Who's Really in Charge?
Let’s run a little hypothesis up the flagpole and see who salutes. There is a literary sub-genre called “uchronia,” or tales of alternate history, e.g., what if the Nazis won the war, etc. In fact, a recent example by novelist Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (2004), is a kind of “what if’ story. Franklin D. Roosevelt is not elected president, but rather the anti-Semitic Charles Lindbergh, who signs a peace pact with Germany and Japan and America “evolves” into a fascist state. Interestingly, cultural historian and social critic, Morris Berman observed in his book, Dark Ages America (2006), that from 2000 on, a kind of “soft fascism” was at work, referring to Dubya as the Boy Emperor and Dick Cheney as first cousin to “Dr. Strangelove.” When I see Dick Cheney and others like Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter on TV, my right arm involuntarily rises to a 45-degree angle, my hand smartly saluting. Or, as Woody Allen put in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), leaving the opera early: “if I listen to too much Wagner I get the urge to conquer Poland.”
Consider this alternate history: what if our nation was not really founded on the principles cited in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? But that it was only made to look that way. What if there were forces behind the scenes, well, hiding in plain sight really. What if the seat of power were not Washington? What if Washington was irrelevant, theater, a puppet show? To create an illusion that we elect officials to represent us and our interests. So, who’s running the show? Who’s the Man behind the curtain?
In the TV show, The X-Files (1993-2002), the main character, Fox Mulder, an FBI agent, was assigned to strange cases involving the paranormal and conspiracies to conceal proof that extraterrestrials really existed. There was a shady group of men, a syndicate, a consortium, a kind of “shadow government,” above the law and more secret than the Illuminati or the Masons. They had a very specific agenda: proof of extraterrestrials must be denied. What if we had these guys or something like them really in charge? They represent the true seat of power in America, power through controlling wealth. Real democracy exists on paper, like socialism and communism. Capitalism is not just an economic system, but a political one as well and does not co-exist easily with democratic ideals. How does one reconcile “all men are created equal” with Darwinian economics? Forget the history textbooks with the organizational charts: executive, legislative and judicial branches. Checks and balances my ass.
It is a tale of two Americas with the controllers of wealth and power impoverishing the middle class. Nothing new here; Independent Lou Dobbs speaking about this in his book, War on the Middle Class, stated, “In both Republican and Democratic administrations, Congress has passed and sustained billions of dollars in royalty payments and subsidies to big oil companies; pushed through a corporate-written, consumer-crippling bankruptcy law; embraced the death of the estate tax; approved every free trade deal brought to a vote; and supported illegal immigration for the sake of cheap labor.” (October 18, 2006)
Atop this Empire of minority rule sits Wall Street. Wall Street wants the middle class to go away. It needs the lower working class people to provide menial labor. And separate laws apply, hence a tale of two Americas. The Lords who report to the Wall Street monarchy all have the title “Big” in front: Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Retail, Big Finance (a short in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983) depicted the Very Big Corporation, evil and corrupt and taken down by the Crimson Pirate Assurance Company).
“In the bleak days of 1983, the Crimson Permanent Assurance, an accountancy staffed by elderly workers much like a slave ship, has been taken over by efficiency-minded corporate types. When they sack an employee, there's an uprising, and the building is unleashed from its moorings to sail across the (dry) ocean and take on the financial centers of the world, starting with an all-out attack on the large skyscraper housing The Very Big Corporation of America, complete with filing-cabinet cannons, ceiling-fan broadswords, and paper-spindle short-swords.” Jon Reeves ([email protected])
Anyway, don’t kid yourself; the “Very Bigs” run the show. May 18, 2009: CNN reported that gas prices are beginning to rise at a brisk pace, but “it’s no conspiracy.” Speculators are driving the price up because the economy is improving. Cable news is an execrable display of three-minute sound bites on which to hang commercials, encouraging us to buy and consume. Local news isn’t much better. Try to watch a 30-minute local news show without seeing something with pet pics. Viewers are treated like mental patients in a hospital, where video and audio must be calming and simple-minded.
Very Big Oil
Tell the unemployed and the underemployed (the impoverished by design), whose ranks continue to grow, that the economy is improving. Noooo, rising gas prices have nothing to do with Memorial Day, the gateway to the summer and family vacations. Happens every year, but there’s no conspiracy. Big Oil’s obscene quarterly profits are not enough. Wall Street thinks that the economy is improving because the stock market has been up and they’ve received billions of taxpayer money. Not only is unemployment high, the mortgage defaults have not been addressed. Looks like the Very Big half of America is being taken care of. You may recall from James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) the sleaze ball husband-to-be of Kate Winslet. Someone says that half the passengers will drown. The sleaze ball replies, “Not the better half.” No middle, just aristocracy and proletariat, feudal lord and serf. Don’t think that’s where we’re headed? Think again.
Forget alternative fuels. We knew we had a problem since the early seventies. Supply, cost, carbon emissions and what happens? The automotive industry marketing gurus give us the SUV. If someone could replace fossil fuels, it wouldn’t be allowed. They would be disappeared (used incorrectly as a transitive verb). The novelist Joseph Heller was onto “disappearing” in Catch-22 (1961):
- 'They're going to disappear him,' she said.
