Obama Mythologos
Barack Obama is a myth, our modern version of Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan. What we were told is true, never had much basis in fact — a fact now increasingly clear as hype gives way to reality.
“Brilliant”
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, on no evidence, once proclaimed Obama “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” When he thus summed up liberal consensus, was he perhaps referring to academic achievement? Soaring SAT scores? Seminal publications? IQ scores known only to a small Ivy League cloister? Political wizardry?
Who was this Churchillian president so much smarter than the Renaissance man Thomas Jefferson, more astute than a John Adams or James Madison, with more insight than a Lincoln, brighter still than the polymath Teddy Roosevelt, more studious than the bookish Woodrow Wilson, better read than the autodidact Harry Truman?
Consider. Did Obama achieve a B+ average at Columbia? Who knows? (Who will ever know?) But even today’s inflated version of yesteryear’s gentleman Cs would not normally warrant admission to Harvard Law. And once there, did the Law Review editor publish at least one seminal article? Why not?
I ask not because I particularly care about the GPAs or certificates of the president, but only because I am searching for a shred of evidence to substantiate this image of singular intellectual power and known erudition. For now, I don’t see any difference between Bush’s Yale/Harvard MBA record and Obama’s Columbia/Harvard Law record — except Bush, in self-deprecation, laughed at his quite public C+/B- accomplishments that he implied were in line with his occasional gaffes, while Obama has quarantined his transcripts and relied on the media to assert that his own versions of “nucular” moments were not moments of embarrassment at all.
At Chicago, did lecturer Obama write a path-breaking legal article or a book on jurisprudence that warranted the rare tenure offer to a part-time lecturer? (Has that offer ever been extended to others of like stature?) In the Illinois legislature or U.S. Senate, was Obama known as a deeply learned man of the Patrick Moynihan variety? Whether as an undergraduate, law student, lawyer, professor, legislator or senator, Obama was given numerous opportunities to reveal his intellectual weight. Did he ever really? On what basis did Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan regret that Obama could not be lured to a top billet at Harvard?
That his brilliance is a myth was not just revealed by the weekly lapses (whether phonetic [corpse-man], or cultural [Austria/Germany, the United Kingdom/England, Memorial Day/Veterans Day] or inane [57 states]), but in matters of common sense and basic history. The error-ridden Cairo speech was foolish; the serial appeasement of Iran revealed an ignorance of human nature; a two-minute glance at an etiquette book would have nixed the bowing or the cheap gifts to the UK.
In short, the myth of Obama’s brilliance was based on his teleprompted eloquence, the sort of fable that says we should listen to a clueless Sean Penn or Matt Damon on politics because they can sometimes act well. Read Plato’s Ion on the difference between gifted rhapsody and wisdom — and Socrates’ warning about easily conflating the two. It need not have been so. At any point in a long career, Obama the rhapsode could have shunned the easy way, stuck his head in a book, and earned rather than charmed those (for whom he had contempt) for his rewards. Clinton was a browser with a near photographic memory who had pretensions of deeply-read wonkery; but he nonetheless browsed. Obama seems never to have done that. He liked the vague idea of Obamacare, outsourced the details to the Democratic Congress, applied his Chicago protocols to getting it passed, and worried little what was actually in the bill. We were to think that the obsessions with the NBA, the NCAA final four, the golfing tics, etc., were all respites from exhausting labors of the mind rather than in fact the presidency respites from all the former.
“Healer”
Take away all the”‘no more red state/no more blue state,” “this is our moment” mish-mash and what is left to us? “Reaching across the aisle” sounded bipartisan, but it came from the most consistently partisan member of the U.S. Senate. Most of the 2008 campaign was a frantic effort on the part of the media to explain away Bill Ayers, ACORN, the SEIU, Rev. Wright, Father Pfleger, the clingers speech, “get in their face,” and the revealing put downs of Hillary Clinton. But those were windows into a soul that soon opened even wider — with everything from limb-lopping doctors and polluting Republicans to stupidly acting police and “punish our enemies” nativists. The Special Olympics “joke,” the pig reference to Sarah Palin, the middle finger nose rub to Hillary — all that was a scratch of the thin shiny veneer into the hard plywood beneath.
