ANS -- "Responsibility to Protect" in Civil War Zones

Here's Brad Hicks on when it makes sense for the US to intervene in someone else's war.  Interesting, as usual.  I've included comments. 
Find it here:  http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/457798.html?view=8902982#t8902982   
--Kim

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"Responsibility to Protect" in Civil War Zones

• Feb. 16th, 2012 at 8:34 AM

I continue to be convinced that, when it comes to anything even vaguely connected to war, military affairs, or coercive diplomacy, the most important fact of history is the ferocious bipartisan determination to prove Donald Rumsfeld right and Colin Powell wrong, no matter how often Colin Powell's predictions end up being the ones vindicated by the facts.

A quick refresher course:

While at the US Army War College, Colin Powell did a historical survey of every single war in history that any democracy fought on either side of, dividing them into two categories: wars that the democracy won, and wars that the democracy failed to win, either fought to a tie or lost. He wanted to know if he could come up with a clear military doctrine for democracies, and he found one. Unsurprisingly, it was little more than a slight improvement on previous military-science research, from Caspar Weinberger's work all the way back to Von Clausewitz: a list of 9 pre-requisites, every single one of which a democracy must meet before the first shot is fired, or else the democracy loses: do everything possible to avoid military force (#1 and #4); persuade your own voters and the voters in other democracies to want to fight (#7 and #8); and plan in advance the attack strategy, the objectives that will signify victory, and how you intend to get out (#s 2, 3, 5, and 6). And having done all that, weigh what you hope to achieve against the cost of the only military strategy that has ever worked -- if it's not worth the cost of raising taxes, mobilizing every healthy military-aged male, and taking them all into the target country for half a decade or longer, then accept that you can't win and abort (#8 and, informally, #9). TL;DR version: do what we did in World War II, the last war we unambiguously won.

On the other side is a bi-partisan agreement among politicians and pundits, almost none of whom ever fought for their country let alone studied military science, that while fighting a Powell Doctrine war works, it can't possibly be the only thing that works. Because if the Powell Doctrine is the only thing that works, then war has to be a once or twice in a lifetime affair, at most, because no democracy can afford to fight a Powell Doctrine war more often than that without wrecking their economy. Why is that such a bad thing? The reason, say the bi-partisan politicians and pundits, that that's unacceptable is that there are so many bad things out there in the world that diplomacy and economic sanctions alone can't stop. Surely, they argue, a nation that can put a man on the moon (or, at least, that used to be able to put a man on the moon) can find some way for the President of the world's last remaining super-power to project force, when diplomacy and sanctions fail, in order to get his way, without having to convert the whole country over to a war footing for years on end! And while there were ideas and trial balloons floated by Madeleine Albright and others during the Clinton administration, Colin Powell's opponents crystallized their planned alternative during George W. Bush's administration, and thus it's called the Rumsfeld Doctrine.

The Rumsfeld Doctrine hypothesized that given sufficiently advanced technology and best-of-the-best training for elite special operations forces, a superpower ought to be able to find, or else if need be recruit, disaffected elements in the targeted country, and incite them to civil war. As they will be a tiny rebel force, we can count on their government slaughtering them, and then, under the UN's "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine, we can use the fact that they're losing their civil war as diplomatic cover for providing them with satellite and computerized intel and precision drone and stealth-fighter air cover, and covert special operations force ground support. With those advantages over the national army, Rumsfeld and his fans argued, any group of rebels, no matter how small and how unpopular in their home country, ought to be able to seize and hold the capital indefinitely. With enough such special operations forces units and enough drone air strikes, the Rumsfeld Doctrine argues, we ought to be able to credibly threaten any country that doesn't bow to our diplomatic and economic sanctions, and, if that threat isn't enough, replace them with a grateful, and thus friendly, government. As cheap as those things are, we ought to be able to do those things as often as the President wants.

The Rumsfeld Doctrine was a disaster in Iraq. It was a disaster in Afghanistan. Oh, we can pretend that both cases were victories, because the Rumsfeld Doctrine is right in one narrow regard: a tiny America-backed rebel force can topple any third-world government. What they can't do, after that, is govern the country, not without popular support at home, near-universal diplomatic support, and millions of pairs of American boots on the ground to protect that government, and to protect and provision the country, during reconstruction. The net result, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, ended up being that even worse, even more anti-American, governments end up being the ones that seize power at the end of the civil war after the old regime falls. It turned out, in Afghanistan and Iraq, that "Gideon's band" can topple a government, but they can't build a new one.

I worry that the Obama administration considers Libya to be a Rumsfeld Doctrine success. In Libya, we did do it a little differently. We made one concession to Powell and put more effort into diplomacy and coalition building before we went in. (Neo-cons will never forgive Obama for that. Having to have allies who agree to take the lead? Strikes them as an unacceptable limitation on Presidential power, it limits the US to only using military force when somebody else says we can. And a tool that can only be used when somebody else lets us use it is barely better than not having the tool at all.) Our covert troops on the ground were even more covert. Obama was very, very proud when Tripoli fell and made only unconvincing tut-tut sounds when US-backed rebels killed Qaddafi in cold blood. But has Libya been a success for the Rumsfeld doctrine? The news out of Libya in the last couple of months hasn't been any better than the news out of Iraq in 2004: sectarian and tribal militias are slaughtering each other, and elements of the old regime are massing across the border biding their time.

And, although no US newspaper or TV station will tell you this, that is why Russia and China used their UN Security Council veto power to turn down the US-backed motion that we have a "Responsibility to Protect" anti-Alawite rebels in Homs and elsewhere in Syria. I don't think they're just being cynical when they observe that, while the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine was promulgated after a genocidal civil war in sub-Saharan Africa, somehow it only gets invoked against oil-exporting states that the US has diplomatic problems with, and the facts are clearly on their side when they argue that the death toll among civilians in Libya, after our "Responsibility to Protect" intervention on behalf of the people of Benghazi, Libya is rapidly closing in on as many people as if we'd just let Qaddafi win; it's at best a net-break-even on human life and suffering, and will certainly be a net loss by the time the resulting Libyan Civil War grinds to a halt, who knows how many years from now.

In the days immediately following 9/11, neo-cons crowed that this meant it was only a matter of time before they got the wars they wanted. Afghanistan, which actually attacked us, was never more than an unwanted distraction from the wars they really wanted: Rumsfeld-Doctrine colonial adventures to replace anti-US governments in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. And, as the US has openly said that they intend to find some way around that Security Council veto, it looks like they were right; it's only a matter of time before our Nobel Peace Prize winning President finishes George W. Bush's dream of launching at least one more colonial adventure in the Middle East.

(Oh, and have you heard? According to the New York Times, Iran is pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction! And is in contact with Al Qaeda! If we don't act now, the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud!)

The "Responsibility to Protect" UN doctrine was, as I said, first promulgated by then-outgoing President Bill Clinton. He counts his failure to send US troops to stop the genocidal Tutsi/Hutu civil wars in Rwanda and Burundi as the biggest mistake of his two terms in office. He, and others, argued that no matter what the UN Treaty originally said about aggressive war, there must be something the UN can do, there must be something the world's superpowers can do, there must be something the US can do, to stop genocidal slaughter of civilians - that it's happening in a sovereign country that isn't at war with anybody else can't possibly mean that the rest of us have to stand by and do nothing, he argued, and many others have agreed. I stand by what I said at the time: if you do not have the ability, you do not have the responsibility. You cannot be held morally accountable for something you were incapable of doing. And Colin Powell keeps being proven right: no, we cannot overthrow every evil government in the world, because the only kind of war that's actually capable of doing it is one that we can only afford to use the one or two times per generation that we come under attack ourselves. Even if post-Rumsfeld generals find a way to topple governments that slaughter their own people, we cannot afford the manpower and the money it would cost to reconstruct those countries afterwards, and without that reconstruction, the slaughter only ends up worse, not better.

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Comments

( 44 comments ­ Leave a comment )

perich wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 02:50 pm (UTC)
The news out of Libya in the last couple of months hasn't been any better than the news out of Iraq in 2004

Hell, it hasn't been any better than the news out of Libya in the few months prior to Qaddafi's death.

Phenomenal post.
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booklegger wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 02:50 pm (UTC)
To me, this suggests that America will become less democratic in the future.
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drewkitty wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 08:13 pm (UTC)
In the future? The post-industrial war machine is the only thing keeping our economy going, to the extent that it still is. Both directly as in Iraq and Afghanistan and indirectly by protecting oil extraction and transportation worldwide.
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kimchalister wrote:
Feb. 19th, 2012 02:03 am (UTC)
something more positive
Would you like to read something a bit more positive about the future? This article is by Sarah Robinson, a futurist. It is called:
Why Going 'Back To Normal' Is No Longer An Option for the American Economy -- And Where We're Headed Now

http://www.alternet.org/story/154056/why_going_%27back_to_normal%27_is_no_longer_an_option_for_the_american_economy_--_and_where_we%27re_headed_now/
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lassiter wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 02:52 pm (UTC)

This doctrine (shall we now label it the Rumsfeld-Obama Doctrine?) has led to the US supporting a faction in Iran - the MEK - that is considered a terrorist group by most international law NGOs.
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perich wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 04:54 pm (UTC)
by most international law NGOs.

And the U.S. State Department, don't forget.
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diego001 wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 03:55 pm (UTC)
In the US, we've replaced the idea of republic, democracy, and international process with the idea of unlimited Presidential power. The worst part of all is that there are large swaths of our population that actually believe this.
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thakur wrote:
Feb. 17th, 2012 09:46 pm (UTC)
Unlimited presidential power?..
That sounds like a dictatorship to me.
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diego001 wrote:
Feb. 17th, 2012 09:50 pm (UTC)
Pretty much, yes.
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hugh_mannity wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 04:02 pm (UTC)
Excellent analysis.

