Perhaps you caught a glimpse of Tuesday’s presentation at Soldier Field.  You know, the political fashion show displaying the Democratic presidential candidates to all the union bosses in order to determine who – if anyone – is to get the endorsement from the AFL-CIO for the run to the White House.  If you didn’t, perhaps you saw excerpts of the apocryphal debate in the news, and maybe even heard a 10-second bite where the junior senator from New York offered herself as Labor’s fighting hero: “I’m your girl!”

If you didn’t even know that seven of the eight declared Democratic candidates were having a get-together, it’s just as well.  Nothing much was said that’s worth repeating, with apologies to Congressman Dennis Kucinich and moderator Keith Olbermann.

An item in the news the day before probably drew a much larger audience if for no other reason than its catchy theme, stating that kids liked most any food better if perceived to come from McDonald’s as visually suggested by McWrappers.  It gave results of a study on obesity prevention, and how McBranding hooks preschoolers; also had Dr. Robinson of the Stanford University School of Medicine, and author of the study, saying how at McDonald’s “The majority of their marketing and reputation and brand is based on foods that are high in calories and fat and low on nutritional value.”  Health foods are for show.

Those two items in the news, a day apart, brought to the forefront what could be two of the greatest ills facing America today: obesity and bad governance; one affecting the physical health of the nation, the other dealing with the socio-political health of society.      

Unhappy about how the country is being governed?  Hey, cool off, don’t be upset.  For a nation of faith and monotheism, why not carry the idea beyond the realm of religion and into politics?  Americans worship one god, so why look beyond our homespun form of capitalism to determine the nature of America’s body politic.

Free from foreign impurities, this sacrosanct capitalism, whether dabbed socially-benign or predatory, must be provided with an all-American circulatory system.  And none better than McPolitics, a system designed to honor diversity of opinion via those two Golden Arches of thought, our two political parties: Republicans and Democrats.  Two arches that hold together, lock, stock and barrel, our entire body politic; that’s what Americans should desire to achieve, a unity-of-purpose doctrine for this land.  Lefties, liberals, populists, greenies and progressives of all types are simply relegated to just epithets that the greater-right can bestow on the lesser-right, in this incredible make-believe land of milk and honey… and two-party politics.

McDonald’s is about business strategies, public relations, advertising… and plain deceit.  But you know what? So is McPolitics!  The vast majority of Americans are uninformed, misled and tricked into thinking that they can have it all: health, taste, convenience and low prices; as McDonald’s, by chance or design, keeps health and culinary issues away from young and old, concentrating on what really counts in business: meeting people’s expectations with flying colors.  And so it is in politics as Republicans and Democrats, in their alternating governing roles, strive to keep Americans politically illiterate.

Homogeneity in American politics stays true behind the mask we put on to attend the biennial and quadrennial election balls.  It reminds me of a yokel from Vermont that did appear on a popular TV sitcom a few years back.  His repetitive character line was an introduction of himself and his two brothers, saying: “Hi, I’m Larry; this is my brother Larry; and this is my other brother Larry.” We all seem to be part of this bumpkin Larry-brotherhood, half addicted to unhealthy food, and most suffering the consequences of bipartisan politics which cater to special interests instead of the citizenry at large. 

But unlike McDonald’s franchises which have found success in much of the world, McPolitics is probably reserved for the American political palate and no one else.  One doubts that it meets enough criteria for export, even if aided by heavy subsidies from both the US State Department and the imperial peacekeepers at the Pentagon.  At least for now, America’s interpretation of “democracy and freedom” does not appear to have made measurable inroads anywhere else.

Be that as it may, there are two mission statements that could shed some light on what might be the problems behind obesity and bad governance.  McDonald proclaims in its mission statement, “McDonald’s vision is to be the world’s best quick service restaurant experience.”  No corporate responsibility, not even empathy for customers as people. And it’s fairly evident that “McPolitics wants to be America’s answer of a government that lets business take care of business without interference.”  So if there is neither corporate nor government responsibility to educate and protect people, who else can they turn to?  Somehow, carried to the extreme as ultraconservatives would have it, the answer is simple: it must be left in the hands of the economic marketplace.  That is a polite way to be told in historical terms that we are marching back towards slavery.

Unfortunately, obesity and bad governance are two issues Americans are yet unwilling to confront head-on, and fighting food addiction or recognizing political or governmental malfeasance are simply not in the cards.

© 2007 Ben Tanosborn

www.tanosborn.com

Tags: foreign entanglements, foreign policy, politics
Categories: Commentary
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Copyright 2007 Ben Tanosborn
www.tanosborn.com

Thomas Gray’s maxim stating that ‘ignorance is bliss’ has been both, widely accepted and widely refuted. Proponents and opponents to what that gentleman said, or meant to say, back in 1742 seem to gather with equally opposing strength as centuries pass. Of late, however, the people of Latin America may have given us a replacement to that axiom, coining with their actions a true gem: Bliss is being ignored by the US!

