jude folly

Pfc. Lynndie England holds what appears to be a dog’s leash around the neck of a naked man at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Digital image obtained by The Washington Post from Iraq.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a federal appellate court’s decision to allow the release of still more photos allegedly illustrating the abuse of U.S.-held prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though initially in favor of the release of said photos, the Obama administration changed course and argued that, if published, the images would provoke further anti-American sentiment and jeopardize the security of U.S. military personnel, diplomats, and citizens around the world.

At the risk of sounding naive, this sounds a lot like an argument against using torture to interrogate prisoners in the first place; let alone severely compromising the moral authority of the United States–meaning, how can we expect other countries or para-military organizations not to mistreat our citizens if our conduct in war is just as abusive?

‘We’ll have no one to blame but ourselves if healthcare reform doesn’t include a public option.’ So read the subheading to columnist Robert Reich’s piece ‘The Public Option’s Last Stand,’ featured recently at Salon.com. It appears a Salon editor took some liberty with Reich’s article in response to the real possibility that the Obama administration had winced over the battle to reform healthcare.

Though it might invite the accusation of ‘blaming the victim,’ our culpability strikes me as quite reasonable. So what if there’s been plenty of passionate and urgent venting about healthcare reform; no voter consensus has emerged to force even a committee majority in Congress to thoughtfully consider providing a single payer system like Medicare for U.S. citizens under age 65.

Given the career paths of former staffers for Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) – whose campaign has received  insurance and pharma industry millions – a single payer plan never had even a meatball’s chance on Rush Limbaugh’s dinner plate.

Opponents of healthcare reform have stirred up a hornet’s nest of outrage by plying all manner of lies and pathetic exaggerations about the government option offered in a health insurance exchange along with private carriers.

There is a big disconnect in the thinking of the town hall hecklers about what really is at stake for them and the country. They’ve allowed themselves to be seduced by visions of unaccountable government control over healthcare while believing, as coordinated voters, they have no means to check abuses of power. The Right has been able to exploit this assumption, distracting their kool-aide drinking followers from realizing the possibility of governing this nation as ‘we the people’ or ‘by the people’.

Consequently, they express a paralyzing cynicism or jaundiced view of the U.S. government. Such was illustrated in a Facebook dialogue I had recently with members of my extended family. What follows is an excerpt from an opinion piece by the Washington Post (culled by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society) commenting on the Affordable Health Choices Act’s favorable treatment of the pharmaceutical industry:

[T]he bill includes a provision that would create a 12-year market exclusivity period for brand-name biologic drugs. This would drive costs to consumers above even current levels, making the title little more than a mockery.

So one member of the family responded:

Great . . . we knew this bill was crap . . . guess only if you are healthy and NEVER need a doctor and don’t need money either. I am so glad we are used [sic] failed patterns to imitate when creating our system.

And I was not above playing the devil’s advocate: ‘So you’re in favor of the single payer plan?’

She responded:  ‘Actually, for massive de-regulation. Gov’t seems to mess up what they touch. The letters IRS come to mind. . . .’

Then her sister chimed in:

It’s never good when the government plays ‘god’ with people’s lives . . . like our good friend and illustrious leader BO. ‘Single Payer’. . . hm-m-m-m-m-m-m. . . catchy. Too bad it can never work.

While neither thankfully invoked any Hitler comparisons to President Obama – like the loon who recently faced off against Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) – I do share the congressman’s befuddlement. I consider it the highest form of irony for one to complain about cost of medicine and then assert the need for its ‘massive de-regulation.’

What’s far more troubling is the unspoken assumption that they bear no responsibility to hold decision makers accountable for government’s lapses in judgement or abuses of power. I would characterize the disconnect as an accountability gap; between government policy and an alert and engaged electorate.

The business of governing this country requires far more inclusive and attentive participation than election day vote casting and the odd phone call or letter to elected representatives; far more involving input than signing petitions and waiving signs at town hall gatherings.

What’s required is each voter’s willingness to compromise somewhat on his or her ideological latitude so that he or she might be a part of the  united consensus that will be necessary to take back governing; to really embody the meaning of e pluribus unum.

It would be a treat to see opponents of healthcare reform turning out protest mobs of any number close to the 47 million U.S. citizens who currently survive without health insurance. So far they’ve only managed to mobilize throngs loud enough to shout down public officials trying to explain Congress’s paltry attempt at health coverage legislation for the majority of Americans.

While right wing apologists would have you believe the yellers are local yokels – an ‘organic’ groundswell of protest against a power hungry government – they overlook the activities of organizations like FreedomWorks (chaired by former Congressman Dick Armey), Conservatives for Patients’ Rights and Americans For Prosperity – all of which are headquartered in Washington, DC and led by Beltway and health industry insiders; hardly the advocates for the interests of common people.

