Status Quo

The voters have decided and chosen the lesser evil.

The Obama victory last night, as with that of any major party presidential candidate, means very little in the long run for the American people and the world at large.  It is good news for us who care about preserving the remaining shreds of civil liberties we still possess or who wish to extend civil rights protections for women, same sex couples, and immigrants. 

But in every other social arena, particularly in the workplace, a second Obama administration will have the same impact as a Romney administration would have had.  The demands of the global capitalist economy, untethered to any bedrock of morality, presided over by sociopathic profit seekers, will continue to dictate U.S. policy as it has for the past generation.  Expect more of the same—more industry-funded union-busting efforts, more state right-to-work legislation, and the steady erosion of personal economic security as the American working class is sacrificed in the race to the bottom.    

If you find you’re worse off four years hence, don’t blame it on your vote.  The only option you ever had was the status quo. 

Vox Populi

Here is an interesting tidbit culled from YouTube.  It’s footage from a Romney campaign rally in Ohio this week.

There’s a saying that the voice of the people is the voice of God.  If that is the case, then God help God.

Home Stretch

October is drawing to a close, the debates are over, and we are little more than a week away from the end of the 2012 presidential race.

The closer November 6^th draws, the shriller the rhetoric gets.  Both candidates are hurling jabs at each other’s record and respective economic programs, while their acolytes in the chattering classes argue bitterly over everything from tax policy to healthcare to whether the administration acted appropriately on intelligence related to the Benghazi consulate attack. There has also been the inevitable pop culture spillover: Conservatives are up in arms over enfant auteur Lena Dunham’s suggestive pro-Obama video, and a clutch of concertgoers walked out on Madonna after she urged them to vote for the president during a performance.

The polls show we are just as divided as we’ve been for the past dozen years…Obama and Romney are tied at 48% among registered voters according to Gallup.  Ideologues aside, most of us will vote for the perceived lesser evil.  The other major contest, however, is the one most people aren’t paying attention to: the race for control of both houses of Congress.  But 468 separate races—for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and the 33 Class I seats in the Senate—don’t hold nearly the media sway as the personality-driven choice we make every four years for the top job. 

We ignore the congressional elections because they seem irrelevant to daily concerns.  Perhaps they are in the larger scheme.  One could argue the same of the presidential race; we only believe it significant because of the attendant media saturation.  Our apathy is literally systemic.  The reason we don’t participate in politics, save to vote, is because we are effectively cut out of the policy making process.  At the national level (and at the state level too), the “iron triangle” of interest groups, bureaucrats, and legislators forms policy.  The things that affect us most directly—public school quality, whether there are enough cops on the street, and how soon the potholes on your street get fixed—are governed by largely anonymous local officials whose names we either skip on the ballot or vote for blindly without recognition.   

All the same, if voting is our only role within the existing system we should make the most of it.  As an engaged citizen, I’ll devote my efforts over the next few days to urging my neighbors and coworkers to take charge of their future and cast their ballot.  Starting now.  Let’s see, let me bring up my friends’ numbers on my phone here and…hmmm, it’s Sunday, I shouldn’t really bother them…oh, who am I kidding?  Game 4 of the World Series is on…can’t miss that.  I’ll make my calls tomorrow, sometime, maybe. 

Go Giants!   

George McGovern (1922-2012)

Former Senator George McGovern has died.

His passing should make us consider what might have been.  McGovern is best remembered for having lost the 1972 presidential election to incumbent Richard Nixon in the biggest landslide in U.S. history. 

McGovern’s drubbing at the polls was an object demonstration of the American voter’s egregious lack of judgment.  Nixon’s resignation in disgrace a scant twenty-one months after his electoral triumph must have caused even the president’s most fervent supporters to kick themselves for their stupidity.  (On the other hand, maybe it didn't.  A political cartoon from that time shows two men at a bar, with one saying to the other, “Hey, Nixon’s no dummy.  If the American people wanted moral leadership, he’d give it to them.” The humor in that piece hits a little too close to home for comfort.)

McGovern was not perfect by any means; his quick repudiation of his first running mate Tom Eagleton after it was revealed Eagleton had once been treated for clinical depression being the best remembered example of his fallibility.  Nevertheless his defining characteristic was his fundamental decency, something lacking in virtually every presidential candidate for the last thirty years. 

McGovern, a decorated World War II veteran as well as an academic historian, was an early opponent of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.  After one measure he sponsored to defund the war failed to pass, McGovern proclaimed, “This chamber reeks of blood!”  It is nearly impossible to imagine a member of Congress saying anything like that today about Afghanistan or any other of our recent wars.  Nixon, by contrast, promised to end the war during his 1968 campaign but only concluded the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam a few weeks before the 1972 election.  Unsurprisingly, both public and pundits forgot his foot-dragging and widely praised Nixon's success.  Nixon's saturnine, uncompromising style, which had worked against him throughout his political career, actually helped his cause in 1972.  Despite the Vietnam debacle, Nixon's silent majority had no patience for what they saw as anti-American ideas or the excesses of the '60s youth culture.  For them, a McGovern presidency would mean condoning what they held to be anathema.  

McGovern was a good guy. Unfortunately, good guys with ethics often finish last in this country.  In a culture where we strive to impose our will on each other and seek to impose it on the world, it is clear why he did not achieve this nation’s highest office.  As the man in the cartoon said, Americans aren’t interested in moral leadership. They want to be told they are the best, that they are always right, and that they are always blameless.  George McGovern’s plainspoken style conflicted with our self-image, reminding us that power does not necessarily equate with greatness. I only wish we had public servants like him today.   

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

Columbus Day

Today is Columbus Day, the federal holiday which commemorates a white guy who got lost and thought he landed in India.

Please consider signing an online petition to Congress in support of replacing Columbus Day with a holiday honoring Native Americans.  You can find the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/indian/petition.html.

Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012)

British historian and truth teller Eric Hobsbawm died yesterday at age 95.

Requiescat in pace.

 

Indispensable People

Once in a while, common sense is reflected in social scientific research.  According to an item in the Huffington Post this week, a new study finds that bosses tend to be less stressed than their employees.

Surprise, surprise.  Although the article avers that the Harvard study defies the “conventional wisdom” that greater pressures are part and parcel of the greater responsibility shouldered by our betters, those of us in the rank and file know better.

It all comes down to security and life chances.  It’s true enough that CEOs and managers lose their jobs every day.  It’s also unlikely that these people will spend much time unemployed.  Even if it takes longer than expected to land a new position, the superior compensation enjoyed by senior management, often sweetened with golden parachutes upon termination, soften the blow of being out of work.

Not so with most workers.  After thirty-some years of neoliberal economic policies, flat wage growth, offshoring, union-busting, and cuts to pensions and social programs, faced with the struggle to make ends meet and the threat of unemployment with only a badly frayed safety net to catch them when they fall, the American working class is beset with anxiety and feelings of helplessness bordering on Weltschmerz.   

This is to the advantage of employers, of course.  A fearful worker is a docile worker.  A large surplus labor pool, undereducated and fitted only for the deskilled service work of the postindustrial economy, keeps wages low and serves as an object example to anyone tempted to buck the system.  The widespread reliance on consumer credit to maintain the comfortable standard of living we all expect further serves to discipline the workforce by way of postmodern debt servitude.  It’s probably best not to mention the certain economic disaster lurking behind illness or accident even when the unfortunates are insured.  Too many of us go to work every day with the bleak knowledge that we are expendable hostages to misfortune.    

The underlying lesson of the Harvard executive stress study is clear and simple: In our free market system, some people are more indispensable than others.    

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar