My view on the Occupy Movement as of right now

A family member recently asked me about my view on the Occupy Movement. I thought about it for a few days and realized that I could write 20K words about it in an attempt to explain my views, but that this would take much more time than I have in the midst of a new job, the book project, the Holidays, etc. So, I will let far more knowledgeable and eloquent people speak on my behalf, and call upon one extremely flawed counter-example for contrast.

Here is my view on the Occupy Movement as of right now:

An Entreaty for the New Year

I posted this on Facebook, but not all of us are on Facebook . . .

For all of us who have ever "shared" politically-themed links, or forwarded them via email, there is this timely reminder that we might be full of shit (Plus, see the Errol Morris Op-Doc link I posted not long ago [here]). May our resolutions for the New Year include endeavoring to attempt to try to strive to be less credulous, particularly when our egos & ideologies are involved!

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Is Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy anything more than cynical and intellectually shallow misanthropy?

I think I know the outlines of Ayn Rand's philosophy -- and I've even read Atlas Shrugged long ago, before I could make much sense of it -- but this morning's segment on NPR provides both a concise description of her philosophy and the very real ways in which the philosophy resonates in current politics.

Particularly after listening to the NPR segment, Objectivism seems to be a deeply cynical approach to governance that justifies the perpetuation of political and economic inequality and ignores the necessary and fundamental contributions that broader society and functioning governmental services provide to the general welfare (i.e., transportation & communications infrastructure, sanitation, public health, security, etc.). Objectivism ignores the fact that individual achievement is tied-up in complex ways with the strengths and weaknesses of broad society, and focuses instead on the fiction that fulling distinct individuals could possibly exist in a fully laissez faire system.

For these reasons, it's no surprise that the a significant slice of people with money and power (and their toadies) who are detached from daily knowledge of the complex iceberg upon which their money and power stands have the audacity and myopia necessary to advocate strongly for the dissolution of the very system that enables their success. From my vantage, Objectivism seems both intellectually and morally bankrupt, and it's rather frightening to me that so much of our current political debate is driven by advocates of this philosophy.

Or, am I missing something important about Objectivism, and my interpretation isn't correct?

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A rather rapid escalation to ad hominem attacks & similar irrationality

I'm in the midst of an exchange with others on a Linkedin group that I belong to (reproduced here). This experience has motivated me to make the following reflections . . .

When the un-repressed play the "I'm being repressed!" card

Jon Stewart had a great show on a few weeks ago that provides yet another example of a group with plenty of political, economic, and social power trying to play the "I'm being repressed!" card:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
GOP - Special Victims Unit
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

It seems even in the nearly-meaningless world of sports that representatives of certain groups who most certainly are not being repressed in the U.S. -- but who seem to have a deep-seated need to try to convince people otherwise -- are playing this card.

This is ridiculous. Here's an historically accurate representation of real repressive violence inherent in the system:

Reader Poll: Is Coal the Answer?

There's a movement afoot among some residents, civic leaders, and businesspeople in Whatcom County, Washington, to mine coal in the county and ship it to China. (For an overview of this proposal and links to other information, see Preston Schiller, "How to Stop Worrying and Love Coal Trains," Whatcom Watch Online, April 2011.)

This proposal would involve the burning of fossil fuels to extract fossil fuel from the ground; burning fossil fuel to transport the fossil fuel to the shipping terminal and load the fossil fuel onto freighters; burning fossil fuel to ship the fossil fuel across the Pacific Ocean to China; transporting the fossil fuel -- using fossil-fuel-burning trains and trucks -- to power generation plants, where the fossil fuel will be burned to produce electricity. The extraction will leave polluted land and air in Whatcom County; clog the regional rail system; and, when the coal is burned in China, produce emissions containing the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, as well as sulfur dioxide, aluminium, arsenic, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, mercury, selenium, and uranium (See here and here, among others).

So, readers, is the above proposal:

A) Crazy

B) Ridiculous

C) Farcical

D) Nonsensical

E) Ill-informed

F) Desperate

G) Inconsiderate

H) Asinine

I) Silly

K) All of the Above

Answer below the fold . . .

Global mega corporations = fascism?

In a recent opinion piece on Aljazeera online, William I. Robinson (Prof. of Sociology, U.C. Santa Barbara) claims that "The global economic crisis and the attack on immigrant rights are bound together" in a potentially catastrophic dynamic.

Robert Reich had a thought-provoking take on something similar the other day. Reich observed on American Public Media's "Marketplace" program that "Corporate profits don't translate." He asked, "How can big American corporations be doing so well and the economy so badly?" His conclusion was, "Because their sales are booming -- abroad. And they're adding new jobs where their sales are."

My interpretation of Reich's point was that the current growth of corporate profits in spite of little to no job creation here in the U.S. shows how detached so-called American corporations are becoming from democratic oversight and input. In fact, this shows how detached they're becoming from any real interest in the well-being of their host countries. If it is true that General Motors President Erwin Wilson stated in 1953 that "what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa," the dynamic that Reich discusses seems to represent a different era. Erwin was equating corporate and national interests, a claim that many of us can argue with. However, Reich is describing an era in which the big global corporations don't even pretend to care whether or not corporate practices are "good" for the U.S., and vice-versa.[1]

Robinson incorporates Reich's observation as a central strand in a "web of 21st century fascism."

I'm struck by Robinson's use of the word "fascism."

"Society becomes how you behave"

This quote came from Eric Liu during his interview with KUOW's Steve Scher this morning, "What Makes a Great Citizen?"

Eric Liu is an author, educator and creator of the Guiding Lights Weekend, a group that seeks to foster greater community participation. He served as a White House speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and later as the president's deputy domestic policy adviser. Now he teaches at the University of Washington and hosts an acclaimed television interview program called "Seattle Voices." His latest book is called "Imagination First: Unlocking the Power of Possibility."

I appreciated what Liu said in his interview. He discussed a dynamic that I've been grappling with for many years: how can people with such fundamental differences in political philosophy learn to put aside their disagreements for the greater good? One of the resonant points he made at the end of his interview was that "society becomes how you behave" -- a variant upon Ghandi's adage "be the change that you want to see in the world," yet no less profound in spite of its near-cliche status.

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Is not being stupid not enough?

There is a fascinating discussion over at Intellectual History "How Should Intellectual Historians Deal with Erroneous, Foolish, or Vicious Thought?" As Ben writes in the post, historians generally don't have a problem taking seriously egregiously wrong[1] ideas from the past and applying a more detached and objective approach to these ideas in order to establish their context, learn more about their adherents, and investigate their causes and effects.

However, what is the historian's role in shedding light on egregiously wrong ideas in the present?

In his brief post, Ben provides three things to think about as historians work to identify or otherwise confront wrong ideas in the present:

1) "People do express opinions about the past that are simply wrong. And as historians, we have a responsibility, perhaps even a duty, to point out when people use bad history to bolster their arguments in public debate."

2) "significant ideas that we happen to believe are wrong, inane, or even deeply evil should still be taken seriously."

3) "Of course how we do this . . . is a more complicated question."

I certainly struggle with this stuff. In some of my own posts, I've grappled with similar issues: trying to understand the relationship of deistic beliefs to historical inquiry and the scientific process and recoiling at the kind of asinine ideas that historical ignorance can foster, among others.

I also have a long list of posts-in-process that I may never finish but that share the theme of "what the f#*k?!?!?! Do (Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin/Newt Gingrich/insert your favorite blowhard here) actually believe what they're spewing, or are they blatantly & cynically manipulating the historical record on purpose?"

I like what Tim Lacy has to say in response to Ben's post, as it's relevant to the question I continue to reflect upon -- namely "what is history?":

Our job is to help tease through the hierarchy of causes and sort out the probability of relevance. We're experts on the probability of relevance.

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[1] By "wrong" Ben seems to be suggesting both ideas that are "deeply incorrect" in an objective sense (an example from my own area of study would be the miasmatic theory of disease etiology) and ideas that are wrong in a moral sense (i.e., slavery).

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This is quite surreal to me

Wow: The private prison industry was behind efforts in Arizona to pass the state's Draconian anti-immigration bill.

NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry. The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them. (quote; another link)

One would be hard-pressed to find a clearer example of corporate America corrupting our political system. I wish there were a way to somehow moderate the corrupting influence of corporations in our political system. Oh wait -- there used to be a way. Maybe there are politicians whom we might rely on to help bring light to the way corporations finance our campaigns? Oh wait -- there used to be.

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Perhaps it's time to allow Texas to secede?

We awoke late last week to Texas governor Rick Perry's words coming through the radio. It was one of those mornings where I was waking slowly, so the first bit of his segment was incorporated into my dream. Here is what I thought I heard him say:

If you want to live in a state that has high taxes, high regulations — that is favorable to smoking marijuana and gay marriage — then move to California . . . [In Texas,] we still believe in freedom,freedom from over-taxation, over-regulation, over-litigation.

This is what he actually said:

The Texas School Board continues its quest to change history

Some on the Texas School Board oppose proportional representation of the history of Islam in world history textbooks. A resolution before the board in September asserted an anti-Christian, pro-Islam bias in K-12 world history textbooks.

The Texas School Board, as a body, has already proven itself to favor misrepresentation in K-12 social science standards.

Some specifics of the shallow-minded ideological machinations of the majority of the Texas School Board here.

What the Texas School Board and its supporters fail to understand is that ignoring, misrepresenting, skewing, or otherwise manipulating historical narratives does not magically transform the resulting fallacy into truth. However, what they do understand is that if they can influence historical narratives to reflect their personal biases and ideology, they can get these inaccurate notions into the minds of K-12 students and create future citizens and voters who are uninformed. As Depeche Mode sings in their song "New Dress":

You can't change the world / But you can change the facts / And when you change the facts / You change points of view / If you change points of view / You may change a vote / And when you change a vote / You may change the world

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Eat more cheese! No, wait: Eat less cheese! Like we said: Eat more cheese!

A recent report found that the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture designed and implemented a $12 million marketing campaign last year to help Domino's Pizza recover from a period of sagging sales and declining customer satisfaction. The campaign that the USDA's subsidiary organization Dairy Management designed centered on increasing the amount of cheese on Domino's pizzas. Dairy Management is one of eighteen USDA programs that exist to market agricultural products, including beef and pork; the "Got Milk?" campaign is one of Dairy Management's most well-known and successful initiatives.

Meanwhile, other USDA initiatives continued to fund research and marketing campaigns to try to convince Americans to eat less cheese as a way to sustain a more healthy diet and lower saturated fat consumption. The USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion runs on an annual budget nearly half that of the single campaign for Domino's Pizza, $6.5 million.

As part of its campaigns to increase cheese consumption generally, Dairy Management funded research to look into claims put forth in 2003 that intake of calcium would help people lose weight. By 2004, this research contradicted the weight loss claims, but Dairy Management ignored the findings and persisted for three more years with their campaign correlating calcium intake with weight loss. They only stopped their disingenuous campaign on the order of the Federal Trade Commission, which itself was finally acting on a petition brought by a physicians advocacy group two years prior.[1]

The dynamic described above seems rather contradictory and self-defeating: One USDA team is urging Americans to eat more cheese, while another, at the same time, is urging Americans to eat less cheese. To me, it's illustrative of some unfortunate aspects of American society:

Hunter Orange

Anne Saker, "In a first, Oregon's Fish and Wildlife Commission considering 'blaze orange' mandate for hunters in 2010," Oregonian Sep. 29, 2010, p. A1, A8.

The prospect of state officials mandating that hunters in Oregon wear "hunter orange" clothing has brought out an example of the kind of libertarian thinking that I find ridiculous:

"What is lost on you folks on the commission and government bureaucrats is that it is none of your damn business what I am wearing when hunting, and what my children are wearing is my decision not yours!" (italics mine, for emphasis)

I find this perspective extremely myopic, for the following reasons:

"What If We Ran America By The Poll Numbers?"

Fascinating show recently on KUOW's Weekday program: "What If We Ran America By The Poll Numbers?."

President Obama pointed out that religious freedom is a constitutional right which is guaranteed to all Americans when he addressed the possible construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque near ground zero. Yet any show of support for the cultural center goes against the will of the people — at least according to recent poll numbers. The majority of American's are against the project, if not insulted by it. What if our country was ruled by the majority? What if polls were always the deciding factor in what could, or could not, happen? Which is right: The religious freedom argument, or that the sentiments of the majority should be respected?

The guests on this program discuss the disconnect between what some people believe and what the facts of the matter actually are. This is a conundrum that I've been thinking about a lot recently. Why is it that some people -- most notably a lot of people who associate with the tea baggers, many libertarians, and the extremist fringe of conservative fundamentalist monotheists -- hold the beliefs that they do, even though the facts do not support the belief? Here I'm thinking of issues that are amenable to proof or disproof using factual evidence, such as whether or not President Obama is an American citizen, or claims about the participation of immigrants in violent acts.

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The value of effective government regulation

Jennifer and I arrived at PDX late last night, returning from our trip to Nebraska. We stood outside the bag claim area, waiting for our ride. The vehicle traffic through the passenger pickup area was clogged, even at 10:45 p.m. We stood there with our luggage, waiting.

After a few minutes, I started to notice that there were quite a few vehicles along the curb lane, idling, their owners either sitting in the driver seat, waiting, or standing outside their vehicles at a door, waiting. More minutes passed, and most of these people continued waiting. The two pickup lanes were almost completely clogged, and vehicles were moving in the two through lanes only slowly.

Eventually, I noticed a handful vehicles along the curbside pickup lane that had not moved in at least ten minutes.

After about fifteen minutes of this, two airport security officers came outside and started directing traffic and pedestrians and ordering that the curbside idling vehicles move on. "The curbside is for active loading and unloading only," as the pre-recorded public service announcement proclaimed every few minutes. The security officers used their whistles and day-glo gloves to direct these drivers to move on. Many of the drivers moved only reluctantly.

Finally, within a few minutes, the traffic lanes began flowing relatively efficiently. The security officers had restored the flow like some moist wad of fiber through a clogged digestive system.

It struck me at this time that this is precisely why we need effective government regulation: individuals do not often regulate themselves effectively. Too many people think that they are the ones for whom the rules do not apply, they are the ones who deserve an exception, etc.

If individuals cannot regulate themselves with such a simple task as picking folks up at the airport, how can individuals and corporations possibly regulate themselves in the complex realms of industrial effluent, worker health & safety, off-shore oil drilling, international finance, etc.?

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Ignorance by any other name would still smell as foul . . .

I've recently been alerted to the escalating bigotry associated with the possibility of having a mosque constructed at/near the former site of the Twin Towers in NYC (here and here). The most shrill voices in opposition to this project include people we have already come to know as ideologically-motivated blowhards who select and manipulate data in any way that will further their political agenda: Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.

Just imagine what could have been: Oil-soaked Oregon beaches!

Matt Love wrote an interesting piece in the Sunday Oregonian on the topic of proposed offshore oil drilling along the Oregon coast in the late 1970s.[1]

He begins his article with reference to a 1978 pamphlet "Oregon and offshore oil," written by a body identified as the "Governor's Task Force on Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Development." The year prior, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had determined that prospects for discovering oil off the Oregon and Washington coasts was lowest in the country and, therefore, not worth the hassle.

However, Governor Bob Straub lobbied the BLM to reconsider this conclusion in the hopes that offshore drilling might, after all, be proven feasible.

Formerly a Hog, currently cluless (historically speaking)

It was one of those days weeks ago when I was putzing around on the Internet, re-living a bit of the glory days of the Washington Redskins,* when I happened upon what was news to me: One of the original Hogs, former Tight End Clint Didier (#86), was one of 15 candidates gunning for Patty Murray's senate seat in Washington State.

In response to the interview showcased at the link above, when asked why he was running for a position on the Senate, Didier replied:

When I see our kids and grand-kids' freedom being jeopardized by an over-intrusive government. They want to keep taking away our rights and individual liberties. We've gotten away from the basics...the Constitution.

"Hmmm," I thought . . .

On the Gulf oil spew

Unbelievable, actually.