- Yossarian squinted at her uncomprehendingly. 'They're what?' he asked in surprise, and laughed uneasily. 'What does that mean?'
- 'I don't know. I heard them talking behind a door.'
- 'Who?'
- 'I don't know. I couldn't see them. I just heard them say they were going to disappear Dunbar.'
- 'Why are they going to disappear him?'
- 'I don't know.'
- 'It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?'
It means no alternative fuel for cars. Some of you may recall the dreary Presidency of Jimmy Carter and his famous or infamous “Malaise Speech”:
“To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun.” (July 15, 1979). Good luck. Someone said Carter told us the truth and his successor, Ronald Reagan, gave us a smile. We want gratification, not enlightenment. What’s really funny is when the Big Oil executives are summoned before congressional committees to testify about their astronomical profits. How do they keep a straight face? Knowing that it’s all theater for the American public.
Very Big Insurance
There’s property, auto, and health. It’s a love-hate relationship. A necessary evil. Some are more evil than others (i.e., Health Care). Property insurers love to take our money. A couple of hurricanes and they bail. I live in south Florida and State Farm was dropping policies faster than TV networks create new reality series. “Like a good neighbor.” It’s a paradox. When you file a claim the “good neighbor’s” first question is “how do we get out of paying this guy?”
I had State Farm Auto for 38 years. During that time I had two fender benders. One was clearly my fault. For the second, the other driver claimed excessive damages but State Farm couldn’t write the check fast enough. In the Fall of 2007 I was visiting New Jersey, from where I hail (please don’t hold it against me). It was in the city of Newark, my birthplace, Tony Soprano territory. I was driving a rental. In a pounding rainstorm with very limited visibility, I approached an intersection with a stop sign and I recall stopping. As I proceeded through the intersection, a driver approached from the right, going maybe 40-50mph and T-boned me. Oh, did I mention this was a school zone? The other driver was alone. I had a friend who honestly agreed with my account. No other witnesses. We went to make sure the driver was all right. She was. I said I’ll call ‘911’. She said, “they won’t come.” Huh? I was informed that Newark police no longer respond to ‘911’ calls (see Disappearing).
In the almost disabled rental, we followed the driver to the nearest police station to file the report. The other driver naturally claimed I ran the stop sign. In a blink, State Farm awards damages to her and my rental car company. I called my agent who cheerfully tells me that although it’s my fault, because of my safe driving record for the past 10 years, my rates won’t go up. I cancelled and went with another carrier, those people with the lizard and cavemen and got a lower rate. The point is that if the insured cancels his policy after 38 years, you’d think maybe in the spirit of Customer Service someone would ask why. It’s a separate topic: customer service. In America, it’s become one of those oxymorons (e.g., military intelligence). You can bet the more an organization talks about customer service, the less there is of it. If you get a live voice on the phone, you’re probably talking to Mubai or Bangalore.
The other lesson here is never go to Newark, New Jersey. A brief digression on New Jersey. I moved to south Florida 22 years ago. Poor job prospects and I had tired of the climate and getting the flu four times each winter. In another Woody Allen film, Sleeper (1973), Diane Keaton asks him if he believes in God. He replies, “I believe there is a central intelligence operating in the universe with the exception of a few sections of northern New Jersey.” I remember seeing it in the movie theater and laughing hysterically. I laughed alone. You can take the Jersey out of the boy except for an occasional, “whaddyacallit.” When you see it in print, it looks like Old English
(wadd-yac’allit, you Beowulf mother-fucker). I guess that’s Jersey-like, too.
For the “Biggies”, outsourcing isn’t enough. They lament their 35% corporate tax rate. Wages have been essentially flat for over eight years, so the news media hails low inflation. I’m adjunct instructor at a community college. If I teach two full semesters with a four-course load, summer off, I make about $10,750. That was my annual salary in 1977 (see Education).
Very Big Finance
After predatory lending led to the mortgage meltdown, the next most heinous practice is that of the credit card companies. The vile abuses are portrayed in a documentary called Maxed Out (2006). Maxed Out takes viewers on a journey deep inside the American style of debt, where things seem fine as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. With coverage that spans from small American towns all the way to the White House, the film shows how the modern financial industry really works, explains the true definition of "preferred customer" and tells us why the poor are getting poorer while the rich keep getting richer. Hilarious, shocking and incisive, Maxed Out paints a picture of a national nightmare which is all too real for most of us." And this was before the financial nose dive which began in the Fall of 2008.
Just now (May 19, 2009) the Senate voted 90-5 to rein in these practices. The CEO of MasterCard must be laughing his ass off. So what? It’s smoke and mirrors, folks. From their website: “MasterCard is committed to enhancing the communities in which we do business and promoting education [my emphasis] as the major tool for economic self-sufficiency.” Bullshit.
