Beware of the Blob

Another week, another GOP debate. The big news coming out of this one is that Rick Perry, after all, is not likely to be the Republican nominee for president. He has a fatal flaw that makes him unacceptable to most GOP voters: He doesn’t hate Mexicans enough.

Perry’s flaw was revealed in one of the most memorable exchanges of the night, when he blurted out, “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they have been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.” This prompted spirited attacks from his fellow Republicans and led to widespread, post-debate discussions about Perry’s failure to pass an important conservative litmus test, the one requiring the candidate to not have a heart.

The issue of educating children was brought up because under Perry, undocumented aliens in Texas can attend public universities and pay in-state tuition if they agree to a number of stipulations, including a promise to apply for legal status. I think Perry could have won over those in the GOP audience who booed him, if he had promised them they would all be allowed to attend the graduation ceremonies of the immigrant youths and beat them up after they had received their diplomas. But the governor wasn’t quick enough on his feet to make this offer, and this slowness is likely to be his downfall.

The immigrant issue is one that GOP leaders have used to distract voters from the fact that conservative policies have steadily held the middle class down since about 1980 and now threaten to eliminate it entirely. Today we’re facing a possible replay of what happened in the 1920s when conservative policies of deregulation and favoritism for the corporate rich plunged us into the Great Depression.

The 11 or 12 million undocumented aliens in the US have nothing to do with this. They are not going to make or break the American economy, but their presence provides the GOP with a handy device for distracting middle class voters from their real problems – problems that have been brought about by GOP policies.

No Republican candidate wants to run on the line, “Vote for me so I can keep helping the rich get richer!” though that is what their policies are all about. Of course, conservatives claim that this is not their game, that what they really want is “small government,” but what is small government but a strategy for letting corporate money further engorge itself at the public’s expense?

Corporate money, when allowed to follow its own capitalist instincts, is kind of like the Blob in that old 1958 horror film – a formless monster whose only drive is to get bigger by devouring everything it touches. We in the middle class are protected from this insatiable monster to some extent by Social Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, unemployment benefits, disaster relief funds, public employee unions and the progressive income tax. But when conservatives denounce “government,” these are the things they’re talking about. What the GOP wants is to dismantle them and let us, as individuals, take our chances against the Blob.




















Here’s the rub: Given conservative hatred of the government, you’d think they would also be hostile to our government’s very foundation, namely the U.S. Constitution. But apparently they’re not; in fact they seem quite fond of talking it up. But isn’t hating the government while praising the Constitution kind of like hating Christianity while loving the Bible? What’s up with that?

I think the real answer is that conservatism, as embodied in today's GOP, does not require logical coherence. Rather, it requires a handful of hot-button distractions that engender fear and hatred, distractions like undocumented immigrants, "the government," the sexual preferences of our men and women in uniform, and so on. But these distracters do not truly threaten our well-being; the one thing that does threaten us and that can destroy our way of life is that insatiable and ever-growing Blob.

True Believers

The GOP debate in Tampa last week produced a number of memorable moments, but for my money the most unforgettable of these came when shouts of “Yeah!” burst from the crowd as Wolf Blitzer asked Representative Ron Paul if an ailing individual with inadequate insurance should be allowed to die.

This incident may not exhibit the level of bloodlust that could be heard in the full-throated Republican roar that erupted when, in an earlier debate, Brian Williams pointed out that Governor Rick Perry had overseen 234 executions in Texas, a number that makes the governor an all-time death sentence champion.

Why are Republicans so enthusiastic about death? I’m pretty sure that part of the answer is that the people cheering and shouting over someone dying are not imagining the dying to be in their circle of family and friends.

Let me bolster this point with a thought experiment: Imagine that Wolf Blitzer had addressed one of those cheering Tea Party individuals with this question: “Suppose you and your spouse lost your jobs, found yourselves too poor to buy insurance, and then suddenly discovered that your daughter had an illness that would require hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical attention to save her. Should she be allowed to die?”

Faced with a question like this, I don’t believe even a hard core Tea Partier would blurt out an enthusiastic “Yeah!”

But perhaps I’m naïve.

The fundamental sin of these conservatives, in my opinion, is not just their tendency to imagine that “other people” will be the ones who suffer under the policies they favor, but their outright abandonment of reason. They seem to have given up on rational thought to the point where they are starting to look like a cult.

