♣ Today the US economy runs on a profligate system of fiscal libertinism, a system of profiteering without reserve, responsibility, regulation or consideration for the sad lot of the average American citizen, a system favoring wealth and endorsing a winner-take-all mentality. Wall Streeters and big money in general have us all back on the same cyclical pre-Roosevelt juggernaut, the runaway roller coaster that’s made regular stops at economic disaster throughout history and which in fact induced the infamous crash of 1929.

Oddly enough, knowing this, our government has been lifting prudent regulation of Wall Street and business at large increasingly since the Reagan years, regulation duly imposed both during and after the Great Depression. Today it’s all but totally non-existent. More, the US government does precious little nowadays to curb the nasty trend toward business excess, power mongering and hindrance, even exclusion of lesser players, although each infraction has served in some measure to undermine American freedom while undoing our democratic process. Likewise, our government does precious little in curbing today what’s tantamount to greed, unbridled greed that courts destruction, rampant greed that history tells us guarantees destruction. “All aboard!” seems to shout a frenzied clique of business and government people met at the head of the wild carnival ride, a snide grin curling up their sickly blue and frothy lips “Next stop: Major depression.”

It’s like the Supreme Court ruled the most crucial human right in the US Constitution the right of man to make money, then decreed it take full precedence over all other rights and human effort, forget that the very right emerged ambiguously under the heading of free trade and the even more ambiguous themes of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Certainly such vague ambiguity renders the seemingly favorite human right, the right to make money or more aptly, big business’s right to make money, liable to clash in both interpretation and practice with the right of the less endowed to make money or otherwise gain themselves some feint semblance of life, liberty, yes or some ghostly form of that most profoundly ambiguous of ambiguities, the pursuit of happiness.

Meanwhile, given official license in recent years,  carte blanche to do whatever it pleases, big business continues to play fast and loose with the economic system and the devil take the hindmost, the hindmost being, as usual, a disinherited mass including several indiscreet rich and a huge preponderance of average as well as sub-average wage-earners doomed to plunge headlong into poverty and hopelessness. Meanwhile, given official license, carte blanche to do whatever it pleases, big business continues to play fast and loose with that which ought to be everyone’s economy but will only become everyone’s economy when final disaster strikes, when the rich take cover behind their wealth and the common man is forced to pick up the pieces.

–♦©M. D. Phillips–awincingglare.com

♣ I recently read an artacle on Rudy Giuliani in which the former New York City mayor, like artful pols before him, used the “hates America” scam against a rival. The man seemed sure that like the rest he could put the thing over and the ploy was aimed directly at the president. The ex-mayor claimed Barack Obama hates America. Forget whence the alleged emotion was said to derive or at that rate just exactly when, how or why.

I wouldn’t dream of printing all the trumped up details. I won’t be shill for cheap, dense, shallow and odorous falderal, for lame, primitive, overused falderal like the “hates America” scam on any account no matter the source or  the target. The American public has all too often borne the wiles of duplicitous pols presuming to glean falsity in the hearts of their opponents. The mere suggestion that Obama hates America and that some sagacious pols have the power to divine that hatryyttsrsea the man it is preposterous. It’s rhetoric so concerted and transparent it can only ring asinine from the tongues of those who belch it, must pain the ears of the discerning when they hear it.

More the fib has lain acrid in the mouths of those who know better ever since its ill-planned inception.  Here Giuliani repeats it for the umpteenth time however.  A vile scrap, harsh and inedible, a bite that swallowed square from the start, this certain food for thought far exceeds the limits of bad taste. It’s tough, slimy, full of rind, well past its shelf life. Partaking of the swill is kin to getting a dish of crow from one who can’t taste, one sharing a meal he should be eating alone, one fit to draw tang from nothing well enough to glean that on the menu tonight is roadkill, for dinner this evening is turned, moldering, indigestible crow, lousy, decimated, mashed by the tread a thousand tramping motorists.

