Following our discussion on Thursday, defining terms — Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Capitalism and The Yankees — several parallel stories have appeared that suggest the struggle and the tension we discovered in our exercise, in our discussion.
Please examine these, carefully, and again per group (each group, except one, still is behind and has to do the Scott Page post), determine HOW these stories define Democracy/Capitalims/Us and HOW these stories parallel Empire of Illusion.
The first story is from Terry Gross’s Fresh Air, ” ‘Citizens United’ Ruling Opened Floodgates on Groups’ Ad Spending.”
The next 2 are not stories, but rather, commentaries. First, Bob Herbert, writing for the New York Times, in Policy at its Worst, tells us that, “We can’t put the population to work, or get the kids through college, or raise the living standards of the middle class and the poor. We can’t rebuild the infrastructure or curb our destructive overreliance on fossil fuels.”
The next opinion, also from the Times, is by Charles M. Blow, High Cost of Crime. Here, Blow informs us that, “Our approach to this crime problem for more than two decades has been the mass incarceration of millions of Americans and the industrializing of our criminal justice system. Over the last 25 years, the prison population has quadrupled. This is a race to the bottom and a waste of human capital. A prosperous country cannot remain so by following this path.” Take a look at how much a single murder costs — then ask yourself: why do we incarcerate more people than anyone else in the industrial world?
The last story, which parallels Hedges’ chapter, “The Illusion of Wisdom,” and written by the indefatigable Camille Paglia, was sent to me by Izzy Ocampo. In “Revalorizing the Trades,” Paglia asks, “what if a student wants a different, less remunerative or status-oriented but more personally fulfilling career?” She responds to her question, saying that, “There is little flexibility in American higher education to allow for alternative career tracks.”
In a moment, Paglia sounds a lot like Hedges:
Jobs, and the preparation of students for them, should be front and center in the thinking of educators. The idea that college is a contemplative realm of humanistic inquiry, removed from vulgar material needs, is nonsense. The humanities have been gutted by four decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and insular identity politics. They bear little relationship to the liberal arts of broad perspective and profound erudition that I was lucky enough to experience in college in the 1960s.
Examine each of the stories and the editorials, then discuss, online, how all this fits our notion of the struggle for democracy, our struggle for the truth?
Both “Citizens United” and “Policy at Its Worst” represent how misguided the United States’ priorities have become. And “The High Cost of Crime” and “Revalorizing the Trades” represent the consequences of our misdirected energies and attention.
The Supreme Court’s ruling stating that corporations can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns and ads shows how corrupt democracy in America has become. All this ruling serves to do is give those in power even more power to affect legislation and sway our system to their own benefit. Giving more power to corporations and rich individuals is essentially the same as taking it away from the middle and lower-classes. The American political system is moving further and further away from the “one vote for all” system, to a corrupt system run by those most able to make “donations”.
In “Policy at It’s Worst”, Bob Herbert talks about how, as the U.S focused externally, internally we have been crumbling. Our inability to build the railroad tunnel is just one example of “government policy at it’s pathetic worst”. The internal decay that Herbert described reminded me a lot of how Hedges portrayed the inevitable future of a society based on illusion, where the powerful serve their own needs as the masses suffer.
Paglia describes how this decay has taken form in the education system, where a liberal arts education is an illusion and students are no longer pushed to become contemplative and inquisitive thinkers (eerily similar to Hedges viewpoint).
This decay is also evident in the rising levels of crime and incarceration (and the huge monetary burden associated with this), as describe by Blow in “High Cost of Crime.”
The U.S government’ domestic policies (which have been geared towards benefiting corporations and the rich) as well as our foreign policies (including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and campaigns against Pakistan)have had serious consequences. The corruption of our education system, deterioration of our infrastructure, and rising crime levels are just a few manifestations of a very sick system.
