What’s the Matter with Arizona?

On Tuesday the Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill that directly targets minority studies meant to show the ethnic differences in history. This is on the coattails of the new Arizona immigration law in that encourages the police to target people on the basis of ethnic origin. The TV heads immediately sprang into action by either asking why Arizona has become so insatiably jingoistic or wholeheartedly supporting any and all measures – but that is what they do on every topic.

The real story is that we never learn from history. Every time that a minority immigrates to the country en masse during a time of economic hardship, the native population sees them as the reason for their difficulty. In reality, the new group is the solution to the problem. The massive Irish immigration to New England resulted in Hibernophobia, or hatred of the Irish. They were labeled as lawless addicts who took all of the low paying jobs away from good Christians. They were demonized to the point where businesses openly displayed signs that said “No Irish Need Apply.” But in the end, the Irish workforce created more jobs and a higher quality of life by added a fresh jolt a working class of people into a much needed economically stagnant society. Our open system is built on a constant influx of foreign laborers to bolster the previous proletariat.

What we are now seeing in Arizona is the same unfounded fear of a new group. The Arizonian people incorrectly assume that if they were to rid the Latinos from their area, they would somehow rebound economically; but this thought process is not complete. There is no reason for an economy to rebound by simply throwing out the cheapest workers because there is no great supply of jobs that the native population could then take. The jobs that the Latinos are doing will never pay enough for the home-grown population to continue their current quality of life. Moreover, the resources being taken by that new group are barely more than an offset of any poor population. Ridding Arizona of “illegals,” a very thinly veiled code word for Latinos, would only move out one poor minority for another.

The reason for this ethnic blame game is nothing more than laziness. The majority does not wish to be forced to work as hard as someone with everything to gain. They believe that their lineage paid for their position within our class system and they are happy to spend just as much energy fighting against proving their place in society as they would if they had to directly compete for the jobs in question. But this is how our system works – think of it as an initiation. Put up with our xenophobic nationalism masquerading and poorly placed patriotism and we’ll let you stay. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and we’ll beat them up for about a decade and let them fin. So next time you see a talking head, say Irish descendant Bill O'Reilly, ranting about the scourge of the newest immigrants to land on our shores, try to remember that in 40 years it could just as easily be a Bill Ortega ranting about the invading immigrants from South Africa. The story is always the same, only the last names change.

The Bellicosity Curve

In 1943 multiple Pulitzer Prize winning historian Richard Hofstadter wrote the book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life which traced social movements that altered the role of intellect in American society. In it he argued, with extreme success, that anti-intellectualism and utilitarianism were functions of American cultural heritage, born out of our colonial European and evangelical Protestant heritage, and now embedded within our national fabric. He identified the major causes of anti-intellectualism in society as mediocrity in the public schools, and attacks on academic freedom in the universities and a press divided into niche markets.

The entire book was a social commentary on life leading up to the early 1960s, the increasing influence of Protestant evangelicalism, political egalitarianism, and the rising cult of practicality as the new criteria for assessing the private and public worlds. He spoke to the connection of religion, politics and public schools fostering the average person’s resentment and suspicion of intellect and of those who devoted their lives to it. Tracing through history, he then showed how this created a predictable reaction of "righteous" vengeance from a highly susceptible percentage of the population and how that rise is not only precipitated but cyclical.

I mention Hofstadter and his book because I spent this last week reading Glenn Beck’s five books, watching hours of his show and reading through his numerous pieces online. I did so because I’ve been trying to figure out why so many people find him to be a credible source of knowledge on politics, society and life in general. After submitting myself to all things Glenn Beck, I can honestly say that the people who follow this man are clearly not too intelligent. His books contradict themselves, his show is encourages people to isolate themselves, reinforce their predetermined opinions and uses the old trick of repetition to make truth out of fiction.

If virulence destroys an argument, it is only done so when fiction is embraced and civility is abandoned to mob rule. In Glenn Beck’s world, contempt of anything that he cannot understand is marketed like a commodity to a segment of the population who understands the topic less than him. What is more interesting is that his rise and eventual fall will be inextricably linked to both Hofstadter anti-intellectualism and the inevitable normal curve of shock media. Glenn Beck is the new Jerry Springer Show, Howard Stern, The Morton Downey Jr. Show or the practice of bleeding sick people. And the only way to combat his misinformation, thinly veiled bigotry and radical political ideologies, is to just let them run their course. So if you are like me would like to go all Lionel Trilling on the situation, but lack the cerebral firepower, don’t. Anything that you do to encourage either him or his momentary followers simply adds to his credibility as an anti-intellectual leader and extends the time during which he is relevant.

Why is it Always South Carolina?