And you know what? They may have come up with an irrefutable truism when we try to make sense of what they mean by that. However, what they are saying south of the border and what we get from America’s corporate press confound us as if originating in Babel. Commentary by so-called experts on Latin America, usually from think-tanks of convenience - those from where most propaganda germinates which serves the needs of both the White House and the State Department - seem to always give us a minority or dissenting view - something which would be acceptable were it not presented as the majority or prevailing view. And that’s basically what we get, minority-imposed views.

Recently I came across an article-commentary typical of what’s being written these days; it was penned by Alejandro Chafuen from Atlas Economic Research Foundation, under a catchy headline, Latin America won’t just sit still and be ignored - Our southern neighbors grow politically restive with U.S. inaction to their legitimate economic worries. What, you say! Is this individual for real or is he just a PR man for the Latin elite?

The fact that George W. Bush has ignored the breaking of political piatas south of the border - way, way south of the Rio Grand - might have made the powerful local elite, and their squire-class of enablers, politically restive in Central and South America; but as far as most of the people who live there, those best described as without a pied - terre in Miami or elsewhere in the States or Europe, these past six years have proven to be a true blessing, bringing a ray of hope for a true beginning of social and economic reform. It’s not an anti-democratic or anti-American trend that is taking place, as we are being led to believe by a shamelessly lying government and a conformational press. What’s happening in the Latin Down Under is not really about us, it’s about them; about people freeing themselves from us, the ‘corporate America’ that has kept the powerless in those nations as permanent beggars, at times mistakenly looking northward for alms.

At this point, all we have seen is nothing more than the unlocking of the gates to allow passage of both political reform and economic equity for hundreds of millions of Latin Americans. Whether or not these peaceful socio-economic revolutions succeed, and to what degree, remains an experimental unknown for now.

What the governments of Ortega (Nicaragua), Chavez (Venezuela), Correa (Ecuador), Morales (Bolivia), Lula (Brazil) - or the more acceptable, to the US government, political evolutions in Chile and Argentina - give us as a bottom line a decade or two from today, assuming the US does not intervene, will determine success or failure and not any ill-founded demagoguery pitting socialism against capitalism. Capitalism, defined as properly regulated free-enterprise, should be able to co-exist and thrive under almost any form of socialism. Only predatory capitalism will shrivel and die a natural death.

One thing we feel safe to bet on: results, no matter how dismal, cannot possibly be as bad as those obtained in the past under predatory capitalism, even if blasphemously camouflaged as free-enterprise; not for 70 percent of the people in the region, perhaps a much higher figure in some nations with larger indigenous population. The people are simply fed up, and have been saying so where it counts: at the ballot box. They are shouting to the four winds: enough!

For almost two centuries, Latin America has been Wednesday’s Child for the US. No sooner had the Iberian colonies asserted their independence in the Americas, that it was made known to them all new nations in the Western Hemisphere - British Canada excluded - were under the protection and foster care, of fair and wise Uncle Samuel. And for almost two centuries, the parasitic relationship between the Northern Giant and the Southern Lilliputians has not changed.

My own personal exposure to this Gringo-Latin relationship started at the tail end of the Alliance for Progress which had began a decade earlier by John F. Kennedy with little in the way of funds, but much hullabaloo and tear-jerking rhetoric to counter what was seen as a possible communist threat from Cuba to ‘US interests.’ An overall failure, since it was unable to meet even the pygmy goals stated in 1961 at Punta del Este in education, health, and economic well-being for most Latin Americans, it is symbolic of what the US had done before, or what has done since in Latin America. The US invested less than $1 per individual per year, and that insignificant figure was not even in net transfers of resources and development.

The Alliance for Progress was little more than a PR job that could not cut the mustard with even the simpletons among economists. Who could believe that the powerful elite would allow any land reform, or more equitable income distribution, or more restrain by the powerful in abusing those who lacked power; the powerful being the team of corporate Yanks and local-elite? Dictatorships multiplied during that period with our consent, and often with our direct help, and for all our freedom-talking rhetoric we helped hang democracy in every town square. As for anecdotes, I have dozens of them, many as an admittedly participant, and where the Agency for International Development (USAID) was but a sad joke. Can anyone fathom the US guaranteeing low interest funding for low cost housing which ended up being owned by top military brass and business elite (Bolivia) or similar projects having the rich as beneficiaries?

Enough! No more PR safety-valves for global exploitation by predatory capitalists and their supporting governments. Doesn’t it make sense that Latin Americans are ecstatic as America, under Bush, pays full attention to the mess it has created in the Middle East ignoring its Latin protege’ Can we, at least this once, let people in other parts of the world determine what’s good for them� instead of homicidally intruding in their affairs?

It would be most difficult to refute that Bliss is being ignored - by the United States!

Tags: bolivia, brazil, bush, cuba, ecuador, foreign entanglements, foreign policy, Global, latin america, middle east, nicaragua, politics, venezuela
Categories: Commentary, Global, Politics, Foreign Policy
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