Howard Zinn asks why neither candidate wants to talk about the New Deal and offers up a potential speech one of them could give. I would argue that neither of them want to invoke that image because both hope to appeal to those who consider themselves “independents”, people who have voted Republican in the past but are disenchanted for various reasons and appealing to a “New Deal ethos” would be considered “too radical” for such broad based appeal. And invoking the “New Deal” would be a frank admission that we are teetering far too closely to collapse. Americans, above all like to “feel good” about themselves and their country. Never mind the blatant hatred those on the right have for the “New Deal”.

As Zinn notes, the “New Deal” was really an accommodation with capitalism, not rejection.

We might wonder why no Democratic Party contender for the presidency has invoked the memory of the New Deal and its unprecedented series of laws aimed at helping people in need. The New Deal was tentative, cautious, bold enough to shake the pillars of the system but not to replace them. It created many jobs but left 9 million unemployed. It built public housing but not nearly enough. It helped large commercial farmers but not tenant farmers. Excluded from its programs were the poorest of the poor, especially blacks. As farm laborers, migrants or domestic workers, they didn’t qualify for unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security or farm subsidies

Indeed, what many on the right fail to grasp is the extent to which the “New Deal” sought to save capitalism, not replace it. If one accepts Zinn’s description, the “New Deal” was much better than a band aid, and much less than real structural change.

You can read the whole Zinn article with the speech he wishes somebody would give here.

I have always been “out of touch” with popular culture, even though I look distressingly ordinary in person. One of the popular axions these days is that “protest” doesn’t matter, it is ineffective, and a yawning legacy of the 1960’s which if one is particularly young is seen as quaint and if one is middle aged or older, the 1960’s were a time when the trusted order of society fractured a bit. I don’t think it fractured enough.

I would argue that protest has at least symbolic meaning for a few reasons. It is a basic exercise in democracy, peaceful protest is a healthy alternative to unfocused violence, and there is in the United States today a silent majority who don’t agree with the direction this country is going in but feel either paralyzed or reluctant to join in any activity. If your expectation of protest is that there will be a rapid response, an indication from authorities that the action has even been noticed, disappointment is sure to follow. Typically even when large numbers gather, the media under reports numbers and it is framed as being an unusual “event” rather than a fairly benign one.

People who protest aren’t radicals, they are simply exercising their right to free speech and assembly but America is increasing reflecting other states in which capitalism flourishes in absence of civic action. Indeed, the new emerging democratic model seems to be one in which people have theoretical rights but aren’t actually supposed to invoke them. People protest for a variety of personal/political/ and moral/spiritual reasons and telling them that voicing these ideals “don’t matter” and that they aren’t “effective” is arrogant. I would apply that critique even to peaceful protests on subjects I stringently disagree with. I might disagree, but I won’t ever claim they are a waste of time. Watching reality TV is a waste of time, having enough conviction to stand alone on a street corner holding up a sign is not. Using your voice is never a waste of time and anybody who tells you it is, is either struggling to find their own voice and envious or fearful of your message.

I attended a small protest last week and I actually do have a few criticisms. The fact that it was small was of no consequence to me. I was intrigued by the one obvious paradox, while the group of people were cheery and amiable, very few people struck up a conversation with me. Most came with friends or other groups and clearly all knew one another. My take on the Memphis activist scene at least with regards to the anti-war effort, is that it might suffer from a bit of clique behavior. My advice to wanna be community activists is that if you see a stranger at one of your events, go introduce yourself or designate somebody in your group to look for and cultivate newbies. A few people saw my camera and asked if I was from the media and when I explained it was a hobby, they lost interest. That certainly won’t discourage me from attending future events but at a time when community activists are interested in engaging “ordinary” Americans on the big issues like the war, somebody with thinner skin than I might have concluded they weren’t necessary or welcome.

As long as you don’t need water, access to health care, have no concerns about public safety, don’t mind being unemployed, enjoy adventures as a refugee, aren’t worried the occupying forces are going to target you, and relish the challenge of living in a country with no to little infrastructure, daily life in Iraq is just peachy. Of course if any of those things might say have a negative impact on your ability to survive, then daily life is an ever changing lurch to avoid disaster.

The Red Cross managed to highlight just a few minor barriers for Iraqi citizens.

Among the discovered gems of reality….

Iraqi hospitals lack qualified staff and basic drugs, and facilities are not properly maintained, the Red Cross said

So…. Iraqis can have a fruitful productive life as long as they don’t get sick.

Public hospitals provide 30,000 beds, less than half of the 80,000 needed. Few Iraqis can afford to seek help in private clinics where consultations cost $2-$7 because the average daily wage in the country is less than $5.

And if you’re poor…. don’t get sick.

The Red Cross said Iraqi officials estimate that more than 2,200 doctors and nurses have been killed and more than 250 kidnapped since 2003

Even if you can find your way to the hospital with a few bucks for treatment, it might be hard to find anybody qualified to actually treat or care for you.

Water supplies have inconveniently deteriorated.

And the whole concept of “public water”, well turns out that whole personal choices and free market solutions mantra is alive and well.

At current prices, families with only one earner spend a third of their income – or about $50 a month – on water alone, the Red Cross said

Isn’t democracy great? You get to pay for your own water instead of having your civil rights violated by being forced to share clean, public water with other people. Who needs for hospital beds anyway, people should just toughen up and take better care of themselves while they are dodging bombs and bullets in the street.

