An Article by:

Russell Cole

Bad for Democracy is scheduled for publication in September of 2008

In order to ascertain the significance of the thesis propounded by Dana D. Nelson in her manuscript, Bad for Democracy, it is useful to first characterize the way in which American democracy is perceived according to the collective representations, instructing the political understandings possessed by the preponderance of Americans.

American mythology instructs us that the composition and ratification of the Constitution serve as historical markers for the solidification of American democracy. According to this narrative, prior to the Revolution, there was a growing democratic fervor. Ultimately, this ground swelling of radical democratic sentiment resulted in a rebellion against Monarchy and colonialism. Following the independence of the American Colonies, the devotion to democratic ideals continued; albeit, in a form that was reckless and unsustainable due to its unmanageability. As a consequence, the Founders of the Nation saw fit to innovate a political structure that both manifested democratic principles as well as a state with a workable governability. From there on, as this orthodox history suggests, the Nation was set along a course leading to the continual improvement of its democratic fixtures.

In contradiction to this grand mythology, Nelson provides us with a concise – although thorough – counter-narrative that expresses aspects to American historicity that run in opposition to the premises underlying the standard master-narrative. Central to her thesis is the recognition that the historical trends in American politics have not conformed to a trajectory headed toward an increasingly enhanced democratic embodiment. As Nelson quite correctly indicates, the practice of radical democracy and the cultural attributes with which it is associated – those behavioral habits that dispose the citizenry so that they take an active role in the ongoing affairs of government – had a more complete expression during the Colonial epoch than in subsequent periods of American history.

With the ratification of the Constitution and the establishment of a centralized office wielding executive powers, a trend was set in motion that is comparable to the political transformation undergone by the Roman Republic during the Roman Revolution. That is, similarly to the Roman Emperor, whose ascendancy to power was associated with popular land reform, the Presidency in American governance has been interpreted as a political mechanism offering representation to the populous. Presidentialism, as Nelson terms it – which is defined as the stature that has been infused into the semiology attached to the conception of the High Office – has been, from its inception, increasingly interpreted as a vehicle for the realization of the popular will in the body of public policy.

Even more, the concept of Presidency has acquired a semantic value, adding to the concept a latent notion of paternalism. We, as citizens, are all too willing to submit to this parental authority; not only during times of uncertainly, peril, and calamity, but during times unmarked by social drama, because we see him as the personification of the democracy that we collectively form as Americans. When the President appears powerful and impacting, we relish his strong paternal presence because we conflate it with our collective contributions, as citizens, to American polity.

However, it is precisely this quality that is assigned to the Presidency – an attribution that causes the Presidential incumbent to be perceived not simply as the outcome of democratic process, but as the carrier of the vitality belonging to the body politic – that contributes to the cultivation of behavioral dispositions, rendering the citizenry democratically disinclined. We confuse our ability to engage in a ritualized affair – where we cast a single vote that infinitesimally affects the outcome of a Presidential Election – with the operations of a functioning democracy. This illusion is propagated by the growing authoritarianism of the Presidency – which reinforces the prejudice that voting in Presidential Elections somehow epitomizes democratic civic engagement.

As Nelson adeptly points out, democracy is more than mere electoral politics. For a political order to be democratic, public policy must be determined through the direct deliberative participation of the citizenry. The Republican Romans, for instance, indeed had elected officials. Furthermore, the aristocrats in the Republic formed the Senate. Nevertheless, only through passage in the House of Plebes could legislation be enacted. Although the Republican Romans possessed intermediaries between the state and the public, such as the Senate who could advise and consent, the commoners, whose votes were organized according to tribes, remained politically empowered through their ability to directly legislate.

Democracy, in order for it to exist in America, must take on similar attributes to those instantiated by the Roman Republic. Americans must learn to acknowledge that the unilateralism of the Presidency is antithetical to democratic organization. Democracy is a messy affair; one that involves an ongoing public dialog conducted in an effort to arrive at new compromises among shifting factions. Democracy is not a political condition whereby a “Decider,” as Nelson mocks, is endowed with solitary authority over pertinent matters of state.

The Populist Party of America has already adopted a platform that calls for political decentralization, with the intention to effect a condition conducive to what we have coined, localized democracy. We realized that through the political empowerment of local communities – a state of affairs that can be hypothetically achieved through the decentralization of government – the political influence of individuals can be amplified; thus, accentuating the motivations of ordinary people to participate in the dealings of their municipal polities.

People will become more politically conscious and politically engaged because, within the context of municipal affairs, their participations can have demonstrable consequences upon the public policies that bare the closest immediacy to the Lifeworlds that they inhabit. In other words, the impact that can be had through participation of people in localized democracy will seem more concrete and more relevant and, therefore, more worthy of their sustained interests and their persisting efforts.

In the prescriptions she lays out for a democratic revival, Nelson appears to have unknowingly joined Populist America’s activist chorus. She recommends political decentralization. Even more, Nelson introduces the verbiage, leaderless democracy, in order to designate an organizational state that is comparable to the networked politics that I had summarized in earlier writings that examined a developing theory of democracy, which has been labeled by members of open source software communities as Extreme Democracy:

http://www.midwest-populistamerica.com/articles/theories-of-extreme-democracy/; http://www.extremedemocracy.com/.

Despite the lack of originality marking the recommendations included under the breadth of the normative section belonging to Nelson’s work, she does provide a valuable survey of the various trends in Computer Mediated Communications that are not only leading to a new paradigm of democratic organization, but to a larger intellectual phenomenon that should be considered a new episteme.

The emergence of social knowledge – facilitated through the device of web based communications – is generally characterized as decentralized modalities of content authoring and editing. Wiki platforms, such as the Wikipedia, are demonstrative of this understanding of knowledge and the processes through which knowledge is most effectively constructed. In the spaces generated by the Wikipedia, anybody can contribute to the creation of content by either authoring original materials or editing the materials already published on the platform.

