Call me crazy, but I have to believe that the Republican Party is only half as dumb as it looks, based on the current crop of personalities masking as Presidential candidates. If you take them at face value, they all share the characteristic of ego at some multiple of native intellect. None seem to have a credible chance of beating Obama in the general election, even with historic trends portending an incumbent defeat. At this moment, Obama's chief strength is the relative weakness of his opponents, most of whom will arrive at the convention DOA.
So what if...
...the convention has no clear winner from the primaries and the selection is left to the back room pros, and the traditional Republican Party money power base?Here's a ticket that I can picture arising from the murk of the Convention back room machinery: a general and a woman v.p.
Who might they be? General Stanley McChrystal and Senator Lisa Murkowski. Why?
McChrystal has strong identity with one of the few institutions in this country that still retains substantial citizen respect. And his dissing of the Commander-in-Chief gives him added creed with those who viscerally hate the CiC, irrespective of his accomplishments as such. McC has been lecturing on leadership at Yale as he contemplates his life's next mission. Walking through the door, he'd be a better front man for the party than anyone currently in the race.
Murkowski is a woman, and, as proven in her last election victory, and independent one with more backbone and possibly more principle than allot of her male colleagues in both parties. She has strong conservative credentials, but sufficient independence of thought to suggest that she's not a wind-up doll of the Tea Party Wing Nuts or the Party's Corpocracy Wing. She could conceivably attract a significant female constituency across party lines, as McChrystal could conceivably attract a significant male constituency with the Leadership mantra wrapped in the Flag with the Star Spangled Banner playing in the background on loop. Forget that he may be no better prepared to lead Congress, even with his own party in control, than was his former boss.
* * *
As I said, I have to wonder if the Republican Party is only half as dumb as it looks. I have wondered how some of the dwarfs have managed to stay in the race as long as they have, other than on their seemingly indefatigable egos. It occurs to me that the Republican institutional brain trust, burdened with the unintended consequences of the Tea Party, finally concluded that if you can't beat them, co-opt them. Let the show run; maybe even breath life support into the highly unlikely among them (Perry, Cain, Santorum?). Blur the field and drain the undesired energy. Then fill the vacuum with a totally plausible dark horse ticket that looks like a move of desperation at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute, but was really in the works for a while. It gives the Repugs the decided advantage of springing on the Dems a totally unexpected ticket which demands a totally different strategy. It further shields the dark horse ticket from all the ugly baggage that has accumulated in the pre-convention debate-primary slug-fest.
I know, it sounds so conspiratorial. But then again, we have a long and vibrant tradition of that in our politics. Look at the Republican discipline in the Senate. That's not the product of principled consensus.
Mind you, I'm not advocating for such a ticket. Just speculating.
Onward.
20111214
Copyright 2011
First, let me apologize for the lack of creativity in the title. If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then Bill deserves his due. More to the point, though, is that the original hook of the nineties deserves, indeed demands, to be updated to the new century, with its new priorities.
It was once the case that the economy drove our prosperity, and the environment was the servant (or is that 'slave') to the economy; there to be used, abused and refused--the default dumping ground of a trash prone society.It appears that we have approached an inflection point in which roles have been reversed, and from this point on, The Environment will drive the economy. The problem is, we don't know what The Environment's agenda is. The new slave would be wise to be a bit concerned, but the new slave did not arrive at this inflection point by virtue of wisdom.
I have not been around long enough to have an appropriate time-line for reference of current events to earth's paleontological history. But I've been around long enough to judge from observation that what we've seen in the past five years in environmental disasters, man-made and natural, dwarfs my awareness of the preceding 35 years of my adult life.
Whether recent events are natural or human induced is somewhat secondary to the fact that they appear to be happening with increasing frequency and magnitude across a broad array of phenomena.
Whether they are increasingly severe because of their intrinsic intensity or because human-kind has chosen to plant itself unwisely in their path is secondary to the fact that these events are exacting an escalating toll on a society that will find it increasingly difficult to bear the burden of economic regeneration.
Whether we are rebuilding better and generating economic activity to replace the loss is secondary to the fact that each rebuild is to restore something of value rather than to add to our net capital.
It is difficult to imagine where this new paradigm will go, but it is not difficult to imagine that we will have to re-calibrate our thinking to address a new set of independent drivers and dependent variables.
* * *
When I first became tangentially involved in the climate change issue in 2004, I emerged from a workshop convinced that nature was only half of the problem. The more troubling half would be how human society would choose to handle it. Based on my experience with that issue at a very local level over the ensuing years, my concerns have been ratified by experience. We are failing the management challenge. We are congratulating ourselves on how far we've progressed from doing nothing, but are oblivious or in denial about how far we have to go to address the phenomenon of climate change effectively, and what we truly need to do to get there.
When I began my active involvement in Climate Change, I focused on impacts in the belief that, until society understands the impacts of Climate Change, it is unlikely to summon the critical level of commitment to deal with prevention. Over the past seven years, I have concluded that prevention is retreating beyond reality and is a crutch for those who cannot face the fact that society will fail to address the issue until its actuality is presented in a way that only the dullest of minds can persist in ignoring. I have sustained some level of hope that we might begin meaningful action to prepare for impacts, but even the events of the past three years fail to convince the average citizen and too many civic leaders that we have a trend in the making that demands their attention.