I think that one of the problems with US foreign policy is that thepolicy-makers don't understand the history of the situations they try to "manage". The Tutsi/Hutu civil wars in Rwanda and Burundi weren't a one-off thing. They were the most recent flare up of a long-standing enmity between the two groups, dating back to before the colonial era in Africa. Coming in to "rescue" a group of people from their traditional enemies mostly serves to piss off the current aggressors because not only were they getting their (in their minds) justified payback for past injustices, no one came to help them when they were being massacred in the past.

Then there's the whole regime change thing. Time and time again, the US has replaced one government with another supposedly more friendly to US interests (Saddam Hussain, the Shah of Iran, Ghaddafi, Noriega, et al.) only to find the supposedly friendly new government had not-so-US-friendly ideas of its own, or was so tyrannical and corrupt (Shah Reza Pahlavi, for example) that they sparked a revolution which put a very unfriendly government in power. (This is something I expect to see happen in Saudi Arabia fairly soon unless the Al-Saud brothers can pull some pretty big rabbits of reform out of their hats.)

It seems to me that the policy makers in the US aren't learning from either history or recent events. They seem stuck in this "we are an invincible superpower" mode, leading them to make some really bad decisions as to where, when, and how to intervene in the affairs of sovereign nations. Understandable, I guess, if you've never left the US and have grown up immersed in the myth of American Exceptionalism. However, to those outside the US, the picture is quite different.
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dd_b wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 04:59 pm (UTC)
But, you know, the people at that level generally *have* left the US. So you can't excuse their ignorance quite that easily.
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hugh_mannity wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 05:09 pm (UTC)
Physically, almost certainly, but intellectually, socially, and culturally, probably not.

People at that level stay at 5 star hotels or embassy residences, and other than domestic staff, rarely talk to anyone other than their opposite numbers in the country they're visiting. All of whom have agendas. They live in a bubble.
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dd_b wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 09:27 pm (UTC)
Now, yes, but frequently they were abroad before they reached their current level. Travel is still one of the elite privileges, and most of these people come from elite families.

We all live in bubbles; I wonder when I last interacted with somebody of IQ below 120, other than to say "yes" when asked if I wanted fries with that?
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nancylebov wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 04:08 pm (UTC)
It amazes me (but perhaps shouldn't), that letting in refugees is considered too expensive, but war isn't.

Some research on when terrorism works, and when it doesn't.

Short version: terrorism can work if it's limited to military targets.

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bradhicks wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 04:48 pm (UTC)
That's because they look at the worst-case lifetime cost of taking in refugees, and contrast that with the most optimistic estimate of what a short-term Rumsfeldian military intervention might cost if everything goes right.

Which should tell you that it's not about the cost, it's about what they've already decided to do. They couldn't put their thumb on the scale any more blatantly than they do.
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cestmama wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 04:24 pm (UTC)
if you do not have the ability, you do not have the responsibility. You cannot be held morally accountable for something you were incapable of doing

"The wisdom to know the difference" between the things you can change and the things you can't change is the sticking point. We're pretty arrogant about our abilities and what we have the ability to do. Before Iraq, I was party to that arrogance myself.

Iran is pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction!

If I were Iran, I would pursue a bomb, too. It's a highly rational move on their part. They get the crap knocked out of them by Israel anytime the Israelis feel like it. They are weaker than Israel and can't do much about it. A couple of nukes would force the Israelis to think twice about doing that.

Iran is also on the "Axis of Evil" list for the USA. We have good reasons not to like them. They positioned themselves in opposition to the US in the late 70's and 80's. They held our citizens hostage for over a year. That creates a problem for Iran. People we don't like sometimes get invaded. They don't want that to happen. A nuke or two would make the price of a US invasion very high and probably too high to undertake without a very, very good reason.

We can't stop it. We just start formulating plans for promoting regional stability in light of a nuclear Iranian state.
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bradhicks wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 04:45 pm (UTC)
Indeed. Remember the question that cost Helen Thomas her career? The last question she was ever allowed to ask at a presidential press conference?

At Barack Obama's first ever press conference, he admitted to some trepidation before taking his first (and, history records, last) question from Helen Thomas. She referred back to his introductory remarks in which he said that a nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, and was thus unacceptable. And, so, she asked him: "do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?"

Third. Rail.

There is no way that Israel can maintain a nuclear arsenal, one that the whole world has seen photographs of, and not have its enemies pursue their own nuclear deterrent. It's just not possible. But no, since we still have to maintain the diplomatic fiction that we don't know about Israel's nukes, when what's really going on is that yes, we do actually intend Israel to have the sole nuclear deterrent capability in the region, we're stuck having to pretend that we think that Iran will give nuclear weapons to Hezbollah or, even sillier claim, its deadly enemy al Qaeda.

Edited at 2012-02-16 04:49 pm (UTC)
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dd_b wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 05:01 pm (UTC)
I don't see the rational purpose to Iran building a bomb. In particular, it's what's uniting the western world against them, and hardening the support for Israel at a time when, for the first time in ages, there was some slackening.

How is that good for Iran?

If they ever *use* a bomb, the regime in power is toast within a week.
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cestmama wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 05:21 pm (UTC)

If they ever *use* a bomb, the regime in power is toast within a week.

I don't think they want to use a bomb. I think they want to *have* a bomb. Because if anyone invades them, they can bomb Israel, and so no one will invade them.

It's a deterrent against invasion by Israel and the US. The only players in this game that matter are Iran, the US, and Israel. Those three states will do what they want, without much hindrance from "the western world."

Sympathy from the Russians or the French is very nice, but neither one of them is going to stop the US from invading.
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lassiter wrote:
Feb. 17th, 2012 04:29 am (UTC)
What cestmama wrote. Horrible as it seems, I think the fact that the US and Soviet Bloc had "mutually assured destruction" as a doctrine did help avert the use of nuclear weapons. Having Israel as the sole possessor of nukes in the region is itself a major source of instability. Many neocons and supporters of Israel here in the US have already suggested, apparently in all seriousness, that Israel should preemptively nuke Teheran! So Iran having a nuclear deterrent will potentially serve to prevent such an occurrence.

Edited at 2012-02-17 04:29 am (UTC)
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dd_b wrote:
Feb. 17th, 2012 04:47 pm (UTC)
I do think you're right about US/USSR history.

I'm not sure the levels of nukes that Israel and eventually Iran have really rise to "MAD" levels, though. Of course those countries are smaller and more concentrated, so maybe they do.

Iran coming close to having a nuclear deterrant is of course exerting huge pressure for Israel to act preemptively.
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naath wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 04:36 pm (UTC)
Thinking...

This problem of "we killed the king, what next" exists for entirely internal revolutions as well as externally existed ones. One possible answer is clearly "take over, and rule with an iron fist" but I don't think we get to count that as a "win" for "democracy"; it's just replacing one king with a different king (who might or might not be better). Applying more troups, guns, tech, intel., money, etc etc to the problem might help you take over and rule with an iron fist; but I'm not sure it helps you achieve an Orderly and Peaceful Transition to Democracy like you (as a Good Democracy) probably wanted.

Post-WWII West Germany worked well; but I'm struggling to think of other cases.
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brynndragon wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 05:20 pm (UTC)
Geez, if that's the case, how did anyone ever develop a democracy? I guess England did it via relatively gradual degradation of the ruler's power, but America definitely had a revolution, as did France. Is it necessary for democracy to be home-grown rather than imported? (Man, we would *hate* that, we're made of impatience.)
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etherial wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 06:27 pm (UTC)
The French Revolution was immediately followed by a self-crowned Emperor attempting to conquer the world.
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brynndragon wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 06:55 pm (UTC)
You assume I meant the first revolution.
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simulated_knave wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 06:57 pm (UTC)
Since that's the point when France first developed democracy, assuming you meant something else would be the strange course of action...
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brynndragon wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 07:21 pm (UTC)
*sigh* Let me clarify this. The origin of the conversation was Libya, which was ruled by a self-appointed non-royal ruler. France found themselves in a rather similar situation. Somehow they got from deposition of said ruler to what we would consider a democracy (as vs. what we don't consider a democracy even if it used the trappings thereof, e.g. how the French Empires and Libya were run), although it took them another round to really get it done.

Now, how did that happen, if democracies don't result from getting rid of despots? Was it because the change of government was an internal matter rather than imposed from the outside? Was it because the despot got captured when he left home to fight a war, implying that getting the despot to leave or surrender rather than fight to the death on their home turf is a key component?

(In other words, can we actually discuss this question rather than get side-tracked by having to be right on the internet?)
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subnumine wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 08:33 pm (UTC)
The deposition of the ruler was after the first democracy in France, and was one of the reasons it fell apart.

The first French democracy was the Constitution of 1791 (with much the same caveats as calling New York or Virginia a democracy in 1791); it was a constitutional monarchy, and it even elected a legislature - once.

They went to war with Austria for (mostly) the traditional French reasons for going to war; in the middle of this war, the King lent aid and comfort to the enemy, and tried (and failed) to defect.

They duly tried the King for treason, and executed him; thereafter, however, a number of different groups each tried to protect the Republic from paid agents of the enemy (i.e., each other); we call one of these episodes the Terror.
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naath wrote:
Feb. 17th, 2012 09:48 am (UTC)
The Rulers With Iron Fists have to relax their fists.

The French revolution produced a series of dictatorial non-royal rulers before it produced a democracy. The American revolution appears to have transitioned into democracy much faster.