Barack Obama is a myth, our modern version of Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan. What we were told is true, never had much basis in fact — a fact now increasingly clear as hype gives way to reality.
“Brilliant”
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, on no evidence, once proclaimed Obama “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” When he thus summed up liberal consensus, was he perhaps referring to academic achievement? Soaring SAT scores? Seminal publications? IQ scores known only to a small Ivy League cloister? Political wizardry?
Who was this Churchillian president so much smarter than the Renaissance man Thomas Jefferson, more astute than a John Adams or James Madison, with more insight than a Lincoln, brighter still than the polymath Teddy Roosevelt, more studious than the bookish Woodrow Wilson, better read than the autodidact Harry Truman?
Consider. Did Obama achieve a B+ average at Columbia? Who knows? (Who will ever know?) But even today’s inflated version of yesteryear’s gentleman Cs would not normally warrant admission to Harvard Law. And once there, did the Law Review editor publish at least one seminal article? Why not?
I ask not because I particularly care about the GPAs or certificates of the president, but only because I am searching for a shred of evidence to substantiate this image of singular intellectual power and known erudition. For now, I don’t see any difference between Bush’s Yale/Harvard MBA record and Obama’s Columbia/Harvard Law record — except Bush, in self-deprecation, laughed at his quite public C+/B- accomplishments that he implied were in line with his occasional gaffes, while Obama has quarantined his transcripts and relied on the media to assert that his own versions of “nucular” moments were not moments of embarrassment at all.
At Chicago, did lecturer Obama write a path-breaking legal article or a book on jurisprudence that warranted the rare tenure offer to a part-time lecturer? (Has that offer ever been extended to others of like stature?) In the Illinois legislature or U.S. Senate, was Obama known as a deeply learned man of the Patrick Moynihan variety? Whether as an undergraduate, law student, lawyer, professor, legislator or senator, Obama was given numerous opportunities to reveal his intellectual weight. Did he ever really? On what basis did Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan regret that Obama could not be lured to a top billet at Harvard?
That his brilliance is a myth was not just revealed by the weekly lapses (whether phonetic [corpse-man], or cultural [Austria/Germany, the United Kingdom/England, Memorial Day/Veterans Day] or inane [57 states]), but in matters of common sense and basic history. The error-ridden Cairo speech was foolish; the serial appeasement of Iran revealed an ignorance of human nature; a two-minute glance at an etiquette book would have nixed the bowing or the cheap gifts to the UK.
In short, the myth of Obama’s brilliance was based on his teleprompted eloquence, the sort of fable that says we should listen to a clueless Sean Penn or Matt Damon on politics because they can sometimes act well. Read Plato’s Ion on the difference between gifted rhapsody and wisdom — and Socrates’ warning about easily conflating the two. It need not have been so. At any point in a long career, Obama the rhapsode could have shunned the easy way, stuck his head in a book, and earned rather than charmed those (for whom he had contempt) for his rewards. Clinton was a browser with a near photographic memory who had pretensions of deeply-read wonkery; but he nonetheless browsed. Obama seems never to have done that. He liked the vague idea of Obamacare, outsourced the details to the Democratic Congress, applied his Chicago protocols to getting it passed, and worried little what was actually in the bill. We were to think that the obsessions with the NBA, the NCAA final four, the golfing tics, etc., were all respites from exhausting labors of the mind rather than in fact the presidency respites from all the former.
“Healer”
Take away all the”‘no more red state/no more blue state,” “this is our moment” mish-mash and what is left to us? “Reaching across the aisle” sounded bipartisan, but it came from the most consistently partisan member of the U.S. Senate. Most of the 2008 campaign was a frantic effort on the part of the media to explain away Bill Ayers, ACORN, the SEIU, Rev. Wright, Father Pfleger, the clingers speech, “get in their face,” and the revealing put downs of Hillary Clinton. But those were windows into a soul that soon opened even wider — with everything from limb-lopping doctors and polluting Republicans to stupidly acting police and “punish our enemies” nativists. The Special Olympics “joke,” the pig reference to Sarah Palin, the middle finger nose rub to Hillary — all that was a scratch of the thin shiny veneer into the hard plywood beneath.
