Category: Politics

Day 6 – Capitalism

Daily Story Project, Politics

Can I limit my definition and concerns about capitalism to only 500 words? Let’s find out!

I was listening to a podcast last week that I will not name; just using this as a jumping-off point. The hosts are generally liberal or left-leaning, and the normal topic of the show is the tech industry, but because of a reader question they were talking about tech CEOs and what they could do to push back against things like anti-labor practices, wealth inequality, and resource exploitation. In other words, the hosts were talking about capitalism, especially as it’s practiced in the early 21st century here in America and the world.

And one of the hosts said that they like capitalism. Specifically they said they like some parts of capitalism, some parts of socialism, but that neither one of them is the complete picture of how to organize society.

And that struck me as just dumb. It’s that whole “moderate” view where you try to thread the needle so you don’t take any particular stance. And my one thought was, how does this person define capitalism? Because by my understanding, there ain’t nothing good about capitalism in the basic idea. I would love to ask this person for their definition, but that would probalby just end up in an argument, and generally I like this person and their tech and social opinions.

Instead, here’s my baseline understanding of capitalism, and how it’s been running lately. The base idea of capitalism is that it’s good to accumulate capital. Capital is whatever tangible goods, objects, factories, or labor needed to make things people need. Capital is classically the machines and factories used to manufacture goods, but that ignores the very real labor that the workers in that factory also provide. The labor is also capital, human capital.

Folks with the most capital are called capitalists. We generally don’t examine, at least outside of lefty circles, what or how those capitalists accumulated their capital. How did they have the money to buy or have factories built? My inclination is that most of them inherited it, and then through the process of underpaying for the labor and overpricing the output, kept accumulating profits that gave them even more capital.

Because that’s the ethical failing, as I see it. Labor will always produce a surplus. A leftist thinks that the laborer should retain most if not all of that surplus. A capitalist, though, claims to own that surplus because they own the factory. To my mind, that’s a tautology. The factory was itself built by labor, and labor was underpaid for that construction, because the capitalist retains ownership of the property.

Capitalists, are, definitionally, profit extractors. Rent-seekers. That’s how they accumulate capital.

Let’s briefly touch on what capitalism is not. It’s not the concept of money, or markets, or buying and selling. All of those things existed before Adam Smith tried to define a new economic model. Capitalism is also not the idea of profit; that, too, existed previously in human history. Funnily enough, excessive profits was seen as a negative, nearly a sin, definitely a moral failing. It’s just that it was called usury (and to be quite honest, applied in a very discriminatory and racist way.)

I’d love to bring back the accusation of usury, but I’d apply that to billionaires. Are you with me?

The Rumsfeld Doctrine

Politics

Back in the mists of time there was a website called Geeks Against Bush, founded by friends and me, trying to write about politics from a liberal (for me at least not yet “leftist”) but techie point of view. I wrote a lot of posts there, but sometime after Obama got elected, Caleb stopped renewing the domain, and the posts all fell off the internet. But the one I am most proud of was my post about then-Defense-Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s cynical and heartless military doctrine.

I’m in the process of going back over my backlog and updating the links, and I managed to find the text of my original post about The Rumsfeld Doctrine on the Wayback Machine. Below you can find the full text.

The links below may or may not work, though, as of this posting. I’ll need to update them, I’m sure.

Nothing is ever really gone on the internet, after all.

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The Way You Held Me Up When I Was Down

Politics

Today was a heartbreaking day, a day I have been dreading since the election, a day were America swore in as president possibly the worst American in our time, a man whose biographers agree is self-centered, insecure, and a bully. A man who ran a campaign of hate and divisiveness, a man with a record-breaking commitment to lying lies. An admitted sexual predator. The list goes on.

And in my heart of hearts I know: Donald Trump is not a unique snowflake. There are still plenty of people in our country who see nothing wrong in that list above. They may even frame it all the same way I did, and even then, think that behavior is a reasonable reaction to the world today. I know how we got here, I do. As much as I didn’t want to face it, as hard as I tried to believe we were getting better, I knew: America still has plenty of anger, hate, and bigotry.

We need to face that head-on if we want to come back from this, I think.

