Evolution of Consciousness

And now I discover that Chalmers Johnson passed away (November 20, 2010), but not before he was able to publish a final work: “Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope.”

Ralph Nader’s thoughts on the little psychopath’s book tour: “Bush At Large.”

This sounds like a good book (link to a review by Bob Herbert): “Fast Track to Inequality.”

Earlier this month we had the Teabag Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, featuring Ms. Sarabelle, the dominatrix of the hard right. This was followed by the annual fascism workshop known as CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in DC. A remarkable quote emerged from this year’s show when the heavily pin-stripped Liz Cheney, railing against the current state of counterterrorism in this country, said, “there’s no polite way to put this, but that kind of incompetence gets people killed.”

Now when I hear words like “terrorism, incompetence,” and “people getting killed” I immediately think of 9/11, back when Liz’s daddy was Vice Incompetent. That gang was so busy making the rich richer, and vacationing, that they had little time for the barrage of intelligence briefings coming in that summer, strenuously warning them of imminent attack. For example, the brief titled Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US was delivered August 6, 2001, but our heroes bravely continued vacationing the rest of that month, only making it back to headquarters in time for the actual attack.

But that was then, and now, with Liz on stage, in what should have been an awkward moment, reality did not intrude. A couple minutes after making her cluelessly hypocritical statement, Liz introduced the original incompetent himself, jolly old St. Dick, to a rousing ovation. You’ve got to hand it to these demagogues, they certainly know their audience. Knowledge? facts? independent thought? critical thinking?…nah, none of that here, no “elitist” intellectualizing for this mob. They prefer leading with the gut.

Meanwhile, in between all this Teabaggin’ and CPACin’, a bunch of retrograde zombies arose from their graves to scribble out a sophomoric manifesto they call “The Mount Vernon Statement.” It’s a remarkable collection of 537 words that say next-to-nothing, beyond some vague sense that these guys are dead set against progress. The last thing in the world we should do is evolve, for god’s sake! Instead, they seem to be suggesting that we all curl up in George Washington’s lap and go back to sleep. This movement is obviously tapped out of ideas (beyond “no taxes, no regulation,” of course, those polar stars of the greedy man ethos). This is a shining example of politics at its worst, stirring the emotions while befuddling the mind. The document is available online, and I recommend giving it a once over, just to marvel at the gassy, empty rhetoric.

At bottom is a list of signatories that reads like a macabre Who’s Who of Democracy’s Demise: Meese, Norquist, Regnery, Feulner, Bozell, Viguerie, etc. It’s a shame their old friend Abramoff is behind bars, else he could have joined the fun.

A well-researched book that takes a close look at this destructive group, and their cynical perversion of the conservative movement over the past fifty years, is The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule by Thomas Frank (2008). It’s helpful to know how these traitors to American democracy think and operate. As an old Chinese general once recommended, “know thy enemy.”

Freefall: America, Free Markets, and Sinking of the World Economy is the excellent new book from educator/economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Loosely structured around the story of our recent “Great Recession,” Stiglitz not only does a fine job of explaining what happened from an economic viewpoint, but also includes politics, culture, and history within his scope of vision. The author should also be commended for remaining calm and reasonable as he discusses this monumental calamity of human greed and folly. Some great restraint exhibited there.

One insight I really appreciated was drawing a parallel between the fall of the Berlin Wall, representing the end of Soviet-style Communism, and the fall of Lehman Brothers, representing the end of American-style Capitalism. The interim period (1989-2008) Stiglitz calls “American Triumphalism,” which I thought was a fine name for it. [It is interesting to note how well the hubristic “Project for the New American Century” (1997-2006) fits into this particular narrative, and that those same PNACers have now coalesced into yet another think tank called the “Foreign Policy Initiative.”]

This is a book Americans could really benefit from reading, as Stiglitz provides plenty of solid, sensible recommendations on how to pull out from the nosedive we’re in.