I think of a cult as a social group with a set of beliefs that are designed to coerce allegiance from group members and to do so by promoting ideas that are irrational but that are made to seem reasonable through being constantly repeated by influential figures – the cult leaders.

One of these irrational beliefs is those executed by the government (the government!) are almost always guilty of the crimes for which they are convicted. This has been proven false by any number of scientific studies. For an interesting and disturbing example of Texas’s death penalty in action, see Errol Morris’s classic documentary The Thin Blue Line. But from the GOP right we get, “Damn the facts and keep the lethal injections coming!”





The Thin Blue Line by the Great Errol Morris






Another irrational belief is that taxes are bad because government is bad (except, I guess, when it is killing people), and that Congress should never, never, never raise taxes, period. This, of course, is the brilliant notion that pushed the government to the brink of default last month, and that threatens to strangle any possibility of an economic recovery in the near future.

One way to put a spike in the heart of this anti-tax fanaticism would be to survey a dozen economists, asking them whether or not they thought it made sense. From my own informal survey of my colleagues in economics, I’d guess that somewhere between 95 and 100% of economists would reject this belief as ridiculous.

But then, why listen to economists? What do they know about economics? Or so a cult believer is likely to say. If a claim is made by someone who is not in the cult, it can be dismissed as propaganda, and not part of the true believer’s belief system.

The Tea Partiers apparently only believe those who don’t criticize or otherwise threaten the true belief system - the system that says, for example, the death penalty only condemns the guilty, taxes should never be raised, undocumented aliens should be treated with contempt and government should never involve itself in the economy.

Let’s stop for a moment to consider that last point – government involvement in the economy is always bad.

China offers an interesting test case. In China, where the economy has been growing at close to 10% per year for decades now, the government has recently been orchestrating the development of green technologies that will dominate the 21st century and by doing so has gained significant advantages over American industries. Of course, China is a country whose government is entirely too intrusive in the lives of ordinary citizens. But it is also a country whose economic growth proves (as though this were necessary) that carefully planned government action can be very good for the economy and for the long-term economic well-being of its citizens. What is keeping the Tea Partiers from seeing that?

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Peace Be upon Us

Steven Pinker is not only a terrific writer, he’s also brilliant. His views are in agreement with mine on almost every issue, and, though I won't go so far as to say this is the ultimate criterion of brilliance, I'll admit to the temptation to think this way.

Pinker has a new book coming out in October, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, and I’ve been given an advanced copy of it to review. I’m not sure I’m going to get to properly review it though, because it’s about 700 pages long and it will take me a while to get through it quickly given my professorial duties. And now that the semester has begun in earnest, these duties can be quite time-consuming. When your spouse begins referring to your job as “that cheap whore that keeps you away from home,” you kind of sense that taking on more work would not be a wise move.

Anyway, in Better Angels Pinker argues convincingly that we live in relatively peaceful times. Yes, you read that line right: We now live in relatively peaceful times. Furthermore, there are powerful trends that have steadily driven down levels of violence on virtually every front for centuries, and these trends should reduce levels of violence even more in the future.

“But,” you may well say, “what about Al Qaeda? 9-11? Iraq? Afghanistan? Libya?” And that’s not to even mention Somalia, Chechnya, Yemen and the Philadelphia Eagles fans.

Yes, there is violence in the world today, but less than there was in the recent past, and much less than there was in the distant past. Pinker identifies six trends, some having lasted for millennia, others for just a few decades, but all of which have helped reduce levels of violence both between nations and within them.

Pinker cites a number of ancient sources, including the Homeric epics and various biblical chapters to support his contention that we are much more peaceful and humane today than our ancestors were. Passages he refers to in the book of Deuteronomy are so intriguing that I found myself going to the original source to see just what God had in mind for the ancient Israelites where warfare was concerned.

Deuteronomy 20. Check it out:

“When the Lord your God delivers [a resisting city] into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.”

Hard cheese on the Hittites, I’d have to say.

From the next chapter we get Divine instructions on what to do with female hotties that fall into the victors’ hands:

“10 When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, 11 if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. 12 Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails 13 and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. 14 If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.”