The President Who Never Was
December 8th, 2011 - 10:44 am
A Teen-age President in Search of an Adult Identity
Barack Obama keeps looking for a presidential identity not his own. In 2008, he wished to be JFK — whom he often referenced as a youthful and charismatic figure supposedly similar to himself. So we heard references to Obama’s father’s arrival to the U.S. during the golden Kennedy Camelot years. Caroline Kennedy herself came out of seclusion to assure us that Obama had the same Kennedy zest, and she flirted with a Senate run to help restore the lost age of grandeur. And at the Brandenburg Gate, Obama would have liked to electrify Europeans with another Ich Bin Ein Berliner speech. But even the left-leaning Germans sorta balked at that, and relegated the new Galahad to the Victory Column — a nice enough gesture that earned them a snub when a later President Obama chose not to go to Berlin for the commemoration of the twenty year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. (But flying ad hoc to Copenhagen to lobby for the Chicago Olympics is a horse of a different color.)
The New Gipper
Next candidate Obama channeled his inner Ronald Reagan. He reminded us that that he too had a sense of a new “trajectory.” His supporters swore that he had the same sunny disposition and eloquence. Obama liked that new persona. Soon he was talking about being the same “transformative” president, as long as we understood that Obama was going to be Reaganesque solely in the way he campaigned and soared with “hope and change” rhetoric — a sort of ironic payback to the Reagan Revolution as Obama mimicked the Gipper’s personal talents to undue his legacy.
Young Mr. Lincoln
That did not last long. When he won the election, Obama now referenced the Civil War, slavery, and the civil rights struggle as he became the Great Emancipator to finally bind up the nation’s wounds. So he was for a bit Barack Lincoln. I mean this literally and to such a degree that he chartered a slow train from Springfield to DC in December 2008, to remind us that it had been 148 years since a similar messiah had trained from Illinois to Washington to save the Union. Aides got copies of Team of Rivals, since Obama had long seen himself as a saintly Lincoln in magnanimous fashion bringing in former political opponents who perhaps were more experienced but surely less talented than himself. A Biden or Hillary as Seward or Stanton?
Hyde Park Redux
But when he assumed office, there being no Civil War, Obama of Chicago Hyde Park now channeled FDR of New York Hyde Park to meet the same crisis of yet another Great Depression induced by Bush/Hoover. The “100 Days” of 1933 were upon us again. Those were the glory moments, as the White House let it be known, when a new FDR would bookend Social Security with Obamacare. That did not last too long —given the fury over the health care machinations, the Tea Party, 9% plus unemployment, the horrendous new debt, and the greatest mid-term setback since Roosevelt’s own in 1938.
Barack Obama keeps looking for a presidential identity not his own. In 2008, he wished to be JFK — whom he often referenced as a youthful and charismatic figure supposedly similar to himself. So we heard references to Obama’s father’s arrival to the U.S. during the golden Kennedy Camelot years. Caroline Kennedy herself came out of seclusion to assure us that Obama had the same Kennedy zest, and she flirted with a Senate run to help restore the lost age of grandeur. And at the Brandenburg Gate, Obama would have liked to electrify Europeans with another Ich Bin Ein Berliner speech. But even the left-leaning Germans sorta balked at that, and relegated the new Galahad to the Victory Column — a nice enough gesture that earned them a snub when a later President Obama chose not to go to Berlin for the commemoration of the twenty year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. (But flying ad hoc to Copenhagen to lobby for the Chicago Olympics is a horse of a different color.)