I’ve lived in a lot of places in my life, but no where have I lived that had a reputation like South Carolina. We moved here a week after Miss Teen South Carolina, competing in the Miss Teen USA Pageant, made national headlines with possibly the worst answer to a question in the history of all questions and answers (video here). Then our intellectually challenged Governor got so lost on the Appalachian Trail that he ended up in bed with an Argentinean mistress, only to then cry on national TV as he tried to explain to the world that she was his "soul mate". This last week our 2nd Congressional District Representative to the US House, Addison Graves Wilson, Sr. (he just goes by "Joe"), who was previously only known for being one of the last holdouts for taking the Confederate symbol off of the state flag, heckled the president in a joint session of Congress. Seriously.

Historically speaking, SC has a reputation for being on the wrong side of almost everything argument since our inception. From the big things, like South Carolina being the last state to sign the Constitution (and only agreeing to join the Union on the condition that the Constitution wouldn't abolish slavery), to SC being first state to secede from the Union and the last to succeed in reestablishing its native white government after Reconstruction, to all of the small things, like South Carolina being last state to abandon a simple money fine for the murder of a slave, last to recognize MLK Day, an educational ranking of 49th in the country, 48th in unemployment, one of the worst states for woman’s health care, one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy, lowest infants birthrate, highest infant mortality, highest stroke death rate (which SC has had for a staggering 5 decades), 2nd highest death rate for oral cancer, one of the highest poverty rates within the US. All of this leads to the third worst life expectancy in the entire country (if there were ever a state in the US that could use health care reform, it’s South Carolina).

So naturally, with such an unhealthy, uneducated population, our representatives are going to be, well, representative. This helps to feed the rhetoric that amazes most of the country. They cannot understand why South Carolina has such high percentage of people who are unabashedly proud of their constantly poor decisions. South Carolina's arrogant backlash against what are mathematically unquestionable statistics, and inverse benevolence towards those who refuse to listen to elementary logic, are what causes the country to take note. Which is why, every couple of months, another South Carolinian makes national headlines for actions that the vast majority the country would categorize as "not too bright."

All of this continuously bad press was summed up by one of Politico’s lead headline this week: "What's the Matter with South Carolina?" The answer to Politico’s headline is simple. We are the most patriotic state in the country. We are the strongest, humblest and do more than any other state to make our country both strong and successful. Don’t believe me? What state would stand up against health care reform when they need it the most? What state would fight against government job stimulus when have skyrocketing unemployment and endemic poverty? What state would knowingly, historically and with full awareness of their actions, crucify themselves over and over again, prostrating themselves on the altar of every bad idea, hypocritical leader and backwards ideology, while still holding their heads up for the world to see? Who will? South Carolina will, that’s who. Without us, the other states would have no example of what not to be. That is our place in this country and we do a damn good job at it.

As Long as You Have Your Health

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

Growing up where I did in Massachusetts, my parents had a couple run-ins with James Taylor. For a time we lived near him, but I still don’t care for most of his music. That being said, the words to some of his songs still resonate with me to this day. Even taken out of context, they seem to have a power that makes them live on their own.


A couple weeks ago I spent several days tooling around the area where both Kela and I graduated from high school. When we lived in the area it was fairly well off. Now, with the median household income nearing $100,000 and the median home price closing in on $300,000, it is safe to say that it is quite an affluent area. And it was in one of my retracing of old haunts that I realized how insulated that area is from most of the country. In the middle of a recessions their restaurants overflow, their Bentley and Porsche dealerships flourish and, even in the most deprived areas, they still seem very comfortable by national standards.

Spending time in a city like such as that, I can understand why some people don’t grasp the weight of poverty that smothers so many in this county. I would like to stereotype them as people who think that the poor are those who can’t afford organic food or drive cars with dents in them; that their biggest gift back to the world was that trip to Africa where they traded food and medicine to anyone who would accept Jesus as their lord and savior; or as people who never had to explain to a child why it needed to sleep through their hunger, but that would not be fair. You cannot judge someone by what they have never had the chance to learn. Instead, I fault our ever increasing segregation into socioeconomic classes, devoid of class mobility, and encouraged by companies catering to those specific sects. We have become a society who does not want to be reminded of those we’ve left behind.

From my generation back to the baby boomers, we are at best one generation out and two thoughts away from any true understanding of hardship. For the most part, we don’t go places in this country where they are likely to see it pain, suffering or poverty. Sure we may encounter a homeless mother on the street, but they will never see where and how she and her children live. We no longer understand what poverty means to them.

So maybe a quick reminder is due: Poverty and its outcomes are hunger and the lack of shelter. It’s the knowledge that if you get sick without insurance, it will mean living on the streets. Real poverty is not having access to school, not knowing how to read, not having or being able to find a job, having an all-consuming fear of the future, living one day at a time or losing a child or family member to illness brought about by living conditions. Real poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and an absence of freedom.

