This has been one of those weeks when I’m not sure whether to look east or look west at any given moment. So many compelling things happening both at home and overseas at the same time – a monumental struggle in the case of the Libyan nation; certainly dramatic ones at play in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere.
Just a few thoughts about Libya. Muammar Gaddafi appears to be turning his country into the Romania of this particular wave of revolutionary movements, importing mercenaries to buttress his failing grip on the capital, using all the armaments that western money has bought him against his own countrymen and women, turning 50 caliber anti-aircraft guns against unarmed civilians. Terrifying stuff, and likely hundreds – possibly thousands – are dead. Gaddafi is now phoning in his incoherent rants from an undisclosed (probably mobile) location, blaming the uprising on Al Qaeda and drug-crazed youth, among other things. (Now I understand why Bush took a shine to this wack-job. His administration used similar rhetoric against opponents to the Iraq war.)
I’ve heard many helpful suggestions about what we can do to help the Libyan rebels – everything from cat calls to military invasion. That last one worries me a bit. Frankly, I think the best thing western countries can do is just not buy oil from the regime, freeze assets, etc. We’ve floated him in much the same way that we support and have supported other despots in the region and elsewhere in the world, from Saddam Hussein in the 1980s to Hosni Mubarak three weeks ago. As always, it’s all about the money. What else would put him two seats down from Obama at an international conference? (Expect to see THAT picture during the 2012 campaign.)
Back here at home, we’ve got a somewhat more amiable struggle between the ownership class and, well, all of the rest of us. And yes, I know – most of us are not members of unions; I am certainly not. But this is an important fight for working people in general, because it is a concerted, premeditated effort to erode some of the hardest won rights of organized labor. As those rights are taken away, those of non-union workers are further undermined. But even more fundamentally, the Wisconsin fight is a question of basic fairness. The reason why public pension funds are in trouble is not because they are too generous, but because many of them invested heavily with Wall Street and because we are in the worst economic downturn in recent memory. Public workers are being scapegoated because conservatives are taking the opportunity to pin the blame on them. Meanwhile… Wall Street is doing just fine, thank you.
Class war? Guess what… it’s being waged against us all the time, whether we admit it or not. Time to fight back.
luv u,
jp
One wishes that were the full extent of the madness – just the Keystone Cop-like clumsiness – but it goes much deeper than that. The corporations that poured money into this last campaign will be getting just what they paid for: a legislature devoted to ensuring full federal compliance with their legislative and regulatory priorities. They got some love from the 111th Congress, to be sure, particularly in light of what has happened to the economy and the environment over the past two years, but this is a prize of an entirely different order of magnitude. This is a paid-for House, pure and simple.
I’m not a practicing Christian, nor am I big on organized religion in general, but if there’s one thing valuable about the Christmas season it’s the sense of possibility it can engender in people – not so much the expectation of personal gain, but more the notion that things can be better, that in the midst of an unforgiving universe, we can be fair and decent to one another. So in a way these letters show that, even in the midst of an unrelenting consumer culture, these kids are more focused on those ideals than might be expected. So even though Santa may not be coming for many of them, they are very good little girls and boys indeed.