Although there lacks a sufficient amount of studies to draw generalizations with certainty, preliminary studies, such as the one conducted by Nature, have compared the Wikipedia with traditional reference publications, such as Britannica, and have found the rates of errata between the two respective reference materials closer than one would probably suspect. Additionally, the Wikipedia, in comparison to Britannica, possesses a far greater amount of materials devoted to a broader range of topics. Further, due to its decentralized editing process, it takes less time for the Wikipedia to correct its errata than it does for publications, such as Britannica, that follow a traditional workflow process.

All of these developing social formations fall under the extension of the concept, Web 2.0: web platforms that are devoted to collaborative knowledge building conducted by a community of interlocutors. This new form of sociability suggests that radical democracy – a state that is, oftentimes, embodied by Web 2.0 communities – is not only a deontological ideal – a social condition that we should strive to foster, because it is inherently desirable – but a form of social organization that is pragmatically endowed.

In order to understand why social knowledge produces knowledge constructs on a scale that supersedes in volume and quality the knowledge built from traditional social institutions, such as the Academe, it is illuminative to first explore the precepts that support the epistemic prejudices associated with High Modernity and the Academe:

Political centralization, according to its interpretation under the lens of the new social knowledge understanding of knowledge, is a relic belonging to the social condition marked by industrial capitalism: a myriad of interdependent industrial productions that require homogeneity in order for there to be the predictability that is necessary for the various manufacturing outputs to be interoperable with one another. What is more, industrial capitalism calls for cultural uniformity, in order to effect a state wherein the activities of labor can be integrated into the system of interdependent industrial functions that collectively comprise the modes of production; a social organization that requires social agents, serving a labor, to react in predictable ways when operating as cogs in the machineries constituting the modes of production. Following this logic, organizations must possess an executive authority, under which all other offices and capacities are integrated, in order to ensure their synchrony. In short, they must all fall under a unified command structure.

The paradigm of centralized organization continues to reign dominant in contemporaneity. Nonetheless, this centralized model of social organization is not necessarily the most efficient or effective. Whether we are to compare a starfish to a spider; Native American Apaches to the Aztec or the Incas - decentralized structures are proving to be more resilient and adaptable.

Nelson refers to the popular work, The Starfish and the Spider, authored by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, who point out that leaderless organizations – similarly to the starfish and the Apaches – cannot be destroyed by annihilating a single component of their structures. Contrarily, in a case of spiders and in the case of the Native American empires, the organisms can be killed by simply targeting their central nervous systems – or, specifically in these cases, the head of the spider and the metropolises, belonging respectively to the Aztec and to the Inca.

The challenge for the reader is to understand how these properties, attributable to leaderless organizations, relate to potential democratic reforms enacted upon the American sociopolitical establishment. I would suggest that leaderless organizations – or, in the context of this essay’s ensuing sociopolitical considerations, what I shall call networked politics – possess a dual function:

Initially, networked politics can be used as an instrument of insurrection. The recent success of the popular uprising among the Filipino is evidentiary of the efficacy of networked forms of resistance. The insurgents relied upon a moblog – a server upon which contents derived from wireless gadgets can be published by a decentralized public – in order to coordinate their activities. Therefore, the Filipino revolution was not centralized, falling under a single command structure; rather, it was decentralized and voluntarily associational. Although networked politics have just now emerged as a topic of social scientific research, historical incidents, such as the historically recent Filipino revolution, suggest that they might be the optimal form of political resistance in a world where social actors are increasingly connected via the availability of Internet based forms of communication.

Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, networked politics are more resistant to the consolidation of sociopolitical power under any particular hegemony. If we look to traditional forms of popular insurrection – those that were guided and controlled, to a large measure, by van guards – we see a tendency for the elites, who orchestrated the successful revolution, to simply consolidate power themselves, forming another hegemonic faction in control of the society’s sociopolitical power.

As Orwell so brilliantly depicted in his Animal Farm, the revolutionary elites – which, in the case of Orwell’s short story, were comprised of the van guard pigs on the Farm – following the revolution, simply transform into the role that was assumed by the previous governing class. Consequently, the pigs, after staging the revolution, eventually morphed into an embodiment indistinguishable from the human farmer who had been expelled during the uprising.

However, in the case of network politics, there is no centralization, so there will not necessarily be any faction in a position to install an elitist governing structure, or hegemony, in the post-revolutionary social order. To translate the argument I am making into Nelson’s terms – the expressions she used when constructing an alternative American historicity – the emergent social condition will not possess a unified executive branch, and, therefore, it will be absent of Presidentialism: The cultural condition whereby Americans are disposed to conflate democratic processes with the presence of a strong, paternalistic Executive Authority.

Russell Cole

Tags: activism, constitution, decentralization, democracy, executive powers, government, populist party america, Russell Coles Blog, self governance, Social Change, sociology, sociology web 2.0
Categories: Commentary, Democracy, constitution, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Decentralization, self-governance, Social Change, Sociology, activism, executive powers
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An Article:
Ben Tanosborn

It happens time and again as America’s quadrennial campaigns to gain residency at the imperial White House gather momentum.  Although our forever-cloned candidates, one for each of the two indistinct political parties, are asked to address each and every issue of the day, soft-hearted – or perhaps civically-ignorant – Americans that we are, we usually give candidates a free pass, not forcing them to commit to any specific color in their answers, true chameleons they are.  And the press, with its own corporate mission, self-preservation, plays the usual economic game in its key role of as a pleasing whore.

Progressives as well as many other change-clamoring Americans, particularly legions of young college students – many, first-time presidential would-be voters – volunteered to give this new political face of great hope, a man articulating change with a great amount of credulity, the reins of that sempiternal “lesser evil” party of peace-makers and lowly economy’s downcasts.  Of course, having reached that all important milestone which assured him the backing of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama had few options but to accept being placed in the waiting “golden stable” where he gets new handlers claiming to have magical knowledge with which to plot how the presidential race must be ran, not to place… or to show, but to win.