This, of course, isn’t the first time the Right has fabricated the facade of people power. There was the Brooks Brothers ‘uprising’ to stop the Miami-Dade hand recount during the 2000 presidential election. Also worth remembering: the regular folks who stood up to defend President George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize social security during town hall events staged to promote the plan back in 2005.   

Also, I find it quite telling how Fox News would frame the coordinated protests as ‘Townhall Opposition‘ – begging the question why anyone would oppose a forum for local citizens to gather together and discuss major decisions faced by their elected leaders?

menacing, slithering beneath dark waters, wielding a tidal force. The thought occurred to me as I absorbed the news that the private equity firm I work for was letting me go. Having paid close attention to the dismal job market news and the whithering US economy, at least the event of my dismissal wouldn’t shock me, I reasoned all along; and it didn’t.

Still, I gave in to moments of panic as I considered how to rearrange my financial obligations and wondered what kind of severance I might count on. Being aware of the growing masses of the unemployed, I admit, gins up the fear. I couldn’t imagine there being much of any comfort in numbers, especially such figures compared over and over again in superlative terms to the Great Depression.

While I experienced the physical sensation of dread, I imagined a squid’s inky cloud billowing through my innards. How useful it’s been to conjure or project images for the anxiety that can rear up suddenly.

Of course, I’ve not yet been turned loose and and have yet to endure the peril of depleting funds and diminishing job prospects.  I know that whatever happens it will be in my best interest not to panic. It requires committing self-affirming belief to a situation I don’t fully understand in the heat of its unfolding.

A new politico-economic order is emerging that we have yet to see fully manifested. I am grateful for times like this that expose the American myth of the independent, self-sustaining individual. Since our economy has evolved into an intertwining entity that binds most of our financial destinies together, it stands to reason that we learn to lean on one another, at the very least for ideas, encouragement and hope.

Now that this scandal has been beat to pulp, we should move the conversation beyond any further details of the South Carolina governor’s infidelity and skip the talk about his mental well being.

The particulars of the story bear a striking resemblance to a novel called Damage (by Irish writer Josephine Hart), a tale narrated by an unnamed protagonist – an English physician and up-and-coming Member of Parliament – who, by all appearances, had possession of a wonderful life. Like Mark Sanford, his rise to prominance as a capable and admired elected leader inspired talk of his potential as a head of the nation.

The novel’s opening passage presents themes about the human condition – what I would liken to pangs of an undernourished soul - that play out with dreadfully regrettable effect.

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. . . .

For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. . . .

And in my own life, I have traveled far, acquiring loved and unfamiliar companions: a wife, a son, and a daughter. I have lived with them, a loving alien. . . . and tried to be what those I loved expected me to be – a good husband, a good father, a good son.

Had I died at fifty I would have been a doctor, and an established politician . . . . One who had made a contribution, and was much loved. . . .

But I did not die in my fiftieth year. There are few who know me now, who do not regard that as a tragedy.

The promising politician finds his ‘imprint’ in a dark, mysterious young woman (French, of course, for full fatalistic effect) who happens to be his grown son’s romantic companion. As if powerless against the collision of greater forces, they commence an affair whose calamitous arc ends with the death of his son.

While the Mark Sanford saga doesn’t feature a taboo element like incest, judging from the weepy press conference he held to admit that he had cheated, and from the emails he exchanged with his lover, the affair was no frivolous fling. At the risk of implying that Gov. Sanford’s behavior should be excused, I think it worth considering that, like the novel’s central character, the magnitude of his misdeeds reflects a great spiritual longing or hunger of the soul; requiring a moral catastrophe proportional to the unfettered becoming (or metaphysical fulfillment) that contemporary culture has few resources to accommodate.

Well, then he should not have sought public office, would be the common sensical response. True; and I would observe that in order to serve our republic, we require candidates to submit to somewhat extreme contortions of image and soul in order to appeal to a rule of the majority.

Yet how easy it is to disparage elected officials for the chameleon qualities they adopt and not recognize our complicity in the compulsive ‘costume’ changes (a.k.a. flip flopping) politicians must make to remain politically relevant. Yes, voters play a significant role in all this madness – though in Mark Sanford we witness the implosion of one political career that could not conceal the impassioned, vulnerable and utterly human qualities that far too many in the United States would prefer to deny about themselves.

Adulterers or not, absconders of duty or not, we are Mark Sanford.

Two weeks into the Iranian voter protest against the questionable outcome of their presidential election, and right wing pundits continue to squeal and bray for President Obama to take urgent action in the name of ‘democracy’; the ‘will of Iranian’ people is at stake. Such goading presumes the president’s cheer leading and turning cartwheels would give Iran’s hardline leadership a moment’s pause.

No doubt, given the several handfuls of Persian protestors that have been slain, the hundreds that have been arrested and thousands that have endured a beat down by the police and the paramilitary thugs known as Basij - the situation conveys great peril now, as well as the likelihood of a catastrophic crackdown by the country’s ruling clerics.

Among other absurd accusations lobbed at President Obama, he’s criticized as lacking ‘moral fortitude’ or ‘moral clarity’ for the measured tone of his response to the abuse meted out to citizens participating in demonstrations; also the object of caricature, described as a ‘man of the hard left‘ - an apologist for the likes of Fidel Castro or Hugo Chávez - one who would prefer a ‘totalitarian Islamic regime’ over a ‘free Iranian society.’

If the pundits think they’ve scored any political points with their cheap shots at the president and dyslexic assessments of the situation in Iran, they’ve only betrayed an obscene (some might argue willful) ignorance of historical context and the sordid legacy of the United States’ relationship with Iran.

Typical of those who ignore the history of US covert intervention in the affairs of other countries, they would rather forget or dismiss what President Obama acknowledged in his Cairo speech to the Muslim world just weeks ago – that the United States played a role in the 1953 ousting of Iran’s parliamentary-appointed prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq.

I would argue that this act of meddling in the national affairs of Iran set the pace for a troubled and troubling relationship bewteen the two countries; a dialogue that most certainly became a face off after the 1979 Revolution created  a window for Islamic clerics to seize control of the country. Now, at a moment when the Iranian people have a chance to actively decide their nation’s political destiny – not just free from foreign manipulation but also unshackled by their leadership’s paralyzing suspicion of the West – wouldn’t it make sense to offer moral and diplomatic support, but mostly just sit this one out?

Lewis Lapham, former editor at Harper’s, serves as editor of a history-focused literary magazine called Lapham’s Quarterly. It publishes a collection of excerpted writings by the greats of literature, philosophy, art, politics and any other arena of renown. Each issue features texts gathered around a specific theme (e.g., States of War, About Money and Eros). Fall 2008′s theme, Ways of Learning, addresses education.

In a stunning preamble to that issue, Lapham presents an incisive, often devastating, critique of education in the United States. How fitting that he titles the piece ‘Playing with Fire,’ evidently inspired by a maxim tacked at the top of the essay, a quote credited to Plutarch:  ’The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.’

No less incendiary than that sentiment, Lapham delivers a far-reaching but nuanced analysis of the forces at work in the perpetual shortcomings of education. Taking a cue from the 1983 National Commission on Excellence in Education, which cautioned that the the nation’s schools were flooded with ‘a rising tide of mediocrity,’ the author illustrates a broader cultural context to account for the said deluge of underachievement.

Two mistaken but often unquestioned assumptions at work in the demise of education are 1) the belief that education is a commodity and 2) that the humanitites are inconsequential. As Lapham discusses each assumption, I cannot help but marvel how each notion enables and provides cover for the other; working together they render a consensus thinking that the writer savages in the following statement: ‘If the kids know how to run the computers, work up the punch lines for Disney or Goldman Sachs, figure the exchange rates between the euro and the yen, what does it matter if they don’t know who won either the Revolutionary or the Civil War?’

If Thomas Jefferson were to have his say about what is taught in schools, he might reiterate his hope for a citizen prepared for the demands of self-government and encouraged ‘to judge for himself what would secure or endanger his freedom.’

Echoing Jefferson’s thinking toward the end of the essay, Lapham writes, ‘What makes men and women free is learning to trust their own thought, possess their own history, speak in their own voices.’ If conveying this kind of knowledge could not be co-opted, packaged and mass marketed for maximized profit, would there be any takers?

The national achievement last night defies words of any consecration or commemoration. Finally this country sees through our legacy of mystifying fear and prejudice. Dreamers, for once, have prevailed.

I took a look at the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges, specifically their trading stats for Jan. 2008. Combined for that month, they executed 442.6 million trades, which would add up to a huge heap of money extracted from the securities industry. A penny-per-trade tax strikes me as far more reasonable, but I suspect the captains of corporations at Wall Street would squeal like stuck hogs in objection, all the same. Anyway, I sent a note to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Finance & Urban Affairs to make the argument as follows:

Dear Committee Members:

Over the past week I’ve paid close attention to the news headlines depicting the financial crisis the United States faces. Of all the solutions bandied about, I’ve yet to hear anyone propose a penny-per-trade tax on the execution of any equity, mutual fund, option, futures, or credit default swap transaction.

If trading has been the very mechanism that distorted the value of our assets, shouldn’t it also be the process by which Wall Street lends a hand in resolving this crisis?

Respectfully yours,

Subject: $1-per-trade tax on securities (buying and selling) 

Dear Sen. Dodd,

I write to thank you for your efforts to hold Wall Street accountable over the current financial crisis this country faces. If I may be so bold as to suggest one phase of the solution to this potential economic cataclysm: a
$1-per-trade tax on buying and selling of securities (stock, bond, mutual fund, option, futures, credit default swaps, et. al.) that can go towards defraying the cost of the much-heralded $700 billion bailout.

If the investment banking and securities industries have had a part in bringing our economy to the edge of ruin, then perhaps it is a modest proposal to expect they participate in its salvaging.

Respectfully yours,

Jude Folly