Barack Obama hates America? Rudy knows. Rudy sees. Rudy can tell. It’s all so clear to Rudy, ah Rudy, the great Rudy, man, myth, legend, The Majestic Giuliani, crystal gazer, seer, psychic, soothsayer, sage guide, guru of the American political heart. In this mean-spirited, boldly presumptuous claim the ex-mayor appears to be charging voters, like hordes before, with believing a pol would never spew such salient rot if it weren’t undeniably true and unless he himself were truly insightful, prescient, maybe psychic, certainly firm in his deep devotion to party, bold in engaging its foes. Wow! All this cheese in a single pronouncement. No wonder Republicans love it. So, it seems that among the benighted Rudy just can’t lose. Some stubborn part of his thick and gooey crud is bound to stick.

At the heart of this brutal, baseless, untenable albeit cunningly scandalous statement lies a metaphor for the dregs to which politicking has sunk of late. The ruse invokes precisely what’s wrong with American politics nowadays. This rash claim, though soft inside, remains misleading, quite deceitful, very powerfully effective in smearing even the most resilient of public figures in less discerning  quarters.

At the core it’s libel and slander. It’s textbook propaganda. It’s the rash and groundless charge of a desperate man designed to portray the accuser as keen, intrepid hero, the accused as loathsome, despicable cad. It’s a vicious lie, an egregious wrong inasmuch as it’s been fabricated to lionize a demon and demonize a lion, paint a betrayer of trust patriot, a statesman traitor.

It’s a bowl-faced lie at that, having been plotted quite knowingly, willfully, calculatingly. It’s a deliberate lie that’s been justified through smug rationalization without a tenuous fiber of obvious compunction, the plotter boldly embracing the deed for the loathsome sham it is. Politics, after all, mimic warfare by certain accounts and the proverb says that all in war is fair–even defrauding the American public I guess.

We could always believe, of course, that Giuliani and his ilk really do possess a rare perspicacity or genuine clairvoyance that make them alone privy to the otherwise cloistered hearts of rivals–and wouldn’t they bristle to know it. This is just what they want. It’s precisely what their shooting for. The schemers would all do well, however, to mark how little psychic skill it takes for the average American voter to spot lies and sophistry, the pretense of extraordinary insight or flagrant attempts to assassinate the character of a colleague.

Conjuring up a maelstrom of sound and fury, of course, as the magician with his stock smoke and mirrors, the charlatan easily hides the fact he’s not prescient, obscures the fact he’s irreversibly prone to spouting wild innuendo keenly calculated to slur his opponents, bold insinuations measured for effect instead of tame statements  based on some semblance of truth. So it follows then that endlessly, in lieu of fresh ideas, the will for change or sound solutions to tough problems, we the public, the American voters are subjected to a merciless pummeling by trumped-up charges, a brutal squashing by senseless, off-topic attacks and low  blows, a cruel dicing up by absolutely the cheapest of all cheap shots. It ought to go without saying and yet, sadly, it must be said: The American people deserve much better than this.

At whom is all this nonsense directed anyway? What impoverished manner of vapid demographic is inclined to trust this thinnest, nastiest, most disingenuous of all political language? Is anyone else nearly  as tired as I of hearing this altogether absurd, inane, worthless and dishonest rhetoric bantied about, used to death in place of any viable discussion, real discernment or direct speech in public officials’ assessments of each other, used to death in place of insights into the crux of pressing issues which absolutely beg for resolution, used to death by those too dense and ill-informed to know how outright silly, terribly wasteful and clearly devoid of all veracity such sedimentary muck as the “hates America” scam is to begin with?

As if Barack Obama suffers the strain endemic  to the office of President out of some sort of spite. As if he could  hate the very nation he aspires to lead. As if any American enters public service because he hates his country. As if any politician has a gift with which to grasp his rivals’ hearts when in fact he’s lucky to grasp the very folly in a suggestion that he fosters such a gift in the first place, lucky if he can grasp, much less resolve, the grave problems which confront him every day as an official to begin with.

Rudy, gimme a break. Be a mensch not a witchdoctor. Get some new advisors. Do something, do anything only slough off the psychic demonizations, please. Spare me this emptiest of puerile, shopworn rhetoric. I’m a grownup after all.

