A Spending Freeze Could Worsen Jobs/Economic Crisis, and Follows the Path of Herbert Hoover rather than Roosevelt

Will President Obama follow the path of Herbert Hoover or Franklin D. Roosevelt in his attempt to lead the nation to economic recovery? That is the question that still remains to be answered, after his State of the Union Address.

Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, had the following to say about the Obama administration’s proposal to ‘freeze’ overall non-defense discretionary spending for three years starting with fiscal year 2011:

In all likelihood the unemployment rate will be higher in October than it is now, yet somehow the White House thinks it’s appropriate to begin reducing domestic discretionary spending at that time. Reducing overall spending when tens of millions of Americans remain out of work would be a disaster. It will condemn millions of families to years of avoidable economic hardships.

President Obama's . . . proposed ‘freeze’ is bad economic policy. It ignores the basic facts that deficit reduction must begin with job creation and economic recovery, offers little more than window-dressing on long-term deficit reduction, and inappropriately vilifies domestic spending.

Shifting federal spending from less effective to more effective programs is certainly welcome, but it doesn’t justify an overall spending reduction — especially not at a time when we need the federal government to inject demand into a severely weakened economy in order to create jobs. What President Obama should offer . . . is a bold plan to put millions of Americans back to work. To do anything less is to turn a cold shoulder to the needless suffering of millions of Americans and make any focus on ‘jobs’ simply rhetorical.

For more of Lawrence Mishel's statement, click here.

Toward a Sustainable State of the Union: What President Obama Needs to Communicate Tonight

"What happened here tonight can happen all over America." So stated the new Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown last week after his election night takeover of Ted Kennedy’s seat. If the somnambulant Democratic Party leadership wants to avoid the fate of having Scott Brown’s prediction come true, President Obama and the Democratic leadership need to engage a fundamental transformation of strategy.

That process of transformation could begin tomorrow night with President Obama’s State of the Union speech. To avoid repeating the mistakes of President Hoover, on the way to a one-term presidency, this State of the Union speech needs to do three primary things:

1. Emphasize an inspiring Vision of Sustainable Recovery and Governance for a democratic nation of, by, and for the people, not corporations.

2. Demonstrate President Obama is taking up the role of a democratic national leader, rather than trying to be a technocratic political manager of the narrow Beltway consensus.

3. Define an assertive Progressive populist Agenda for which the President will fight, as leader of the American people.

If President Obama and his administration are still inspired by the audacity of hope that helped them to win the election in 2008, here is the kind of message and vision that needs to be communicated in the President’s State of the Union Address tonight.

"Without vision, the people perish."

Vision--Develop an assertive Progressive Vision of government of, by, and for the People, not the corporations, by focusing on Sustainable National Recovery and Community Building.

Instead of constantly playing defense against an assertive populist minority on the right, emphasize your progressive vision of Democratic Governance for a Democratic Nation of People. Provide a larger inspiring vision for governing the country, one that engages the people of this country as participants in creating a Sustainable Recovery and an ongoing Process of Community Building assisted by a progressive government of, by, and for the people (rather than the corporations) that will put all Americans back to work in rebuilding their communities and the economy of the Nation!

Especially after last week’s Supreme Court decision, there is great opportunity and need to recapture the spirit and importance of the reasons our government over the last century was shaped to restrict corporate influence in order to preserve democracy from being destroyed by corporate power. Democracies are always fragile, and never more so in times of war and crisis. If we allow government to be taken over by the fear resulting from perpetual war and the power of money stemming from corporate control, meaningful democracy will have little chance of surviving in the U.S. during this century.

Since FDR’s New Deal was very fragmented and only partially effective, the Obama administration can provide a better and more Sustainable New Deal for the American people--if it grounds its strategy in a clear vision and a systematic strategy for addressing the requirements of economic and political transformation in the 21st century. A Sustainable New Deal focused on Recovery and Community Redevelopment can not only be more successful than Roosevelt’s New Deal, but can provide a vital platform for national and local transformation in this decade and beyond. Such a vision and strategy would allow the Democrats to lead the nation dramatically forward, rather than keep them in a position of continuing to fight on the margins of reform against a faux-populist Republican party that provides nothing but empty slogans and ideology to guide us further down the path to disaster.

Leadership--We Need Progressive Presidential Leadership, not Management, NOW!

We the People need a President who will not be afraid to take up the role of democratic political leadership of the people of the nation! We don’t need, and will eventually lose faith in a President Obama who rests content with trying to be another political manager of the Beltway politicians and their consensus (or lack thereof). We need a President who will provide the inspiring leadership of the People who elected Barack Obama to be their President. Allow your staff to play the role of managing the Beltway political process—that’s what they are hired to do. We elected you to do more than that. As President, you should be the political leader of the people of this country, and we need such a progressive leader now more than ever.