-Zoe, Joey, Ciré, Fred
“Citizens United’ Ruling Opened Floodgates On Groups’ Ad Spending” discusses the Supreme Court ruling that lifted restrictions on how much money corporations, unions and individuals could spend on political ads. This is an example of our capitalist society, where uncapped spending by big name corporations influences, what message we are delivered by the politicians who are supposedly in office to fight for our rights. The article specifically talked about Republicans, but all politicians, Democrats alike, are influenced by funding they receive. Even the stipulations regarding the ruling are ambiguous. There are loop holes that politicians use in order to avoid “non-political activities” which the majority of the funding needs to go towards. Peter Stone, of The Center for Public Integrity, says that independent groups have been “running these so-called issue ads which tell the viewer that so-and-so is not very good on healthcare issues and (ask viewers) to please call or write Washington with your concerns.” It is actions like this that Faber describes in “The Struggle of Ecological Democracy” that makes the people from poorer neighborhoods not have access to equality of participation in government. Also, these loop holes allow international companies to donate, putting some of the political influence in our country in the hands of foreigners. The elite have the power to influence politicians and the rest of us just wait to be told what they want us to know.
The Op-Ed articles by Bob Herbert and Charles M. Blow both addressed questions about the development of America. In “High Cost of Crime,” Blow asks why is it that we’re spending so much to put people in prison and keep them there, when we could’ve avoided the whole mess by having a “competent educational system and a more expansive, better-financed social service system” to prevent crimes. Perhaps the reason why we incarcerate more people than anyone else in the industrial world is because we’re not spending enough on preventing crime. On a side note, the article mentioned Rwanda as a country that has a lower annual murder rate than the U.S., but one should know that because of the genocide of 1994, the current government is very invested in the prevention of any trouble resembling the hysteria of the genocide. Blow makes the answer very clear: “pay a little now or a lot later.”
In Herbert’s op-ed piece “Policy at Its Worst,” he talks about how America has regressed in terms of developmental projects. We were once known for pioneering projects such as the Marshall Plan, the G.I. Bill, the world’s highest standard of living, the world’s finest higher education system, the space program, and on and on” but today we are hesitating on building a tunnel. Especially since the railroad tunnel would help the local economies of New York and New Jersey, be beneficial to the commuters, and prevent them from driving, which would help decrease pollution.
-Sonam, Cooper, Mike, and AJ
very well done — very thorough. But in the end, what are we left with? Can we respond with some answers? Might Page help, anything in Faber? Emerson even?
I’m sorry in replying late to your questions. I thought about them over fall break while reading Faber.
In the end we’re left with as Faber describes is environmental policies that only help the rich, and dump problems (i.e. toxic waste) onto the poorer neighborhoods, bureaucracy that prevents changes to the capitalist system and economic stagnation. These issues are addressed by both Herbert and Blow. I believe that Scott Page’s idea of leveraging diversity might be helpful in that cognitive diversity would help us bring different points of view on these views and lead to solutions that might not be previously thought of. As for Emerson, he says that the poet can imagine beyond what we see and incorporate all the parts and articulate it to the people, maybe this is what we need after all- a comprehensive understanding of what the environmental policies are and how we can work to change them.
In the article “Citizens United” the main discussion is how independent groups are spending an overwhelming amount of money on political ads. These independent groups have been allowed to spend an unlimited amount of money on these political ads as long as they spend the majority of their money on non-political activities. Unfortunately these groups are finding loopholes that allow them to spend excessively. This relates very closely to our struggle for democracy because these independent groups are greatly influencing the ways that we select our government representatives. The corporations are supporting these government groups for their own capitalist benefit and not for the benefit of the American people. As Hedges says in Empires of Illusion, “The corporation is designed to make money without regard to human life, the social good, or the impact of the corporation’s activities on the environment.” (Hedges, 162) Hedges is saying that the corporations have no motivation to be beneficial for humans, their only motivation is to make money, which often comes at the expense of democracy. In addition to spending excessive amounts of money, these political parties that are receiving monetary aid do not have to disclose where they are getting their money. With the power to swing presidential elections, these major corporations must be controlled in order to preserve what little democracy we still have left.
In the second article, Bob Herbert notes a shift in America’s focus from infrastructure, which could provide thousands of jobs and opportunities to reduce pollution, to military spending in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. Government officials who are elected through the skewed system of campaigns with the help of groups’ generous yet undisclosed political donations, opt for this military-based society. This is where the problem lies for U.S. democracy. The unemployed citizens who need work do not have a say in these matters, although it is clear that more infrastructure policies need to be initiated for the sake of economic activity and in Herbert’s commentary, the reduced commuter traffic and pollution that would result from building a desperately needed railroad tunnel between New York and New Jersey. Similarly, Hedges discusses the illusion of war in his chapter “The Illusion of Literacy.” He explains, “the truth of war could not compete against the power of the illusion. The truth did not feed the fantasy of was a ticket to glory, honor, and manhood.” Americans tend to have a misconception of war, which is part of what fuels our heavy military spending. Our perception of the truth of war is deluded by our government’s insistence on such spending.