I'm sure people with better knowledge might be better able to pick out what you need to make this transition work; I'm just not seeing how "apply more troops" helps with the part where you want to get to a democracy rather than simply installing the dictator you wanted.
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kimchalister wrote:
Feb. 19th, 2012 02:24 am (UTC)
The American revolution had a strange and lucky confluence of a set of great men (and women?) who were brilliant, enlightened, adventurous, idealistic and not power-mad. It was "the enlightenment", after all.
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kimchalister wrote:
Feb. 19th, 2012 02:35 am (UTC)
The American revolution had a strange and lucky confluence of a set of great men (and women?) who were brilliant, enlightened, adventurous, idealistic and not power-mad. It was "the enlightenment", after all.
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kimchalister wrote:
Feb. 19th, 2012 02:17 am (UTC)
my worthless opinion....
Yes, it is necessary for democracy to arise from within, and it takes a fairly educated populace and a free press. That's one of the reasons we've lost most of our democracy: we aren't all that educated anymore and our press is no longer free. (Okay, I don't know enough history to have an opinion on this, really, but here it is anyway....)
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seferin wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 05:17 pm (UTC)
I can find no flaws in your logic, but on some level, I keep returning to "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing". If I am reading what you wrote correctly, under the Powell Doctrine, until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we should not have entered WWII, and further, had the Nazis not declared was on us, we should have stayed out of Europe and allowed them to continue the mass slaughter of millions.

By that logic, what is the argument against a doctrine of "If you commit crimes against humanity, either against your own people or segments thereof, committing intentional genocide, we will assassinate you, and whomever follows you, until they cease slaughtering their own people."

Provided it can be down without leaving evidence we did it, and the loss of American life is minimal, what prevents this from being a viable philosophy, under the heading of numbers used and dollars spent per above?

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amblinwiseass wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 06:08 pm (UTC)
Provided it can be down [sic] without leaving evidence we did it

Now there's a courageous stand on principle -- a sort of covert Pax Americana, which strikes me as a curious thing indeed. One might, I suppose, secretly say "Be at peace, or we will kill you"; one doubts, however, that such a statement, made where there's no one to hear, is all that likely to have an effect.
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seferin wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 06:17 pm (UTC)
If the argument is purely about the numbers of American lives at risk, then a targeted assassination does the same thing, except it bypasses the army on the ground and avoids the initial losses. I don't say that as an advocate of the policy, I'm asking the question because I see a flaw in the outcome. I don't see a flaw in his logic, but can't agree with his premise, namely "You cannot be held morally accountable for something you were incapable of doing." It reads to me as "We can't do THIS, ergo we can't do ANYTHING."

If the caveat is to not bring it back to our shores, but to stop the behavior, this might do it. The issue is that those who commit these type of acts have enough money and human shields to generally get away with it. Hussein and Gaddafi have been recent exceptions to the rule.
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amblinwiseass wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 07:31 pm (UTC)
To what argument are you responding?

You seem to be saying that, if one can't do something which has a reasonable chance of success, then one should do something nonetheless and despite the good chance of it failing, because to do so is somehow more moral than doing nothing -- even if the "something", upon failing, produces an even worse result than what motivated the intervention in the first place.

Boiled down to a cliché it seems as though you're saying, in a moral sense, it isn't whether you win or lose but rather that you're involved -- to which I'd respond with a cliché of my own on the subject of good intentions and where they may lead. Have I misunderstood what you're saying? If not, I look forward to hearing how, given a choice between 'do nothing' and 'make things worse', you find the latter option preferable.
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seferin wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 07:37 pm (UTC)
My response was based on incorrect interpretation of his statement "I stand by what I said at the time: if you do not have the ability, you do not have the responsibility. You cannot be held morally accountable for something you were incapable of doing."

He clarified in his response to my example, which was admittedly exaggerated, because it's easier to provide an example I knew was incorrect, and see why it was wrong under his interpretation.
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bradhicks wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 07:01 pm (UTC)
Assassination is like poison gas: states foreswear it because it's too easy, and because it's a tactic that doesn't favor either side. John F. Kennedy thought that assassinating Castro was a great idea. Look how well that worked out for him.

No, as Nancy alluded to above, my position is that if it is morally necessary that we intervene to protect foreign nationals from their own government (and I don't generally agree that it is), then it is more effective, more moral, and safer both for us and for them if we pressure their government to let them evacuate, as we did with the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Soviet Union back in the '80s. Even Reagan knew that invading the Soviet Union to free Jews from genocide was not a viable option; we would have failed to save them, and just gotten ourselves nuked. So we used diplomatic means to get the USSR to let them emigrate; half of them went to Israel, the other half came here to the US. Everybody benefited.
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seferin wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 07:12 pm (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying.
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bugsybanana wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 08:16 pm (UTC)
Excellent post, but I gotta jump on this:

Afghanistan, which actually attacked us...

Uh, I don't think so. Even if you take as given that the Taliban were involved in the 9/11 attacks (which I don't), no way did Afghanistan, as a nation, present a reason for us to be involved the way we became.

And the humanitarian issue is one I wrestle with, but I think humanitarian intervention is fraught with too much opportunity for mission creep to be justifiable. Better have Americans as private citizens jump in to help out, Abraham Lincoln Brigade-style. Better "prematurely anti-[fill in the blank]" than not at all.
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tcpip wrote:
Feb. 16th, 2012 08:43 pm (UTC)
The news out of Libya in the last couple of months hasn't been any better than the news out of Iraq in 2004:

Actually it has been a lot better.
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Feb. 17th, 2012 04:53 am (UTC)
The Rumsfeld doctrine is also similar to the doctrine that Sparta used to fight it's wars.
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subnumine wrote:
Feb. 18th, 2012 01:04 am (UTC)
Which doctrine was that?

Actual Spartan practice seems to have been "Stay out of wars if at all possible; the Helots might get restless (and anyway our politicians are too stupid to hide their bribes)."

See the Spartan absence from Marathon, their reluctance to join the Peloponnesian War, and the fates (well-deserved) of Pausanias and Lysander.
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subnumine wrote:
Feb. 18th, 2012 01:18 am (UTC)
Well taken.

But you may be omitting, in thinking of the Iranian, Syrian, and Georgian Wars that our politicians are so eager for, the third category of truly limited wars: wars that are intended to get some lesser power to change its policy, not its government.

The United States has been fairly successful at these, and doesn't need to occupy the conquered for years; we can leave it to the same people who annoyed us in the first place.

Examples:
*The Barbary Wars of Jefferson's time. It was not our aim to have a new Sultan in Tripoli; the old one would do fine, if he would accept the old tribute, and keep the pirates in check.
*The Mexican War. Unlike France, we didn't try to conquer Mexico; we walked off with the northern provinces, and left Santa Anna to survive if he could.
*The Spanish-American War; we never tried to conquer or rule Spain; we just stole what was left of the Spanish Empire outside Africa.
*The Serbian War of 1994. Didn't take Belgrade, jsut removed Kosovo.

Now all these are rare circumstances; there are few empires (other than our own) left to dismember. And there is a risk in McKinleyesque war: you may misjudge whether the demands are less than regime change to the other side.

Vietnam combined two forms of this mistake: The other side is *really* the Soviet Union, and we are just depriving them of a province; or, for those with a clue, that the Hanoi government would regard a partition on American terms as less than a change of regime.
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ANS -- Why Going 'Back To Normal' Is No Longer An Option for the American Economy -- And Where We're Headed Now

This is a summary of some visions of the future, and why we are not going back to the past.  I'm happy to say she (Sarah Robinson) mentions the growing movement to worker-owned businesses as the new form of economics.
Find it here:  http://www.alternet.org/story/154056/why_going_%27back_to_normal%27_is_no_longer_an_option_for_the_american_economy_--_and_where_we%27re_headed_now/?page=entire    
--Kim


AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
  180 COMMENTS

Why Going 'Back To Normal' Is No Longer An Option for the American Economy -- And Where We're Headed Now

Stop waiting around, because "normal" as we know it isn't coming back.
February 7, 2012  |  
 
 
Photo Credit: sunsurfr
 
 
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Former IMF chief economist Joseph Stiglitz has a message for everybody who's sitting around waiting for the economy to "get back to normal."

Stop waiting. 'Cause that train's gone, and it ain't coming back. And the sooner we accept that "normal," as post WWII America knew and loved it, will not be an option in this century, the sooner we'll get ourselves moving forward on the path toward a new kind of prosperity. The only real question now is: What future awaits us on the other side of the coming shift?

In a don't-miss article in this month's Vanity Fair, Stiglitz argues that our current economic woes are the result of a deep structural shift in the economy ­ a once-in-a-lifetime phase change that happens whenever the foundations of an old economic order are disrupted, and a new basis of wealth creation comes forward to take its place. The last time this happened was in the 1920s and 1930s, when a US economy that was built on farm output became the victim of its own success. Advances in farming led to a food glut. As food prices plummeted, farmers had less money to spend. This, in turn, depressed manufacturing and led to job losses in the cities, too. Land values in both places declined, impoverishing families and trapping them in place.

We remember this as the Great Depression. It lingered until the government stepped in ­ largely through the war effort ­ with unprecedented education, housing, transportation, and research investments that created new pathways for all those surplus farmers to come in off the farm, for the factory hands to get back to work, and for both groups to move into the modern industrial middle-class.

Stiglitz thinks that we're going through much the same kind of process again now, as the postwar manufacturing-based economy that saved us 80 years ago moves offshore, leaving our manufacturing workforce just as surplus and idle as those 1920s farmers were. In his view, the current phase shift is taking us away from industry-as-we've-known-it, and on into an economy that will have us relying more and more on many different kinds of knowledge work. (This isn't a new thesis; Daniel Bell was writing about it back in 1973.) But Stiglitz goes on to point out that because people are misunderstanding the moment, we're investing in the wrong things.