Question: Do Christian fundamentalists, who insist on accepting every word of the bible as God’s truth, believe that our guys in Afghanistan should be putting local women under house arrest as potential future wives? If not, why not? Was God just kidding when he wrote Deuteronomy? And what would GOP front runner and Christian prayermeister, Rick Perry, say about this?





Sabine Women by David









So far, I’m only about 25% through with The Better Angels of Our Nature, but I’m happy to report that, like all of Pinker’s previous books, this one is interesting and beautifully written. It has Pinker’s characteristically engaging style and its argument is supported by reams of data, much of it in the form of charts and graphs. One of the minor points he makes is that in the U.S., the violence-prone frontier took root before proper policing by state authorities could bring it under control. Canada, on the other hand, policed its frontier courtesy of the Mounties, and consequently Canadian society is not racked with the gun-loving nuttiness (my word, not Pinker’s) that makes America so unique in the Western world. Hard cheese on us.

But ultimately, the varied array of data Pinker brings to bear, and the logical coherence with which he presses his points home are not only thoroughly convincing but even hope-engendering. This is an important story, and we are fortunate that Steven Pinker has taken the time to tell it and to tell it so well.

China - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Back in 1985, when I arrived at Rollins, the first course I taught, more or less as an experiment, was on Chinese culture. I continued to teach that course year after year until 1993 when I went, with my family, to spend a year as a visiting professor at Qingdao University in China. At Qingdao, I underwent a "through the looking glass" fliparoo: after having spent a decade teaching Chinese culture to American students, I was now suddenly teaching American culture to Chinese students.

Qingdao, in 1993, was a pleasant enough town, if you could overlook the widespread poverty and shaky sanitation standards. (Which I could. Not everyone in the family was ready to accept the loose garbage control standards, but that’s a story for another day.) Qingdao, according to the Chinese, is “a beautiful seaside town,” and, in fact, it is considered something of a resort city. I had to explain to one of my deans back then that I had “accidentally” arranged my sabbatical to be a year spent in a seaside resort. When I reported this to him, the dean raised an eyebrow and said, “Qingdao…isn’t that also the beer capital of China?” It is. It’s the home of world famous Tsingtao Beer, so I was obligated to bid good-bye to everyone at Rollins by saying, “I will be spending my sabbatical year in a seaside resort known as the beer capital of China. Wish me luck.”

Teaching the Chinese university students was a dream. Everyone spoke good English and had an attitude that said, “We are ready for anything. Give us homework and we will do it.” Also, they were quite polite and hospitable. Two groups of students volunteered to come to my apartment after Darla and Grace had returned to the U.S. and fix dinner for me. Two of the peasant boys invited me to spend a weekend at their respective homes out in the country and many of them, males and females, spent time giving me information about life in China in the 1990s.















Qingdao University Juniors 1993








China had left the madness of the Mao era behind by then, but it was still more restricted than it is today. We had to report to the university whenever we intended to travel out of the city and all of our packages from home were closely inspected by the customs office.


















The guys at the customs office had some of the best jobs in Qingdao. One of their perks was being able to see all the videotapes sent to us and the other American teachers, since it was their duty, or that of an associated office, to inspect these tapes for unacceptable materials – videos on sensitive political topics or of a “pornographic” nature. But we teachers were a straight-laced bunch. In fact, about a third of our group were Mormons, so our videos turned out to be harmless. Actually, the customs people complained a bit about this. Someone in our group had “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” sent to her every week, and the Chinese officials informed her that they found this show entirely too boring.

We became friends with a family from Iowa living near the university since they had children who were about the same age as Grace. They had asked their family to videotape the Superbowl for them, and, once the game had taken place, they waited anxiously for their tape to make it through Chinese customs. One day, while they were in this waiting limbo, they happened to see the Superbowl game on a local Qingdao station. They watched the game, but as they were watching, they noticed that during the commercial breaks, a lot of the ads were from their Iowa hometown. Curious that. The next day they received word from the customs office that their tape was ready to be picked up. Apparently, someone in the customs office had a relative or a good friend at the local TV station, someone for whom he was willing to do a little favor by loaning him the exotic American sports tape to be broadcast for all of Qingdao to see - complete with ads for Harvey’s Roadhouse Barbecue – Des Moines’ Best!.

