Orwell Rolls in his Grave

I recently caught the film, Orwell Rolls in his Grave, on cable television here. I don’t normally watch much T.V. during the day, especially with Ben gone, and I just couldn’t watch SpongeBob anymore so I flipped through to FSTV, which stands for “Free Speech Television” and was airing on AccessTucson, a local channel. The film about Orwell compares the modern day political climate with George Orwell’s novel, 1984. The narrator in the novel, Winston Smith, works in the Department of Truth to create “spin” on all decisions made by “Big Brother,” a euphemism Orwell created for the ruling elite (sadly, I haven’t read the novel, only clips from it, so I plan to pick it up for this weekend). Anyway, Robert Kane Pappas, the director of the film, equates the tightly-controlled media in the U.S. to the “Department of Truth” and illustrates how “spin” can draw support from common people while the ruling elite gather the profit. The conservative right’s ability to incorporate religious belief reminded me of something that happened during the Clinton years: despite Clinton’s sex scandals, NOW and other feminist organizations supported Clinton because his stance on certain issues was favorable to their platform. I believed this caused a real loss of faith in feminism — it certainly did for me, and I decline to support NOW even to this day. Now, the conservative right has found that it works for them, too — all they have to do is put “spin” on a bill and make it seem that it is against “people of faith,” and suddenly they have grassroots support from churches all over the country, regardless of the immorality of the legislation itself. It’s ridiculous, and I see this kind of ludicrous spin all the time in propaganda pieces like “World” magazine (sent to me courtesy of my husband’s family), which actually protested election reform — election reform! — by saying it was “unGodly.” No reason attached, just that it was “unGodly.” What, do I have jello for brains? Thus I am working on a new book called,
Taking Back Christianity: Ten Reasons Republicans think they are “God’s Party” — but aren’t. I’m sick of this kind of conservative bias everywhere. But anyway, back to “Orwell Rolls in his Grave”… what I did enjoy about the movie was the consensus that anti-trust laws need to be rewritten. I have felt, for a long time, that this is key to reform in all areas of our society. Anti-trust legislation is now a hundred years old, which means that corporations and media giants have had a hundred years to figure out how to get around it — and they have. Look at the franchise system: this is a system of corporate control that allows monopolization without, ahem, monopolization under the law. Take any fast food chain: each is privately owned, but do we ever see any kind of customization or individuality? All are under tight corporate control — almost like, gee, a corporation — without falling under anti-trust legislation, even when they dominate a market. We also see buy-ups of competitors: for example, Microsoft now owns 49% of Macintosh/Apple. They cannot hold a “controlling” share, but they can certainly influence decisions with 49% of stock. In addition to this kind of economic monopolization is polarization in the media (either liberal or conservative — what really happened to “fair and balanced”?) and a kind of ideological monopoly. For example, the same media corporation owns both the Washington Post (liberal) and the Washington Times (conservative) — I had to read both when I lived there to get a decent idea of what was really happening. Now I read the internet — and not msn.com or cnn.com, but a host of news agencies from all over, as well as individual bloggers. I really believe that anti-trust legislation is key to allowing diversity of opinion and free speech to all people, not just speech in the corporate interest. When I was a child, we used to talk about communism and fascism arising “from within” the U.S. and threatening Democracy, but I never believed I would live to see it. And yet, I have.

Ten Signs of Fascism

Here’s an interesting link from my lovely and amusing co-worker T., whom I will call “Buttercup DeathFairy” for short. The link, which goes to a full explanation by Veterans for Peace, gives the ten signs of fascism. Here they are — how many do we find budding in the U.S. today?
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. Supremacy of the military.
5. Rampant Sexism.
6. Controlled Mass Media.
7. Obsession with National Security.
8. Religion and Government are intertwined.
9. Corporate Power is protected.
10. Labor Power is suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption.
14. Fraudulent Elections.

George W. Bush -- Red Communist?

Recently my husband and I took a long drive: destination, Las Vegas. There we met my sister (it is a halfway point) who took our son for a brief visit. On our way home, in the accompanying silence that comes sans 3-year-old boy, we talked politics, and M., my husband, made a wild statement: George W. Bush is a communist. Now, you have to understand, M. is a Republican who has voted for W., so it wasn’t like I was settling in with Noam Chomsky (who wouldn’t consider the “C” word an insult, anyway) for a nice long talk. No, this is M., former Marine and homeschooler, saying such a wild thing. I loved it. I wanted to make it a headline. Then, when I had calmed down a bit, I said the question that is probably on everyone’s mind. “So how d’you figure that one?” Here it is, the best as I can put it, and for this special post I have turned on my comments just to chronicle the hysteria.