Austerity and debt reduction will get us nowhere, in this view. In particular: it won't change the fact that we have too many manufacturing workers and too few information workers. Stiglitz argues forcefully that this gap is likely to remain open until our governments make a long-term commitment to do what they did in the 1940s -- that is, fund the kind of aggressive education, research, and infrastructure investments that will finally get us fully transitioned to the new phase. The current economic crisis is doomed to last exactly as long as we delay put off building that necessary to the new information economy. When we come out the other side, there will still be farmers and manufacturers ­ but even they will be leveraging the power of the Internet to create new wealth. Everybody will.

But Stiglitz is far from the only theorist who's trying to look beyond the phase change, and figure out what new form wealth might take when we get to the far side of it.

Another one is Thomas Homer-Dixon, a Canadian economist who wrote The Upside of Down. Homer-Dixon marshals evidence that all great empires rise and fall by controlling the dominant energy supply of their age. The Romans used roads and aqueducts to harness solar energy (in the form of food) from around the Mediterranean basin, and used that surplus to fund the most complex society of its time. The Dutch empire rose on its superior ability to master wind technologies ­ the windmill and the ship ­ to extend its land holdings, run early manufacturing industries, and extend its trading reach around the globe. The British empire rose on coal-powered steam engines, which gave it more productive industries, railroads, electrical generators, and faster ships. The US eclipsed the Brits due to its vast wealth in oil ­ a far more concentrated and fungible fuel ­ and inventions from cars and planes to plastics and fertilizers that allowed it to make the most of its advantages. And the Chinese are now making huge investments in renewable energy and safer, more efficient second-generation nuclear power, which they can use to fuel their ascent to global primacy.

The bottom line in Homer-Dixon's theory is this: Everything that Americans understand as "wealth" under the current paradigm comes from oil. It's the foundation of our entire economy, and the ground our superpower status stands on. Our cities are built on the assumption of cheap, plentiful oil. Our consuming patterns are made possible by a fleet of oil-burning trucks, ships, and planes that bring us goods made in oil-driven factories. Our warmaking machine, which is largely tasked with protecting our oil interests around the world, is the single largest consumer of energy on the planet. Even our food is created with vast oil-based inputs of fertilizer and pesticides; and we enjoy a year-round variety of foods (bananas! chocolate! coffee!) that is unprecedented in human history because oil makes cheap transport and refrigeration possible.

And the pain and fear caused when we're forced to face this fundamental fact explains quite a bit about why ideas like climate change and peak oil are so viscerally terrifying to so many Americans. (In many right-wing circles, denial about the American oil addiction is now a core piece of their political identity. It's considered anti-American to even suggest that getting off oil is necessary or possible.) We are so deeply invested in oil, in so many ways, that it's almost impossible for us to envision a world beyond it. We stand to lose so much that it's hard to fathom it all.

And this, says Homer-Dixon, is why no empire has ever survived an energy-related phase shift with its full power intact: the reigning hegemons are always too deeply invested in the current system to recognize the change, let alone respond to it in time. And so they are always superceded by some upstart that's motivated to put more resources and risk into aggressively developing the next source. The decline of oil as the energy reality of the world has deep implications for every aspect of American life in the coming century. It's a phase shift at the deepest level.

Other theorists, including Gar Alperovitz, Jeffery Sachs and Umair Haque, agree that there's a phase shift happening under our feet ­ but they believe the real shift lies in the changing structure of capitalism itself. Forming markets is a core human activity that we're not any more likely to abandon than eating or breathing. But our understanding of the purpose and value of markets ­ and the role of capital within them ­ is overdue for a profound change. Haque argues that "twentieth-century capitalism's cornerstones shift costs to and borrow benefits from people, communities, society, the natural world, or future generations." But, he continues, "both cost shifting and benefit borrowing are forms of economic harm that are unfair, non-consensual, and often irreversible." The result is a great imbalance that we are finally being forced to fully reckon with, one that will call us to radically change our focus, creating a totally new kind of capitalism.

Haque makes a distinction between "thin" and "thick" value. Things with "thin" value tend to be artificial, unsustainable, and meaningless to anyone but the people who produce and consume them. Hummers, McMansions and Big Macs are all examples of thin value items. They're produced without any recognition of our larger values context or the externalized costs to the community, and consuming them tends to add to the overall imbalance in our economy. Thin value, he writes, is "profit that is in many ways a financial fiction, because it fails to exceed a fuller, truer economic cost of capital." And the phase shift is evident in the fact that the companies that are falling hardest right now are the ones whose past profits have relied most heavily on monetizing our common wealth for private profit.

"Thick" value ­ produced by companies that practice "constructive capitalism" ­ is value that is sustainable, that has a moral component that matters, and that multiplies itself. Companies that practice it tend to win because they produce things that have a deeper meaning to people. Their real wealth isn't what they're able to extract from the rest of us, but in their long, deep, trusting relationships with their customers. The world is shifting from the economics of a game reserve to those of an ark, says Haque. The companies that are thriving now are the ones that increasing their focus on "constructive advantage" ­ "how free a company is of deep debt to people, communities, society, the natural world, or future generations." While this focus-shift is far from complete, the current economy abounds with firms that are showing us a new way forward. (Apple is a prime example of a company that creates "thick value," but we've seen recently that its commitment to this ideal has some rather glaring thin spots.)

Alperovitz' vision extends this by revamping how wealth flows in society. He points to a quiet revolution that's already much further along than anybody realizes ­ the move toward worker- or consumer-owned cooperative businesses, in which distant shareholders are replaced by local stakeholders who have a deep personal interest in how every aspect of the business is run. Already, four in 10 Americans belong to some type of co-op business (if you have a Costco or a credit union card in your wallet, you're already on board here); and America's 30,000 cooperatives provide over 2 million jobs. (Many, many more fun facts here.) The UN has declared 2012 to be the Year of the Co-Op, in recognition of the fact that nearly half the world's population now belongs to cooperatives. Co-ops are already forming a formidable challenge to Wall Street-driven 20th-century capitalism, and their expansion through the coming century would represent a massive redistribution of labor and wealth ­ a phase shift that favors the direction Haque suggests.

These are just a handful of the many serious theorists out there describing the deep structural changes we're undergoing. Not all of them, to be sure, are this cheery (and I've made my own contributions to the dystopian canon in the past). There are so many now, in fact, that their very numbers might taken as evidence that we're going through something uniquely new and deep. Our government is broken. Our economy is broken. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Our major institutions ­ education, religion, culture ­ are inadequate to the tasks at hand.

These are all signs of an old world passing away, clearing the way for a new one to arise in its place. And the sooner we let go of our assumption that going back is desirable, or even possible, the sooner we'll be able to fully embrace the new things that lie ahead.

<------------------>
Sara Robinson is Alternet's senior editor in charge of the Visions page. A trained social futurist, she's particularly interested change resistance movements. She does foresight and strategic planning consulting for a wide range of progressive groups.

ANS -- The Sifted Bookshelf: The Myth of Choice

Here is a very short article by Doug Muder, a book review, about making choices.  do we really make choices, or are we unduly influenced by our environment?  It's a complex issue, in a world that dislikes complexity.  I've included the comments so far.
Find it here:    http://weeklysift.com/2012/02/13/the-sifted-bookshelf-the-myth-of-choice/#comments    
--Kim

The Sifted Bookshelf: The Myth of Choice

So many social issues hinge on choice and individual responsibility. To what extent do our choices shape our lives, and how much choice did we really have? A struggling family pays its rent and buys the kids school clothes rather than sign up for health insurance. Should we regard that as a "choice" to be uninsured?

The poor often make bad choices. They may eat badly, handle money badly, or fail to invest enough time developing marketable skills. Is that because they lack character, or because poverty is a high-stress environment in which it's hard to make good choices?

In another view, nothing is anybody's fault. We're all just automata, determined by forces beyond our control: genetics, peer pressure, advertising, culture, economic forces, childhood trauma, and so on. If one child goes to college and another to prison, it's just the breaks.

The Myth of Choice by Kent Greenfield is the beginning of a more meaningful dialog about choice. He presents a variety of real-life examples and scientific studies that point in a more sensible direction: We do all make choices, but our options are limited by external forces. And even when the external world isn't constraining us, we are limited by what he calls our "choice muscles". If we have to make too many stressful decisions or apply too much willpower, they wear out and we begin to act like the kind of automata pictured by determinists.

In one experiment, people were asked to remember a number and then offered a snack. The longer the number, the more likely they were to take the cake rather than the fruit. The stress of the longer number left fewer mental resources to apply toward healthy eating.

The metaphor of "choice muscles" is a valuable addition to the discussion. As individuals, it points us toward exercising them and building them up, as well as towards avoiding needless temptations. And as a society, how do we create choice-friendly environments that make it easy to the things we really want, rather than overwhelming environments that make us more manipulable?