My depression stems from the sinking feeling that we have to fight it. On the other hand, on a more positive note, as a friend pointed out to me: my goal is clear. There is no disputing the very wrong ideals that are showing themselves now: racism, sexism, hatred of the poor. And fascism. Actual, for reals, corporate-interests-before-everything-else, fascism. Turns out, it can happen here.

Because the evil is now so clear, because evil’s supporters are now so vocal, it’s easy to identify them and that makes it easy to resist. If you ever wondered what you would have done when the Nazis rose to power, well, now’s your perfect chance.

Fight. Fight smart, but give no quarter. Hatred may be on the rise but this time we have a chance to knock it back for a good, long time.

Resist.

Make art.

Sing.

Dance.

Laugh.

Love, and love everyone.

And support those who do all those things, too. We’re all in this together. We are all individuals, but we share a purpose: making this world a better one for every single human.

Fascists hate all of that.

Herding Cats Is The Perfect Analogy

Politics

A friend on Facebook shared this essay about the political left in America infighting, by Sammy Leonard, and it’s got me thinking about how differently the right and the left operate, at least in America.

Disclaimer up top: if you weren’t already aware, I consider myself a liberal, democratic socialist, leftist, communist… all of those. My tagline for the longest time was “a little to the left of Bernie Sanders,” and that was before Senator Sanders ran for president and suddenly everyone knew who he was. I supported Bernie in the primary, right up until he was clearly losing, at which point I switched to the Democratic nominee, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I did that for pragmatic reasons, not idealistic ones. I did it because the GOP nominee was Trump, and having him in the White House would be beyond disastrous.

Lucky us, we get to see if my (and so many others’) fears are accurate, alas.

Back to my main point, however. The above-linked article shows me that among the left, there are large demographics that are still holding on to their ideals and not joining forces with other left-aligned groups to make common cause against a clear and present danger like the Trump administration is shaping up to be.

Why doesn’t the left know how to work together?

There are probably many reasons, but let me offer at least one. Liberals all tend to operate from a particular frame of reference; they share ideals and goals. One of those shared goals is the idea that speaking up, dissenting to an authority figure, is a net good. Liberals like to protest, they like free speech, they don’t automatically accept what our leaders tell us without some evidence behind it.

I’m generalizing, of course, and it’s somewhat easy to find counter-examples of conservatives protesting, dissenting to authority, and valuing free speech. What I’m suggesting is that liberals put all that higher in priority than do conservatives.

A more top priority for conservatives, baked right into the name, is preserving order, following chains of command, and offering deference (often spoken of as “respect”) for authority. Let the leaders lead, they say. This ideal gives the right the edge in organizing against a common threat, and that’s the part that those on the left either never had, or have forgotten about.

Many electrons have been spent outlining the demographic differences in the Republican and the Democratic parties. The GOP is largely older, largely white, largely male, largely middle-class or better off, while the Democrats include large coalitions of blacks, Asian, Hispanic, LGBTQA, younger voters, and more women. That is a consequence that arises when the left champions ideals of inclusiveness and diversity.

What that means is that the left has some learning to do. Specifically, liberals need to learn better how to avoid infighting, how to accept that people are imperfect and may not fully agree with each other, but that we can all push together on those policies and goals we share. Maybe we can even learn to help people in other coalitions to achieve what they need even if we don’t fully agree with them, as long as they can help us when our goals are being tested.

It’s a strategy that has worked for the right, which is made up of at least three large coalitions with differeing goals: the Christian authoritarians, the neo-con geo-political strategists, and the pro-gun pro-capitalism paleoconservatives. When crafting their party platforms, they make sure that every faction gets some attention, so they can count on every group working for the overall good of the party (often at the expense of the country and the world, at least in my view).

The Democratic Party doesn’t really operate like that, and it shows in the fault lines we continue to see today. Bernie Bros are still bitter and angry at what they see as party leadership pushing Hillary Clinton as the nominee, for right or wrong. Blacks are upset at being abandoned over the very serious issues of being a black person in America, which to this day results in far too many deaths; Sec. Clinton did not really address this in her platform, although black women still turned out in large numbers for her anyway.