Tomorrow night, do not speak like a technocratic political manager! Instead, combine the impassioned and inspiring Obama of 2008, and of the 2004 Democratic convention, with the spirit of Presidents Lincoln and F.D. Roosevelt who came to understand and accept the role of being leaders of their country in times of national crisis. This means speaking beyond the audiences of the Beltway, to the hearts and minds of the American people. Use the vision of Sustainable Recovery and popular government for the people to take up the mantle of leader of the people of the United States, not simply of the other politicians within the Beltway.

President Obama, you have the ability to be an inspiring leader; don’t hide that ability under a bushel! This speech should rebuild our sense of the President as a popular leader of the country, not a mere political manager and technocrat of a Beltway-centric political process so narrowly and cynically defined that most of the American people have become disgusted with the very meaning of "government" associated with the Beltway. People have lost the ability to believe in government as a positive force for progressive change in their lives, their cities, and their country because no one speaks out in an inspiring way about all the valuable things government (beyond the Beltway) does and can do for the American people and for our common good as a people and a nation. The President as democratic leader should speak to this most fundamental of needs of a democratic nation.

Progressive Agenda--Define an Assertive Progressive populist Agenda you will fight for!

Grounded in a Vision of a Progressive Populist Government that will engage with and fight for the American people, and for a sustainable National Recovery and process of rebuilding communities, use this speech to define an Assertive Progressive populist Agenda you will fight for! Don’t get bogged down in a bunch of boring policy-wonkish details that make you sound like a politician and political manager rather than a leader of the nation. But use this speech to provide a clear and inspiring outline of the kind of systematic approach to progressive governing that will not only lead the country out of its current economic and political crisis, but also provide a strong and firm foundation for its future as it responds to the fundamental 21st-century challenges of war, climate change, and the crises of energy and economic transformation. These challenges are not going away, and will be a constant feature of this century’s historical development.

The President who can provide the people of this nation with a clear approach to achieving a Sustainable Economic Recovery and National and Community Development in the 21st Century will define the meaning of successful and positive government for generations to come (as did Roosevelt for the second half of the twentieth century).

This should be your trans-partisan (not bipartisan, which allows the combined limitations of both Washington parties to define your agenda) approach to developing an agenda for the American people, rather than the political parties. By focusing on outlining a progressive agenda for action on behalf of the American people that transcends the narrow limitations and petty politics of both parties, you can challenge the membership of both political parties, as well as Independents across the nation, to follow your popular progressive leadership. Absent this, you will remain hostage to the narrow and ultimately self-defeating agendas and battles of both political parties.

It is through defining a clear and inspiring progressive agenda for change, grounded in the vision of Sustainable Recovery and Community Building, that you can take leadership of the political process back from the reactionary forces governing both parties, and become a truly transformative democratic leader for the 21st century.

What would be some of the key highlights of a Progressive Agenda for Sustainable Recovery and Community Redevelopment?

First and foremost: A strong and primary emphasis on supporting and nurturing citizen and community engagement in processes of Governance and Policymaking, so citizens can take government back into their own hands for the purposes of sustainable development and community renewal. Effective participatory engagement in structures of local governance is crucial to the forms of sustainable community building and development needed to respond effectively to all the major challenges of the 21st century related to energy, climate change, and economic transformation. And the survival and flourishing of democratic government in this century depends on the rediscovery of popular and equitable participation in structures of governance that are not limited to the voting booth.

Second, the strengthening of effective and efficient social programs of education, health and human services, housing, food security, employment, and transportation under the more coherent and unifying umbrella of building sustainable infrastructure for healthy communities, is crucial to being able to defend and improve upon the national, state, and local infrastructure and structures of social services that people depend on for maintaining humane and decent communities that serve the fundamental needs and interests of the American people. Merely maintaining a focus on social program spending, and on restraint of such spending, in the absence of a new and inspiring vision and framework that gives people an understanding of what all social programs are for, is a losing strategy that feeds into the hands of all the reactionary forces that seek continually to cut social spending but have no problem with always increasing the budgets for military spending. This is neither a progressive nor sustainable strategy for the development of a democratic government and nation in this century. It is rather a capitulation of the worst kind to the reactionary forces that will defeat all movement toward a sustainable future.

An inappropriate emphasis on spending restraint in relation to the most pressing social needs of the people in the midst of a major jobs recession will do more to turn people against this administration than anything else could, while also ensuring that the economic recovery will fail to sustain itself. Any real economic recovery must be a jobs recovery, not merely a financial/stock market recovery.