When I see people speak up against nationalized health care, I wonder who these people think that this is for. Do they honestly think that people don’t want to work, want to live off of the system and are truly a mass of degenerates who deserve nothing but our scorn? These are real people, stuck within a system that we created and support, and whose numbers are expanding at an extraordinarily fast rate. Every day, former middle-class Americans, previous neighbors of you and I, become part of their numbers. Of course no one knows that because they are forced out of their communities, to places their former neighbors would never visit, to be forgotten and treated as soulless government welfare recipients.

Ted Kennedy died this week. He died before having a chance to see his lifelong goal of health care for all Americans become a reality. And it was during one of the blisteringly long memorandums televised in his honor that Fire and Rain, performed by Boston born James Taylor, was played in the background of rotating stills of Kennedy’s life. Inappropriate as I found the touted connection, the words struck me as poignant.

Even though I’ve lived a life of reasonable comfort and have done what I could to pass that on to others, I have seen true poverty, I have seen politics, organizations and well-meaning individuals fail to save the weakest among us, I know the smell of depravity as it heads toward the inevitable and I have seen death for sheer lack of powerlessness. Still through all that I have seen and experienced, I always thought that when called upon, we as a country would come together, rise up as one and reach out to help those in need, one more time again. Now I’m not so sure.

Astroturf

For those of you who aren’t sure how politics works behind the scenes, let me take a minute to give you an example of what the average American never sees or hears. This is how current anti-health care reform movement was created and how it is still run today:

Almost all grassroots movements, whether Liberal or Conservative, usually have, at their root, organizations run by heavily sponsored corporate interests that orchestrate the dissemination of information and organize the movement of pawn-like individuals to represent their interests in the most public places possible. If you ever want to find out why the latest grassroots movements came into being or where it is going, simply look at who backs them.

For information on current anti-health reform faction, simply check out Americans for Prosperity website, currently working under the subsidiary of Patients First. Their Director is Art Pope, who has North Carolina Republican Party Headquarters named after him, and whose National Chairman is David Koch, the 19th richest man in the world and the co-owner of the largest private oil company in the US. Their organization perfectly represents the real driving force behind this current anti-health reform drive. Furthermore, their website claims that they are run and comprised by normal, hardworking middle-class people, who just happen to be busing people across the country to cause disruptions at Town Hall meetings, sometimes thousands of miles away from their own homes.

This is what these groups do. They are experts at fake grassroots campaigns that promote corporate interests. Americans for Prosperity is the exact same company that drummed up support for its anti-stimulus rallies earlier this year and organized a national campaign against the notion that global warming exists. It is the same company that paid for Joe the Plumber to travel around the country to protest the Employee Free Choice Act’s pro-labor legislation. This oil industry and Republican Operative millionaires club is, according to the Republican Party Spokesman today, “just regular, average American folks.” I can almost see them now: just sitting around the kitchen table talkin’ about whether or not they can get away with saying that the government has a secret plot to kill old people.

These guys are the pros, this is an industry. Americans are now being bused to these events to stop the discussion and rattle congressman. Sure they are enraged, but it is in part because they are being riled up by over-the-top fabricated conspiracy theories about health care. And they are being directed and orchestrated by the corporate interests that do this for a living and do it very well. Add to this a media company that directly caters to, and is funded by these same special interests, and you have a formidable publicity movement with a very specific goal in mind.

So none of these protests are grassroots in any way. This is about as organic as the McRib. This is how corporate America creates the illusion of a grassroots movement to support their own interests. This is their job, they are professionals at this and this is an industry. To talk about these town hall events as some sort of natural outpouring of average American folks that have concerns about health care is to be willfully blind as to what is really going on. What is really going on is that there are professional PR operatives, generating exploitive, manufactured, strategically deployed disruptions in order to line their own pockets. These PR people get paid a lot of money for doing it and the corporations that pay for it get to kill legislation that would hurt their profits. And the real people, who they launch into these town hall settings, after they’re told that health care reform is some evil socialist plot to kill old people and to mandate sex changes, those real people get angrier and more alienated every day. Ultimately they will get left, like the rest of us, with a health care system that is broken, doesn’t work in the interests of the American people, but does work in the interest of the corporations that profit from the way the system is now.

This is what politics looks like behind your back. Both sides always have and always will do it. What I ask of you is this: don’t give them that power. The biggest secret in Washington is that you, the people, have the final say because it is you, the voters, who decide who stays and who goes. If enough of you tell your Congressman that this type of activity is not how you wish to see your country behave, it will stop. If enough of you say that you don’t want to be told what to believe, it will make a difference. If enough of you finally decide that you have had enough of this manipulative practice, the country may even have a chance to debate this issue in an open and honest setting – devoid of special interest groups, PR firms and lobbyists trying to dictate what you think. That is, if enough of you still think that you matter.