So now that face of great hope has been lifted, not to remove any wrinkles, young man that he is, but “to add” the necessary patriotic wrinkles required to be acceptable to what the new handlers consider to be the candidate’s initiation of trust from Middle-America, not a geographical location but a state of mind: that non-existing, totally equivocated middle of the road of an economically and morally decrepit, fading nation where the imperialism-cancer is already hovering around stage IV having spread to many, if not most, aspects of American life.  This while flags wave high in glory, and flag pins adorn the lapels of politicians and their brethren, our corps of elite corporate crooks.  Could it be that it isn’t change that Americans want… only a return, by whatever means, to easy credit, low oil prices and continuance of that fantasy dream of wealth as a birthright, or one created by motivational charlatanry, rather than the product of one’s labor?

Obama’s hundred-and-eighty-degree turn from progressivism and change should come as no surprise to those of us oft-scalded by American fraudulent politics; although we cannot help but feel deep pain for our idealist young people getting their initiation of fire.  Obama is in the hands of the handlers (visible and invisible) who require his adherence to flip-flop ambidexterity about Iraq, NAFTA (North America Free Trade Association), separation of church and state; and, recently, his unnecessary and obscene vote in the Senate favoring more federal surveillance on the citizenry.  One wonders how Obama might have voted in 2002 on the Iraq resolution had he been then a member of the Senate… with advisers; and not just an Illinois citizen unattached to the powerful.

If we add to all the above his ceremoniously recorded adhesion not long ago to AIPAC (Israel’s lobby) and his of-late windmill attitude to just about anything and everything, one must ask, is there really much of a difference between Barack Obama and John McCain?  Well, age for one thing; and, most definitely, brains.  But as for everything else, including critical foreign policy change, the two senators might have been birthed by the same mother as non-identical twins.

Some people, who have followed Obama’s political evolution since Hillary Clinton’s abdication to what she claimed to be her Democratic Party throne, are quick to give him the benefit of the doubt, saying that once he gets to the White House he’ll be his own man and his deeply imbedded progressive ideas will take root.  Fools we are… has that ever happened before…well, in recent memory?  Not a chance!

Even President Carter, as honorable a president as this nation has ever had, found it necessary to bend later on in his administration to the influence that the Miami Mafia (exiled Cubans) had on Florida politics.  Castro’s Cuba, or rather the apolitical Cubans in the Island, had to suffer the consequences of America’s WIR (Weapons of Ill Resort): embargoes, economic sanctions and other destructive, anti-people dirty tricks which are constantly being performed secretly.

There are three key issues for Americans which overrule everything else, issues that have been addressed with ignorance and/or triviality by both Obama and McCain.  They are: the complete overhaul of an economy in shambles; the imperialistic treatment we give to our presence in both the Middle East and Southwest Asia (Afghanistan, Iraq and the military-infested waters of the Persian Gulf, for which a more apropos name would be the Pentagulf); and our irreverent, imperialistic position towards Russia.  The latter, an issue which is not being played much by the American media… but an issue that will comeback for sure to hunt us… and hurt us.  Unlike Germany and Japan, Russia is not a defeated country… and to treat her with triumphal disdain and bullyism could ultimately exact too-high a price for the United States.

Arsonist Bush may be lighting up most destructive fires around the world, but no one hears either McCain or Obama speaking of putting them out.

Tags: Ben Tanosborn, democracy, economics, media, politics
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Democracy, Politics, Media, Ben Tanosborn
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On This Fourth of July 2008

An Article by:
Ben Tanosborn

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with its own government, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the denunciation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  That to secure these rights, a new government must be instituted, deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed.  That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.  Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.  But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of the people of the United States of America; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their existing system of government.  The history of the Executive in this government, exemplified and accentuated by the current administration; together with a long history of a lobbies-corrupted Legislature and a politically-appointed Judicial, are histories of repeated injuries and usurpations, not acting as to balance power but jointly providing a unified corruptive government, all having in direct object the establishment of a world empire and a domestic ruling class able to exercise absolute tyranny over the people. The present and recent past administrations of the United States of America are hereby deemed non-responsive to the interests and well-being of the people of this nation while also acting as an imminent and constant danger to the cause of peace in the world.  To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

…That existing government has made itself a self-perpetuating tyranny where the channels to change and impeachment are de facto blocked by the duopolistic party system.

… That existing government operates under the auspices of special interest groups whose money influence the election of officials in such government, the enactment of legislation, and the way domestic and foreign policy are created and conducted.

… That existing government has not only permitted but promoted the ever-widening gap between haves (20%) and have-nots (80%), with serious wealth and income inequality.

… That existing government shows no concern for the well-being of the people as evidenced by the availability of healthcare, education and social welfare relative to other nations with similar or fewer resources.

… That existing government is responsible for instilling fear in the population, making terror the underlying reason for curtailing freedoms, spying or even lying to the people.

… That existing government maintains a military with a destructive capacity far in excess of that needed for self-defense; and to the detriment of public needs.  And that such massive destructive capacity only serves to paint the United States as a coercive, imperialistic and terrorist nation.

… That existing government by engaging in criminal wars, embargoes, blockades and other black-listing of foreign nations has made the United States not just an international bully but a piranha, world’s leading perpetrator of genocide and dislocation of people.

… That existing government has in fact misgoverned domestically in every facet of governing; while abusing its power to promote mayhem internationally which has gravely damaged the reputation of the people of this nation before the eyes of the world.

We, therefore, the people of the United States of America, in self-representation and joined   in mind and effort, appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name of one another with common joint interests, and self-exercising our authority as free people, solemnly publish and declare, that these United States of America are, and of right ought to be free from the tyranny of the existing government; that they are absolved from all allegiance to this existing Federal government, and that all political connection between them, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that the Fifty States making up this union immediately join forces to create and summon a Constitutional Congress for the sole purpose of enacting a new constitution and the formation of a new Federal government; representatives to that Congress to be judiciously chosen by the States in proportional numbers to population. The new constitution, and the government which will derive from it, to be exemplary models in morality and brotherhood; such government to have full power to work for peace and against war, to regulate all wealth-producing activities to guarantee a free but fair market, and to do all other acts and things which independent nations may of right do for the well-being of its citizens. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we, the people of these United States of America, pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Author’s note:  Rather than a plagiarization of the original Declaration of Independence this re-declaration is intended as juxtaposition to that great document of long ago… and the sad political reality we have today in a broken government which does not represent the citizenry; a reality that would bring dismay to its signers in their futuristic vision of the United States.  It took a revolution to free the Colonies from the English Crown… and it appears that it will take another revolution for this nation to retrieve both, its moral compass and true freedom for its people.