Speaking of bullshit, as an aside, Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus at Princeton University, wrote a slim volume called On Bullshit. To summarize:
“Professor Frankfurt explor[es] how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”
Education is not a priority at any level in this country and certainly works against the interests of the corporation. See comments by George Carlin later. One of the shady practices targeted is offering cards to “vulnerable minors.”
Very Big Retail
I have an entire page on Walmart, so I will not be discussing them specifically here. This is because Walmart, its “spirit” is so pervasive in our consumerist culture that it deserves standalone scrutiny.
Very Big Actors
The Empire has tightened the strings on Washington, however there are precedents for sweeping Presidential executive orders. Nixon ordered a wage/price freeze; Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. If President Obama were really in charge, why not threaten corporations with huge fines for outsourcing? I guess they would pay their fines with the bailout money the taxpayers gave them.
Even if Washington isn’t a put-on, perhaps we should take a look at how we got to the One-Party system, the reality of no choice. What’s the real choice with two candidates running for the highest office? Our culture and values are polarized; we are a nation of extremists (“America: love it or leave it.”). Paradoxically the “Two-party” system is more like a one-party charade.
My earliest remembrances of Presidential administrations goes back to JFK. Camelot. Sure Kennedy had his dalliances, but it was an era of hope and supremacy after we emerged from the paranoid 50s and escaped the greatest internal threat to our liberty (McCarthyism) since, uh, the Empire? The Empire is far more subtle and, using the government as a front, manages to, in the words of Stephen Colbert, “get us to vote against our own interests.”
They say with the Kennedy assassination, we lost our innocence. In 1961, Kennedy promised that we would put a man on the moon in 10 years. We did it in nine. But we’ve had almost 40 years to work on our energy needs and what do we have to show for it? Hummers, goddam it! (See Technology). The Empire is insidious. Interesting tidbit about the Kennedy-Nixon race in 1960: it was close and the next morning, no one knew who was President. What if (alternate history, remember?) Nixon had won? Good chance you wouldn’t be reading this and I wouldn’t be writing it. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)? Kennedy remained calm and steely; Nixon might have started pushing buttons. Ah, a cultural referent. The character, Christopher Moltasanti on The Sopranos, hears about this and says, “That shit really happened? I thought it was a movie.” See Education.
Lyndon Johnson stepped in and made significant advances with civil rights and racial equality but then the spreading cancer of Vietnam brought him down. Next, we are treated to eight years of the imperial, yet sociopathic King Richard the Undeterred. In Frost vs. Nixon (2008), he says “It’s not illegal when the President does it.” It was the silent majority vs. the ridiculous hippie counterculture. He made Americans afraid of anything different and Republican presidents have played that card ever since. Us against them. You’re either for or against us. So, Nixon is implicated in the Watergate scandal and resigns. Gerald Ford pardons him and that cost Ford the election to Carter, just barely. We were close to electing the Veep from a corrupt administration. I’ve already mentioned Carter’s Malaise speech. Additionally, he had some bad luck. What if the Iranian hostages had been rescued? Carter was a workaholic, putting in heavy hours at the White House. His successor, Ronald Reagan worked nine to five.
I am entirely baffled by the Republicans’ reverence for this Hollywood Grade ‘B’ actor. Reaganomics. Trickle-down effect? Like sewage? And now the Empire starts to take shape. The decade of the 1980s was rife with financial scandal, but Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers, perhaps, if one examines the facts, justifiably. In recent history labor unions have shot themselves in the foot—see automotive industry. Reagan took or was given credit for the downfall of the Soviet Union, which to my thinking collapsed of its own bloated weight. Reagan, as an actor, was a perfect fit for the Empire.
The economy of the 80s was just as bad as it is now, plus mortgage interest rates were in the high double-digits. But the Empire was on the move. Tom Wolfe’s novel, Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) depicted the self-proclaimed Masters (Bastards) of the Universe, the assertion of the Wall Street Empire. Recall Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987). In that film, Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gecko (aptly named for a slithery reptile) says, “Greed is good.” It still is. And through the 80s and part of the 90s, evolved this hysterical work ethic: marathon binges at the office. Economist Juliet Schnorr reported on this in The Overworked American (1991). I remember her quoting a corporate recruiter: “The 80-hour a week man sizzles.” In some cases presence equaled productivity. Face time. She reported on the decline of leisure time. It’s hard to think (critically) when you’re exhausted. I dunno; if you’re making millions a year, maybe you should be working those hours, but be single. But this “lifestyle” was promoted down to office workers making $30K. You’re on company time 24/7. I know. I worked in the corporate sector from 1976-2006. I made a t-shirt once which said, “Just Don’t Go Home.” And of course these were all exempt workers, meaning no paid overtime. Well, people finally tired of this. Forty hours is enough. When did the 80-hour man see his family? Do his laundry? His banking?
There were other egregious commissions of errors by Reagan: the Iran-Contra Affair, for example. In his 1991 book Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years, journalist Haynes Johnson came up with an unflattering statistic:
"By the end of his term, 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations."