The New Gipper
Next candidate Obama channeled his inner Ronald Reagan. He reminded us that that he too had a sense of a new “trajectory.” His supporters swore that he had the same sunny disposition and eloquence. Obama liked that new persona. Soon he was talking about being the same “transformative” president, as long as we understood that Obama was going to be Reaganesque solely in the way he campaigned and soared with “hope and change” rhetoric — a sort of ironic payback to the Reagan Revolution as Obama mimicked the Gipper’s personal talents to undue his legacy.
Young Mr. Lincoln
That did not last long. When he won the election, Obama now referenced the Civil War, slavery, and the civil rights struggle as he became the Great Emancipator to finally bind up the nation’s wounds. So he was for a bit Barack Lincoln. I mean this literally and to such a degree that he chartered a slow train from Springfield to DC in December 2008, to remind us that it had been 148 years since a similar messiah had trained from Illinois to Washington to save the Union. Aides got copies of Team of Rivals, since Obama had long seen himself as a saintly Lincoln in magnanimous fashion bringing in former political opponents who perhaps were more experienced but surely less talented than himself. A Biden or Hillary as Seward or Stanton?
Hyde Park Redux
But when he assumed office, there being no Civil War, Obama of Chicago Hyde Park now channeled FDR of New York Hyde Park to meet the same crisis of yet another Great Depression induced by Bush/Hoover. The “100 Days” of 1933 were upon us again. Those were the glory moments, as the White House let it be known, when a new FDR would bookend Social Security with Obamacare. That did not last too long —given the fury over the health care machinations, the Tea Party, 9% plus unemployment, the horrendous new debt, and the greatest mid-term setback since Roosevelt’s own in 1938.
The Ancient Virtues and Modern Sins
December 2nd, 2011 - 9:59 am
Candor
Aside from courage — the essential trait without which, as the ancients insisted, all other virtues are impossible — candor is now the most appreciated. Herman Cain came a long way, despite not knowing much of anything about foreign affairs and with a past that could not stay in the past. Why? He was blunt-speaking, and so often could cut to the quick. “9-9-9” was at once clear and concise, and that even trumped the fact that Cain himself did not know all the details of his own nostrum. And when he was not, or could not be, candid about his past, he faltered.
Crazy Ross Perot capitalized on that virtue as well — for a time, until he was not forthcoming about his contradictions. The more complex present society, the larger the bureaucracy, whether corporate or government, and the less likely we are to encounter clarity. And we miss it so these days, especially in matters of taboo race, gender, and class. Read a Reuters or AP story about a flash mob, copper wire theft, rape or murder and one infers Martians did it; read the posted Internet comments below and they are right out of the Roman Coliseum, so tired is the reader of mush. Candor was the great attraction of Achilles in the Iliad. John Wayne mastered the trait in his Westerns. Reagan for a while enjoyed candor. I greatly admired his “Evil Empire” references. Was it not both an empire and evil?
The secret to candor? The willingness to place honesty over comfort, or a sense of allegiance to truth of the ages rather than the lies of the present. Candor need not be rudeness, though it can be, especially if one is in a superior position. Churchill told generals critical of Montgomery that their anger derived from the fact that the obnoxious Montgomery was “better than you.” I remembered my father lamenting about someone he found wanting. “He’s weak and I told him so” is what he would say. My grandfather would say of a nephew or cousin gone bad, “He was no good, that’s all there was to it. Bad from the beginning, bad to the end.” What a way to cut out one hour of sociological and psychological mish-mash. The antidote to groupspeak is candor, a virtue never more missed.
Irony
Irony is not sarcasm, much less nihilism. Rather it is a way of tolerating absurdity and appreciating that the world seems to have a pulse of its own, a karma or nemesis that evens things out. Obama is an ironic candidate, though he has no sense of irony himself. Do you remember December 2008 when the Left openly worried that something might happen that would prevent our deliverance from the messianic president-elect? Instead, Obama has done more to harm Keynesian economics, the entire notion of “green,” big government, race relations — the list goes on — all those areas that he bragged he would embrace. That’s ironic — so is the editor of Harvard Law Review confusing Britain with England, Austria with Germany, or 50 with 57. So is the big critic of Guantanamo saving Guantanamo. So is Predator in Chief expanding targeted assassinations ten times. Yet editors often worry about irony, as if you are being mean to express it or the reader will not appreciate your intent.