Third, the promotion of progressive environmental and energy programs, on the order of New Deal’s TVA, are crucial to building a sustainable recovery. Here is where the most dramatic emphasis can be placed on clear programs for tying together sustainable economic recovery and community redevelopment through an emphasis on the promotion of fundamental and energetic initiatives needed to bring about the transformation of our national economy and energy grid to sustain a productive national economy throughout the century, while also protecting the global environmental commons on which all nations depend for their survival and flourishing in this century.

And last, the strengthening of effective and efficient regulatory programs to protect the interests and security of the nation’s economic and financial systems, along with the fundamental structures of democratic governance of, by and for the people, all of which can be so easily corrupted and broken down by forces from within or without.

NO MIDDLE ROAD to a Sustainable Future

The possibility of a compromising bipartisan middle road to the future disappeared during the eight disastrous years of the Bush administration.

Until the Obama administration and the Democratic Party wake up to this fact, they will be playing into the hands of the most reactionary forces of our political reality, and living in a dream world of the past. In the terribly fragmented and divided political culture of our present reality, there can be no middle road to winning the hearts and minds of the American people.

If Obama the President tries to play the role of political manager of a nonexistent middle-of-the-road consensus, and continues to follow the path of moderation and compromise, he will remain a mediocre president like Hoover who failed to rise to the occasion of democratic leadership and vision in a moment of national and global crisis. He will remain a President always reacting to the crises of each moment, rather than a President able to define and lead a democratic people and nation in turning crises into opportunities to redefine the nature of our structures of life and governance in ways that will help us not only to survive but to thrive as a people and nation in the 21st century.

In a time of crisis, to remain the same and follow the patterns of the past is inevitably to lose the struggle to define history. To remain a moderate in this crisis will mean being defined, limited, and eventually overwhelmed by the constant crises of our historical era.

President Herbert Hoover was defined by historical crises he was never able to rise above and command with a vision for national transformation and leadership. The first year of the Obama Presidency unfortunately followed the model of a Hoover rather than an FDR. But as we’ve seen from past presidencies, the first year does not need to define the course of an entire Presidency.

Obama was much younger than FDR when he took office, and so we can allow him the grace of time needed to discover and learn the necessity of assuming the mantle of national leadership in a time of crisis. This cannot be easy. It is obviously the most difficult of things, and no human being could do it alone. But President Obama has the hopes and aspirations and desire of the American people behind him, if he will have the courage to lead. Even FDR made many mistakes, and his New Deal was far from perfect. But FDR became a great leader because he was willing to lead, and take on the vast program of experimentation with passion and commitment to the common good of the American people and nation.

But the time for indecision within the Obama administration is quickly running out. The time for transformation of Obama the political manager into Obama the progressive democratic national leader has arrived, and tomorrow’s State of the Union is a pivotal opportunity for him to begin to make that transformation manifest.

Instead of accepting current political reality and beginning day one of his administration with a clear plan to fight and reverse the damage done by the Republican party’s disastrous framework of policies over eight years of misrule under the Bush administration, the Obama team seemed to have no clear plan for its first months beyond a moderate course of economic stimulus to correct the most severe aspects of the financial debacle, a commitment to health reform—without any clear will to fight for a public plan, and a rather bizarre commitment to seeking bipartisan cooperation with a Party that had just brought the country to the brink of ruin, and has continued to show it has no desire to change its ways.

In a situation where the Democrats won the most resounding political victory of a generation, and a clear progressive mandate for reversing the horrendous damage done by eight years of Republican misrule, the Obama team in 2009 seemed more interested in establishing a tone of reconciliation than a fighting spirit aimed at building on the tremendous popular achievement of the Obama candidacy of 2008.

Now, after the loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat and a Supreme Court decision that threatens to convert what remains of people’s democracy in this country into a façade for a corporate-controlled state, it is time for President Obama to assume the mantle of transformative democratic leadership the people of this nation are waiting for.

The people of the country want such a leader, and are ready themselves to assume the mantle of progressive leadership with him, to create the change that is needed. But in order to become a nation of transformative leaders, we need a herald to shine a light on our path, and to believe in the ability of the nation’s people to bring about this change.

While obviously not intended, the consequences of this somnambulant Democratic politics in 2009 are already beginning to manifest—in the victory of Scott Brown. Democratic sleepwalking has allowed the populists on the right to step into the gap and scoop up the vast energies and anger in the country against the deep economic and political inequalities evident to all, in ways that have set the stage for these libertarian-right populists to become the insurgent force for the election year of 2010!