We have another California governor and actor who the Empire would salivate over. So what if Governor Schwarzenegger is not a native citizen? The Empire can get that repealed, as long as Arnie entertains us, distracts us with “bread and circuses,” [see below] which in our case means football and other stadium spectacles, x-treme fighting, fast food, and conspicuous consumption (See Walmart). We’ve become fat, lazy and stupid. Bad for us, good for the Empire. Not laughing yet?
In Berman’s The Twilight of American Culture (2000) he cites Robert Kaplan a correspondent for The Atlantic in an essay entitled "Was Democracy just a Moment?" published in the Atlantic Monthly in December 1997:
“the masses become more indifferent and the elite [the Empire] less accountable," and the (increasingly shrinking) middle class spends its money on lotteries, health clubs, and antidepressant drugs. Spectator sports provide mass diversion, while a new form of professional combat, called "extreme fighting," is attracting sellout crowds eager to see blood. "The mood of the Coliseum," writes Kaplan, "goes together with the age of the corporation, which offers entertainment in place of values." As in the case of Rome, we are drifting toward a society comprised of an elite with little loyalty to the state, and a servile populace content with some equivalent of bread and circuses.”
After eight years of Reagan, his VP, Bush Sr. makes it 12 years of Republican “rule” (we know by now, not really). Although I never liked his politics, I never thought the man was stupid, which in this case proves to some extent that the apple can indeed fall far from the tree.
As time goes on, slick Willy seems less like a liberal democrat and more like a cross between a used car salesman and a game show host. The economy was better, my 401k soared, but I’m not sure what the Clinton Administration had to do with it. And, even if Hillary was the proverbial Ice Queen, you’d think Bill would have had more sense than to diddle an intern. When you’re President, you can’t just do whatever you want. Oh, Nixon, right. Bill, you should have sent the secret service out for porn videos.
Finally, we come to the sad architect of the first eight years of the 21st century: Incurious George. So much could be said but I think the defining moment which best sums up his crippling administration came when Bob Costas interviewed the Boy Emperor during the 2008 Olympics. I remember seeing this on TV, my mouth hanging open, stunned beyond comprehension, mirroring Costas’ expression.
Costas: This past week you restated America's fundamental differences with China but given China's growing strength and America's own problems, realistically, how much leverage and influence does the U.S. have here?"
Bush: First of all, I don't see America having problems. I see America as a nation that is a world leader that has got great values and leverage….
I don’t understand. Bush brings a country to its knees and walks away unscathed. Clinton brings an intern to her knees and they want to impeach him.
One Common Mission: Outsourcing
All of the Biggies, under the protectorate of the Wall Street Empire, have an unstated purpose: eliminate American jobs and they have been doing so with impunity. Outsourcing continues apace, while corporations blame it on their 35% tax rate. Not only do we send jobs offshore, we import foreign labor, cheaper through a vast variety of work visas.
Warning: the “S” word is coming up. There exists in advanced societies, at least in theory, some sense of social responsibility, providing for the basic welfare of its citizens (oops, the W word, just as bad as the S word .” Employment, Education, and Health care are all social issues but as soon as the “S” word appears, many reactionaries equate this with “social engineering,” a stone’s throw from the dreaded iron fist of socialism. Reactionaries decry the “welfare state”. What welfare? We’re growing poorer each day. Only the Royal Court of Wall Street receives welfare, er, bailouts. What Socialism, what Welfare? What are the conservatives complaining about? They’re getting everything they want. I guess it’s not enough.
Conclusion
On the subject of outsourcing, the Wall Street Empire will pursue this like a reductio ad absurdum argument. Ultimately, we’ll outsource everything, then there will be no one to maintain the castle walls which finally crumble in on the monarchy. Think the last emperors of Rome gave a shit? Just get on that corporate jet to a Caribbean retreat and slam down those gin and tonics.
Near the bottom of the page is a blistering diatribe from Mr. George Carlin that pretty much sums it all up. The text of the rant appears directly below in case the link goes away.
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."
But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club.
This country is finished."
Mr. Carlin puts it quite eloquently and much more succinctly than I. The orgies didn’t last in ancient Rome, either. When things really spiral out of control we’ll simply do what has become an American tradition: outsource for cheap labor. After all, the Romans (our model for Western civilization) did it. For what? To help run things. The Chinese must be salivating. India, too. And then the kingdom begins to fracture.
Thomas Cole (1801-1848) of the Hudson River School of Painting is perhaps best known for his series of paintings called The Course of Empire, introduced at the beginning. These represented five distinct periods or phases of a civilization’s development. The paintings, while striking works of art on their own merit, also provide an insight into both historical parallels and the present state of society and culture in America.
I’ve mentioned that our best historical example is the Roman Empire which flourished approximately 400 years. About halfway through that period it reached its zenith, where it had produced unprecedented advances in government, law, engineering, and the arts. It may be generalized that its decline can be traced to failed leadership, loss of identity and vision, and hedonistic excess by its citizenry. Cole mapped it out like this:
The Savage State is an uncivilized, unexplored territory with great promise and abundance of resources, where indigenous peoples are either expunged or assimilated.
The Pastoral State…a formative period where civilization begins to develop and there are enough “fruits” to reward labor.