And Cory Booker gets reamed for a non-binding vote that’s seen as being anti-Bernie, when in fact it wasn’t Bernie’s bill (he was a co-sponsor but Sen. Kobluchar authored it) and Sen. Booker voted for Wyden’s far more direct bill, despite supposedly being in Big Pharma’s pockets. I have to admit, I fell for this smear, too, and repeated some memes showing how terrible Booker was, without knowing all the facts. I can get better.

I hope we all can get better, the faster, the better.

Do You Believe It’s Day?

Politics

I told myself I’d write every day this year, and man, have I missed that goal. I guess 2017 only 14 days old, so it’s only 3.8% over, and there’s a lot of ground to cover before we call it done, but with the mood I’ve been in this winter, it’s hard to see the bright side.

It’s been a long winter already. The long winter followed a long fall, and a stressful summer, and the incredibly anxious spring. Let’s face it, 2016 was more trash than treasure. There were bright spots, to be sure, but it all happened under a cloud for me.

I have plans to get things together this year. All of those plans include a daily component because I’m trying to build habits. I’ve learned that motivation is a fickle muse, but habits keep you moving along towards your goals. Once something becomes a habit, it’s easier to do it than it is not to do it. Like brushing your teeth, or going to the cafeteria on your break and getting some bacon. Maybe that last one is just me, though. But can you blame me? Bacon is amazing.

Of course, the political situation in the most egotistical of the Americas is part of the gloom. Love him or hate him, Trump appears to be taking great delight in breaking every single norm, custom, or law on his way to the inauguration. Picking his daughter for First Lady and keeping an expensive Secret Service detail in New York to protect his wife. Firing every appointed diplomat just because. Keeping a private security force for himself instead of the Secret Service. Firing the head of the security detail for the inauguration during the inauguration. And so much more; I can hardly keep track.

And all the tweeting. Every morning, the man who will be leading arguably the most powerful nation in the world gets up, checks his Twitter feed, and starts hitting back. There’s no stopping him. It’s unnerving. And possibly distracting and confusing. It’s hard to keep track, which might just be the perfect description of America these days. We’re angry, unnerving, confused, and clearly hiding something, as a nation.

On a personal level, I’m also glued to my Twitter and Facebook feeds, and it’s freaking me out. I keep wondering what’s next, while also dreading whatever news I find. It’s not healthy, and I don’t know how to stop. Maybe I should delete those apps and just take a break. A writer I love, Sady Doyle, mentioned (on Twitter, of course) that she made a promise to pitch or blog instead of thread or long-form on Twitter, and that would also be a useful rule. It’s one reason I’m here and writing stream of consciousness style. I’m training myself just to sit and write and not edit.

Training my attention span is part of my plans to get things together this year, too. I remember being able to sit and read for hours at a time but these days my attention wanders whenever I try that. The few things I can sit and do for hours now are watch videogame let’s plays or play videogames myself. Except for last night, when I fired up Skyrim and was barely into it for an hour, and most of that was just getting my character back to their home base, ignoring all the possible quests. Once back at home my Dragonborn laid down and slept for 12 hours, which made me feel a bit sad.

So I saved my game, quit the app, and went straight to bed myself, where I slept for 9 and a half hours. Sigh.

Tomorrow will be better.

Dear Electors

Politics

I composed and sent this email to the members of the Electoral College on the evening of 18 December 2016, just prior to their vote to select the winner of the US Presidential election. Posting it here for the future.

I could have said more. I should have said more. I will say and do more, and more, in the days ahead.

But this is what I said two days ago.

Dear Electors,

My name is Brian Moon from Portland, OR.
I don’t even know how to describe the fear and depression I have felt since finding out that a minority of voters have somehow managed to provide enough electoral votes to put the dangerous demogogue Donald Trump into the White House. He is a man who lashes out at the slightest resistance, enabling his angry and armed followers to inflict violence on the most vulnerable people of our country; hate crimes have increased dramatically after November 8th, particularly in my home state of Oregon.

With Donald Trump’s blundering bombastic Twitter account, he has already raised tensions with China, a nuclear nation with whom we compete and attempt to trade, and that’s even before Donald Trump has taken office. Who else will suffer if the leader of the free world tweets without thinking, once in office?