Now the only question remains: Will the Obama administration and the Democratic Party awaken from its sleepwalking?!

If the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress do not quickly wake up and develop a progressive policy spine for battle, they will be paving their way to lame-duck status, and will be forced to limp through 2011 and 2012 on the way to the end of a one-term Obama presidency—a presidency that will be viewed by history as more like the Hoover than the Roosevelt administration.

But this tragic history has not yet been written, and we are not condemned to this historical trajectory. Everything now depends on how the Obama administration and Democratic leadership responds to the dramatic loss in Massachusetts, and what it signifies. Will the administration and the Democrats in Congress become even more cowardly, and lay down to die, as some in Congress already seem to be indicating they are willing to do? Or will the Obama administration and the rest of the Democratic leadership see the writing on the wall, and transform themselves into a Party of progressive Leaders willing to fight for the people who elected Obama to lead this nation in a new direction?

Unless the somnambulant Democrats and the Obama administration quickly wake up, and fundamentally transform their strategy into a clear and assertively progressive populist agenda, the Democrats should begin preparing themselves to become a lame-duck party on the way to a one-term Obama Presidency.

And so we must now pose to the Obama presidency, after its first year, the kind of challenge that the poet Robert Sherwood posed to F.D. Roosevelt at his 1933 inauguration:

[Can we trust] that you have fixed your eyes on
A goal beyond the politician’s ken?
Have you the will to reach the far horizon
Where rest the hopes of [the people]?

We hope, President Obama, that you will show us where you stand tonight--with Vision, Leadership, and a clear progressive Agenda.

To Pres. Obama & the Democrats: "Have you the will to reach the far horizon where rest the hopes of men?"

After his victory Tuesday night, Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts summed up the nightmare scenario for Democrats in 2010: “What happened here tonight can happen all over America.”

This loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a Republican for the first time since the 1950s does more to underline the fundamental consequence of Democrat’s sleepwalking approach through 2009 than any additional words can offer. And the message of this loss should now be loud and clear for Democrats across the country—especially for those in the Obama administration: Either wake up to the need for a fundamental transformation of strategy into one that is more clearly and assertively progressive and populist, and willing to fight! Or get ready to become a lame-duck party on the way to a one-term Obama Presidency.

At the inauguration of President Roosevelt in the midst of the Great Depression in 1933, the poet Robert Sherwood posed a fundamental question to Roosevelt on behalf of the American people:

“Are we sure that you have fixed your eyes on
A goal beyond the politician’s ken?
Have you the will to reach the far horizon
Where rest the hopes of men?”

At this crucial historical juncture for the Obama administration and the country, the American people need to pose this query to President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress.

Have you the will to reach the far horizon where rest the hopes of men?

During the four long months between the election of 1932 and Roosevelt’s inauguration in March of 1933, President Hoover did everything he could to try to tempt Roosevelt into abandoning his ambitions for the New Deal. As Arthur Schlesinger observed about this moment in The Crisis of the Old Order: “In the name of ‘cooperation,’ Hoover proposed that Roosevelt repudiate” most of the major policies that would make up the New Deal.

Roosevelt, however, made clear that he was not interested in this kind of “cooperation.” Instead, on the basis of a firm repudiation of Republican appeals, on the day of his Inauguration Roosevelt launched the greatest hundred days of institutional reform legislation this country had ever seen, and thereby laid the foundation for the programs of the New Deal.

President Obama’s first year, on the other hand, raises serious questions about how much of the potential for significant reform and the hopes he inspired for a second New Deal may have been surrendered in the months before his Inauguration by two parallel sets of compromises: (1) his decision to recruit for his economic/financial team representatives of the very financial elite that had set us up for the 2008 financial crisis and recession; and (2) his commitment to going out of his way to seek “cooperation” with a Republican party that had no interest in any constructive cooperation with the Democratic leadership.

Instead of accepting this political reality and beginning day one of his administration with a clear plan to fight and reverse the damage done by the Republican party’s disastrous framework of policies over eight years of misrule under the Bush administration, the Obama team seemed to have no clear plan for its first months beyond a moderate course of economic stimulus to correct the most severe aspects of the financial debacle, a commitment to health reform—without any clear will to fight for a public plan, and a rather bizarre commitment to seeking bipartisan cooperation with a Party that had brought the country to the brink of ruin, and was showing no desire to change its ways.

In a situation where the Democrats had won the most resounding political victory of a generation, and a clear progressive mandate for reversing the horrendous damage done by eight years of Republican misrule, the Obama team seemed more interested in establishing a tone of reconciliation than a fighting spirit aimed at building on the tremendous popular achievement of the Obama candidacy of 2008.