Consummation: the apogee of society, a vision realized, with abundant wealth, though not necessarily distributed equally. A sense of national vision, of purpose exists. This is the key crossroads. A society can continue in one of two directions. Redirect its vision to a higher plane, achieve racial and spiritual harmony, and sharpen its moral focus.
Otherwise, the alternative is destruction…and ultimately, desolation, civilization in ruins. Of course this can mean a spiritual as well as physical wasteland.
Let us pray for our children…seriously—no joke.
Consider this alternate history: what if our nation was not really founded on the principles cited in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? But that it was only made to look that way. What if there were forces behind the scenes, well, hiding in plain sight really. What if the seat of power were not Washington? What if Washington was irrelevant, theater, a puppet show? To create an illusion that we elect officials to represent us and our interests. So, who’s running the show? Who’s the Man behind the curtain?
In the TV show, The X-Files (1993-2002), the main character, Fox Mulder, an FBI agent, was assigned to strange cases involving the paranormal and conspiracies to conceal proof that extraterrestrials really existed. There was a shady group of men, a syndicate, a consortium, a kind of “shadow government,” above the law and more secret than the Illuminati or the Masons. They had a very specific agenda: proof of extraterrestrials must be denied. What if we had these guys or something like them really in charge? They represent the true seat of power in America, power through controlling wealth. Real democracy exists on paper, like socialism and communism. Capitalism is not just an economic system, but a political one as well and does not co-exist easily with democratic ideals. How does one reconcile “all men are created equal” with Darwinian economics? Forget the history textbooks with the organizational charts: executive, legislative and judicial branches. Checks and balances my ass.
It is a tale of two Americas with the controllers of wealth and power impoverishing the middle class. Nothing new here; Independent Lou Dobbs speaking about this in his book, War on the Middle Class, stated, “In both Republican and Democratic administrations, Congress has passed and sustained billions of dollars in royalty payments and subsidies to big oil companies; pushed through a corporate-written, consumer-crippling bankruptcy law; embraced the death of the estate tax; approved every free trade deal brought to a vote; and supported illegal immigration for the sake of cheap labor.” (October 18, 2006)
Atop this Empire of minority rule sits Wall Street. Wall Street wants the middle class to go away. It needs the lower working class people to provide menial labor. And separate laws apply, hence a tale of two Americas. The Lords who report to the Wall Street monarchy all have the title “Big” in front: Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Retail, Big Finance (a short in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983) depicted the Very Big Corporation, evil and corrupt and taken down by the Crimson Pirate Assurance Company).
“In the bleak days of 1983, the Crimson Permanent Assurance, an accountancy staffed by elderly workers much like a slave ship, has been taken over by efficiency-minded corporate types. When they sack an employee, there's an uprising, and the building is unleashed from its moorings to sail across the (dry) ocean and take on the financial centers of the world, starting with an all-out attack on the large skyscraper housing The Very Big Corporation of America, complete with filing-cabinet cannons, ceiling-fan broadswords, and paper-spindle short-swords.” Jon Reeves ([email protected])
Anyway, don’t kid yourself; the “Very Bigs” run the show. May 18, 2009: CNN reported that gas prices are beginning to rise at a brisk pace, but “it’s no conspiracy.” Speculators are driving the price up because the economy is improving. Cable news is an execrable display of three-minute sound bites on which to hang commercials, encouraging us to buy and consume. Local news isn’t much better. Try to watch a 30-minute local news show without seeing something with pet pics. Viewers are treated like mental patients in a hospital, where video and audio must be calming and simple-minded.
Very Big Oil
Tell the unemployed and the underemployed (the impoverished by design), whose ranks continue to grow, that the economy is improving. Noooo, rising gas prices have nothing to do with Memorial Day, the gateway to the summer and family vacations. Happens every year, but there’s no conspiracy. Big Oil’s obscene quarterly profits are not enough. Wall Street thinks that the economy is improving because the stock market has been up and they’ve received billions of taxpayer money. Not only is unemployment high, the mortgage defaults have not been addressed. Looks like the Very Big half of America is being taken care of. You may recall from James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) the sleaze ball husband-to-be of Kate Winslet. Someone says that half the passengers will drown. The sleaze ball replies, “Not the better half.” No middle, just aristocracy and proletariat, feudal lord and serf. Don’t think that’s where we’re headed? Think again.
Forget alternative fuels. We knew we had a problem since the early seventies. Supply, cost, carbon emissions and what happens? The automotive industry marketing gurus give us the SUV. If someone could replace fossil fuels, it wouldn’t be allowed. They would be disappeared (used incorrectly as a transitive verb). The novelist Joseph Heller was onto “disappearing” in Catch-22 (1961):
- 'They're going to disappear him,' she said.
- Yossarian squinted at her uncomprehendingly. 'They're what?' he asked in surprise, and laughed uneasily. 'What does that mean?'
- 'I don't know. I heard them talking behind a door.'
- 'Who?'
- 'I don't know. I couldn't see them. I just heard them say they were going to disappear Dunbar.'
- 'Why are they going to disappear him?'