And Donald Trump appears to be planning on using the highest office in the land to rake in more billions. He has used the office to expedite stalled business dealings around the world and I do not believe he would be making decisions based on the interests of the people, but rather his own personal gain. If there are consequences, again, it won’t be him paying them; it will be us, the rest of the country.

Please consider your duty to the nation, and to the Constitution, and put that ahead of party or tradition. America, all of America, needs to be served, but most especially, those who do not have a national voice except in our numbers.

Thank you for your time and consideration, I appreciate and respect the role you serve in our electoral process.
Sincerely,

Brian Moon

Tour Portland’s Political Underbelly

Politics

I’m reading (well, listening to the audiobook of) Nixonland by Ron Perlstein and Portland’s been mentioned as a location twice, even though I’m less than a third of the way through. First, Nixon was in a hotel here during the campaign for president Eisenhower; Nixon was the vice-presidential candidate, and there was some controversy about a slush fund, and Eisenhower was apparently pressuring Nixon to bow out. Instead, Nixon doubled down, and two days later, gave the infamous “Checkers” speech, where he deflected criticism by showing off an adorable Cocker spaniel. (To be clear, the speech was given in Los Angeles, in the El Capitan theater).

The second mention was when Nixon started a boiler-room phone bank operation here to spread misinformation about a political opponent.

That got me to wondering if I could track down the actual locations. Would it be possible to find the exact hotel room Nixon stayed in? Is the building where that phone bank was situated even still standing?

It felt like it was turning into a project that an author like Tim Powers would love, and I love Tim Powers’ work. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I imagine I would feel something like haunted, standing in a place where Tricky Dick worked his weird anti-charisma magic. Language and communication and consciousness are deeply affected by context, and that particular context is difficult for me to resist.

And that got me to thinking: what other Portland buildings, rooms, street corners hold the not-actual-ghosts of some of Portland’s infamous political history. We’ve had our share of home-grown seedy politicians.

  • Neil Goldschmidt, once a rising star of the Democratic Party, went from Portland City Commissioner and Mayor to US Secretary of Transportation under President Clinton, to state Governor. He was probably going to make a run for president, but some investigative journalism uncovered a victim of his: a woman revealed he had been her statutory rapist, back in the 1970s, during his tenure as Mayor. She had been 13 or 14 at the time.
  • Bernie Giusto, The Teflon Sherrif, had been Goldschmidt’s bodyguard but eventually rose to elected official himself as Sherrif of Multnomah County, a position he was forced out of in large part because he lied about knowledge of Goldschmidt’s rape during the state’s investigation into the matter.
  • Bob Packwood, Senator from Oregon from 1969 until he stepped down in 1992, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was discovered to have been sexually abusing and assaulting women during his political career. He’s no longer in public office, but he’s apparently doing quite well, sharing his expertise in government funding with a large number of private firms as a lobbyist.
  • Going further back, Oregon was under Federal investigation as the center of organized crime and corruption that went all the way to the statehouse. The Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, a.k.a. the McClellan Committee, as part of their investigation into Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, found out about a plot by the Teamsters to bribe, blackmail and extort their way into power in Oregon. Recordings of conversations with Jim Elkins, a Multnomah County crime boss whose specialties were brutality and illegal gambling, were played on national television, to 1.2 million viewers, in 1957.
  • Portland Mayor Sam Adams, three weeks into his first term in 2008 and enjoying wide popularity, was accused of sexual misconduct with an intern by the name of Beau Breedlove, who had been a teenager at the time. Adams admitted to the accusation. Despite the resulting scandal, and with Beau Breedlove appearing wherever and whenever he could in the local media to remind everyone of the scandal, Mayor Adams was cleared of criminal wrongdoing and served out his full term,  retiring from public life to become the director of a non-profit devoted to climate change.
  • Then there was Police Chief Derrick Foxworth, who, in 2006, got caught via email for sending sexually explicit emails to a subordinate. He was demoted, and filed suit against his accuser, but remained employed until he retired a couple of years afterward.
  • The last truly local scandal I can recall without more research is Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen, was forced to step down after his affair with a policy advisor was made public. When his emails and text messages were published he was found to have enjoyed support from the union president, too, who had known and warned Cogen about the affair a year before.

