A few miles from where I live, there’s going to be a demonstration of sorts sometime soon. Our local NPR station did a somewhat incoherent interview with the organizer, an elderly sounding gentleman who said he was bringing together people who represent a broad range of political tendencies, left to right, to protest taxes against the backdrop of Fort Stanwix in Rome, a tourist-oriented recreation of the Revolutionary War era outpost. His contention was that, like the colonists during the revolution, he was encouraging people to take a stand against taxation. Actually, I think the founding fathers took issue with the notion of taxation without representation, but nevermind. This is a very 21st Century type of revolution – a bunch of people gathered at a local tourist trap to complain about something that will be with us as long as we have an organized society. It’s kind of like protesting gravity. Jump as high as you like – eventually, you’ll have to come down.

I wonder if this is what Grover Norquist dreamed of when he was a College Republican (like his pal Jack Abramoff) – that we would adopt an ethos of almost childish self-centeredness. Nobody likes paying taxes, goes the cliche. Nobody likes paying for anything, right? (Wouldn’t it be awesome if everything were free, man?) And do I have to eat my oatmeal, mom? Seriously, in the last 30 years, taxes, like “tough on crime” legislation, gun control (or lack of same), and national defense, has been the stuff of legendary demagoguery. It remains true today, with a somewhat hollower ring. Republicans, for instance, are really only about tax cuts now, while intoning recently-developed concern about rampant deficit spending. These are the same folks who enthusiastically signed on to pirating the treasury during the first Bush term, voting for two major tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that contributed to growing deficits even during what they themselves refer to as relatively prosperous years – tax cuts designed to create far greater costs in the out years (i.e. right now) and which left us in a far weaker position to face down the current economic crisis. That’s the party of fiscal responsibility.

The truth is, they’re not against running deficits – their own alternative budget provides for a $1.7 trillion shortfall. They’ve just against the notion of that borrowed money going to benefit ordinary people in any tangible way. So I have to wonder what that guy who’s picketing Fort Stanwix hopes to achieve, except perhaps a completely dysfunctional government that still runs massive deficits.

Shoot ’em up redux. Just down the road, in Binghamton, some lunatic shot up an immigrant services center on Friday, killing as many as 15. Where’d he get the gun? Who cares, right? These mass killings keep happening, and no one even attempts to address the flood of deadly weapons anymore. We’re being held hostage by 2nd Amendment absolutists who rail at any limits as an attempt to take away their firearms. Bullshit. Consider this, friends – the word “gun” never appears in the 2nd Amendment, just arms. If we consider it beyond any limitation, people will claim the right to buy rocket launchers and nuclear bombs before we’re done. Time for some common sense, before someone else dies for nothing.

luv u,

jp

News from the front this week hasn’t been so good. Deadly car bombings in Iraq (a.k.a. “normal land”). Policemen killed in Afghanistan, along with many others (including U.S. military people). Another unmanned drone attack in Pakistan, killing Lord knows who (sometimes the policy – like our weapons – seems to be on autopilot). And in Israel, chilling testimony from Israeli soldiers confirming the worst allegations about their attack on Gaza (euphemistically referred to by our media as a “war”), with stories of arbitrary, even random killings of Palestinian civilians, various acts of gratuitous brutality, a fanatical head chaplain from the settlements urging holy war. Pretty ugly stuff, all in all… though nothing all that surprising for the I.D.F. Despite their claims about “purity of arms”, they have a history of oppressive behavior dating back to the 1948 war. And now it seems likely their next foreign minister will be a patent racist who has toyed with the notion of expulsion of Israeli Arabs. Paging George Mitchell! You’ve got your work cut out for you, old boy.

Obama’s message to the Iranians was probably a step in the right direction, but it means little without a palpable change of policy across the region. That means some effort to promote Iraqi independence (from us) and reconstruction (from our assorted ravages), as well as a more speedy withdrawal of troops and military contractors. It also means rethinking the kind of policy that produces more hatred towards America amongst Pashtuns on both sides of the Afghan/Pakistan border. And it means a stop to the uncritical support we have given the Israeli government regardless of how they conduct themselves in the territories they have occupied since June 1967 (i.e. Palestine). Let’s face it – we’ve always been on the wrong side of struggles in the developing world, even when “our side” has won. From the Congo to Southeast Asia, from El Salvador to Chile, from Kabul to Baghdad, and everywhere in between, we’ve engaged in the thoughtless application of military might to political disputes and social upheaval, with invariably disastrous results. When will it stop? When will the sun set on this empire?