–♦©M. D. Phillips–awincingglare.com

 

§ ♣ These days, completely surrounded by sweeping digital science, I can seldom feel that erstwhile solace, that conciliatory flush, that liberating sense of being truly alone, serine, free, myself–inviolate.

We can shed our gadgets, roam the woods, hike the mountains, sail the seas, wander the barren deserts to our hearts’ content but henceforth we’ll always know what we can’t unknow. We’ll always know what we can’t deny, decry or defy ever again. We’ll always know that now the world and everyone in it are little more than cybergame caught and writhing captive in a monolithic web of countless other prey inextricably sewn together, not by the warm and silken threads of family, faith and fellowship, conjoined, not by the soft satin strands of brotherly love but rather always, wholly, inevitably, irrevocably by the sundry, taut, intractable bonds of inorganic science. We’re all potential cybercatch, cyberkill, cybermeat, today, tomorrow, ad infinitum.

Science works wonders every day in human services like health, communication and manufacturing. At the same time, it’s lessened our humanity significantly and done the odious deed at great expense to our  freedom. Like most progress, certainly progress undergone for profit, new technology is oversold, overused and overbearing. Nowadays progress has invaded every aspect of our lives under the auspices of science, often pointlessly. This is because profiteers have sold us on the bogus trope that modern, trendy, well-equipped and obligatorily cool mean hysterically drawn to every new advancement on the horizon.

All of a sudden we can’t survive without them, never mind that life was good for many years before the tech revolution. Not all that long ago, life was much simpler, more private, more palpably sociable. Back then life was more innately interactive, more relaxed, more blithely down-to-earth. It was joyous, more celebratory and free, quite devoid of that intrusion grown ubiquitous and ultimately disruptive on the social, mental, moral and emotional planes. That pervasive and eventually disquieting intrusion brought much broader unity for sure but then with many added superficial bonds and in their wake a new pejorative conformity and spiritual isolation.

At last cold technology has snatched a soulless place in the protean limelight, donned the flighty crown to become newborn if nonetheless provisional star of the day. It’s the graven image of choice now, displacing all disposable human idols, the most engaging if somewhat pedestal-bound demi-gods of yore, just deified flesh themselves but still living things with long trains of humanizing culture abaft.

Since the dawn of civilization human beings have paid deference to the nonpareils, the very few astute in certain ways come to aid, bolster, validate, the extraordinary, the emulable, the creators, great instruments of culture who have toiled, taught, enriched, inspired, icons, kindred spirits, a whole parade of artists, writers, actors, musicians, philosophers, a panoply of social, religious, political and corporate leaders. Nowadays we eat, drink and sleep cold technology. Some even genuflect to mute, indifferent science. The lifeless beast is more important than we are at last.

Now we’re always home, always available, always there for the outside world and its superfluous intrusions. We’re never, ever away, remote or incommunicado, even when making the hollow claim to have gone fishing. Think of it. We’ll never know the consummate solitude of an ordinary fishing expedition ever again unless we choose to leave our cell phones at home where they belong. For that matter, who in their right minds would risk the panic of insecurity apropos to such reckless abandon?

Wherever we go, whatever we do, we can never evade the salient fact that we’re all electronically interconnected. We’re stuck like flies in the byzantine monstrosity of a dark, sprawling, unbounding, fast-binding, co-opting, soul-crunching, all-consuming, inescapable spider web, entangled in this complicated network of invisible cord that mocks a door to freedom while in truth it’s just a huge, duplicitous trap that reins us in, curbs our liberty, skews our instincts, numbs our grasp, and writ large makes atavistic carrion of us all. More, all this interacts with new, updated, pluralistic, decidedly more sophisticated and all-encompassing modification to unbridled capitalism, the course original long since tinged by the aboriginal, a new-fangled greed machine, a strange new electronic commerce edging too close to world-wide cannibalism. Keep a careful watch for the Black Widow.