Although the right has constantly accused the mythical, unicorn, left and liberals of imposing a mantra of rejecting self reliance, accountability, in favor of weakness and sloth, it is as usual the right who has asked nothing of Americans except to be consumers. Americans look fondly upon Reagan because he made us “feel good” about ourselves. Today when social critics complain about how we raise children and praise them for everything, indulge their whims, and fail to teach them the harsh lesson that they won’t “win everything ” need to look at the right and how they rejected the idea planning for a future shock. Reagan encouraged the idea of expressing pride in ourselves just for the hell of it, the right has infantalized us, encouraged us to stay too long at a party we never should have attended in the first place.

Our own VP said Conservation may be a personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy many years ago. Prior to the so called Reagan revolution, old school conservatives used to believe that stuff ran out, that this guiding principle in essence surfaced in the market. There was not an endless supply of “stuff” and what drove some amount of competition and anxiety was negotiating for the stuff we could get.

I always saw the “market” as being a big fucking rigged casino and stock trading as horoscopes for the wealthy, but I am not an economist, and it is the rare economist who is willing to question the sanctity of market principles in North America. If they did, my guess is that they might have chosen other calling. Even mild critics basically believe it works well for a vast majority of citizens even when it doesn’t. They remind me of people who insist on praying for miracle cures while evidence piles up that none are forthcoming.

The cheapest laugh, the quickest way to chest puffery, for the right is to mock President Carter. I was born in 1964, so I recall, the economic turbulence in the 1970’s.

As the child of a single parent, I was very aware of when stuff “ran out”, Mom got paid monthly and toward then end of the month when money was scare we ate vegetarian. I had clothes she mostly sewed and my “cool stuff” I obtained as hand me downs from the children of a woman my mother knew who had married well. It wasn’t presented as hardship, or sacrifice. It was considered annoying. Prior to consumer gas shortages, Mom drove a Volkswagen Beetle, and then a Honda Civic that were both the size of a large dog.

Men on the block claimed that, “Japanese cars could not withstand the harsh Canadian winters.” She drove that civic for ten years and sold it to a college student as part of a garage sale.

I thought I would have a second look at Carter’s famous speech in which he said:

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

Those who want to digest the entire speech can do so here.

Like some of you, I am not inclined to particularly bash a candidate or have my heart go fluttering either. I am agnostic and I have no problem with those who are passionate as long as my measured reluctance does not stir them into a frenzy of some attempt to intervene for my own good. I have many issues that need fixing and possibly intensive therapy, my refusal to invest in a particular person isn’t one of them.

Although the right has long positioned themselves as being champions for “family values” what they actually champion hegemony, social control, a strict definition of families as being strictly a self contained nuclear unit, and a return to good old fashioned patriarchy. I. Am. Not. Interested. In. That. So… just to annoy people I tell them I don’t care about family values. Did you know watching heads explode could be a sport or a hobby?

Families are blended, extended, made up of (gasp) unmarried people, gay, straight, and the undecided, adults are taking care of their kids, their grandkids, kids that they adopted, unofficially adopted, their own parents, friends, those with chronic illness, disabilities, those who fell on hard times, they are in short making up their own little communities quite in defiance of what the right thinks they should be doing. They might not even think of themselves as rebels. And. They are being squeezed by their obligations, their hopes, and wishes to be a community by a complete lack of legislative support. We constantly ask why ordinary Americans are not agitating and participating. Maybe they are numb, not from political fatigue or disaffection….. they don’t have time. They have no free time, their desire to help others in their families has dire financial consequences as well. They are going into work half asleep because they were up all night before caring or tending to another person. They are worried at work while they are half asleep that might might make an error and lose their job.

Many Americans are every day heroes in this effort. They might not have that self image or a wish to get the keys to the city for recognizing the paths they choose.

FMLA is not enough. Unpaid leave for workers who are lucky enough to be in place that has 50 or more employees is not enough. I am not a policy wonk, nor do I play one in bloggyland.

A few states have attempted to rectify this, New Jersey being the most recent. It will have to pass approval in the General Assembly but the Senate narrowly approved

paid leave for workers to meet the demands of caring for others. It is to be financed through payroll taxes although the article indicates it might also require the shifting of monies from that state’s temporary disability funds.

Those with bigger brains that I can read the actual legislation here.

Most of the objections centered on a perceived hostility to business interests. Six weeks seems barely adequate. Well, it isn’t. Who know if the General Assembly will even pass it. If it does, New Jersey will be the third state along with Washington, set to be implemented in 2009, and California.

Howard Zinn rolls his eyes, sighs, and  

One thing that has always fascinated me about right wing talk show hosts, whether they originated from TV or radio is a tendency to write books with very long and awkward titles.

How Liberals Are Ruining America With Weird Ideas From France That Will Force You To Wear Thong Underwear On Your Head And Make You Burn Your Bibles In Public. Or..

How Conservatives Are Really Super Great and Right About Everything So You Don’t Have To Think For Yourself Or Wear Thong Underwear On Your Head. Do their publishers like those really long and awkward titles and just have a Pavlovian response to any book structured like that? I have read a few of them for entertainment. It takes only about five minutes since the titles have more content than the actual books. An easy summation follows: Liberals are really bad people who hate America. It still shocks me to discover that they think Liberals and progressives are. You know what? If there is an progressive organization out there trying to force Americans to wear thing underwear on their head while taking French lessons, I might join it. My French is rusty and the only way I will ever wear thong underwear is on my head.