And because the Obama team so quickly and naively surrendered the tremendous power and potential of the political victory it had achieved, along with the opportunity for dramatic change offered it by the disastrous economic collapse that was the appropriate culmination of the Bush era, his team soon found, to its apparent surprise, that the popular anger and energy it had chosen to spurn and dissipate was instead being harnessed by the Republicans—against the middle-of-the-road Obama agenda.

Many inspired by the Obama candidacy had hope his election would bring about a movement for the restoration of a democratic government of, by, and for the people instead of the corporations and banks. But we were all quickly confronted with the reality of a President who had placed into leadership many of the financial whizzes responsible for the financial meltdown, and who appeared to be more interested in conciliating and appealing to the good graces of a Republican party committed to his failure, than to fighting for a progressive populist agenda that included a strong public health plan.

Instead of launching his Presidency with a strong critique of the last eight years of Republican misrule and errors of domestic and foreign policy, and building on the power of his victory to offer a strong and clear alternative agenda of policies that would reestablish the fundamental principles of a government that would fight for and with the people, against the corporations, banks and financial interests that had brought so much harm to the American economy and the millions of people who have lost their jobs; instead of using the historic victory of 2008 to establish a clear progressive agenda for a second New Deal, the Obama team’s somnambulant agenda of 2009 allowed most of the energy and hope of 2008 to be dissipated.

Instead of harnessing the transformative passion he inspired in the American people to fight for the restoration of a progressive agenda for government in 2009, the administration allowed these energies to decay into a free floating anger and anxiety that could be harnessed by others for anti-progressive purposes.

While obviously not intended, the consequences of this somnambulant Democratic politics in 2009 are already beginning to manifest—in the victory of Scott Brown. Democratic sleepwalking has allowed the populists on the right to step into the gap and scoop up the vast energies and anger in the country against the deep economic and political inequalities evident to all, in ways that have set the stage for these libertarian-right populists to become the insurgent force for the election year of 2010!

Only a sleepwalking Democratic Party could have squandered, in one year, the great opportunity offered for progressive populist renewal by the Obama victory of 2008. Enough said.

Now the only question remains: Will the Obama administration and the Democratic Party awaken from its sleepwalking?!

If the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress do not quickly wake up and develop a progressive policy spine for battle, they will be paving their way to lame-duck status, and will be forced to limp through 2011 and 2012 on the way to the end of a one-term Obama presidency—a presidency that will be viewed by history as more like the Hoover than the Roosevelt administration.

But this sorrowful history has not yet been written, and we are not condemned to this historical trajectory. Everything now depends on how the Obama administration and Democratic leadership responds to the dramatic loss in Massachusetts. Will the Democrats in Congress become even more cowardly, and lay down to die, as some in Congress already seem to be indicating they are willing to do? Or will the Obama administration and the rest of the Democratic leadership see the writing on the wall, and transform themselves into a Party of progressive Leaders willing to fight for the people who elected Obama to lead us in a new direction?

President Obama, in the words of the poet, the American people now ask:

[Can we trust] that you have fixed your eyes on
A goal beyond the politician’s ken?
Have you the will to reach the far horizon
Where rest the hopes of men?

Our hope has not yet completely died, but it withers a bit more every day…

The Patriotism of Stupid White Men?: Lapel-Pin Patriotism vs. Responsible Citizenship

As a person of European-Mediterranean heritage, the insistently shameful stupidity of white media pundits over this past week and weekend in response to the Wright controversy has made me so sick of heart that I've been compelled to write out some basic notes (for my own sanity’s sake, if nothing else) about what distinguishes the true patriotism of democratic citizens from the false patriotism of those whom Michael Moore has so appropriately labeled "stupid white men"—who often happen to be the most privileged and powerful in our society and politics.

(This suggests a new formula for the production of stupidity: whiteness + power = stupidity; and the more power and privilege one has--especially when that power is in the media or politics--the more stupid many seem to get....)

And PLEASE NOTE: since "stupid white man" is a state of being rather than a skin color or gender, you do not need to be either light-skinned or in possession of an xy sex chromosome to fit the category of "stupid white men."

Inspiration for these notes on patriotism: The white media pundits and corporate media structure cannot seem to get enough of asking Obama about his relationship with Rev. Wright. Instead of focusing on the real problems and policy issues confronting this country, they would rather focus on white noise, repeating the same dumb questions over and over again:

Why don't you wear a flag pin, Mr. Obama?