In the December 7th New York Times, Andrew Revkin posts a conversation with Naomi Klein regarding human-kind's approach to dealing with climate change. Ms. Klein's position is that the necessary action to address the threat of climate change is nothing less than a radical restructuring of society, a re-ordering of how we live. As a theoretical statement, she has a valid point, in my opinion. Unfortunately, it is irrelevant because it is virtually unlikely to happen. She further distances herself from reality by two other observations:
- She concludes that the developed world which has most substantially contributed to the human induced component of climate change has a moral obligation to assist the underdeveloped world which will be disproportionate victims of this phenomenon. One minor point: the developed world is broke. You can't tell that by the blandishments of the glitterati, but we're broke. Further, we're not mustering the resources and knowledge we have to the tasks that needing tending within our own societies. By what wisdom or means are we supposed to lift the burden of others. This is not so much a justification for us to do nothing as an observation of fact as to why Ms. Klein should contemplate a Plan B.
- Ms. Klein unflinchingly blames President Obama for not leading. Anyone who has read some of my prior blogs knows that I have shared my own despair at Mr. Obama's failure to make a direct case on the matter of energy. But, looking at his operating environment through Machiavellian eyes, it is clear to me why he has taken several indirect approaches to advancing energy and climate. It is difficult to engage a hostile force when you have an army of cowards behind you. Far behind you. The political and cultural problems confronting climate change (to say nothing of the economic ones) are far more complex and daunting than can be rationally placed at one man's feet. And who, I wonder, would be Ms. Klein's model of leadership and, more importantly, accomplishment in a venue of comparable scale?
* * *
Climate Change is but a part of the broader environmental paradigm. It does not encompass earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. It does not address over-fishing and depletion of arable lands and potable water sources. It will be exacerbated by the quest for 'cheap' energy, but it did not cause our approaching date with the destiny of non-renewable resources.
Ironically the energy and climate change paradigms are entering a phase of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). A warming climate will demand more energy, and more fossil fuel utilization in the near to intermediate term producing a positive feedback loop that will lock in a further warming climate. And for the demented Deniers who will rejoice if their thesis of a cooling climate should happen by whatever means, here's a comforting thought: a cooling planet with diminishing fossil fuels will not necessarily be a more inviting place. But then, you and I will be dead by then, and that's all that matters.
Onward
20111211
Copyright 2011
How do you recycle a culture?
We know how to recycle bottles and cardboard and other forms of waste. But in what bin do you put an entire culture, or the larger part of it?
Let's start with Black Friday.
Black Friday may have a benign business connotation, marking the beginning of the holiday period on which most retailers hope to earn their profits for the year (as distinguished from the rest of the year when many are just treading water). But the darker side of this marketing morass is gaining prominence in defining the term.
The day after Thanksgiving is now noted for spectacles of random violence that were previously reserved for NASCAR racing and extreme boxing. But, more exciting than either of those and not exacting a price for admission, Retail Rampage is a group participatory sport, whether you want to join or not. Actually, it is elective. I elect not to go shopping during days of retail rage. But for the father who was erroneously injured by police responding to an assault he suffered from another contestant while protecting his son from The Hoard, the shopping experience was probably not the bargain he was hoping for. One lesson learned; one million pending.
Then there was the pepper spray incident by a better armed, more aggressive contestant. She was ready to take on the entire crowd. Thank God she wasn't packing heat with an extended clip. I'm sure she'll come better prepared next year if the law can't identify her first in the store security tapes. We are after all a 'learning' society. Or is that programable?
And what is the program, and who is the programmer?
Well, it's not the government, much maligned as it is as the source of all evil. It's Madison Avenue, and ultimately it's clients: Big Business.
* * *
Allow me to digress for a moment to make an important distinction: Advertising and its broader discipline of marketing are not inherently evil. Nor is that other externality of corporate influence: lobbying. Both advertising and lobbying have valid applications within the ethical conduct of business in a diverse society. But when the outcomes of their application become repetitively harmful to the well-being of society, one has to question the moral and ethical value system of the beneficiaries on all sides of the transaction.
Marketing has become a profoundly destructive agent of cultural deformation, as corporate lobbying has become the same of the political process and its subordinate governmental institutions. They have created waste that is in fact measurable in consumer and governmental debt that may be beyond our ability to repay without painful sacrifice that will itself cripple the very engines of our destruction.
* * *
Black Friday is not the only example of a society sinking into the abyss: it merely trumps others in intensity of media coverage. On an everyday basis, we have merchandisers extolling the virtues of pimping our young daughters in clothing that exceeds their age appropriate comprehension of the inferences. A society which on the one hand abhors pedophilia tolerates hawkers who consciously proffer youngsters dressed as sex objects, aided and abetted by parents who were probably brainwashed a generation ago in only slightly milder degrees.