As the Israelis have demonstrated through their actions, and as we are demonstrating through our own, occupations have a corrupting influence on the occupier. Now seemingly incapable of facing down even a moderately armed irregular force like Hezbollah, the Israeli military seems best suited to attacking captive civilian populations in areas they already effectively control – civilians who have no effective means of defense. For our own part, we have become so used to the idea of civilian casualties that they are almost never deemed worthy of media coverage unless they occur in the double digits. The fact that we leave crucial life-or-death action to pilotless drones illustrates how profoundly we have separated ourselves from any sense of responsibility to the people subject to our military force. The very experience of war and occupation is now limited to the relatively small number of families whose members volunteer for service, our collective knowledge of its horrors growing more and more remote as the conscripts of 20th Century conflicts grow old and pass away.

Leave us face it: the empire is failing. Instead of tinkering with it, we had best consider how to abandon it before it destroys what’s left of our democracy.

luv u,

jp

When I first heard about the AIG bonuses – I think it was last Saturday – I felt sure there’d be hell to pay, but this is way beyond what I expected. Now that we’ve all been treated to six straight days of red-faced rage, I have to say – this is just fucking surreal. It’s not surprising that people are pissed off, but to see politicians, pundits, and news correspondents gnashing their teeth and shaking their fists at the sky is kind of hilarious. What – they’ve never heard of out-sized executive compensation before? Of top-level managers walking away from failed enterprises with a big bundle of cash? Where have they been for the past 25 years? It’s only been happening my entire adult life, practically. Oh sure, I know – AIG took public funds. But plenty of companies with obscenely over-compensated management teams suck off the public feeding tube. Just look at our defense contractors, for chrissake, or Agri-business, fed fat with subsidy. AIG is a dramatic example of something that’s been common practice for a long time, made possible by the very people who are screaming the loudest.

It’s a pretty hollow pantomime, I’m sure, for most people. We’ve all been watching this feeding frenzy for decades now as our own incomes have stagnated or declined. These hubris-driven bonuses are just a parting shot – a little flourish on the longest and most profound looting of our nation’s treasure in its 233-year history. Since the start of the 1980s, business has called the shots and the wealthy have further enriched themselves at the expense of working people and the poor. What was good for Wall Street was good for the country, and it didn’t matter how convoluted and abstruse their methods became – if they moved the needle in the right direction, it was all good. We’ve just been subjected to a systematic fraud that’s measurable in the tens of trillions of dollars, and far from excoriating the beneficiaries, our political leadership and mainstream press have largely facilitated and celebrated their excess.

Sure, AIG cut themselves checks. But they also passed something like $13 billion to Goldman Sachs to cover outstanding contracts. I heard a G.S. spokesperson say that they would not have been substantially affected by the loss of AIG, but that they took the payout to protect the interests – get this – of the American people, who had bailed Goldman out and were, therefore, shareholders of the extremely well-connected investment bank. (Insert laugh track here.) When you view this in the broader context not only of massive bonuses (more than a billion to executives of bailed-out Citibank) and ongoing payouts via the Federal Reserve, but of the stuff that doesn’t get talked about at all, like the missing $50 billion or more in Iraq reconstruction funds (remember the pallets of cash?) and the other assorted wild commitments of public funds initiated by the previous administration, AIG is small potatoes. It also provides a good opportunity for the thieves to yell “thief”, if only for a few days.

We’ve got a massive problem here, folks – one that’s causing upwards of 650,000 people to lose their jobs every month. We didn’t get here overnight. If we’re unprepared, it’s because the sluggards who run this country – Republicans and Democrats – have been asleep at the switch for too long. Wake up time.

luv u,

jp