Tags: Ben Tanosborn, citizens, democracy, direct democracy
Categories: Commentary, Democracy, Direct Democracy, Ben Tanosborn
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Insightful remarks on the nature of American politics and governance

“We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.”

–Ramsey Clark

“Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.”

–John Pierpont Morgan

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

–Thomas Jefferson

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour [endeavor] to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

–Abraham Lincoln

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.”

–Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.”

–Benito Mussolini

The compilation of quotations was derived from an email correspondence authored by Dennis Morrisseau: A Vermont politician, he was the first Republican to run for Congress on a platform that included the impeachment of both Bush and Chaney. His biography also includes an incident during the Vietnam War where he, when serving as an officer in the Military, as a protest to the war, refused to engage in combat, and was subsequently court marshaled.

I have included this brief biographic description because it evidences the differences existing among the various types of political conservatism and demonstrates that the two-dimensional framework used by the punditry to index political ideologies is woefully inadequate and, indeed, in some cases misrepresentative. There are undoubtedly a whole field of ideological commonalities to be discovered between and among all of us, irrespective of the Left/Right division we have been lulled into assuming to impose barriers between us.

Russell Cole

Tags: democracy, plutocracy, political ideology, politics, Russell Coles Blog
Categories: Commentary, Democracy, Russell Cole's Blog, Politics
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An Article by:

Ben Tanosborn

Like it or not, in agreement or in disfavor by the populace, our money politics has now entered the era of networking, multi-level-marketing and thorough ad-brainwashing.

Forget about democratic ideals, exalted social justice, or even the loftier proposition of brotherhood and world peace.  Forget about political party platforms that might spouse aspirations spirited with humanistic principles.  Remember, this is America, where the only beliefs held sacrosanct, beliefs which are expected to hold popular allegiance, are embodied in the duality of market economics and market politics.

Well, in truth, probably fewer than 10 percent of our citizens have a clue as to what a free market economy is, or should be; or that our existing economy is hardly guided by a free price system, much of it being expropriatory and corrupt.  However, that 90-plus percent of ignoranti in the art of economics are well aware of this nation’s unashamed commitment to market politics, accepting by default being governed by those with the purse strings.  Most everyone seems to be in conformity with the idea that “ours is the best government money can buy,” mocking ourselves to be proud and happy fools.

Money has influenced and often dictated, at least in our lifetime, how political elections are being conducted so as to optimize a candidate’s chances for election.  Our two-way stepladder politics has been for the most part a game played by the Knights of Capital, some siding with the Democrats, some siding with the Republicans, some straddling… placing their bets on both.

Now, since the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law went into effect (2002), there is little option but for the candidates to invite small donors, up to $2,300 each this year, to come and fill their coffers.  The fund-raising, to be effective, needs to tap a new breed of “venture capitalists,” a group that might be considered the Squires of Capital, those who not only donate the allowed max, but who pledge to collect from other donors from 10 to 100 times that amount.  Networking is called… MLM of 2 or 3 levels, if you ask me!  Enter the most successful – in obtaining financing – presidential candidate of them all, Barack Obama, who in a true effortless mode can just rake in $50 million in a single month, 80 percent via the Internet, with zero personal effort and barely cracking a smile.

And the why of that success should not be a secret to someone in my shoes.

A business plan for a political candidate should be no different from a business plan for either a start-up business, or a mature one in need of venture capital… whether for expansion or for survival.  The functional areas in politics that need to be addressed may be different from those of a profit-making enterprise… but the purpose is identical: to obtain necessary funding to achieve a set of goals.  And, in my counseling capacity to businesses for decades, I have been an integral part of that business plan process.

And guess what, for all the logically and beautifully presented data assigning a high probability of success in the plan, and minimization of risk, it has been my experience that, in eight out of ten cases, whether dealing with banks or in private placements, the ultimate success was achieved because of the personal talent and the inspirational, or entrepreneurial, skills of the person in charge.  At the end of the day, it is a person that defines for a venture capitalist whether a company or a project is viable.  And so it is in politics.  Barack Obama was/is that inspirational leader this year… turning him into a quarter-of-a-billion, maybe a half-billion dollar man before the Democratic National Convention in August.

So more than the political funding concept, success has been Obama himself… and his message, of course.  Needless to say, Obama needs to pay attention to the pre-printed pages that are de rigueur in any and all business plans presented by US presidential candidates: solidarity with the aspirations of the brass at the Pentagon (empire); at least a friendly attitude towards big business; total adhesion to Israel’s government; and an anti-Castro (Fidel, Raúl or any government of ideological continuity) position on Cuba.

A good politician that Obama is, he is ahead of schedule, having made the rounds at the synagogues as well as addressing the now dwindling Cuban Mafiosi in Southern Florida.  Of course, the hawkish duet in the trio, Clinton and McCain, had already done so.  But then again, foreign policy issues are pre-written in each candidate’s business plan.

Does anyone really believe that this country will change via political evolution?  I, for one, have my doubts.  Our elections are but an adventure in advancing the possibility of minimal change, but never give us an opportunity to really choose change.

Tags: Ben Tanosborn, democracy, economics, economy, government, market, politics
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An Article by: 

Ben Tanosborn 

In my mind you don’t trot around the world creating havoc and taking peoples’ lives to defend your “envied freedoms.”  For all the shame we may rightly accumulate as we send young people to die for our elite’s lust for power and greed, we don’t have to lie to our enlisted military by mockingly making them martyrs and heroes when, sadly, they are just being played for chumps.  Our freedoms and rights need to be protected, but right here, not in some battlefield or neighborhood somewhere in the Middle East. And we, Americans, have done a very poor job in fighting domestically to preserve them.