Nor can we blame it all on the sixties and free love. Snippets of "Mad Men" remind us that the values were just as debouched then; merely more institutionalized, subliminal and constrained by a moral hypocrisy that hid the underlying moral rot. The virtue of the Age of Aquarius was that it unmasked the hypocrisy; not that it elevated our moral awareness, values and conduct. Unfortunately, we never took the next crucial step to elevate both our standards and our conduct. We replaced moral hypocrisy with tolerance of the immoral, amoral and pseudo-moral.
* * *
So, let us review. Thus far, we have trashed merchandised holidays and merchandised child porn. What else?
By a show of hands:
- how many of you aspire to be overweight, verging on obese?
- How many of you are already there, whether by aspiration or not.
- How many of you have the self discipline and sense of responsibility to self manage a condition that is controllable?
- How many of you frankly don't give a damn?
- How many of you resent the Health Care Reform personal insurance mandate because government will force you to take some level of personal responsibility and set some level of personal priority for your own and your family's health that will otherwise fall to society in direct and indirect ways that will cost others who had no say in your life choices?
This last item gets to the point that our self-destructive culture is not just about big, bad business. It's ultimately and equally about us as consumers and our willing failure to submit our life choices to critical self-examination in our own best interest. It is ultimately about us because we still have the power to vote every day with our dollars. Failing to use that vote in a concerted and premeditated manner, we create, wittingly and unwittingly, the destructive consumer culture that now consumes us.
* * *
There is one other waste product of our current culture, but it deserves its own post: human waste. No, not the result of the basic biological function of excretion. But the act of an economic system that progressively extracts human resource from the processes that are supposed to serve human needs and wants, but actually becomes the engine of its own destruction, as well as the culture that created its logic.
So, I will return to where I began. How do you recycle a culture? The answer probably resides in greater minds than mine; but, if I had to take a stab at it, I would suggest that you treat it like a collection of a thousand malignant tumors serving a giant host tumor that gives nothing and demands all. Slowly and steadily starve the thousand slave tumors of their blood supply, money. While you watch them atrophy and ultimately die, conceive and nourish quietly the cultural organisms that should succeed them.
Go quietly if you can. Go viral if you must. But, by all means, go forward.
Onward
20111207
As an auditor, I learned early that when a perceived situation seems utterly crazy when judged by expected criteria, it is often because the subject is operating on otherwise rational, but non-standard, assumptions or objectives. Stated more simply, ' crazy ' is a relative judgment.
I have struggled for the past two years to find a rational comprehension of the Republican vision of America's future. I have concluded that the term ' rational ' should be removed from the criteria. That leaves the perception of Republican strategy as a condition best described as ' fog of war ' rather than a coherent statement of policy goals.
So, what is the Republican Party's vision of America's future?
Afghanistan.
Onward
20111123
Image is everything. Or at least 99%, or so it seems.
It obviously worked for Madoff, but the sad truth seems to be that Madoff was just a petty thief compared to our more accomplished operators.
In 2008, September 18, my blog explored the conditions that have eroded our trust in everything, just as the true dimensions of our financial crisis were beginning to manifest. We are now three years down the road from those momentous events. And the echos persist.
Today, the New York Times reports the consequences of European banks investing in 'safe' Euro debt.Barry Ritholtz' recent article, The Big Lie Goes Viral, gives further testament to perverse and pervasive mutilation of fact and truth in the media and public discourse in general as the spin-meisters seek to revise the history of the debt crisis, much like Bill O'Reilly has apparently succeeded in revising the history of Lincoln's assassination to the dissatisfaction of Ford Theater (which has banned the book), and Newt Gingrich revises the rest of history.
The disturbing part of this is that the deceit of these perps is exceeded only by the shallowness of the consuming public. This is a recurring theme in James Howard Kunstler's blog, marveling at society's seemingly infinite willingness to submit to spiritual and philosophical rape by its various leaderships.
* * *
I can't leave the subject of illusion without mentioning the scandal at Penn State involving the serial molestation of young boys, aided and abetted by an institution of, yes, 'higher learning', which put its basest of its enterprises, pre-professional football, on a pedestal higher than the protection of human souls. The rioting that followed the revelations and firing of the University's heretofore esteemed coach spoke volumes of the moral and ethical teachings and value system of this institution. All illusion. Charity as a mask for a pedophile. Football as a measure of institutional greatness. Empathy for the victims as salve for an institutional conscience, if there is one, that should remain scared and tortured long after the headlines have faded and three new freshmen are enrolled by the courts in the State Pen.
* * *
Meanwhile, around the country, Occupy Wall Street encampments are being evicted from the public spaces. These encampments are also illusions, much like our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were illusions. In all cases, the real battle is not for real estate, but for hearts and minds. We've lost that in Iraq and Afghanistan. OWS can lose it here if they fail to realize that street theater is illusion and nothing more. Their work needs to be in town hall meetings, share holder meetings, pension fund meetings, court rooms, television studios, delivering fact and truth and defensible logic. They need to go home, get a good meal and a good night's sleep, and gird themselves for the battles that matter in the venues that matter.
* * *
Favorite bumper sticker wisdom of the day:
"The system isn't broken;
It's 'fixed'."
Onward
20111113