There’s a bunch more, going farther back: land fraud in 1908, Sen. Hatfield’s graft in 1984, Police Chief Harrington’s improper collusion with drug dealers in 1986. But I was specifically trying to find ones that may have ties to a Portland, or, at least, Multnomah County, location.

Portland is seen as incredibly liberal, and generally, politically, it is, but there’s another side of the coin that doesn’t get as much play. Our political leaders seem to enjoy, or maybe I should say take flagrant advantage of, our native sexual permissiveness, only to find that public opinion about that can turn on a dime.

Martian thoughts about a confrontation in NW Portland

Politics

I can’t stop thinking about this post. I saw it Sunday, on /r/Portland, and read it, and lots of the comments, both from the original poster, and others arguing against him or praising his actions.

In the vast majority of those comments (827 as I post these words) I didn’t see my own thoughts reflected. But maybe my point of view is so different from those around me that they might as well be from Mars.

The OP clearly states, in the post and further comments, that he feels powerless and vulnerable. More than anything else, he wants to feel safe. From his post, he’s threatened by the man he drew on, of course, but also by the petty criminals, tweakers, and homeless people he sees all over his neighborhood. But even more so, he’s disgusted and powerless against the mayor, city government, and law enforcement.

But he’s also a man who plays by the rules. He pays his rent, and his taxes. He works within the rules of his neighborhood and building management. And, again, in his own words, he has tried to soothe that fear by buying guns. 40 of them, over the course of years; he admits to only owning 12 right now. He’s followed the law in getting a concealed handgun license (CHL), and from his words it’s clear he’s knowledgable about how and when to use deadly force.

He’s staying inside the lines, but he sees those lines being ignored by people everywhere; both the authorities, and the common citizens. So he still feels powerless, and vulnerable. And that is not a good way to feel. No one should feel that way.

And so, in the Pearl District, while he was out walking his dog, a man rode quickly past him on a bike, the OP reacted as if he’d been wounded, and a confrontation happened.

I’m glad that no one involved was physically injured or killed. I’m happy that all three of them (let’s not forget there was a dog involved, a labrador/whippet) walked away.

The reason the OP cites for not actually pulling the trigger, despite the training he received that drilled in to him the idea that he should not even draw if he is not willing to fire, despite his training to shoot to kill if he’s going to shoot at all, despite his fear being enflamed by the actions he describes, is that he was too, yes, afraid: afraid of being second-guessed by society, law enforcement, and the media.

I’m not going to second-guess him. I don’t know what happened, exactly. I am far from an expert on gun laws or even the kind of training given to those who feel the need or desire to carry a handgun. I’m sure that if you’re reading this, you either know about my own feelings on the topic or you’re just a couple of clicks away from finding out. But here, that’s not my point.

In contrast to the OP’s dehumanizing language, though, I bet that the man who had a gun pointed at him also feels powerless and vulnerable. I know I’m speculating here, but it’s just for a moment, just for this paragraph. I bet that bike-riding man feels just as abandoned by society. But because of the different paths each man has taken through life, they each express that deep fear and loathing in different ways.

One goes riding through the streets of one of the richest, most developed neighborhoods in the city, screaming and yelling, ready for a fight.

The other walks his dog, a gun at his side, wishing the police or government would do something about the petty crime, ready for a fight.

We’ve alienated both of them. We need both of them, and so many more, back.

Past as prologue

Movies, Politics, reviews

In 1985, I was 20 years old.

Of all the factors that our society considered the hallmarks of adulthood, I had some but not others. No job, no car, unable to drink alcohol legally, still living with my parents. Yet I could vote, I had a steady, long-term girlfriend, whom I had met in high school. I was not a virgin. And I could think.

I knew that I was a citizen of the United States, and that the country and the leadership of my county were locked in a deadly enmity with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, and that the weapon of choice for expressing that animosity was the nuclear bomb. Both my country and the enemy had access to nukes; horrible weapons that did not just destroy the target, large targets, targets the size of large cities, but which also rendered the targets uninhabitable for decades, centuries, and caused deformations and illness in any victim unlucky enough to have survived the initial blast.

And both sides didn’t just have one or two or a dozen of these bombs. They had hundreds. More than were necessary to merely “win” a “war”. Enough to wipe each other out, and every ally, and everyone else, all over the world.