Everyone feeds on everyone else in this day and age. Worse than that, feeding time is all the time. Cue the fertile hunting grounds of Facebook, where every day we bare our very psyches for the amusement of strangers merely masquerading as real and trusted friends and where these seeming friends consume  voraciously every day the most intimate details of our own contrived, cut-rate personal lives.

This once worrisome act, now banal, quite routine by simple dint of everyday need and repetition has at last become acceptable and more or less reciprocal.

Add to the bleak scenario all the other bane of social media. Look at the runaway rancor, malice and hate speech released by rampant cowardice in the safety zones of ensured anonymity, yes, on Facebook again but too on such vehicles as You Tube, Reddit, Twitter, Twitch and way too many others.

Today, clicks away from each other, everyone dishes on everyone else. That’s the fact, the inescapable truth. Well, bon appetite. Me, I’m gonna stand back, stay back, kick back, hold back, hark back and turning an eye to sanity make a last-ditch effort to just “simplify, simplify.”

–♦©M. D. Phillips–awincingglare.com

♣ With July 4th days away and Election ’16 in the offing, now’s an excellent time for lovers of freedom to rise and decry what surely marks the worst travesty ever to jam the halls of American justice:   Yea, that’s right, Citizens United.

In 2010 the earth shifted slightly on its axis, caused a seismic jolt which skewed the very cornerstones of the Supreme Court building and precipitated a lapse in judgment of mythical proportions. Heads reeling, minds bent, emotions frazzled, the High Court lifted former bans on the use of corporate, union and other organizational treasury funds to buy direct political advocacy, that is, forsaking former commitments, the Court voted to let wealthy organized money interests pay for political marketing tools like advertising, sound bytes and documentary films with which to laud and promote their favorite candidates. It effectively gave powerful profiteering concerns carte blanche in soliciting votes for or against certain political candidates, the underprivileged citizen and his meager vote be damned.

While the Court continued blocking use of group treasury funds to make direct monetary contributions to candidates and political parties, it did rule that entities like corporations, unions and other select organizations comprised groups of individuals just like you and me, individual speakers whose freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment.

This of course begs the question of why certain Americans  get to be recognized twice for their individual right to freedom of speech, once as individual voters and once as individual members of groups helping to buy elective office. Since when do Americans get to both vote and buy elective office? At that, since when do Americans get to buy elective office at all? More, isn’t it the individual members as a collective whom the Supreme Court has given both the right to vote and the extended right to buy public elections, those members as a collective, meaning corporations, unions and other organizations as a whole, simply put, meaning Big Money?

Conceding the fact that spending money is paramount in advocating for or against any political candidate, the Court decided that spending of group treasury funds on electioneering communications constitutes an extension of individual speech, that hence curbing political advocacy expenditures of groups who wish to do so is the same as curbing their individual members’ right to speak on political issues and is unconstitutional. Whoah, step back. Since when does money in any capacity mean individual speech and doesn’t this concept give the rich more say than the poor?

From the Court’s perspective, henceforth, corporations are not to be seen as vast, prodigious money mills maintained by a few wealthy and privileged elites of tremendous influence. Rather, they’re to be viewed as mere collections of individuals who gather, like members of any sewing circle or barber shop quartet and whose own freedom of speech is limited only by the amount of money they have to spend on election campaigns. So where does the power of the individual vote come into play again? Where do those with less money find even ground? Why do the rich get the advantage? Is this the Court’s idea of equal rights?

At one point the Supreme Court conceded the fact that its former decisions against group spending for political things were founded on equitability, that they were made with a prodigal eye toward fairness which only found them unfairly restricting the speech of some and not others. The Guarantee of  fairness, it ruled, is not the High Court’s prerogative after all.

Wait a tick. Fairness embodies justice, does it not, the same justice driving the pledges of freedom, equality and human rights in the US Constitution. Isn’t the fairness described by the Court as misplaced, on the contrary, quite perfectly placed given how sharply aligned it is with the virtual backbone, with the veritable spirit of the US Constitution?