A couple of mornings ago a thought occurred to me just as I was reading an article by H. Josef Hebert (AP) on how Bush rhetoric on energy strayed from the facts.  Of course, it wasn’t the headline that caught my eye; as I see it, Bush rhetoric on most everything has always been light years away from the facts!  But it was the mere thought of this persistent and hopeless liar, that went off like a flash – and just like there is a liar ready to divert any and all facts from a given story, or there is a vice for every virtue, or an antonym at the opposite end of a synonym, or even that science fiction idea of parallel universes, why can’t we come up with a set of anti-freedoms, one that can quantify the degree to which we, Americans, have become complacently enslaved?

During the six plus years since 9/11 and the passage of the pseudo-patriotic Patriot Act, we have slowly become aware of fundamental and diminutional changes to Americans’ constitutional rights under this embryo-fascist government embodied by the faith-based Bush administration, and a condescending, peoples’ unrepresentative Congress. 

Freedoms of association, information and unreasonable search; as well as rights to liberty, legal representation, and a speedy and public trial… all were confiscated and warehoused – only borrowed, ‘mind you – so as to relieve us from our heavy load of fear and make us all think we’re assisting in “terror investigation.” Notice that I haven’t included “freedom of speech” in the list although the government may prosecute librarians and other record keepers if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.  Actually the freedom of speech, or expression, had long been under attack almost two generations before George W. Bush came to the political scene… and it was done without the aid of any specific legislation.    

To journalists and commentators, the first freedom that comes to mind is an easy one: freedom of speech or expression.  For those of us left with the option of writing for our peers and a compressed audience of progressives, freethinking coreligionists, plus the occasional lost souls who might be reading us as result of boring curiosity or perhaps cyber-randomness, we know that freedom of expression is for the most part a cruel hoax.  No, it isn’t that we aren’t free to write (or say) what we please; it’s just that such writing means very little if it cannot be readily accessed, be available to a mainstream audience; and people must travel to the underground of verboten ideas that could never make it through the red-white-and-blue strainer of our nation’s unfree corporate press.

Soon after World War II, to keep our country uninfected from the diseases of that malignant world of foreign socio-political ideas, our freedom of expression was quietly modified without much planning or fanfare to include patriotic clarifications and purifications via a filtering layer added to the strainer, one capable of removing all foreign viruses that could challenge the “American way of life.”  These impressions have been very meticulously carved in the American psyche for almost three generations, and they render any deviation from capitalism or individualism – the way we define them – as sacrilegious; down and out heresy.  The Spanish Inquisition of 1478 had been de facto transplanted to America, in both cases to preserve the faith (Christianity for the Spaniards, and Americanism for the Americans) and with it the nation’s unity.  In fact, it isn’t just Socialism that Americans have been taught to hate and also to ridicule, but anything that is part of, or prefixed by, the word social; or another neutral word, welfare, which for no good reason has lost its primary meaning of well-being in the US.  

Our citizens must be guarded against all those foreign social remedies that seem to plague much of the industrialized world, particularly those Northern European countries; just how sick can those forsaken foreigners be when they exchange an indomitable and survivalist spirit for a system of welfare from cradle to grave?  Obviously Elitist America is willing to throw overboard half or more of Americans to the seas of the Third World in its globalization attempt.

Someone told me the other day that the Statue of Liberty should have Emma Lazarus’ poem on that bronze plaque welcoming the tired and the poor, re-inscribed with the new reality… “Welcome to America, Land of Human Recycling.”  Grotesque perhaps, but true!  And all because we have surrendered the free flow of ideas in our nation, our true freedom of expression, with the captivity of impression of an immutable Americanism unable to grow and transform.

Like birds in a cage Americans are free to flutter, but haven’t we been forced into economic and political submission with the control held by an elite few?
 

Tags: democracy, empire, Global
Categories: Commentary, Global, Democracy, Empire
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An Article by:

Steve Hammons

Originally published in the AmericanChronicle.com

http://americanchronicle.com/articles/53747

The recent controversial remarks from Cincinnati radio personality Bill Cunningham about Barack Obama at a McCain rally can be instructive about the Cincinnati region and Ohio.

I was born and raised in the Cincinnati area, was given the mandatory Ohio history classes in school and later went to college in southern Ohio at nearby Ohio University in Athens, a couple of hours east of Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati and southern Ohio region has a unique history that may be relevant in the run-up to the Democratic primary and the 2008 elections. This history and current flavor of the whole state might also be of interest.

We know that Ohio has been in the news during recent elections. Concerns about questionable election processes in Ohio have been part of this.

After Cunningham made his comments at the McCain rally, another Ohio politician followed him to address the crowd … former Congressman Rob Portman who represented the Cincinnati area.

Portman has been mentioned as a possible vice-presidential running mate with McCain, and a possible presidential candidate in 2012.

SPECIAL ELECTION

Portman left his congressional seat in 2005 to take a position in the George W. Bush administration as U.S. trade representative, which carries the rank of ambassador.

From 2006 to 2007, he took another position in the Bush administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He currently is working at a law firm in Cincinnati.

What is interesting is that when a special election was held for Portman’s congressional seat in 2005, the solidly Republican-voting area almost elected another attorney and Marine Corps Reserve major who had served in Iraq, and was running as a centrist Democrat.

That person was Paul Hackett, and during the campaign he said that he had opposed the Iraq war, yet felt it was his duty to volunteer to serve there.

In the congressional race in August 2005, Hackett, who notably opposed gun control, gained attention by referring to George W. Bush as a “chicken hawk” for avoiding combat service in Vietnam during that war.

Hackett also said Bush made “stupid” remarks such as “bring it on,” challenging insurgents in Iraq to attack U.S. troops there.