China is not as restrictive today as it was in the 1990s, but there are still some barriers to what Americans consider ordinary freedom. For example, China blocks access to Facebook, though many young Chinese have found clever ways around the “Great Firewall of China.” Given that millions of bright young Chinese are growing up with the expectation of communicating freely with each other, and sometimes finding ways to do so by getting around government restrictions, I wonder how long the Beijing authorities can manage to stifle some of these streams of communication that seem so ordinary in the rest of the world. Not too long, I’m guessing. My hope is that by the 100th anniversary of the May Fourth student uprising of 1919, today’s student generation will convince the government that choking off major avenues of citizen discourse is not the best approach to tapping the nation’s resources. Then won’t China be ready to soar?

And I have some cause for optimism. This semester I am again teaching American culture to Chinese students, this time in partnership with Brother Li Wei here at Rollins. And from everything we’ve learned from our Shanghai students so far, I’d have to say, China’s future is in good hands.




Grace with Chinese Friends - 1993

Beware Oprah

We Americans have a constitutionally guaranteed right to our own beliefs no matter how loony they may be. If we want to believe that God flooded the entire world and annihilated humanity because he thought we had a tad too much attitude, we can.

But what about our right to subject everyone else to our own belief system? There doesn’t seem to be such a right, at least not according to the American Constitution as I remember it. However, don’t try telling that to the leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation or NAR.

Last Wednesday on NPR’s Fresh Air, Terry Gross spoke to Rachel Tabachnick, a researcher who has been looking into the NAR and finding some surprising things. For starters, the NAR folks are hard-core fundamentalists. Really hard-core. They make ordinary fundamentalists look like a bunch of abortion-loving sissies.

According to Tabachnick, the NAR guys believe in Dominionism, which is the idea that it is their duty to take over government, business, education and all other major institutions in order to help bring about the End Days. According to them, these institutions, as of now, are under the control of demons. Yes, demons.

Obviously, most of us do not believe that demons are running everything. So far, all they seem to control are Goldman Sachs and some of the other major investment banks and corporations. But are we to believe they also control the Red Cross? Our public schools? The University of North Carolina? Duke? (Well, maybe Duke).

Are we to believe that Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood is controlled by demons? Most Americans, I’m guessing, would agree that the NAR is overestimating the extent of demon control here.






They're Everywhere!
(According to the NAR)







The NAR sometimes gets quite personal about its accusations. They believe, Tabachnick says, not only that gay people are controlled by “demonic spirits,” but that “Oprah Winfrey is a precursor of the Antichrist.”

Wow. Does Stedman know about this? Or could he be…? Never mind.

I suppose that those of us who don’t see Oprah as Antichrist material can dismiss the NAR’s ideas out of hand. After all, what influence do they have in America?

Hmmm. Maybe not a lot right now, but here’s an interesting tidbit that Tabachnick turned up: Texas Governor Rick Perry, who recently vaulted to the status of front runner among Republican presidential candidates, preceded his campaign start-up with a prayer rally that was organized with the help of NAR-linked people.

Tabachnick specifically identifies Lou Engle and Mike Bickle, the latter being affiliated with The Call and the International House of Prayer (not to be confused with IHOP of pancake fame).

Now, I do not believe that Rick Perry is going to be our next president. His beliefs are just too nutty. (Full disclosure: Back in 1980, I thought the same thing about Ronald Reagan.)

But no, even for Republicans, I think Perry just goes too far outside the boundaries of What-a-Sane-Person-Can-Believe Land. And his affiliation with the anti-Oprah fanatics is just one example of his loopiness. There is also his famed declaration that it might just be time for Texas to secede from the United States.

Admittedly there were more than a few among us who raised no objection to the idea of Texas leaving the union. Indeed, the thought can be downright comforting. But nonetheless, does it make sense that the voters would choose as U.S. President a man whose most famous declaration before entering the race was “We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot.”?

What really might cause an eyebrow or two to be raised here is not Rick Perry per se, but the association of Rick Perry with a bunch of people who think the rest of us are now under the control of demons and that only by our falling under NAR “Dominion” will we be saved. It’s enough to make an atheist say, “God help us.”

And, by the way, why aren’t there hundreds of Americans out there on the front lines right now with fists flying against these fundamentalist wackos? I imagine the wackos themselves have a theory: Their enemies, they might argue, have orders from Oprah telling them to cool it for the time being. 