- 'I don't know.'
- 'It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?'
It means no alternative fuel for cars. Some of you may recall the dreary Presidency of Jimmy Carter and his famous or infamous “Malaise Speech”:
“To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun.” (July 15, 1979). Good luck. Someone said Carter told us the truth and his successor, Ronald Reagan, gave us a smile. We want gratification, not enlightenment. What’s really funny is when the Big Oil executives are summoned before congressional committees to testify about their astronomical profits. How do they keep a straight face? Knowing that it’s all theater for the American public.
Very Big Insurance
There’s property, auto, and health. It’s a love-hate relationship. A necessary evil. Some are more evil than others (i.e., Health Care). Property insurers love to take our money. A couple of hurricanes and they bail. I live in south Florida and State Farm was dropping policies faster than TV networks create new reality series. “Like a good neighbor.” It’s a paradox. When you file a claim the “good neighbor’s” first question is “how do we get out of paying this guy?”
I had State Farm Auto for 38 years. During that time I had two fender benders. One was clearly my fault. For the second, the other driver claimed excessive damages but State Farm couldn’t write the check fast enough. In the Fall of 2007 I was visiting New Jersey, from where I hail (please don’t hold it against me). It was in the city of Newark, my birthplace, Tony Soprano territory. I was driving a rental. In a pounding rainstorm with very limited visibility, I approached an intersection with a stop sign and I recall stopping. As I proceeded through the intersection, a driver approached from the right, going maybe 40-50mph and T-boned me. Oh, did I mention this was a school zone? The other driver was alone. I had a friend who honestly agreed with my account. No other witnesses. We went to make sure the driver was all right. She was. I said I’ll call ‘911’. She said, “they won’t come.” Huh? I was informed that Newark police no longer respond to ‘911’ calls (see Disappearing).
In the almost disabled rental, we followed the driver to the nearest police station to file the report. The other driver naturally claimed I ran the stop sign. In a blink, State Farm awards damages to her and my rental car company. I called my agent who cheerfully tells me that although it’s my fault, because of my safe driving record for the past 10 years, my rates won’t go up. I cancelled and went with another carrier, those people with the lizard and cavemen and got a lower rate. The point is that if the insured cancels his policy after 38 years, you’d think maybe in the spirit of Customer Service someone would ask why. It’s a separate topic: customer service. In America, it’s become one of those oxymorons (e.g., military intelligence). You can bet the more an organization talks about customer service, the less there is of it. If you get a live voice on the phone, you’re probably talking to Mubai or Bangalore.
The other lesson here is never go to Newark, New Jersey. A brief digression on New Jersey. I moved to south Florida 22 years ago. Poor job prospects and I had tired of the climate and getting the flu four times each winter. In another Woody Allen film, Sleeper (1973), Diane Keaton asks him if he believes in God. He replies, “I believe there is a central intelligence operating in the universe with the exception of a few sections of northern New Jersey.” I remember seeing it in the movie theater and laughing hysterically. I laughed alone. You can take the Jersey out of the boy except for an occasional, “whaddyacallit.” When you see it in print, it looks like Old English
(wadd-yac’allit, you Beowulf mother-fucker). I guess that’s Jersey-like, too.
For the “Biggies”, outsourcing isn’t enough. They lament their 35% corporate tax rate. Wages have been essentially flat for over eight years, so the news media hails low inflation. I’m adjunct instructor at a community college. If I teach two full semesters with a four-course load, summer off, I make about $10,750. That was my annual salary in 1977 (see Education).
Very Big Finance
After predatory lending led to the mortgage meltdown, the next most heinous practice is that of the credit card companies. The vile abuses are portrayed in a documentary called Maxed Out (2006). Maxed Out takes viewers on a journey deep inside the American style of debt, where things seem fine as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. With coverage that spans from small American towns all the way to the White House, the film shows how the modern financial industry really works, explains the true definition of "preferred customer" and tells us why the poor are getting poorer while the rich keep getting richer. Hilarious, shocking and incisive, Maxed Out paints a picture of a national nightmare which is all too real for most of us." And this was before the financial nose dive which began in the Fall of 2008.
Just now (May 19, 2009) the Senate voted 90-5 to rein in these practices. The CEO of MasterCard must be laughing his ass off. So what? It’s smoke and mirrors, folks. From their website: “MasterCard is committed to enhancing the communities in which we do business and promoting education [my emphasis] as the major tool for economic self-sufficiency.” Bullshit.
Speaking of bullshit, as an aside, Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus at Princeton University, wrote a slim volume called On Bullshit. To summarize:
“Professor Frankfurt explor[es] how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”
Education is not a priority at any level in this country and certainly works against the interests of the corporation. See comments by George Carlin later. One of the shady practices targeted is offering cards to “vulnerable minors.”
Very Big Retail
I have an entire page on Walmart, so I will not be discussing them specifically here. This is because Walmart, its “spirit” is so pervasive in our consumerist culture that it deserves standalone scrutiny.