Hackett reportedly bluntly stated about Bush, “I’ve said I don’t like the S.O.B.”

Hackett’s opponent, Jean Schmidt, strongly supported Bush and the Iraq war.

Hackett lost by about 3,500 votes, getting about 48 percent of the vote in a district that routinely elected the previous Republican congressman there by about 70 percent.

This was a very surprising development in southwestern Ohio.

Obama’s stance on the invasion and occupation of Iraq may resonate in Ohio, where many active duty and reserve Army and National Guard personnel have been killed and wounded. Active duty Marines and Marine reservists from Ohio have also been killed and injured in high numbers in Iraq.

GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHICS

The hilly country of southwestern Ohio around Cincinnati is very much like southern Indiana next door and northern Kentucky, just south across the Ohio River.

If you go further east, the southern neighbor becomes West Virginia and southeastern Ohio is considered part of the Appalachian region, as the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains start there. There is coal mining in this region.

Many people in southern Ohio speak with a slightly or markedly southern-type accent.

An ancient glacier that flattened central and northern Ohio stopped just short of the still-hilly southern part of the state.

In that flat central Ohio area, there are plenty of farms, small and medium-size towns with the state capitol of Columbus right in the middle.

Northern Ohio has a lot of the industrial areas around Lake Erie that have had historical links with Detroit and other centers of the old “rust belt” regions.

Many people here speak with a somewhat northern type of accent.

There are many good union people in Ohio. Sometimes their social and political views are centrist and they might find positions and candidates of either major party to be valid.

Some Ohioans who have benefited from unions and have a middle class or even upper middle class economic status are educated enough to know that the struggles of the union and labor movements over the decades resulted in the benefits they have now.

Some realize that the social, economic and political forces in America that supported or opposed working people and the unions were associated in certain patterns with the two major political parties. Some Ohioans who have benefited from unions may not fully understand this history.

Obama’s efforts and results in Ohio will be related to many of these these factors.

OHIO HISTORY AND ETHNICITY

Will Obama’s mixed-ethnicity be a factor? Probably. There are not too many Ohioans who had a father from Kenya, Africa.

Although Ohio is not as diverse as Hawaii, where Obama mostly grew up, raised by his grandparents from Kansas, there is some interesting ethnic and historical background.

Today, you can find people of virtually every ethnic background living in Ohio.

Italian-Americans in northern Ohio, German-Americans in southwestern Ohio, you name it. People from Eastern Europe often came to work in Ohio’s steel mills and mines.

In the early 1800s, Germans were a dominant ethnicity that settled early Cincinnati.

There reportedly were German or even Nazi sympathizers there before and during U.S. entry into World War II.

At the same time, some local German-Americans, including some distant relatives of mine, thought about changing their very German names to avoid problems during the war years, such as being thought of as “the enemy.”

It could be that some German-Americans in Cincinnati then went overboard the other way, feeling that being a “super American patriot” required certain political and social positions.

Going further back in history, during slavery, for a period of time, laws provided that escaping slaves who crossed north of the Ohio River into southern Ohio could not be returned to slave owners and were, as a practical matter, free.

Subsequent laws required escaping slaves to reach Canada to be free from slave catchers.

Amish and Quakers are found throughout areas of Ohio. The Underground Railroad was very active in southern Ohio during the slavery era. Some Quaker relatives of mine, according to stories and rumors, were involved in the Underground Railroad in the rural areas of southwestern Ohio.

There is a problematic element here. Next door in southern and central Indiana, the KKK is quite strong and active. This is also an aspect of the region in general.

My grandfather told a story about a relative of ours who, decades earlier, had run for sheriff in Kentucky. One night the KKK came to visit him, white robes and all. They told him if he was not on board with the KKK, he would not get elected.

He apparently told them he was not on their side … and he did not get elected sheriff.

Many people entering southern Ohio in the 1800s and 1900s were migrating from the Appalachian Mountain regions in Kentucky, such as some relatives of mine, and from elsewhere in the Appalachian region.

In more recent decades, many Appalachians chose to escape the poverty, oppression and violence of the coal-mining regions. Cincinnati was a center for these escapees too.

Among these migrating groups were people who were mixed-ethnicity European and Native American Indians such as the Cherokee whose native lands were in the Appalachian region.

Many early explorers in the 1700s had intermarried with the Cherokee and generations of mixed English-Scottish and Cherokee families lived in the region.

In the years before the 1839 “Trail of Tears” forced march west, and the confiscation of Cherokee lands and homes, many mixed-ethnicity families blended into the mainstream society, with only a few family stories or suspicions remaining about the Indian connections in the family tree, such as my own family.

Another interesting aspect of Ohio is that after the American Revolution, many Revolutionary War veterans and their families moved over the mountains to settle in eastern Ohio. Today, in the cemeteries of southeastern Ohio, you can find the gravestones of many who fought in the American Revolution.

Ohio University, where I went to college, was founded by Revolutionary War veterans.

I am happy to say that I had ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and were associates and relatives of George Washington and the other American leaders of that period.

I also recently learned that, according to a genealogy researcher in the family, Obama and I are distantly related too.

How do all of these and many other cultural, ethnic, geographic and historical elements fit together in our current political landscape as we approach the Democratic primary and then the general election?

We will soon be finding out.

Obama will probably have significant support in Ohio from a wide variety of people.

I bet that many Ohioans will be thinking long and hard about Obama, about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, about the direction our country has been going in for the last few years and about themselves and their core beliefs, deep down inside.

Tags: democracy, ohio, politics, race, race relations, society, sociology, Steve Hammons
Categories: Commentary, Society, Democracy, Politics, Sociology, Steve Hammons
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An Article by:

Ben Tanosborn

It must have been Harry S. Truman, the plainest amongst our plain presidents, who scared us all into having idiots running our government by saying: “Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.”  Of course, he failed to acknowledge the possibility that we could have the worst of both worlds: inefficient government and dictatorship.  And at this moment, we seem to be marching in step to get there soon. 