I remember an academic colleague (well, more a rival or an enemy) with a nice sense of irony. I just had a root canal and was in pain, and explained it was probably from years of eating too many raisins off the shaker (they are far worse for the teeth than candy, and shaking 200 tons of raisins a year can give you a lot of cavities). He did not smile, but observed, “But, of course, raisins are deadly for raisin farmers” and walked off. I replied, “Well, raisin growers usually try to buy their raisins in the store.”
I admire Charles Krauthammer precisely because he usually offers an ironic remark each week or two that sums up the present absurdity in a rare fashion. David Brinkley had the same gift, but to a lesser extent. William F. Buckley was ironic. Great presidents like Lincoln and Jefferson were too. Is there some sense of fatalism in the ironist? That even he does not escape life’s contradictions, or rather especially he does not escape them?
Aside from courage — the essential trait without which, as the ancients insisted, all other virtues are impossible — candor is now the most appreciated. Herman Cain came a long way, despite not knowing much of anything about foreign affairs and with a past that could not stay in the past. Why? He was blunt-speaking, and so often could cut to the quick. “9-9-9” was at once clear and concise, and that even trumped the fact that Cain himself did not know all the details of his own nostrum. And when he was not, or could not be, candid about his past, he faltered.
Crazy Ross Perot capitalized on that virtue as well — for a time, until he was not forthcoming about his contradictions. The more complex present society, the larger the bureaucracy, whether corporate or government, and the less likely we are to encounter clarity. And we miss it so these days, especially in matters of taboo race, gender, and class. Read a Reuters or AP story about a flash mob, copper wire theft, rape or murder and one infers Martians did it; read the posted Internet comments below and they are right out of the Roman Coliseum, so tired is the reader of mush. Candor was the great attraction of Achilles in the Iliad. John Wayne mastered the trait in his Westerns. Reagan for a while enjoyed candor. I greatly admired his “Evil Empire” references. Was it not both an empire and evil?
The secret to candor? The willingness to place honesty over comfort, or a sense of allegiance to truth of the ages rather than the lies of the present. Candor need not be rudeness, though it can be, especially if one is in a superior position. Churchill told generals critical of Montgomery that their anger derived from the fact that the obnoxious Montgomery was “better than you.” I remembered my father lamenting about someone he found wanting. “He’s weak and I told him so” is what he would say. My grandfather would say of a nephew or cousin gone bad, “He was no good, that’s all there was to it. Bad from the beginning, bad to the end.” What a way to cut out one hour of sociological and psychological mish-mash. The antidote to groupspeak is candor, a virtue never more missed.
Irony
Irony is not sarcasm, much less nihilism. Rather it is a way of tolerating absurdity and appreciating that the world seems to have a pulse of its own, a karma or nemesis that evens things out. Obama is an ironic candidate, though he has no sense of irony himself. Do you remember December 2008 when the Left openly worried that something might happen that would prevent our deliverance from the messianic president-elect? Instead, Obama has done more to harm Keynesian economics, the entire notion of “green,” big government, race relations — the list goes on — all those areas that he bragged he would embrace. That’s ironic — so is the editor of Harvard Law Review confusing Britain with England, Austria with Germany, or 50 with 57. So is the big critic of Guantanamo saving Guantanamo. So is Predator in Chief expanding targeted assassinations ten times. Yet editors often worry about irony, as if you are being mean to express it or the reader will not appreciate your intent.
I remember an academic colleague (well, more a rival or an enemy) with a nice sense of irony. I just had a root canal and was in pain, and explained it was probably from years of eating too many raisins off the shaker (they are far worse for the teeth than candy, and shaking 200 tons of raisins a year can give you a lot of cavities). He did not smile, but observed, “But, of course, raisins are deadly for raisin farmers” and walked off. I replied, “Well, raisin growers usually try to buy their raisins in the store.”