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By weeklysift, on February 13, 2012 at 12:29 pm, under The Sifted Bookshelf. 3 Comments
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Comments

•  Nancy Minter On February 13, 2012 at 12:52 pm
• Permalink | Reply I was watching a replay of the snippet of Republicans applauding the suggestion that letting an uninsured man die was justifiable. I thought at the time that the way it was phrased was so loaded that I would have been inclined to let the guy die.
  I mean let's face it, it's PR 101. Ask this question "A young healthy man decides not to buy health care cause he doesn't need it, but time passes and he get sick. Now he's in a coma, and is dying and has no way to pay for treatment. Should the rest of us have to pay for it?"
  The answer you get is very different from the response you get from this question.
  "A young healthy man has to choose between health care and housing. He's hopes he will be able to buy the health care at a later date, but by the time he can afford it he's ill and can't get it at any price. Now he's in a coma and dying. Should he have to die because some corporation can't figure out how to profit from his disease?"
  We need to start pushing the fairness button. Quit trying to appeal to compassionate conservative (no such thing) instead show how compassion is a fairness issue.
•  Roger On February 14, 2012 at 12:33 pm
• Permalink | Reply Thanks for encouraging thoughtful reflections on choice and personal responsibility. Greenfield's book can help people see that we have only limited insight into the way we make choices and the extent to which individual freedom is constrained by factors such as lack of available "bandwidth." Since the decision-making process is so mysterious, we shouldn't flatter ourselves that we are obviously superior to those whose choices seem flawed.
  Roger Schriner

ANS -- Rules for the Class War: Rule #3: Own Your Patriotism

Here is an article about the difference between patriotism and American Exceptionalism.  I grabbed it mostly for the chart in it about where we rank in various measures of greatness.  Have a look.
Find it here:  http://www.ragingwisdom.com/?p=629
--Kim

Rules for the Class War: Rule #3: Own Your Patriotism

Who can really claim to love the country more: the Crazy Rich, the multinational corporation, or the rest of us?
 
The Crazy Rich just want more for themselves; more money for the sake of money, more power to impose their will on the majority. If they had to choose between making the country better and making themselves even slightly richer, they will choose the latter.
 
Multinational corporations, by design, do not give a damn about this country. They may appear to do so only to the extent that it promotes their prime directive: profit. Of course a multinational corporation would favor road maintenance, because it uses those roads to move their goods. It doesn't care about maintaining the nation's infrastructure in order to make the country better.
 
The rest of us have a duty to tap into our patriotism. Patriotism is OK. If we love our country it follows that we want to make it the best it can be. The rest of us care more about the condition of the country because, well, we have to live here. We can't hide in gated communities or move our operations overseas.
 
Any patriotic American should be outraged about how our country has been looted by the financial elites.
 
To those on the left, your feeling that you want to make the country a better place, like it or not, is patriotic. Patriotism is OK. It is natural to care about your country because that is your home, the place you and your friends and family live. Of course you want it to be great. It is patriotic to make it the best that it can be.
 
On the other hand, there is a danger that patriotism can go to far. That's where we find this American Exceptionalism crap. They are asking you to embrace the myth so you can discard any responsibility for reality. This warped version of patriotism needs do be discarded with the warped Randian capitalism.
 
American Exceptionalism is the belief that America is the greatest country in the history of the planet and our unique position and values are literally a gift from God that should be spread worldwide through our shining example and/or direct "leadership."
 


From pluralistnation

 
American Exceptionalism misleads with its fourth-dimensional mindset. Add up the achievements of each nation across the totality of history and, yes, America is the greatest of all time. But riddle me this: is today's America the greatest America that ever existed at any point in time? Is it greater than any America that could exist in the future?
 
American Exceptionalism is a stalking horse for small-c conservatism, for those seeking to maintain the status quo, those that are doing really great right now. American Exceptionalism fools you into thinking we're the greatest, so there is no need to change anything, no need to address any problems because either they don't exist or are too minor to bother with because we're still the greatest country in the world.
 
A true patriot wants their country to truly be its best. It is patriotic to identify where your country is falling behind and then seek ways to improve things.
 

 
I believe American Exceptionalism is so appealing because it has a kernel of truth: The United States is the greatest country in the history of the world. Right there is the key word that could make it true: history. America has been consistently great. On average across the country's brief 235 year history we've been the greatest. But it is more like the esteem of a great pro sports franchise.
 
Arguably, the Boston Celtics are the greatest NBA team. Over the history of the league, they have the most championships (17). But they are not great every year. For instance, in the 1996-1997 season they suh-diddly-ucked at 15-67. They have had some down years where they crashed and had to undertake a rebuilding process, getting stronger again to win the title in 2008. They didn't become great again by keeping the same coach and roster of players from 1997 and chanting "We're Number 1!" No, they made changes and even took some players and tactics from, gasp, other teams. They didn't reject positive changes simply because they were not the Celtic way.
 
Here is where the strongest adherents of American Exceptionalism lose me. Their take seems to be not that America is the greatest and most perfect nation ever, but America is the greatest and most perfect always. To them there is no need for improvement and it is impossible for other countries to invent better ways of doing things. (We've also held on to our Model-T version of democracy too long, but that's worthy of its own post.)
 
Another part of the appeal of American Exceptionalism is it gets into individuals' heads through their personal identity. Like it or not, your nationality is part of who you are. It's part of your personal self esteem. American Exeptionalism appeals to many because it makes them feel good about themselves. People like being told they are special because they are an American. It is easy to see how many people are especially susceptible to believing so strongly in American Exceptionalism: they may not have much else in their individual lives to be proud of aside from their nationality. Or as Julian Sanchez puts it:

You can think of patriotism as a kind of status socialism ­ a collectivization of the means of self-esteem production. You don't have to graduate from an Ivy or make a lot of money to feel proud or special about being an American; you don't have to do a damn thing but be born here. Cultural valorization of "American-ness" relative to other status markers, then, is a kind of redistribution of psychological capital to those who lack other sources of it.

 To those on the right, it is OK to make a distinction between healthy patriotism and American Exceptionalism. As one conservative wrote:

Republicans have sought refuge in a form of American exceptionalism that has remarkably little to do with the real America. Republicans have made a defense of "American exceptionalism" the thing that is supposed to distinguish them from Obama, and in order to make that claim they have defined American exceptionalism to mean an absurd overconfidence in the political and economic uniqueness and supremacy of America. To take pride in economic opportunity available here, they feel that they must deny that it exists elsewhere.

 

…

 

The sort of American exceptionalism that has become the defining feature of Republican rhetoric over at least the last two years seems to require "boasting of the largeness" of America at every turn. This is not healthy admiration for one's country, but an idolatry that prevents its devotees from seeing things as they are.

 So while we should be wary of American Exceptionalism, it does not mean we should abandon any feelings of patriotism. Our shared love of country could help bring together a broad range of Americans with differing viewpoints to rescue our nation from the risks posed by the continuing march toward even more extreme wealth inequality. It is this extreme inequality (as opposed to a more reasonable inequality inherent in well-functioning American capitalism) that causes a ridiculously disproportionate amount of power to be shifted to the ultra wealthy. The crux of the danger comes as some of these very, very rich do not have America's best interests at heart.
 
Tapping into our patriotism can help us at least temporarily put aside disagreements on other issues to take on this greater threat. Which leads to Class War Rule #4… which is here.
 

ANS -- New Rules for Radicals: 10 Ways To Spark Change in a Post-Occupy World

Here is Sara Robinson's latest article.  She is now "Vision Editor" for Alternet. 
Find it here:   http://www.alternet.org/visions/153972/new_rules_for_radicals%3A_10_ways_to_spark_change_in_a_post-occupy_world_?page=entire  
--Kim



  VISIONS  
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
  62 COMMENTS

New Rules for Radicals: 10 Ways To Spark Change in a Post-Occupy World

The world is changing quickly, and we need to help steer it according to our shared values -- our vision of what might be.
February 1, 2012  |  
 
 
Photo Credit: Nick Turse
 
 
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Editor's note: AlterNet is excited to announce the launch of a full-fledged, future-oriented "Visions" section. Click here to sign up for the new Visions newsletter.

The first rule is this: The world is different now. The rules have changed. 

Since Occupy, we all understand this. Nothing works now the way it did even just a couple of years ago. Political tactics that haven't budged public opinion in years ­ like petitions and big street demonstrations ­ are suddenly working again. Narratives that seemed unassailable ­ like the primacy of free markets and low taxes ­ are being openly questioned. Doors that used to be closed to us are now opening. The media that once ignored us is now starting to listen. The conservatives are shaken and fumbling, stuck on autopilot and unable to re-route away from their old course even as disaster looms dead ahead. What's going on here?

What's going on is that we are (finally!) in the first giddy months of a deep-current sea change in American politics, the kind of realignment that happens once every several decades. This change has put us into a whole new political era, one that runs by an entirely new set of rules ­ and one in which a great many impossible things may, all of a sudden, become possible.

The reasons for this shift are complex and wonky, and are the stuff of other articles. But we all sense it, and we all want to know what it means.

As a Silicon Valley brat-turned-futurist, I've spent a lot of my life in a culture that churned constantly with this kind of upending, unending change. There are things tech people know in their bones, survival strategies and cultural knowledge and habits of mind and specific attitudes that allow one to stay loose and adaptive in times of turbulent transformation. 

So, with that, we are already on to Rule Two, which is really the most important one:

2. No despair. Despair is a waste of time and energy.

Anger is useful. It gets the blood moving. It gets people out of their chairs and into the streets. Harnessed quickly to constructive action, it's the fuel that drives change. But anger, once generated, also cools and congeals quickly into frustration, cynicism and despair. Indulging in our daily two-minute hate may be cathartic, but ultimately, it doesn't change a damn thing about our situation. Even worse: it curdles, producing paralysis. Worst of all: once it starts festering, there's nothing left to do with it but turn it on each other.

So: let's drop that cool, cynical, I've-seen-it-all, let's-not-get-too-excited-here stance. Stepping back from the pain by telling ourselves sagely that it's all too much, our enemies are too strong, and there's nothing we can do ­ that's the lazy way out. Yes, you are no doubt right: and yes, it sucks mightily. But the answer to that isn't to sit around indulging in a group bitch session about how awful it all is. The answer is to get off our butts and get back to work, because life is short and there's a whole planet out there that needs to be fixed on our watch.