Doesn’t the Court’s interpretation of that same justice epitomized by the Constitution and forged into federal law by the legislature, constitute in fact the precise interest, meaning, purpose, function and prerogative of the Supreme Court in the first place?

Isn’t the job of that noble organ to interpret both Constitution and federal law, vetting along the way the Constitutionality of, that is, the ultimate justice of, the plain and fundamental fairness of federal laws for man and woman, strong and weak, rich and poor?

In any case, the Supreme Court overruled its prior decisions regarding group contributions to politics, some in total, some in part, as the new rationale demanded. It eschewed the code of fairness once cherished, now deemed inappropriate and expanded the bounds of American free speech to include the ferocious, monolithic, fascistic, selfish and insensate, money-grubbing machine of commerce.

It championed equal rights for the privileged and their machine, making unequal representation, warping of democracy, debasement of the vote, despotic trespass into democratic processes by wealthy individuals and robotic corporations entirely legal. So,  what was the point of democracy again?

For equality’s sake the United States Supreme Court placed the wealthiest one percent above the vast majority and the souless superpac above the sacred ballot box. It chose to play Robin Hood in reverse, serve a more pragmatic order of freedom and justice, an order of exclusivity, the ancient order of money, license, privilege and perks. Well, so much for nobility. So much for equality. So much for democracy, freedom and justice.

Sadly the Justices Kennedy, Roberts and Scalia, under a rare, flash, collective descent into Asperger’s Syndrome, failed completely to make the distinction between a dedicated, obsessive-compulsive, greed-driven cyborg of the rich and a real, private, individual citizen of the United States, the one inclined to act in pure self-interest, quite indifferent to any and all social repercussions, the other prone to act, both for or against his own interest, always sensitive to the most subtle impact on the public.

     Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy 

Accordingly, they failed to rightly calculate or invest themselves in the outcome of their dubious choice. They just let stand an ominous homogeneity, one sure to imbue the political system with tremendous amounts of loyal corporate lobbyists who make, interpret, rule upon and enforce American law in the interest only of big business and the elite.

     Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.

They failed to address the great yawning divide between extremely powerful special interest groups able to influence the tides and average Americans who, despite how often they cast their cheapened votes, can never compete with iconic TV ads, slick propaganda films and all the crack teams of ingenious image makers, who can never lift an empowered voice to politics in America, obscured as they are by the enervating eclipse of big money.

     Justice Antonin Scalia

Tragically, in writing support for Citizens United, arch-conservatives Kennedy, Roberts and Scalia only genuflected to corporate power and left he average American citizen, he for whom the Constitutional rights of the individual were designed, without a solid leg to stand on (he was handicapped already), grossly undermining democracy in principle and in practice.

It would take an Act of Congress now to right this blatant wrong, this horrible blunder, this anathema to American democracy. I guess I’m only one of many Americans who appreciate the devastating effects of this landmark compromise. The bulk of us are sleep walking, however. Wandering over savage ground in a somnolent haze of normalcy bias, we’re liable to miss even the most urgent of threats.

Warm, cozy, cosseted in the lap of this luxurious land with its compliment of freedom, health, abundance and security, we strain to see whatever lies outside the norm, that which is not simple, not distinctive, not immediately obvious. Contrary to most film depictions, the pernicious and malevolent are inclined to be more banal, clichéd, less than dramatic and though acting out in plain sight, they hide themselves from view.

We Americans are light, comfortable, satisfied, incredulous to begin with. If there isn’t some god-awful ogre on the loose, some horrifying creature out growling and seething, off scowling, gripping torn entrails in its razor-sharp teeth as it wends a path of bloodstained destruction through the bourg, then jeeze Louise, there mustn’t be a threat.

We free are a slumberous lot, contented and oblivious. Collusion is a mute, insidious, ever-waking bed of snakes slithering in the grass through which most of us somnambulate. It might be time to sober up completely and for good, join the fray lest we’re bitten or we oversleep and wake one rainy morn to find our liberty and our country long gone. Sweeping change alone can restore proper freedom, objectivity and equality to the nation right now, form a truer, more practicable democracy. Who’s to do it? When? Where? How?