Very Big Actors
The Empire has tightened the strings on Washington, however there are precedents for sweeping Presidential executive orders. Nixon ordered a wage/price freeze; Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. If President Obama were really in charge, why not threaten corporations with huge fines for outsourcing? I guess they would pay their fines with the bailout money the taxpayers gave them.
Even if Washington isn’t a put-on, perhaps we should take a look at how we got to the One-Party system, the reality of no choice. What’s the real choice with two candidates running for the highest office? Our culture and values are polarized; we are a nation of extremists (“America: love it or leave it.”). Paradoxically the “Two-party” system is more like a one-party charade.
My earliest remembrances of Presidential administrations goes back to JFK. Camelot. Sure Kennedy had his dalliances, but it was an era of hope and supremacy after we emerged from the paranoid 50s and escaped the greatest internal threat to our liberty (McCarthyism) since, uh, the Empire? The Empire is far more subtle and, using the government as a front, manages to, in the words of Stephen Colbert, “get us to vote against our own interests.”
They say with the Kennedy assassination, we lost our innocence. In 1961, Kennedy promised that we would put a man on the moon in 10 years. We did it in nine. But we’ve had almost 40 years to work on our energy needs and what do we have to show for it? Hummers, goddam it! (See Technology). The Empire is insidious. Interesting tidbit about the Kennedy-Nixon race in 1960: it was close and the next morning, no one knew who was President. What if (alternate history, remember?) Nixon had won? Good chance you wouldn’t be reading this and I wouldn’t be writing it. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)? Kennedy remained calm and steely; Nixon might have started pushing buttons. Ah, a cultural referent. The character, Christopher Moltasanti on The Sopranos, hears about this and says, “That shit really happened? I thought it was a movie.” See Education.
Lyndon Johnson stepped in and made significant advances with civil rights and racial equality but then the spreading cancer of Vietnam brought him down. Next, we are treated to eight years of the imperial, yet sociopathic King Richard the Undeterred. In Frost vs. Nixon (2008), he says “It’s not illegal when the President does it.” It was the silent majority vs. the ridiculous hippie counterculture. He made Americans afraid of anything different and Republican presidents have played that card ever since. Us against them. You’re either for or against us. So, Nixon is implicated in the Watergate scandal and resigns. Gerald Ford pardons him and that cost Ford the election to Carter, just barely. We were close to electing the Veep from a corrupt administration. I’ve already mentioned Carter’s Malaise speech. Additionally, he had some bad luck. What if the Iranian hostages had been rescued? Carter was a workaholic, putting in heavy hours at the White House. His successor, Ronald Reagan worked nine to five.
I am entirely baffled by the Republicans’ reverence for this Hollywood Grade ‘B’ actor. Reaganomics. Trickle-down effect? Like sewage? And now the Empire starts to take shape. The decade of the 1980s was rife with financial scandal, but Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers, perhaps, if one examines the facts, justifiably. In recent history labor unions have shot themselves in the foot—see automotive industry. Reagan took or was given credit for the downfall of the Soviet Union, which to my thinking collapsed of its own bloated weight. Reagan, as an actor, was a perfect fit for the Empire.
The economy of the 80s was just as bad as it is now, plus mortgage interest rates were in the high double-digits. But the Empire was on the move. Tom Wolfe’s novel, Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) depicted the self-proclaimed Masters (Bastards) of the Universe, the assertion of the Wall Street Empire. Recall Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987). In that film, Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gecko (aptly named for a slithery reptile) says, “Greed is good.” It still is. And through the 80s and part of the 90s, evolved this hysterical work ethic: marathon binges at the office. Economist Juliet Schnorr reported on this in The Overworked American (1991). I remember her quoting a corporate recruiter: “The 80-hour a week man sizzles.” In some cases presence equaled productivity. Face time. She reported on the decline of leisure time. It’s hard to think (critically) when you’re exhausted. I dunno; if you’re making millions a year, maybe you should be working those hours, but be single. But this “lifestyle” was promoted down to office workers making $30K. You’re on company time 24/7. I know. I worked in the corporate sector from 1976-2006. I made a t-shirt once which said, “Just Don’t Go Home.” And of course these were all exempt workers, meaning no paid overtime. Well, people finally tired of this. Forty hours is enough. When did the 80-hour man see his family? Do his laundry? His banking?
There were other egregious commissions of errors by Reagan: the Iran-Contra Affair, for example. In his 1991 book Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years, journalist Haynes Johnson came up with an unflattering statistic:
"By the end of his term, 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations."
We have another California governor and actor who the Empire would salivate over. So what if Governor Schwarzenegger is not a native citizen? The Empire can get that repealed, as long as Arnie entertains us, distracts us with “bread and circuses,” [see below] which in our case means football and other stadium spectacles, x-treme fighting, fast food, and conspicuous consumption (See Walmart). We’ve become fat, lazy and stupid. Bad for us, good for the Empire. Not laughing yet?