3. Try everything.

Because I have no idea what will work now, what we can ask for or expect, or where the boundaries of this new landscape lie. And neither do you. (Thrilling, isn't it?) It's all up for grabs. So, try everything. Try it, even if you've tried it before and it didn't work. Try it, even if it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Try it, just because it's there. It's going to take many thousands of experiments before we really understand the contours of this new political and economic reality we're living in. 

Of course, there are boundaries: don't try anything that violates our principles, or replicates the things we hate the most about the other side. There will be no cheating, no lying, and no crazies with guns taking out people we disagree with. We have to be better than that: if we betray our values, we lose everything. 

But apart from that: Go. The sooner we get going, the sooner we'll figure this thing out.

4. Trust the vision.

Those of a progressive bent ­ and by "progressive," I mean anybody who believes that business-as-usual is no longer acceptable and that real progress is not only possible, but necessary for our very survival ­ have a strong, vivid vision of what this nation can and should become. In our minds' eyes, we can see that future as clearly as we can conjure the familiar rooms of our old childhood homes. And for most of the past few decades, it seems like it's been just about as far away.

Still, we can close our eyes and linger over every shimmering detail. The optimistic comfort of a middle-class life in which most Americans have dignified work, happy families, and enough wealth plus some to share. The relief of knowing that our basic needs for adequate shelter, healthy food and water, safe work, inspired education, useable transportation, essential healthcare, world-class recreation, and a good retirement are met through strong, trustworthy community commitments we can count on. The peace of mind that comes from knowing that we're providing all of this in ways that won't deprive our grandchildren of options crucial to their own survival. We want justice, equity, opportunity, and a government and an economy that are finely tuned to the spritely and practical rhythms of the common good. We want to be rich in the things that genuinely matter, rather than slaves to predatory institutions that produce things that don't.

That's our vision, and we're sticking to it. The problem is: until very recently, a lot of us have felt isolated, like this alternate reality existed nowhere else except inside our own skulls. Few corporations paid it anything more than lip service. Their pet media declared our ideas dangerously crazy and unworthy of "serious" coverage. Our federal government, even in Democratic hands, has been almost totally non-responsive (unless somebody screws up). The cultural authorities who used to defend and uphold our values without restraint or apology ­ the academy, the scientific community and non-fundamentalist religious congregations ­ were systematically discredited and silenced. Progressivism is literally being written out of history, its heroes co-opted, its astonishing victories erased. The very words we once used to describe these very American ideals have been redefined to the point where it's sometimes impossible to even talk about it.

It's hard to trust a vision that nobody else recognizes, let alone validates. After a while, even you might even start to agree that this is all just a weird personal delusion that's best kept under wraps.

The new rule is: Trust the dream. Trust it enough to not only talk about it, but defend it proudly to any and all bullies. Trust the deep wisdom and sanity of it. Trust your own craziness in believing in it. Trust the other people who share it. Trust the change that you create while you pursue it. Trust that much of that imagined world has existed before; and trust also that it will ­ in a new and better form ­ rise again.

5. Focus on our goals, not on our enemies.

This one builds on #2, the "No despair" rule.

I've made a career writing about the conservative movement's uncanny skill at thwarting our dreams. This is red meat to progressives (and a perennially effective traffic booster at lefty Web sites). No blogger ever goes wrong by describing, explaining, or expressing spittle-flecked outrage over the overwhelming will, reach and resources arrayed against us. It's easy, and not entirely wrong, to tell ourselves that we're being stalled by the unfathomable cunning and treachery of our enemies.

But we've got a lot to do, and are strapped for time, energy and resources to do it with. Every moment we spend focusing on How Evil They Are is a moment we are not focusing on creating the next America where we (and they) will all be spending the future. Yes, absolutely: we need to name our villains, clearly call out the threat they pose, and put names to the tools they're using to stop us. But vanquishing them is not the ultimate goal. We've got bigger, better, more rewarding work to do. All they are to us is in the way. And all the energy they deserve is however much it will take to get them out of the way.

6. Expect resistance.

It's the political corollary to Newton's Third Law of Motion: Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. Whatever you do, you are going to piss somebody off. (In fact, I've always thought that this is an important life metric: if you're not pissing somebody off, you're not doing enough to change the world. Call it Robinson's First Law of Politics.) It is a waste of energy to be surprised by this. It's also political malpractice not to think ahead to figure out where it's likely to come from, what form it will probably take, and what you're going to do about it.

Also: there are people (and not all of them are on the other side, sadly) who have made a lifelong commitment to resisting change. For them, obstructionism is a spiritual path. And they're masterful at it. It's a waste of energy to be surprised by them, too. Obstructionists are a force of nature all their own; you cannot be angry at them, any more than you can be angry at a rattlesnake for wanting to bite you. It's who they are. It's what they do. It's part of the Zen of change-making.

Anticipate resistance as much as you can, and do whatever it takes to steer clear of known sources. If surprised, find the flow and go with it. As an Aikidoka friend once put it: If someone attacks you, lean into them. Become part of their attack. And then: become the part that goes horribly, catastrophically wrong.

7. Find and nurture innovators.

We're building a lot of new stuff very fast right now. New politics, new media, new cities, a new economic paradigms, a new relationship with the planet ­ it's daunting. We need new answers much faster than we're able to generate them.

There are people in our midst who are really good at this stuff, and times like this tend to be good ones for them. In more stable times, these folks are often pushed to the side: they often look and talk goofy, they have weird ideas, they don't fit in, and nobody really gets what they're talking about a lot of the time. Also: trailing in their wake you'll find quite a few successes, along with a few stunning failures ­ the sure sign of somebody who's comfortable taking a lot of risks, and not afraid of bombing out.

Genius comes in all ages, genders and colors. It's the old Boomer codger who's got a thousand tricks up his sleeve, and forgotten more than you'll ever know. It's the young kid who's never been told it can't be done, so she just went ahead and figured out how to do it. I've seen world-changing political innovation come from farmworker organizers in Phoenix, women's activists in Atlanta and rural organizers from Montana and Oregon. There are often no markings on the package it comes in that give you a clue as to what's going on inside, so you have to drop your biases, and look closely.

We need to seek out these folks and put their amazing brains to work. To do their best work, they need time and space to think. The basic necessities of life. Really good and worthy problems to solve. Permission to let their minds wander, unfettered and free. Permission to fail spectacularly. And then fail again. And again, over and over, because really complicated problems usually require outrageous quantities of failure before success is achieved. The process takes time, patience, and faith; this is what innovation runs on.

And then we need to listen to them, which is often the hardest part of all.

8. Expect iterations, not perfection.

Even when we find some solution that's shiny, new, and actually working, it's smart to expect that the early successes will be so compromised that they'll create a whole new round of problems of their own. It will take a while, sometimes a long while, to knock the rough edges off to the point where it's an unqualified Good Thing. That's part of the process, too.

In technology, this fact is well understood. The first version of the product is never as good as later versions; this is new stuff, and we expect that we're going to keep getting smarter about it. In politics, though, this is often the point at which the innovator is kicked to the curb. "She's really smart, but that thing she does; well, there are problems. Move on to something else." We lose a lot of brilliant people this way. In this new era, it's a loss we can't afford any more. If there's promise, stick with it, and give the innovator the chance to keep making it better.

9. Celebrate every win, no matter how small. Every one matters.

We may be the world's worst winners. We can get 75 percent of what we want, and spend the next three days whining about the 25 percent we didn't get. (Also: we'll probably forget to reward the politicians who actually managed to deliver the goods for once. And then we'll wonder why they don't help us out again next time.) We'll eagerly do the two-minute hate, but ask us to spend two minutes feeling good about something, and we'd much rather drop back into that lazy cynicism thing instead.

This has got to stop. Whatever we focus our attention on, we do tend to get more of. And as long as we're spending more time focusing on failure than success, we shouldn't be surprised that that's exactly what we get. Would it really hurt us to break out the champagne, turn on the music, and just enjoy the win once in a while? (I sometimes wonder how much of the conservative success was simply built on the fact that those people know how to throw a party, and will do it even when they lose.)

No, that city ordinance didn't change the world, or even all that much in this town. But for once, we made sure the bastards also didn't get exactly what they wanted. That, right there, is something to celebrate. So let's party.

10.  Replicate success.

College teaches us to value original ideas. (Borrowing thoughts from others is called "plagiarism," and it's frowned on.) But guess what: this ain't college any more. Out here in the real world, it's OK not to spend valuable time and energy reinventing perfectly good wheels that have already been dreamed up by other people. If it works, use it. Good ideas belong to everybody, and nobody is going to flunk you for stealing them.

There's a corollary to this. This is a big movement, encompassing tens of millions of people and more moving parts than you can possibly imagine. And we've spent a decade building up some really good infrastructure. So every time you find yourself grousing: "Why isn't someone doing X, dammit?" your next thought should be to assume that someone already IS doing X. Because the odds are good that they probably are. And your next move is to find out who that person is, and offer to extend, help with, or replicate what they're doing.

­­

Ten new rules for the new era. We'll probably figure out a lot more as time goes on and this weird new era we're in becomes more familiar to us. I'd love to hear what other rules you're discovering that help you navigate the post-Occupy world; if I get enough of them, I'll turn them into a future column.

---------

 
Sara Robinson is AlterNet's Visions editor. One of the few trained social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and extremist movements at Orcinus since 2006, and is a founding member of Group News Blog.