Combine the lengthy, overwhelming, pre-existing influence of the rich, corporate lobbying of congress and ownership of media, less taxing of rich than middle class, deregulation of banks and such economic hazards as the haywire deals and fly-by-night policies of the careless past, new control of state prisons by private corporations who profit only as inmate populations increase, disinheritance and abandonment of public schools to private institutions which generate profits, huge, oppressive college tuition costs prohibitive but through pricey student loans and eventual near-sale of countless college graduates into indentured servitude just to pay them off, arbitrary restriction of voting rights, bans on collective bargaining. Combine these wild concessions to profit with Citizens United, the newly elected right of corporations, unions and other organizations to greatly influence and tacitly buy political office wholesale and you’ve got what appears a coup de grace for American democracy.

But no, no, I don’t believe it’s over yet. There remain opportunities. Notoriously, the wheels of justice move very slowly but there do exist broad systemic channels, means of changing any trend, law or court ruling, reestablishing balance and guaranteeing justice for all. It’s an uphill battle, sure. Let’s face it, that graduating slope is growing steeper every day and while I don’t think it’s time to sound a death knell for democracy yet, the process ain’t feelin’ too good. I’m hopeful as are many but we mustn’t let eternal hope resolve itself to numbing complacency.

At last it should be clear to those of every political stripe that one elite, highly organized and mobile ruling class does exist, a tight, exclusive organization of the wealthiest Americans who disdain, evade and all but dismiss democracy but where it serves their own selfish ends, put first their own discrete wealth, power and privilege, though, ironically, there’s no telling how long they’d keep any of  these outside the auspices of a viable democratic process.

It may not seem the case but I appreciate money.  I don’t abhor wealth and I’m quite business-friendly. After all, both directly and indirectly, these factors come together to establish my living. They afford me needed food, clothes and shelter. Most importantly though, they keep me off the federal dole that I mightn’t test or undermine that much more vital state-run institution, the American corporate welfare system.

In fact I’m not at all averse to money, wealth or business.  I believe in the need, the right, the opportunity and the freedom to make a living, to succeed, grow and prosper in terms of monetary gain  if it serves one’s values. There are other fine pursuits, however, worthy aspirations quite frequently devalued, rebuffed and thwarted at the hands of a mainstream business mentality.  There are other income groups deserving of freedom and opportunity, if not exactly equal, then at least more manageable in relation to those of huge corporations.

I believe adamantly in the free trade system. It’s just that even here things have gone so far awry in recent years in view of stingier business philosophies and winner-take-all attitudes, each grown to overtaking that once extant if not pervasive traditional American view that all ships float on a rising tide.

As long as there’s democracy, as long as there’s the concept of money and the freedom of man to make it, the private sector,  private business, private wealth, private money at large will play a key role outside the democratic process.  It will spark and infuse political fervor, dialogue and debate for obvious reasons. Since there’s proof, though, that it can’t be even so much as a cog in the works of a true democracy without utterly skewing the delicate scheme of that people-centered government, in none of its permutations should private money ever venture inside the democratic process.

When will American government come to realize that private money has no fair place inside the democratic process. Politicians parse in perpetuity over separation of church and state and meanwhile let the worst corruptive force in human history, money, override majority rule and dictate government policy which favors the rich and disinherits everyone else. Democracy and oligarchy cannot co-exist.

So where’s the nation headed? Will a choice be made at some appointed time or will the country simply ride the strongest current toward one pole or the other? I can’t rightly say but on this Fourth, as we get up, kick back, cook out, take in favorite sports and duly celebrate our many sacred freedoms, we would all do well to measure such incursions on those freedoms as Citizens United and the many other encroachments we find growing exponentially day to day. We would all do just as well to weigh the devastating impact of these treacherous incursions on the fate of American freedom and democracy, their impact on the destiny of we the American people in general. Jus’ sayin’.

Happy Independence Day, America!

–♦©M. D. Phillips–awincingglare.com