Author: jhngwa

My favorite poem, and for some reason I forgot to post it on Memorial Day to my email list, as is my usual custom.  
“Dulce Et Decorum Est”
A poem by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

GAS! GAS! Quick, boys! –An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(I found a number of translations for the last line — it’s from the Roman poet Horace’s Odes — and they are all variations on “It is sweet and right to die for one’s country.”)

I have been somewhat troubled by the whole concept of “peak oil” in that I think it is misapplied as to what may actually be going on.  Below are some excerpts from Doug Henwood’s newsletter Left Business Observer, Issue No. 111 — not available for reading on the net, sadly:

No doubt we will run out of [oil] someday.  But there’s still 40 years of it in the ground — and the industry isn’t trying that hard to find more of it.  Worldwide, about 2,700 rigs are drilling for oil; that’s doubled from the lows of 2000, but it’s still less than half the peak of 6,148 in 1982.  Major oil companies have kept their exploration budgets in check to please their stockholders, who prefer high profits to busy rigs.  Thanks to that tightfistedness, expertise and equipment are now in short supply.  The number of petroleum engineers in the U.S. — historically the home to much of the world’s talent — is half what it was 20 years ago. These human and material shortages are driving up costs and slowing down fresh exploration.

I’ll add here that this applies to refining capacity, too.  Oligopolies/monopolies always prefer raising prices to their customers to actually providing real service.

Henwood goes on to write about the politics of it, specifically,  

…[the] greens have embraced it, apparently hoping that we’ll react rationally, and finally come to our senses about SUVs, sprawl, and melting icecaps — providing a nice shortcut around messy political agitation.  That’s very optimistic.  It could be that fear of peak oil might inspire a furious rush to find more oil — and make dirtier fuels like coal and nuclear seem more attractive.

Indeed, what I’m hearing from the pols is precisely that scenario — ANWAR, coal and nukes.

So why go to war?  To protect the cheapness of the supply and thus uphold “shareholder value.”  And to pass that cost onto the working class, in taxes on their already meager incomes, and in their blood and the blood of their young — a little business secret called “externalization of costs.”

Having been visiting sites such as this , Truthout,and DailyKos, a question has been vexing me, concerning the nature of “progressivism.”  Exactly what do progressives stand for?  So I’ve been doing a sort of philosophical investigation of my own approach to being progressive re:  What is the core philosophy of my progressivism?  Is there one?  Or is it merely a visceral reaction to the conservative/reactionary mindset now seemingly to have taken over city hall, the statehouse, and Washington?  And, if it is a mere visceral reaction, whence comes that?  In the wake of Katrina and Iraq, in the discussion of what should have been done and what is to be done, this question has appeared more urgent for me — and, hopefully, for all of us here — than ever.

Then the answer presented itself.
 
Recently, my list group received a piece of mail recounting the following from a libertarian of the writer’s acquaintance (purely for giggles):

“You see it’s not that corporations are using all the knowledge they’ve garnered over the last 100+ years to manipulate us into buying food that is deadly to us but highly profitable to them.It’s those damn DO_GOODERS who forced businesses to pay workers such grossly unfair wages as $5.50 per hour-especially to restaurant workers who can easily become  millionnaires by getting huge tips by for once doing their jobs and giving GOOD service to customers.

You see,apparently California requires businesses to pay the full minimum wage in addition to letting them get tips.Well this forces prices up to pay for the inflated wages and in order for them to attract customers they HAVE to offer BIGGER PORTIONS of food to soften the impact of the price increase.So the american public is suffering for that reason alone.So you see,it’s really the fault of the minimum wage.”

Hilarious, no?

Or try this, from the enemy camp

“Rather than have rebuilding efforts across the Gulf controlled or directed by bureaucrats and hampered by end­less restrictions and litigation, Congress and state and local governments should eliminate or reduce the regulatory burden and allow communities to decide for themselves how best to rebuild. To that end:

“…Suspend Davis-Bacon. The President should be applauded for suspending Davis-Bacon requirements for affected areas, as he is empowered to do. Previous Presidents have also seen fit to do so, most recently George H. W. Bush after Hurricane Andrew, as well as Richard Nixon and Franklin Roosevelt. This would significantly reduce the cost of reconstruction and provide more opportunities for displaced Americans who are without jobs to work on federal projects to restore their neighborhoods.”

“…Repeal or waive restrictive environmental regulations that hamper rebuilding a broad array of infrastruc­ture from refineries to roads and stadiums. Congress should consider substantial changes in environ­mental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Clean Water Act that have contributed to Katrina’s damage. NEPA, originally designed to require environmental impact assess­ments for projects involving the federal government, has morphed into an all-purpose delaying tactic. Environmental organizations have used NEPA lawsuits to block many types of projects, including levee improvements that might have prevented the flooding of New Orleans. The same is true of the Clean Water Act and its regulations ostensibly designed to preserve wetlands. As regards flood prevention, these laws have been interpreted in ways that do far more harm than good, and changes are absolutely necessary.”

