<$BlogRSDUrl$>
Our Broken Polity
1) The sons of a bunch of liberal icons are angling for high office. They are all more centrist than their fathers and have "learned the lessons" of their father's defeats. My question is, why are there so many sons of prominent political leaders in powerful positions? Why is it okay to cash in one's family's legacy like that? And why are they all such sell outs?
2) The city of Pittsburgh, already battered by the loss of its steel manufacturing base, is now at risk of losing the Heinz company. This is bad enough, but what appalled me was that the citizens of Pittsburgh can do nothing about it. The stocks of the company are all owned by outsiders, so if the vote goes against them, they're out of luck. What does it tell you about an economic system when whole cities can be destroyed, the citizens deprived of a real voice in their own destiny, and no one cares? Oh wait, for a second I forgot about Katrina.
3) Between Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie, a TV show about the run-up to 9/11 I saw ads about, and the Republicans openly exploiting terror attacks for political advantage, I have to ask a question that Zola loves to ask: Have we no shame? At long last, have we no shame at all?
6 Comments:
-
Out of joint compared to what? That all seems very much like business as usual to me. If you are truly surprised by any of that, then you are either more idealistic or younger than I thought. Neither of which are bad things, btw. Of course, surprise isn't necessary for outrage. It's probably just a matter of different triggers for different people.
By
What I find more upsetting than any of those, although not any more surprising, is the way our goverenment is once more claiming that some of our fittest servicemen are suffering from “non-related conditions” instead of admitting that they are seriously ailing because of exposure to depleted uranium. It's Agent Orange and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome all over again.
I don't think any of this is so much out of joint as history repeating itself...all over again. Also, as distasteful as the truth may be, your question has been answered many times over again, as well. What I'd like to know is when will we ever learn? In fact, the older I get, the more I'm likely to ask, will we ever learn? I'm starting to think not.
Oh my, I didn't realize I was quite so cynical. I think there might be a little wellspring of hope...but I'm not really sure. In any case, I hope you are (at least a bit of) an idealist. I still think that they are the ones who really bring about the best changes - it just always takes longer than we'd like.
Rebecca, at 11:09 PM
-
I'm not all that young, and but I am fairly idealistic. By that I don't mean that I don't know that things like this have always happened. No, what bothers me is that almost no one even finds these things worthy of comment. The response is not an outrage, but a shrug of the shoulders.
By
Beyond that, I do NOT think things have always been this way. Yes things like this have always happened. But they have not happened with such willfullness and frequency. So in one sense I am not an idealist. I have been watching events carefully for a long time, and I think they're getting worse. Arbitrista, at 6:20 AM
-
I'm going to have to read up on the SOBLIAFHO as that was something I thought the Repubs had taken over. Seems I remember my Mom telling me that, back in the 1800's a lot of Dems sons were doing that, then the Repubs took it over for the 1900's. My history sucks.
By
As for Heinz and Pittsburgh, I grew up near/in Pittsburgh. I remember the steel going away and the huge loss of jobs. I remember the fights over whether or not to save certain bridges and the horror at tearing down the stadium. Heinz has always been a part of Pittsburgh, until the "everyday man" could no longer partake in the stock options/ownership of the company. Western Pennsylvanians were relegated to second-class citizens by most of the rest of the country. It didn't matter that we had THE best football team for, gosh, decade + or that we were leaders in science and technology. We didn't "deserve" the ability to own our city.
Sorry for the rant.
And, no, billion-dollar-babies like Stone have no shame. Penguin, at 9:37 AM
-
I'm not sure I agree that it's getting worse. There were some very nasty state of affairs that were acceptable for some very long periods of time. If they are getting worse, though, then I think it may be due to the fact that there aren't as many idealists around who are getting outraged enough to take action.
By
I was pretty taken aback by the level of cynicism that surfaced in my own comment. If everyone just starts accepting this garbage and gives up any hope of effecting change, then we will just start free-falling into the pit. I had no idea that I'd reached that point...and I'm hoping it was just temporary.
If nothing else, I'll just cling to the thought that these things tend to go through cycles and we may just need to wait until the pendulum starts swinging back the other way. Perhaps it has already started and we will see the beginning of some major changes in 2008. That would be a nice surprise. Rebecca, at 11:55 AM
-
Prairie Oyster: Bayh is okay, I suppose. I just don't get any sense that he's in politics for anything other than his own ambition. As far as I can tell, there's just no there there. Maybe I'm wrong.
By
Rebeccah: I've written a lot on this blog in the past about why I think the Republic is uniquely at risk today. To summarize, the underpinnings of America's economy are more at threat now than at any time since the Great Depression. And if you look at the comparative U.S. competitive position in world trade, we are worse off now than at any time since.. well...forever.
Add to this the creation of a national political machine unprecedented since the Gilded Age that unites of the all the most destructive elements of American politics (xenophobic ultranationalism, religious fanaticism, white southern nationalism, corporate greed) in the same political party. Whereas before the Dems had the racists and the Republicans had big business, now the Republicans have both.
Finally look at the steady erosion of America's democratic institutions - education a joke, unions gone, congress corrupted, the electoral process an oligarchy, executive concentration if power, a supreme court returning to the Lochner Court, top-down interest groups practicing "astroturf" politics, civic disengagement....
Well let's just say I'm not optimistic. Arbitrista, at 12:34 PM
-
I think this analysis needs to be parsed: Things that have changed, things that have not changed.
By
Things that have not changed: The corporate ownership of public life is just as strong now as it was in the 19th century. Just look at Thomas Frank's new piece in NYT: http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/opinion/15Frank.html?hp
Things that have changed: the corporate ownership of private and intellectual life, meaning, the squeezing out of ever more hours of productivity from the American work force, and the elimination of almost all intellectual substance from the American media as a direct result of the fragmentation of the American audience that comes from corporate ownership of private life.
In other words, corporations have spread like a cancer through American society, all but eliminating Main Street (which used to be the counterweight to the corporate behemoth). It used to be that a previously unknown candidate from Main Street (say Harry Truman or Huey Long) could take his case directly to the American people, essentially bypassing the corporations and the media, in order to engage in a dialogue (like Roosevelt's fireside chats). Now, almost all free time (time not spent working for a corporation) is time spent watching entertainment sponsored (and therefore dumbed down) by corporate advertising.
The academy is the last refuge of the normal, intellectual, civic citizen (and that's why people who come from the academy, such as Obama and Wellstone, offer the greatest amount of hope to the rest of us).
Or, to put it in simplistic terms, Main Street and the Academy have been at war with Wall Street for a very long time (since the early 1900s) and Wall Street is winning at the moment. The good news is that the academy is starting to fight back. Marriah, at 2:44 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home
:: permalink