Why would your wife ever suggest she had problems with the way this country has been run, Mr. Obama?

Why did you wait so long to renounce your pastor, Mr. Obama?

Why didn't you hold your hand over your heart that one time when saying the pledge of allegiance, Mr. Obama?

No matter how many times Mr. Obama calmly (and with a straight face I could never maintain if I were faced with such blatantly stupid questions) answers these questions, the white pundits just keep asking them over and over and over again. It's at times like these that anyone who hasn't already recognized how most of the network news shows are dominated by clueless white pundits--who seem oblivious to how ridiculously out of touch and stupid they sound to anyone who is not protected by the insular power of the corporate media hierarchy--must be either comatose or blind.

After all, you would never hear Tavis Smiley asking such stupid questions!!! To the contrary, Tavis Smiley and Bill Moyers (a couple of guys who are not stupid) were the only major media pundits I heard criticize the way this whole controversy was being presented. Over the past month, since the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King, Tavis has had some of the most significant thinkers on race and politics in America appear on his show to offer critical commentary that has, without mentioning the Wright controversy, suggested the complete absurdity and vacuity of what goes for political commentary in the dominant white media.

It’s the intensity of the corporate media’s barrage of stupid questions that provides another overwhelming source of evidence--for anyone who still needs more evidence--of the fundamentally racialized power structure supported by our current media set-up.

Yesterday, for example, two major Sunday news magazines hosted by white men continued to devote a large percentage of their time on Obama to the Wright controversy, to the neglect of all the other real issues--including the need for a real conversation about racism in this country--that they could have been exploring with Obama.

Wolf Blitzer, on his two-hour Sunday program on CNN, spent almost 30 minutes on the Wright controversy. In his second segment on Wright--where his producers at least had the good sense to interview three black commentators--even after all three of his guests criticized the stupidity of the way the media has fixated on the Wright controversy, Blitzer kept right on pursuing the same line of questions on Wright, as if he had not comprehended one word of what his three guests has just told him.

I'm not a believer in conspiracies, but when you hear the same stupid questions repeated over and over again by every major media station and pundit, you begin to understand why it does not take a conspiracy theorist to emphasize the need for some kind of structural explanation of why so much of the media seems to be following the same stupid script.

And for Obama's "exclusive" Sunday interview appearance on Meet the Press, Tim Russert spent almost twenty of his 45 minutes of show time discussing the Wright controversy with Obama, asking the same questions we had heard twenty times over during the previous week. Obama stoically answered every question with more patience than many saints could summon, and this alone should serve as a major qualification for his presidential candidacy--since such patience and reserve will serve him well in negotiating with the toughest foreign and domestic dictators and bullies.

All of this media bullying by stupid white men compelled me to ask the patriotism question in a new way:

What distinguishes the patriotism of stupid white men from the patriotism of real democratic citizens who value the future of our beloved country?

Here are some basic answers I’ve casually noted (and I would encourage everyone to come up with a similar list, so we can all provide the corporate media and politicians some desperately needed aid in discriminating real patriotism from the easy patriotism of stupid white men throughout the remaining months of this political campaign season, and beyond--since whoever gets elected will need the strong support of real citizens to make sure our government begins to enforce policies that strengthen rather than weaken democracy. The last eight years of rule by faux patriots of both parties has terribly weakened our democracy, and four more years of such lapel-pin patriotism may do it in for good):

1) Real patriotism understands the fundamental value of criticism and critical thought, for the preservation of democratic government and policies, since without criticism of prevailing policies, we would never have seen the Revolution against the British that founded this country; we would still have slavery; and we would never have gained the semblance of democracy that we have today-- we would have fallen into dictatorship eras ago.

Faux patriotism insists that criticism is unpatriotic; thus Michelle Obama is considered unpatriotic by stupid white men because she clearly has the ability to think critically about the previous history of this country, and even dared to voice a critical opinion in public.

2) Faux patriotism believes the most important sign of patriotism is to wear an easily recognizable symbol of patriotism on one's sleeve or lapel or car--and therefore the easiest way to identify the unpatriotic is to simply note whether or not a person is conspicuously sporting a symbol like a flag, a red-white-and blue ribbon, or an "In God We Trust" license plate, etc.

Indeed, this is why the Nazis insisted that every good German sport a swastika--since this made it easy to distinguish those with loyalty to the Fuhrer from those bold or stupid enough to suggest they lacked this kind of patriotism. The easier patriotism is to sum up in a symbol, the easier it is for demagogues and tyrants to manipulate patriotism in ways that destroy democracy.