Social security is considered a form of “lite” socialism that is essentially a support for seniors, widows and the disabled in our country. And everyone knows that W. would like to priva— I mean, personalize social security. But what does this actually mean?
Well, it means that citizens could opt out of regular SSI accounts and put their money into personal accounts to invest in private business. Keep in mind, Social Security does not invest in private business; it is a murky system I won’t get into but primarily the money is kept in government bonds. Well, if citizens invested in private business through the government, essentially this means that the government would own parts of private businesses. Yes, the money would eventually go back to the private citizen at retirement, but for the 40+ years in between, the government would be in control of those shares. Moreover, if, as is likely, enough people invested in a company through these shares, it is possible that the government would have controlling interest in that private company.

Chilling, isn’t it? And while many would protest that this is not the aim of those in government, but that the ultimate aim is for people to have more money for retirement (or for Wall Street to have more money for retirement, depending on what side you might be on) the truth is that this would allow government an “in” that might be exploited at a later date (I do not mean to invoke slippery-slide argumentation, but simply to point out a loophole that could be exploited). It also means that, at some point, this could become a serious challenge to the sovereignty of private businesses. The fact is, as long as the government is managing those accounts, it will have control over those businesses. If the government does not manage those accounts but instead says private citizens have complete control over them, well, then we simply have the abolishment of social security payments and “encouragement” for private citizens to start more IRAs or 401Ks. If the government is forcing a private citizen to pay into an account, it is managing that money, one way or another. Which means interference in private businesses and which equals Red Communisim. No more pinko commies, now we have the real thing in our midst.

Just something to think about — the comments are on.

Nietzsche

I was looking over some of the news articles by Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist who was held captive for a month by Iraqi insurgents. Interestingly enough, 35 minutes after her release she was nearly killed by U.S. troops as she was trying to exit Iraq. There are some theories that this was “accidentally on-purpose,” as she found some pretty controversial stuff — you can read about a woman who spent time in Abu Ghraib here, and there are other stories in the Il Manifesto, an Italian newspaper. This particular story about prisoner abuse brought to mind a quote from the (in)famous Nietzsche, Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Not much to add to that, and thanks to Nafisi, who put that poignant and timeless quote into her book.

Baghdad Burning

Now that I have my new Bloglines account set up, I can get the feed for my newest favorite blog, Baghdad Burning, a blog written by an Iraqi woman about the current situation there. Since I am currently reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, an amazing book about an English Lit professor whose study of 19th century American novels was considered “revolutionary” in Iran after the ayatollahs gained power in the 1980’s, the allegations that radical Shias who came into power during the last elections may make Iraq another Iran is downright chilling. It seems counterproductive that our administration may do such a thing, but actually, what most people do not know is that, in general, women’s rights are not considered “human rights” by U.S. policymakers, which is why there was no protest regarding the Taliban regime before 9/11 (although press made it seem that saving women was one of the reasons for destroying the regime, there were other — primarily geo-political reasons — that are far more plausible). This means that, were the Iraqi clerics who came “democratically” to power to bring stability to the country, even at the expense of women’s rights, it is totally possible that the U.S. may leave it at that. I mean, who can justify staying in Iraq longer than necessary? The protesters want the U.S. out of there right now (yesterday, really), and so does everyone else who has taken a hard look at the U.S. deficit. Would there really be the political pressure to stay in Iraq for the sake of women who do not want to wear the chador or for girls who don’t wish to be married at the age of 9? Or will this be left to “the Iraqis themselves” to iron oPost Options ut what is often considered either a cultural or a religious problem? Who could justify spending billions of more dollars — or for our troops to continue getting killed on foreign soil — for human rights violations that the U.S. certainly has never cared about before?

This is what struck me about Nafisi’s novel: I am working hard to help children who have been sold into slavery and prostitution. But, in Iran, even today, men can have “temporary marriages” that are as short as ten minutes (in addition to four wives) and men can also marry a girl as young as nine years old. What I work against every day is legal there. If we turn yet another country into a duplication of that — well, this is what I think about it : And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. (Mark 9:42, The Bible)

Liberty vs. Freedom

Although we don’t have cable (read: no Comedy Central) and thus are deprived of such shows as Crank Yankers and Crossballs, I have recently become enamored of Jon Stewart after his amusing and truthful confrontation on Crossfire, which is now being cancelled. His recent assessment of George Bush’s inaugural speech, and his repeated uses of the words Freedom and Liberty is here. (Note to the computer-challenged: click on the underlined words).