The Road Less Traveled

This last week heralded yet another awkward public moment: a white man of privilege took umbrage with someone of a stereotypically lower class for having the gall to say that her background was somehow better than his own. Republican after Republican took shots at Supreme Court elect Sonia Sotomayor for having the nerve to have once uttered, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life”.

The media circus ensued, complete with a previously outed racist Republican, launching quasi-bigoted remarks and attempting to get her to respond in some sort of super Hispanic way in hopes that she would scare every white person within 10,000 miles. Overall, the all-white male Republican panel took great pains in claiming that they will not be discriminated against for working to keep their status quo.

The problem with their base argument is that they are completely dismissing taking pride in the difference in paths that some people are required to take to reach their level of importance. This is at odds with the fact that they are always claiming that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. So there sat a proud Latina woman, one of the absolute underdogs in our society, being grilled by some of the most entitled of our society about achieving the standard American underdog dream.

But maybe that’s just it. These guys have never been down a similar road; they have had life so full of privilege that they can’t even see the true value in overcoming grand obstacles. Anyone who came up through it, while noble, clearly doesn’t understand the way they believe things are and how they believe they should always be. If the system wasn’t fixed, wasn’t stacked in their favor, people like Sonya Sotomayor might just become the new entitled class. And that is something that brings out their true intolerance.

Tea Party Protests

Bitter that your side lost? Angry that the majority of the country thinks that you're wrong? Wanna pretend that your corporate sponsored, news endorsed, political action party scripted values are grassroots and spontaneous? Then I have an event for you!

Today at your local Hooters, they will be serving beer and hot wings. I suggest that you go sit at the bar, have a drink and some wings, and try to get a grip on reality.

Big Government

Here is the biggest secret in all of Washington: Both the Republicans and Democrats love big government. It guarantees them jobs, makes them more powerful and creates an almost unbreakable institution in which they can run the show. The only difference is that they like big government in different places.

Lately there has been a pseudo-outcry by Republicans over the stimulus bill heading through Congress. Their latest charge is the true and tried "borrow and spend" assault that has worked well for them. Yet when you look at their own history back through the 1980’s, they have done the exact same for their own pet causes.

During Reagan’s Administration government spending increased by 69%, with a 92% increase in defense spending as he built up the military to confront the Soviet Union (none of these numbers are adjusted for inflation). When he left office the economy was growing and the size of the government as a share of total economic production had shrunk slightly, from 22.2% to 21.2%. In contrast, Clinton’s Administration increased government spending by 32% during his time in office; which was decreased by the rapid slowdown in defense spending after the Cold War ended. When he left office, Clinton’s defense spending had increased by just 4%. So the combination of restrained growth in government and a booming economy meant that government's size as a percentage of the economy dropped from 21.4% to 18.5%.

Next up was George W. Bush, who boosted government spending by 68 % in his eight-year presidency, spearheaded by a 126% increase for defense as he waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush's spending totals don't include the $700 billion bank bailout added last fall to his final fiscal year, or the $787 billion stimulus package added early this year, but by the time he left office, Bush's government had grown as a share of the economy from 18.5% to 22%.

Over the last couple of weeks Republicans have done everything that they could to brand Obama as another Big Government liberal. And even while Obama speaks of hope and optimism about the economy, he will probably increase government spending for the next two years, only to lower if back down to that same 22% by the end of his first term – the same as George W. Bush at the end of his presidency and slightly more than Reagan at the end of his.

The interesting thing to watch is Republicans crying Big Government while approving of any spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or on weapons systems such as the F-22 Raptor fighter jet being developed by Lockheed Martin. Even such Rush sycophants like Georgian Republican Representative Phil Gingrey has recently brought an argument to the floor that buying nearly 200 more of the F-22 Raptor jets (he attempted to claim that they were needed to defend ourselves from China and Russia) at $160 million each, is a good investment. If you’re trying to do the math in your head, that’s 32 billion dollars worth of Big Government on something even the military deemed unnecessary.

What it comes down to is that Obama and other Democrats want a big government that addresses their priorities, not the Republicans' agenda. Being a liberal myself, I see the military complex of Big Government that the Republicans pushed through over the last twenty years as wasteful, but the Big Government of education, energy conservation, health care… that the Democrats are now trying to push as worthwhile investments. So in the future, when you hear someone say that they are against Big Government, ask them what specifically they don’t wish to fund. I have a strange feeling that you’ll be able to pick out their political leanings fairly quickly.