I admire Charles Krauthammer precisely because he usually offers an ironic remark each week or two that sums up the present absurdity in a rare fashion. David Brinkley had the same gift, but to a lesser extent. William F. Buckley was ironic. Great presidents like Lincoln and Jefferson were too. Is there some sense of fatalism in the ironist? That even he does not escape life’s contradictions, or rather especially he does not escape them?
Why Not Pay Higher Taxes?
November 26th, 2011 - 3:22 pm
The usual liberal complaint against the conservative opposition
to higher income taxes is greed and the better-offs’ self-serving
reluctance to pay their “fair share.” But while perhaps true in some
instances, I don’t think that is an accurate writ against most of those
in that now demonized $200,000 and above categories who resent forking
over more. Rather, here are a random 12 complaints that I hear from
those who become furious about preposed higher income tax rates:
1) The Entire Bite
The most common lament is that taxes are already too high for those who either chose not, or do not have the resources, to find loopholes. I know that pre-Reagan top-bracket rates were often between 70%-94%; but few paid at those rates given the myriad of former deductions. At first glance, 33-35% federal top rates do not seem that steep; but income taxes do not fall in isolation. Many of the higher-income payers are small business people and self-employed professionals, who pay 15.3% in FICA and Medicare taxes on a sizable and growing portion of their income. And that portion and the rate itself always go up, never down. In 2013 a surcharge will hit those in the now near “criminal” $200,000 and above brackets. Many of the top incomes (believe Sen. Schumer, not me) fall in high-tax states like New York and California, where state income taxes can hit 10%. Add in property taxes on homes and businesses, and it is not hard to envision a theoretical 50% + rate, or over half one’s income. So, the conservative asks, at what total rate would local, state, and federal governments be happy — 60%-70%-80% of annual income?
2) Inequality?
Liberals reply that income inequality is worse than ever. (Note here in their own lives they have no problem with other “merit”-based inequality: e.g., Why can’t Johnny Depp turn down a couple of roles so other less fortunate actors could star? Why doesn’t Cornel West at last break up his endowed mega-salaried professorship into three or four lectureships for the struggling part-timers? Why doesn’t Maureen Dowd go down to one column every other week to allow less compensated New York Times op-ed writers a chance to catch up? In other words, why not back off from the trough and let others have a go?) But back to income inequality: some of those figures are not just attributable to the proliferation of $200,000 orthodontists, but to factoring in the mega-fortunes of a Johnny Depp ($50 million last year in income alone) or a Warren Buffett. The onset of a globalized market allowed a new top bracket to make tens of millions of dollars, a world away from the lesser professional. There is no aggregate homogenous group of “the wealthy.” My big-farming near neighbor (500 acres in vineyard plus), who probably nets $300,000 on a rare good raisin year like this one, is a world away from the late Steve Jobs or the thousands of million-dollar-plus incomes in Silicon Valley. This incongruence is not a rhetorical point or special pleading, but evident through the president’s own rhetoric: “Millionaires and billionaires” is a deliberate attempt to weld two disparate groups together — one making 1000 times the other (if the president is talking of annual income), or one worth 1000 times more than the other (if the president is talking about net worth). But is the Menlo Park bungalow owner who teaches at Foothill College and might be “worth” $1 million (given housing inflation) really comparable to Meg Whitman? Mr. Obama knows that there is not enough of the 1% of the 1% to come up with enough revenue to cover his new $4 trillion in debt, but does he think that by going after the top 5% or 10%, well, there just may be?
3) Wise Spending?