Are our nation’s best and brightest so repulsed by the bureaucracy in the public sector that decidedly prefer to take up arms running the predatory wing of the private sector?

Maybe some of the “brightest” are doing that, but they cannot also be called “best” while allowing themselves to be corrupted by a heartless capitalism equally ready to reward its bright leaders as it is to deny countless people from sharing the economic trough. 

It does look more and more as if both public and private sectors are being ran by the very same gang of thieves, all operating from a single “carnivalesque” den, where the larcenous elite pick the lazy, career-politicians as their lead carneys for deceit.

And these lead carneys are seldom the brightest, and definitely never the best! 

Americans have done it in the past… so why not again?  I mean… elect the village idiot to be mayor… well, president and CINC for this US-village we live in.  No disrespect intended, not for the sake of disrespect; certainly not by simply calling a dumb ass who aspires to be America’s supreme leader by a first, middle and last name, all in one.  And every village, we are told, is expected, certainly entitled, to have one.  An idiot, that is!

One would think that hitting on nine out of ten prognostications would make most of us who are humility-challenged, a bit giddy zigzagging in haughty satisfaction; almost as if invited to a seminar conducted, ex officio, by none other than Nostradamus – in spirit, of course.  But to me, this nine out of ten “good guesses” that I’ve attained during this past year lose any and all merit when the error, the incredible miss, involves the man of the hour, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the soon-to-be standard bearer for the GOP in the coming presidential election.  And that’s how I messed up, big time, when last May in one of my columns I prematurely called this politician a has-been, and laid to rest his presidential ambitions with an obituary that read R.I.W. (Rest in War) instead of R.I.P. 

Foolish me!  Of all the predictions I’ve made throughout the years, this one I thought to be a cinch, a sure thing… an “almost-certainty” with an infinitesimal margin of error.  I was almost embarrassed to even consider it a prediction instead of a factoid.  Pleassse! How can the Grand Old Party consent to be represented by anyone like John McCain… a person irrelevant in just about every aspect of the party’s conservative tradition; a true morbid warmonger just like the present occupant of the White House; a phony funny-racist; an inarticulate man… one lacking minimal brain power?  How, may I ask?

Could it be that Americans prefer not to have anyone smarter than their surrounding mediocrity leading them?  Or that after having been submerged at the bottom of iniquity with George W. Bush for eight years, we might fee the need for a decompression stop presidency before our nation resurfaces without suffering from the bends? Nonsense… a McCain presidency would be no different from a Bush’s third term… equal opportunity idiocy, and more thieveries of the filthy, or cleanly, rich.

One cannot fathom McCain as the next president of the United States… the new scorn of the gooks and their new replacements, the terrorist Islamo-fascists! Not this burnt scrap from the bottom of Annapolis’ kettle.  But then again, Americans more often than not seem to side with the perceived underdog, particularly when seen as a hero-patriot, and it would be hard to find a greater underdog than the village idiot.

Don’t count McCain out… at least for now!  It’s an indisputable fact that in America, money is total power, and at the end of the day power always grabs the reins.

Tags: Ben Tanosborn, congress, corporations, corporatism, democracy, economics, government, homeland security, imperialism, politics, power, social responsibility
Categories: Commentary, Democracy, Power, Politics, Congress, Corporations, Homeland Security, Imperialism, social responsibility, Ben Tanosborn
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An Article by:
Steve Hammons
First Published on AmericanChronicle.com

The local newspaper reporter in Stephenville, Texas, who helped cover a UFO sighting case there is no longer working at the Stephenville Empire-Tribune newspaper, effective last Thursday, Feb. 7.

Journalist Angelia Joiner had been covering the UFO story which broke early in January and brought national and international news media representatives and researchers to Stephenville, other nearby small towns and the surrounding region.

Mainstream media such as the Associated Press, CNN and other major TV networks and newspapers covered the incident with great interest. The international press also paid special attention to the UFO sightings in Stephenville and towns in the area.

Media personalities such as CNN’s Larry King and NBC’s Today show host Matt Lauer explored the sightings on their shows.

In Stephenville, Joiner was a staff writer at the small-town newspaper there. She did an excellent job of researching and interviewing local residents who were surprised, curious and concerned about the very unusual objects they reportedly saw.

As national and international interest in the case grew in January, Joiner was contacted for information as the reporter on the scene with some of the best knowledge of the local community.

Her articles helped inform not only local residents who relied on professional reporting for their community, but also assisted other Americans and people internationally understand that Stephenville people and residents in the area were down-to-Earth, solid and of good character.

The factual and level-headed journalism Joiner provided helped the national news media understand and respect the citizens in these communities. This resulted in some of the most serious and credible reporting in the national media on such an incident in recent memory.

The AP article was carried in hundreds of papers and news outlets. People like Larry King and Matt Lauer talked about the subject with intelligence and open minds.

All these outcomes were related in part to the high level of credibility of local witnesses who were courageous enough to come forward and the professionalism of local reporter Joiner and her colleagues in the national and international news media.

However, some of these witnesses and Joiner seem to be paying a price for doing their civic duty and communicating about an incident that appeared to be very significant, and could even have affected the public safety of the communities in the area.

CENSORSHIP AND “NEED TO KNOW”

According to information obtained for this report, management at the Stephenville Empire-Tribune did not want further coverage in the paper of the sightings by local citizens of something that appeared to be highly unusual. Pressures may have been placed on newspaper management to discontinue articles on the subject.

According to the newspaper’s Web site, “The Stephenville Empire-Tribune is a mid-morning paper published six days a week by Erath Publishers, Inc., a Consolidated Southwest Media company which is owned by American Consolidated Media. The Empire-Tribune is a member of the Associated Press, Texas Press Association, West Texas Press Association and the Inland Press Association.”

Publisher Rochelle Stidham and Managing Editor Sara Vanden Berge were contacted for their comments for this report but did not immediately respond.

Did the paper’s management face pressures to end coverage of the UFO sighting by a local peace officer, respected businessman and pilot and reportedly dozens of other local citizens? Did they back away from accounts of local citizens who said they were apparently being threatened for talking about what they saw?