White People Are Awesome

White people are awesome! We really are. – John Oliver

J-Ol said this in the context of his enthusiastic review of The Help, a film in which an awesome white lady showed her bigoted neighbors what’s what as she led the struggle for civil rights way back when. Actually, I haven’t seen The Help, so this description is based only on reviews and other secondhand sources. But I think I know enough to appreciate John Oliver’s snarkiness.






John Oliver - Awesome Guy







 
When the civil rights movement gained steam in the 1960s, a lot of us liberal white people found ourselves well positioned to feel good about ourselves. You might say, paraphrasing Churchill, that “never in the field of human conflict have so many benefited so much for doing so little.” Really, all a guy had to do in those years to feel good about himself was not be a raging bigot. It was awesome (for some of us).

Of course, the story of racism is by no means over, despite what bigoted blowhards like Rush Limbaugh would have us believe. The more I learn about the way racial prejudice works and has worked, the more complex, occasionally subtle and downright horrifying it seems. A wise and gentle white woman of my acquaintance has said more than once, on reading about racial abuses of the past, that she would have wanted to explode with rage had people treated her daughter the way African American children were customarily treated in the past. Naturally, exploding with rage was not an option for those tens of millions of African American parents who wanted to remain alive for the long-term benefit of their children.

I have heard some white folks say things like, “What about black prejudice against whites?!” Yes, I’m guessing there is some of that out there. I wonder where it comes from.

But back to the real problem: Racism has gone underground to an extent, but it is still very much with us. And, though it can be found far and wide, it is most pronounced among those who call themselves conservative. Last Tuesday in the New York Times, an article by David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam (Crashing the Tea Party) pointed out that Tea Partiers are overwhelmingly white and “they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.”

Imagine, if you will, that scientists have invented a Bigot-o-meter that measures the intensity of racial and ethnic prejudice of individuals and gives them a score from 10 (Rush Limbaugh) to 0 (Mohandas Gandhi). If everyone with a score of over 2.5 were denied the right to vote, I believe the Tea Party would lose most of its influence. In fact, the Republican Party as a whole would have trouble winning any elections at the national level.

Absent a Bigot-o-meter, there are other ways to identify people who harbor in their hearts more prejudice than becomes a fair-minded and reasonable person. One indicator is an individual’s approach toward the immigration issue.

Now we know that there are millions of immigrants who have come into this country from Mexico and other Latin American countries without legal documentation or have been born to such people. They have come here to escape economic hardship in their home countries, and they have found that many American corporations will make it easy for them to get jobs as fruit pickers and such. You could say that these companies have offered these low-paid workers a welcome mat, and we who have been able to buy inexpensive fruit and vegetables due to low labor costs, have benefited from this arrangement.

Obviously, this is no way to police a border or organize an economy. Something needs to be done. But what a given individual claims should be done is a litmus test of prejudice almost as accurate as the imaginary Bigot-o-meter.

If you see someone angrily denouncing these undocumented aliens, insisting on labeling them as “illegal,” claiming that “anchor babies” present a huge problem for us, declining to acknowledge the benefits that some corporations derive from this cheap and docile work force, refusing to acknowledge the economic benefits we as purchasers of inexpensive foods enjoy, and refusing to acknowledge that the services these workers purchase ultimately result in job creation, then I’d say you’re looking at about the equivalent of an 8.5 on the Big-o-meter.

Of course anti-immigrant bigotry isn’t the only kind of racism that still flourishes in the seedier corners of our society, but it is the one that now stands front and center in our ongoing political debate. If we could all work together - black people, white people, immigrants and so on - to get a handle on the real problems that a leaky border engenders, and do so without the anti-Hispanic vitriol that pollutes current discussions, then maybe we would have a right to say that we Americans are awesome, and we wouldn’t have to specify color to do so.

Corporations Are People, Too

Last week Mitt Romney made headlines when he said, “Corporations are people, my friend!”

Actually, it would have been totally cool if Governor Romney had gone all Shakespeare on us. He might have said, “Hath not a corporation hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Is it not subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a dude is? If you prick Halliburton, does it not bleed? If you tickle ExxonMobil, does it not laugh? If you poison BP, does it not die? And if you wrong Goldman Sachs, shall it not revenge?”

Frightening prospect, that last one.






 









Hath Not a Corporation Tentacles?