Real patriotism values the substance of how one puts into practice one's love of country and democratic citizenship, rather than the symbols one wears on one's sleeve. Real patriotism cannot be worn on one's sleeve, or demonstrated by pinning a flag to one's lapel pin. Of course, those who would prefer to rely on symbols over substance would love to make wearing a lapel pin the substance of patriotism, since this would allow them to cover up a host of actions that betray the opposite truth. And wouldn’t patriotism be oh so much easier if all it required were a shiny flag pinned obediently to the lapel every day? Then one could just ignore the difficulties of having to actually put into practice the values of democratic citizenship.

3) Faux patriotism believes it is entirely proper to mix religion and politics, in spite of some troublesome principles contained in the U.S. constitution, which attempts to draw a wall of separation between religion and politics precisely because of a long bloody history of tyrannical manipulation of religion and political power, which the founders of this country had the wisdom to reject.

But never mind the wisdom of the founders! On this issue faux patriots of the twenty-first century believe they are much wiser than the founders. These patriots seem to believe we should return to some of the grand old practices of yesteryear: If you’re going to run for political office these days, you’d better be ready to submit to religious truth tests. Not only must you be ready to submit to probes of your own religious beliefs and associations, but now you should also prepare to be held responsible for the words and beliefs of your pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams. Perhaps the next step in this progress toward religious tests will be to begin requiring the FBI to conduct background checks on every member of one’s religious congregation… (or, excuse me, are we already doing this?)

Real patriotism understands the reasons current trends toward bringing religious tests back into politics are fundamentally threatening to the future of democracy, especially when these religious tests are combined with all the other trends that indicate we are losing hold of fundamental principles of democratic liberty (such as freedom from surveillance in private spaces--What’s wrong, after all, with abolishing privacy altogether?! Now that the Soviet Union and communism are dead, why should we worry about abolishing privacy or creating a gulag system, since surely our own system of government could never fall into forms of tyranny similar to those of the Soviet system! After all, we’re all good red-blooded Americans, and we would never let that happen! Historical note: The Germans continued to believe that something like National Socialism could never take over their country, even as that very takeover was occurring in the 1930s.)

So, in sum, if you believe that patriotism can be reduced to pinning a flag to your lapel, denying the validity of any criticism of past or present problems in our country, and insisting on your right to interrogate the religious background of your political representatives, along with the beliefs of their religious leaders (and while you’re at it, of any other associations with suspect persons they might know)—you win the right to sport the stupid white man patriotism label to your heart’s content. Wear it with pride!

As for the rest of us, well, we’ll just have to settle for the harder and less conspicuous work of creating a more democratic and just Republic—the signs of which we cannot wear on our lapels or sleeves. As for me and my kin, may this latter kind of patriotism, along with great suspicion of all flag-pin wearers, flourish!

The White Republic's Bitter Pill

From Urgency of Now: Turning Point Blog--

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

These words were written, not by Rev. Jeremiah Wright in 2008, but by one of the most eloquent and famous American writers of the mid-twentieth century: James Baldwin (in his 1955 collection of essays titled Notes of a Native Son). After witnessing the frenzy with which the corporate media complex manufactured a major controversy out of a few poorly-chosen words by Obama during a private fund-raiser, we're now being forced to witness the explosion of the second phase of the manufacture of the Jeremiah Wright controversy.

We've seen how the corporate media has been struggling to structure this story in ways that set Obama and Wright against each other, so that our racialized Republic’s spectator-consumers can once again be entertained by the tragic spectacle of two black men fighting against each other. As Baldwin noted in the 1950s, “One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men.” Baldwin’s words are being proven all too prophetically true once again.

But the American people, not the corporate media complex, are ultimately in charge of determining how this controversy plays itself out in the current presidential campaign. There is a clear alternative path to the one the media complex is trying to lead the American people down by manufacturing a racialized spectacle that positions Obama and Wright as combatants in a mutually destructive slug fest.

To follow this alternative path, Obama and Wright can refuse and denounce this racialized set-up by the media. But more importantly, all the rest of us--who value our democratic citizenship and don't wish to have our political future dictated by the corporate media--can reject and denounce the racist spectacle that is being manufactured for our consumption and corporate profit.

As citizens rather than mere consumers, we have the power to choose a different path by refusing to participate in the production and consumption of such a racialized spectacle. And we need to be urgently asking--with Baldwin's words in mind--whether the U.S. media is not now in the process of turning itself and its public (once again) into monsters.

Citizens of this country are being invited to participate in the production of a slug fest between two black men. Instead of cooperating with this manufactured and racist media spectacle, there is another option for all citizens who care about the future of this democratic Republic: REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE in the creation of this spectacle, and direct criticism at the structural sources of power in society and the media that are working to produce this racialized spectacle.