But before y’all start getting smug and tsk-tsking over the perfidy, heartlessness, and blatant corruption of the right, try these on for size.  First from Ann Crittenden:

” Just as free enterprise is a requirement for economic growth and development, freedom of choice is a prerequisite of economic development. Just as there is no debate over who is in the best position to decide whether a man or woman should start a new business, by the same token, there should be no debate over who is in the best position to decide whether to start the most important business of life – a family.”

Second from
Freakonomics

“Perhaps the most dramatic effect of legalized abortion, and one that would take years to reveal itself, was its impact on crime….

“…But what if those early legalizers simply got lucky? What else might we look for in the data to establish an abortion-crime link? One factor to look for would be a correlation between each state’s abortion rate and its crime rate. Sure enough, the states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970s experienced the greatest crime drops in the 1990s, while states with low abortion rates experienced smaller crime drops. (This correlation exists even when controlling for a variety of factors that influence crime: a state’s level of incarceration, number of police, and its economic situation.) Since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30 percent drop in crime relative to low-abortion states. (New York City had high abortion rates and lay within an early-legalizing state, a pair of facts that further dampen the claim that innovative policing caused the crime drop.) Moreover, there was no link between a given state’s abortion rate and its crime rate before the late 1980s-when the first cohort affected by legalized abortion was reaching its criminal prime-which is yet another indication that Roe v. Wade was indeed the event that tipped the crime scale.”

Not sure what my point is?  Try these quotes:

“It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children….

“…There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier….

“…I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity….”

Wait for it.  

Okay, read on:

“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”

Those astute among you will immediately recognize the above as from  
Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.”

Swift’s was a satire of Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism (the most articulate and profound exponent of which in the modern age is Peter Singer), but it fits the method of free-market thinking (called “economism” in some circles in which I have travelled) that I think the left should be fighting against.

I mean, aren’t we more concerned with the actual lives of the unemployed and underemployed than with what the aggregate unemployment rate or GDP number is, or what the Dow did today?  Aren’t we supposed to be championing those whose lives are made and kept impoverished by the normal, rapatious operating of the “free” market?  I don’t know — maybe I’m seeing more than what’s really out there, but I think a true progressive left in this country would work to counter this narrow, cramped view of what “economy” is all about.  The core value of progressivism is that “economy” is how we LIVE, not how we spend or invest.  Economy is how we produce and reproduce our lives, how we relate to each other and nature, and how we — intellectually, creatively, psychologically, and socially — develop our potential as human beings in our relationship to each other and our planet. In other words, I feel being progressive means not seeing people as mere instruments in service of a machine.

How does this relate to the politics of today?  I feel a true progressive movement requires some agreement on core principles, and the dialogue over core principles begins (I feel) with a discussion of our values — what we fight for, not just what we fight against.  Of course we’re anti-war, and of course we’re for “people over profits”.  But to what end? What’s the point?

But then that’s one dude’s opinion.  I’m interested in yours.

UPDATE: In the interest of fairness to the authors of Freakonomics mentioned above, I’m adding their reply to Bill Bennett’s use of their work.

If you are like me — a straight, white, middle class, progressive-minded male — you are concerned/sympathetic/empathetic/angry about the state of African-Americans in this country.

But you rarely, if ever, get a chance to witness the daily truth of that state.

I did the other night.

I had been working late at the office — I’m a lawyer by trade (horrors!) — and was on my way home in the way-far-out suburbs, going up a one-way north street to the exit for the interstate.  I was in the far right-hand lane, with a police officer in the lane beside me.  There are five lanes at this point on the road — the far left-hand lane is for right-hand turns.  Apart from me and the officer, there is one other car two lanes from me.  If traffic were lighter, it’d been non-existent.

The officer slows down.

I watch him move over to the far left-hand lane — three lanes.  Beyond him I see a young African-American guy — doo-rag, track suit, backpack — walking in the street, but very close to the curb, not impeding traffic, and clearly visible to northbound traffic.

The officer slows and comes up behind him.  He fires up his lights — the ones on top of the car, you know the ones I mean, I think they’re called “flashers” (and yes, for a lawyer who does criminal defense work, it is embarassing not to know the colloquialism for them).  I roll past them and make my turn, but I check the rearview, and see the officer already move on.  

Well, my curiosity is piqued.  

I come around the block to move up beside the young man, now walking on the sidewalk, and ask what happened.  

Well you guessed it.  The cop told him to walk on the sidewalk.  I shook my head, expresse my incredulity, wished him well, and drove on.  (I regret I didn’t offer him a ride — the product of middle-class whiteness, I guess.)

I suppose it could have been worse — the cop could have ticketed him, patted him down, ran the guy’s name through the computer.  All possibilities far more outrageous and egregious in terms of violating civil rights.  A minor inconvenience to the young man, as his rather nonplussed attitude to my question revealed, not worth even discussing, like an everday occurrence.  

Still.

What was the dire emergency that required flashing those lights at the guy?  Woulldn’t pulling up beside him (in a marked car and in uniform, by the way) and saying, “Son, it’d be a good idea to walk on the sidewalk.  For your safety, you understand.”  And how crucial was it to cross three lanes to do this?  With no one else out, stopping and calling out to the young man would have sufficed.

An everyday occurrence.

WWB.  

Walking While Black.