Actually, the one quality that all commercial corporations have in common is a structural dedication to sucking in as much of our cash as they possibly can. The Governor helpfully pointed out that this money winds up in the pockets of actual People, but the Corporations themselves are not so much People as the shell games that wealthy People use to make themselves wealthier.

Exhibit A: Enron. Some of the People behind Enron got caught and paid a price for that particular shell game, but not all of them did. Some got off scot free with their pockets well stuffed.

Exhibit B: Halliburton. Who can forget the billions that Halliburton’s People raked in through the Bush administration’s no-bid contracts? Governor Romney is asking a lot to encourage us to be kind and thoughtful toward those shysters and spinmeisters. Maybe we could begin to see the humanity in Halliburton if its actions didn’t reek of belligerence, callous greed and utter contempt for the public’s well-being. People like that we don’t need, even though I’m sure Governor Romney finds them just dandy.

















Mr. Cheney is People Too, and Governor Romney Will Thank You to Feel His Pain!



(From Jesse's Cafe Americain)









Exhibit C: AIG, Citibank, and the rest of the Wall Street stage props that Romney’s People relied on to siphon our money into their pockets. These Corporations were like kabuki costumes that strutted across the public stage, both huge and feeble, while crying out to be saved – for they were “too big to fail.” But weren’t the People wearing these logo-crested costumes, the same People who continued to pocket fat bonuses out of the money we gave them? Are they too big to jail? And now, does Governor Romney really want us to seek them out in their Park Avenue apartments and Connecticut mansions and - if we can get past their security guards – step forward to offer our condolences for the pain and suffering they’ve endured in this collapse? Some of them, after all, were once worth billions by virtue of the Corporations they hid behind, but having to rely on direct taxpayer donations, they’ve seen their fortunes dwindle down to mere hundreds of millions.

Maybe Governor Romney could suggest the proper way, according to the People in his class, for expressing sympathy in such situations. Are there special Rich People’s Hallmark stores with sympathy cards that say things like “So Sorry to Hear about Your Being Reduced to a Semi-Billionaire. But Don’t Despair – President Romney Will Restore Your Life to Its Former Fullness!”

Notice how the People that Governor Romney loves have not been held accountable for wrecking our economy and throwing millions of us out of our jobs and homes. The Governor seems to want us to hate President Obama for doing nothing more than saving the economy that Romney’s Corporations blew to smithereens. But since Obama only saved the economy from total destruction and did not, in fact, make things perfect again, Romney and the other Republicans are ready to string him up.

It is true that President Obama was not adequately aggressive in forcing accountability on these ruthless, greedy, and irresponsible Corporations and that select group of People they serve. For this he can be criticized. As far as I’m concerned, however, there is room for a degree of forgiveness here because, first of all, he is not in a position to do everything he’d like to do. Pro-corporate Republicans like Mitt Romney are still powerful enough to stall and undermine his efforts. Recently they succeeded in blocking the appointment of Elizabeth Warren to head the new United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Commission, for example. In that position she would have been an ideal defender of consumers’ rights, but for that very reason Romney’s Corporate People hate her. And so they blackballed her. I wonder if Governor Romney recognizes that the consumers and taxpayers who have been getting screwed by the Corporate People are also People? Or do People only count in the Governor’s book if they’re hiding behind Corporate Logos?

In the money-saturated arena that is American electoral politics, even well intentioned leaders like Barack Obama are sometimes obligated to restrain themselves to avoid being cut off entirely from any chance of re-election. If all the big money sources available for political contributions go to Romney’s Corporate People, then those People will win virtually every election and we will find ourselves living under the authority of an undemocratic Corporatacracy. In fact, this is what the Tea Party and other right-wingers seem to be striving for.

As I have argued in an earlier posting (Lie to me – September 4, 2010), our political leaders would be much more responsive to voters, particularly those voters who don’t have tons of Corporate Cash to throw around, if we could make them less dependent on private money in their campaigns. Most private money is, after all, Corporate-filtered money, and its influence in the electoral process is downright corrupting. But then, those benefiting from this corruption are People; specifically, they are Governor Romney’s favorite People. And, these People, by virtue of their access to Corporate money, have “hands, organs, dimensions, etc.” that are a whole lot bigger and grabbier than what the rest of us people can bring to the table. They have pricked us well and good, all right, and we are still bleeding.