George Soros and the New DP

Okay, I said I’d post more pictures, and I will, but I have to stand on my soapbox for a while again, if only because I haven’t had any rabid e-mails lately. I just finished reading A New York Times article about the struggles of the Democratic Party. In addition, I am reading the fabulous book Fast Food Nation (For a review by FSBA, please click here.) …I am a labor Democrat. While the Republican Party has one platform, the Democratic Party is made up of many factions, including social, fiscal, labor, and environmental Democrats. It has infuriated me for years, not only because the factional nature of the Democratic Party makes it easy for a conservative family or friend to pick one issue unrelated to me (such as abortion, or gun control) and use it to color the entire platform (or variety of platforms) of the Democrats, but also because the Republican Party’s “family values” propaganda often causes blue-collar workers to vote for the party that, well, is taking their right to fair pay, insurance, and tax breaks away from them, something I cannot convince anyone to believe, regardless of its truth. I grew up a Republican. If I had been old enough to vote, I would have voted for Ronald Reagan, something I look back upon with horror. I went to a conservative university that did not allow alcohol, banned the distribution of condoms, did not allow birth control to be given by the health center, and had strict regulations on fraternizing with the opposite sex in its dorms. Nevertheless, most people blame my change from Republican to Democrat on “that liberal university education,” which is simply not true. I majored in liberal arts, not liberal politics. The change stems from the suggestion of a friend to attend a small student group called “The Progressives.” To this day, I believe they thought I was a Republican trying to infiltrate their group, as they rarely spoke to me, and because I never joined in any of their protests or leaflet-spreading campaigns. I simply listened, and I found myself going back, again and again, to listen to what these hemp-wearing radicals had to say. And for me, a small-town girl coming from a working-class area, the message was one I could hardly believe. Immigrant workers dying from respiratory diseases because the agri-business companies that employed them sprayed pesticides while they picked vegetables and fruit? Big beef processors fixing prices, hurting small ranchers, destroying rain forests in countries I had never even heard of before? It seemed like a lot of liberal hogwash to me. Then I went home — and heard from a friend’s dad, who had been a rancher, about how he couldn’t sell his cattle anymore. Or witnessed my own father struggling to convince other workers at his factory that 5 cents an hour, or $5.00 a month, did not a pension make, regardless of what company executives said. I witnessed, just in my lifetime, the loss of more than 50% of the family farms in our area as houses were built on prime farmland. Or what about the high nitrate concentration in an area close to my childhood home because of feedlots? The land, and the underground lakes on which everyone depends for their water, was and is being poisoned. Nobody asks me why I became a Democrat, and certainly my large and very conservative extended family would not want to take the responsibility for my change of heart. But they are. When I returned to my university the last half of my junior and my senior year, I became one of the most outspoken liberals on campus, joining forces with a small but intense intensely progressive group of friends, some of whom have gone on to dedicate their lives as an important member of the Democratic Party, a missionary/human rights worker, a women’s health specialist who is also a sexual assault nurse, and a businesswoman with aspirations to run for government office. In the shadow of these people, I often feel small and insignificant, with most of my contribution toward progressive politics centering on speaking, and mostly angering, those closest to me. And, while my dream is to start a non-profit organization to help women, for two years I have been swimming in place. So, when I read an article like the one in the New York Times, speaking about a revolution in the Democratic Party, I can only applaud the change. The “liberal agenda” has focused on the special interests of a variety of factions who feel under-represented in the U.S., and the DP has been unable to unify themselves under a single banner, like the “family values” of the Republican Party. This has made even myself only a nominal member of the DP, and in many ways unwilling to campaign for the party because of the various points on which I disagree. I am a Democrat because I am, above all, NOT a Republican. To see progressive organizations like MoveOn step forward and try to emphasize standards like labor reform, fair trade and good foreign policy as well as challenging the current administration and it’s insistence that it answer to nobody except themselves, is heartening. And, reading Eric Schlosser’s compelling book, Fast Food Nation, reveals the true nature of big corporations and confirms in my mind the fact that we have come full circle in the past 100 years, in that small businesses, small towns and American workers are suffering they way they did in the 1890’s, when large “trusts” took up so much of the market that nobody could compete. And maybe you like calling me a “bleeding-heart liberal,” but in truth, I am no different from Teddy Roosevelt who ran on the Republican ticket for governor of New York in 1886. I demand, and hope our politicians will someday be brave enough to demand, the same thing Roosevelt felt was required of his America: “…the ideal that the Government should be the great arbiter of the conflicting economic forces in the Nation, especially between capital and labor, guaranteeing justice to each and dispensing favors to none.” (Biography of Theodore Roosevelt, www. http://www.whitehouse.gov/. [see previous link]) If that’s liberal hogwash, then so be it.