Is this a case of media censorship or self-censorship and political correctness? Is it about professional courage and moral integrity? And, can the newspaper now be trusted by the community to cover important aspects of public health and safety, local political activities and other sometimes sensitive topics?

These seem to be questions for the citizens who read and subscribe to the paper and advertisers who use that newspaper.

The corporate owners of the Empire-Tribune (Consolidated Southwest Media, American Consolidated Media) and the professional news and journalism organizations with which the paper is affiliated (Associated Press, Texas Press Association, West Texas Press Association, Inland Press Association) might also want to review developments there.

As for the former reporter Joiner who had covered the concerns and accounts of local citizens so professionally, life goes on.

She appears to be confident that she did the best job she could have for her community as a responsible local journalist who realized something important had happened to her fellow citizens, neighbors and friends.

“I appreciate the opportunity I have had at the newspaper,” Joiner said. “A story of this magnitude drained the limited resources a small newspaper has. I performed my other duties to the best of my ability.”

Even as the national and international media interest calmed down somewhat, other ominous developments were occurring in the Stephenville area.

A local resident stated he had been received threatening phone calls and threats of implied bodily harm or death for talking publicly about what he saw.

An intruder had also appeared on his rural property at 1 a.m., causing the resident to be concerned about the safety of his family.

See my Feb. 7 article: “Texas UFO witnesses threatened for talking to media?”

As Joiner was covering this more serious aspect of the UFO sighting case (in articles published Feb. 3 and Feb. 4) which appeared to be a law enforcement and criminal matter affecting public safety, she was reportedly told by newspaper management to back off.

“My directions were to move on to something else,” Joiner said.

The reason given to Joiner for this was, “because our readership had grown tired of the UFO stories.”

However, Joiner was still a contact person and resource for community residents, researchers, news media representatives and others.

While trying to obey management’s directives to cover topics other than the UFO sightings and related developments, Joiner said, “It was a difficult task to achieve. I was still receiving a surprising number of e-mails and phone calls on the subject.”

“I tried to direct those calls and interviews to after hours or during lunch hours. And I forwarded e-mails to my home so that I would not be giving newspaper time to the subject. I honestly tried to do as they had asked.”

The apparent irregularities and journalistic priorities of what was starting to emerge at the Empire-Tribune probably also started to dawn on Joiner as she realized things were not going in a good direction at the paper.

She gave her two-week notice, then was told to leave immediately.

“I had given notice when I realized my boss was unhappy with my performance, but was unexpectedly asked to pack my things and leave Thursday,” she said.

Joiner apparently felt that people in her community had “a need to know” about what was going on when respectable citizens came forward with their accounts and subsequent serious incidents reportedly involved the safety of and threats to a local family.

GOING FORWARD

The Stephenville UFO sighting incident is not the first and will not be the last. The responses by local and regional public safety officials to such incidents have also occurred before, and will again. Local, national and international news media professionals are also part of the picture, past, present and future.

Americans wearing the military uniform of our country and our intelligence professionals are certainly also parts of the puzzle involving UFOs and how our society deals with an apparently sensitive and complex situation. Their respect and support for good American citizens will remain crucial in the days ahead.

Many of the residents of the Stephenville region are just such good Americans. Reporter Joiner knew this because she knows the people of her community.

Local journalists typically work on topics involving all kinds of community activities: the local schools and hospitals, area peace officers and public safety personnel, businesses and employers, civic groups and organizations. And when they do, reporters often feel a sense of responsibility to do their best for their neighbors and their communities.

This works in reverse too, at the local and national levels. Our newspapers, TV and radio media, Web-based news and other similar information platforms are sometimes only as good as the standards we expect of them, and the support we give to honorable and ethical journalists.

Like the old saying, “In a democracy, citizens get the government they deserve,” the same can be said about our news media. We get the newspapers and news media we demand, deserve and support.

If we continue along a path of the “dumbing down” of Americans, as many have alleged, the fabric of our communities and our nation may deteriorate.

If we search for truth, integrity and honor within ourselves, our media and our government officials, we may just find that too.

The citizens of the Stephenville region, and all the rest of us, must decide about the directions we want to take. Do we want to continue being dumbed down? Do we want to stick our head in the sand and close our eyes?

Or, do we want greater respect as American citizens and intelligent human beings who have the ability to understand sensitive, complex and, yes, even highly unusual and unexpected situations?

When events occur that affect public health and safety, public information, our rights and responsibilities as citizens, what are our roles and those of our institutions such as local and national government and the news media?

These are questions that, it appears, must be faced and dealt with if our communities, our society and our nation will continue to thrive.

NOTE TO READERS: Hammons is a former reporter for newspapers in the San Diego area. He covered public health and safety, the “police beat,” U.S. Navy and Marine Corps topics, Pacific Ocean and beach area stories and other subjects. He studied communications and journalism at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, home of the prestigious Scripps College of Communications and E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, recognized as two of the top such programs in the United States. Hammons is also author of two novels – MISSION INTO LIGHT and the sequel LIGHT’S HAND.

Tags: democracy, establishment, flying, government, journalism, Steve Hammons
Categories: Commentary, Democracy, government, journalism
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An Article by:

Ben Tanosborn

I no longer care how popular the voting concert is, I refuse to pay homage to those untalented, tone deaf rockers!  Every four years we are regaled with the very same quadrennial political tour, the same Evil Brothers, whatever names they may go by this time around, giving us the misconception that there is political choice in our lives.

Sorry, folks, but I have had it with those two brothers engendered by an incestuous relationship. Greater and Lesser, as far as this writer is concerned, although not twins, carry almost identical DNA’s.  And it is precisely our covering up for all of Lesser’s misgivings, election after election, that we are where we are – politically – today.  After the snow dust settled in Iowa’s caucuses and New Hampshire came undone, I finally made an irrevocable resolution, not just for the New Year but one to honor for a lifetime: Never again!  Never again wil