In Berman’s The Twilight of American Culture (2000) he cites Robert Kaplan a correspondent for The Atlantic in an essay entitled "Was Democracy just a Moment?" published in the Atlantic Monthly in December 1997:
“the masses become more indifferent and the elite [the Empire] less accountable," and the (increasingly shrinking) middle class spends its money on lotteries, health clubs, and antidepressant drugs. Spectator sports provide mass diversion, while a new form of professional combat, called "extreme fighting," is attracting sellout crowds eager to see blood. "The mood of the Coliseum," writes Kaplan, "goes together with the age of the corporation, which offers entertainment in place of values." As in the case of Rome, we are drifting toward a society comprised of an elite with little loyalty to the state, and a servile populace content with some equivalent of bread and circuses.”
After eight years of Reagan, his VP, Bush Sr. makes it 12 years of Republican “rule” (we know by now, not really). Although I never liked his politics, I never thought the man was stupid, which in this case proves to some extent that the apple can indeed fall far from the tree.
As time goes on, slick Willy seems less like a liberal democrat and more like a cross between a used car salesman and a game show host. The economy was better, my 401k soared, but I’m not sure what the Clinton Administration had to do with it. And, even if Hillary was the proverbial Ice Queen, you’d think Bill would have had more sense than to diddle an intern. When you’re President, you can’t just do whatever you want. Oh, Nixon, right. Bill, you should have sent the secret service out for porn videos.
Finally, we come to the sad architect of the first eight years of the 21st century: Incurious George. So much could be said but I think the defining moment which best sums up his crippling administration came when Bob Costas interviewed the Boy Emperor during the 2008 Olympics. I remember seeing this on TV, my mouth hanging open, stunned beyond comprehension, mirroring Costas’ expression.
Costas: This past week you restated America's fundamental differences with China but given China's growing strength and America's own problems, realistically, how much leverage and influence does the U.S. have here?"
Bush: First of all, I don't see America having problems. I see America as a nation that is a world leader that has got great values and leverage….
I don’t understand. Bush brings a country to its knees and walks away unscathed. Clinton brings an intern to her knees and they want to impeach him.
One Common Mission: Outsourcing
All of the Biggies, under the protectorate of the Wall Street Empire, have an unstated purpose: eliminate American jobs and they have been doing so with impunity. Outsourcing continues apace, while corporations blame it on their 35% tax rate. Not only do we send jobs offshore, we import foreign labor, cheaper through a vast variety of work visas.
Warning: the “S” word is coming up. There exists in advanced societies, at least in theory, some sense of social responsibility, providing for the basic welfare of its citizens (oops, the W word, just as bad as the S word .” Employment, Education, and Health care are all social issues but as soon as the “S” word appears, many reactionaries equate this with “social engineering,” a stone’s throw from the dreaded iron fist of socialism. Reactionaries decry the “welfare state”. What welfare? We’re growing poorer each day. Only the Royal Court of Wall Street receives welfare, er, bailouts. What Socialism, what Welfare? What are the conservatives complaining about? They’re getting everything they want. I guess it’s not enough.
Conclusion
On the subject of outsourcing, the Wall Street Empire will pursue this like a reductio ad absurdum argument. Ultimately, we’ll outsource everything, then there will be no one to maintain the castle walls which finally crumble in on the monarchy. Think the last emperors of Rome gave a shit? Just get on that corporate jet to a Caribbean retreat and slam down those gin and tonics.
Near the bottom of the page is a blistering diatribe from Mr. George Carlin that pretty much sums it all up. The text of the rant appears directly below in case the link goes away.
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."
But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club.
This country is finished."
Mr. Carlin puts it quite eloquently and much more succinctly than I. The orgies didn’t last in ancient Rome, either. When things really spiral out of control we’ll simply do what has become an American tradition: outsource for cheap labor. After all, the Romans (our model for Western civilization) did it. For what? To help run things. The Chinese must be salivating. India, too. And then the kingdom begins to fracture.
Thomas Cole (1801-1848) of the Hudson River School of Painting is perhaps best known for his series of paintings called The Course of Empire, introduced at the beginning. These represented five distinct periods or phases of a civilization’s development. The paintings, while striking works of art on their own merit, also provide an insight into both historical parallels and the present state of society and culture in America.
I’ve mentioned that our best historical example is the Roman Empire which flourished approximately 400 years. About halfway through that period it reached its zenith, where it had produced unprecedented advances in government, law, engineering, and the arts. It may be generalized that its decline can be traced to failed leadership, loss of identity and vision, and hedonistic excess by its citizenry. Cole mapped it out like this:
The Savage State is an uncivilized, unexplored territory with great promise and abundance of resources, where indigenous peoples are either expunged or assimilated.
The Pastoral State…a formative period where civilization begins to develop and there are enough “fruits” to reward labor.
Consummation: the apogee of society, a vision realized, with abundant wealth, though not necessarily distributed equally. A sense of national vision, of purpose exists. This is the key crossroads. A society can continue in one of two directions. Redirect its vision to a higher plane, achieve racial and spiritual harmony, and sharpen its moral focus.
Otherwise, the alternative is destruction…and ultimately, desolation, civilization in ruins. Of course this can mean a spiritual as well as physical wasteland.
Let us pray for our children…seriously—no joke.