The strategy being pursued by my government, and the enemy (my government told me), for prevailing over the enemy was astonishingly insane: the strategy was to build more and more of these bombs, in order to scare the other side into not using their own bombs.

The madness that you and I now live under, the madness that caused men in caves to fly a jetliner full of innocents into large buildings, and the madness that caused our country’s leadership to respond by invading a country they despised but had not direct connection to the attack of the men in caves, is almost understandable compared to my memories of the Cold War. Almost.

But back in 1985, it was such a horrible dark cloud hanging over the heads of all Americans that our responses were, by and large, anger. Punk rock is hard to define, but for me it will always include an anti-authoritarian, cynical, and political viewpoint, along with the feeling that, if we’re all going to die we might as well have fun. And punk rock was born under the threat of mutually assured destruction.

Punk rock was part of a sub-culture that included comic books and bad movies. And in contrast to the conduit that the internet gives to making sure sub-cultures reach everyone interested today, back in 1985 sub-cultures were both more tightly-knit and harder to find and join. I had few people with which to discuss the paltry few comic books I read. I had few people with which to pick apart the lyrics to a song by the Clash or Bad Religion. I had to come to my own conclusions, by and large, about what, exactly, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were outlining in their 12-issue limited series “Watchmen”.

I didn’t get it at first. I didn’t understand that the characters of Ozymandias, Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan were created out of whole cloth, with a complete backstory (there were previous versions of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre). I didn’t see the depth that the Tales of the Black Freighter, a story of pirates and survival at sea, gave to the main story of the Mask Killer.

But I did understand the alienation of John “Dr. Manhattan” Osterman, a man who was given nearly unlimited power and found himself more and more detached from the fragile people around him. I did understand the Doomsday Clock, which gave us all a sense of how close we were to annihilation by nuclear holocaust, and its use in the comic. I did feel deeply affected by the depiction of heroes as sociopaths: the Comedian and Rorschach had their bizarre twisted ideas of right and wrong, each a viewpoint I could see in those around me. Kids I grew up with who worshipped the guns and armor used in Vietnam without understanding or caring about the human cost of the same. Cops who saw evil and crime everywhere but never looked at how far into criminality they themselves descended. I saw the point of asking who polices the policemen; how do we hold accountable those who we entrust with our safety so that we can remain free?

And, of course, the madness of trying to win a nuclear war.

Who the Hell were these people? Were they really the same species as me? Yes, I often felt anger and disillusionment, but it nearly always turned inward. If I were faced with a Darth Vader, a dark father intent on corrupting me, I would respond as Luke Skywalker did in “The Empire Strikes Back” and fall to my doom rather than fight back. Protecting myself by wiping myself out, and fuck all y’all; you’re on your own.

I had no goals, I could see no future, beyond hoping I was still around next week, next month, next year.

I read every issue of Watchmen while standing in the 7-11 near my house. Standing in front of a wire rack in a convenience store, plate glass in front of me showing the ebb and tide of cars and customers in and out of the parking lot and the flow of traffic on the street beyond, hearing the bells and beeps of the video games and pinball machines off in the corner, and needing the brief escape from the emptiness of the rest of my life.

Yesterday I sat in a theater, beside my best friend from those days, and watched Zak Snyder’s adaptation of “Watchmen”. Many were the moments I remembered the kid I used to be; the feeling of the paper beneath my fingers, the look of four-color printing showing earlier versions of the scenes digitally projected onto the screen in front of me. I had not read the books in years, many years, and yet Snyder’s faithfulness to the comic’s words and images meant many small nostalgic moments during the 163 minute film’s run.

I want to know if anyone whose experience doesn’t include the hopelessness of living under threat of the entire world coming to an end can feel the same thing I felt watching the movie and recalling that I and everyone I know and everyone else might die due to the insanity of my government’s idea of defense. I want to know if anyone who didn’t try to escape entirely into a fantasy world, learning the ins and outs of costumed heroes and Jedi Knights and paladins and rangers and rogues, can feel what I feel when seeing those fantasies being portrayed by living human beings. Is that possible?

Are these feelings I have… nostalgia? That’s what I felt when watching “Watchmen”. So lost I was, and the world was, then.

Not sure we’ve come very far since then, either.