In “High Cost of Crime”, Charles M. Blow discuses the heavy expenses that the American population is burdened with as an affect of crime. He says that research has shown that individual murders can cost over 17 million dollars and rapes cost almost half a million dollars, which sums to insanely high costs for our society. Toward the end of the article he starts discussing the governments approaches to the issue and the prison industrial complex, and how they are all wrong and ineffective. Blow argues: “Many crimes could have been prevented if the offenders had had the benefit of a competent educational system and a more expansive, better-financed social service system…people who took a wrong turn, got lost and ended up on the wrong path. Those we can save.” In Empire of Illusions, Hedges argues in the chapter “Illusion of Wisdom,” that the educational system in the country-more specifically higher education—is solely being used to create an “educated elite.” The educational system is teaching skills and training people to make money but not to question or analyze society. Hedges says: “Schools have to teach more than skills. They have to teach values. If they did not, another Auschwitz was always possible” (90). He is arguing that crime and such is possible, like Blow says, because education system is not teaching Americans morals but rather maintaining the wealth and success of the elite. This is what our struggle for democracy has come to.
Even More Deeply Concerned,
Jack, Nick, Alex, Dorrie
Unsure how this — “the truth of war could not compete against the power of the illusion. The truth did not feed the fantasy of was a ticket to glory, honor, and manhood.” — relates to Herbert’s assertion that we need a tunnel from NY to NJ?
Democracy and Freedom are not free and always require “a struggle.” In the end, you say, “This is what our struggle for democracy has come to.” But in everything you cite, every article, radio program, even the texts from the course, there is no sign of a struggle, rather there are signs of an unconscious civilization, one that has let things go, slip by, which is what I argue, doing your assignment, more or less, in The Uncanny Decline.
Now, since as we see in Hedges and Faber, democracy and freedom are struggles (this is true, of course, following our discussion in class last week), where do we go from here? How do we use what we, in class, know now to engage and then to initiate a struggle that’s meaningful? What evidence is there that this struggle is indeed going on? May 350.org be one such example?
In Terry Gross’s Citizen Fresh Air “Citizens United” he talks about how political campaign fundraising has become increasingly corrupt. Political candidates, especially Repulicans, no longer have to disclose where they receive their money. Now that corporations can spend an uncapped amount of money on political ads, it can be inferred that business will play an increasing role in the political sphere. As we discussed in class, democracy in this country is no longer defined as equal opportunity and rights for everyone. Political success in this country will now be directly controlled by the wealthy and corporations, and the middle and lower classes will be left out once again.
The next article, by Bob Herbert, explains how the US is able to spend endless amounts of money on the military but for some reason cannot build a tunnel from New Jersey to New York. The article illustrates how our country has slowly moved away from an industrial based economy, and we are no longer able to construct basic infrastructure for the greater good of the public. We live in a military based society, and are unable to restore areas of our country that are in dire need of improvement, such as the levees of New Orleans.
In the third story, Charles Blow describes how our nation has spent a huge portion of its budget on incarcerations and crime control when we should be focusing more on prevention through education and social services. This problem could realistically be fixed if we started spending more money on education with the hope that it will reduce the rate of crime and thereby the costs of incarceration; however, at this point, the American public is focused on investing money in areas that will give them immediate benefits.
From these articles, it is apparent that we are moving away from a fair, democratic political system in pursuit of a more capitalist economy.
Deeply concerned,
Charlotte, Emily, Hig, and Liam
Okay, so you’re concerned. So what? What does “to be concerned” mean? Look at my reply to the others, above, and see what you might come up with as a response to this “concern.” I’m concerned that we’re moving into colder weather, so I brought out my warmer clothes. What warm clothes are you guys providing, based on what you’re reading in this course, and based on example throughout.
By the way, Terry Gross is a woman.