ANS -- “The Actual Economy is a Complex System” An Amazon Review of “Economyths – Ten Ways Economics Gets It Wrong” By David Orrell

This is a relatively short, mild critique of how economists view the economy -- that is, way too narrowly.  It's actually a review.
Find it here:  http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=284848721575261&id=110450115681790  
--Kim

Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community


"The Actual Economy is a Complex System"An Amazon Review of "Economyths – Ten Ways Economics Gets It Wrong"By David Orrell

By Dick Burkhart, UUJEC Board

Author David Orrell gets it right exactly where mainstream economics gets it wrong, from the mathematics to the environment. Already on page 5 he lists the 10 myths, then devotes one chapter to each myth: "The economy can be described by economic laws; The economy is made up of independent individuals; The economy is stable; Economic risk can be easily managed using statistics; The economy is rational and efficient; The economy is gender-neutral; The economy is fair; Economic growth will make us happy; Economic growth is always good."

Applied mathematician Orrell is a champion of the complex systems approach to economics. He cites agent-based models as a promising approach to capturing the non-linearity and chaos that is intrinsic to real-world economics (p. 24): "Agent based models have been used to reproduce the boom/bust behavior of markets, and have found many other applications in areas from transportation to cancer therapy." He advises economists to forget about "predicting", except for isolated "pockets of predictability", to focus on scenarios, and qualitative and comparative behavior instead.

He lists 4 properties of "robust networks" that economics should emphasize but doesn't (pp. 40-43): Modularity, Redundancy, Diversity, and Controlled Shut Down. Incidentally you can find some good examples of failures in economic networks in "Cornered – The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction" by Barry Lynn.

Orrell demolishes economic "efficiency, stability, rationality", showing how 19th century attempts by Walras, Jevons, Pareto and others to emulate Newtonian mechanics failed to due to the oversimplification required. Unfortunately they also failed to take note of Maxwell's classic 1876 paper "On Governors" (used by steam engines) which analyzed how negative feedback could be used to control instability, or how positive feedback would generate instability.

Later Orrell takes on the normal distribution and shows how power law distributions and fractal phenomena are a better match for many economic data sets. Then he goes after the Arrow-Debreu equilibrium model and Milton Friedman, saying right up front that "The aim of models should be not to predict the unpredictable but to help design the financial system so that it is more robust".

From there Orrell goes on to characterize mainstream economics as highly masculine in its formulation (preferring abstract models to real-world concerns), unfair (inequality arises naturally in a deregulated economy), focused on growth (growth is unsustainable and GDP is a bad indicator of true economic health, the ecological footprint is ignored), portrayed as a closed system (the actual economy is open to the environment and resources so that "scale and timing and the flow of energy" are critical).

In the end, David Orrell calls for a totally new economics, saying that (p. 238): "We're living in a bubble…We have a line of credit with the rest of the planet, and it's flashing red." Right on!

Like · · Share · January 25 at 10:27am ·

ANS -- Join the Losers: Shame, Pride, and the 99%

Here is another great piece from Doug Muder.  It is about inequality, and how the way our brains are wired contributes to perpetuating it, against our own interests.  He never mentions Jesus in here, but it sounds to me a lot like what Jesus was saying much of the time.  (All those variations of "take care of the poor"...)
Find it here:  http://freeandresponsible.blogspot.com/2012/02/join-losers-shame-pride-and-99.html  
--Kim

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Join the Losers: Shame, Pride, and the 99%

a talk given January 29, 2012 at First Parish in Billerica, MA

[earlier versions were presented at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, IL and First Parish Unitarian in Athol, MA]

We Are the 99%". Maybe you've seen it. People write their story on a single sheet of paper and then post a photo of themselves holding the paper. By now there are more than a thousand stories on that site.

Here's one:

"I am a 20 year old college student trying to better myself and my family by gaining an education although my husband and I both know that with the way things are, we're both almost better off working our minimum wage jobs that we have and are barely scraping by with than even attempting to do anything more. we rely on government assistance for food/medical/daycare, work insane hours each week to get by and still cant afford basic necessities.

Our combined 100 + hr work week shows no profit. None of our jobs provide medical (which due to asthma, I cannot go without medications or I will die. Since a stable home for my children is more important that my own health, rent comes before my $150 prescriptions)

My husband is trying to find another full-time job on top of the one he has so we can stop relying on assistance but due to a buy out and closing of the company my dad worked at, so are 900 other people in the area who are suddenly unemployed or like my dad, took a 75% pay cut and can't afford their bills anymore."

I AM THE 99%

Here's another: "Got my bachelor's. Got low-paying job. Business went under. Defaulted on 70K student loan debt. I make less than 20K a year -- 2 jobs. Not enough to pay debt. No dental/health. 6 cavities -- used car -- no savings -- no $ in bank."

There's another web site called "We are the 53%". It's a response to the 99% site, and it uses the same format. The title comes from the fact that only 53% of American households owed any income tax last year. In spite of the fact that most of the other people pay plenty of other taxes, "the 53%" has come to symbolize those Americans who are pulling their weight, as opposed to the rest who are baggage.

Interestingly, the people considered to be baggage are not the idle rich, who need no jobs. They're not trust-fund kids, who have never worked, but live on vast inherited wealth. No, the baggage, the 47%, are often like the folks on the 99% site, who might work two or three minimum-wage jobs, but can't make the minimum amount to get into the lowest tax bracket.

The first 53% post was put up by Erick Erickson, who is actually quite well-to-do and famous. He started redstate.com, the premier conservative group blog, and now he's a commentator on CNN. He tells his 53% story like this:

"I work 3 jobs. I have a house I can't sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don't blame Wall Street.

Suck it up, you whiners. I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain."

With that post as a model, the site drew posts from people whose lives are much harder than Erickson's:

"I get up at 4:30 a.m. to work a job that pays me to get yelled at. I work around 50 hours per week, but still struggle. I've given up luxuries, shop clearance racks, do not own a new car or a home.

But I pay my bills and my taxes. I work hard to do so. I am an American. I am the 53%."

Here's a similar story that's been shared on Facebook. It doesn't come from the 53% site, but expresses a similar attitude:

"I am a college senior, about to graduate completely debt free. I pay for all of my living expenses by working 30+ hrs a week making barely above minimum wage. I chose a moderately priced, in-state public university and started saving $ for school at age 17.

I got decent grades in high school and received 2 scholarships which cover 90% of my tuition. I currently have a 3.8 GPA. I live comfortably in a cheap apartment, knowing I can't have everything I want. I don't eat out every day, or even once a month.

I live below my means to continue saving for the future. I expect nothing to be handed to me, and will continue to work my @$$ off for everything I have. That's how it's supposed to work. I am NOT the 99%, and whether or not you are is YOUR decision.

So who are the people who aren't making it? Do they deserve our sympathy or our scorn? CNBC's Rick Santelli goes for scorn. In his viral YouTube rant from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, he raised this question: "I'll tell you what. I have an idea. The new administration's big on computers and technology -- how about this, president and administration? Why don't you put up a web site to have people vote on the internet, as a referendum, to see if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages ... or if we'd rather reward people who could carry the water rather than drink the water."

And finally, here's Herman Cain, in an interview with Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal. And I'm picking on Cain not because what he said is unusual, but because it is typical. Cain just said it more plainly than anyone else:

"Don't blame Wall Street. Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. … When I was growing up, I was blessed to have had parents that didn't teach me to be jealous of anybody, and didn't teach me to envious of somebody. It is not a person's fault because they succeeded. It is a person's fault if they failed."

Sermon

From kindergarten to eighth grade I went to a Lutheran elementary school, where I spent nine years with the same core group of about 20 kids. We had a lot in common: same small town, same religion, and a lot of the same advantages -- we were all white, from middle-class, two-parent homes, no major disabilities, and so on. In general, we were also pretty good students. Our parents hoped we would go to college, and most of us eventually did.

But in spite of all our similarities, we had a pecking order -- two of them, one for boys and one for girls. God knows how we came up with it or what we based it on, but it stayed remarkably rigid from year to year. I had a place in that order that, but I did not achieve it on my own. I was the best friend of the most popular boy.

Until seventh grade. That year a new kid transferred in. He was athletic and handsome, and he already had friends in the eighth grade class. He very quickly became the new best friend of the most popular boy, and my place in the order plummeted. By the time the reshuffling was complete, I was second boy from the bottom. But at least I wasn't last.

Another kid was. As I said, he was not that different from the rest of us. If you had met us all one-by-one, you probably couldn't have picked him out as the one destined to be the doormat. But there he was.

After my downfall, he was the only one who wanted to be my friend. He tried to sit next to me. He did me little favors. He invited me to his house. Now, I wish I could tell you that I reciprocated, that we had a bunch of great adventures, and that we are still in touch today.

But that's not how I thought in seventh grade. What I wanted more than anything was to get out of being Second Boy From the Bottom, and I was never going to do it by hanging around with him. Better, I thought, to be alone on the lowest rung of the ladder than to form a two-boy leper colony at the bottom.

That grade-school way of thinking often shows up in the adult world of politics. If you are near the bottom of society's ladder, your most natural allies are the people below you. But it is so hard to group up with them. As corrupt and unfair as you know that ladder to be, it is so, so hard to let loose of that one rung you have and make common cause with the people at the bottom.

And so the same pattern plays out again and again. During the Civil Rights era, many of the people who fought hardest against integration were those at the bottom of the white pecking order. Whiteness was the one advantage they had, and they didn't want to lose it.

Similarly, many of those who fought hardest against women's equality were men near  the bottom of the male pecking order. And where do you see those American-flag decals and the bumperstickers with jingoistic slogans? Not so much on Cadillacs and BMWs. No, you're more likely to see them on rusted-out pick-up trucks. The closer you are to the bottom of the American pecking order, the more dearly you hang on to the idea that Americans are better than everybody else.

If you've only got hold of one rung of the ladder, you hang onto it. That's how humans think.

 

Now, that human trait is very convenient for the people at the top. Because the more people get pushed down onto the lower rungs, the harder it is for them to unite to change the ladder or make it easier to climb.