Jeremiah Wright is part of a long tradition of critique of the injustice of specific American policies, dating back to the time of slavery. From the long biblical tradition originating with the Jewish prophets who understood the bitterness of oppression, to the ringing cries against the bitterness of slavery that founded the American tradition of social protest and provided foundation to the great twentieth-century American civil rights movement, an understanding of the "bitter" fruits of injustice and suffering has had deep roots in American culture.

Yet our national media pundits and certain politicians, seemingly "innocent" of this history, have suggested that Obama must be terribly "out of touch" with reality. Because Obama dared to state bluntly that many Americans are "bitter" about the current state of our economy and country mired in an unnecessary war draining the resources needed to address much more important issues.

Just as media pundits focused on Obama's clumsy choice-of-words while ignoring the primary emphasis of his statement in San Francisco, they also seem to ignore a fundamental message of Obama's campaign--which is rooted in the historical power of previous successful efforts at responding to the sufferings of the American people.

Faced with a government insensitive to the needs of the majority of this country's people--not to mention the billions of people of the rest of the world who will be most impacted by the effects of global climate change--and unwilling to play its proper role in altering the way we do business in the world, the very roots of the American Republic are turning bitter.

James Baldwin frequently used the word "bitter" in his essays. In doing so, he was reflecting a long tradition of American commentary that had already made "bitter" a fundamental adjective for describing the fruits of this country's unjust and racialized structures of power and privilege. In 1955 Baldwin had begun to understand both the bitterness and passion that fueled the creative drive of the civil rights revolution in the 1950s and 1960s.

But bitterness in response to injustice was certainly not a new phenomenon in the 1950s. Nor is it now. And it should therefore not be surprising that a major political candidate IN TOUCH with the suffering of the majority of the American public, should NOW use specifically this word to describe the current state of many Americans. What IS surprising is that major media outlets and punditry appear so ignorant and "innocent" of this bitterness in 2008.

This pretended "innocence" continues to reveal just how deeply rooted are the racialized structures of power in our dominant corporate media. And what remains unexamined is how profitable the production of such racialized spectacles remains in our unreconstructed Republic. If there is any justice in the universe, one positive outcome of this 2008 campaign season will be a significant breakthrough in understanding that brings the public to the kind of turning point that caused it to reject overt forms of segregation in the 1950s. But to bring about such a change in 2008, all citizens of this Republic need to utterly reject the racialized spectacle in which the corporate media complex would like to embroil us in the name of profit.

Since this media complex is driven by profit, one clear way for the American public to reject this racialized spectacle, along with all those who stand to profit from its production, is to withdraw financial support from any media sources that seek to propagate this spectacle.

If the American public clearly rejects this racialized spectacle, and turns its criticism against the structures of media power that seek to profit from the manufacture of this kind of spectacle, perhaps this Republic will yet be able to build the foundation for a better future of opportunity for all its citizens--free of the kinds of racialized inequity that will otherwise continue to reproduce inequality and injustice.

The willingness of certain political currents to label Obama "elitist" because he dared to name the disease embittering the soul of this country--along with the new attempt of the media to manufacture a black-on-black slug fest between Obama and Wright--offers the American public the opportunity for a fundamental turning in this election. Which direction the majority of the American public chooses to allow itself to be taken will determine not only the outcome of this election, but the character of the American Republic for decades to come.

After we were forced to witness the ridiculous facade of the staged ABC "debate" on April 16, we can only hope a majority of the American public will note how desperately the corporate media are attempting to distract us from our interest in discussing real issues during this campaign. If the American public allows its corporate media to continue to lead it by the nose along this absurd path of distraction, our Republic will betray its own best hope for transcending much of what has plagued its previous history.

We can only hope that enough of our fellow citizens will have the wisdom to see through this racialized spectacle being offered up to the white Republic for its titillation. And we can work to ensure that our Republic turns the tables on the media by rejecting and denouncing this spectacle in ways that demand greater accountability from our media corporations.

And wouldn't it be nice if our collective rejection of this media-produced spectacle would help to draw the entire country back to what should be the central concerns of this campaign year--regarding the future of this country and all of its people:

How will our newly chosen President work together with, and inspire, the American people to rise to the challenge of successfully tackling the major problems of global climate change, the energy crisis, increasing poverty and war that otherwise threaten to draw the entire country and world into a century of chaos?

The character of our new President will be determined by the character of our own collective action in the months ahead. And where our new President takes us will determine the conditions, for better or worse, in which we will live out our shared future.