I doubt I'm telling you anything you don't already know if I say that inequality has been rising in America. The economy as a whole has grown a lot since the 1970s, but (after inflation) the median household income has not grown, and in the 21st century it has actually dropped. And even those statistics are too rosy, because often they compare today's two-income households with the one-income households of decades past. People are working longer and sometimes harder, but not benefitting from it.

You will hear many explanations for the increasing inequality. Some will tell you that people who work with their brains are pulling away from people who work with their hands. Or that the educated are pulling away from the uneducated. Or that those who understand technology are pulling away from those who don't.

And while all those things are happening to some extent, the economists who study inequality say that they are secondary effects. The trend that drives all the other trends is that the people at the very top are pulling from everyone else. It happens at every level. The top 10% are pulling away from the bottom 90%. Within the 10%, the top 1% are pulling away even faster from the other 9.

Worst of all, it seems that the law itself is different for the very wealthy. When the housing bubble popped, bankers were bailed out but home-owners weren't. When Goldman Sachs was charged with committing fraud, it paid a fine, a small percentage of its profits. No one went to jail.

Bank of America has foreclosed tens of thousands of homes illegally. Again, they will probably pay a fine and no one will go to jail. Will those families get their houses back? Maybe, if they can wait through years of litigation. Or maybe not.

By contrast, when ordinary people protest against this kind of fraud, say by camping out in public parks, their lack of proper permits calls down the full wrath of the law. Police show up in riot gear with pepper spray and rubber bullets. But police never shoot tear gas into board meetings of Goldman Sachs.

 

In a democracy you would think it would be impossible for 99% of the people to be dominated by 1% or a tenth of a percent or 400 households.

So how is this happening? Well, obviously, the 99% have not been able to pull together to defend their interests.

Why not? That brings me back to the way humans think. If you examine your own mind, you will see the buttons that the 1% can push.

When we are victimized by an unjust economic system, it is remarkably easy to make us feel ashamed of our own victimhood, or to use our pride and denial and resentment to turn us against the system's other victims.

How does that work? Let's start with shame. Rick Santelli had a name for the people who can't pay their mortgages -- Losers. And Herman Cain laid it right on the line. If you're failing, he says, don't be angry at the system or at the people on top, be ashamed of yourself.

Psychologically, shame is the first line of defense of any unjust system.

In 7th grade, I could have rejected the whole idea of a pecking order and been nice to the boy who was being nice to me. But I didn't, because I was ashamed to be Second Boy From the Bottom. I was too ashamed to quit the game while I was losing.

During the Depression, some unemployed men from prosperous suburbs kept dressing for work and taking the train into the city, because they were ashamed to let their neighbors know they were unemployed. Some didn't even want their wives to know.

People who are ashamed don't change the world. They don't protest and they don't organize. They hide.

The 1% would love it if we all hid our losses from each other and kept up appearances and pretended that everything is fine.

To me, that's the biggest significance of the 99% movement so far. Those people who march in the streets or publish their photos and stories on the internet -- they aren't hiding. They are rejecting the system's attempts to shame them into silence. Those pictures on the 99% site are saying: "Look at me. I am losing in this economy. This is what a loser looks like in America today."

If you spend much time paging through that website, you'll probably see that they look a lot like the rest of us. The losers look a lot like you and me.

 

Now that is a scary thought, and fear tends to evoke another very human reaction: denial. No one likes to be scared.

So when you hear about someone whose situation scares you -- the parent whose child vanishes into thin air, the athlete who suddenly drops dead, the old person who is too frail to keep working but too poor to retire --  when you meet someone whose situation makes you worry about your own situation, the most natural response in the world is to try to find some difference between them and you, some waterline where you can imagine that the tide of misfortune will have to stop.

You may not set out to blame the victim, but still we'd all love to find something that the victims did wrong that we always do right. The woman with lung cancer -- did she smoke? The guy who got mugged -- I never go to that neighborhood. The lifelong employee who got laid off -- that couldn't happen to any of us, because we're different.

And when you find that difference, that waterline, it's so tempting to build an imaginary wall there, to exagerate, to turn a small difference of degree into a clear difference of kind.

So if they stay ten minutes past quitting time and I stay 20, then I am hard-working and they are lazy. If some choice I made has turned out better than their choices, then I am wise and they are foolish. If they broke a single commandment that I have kept, then I am upright and they are sinful.

An unjust system's second line of defense is to help us build those walls of denial, to help us convince ourselves that the people below us on the ladder are of some other species entirely.

And to the extent you accept that separation, you help justify the whole ladder. If losers belong to a different species, then maybe the CEOs do too. Maybe they deserve to rule over us.

 

But even if your virtues don't make a different species, you do still have virtues. And that's how denial gets mixed up with legitimate pride. If you are managing to tread water in difficult times, then you have a right to be proud of the fact that you haven't drowned yet. But those who are treading water are kidding themselves if they imagine that they are a different kind of person than those who have gone under.

That's what I think is going on on that 53% web site. The woman who gets up at 4:30 to be yelled at, works 50 hours a week, doesn't own anything, and still struggles to pay her bills -- she deserves to feel proud of her efforts. And yet, is her story really so different from the stories on the 99% site?

And why is life that hard? Is that just "how it's supposed to work"? Or is life so hard because our society has made choices that favor the rich? Could we make different choices?

Likewise, that college senior who has no debt and works her ass off is imagining a sturdy wall that separates hard-working people who make good decisions from everyone else. She pictures herself on the deserving side of that wall, and imagines that she will always be there -- because luck plays no role in her world, and decisions that seem wise at the time never turn out badly down the road.

So that is an unjust system's third line of defense: appealing to your pride. They will tell you that what you take pride in only has meaning within their value system. If you deny that the current system is founded on merit and virtue, then you have denied all possible standards of merit and virtue.

The thought of making common cause with the people below you is supposed to offend your pride, because some of the people down there don't share all your virtues.

But of course, some of the people above you don't share your virtues either -- they don't work hard and don't take risks and don't make the world better for others. But you're not supposed to pay attention to that. That's just how life is. Even to bring that issue up, we are told, is engaging in class warfare, in "the bitter politics of envy", and the "resentment of success".

Resentment does play a role here, but not the way the 1% would have you believe. Again, let me illustrate from my childhood. Growing up, I wasted very little time thinking about the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. Multiple homes in exotic locales did not rouse my envy. But if my older sister got two scoops of ice cream when I only got one, that was not fair.

Resentment tends to stay close to home. It's much easier to resent people who are almost like you, but have some small advantage. Maybe they have just a little more than you, or maybe they have exactly what you have, but didn't work as hard or suffer as much to get it. Those are the people that it's easiest to resent. Not the billionaires.

And so, an unjust system's fourth line of defense is to deflect your legitimate resentment away from the real beneficiaries of injustice and onto your neighbors.

Last spring, when the bill to take away the collective bargaining rights of public employees was being debated in Wisconsin, the Club for Growth blanketed the state with a very effective ad. It talked about the sacrifices that private-sector workers in Wisconsin had been forced to make to save their jobs, and listed the cuts in their benefits and wages.

But where did the ad suggest those workers should focus their resentment? Should they resent the owners, who pocketed those sacrifices as higher profits? Or the executives who raised their own pay while firing some employees and squeezing concessions out of the rest?

Oh no. The ad wanted Wisconsin's distressed private-sector workers to focus their resentment on the public-sector teachers and nurses and bus-drivers who hadn't made equivalent sacrifices yet.

If my money has been transferred to the rich as profits, then my sister's money should be transferred to the rich as tax cuts. It's only fair.

 

Supposedly, we are the 99% and this is a democracy. If we can hang together, it ought to be possible to re-write the rules so that the economy works for ordinary people again.

But there are big obstacles against us holding together. You don't have to look far to see them, because they are sitting right in your own brain:

•the shame you feel in your own defeats;

•the denial that makes you want to say, "That couldn't happen to me";

•the pride that sets you above anyone worse off;

•and the resentment you feel against those who are only one or two rungs higher.

Those impulses sit in your brain for good reasons. In other circumstances they serve you well. You ought to criticize yourself and try to learn from your failures. In the face of adversity, you need to identify reasons to hope. You deserve be proud of all the things you're doing to keep your head above water. And you should stand up for yourself when others are treated better than you.

So I'm not saying you should throw all that stuff out of your head. That would be naive advice, because I can't do it myself. I am ashamed, I am in denial, I am proud, and I resent all the wrong people -- just like everybody else.

All I'm saying is: Pay attention. Watch yourself. Shame, denial, pride, resentment -- those are ways you can be manipulated into working against your own interests and against people whose problems are just like yours.

The manipulators have enormous resources. You hear their message from all directions: The people who want change, the people who are protesting in the streets or in the occupation encampments -- they are losers. They are lazy, jealous, misguided, dirty, disgusting, unreasonable, and violent. They are minions of some dark conspiracy against all that is good. You should be ashamed to have any connection with them. Instead, you should identify with the 1%, because you want to join the winners, not the losers.

Of course you do. Everyone wants to join the winners. And if it were that easy, we all would. Every one of us would say, "Starting right now, I'm going to be a winner."

But it's not that easy. The deck is stacked against ordinary people, and it's going to stay stacked until we all do something very difficult: We need to join the losers. We need to look down the ladder and see not what makes us different from the people below, but what makes us the same.

When we find the courage and the confidence and the compassion to do that, then, together, we really do become the 99%. When we do that, we really do have the power to rewrite the rules, enforce them justly on the rich as well as the poor, and make this country work again for everyone.

Closing Words

"Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." -- Eugene Debs

Fwd: How to protect your passwords:

We were due for some levity:
--Kim