Then there is the manner in which the collected money is spent. It is not true to say Great Society programs have not helped millions, but it is legitimate to ask “at what cost?” came the expansion from a safety net to a sort of guaranteed livelihood. The spread of food stamps to almost 50 million recipients, the increase in unemployment to 99 weeks, the plethora of housing, health, and education supplements — all that creates not just necessary charity, but a mechanism for millions to find an alternative lifestyle, where subsidies, occasional cash, off-the-books work, and “other” activities can supplant work. Mindless “Black Friday” splurging is not just done by the well-off. Once legitimate questions have simply became taboo: “Do you make enough to support that additional child? Do you really think you needed to buy that flat-screen TV? Do you avoid alcohol and drugs?” To inquire like that is to earn liberal invective, but not to is intellectually dishonest. The number of generally fit men my age (e.g., 58) in my small community that, I know personally, are not employed full-time, and have not been so for years, is in the dozens. They are not starving. Obesity is the plague, not malnutrition, as the first lady understood.
4) Always More Spending?
Generally as revenues increased, spending on social programs and entitlements far outpaced them. We have almost doubled federal spending since 2000. Deficits widened despite (until the recent recession) constant annual gains in revenue. In the conservative mind, the higher the taxes, the more likely it is that millions will disconnect from the private sector and dream up ways of spending hundreds of billions on entitlements and billions on those who administer them. Whether the top rate is 35% or 50%, the deficits will probably be the same, given trends in spending. (Yes, I know a Republican Congress forced the Clinton administration to accept spending caps in exchange for higher taxes; but try that now [e.g. back to the Clinton tax rates and freeze spending at 2011 levels] and the deficit is still there.)
1) The Entire Bite
The most common lament is that taxes are already too high for those who either chose not, or do not have the resources, to find loopholes. I know that pre-Reagan top-bracket rates were often between 70%-94%; but few paid at those rates given the myriad of former deductions. At first glance, 33-35% federal top rates do not seem that steep; but income taxes do not fall in isolation. Many of the higher-income payers are small business people and self-employed professionals, who pay 15.3% in FICA and Medicare taxes on a sizable and growing portion of their income. And that portion and the rate itself always go up, never down. In 2013 a surcharge will hit those in the now near “criminal” $200,000 and above brackets. Many of the top incomes (believe Sen. Schumer, not me) fall in high-tax states like New York and California, where state income taxes can hit 10%. Add in property taxes on homes and businesses, and it is not hard to envision a theoretical 50% + rate, or over half one’s income. So, the conservative asks, at what total rate would local, state, and federal governments be happy — 60%-70%-80% of annual income?
2) Inequality?
Liberals reply that income inequality is worse than ever. (Note here in their own lives they have no problem with other “merit”-based inequality: e.g., Why can’t Johnny Depp turn down a couple of roles so other less fortunate actors could star? Why doesn’t Cornel West at last break up his endowed mega-salaried professorship into three or four lectureships for the struggling part-timers? Why doesn’t Maureen Dowd go down to one column every other week to allow less compensated New York Times op-ed writers a chance to catch up? In other words, why not back off from the trough and let others have a go?) But back to income inequality: some of those figures are not just attributable to the proliferation of $200,000 orthodontists, but to factoring in the mega-fortunes of a Johnny Depp ($50 million last year in income alone) or a Warren Buffett. The onset of a globalized market allowed a new top bracket to make tens of millions of dollars, a world away from the lesser professional. There is no aggregate homogenous group of “the wealthy.” My big-farming near neighbor (500 acres in vineyard plus), who probably nets $300,000 on a rare good raisin year like this one, is a world away from the late Steve Jobs or the thousands of million-dollar-plus incomes in Silicon Valley. This incongruence is not a rhetorical point or special pleading, but evident through the president’s own rhetoric: “Millionaires and billionaires” is a deliberate attempt to weld two disparate groups together — one making 1000 times the other (if the president is talking of annual income), or one worth 1000 times more than the other (if the president is talking about net worth). But is the Menlo Park bungalow owner who teaches at Foothill College and might be “worth” $1 million (given housing inflation) really comparable to Meg Whitman? Mr. Obama knows that there is not enough of the 1% of the 1% to come up with enough revenue to cover his new $4 trillion in debt, but does he think that by going after the top 5% or 10%, well, there just may be?
3) Wise Spending?
Then there is the manner in which the collected money is spent. It is not true to say Great Society programs have not helped millions, but it is legitimate to ask “at what cost?” came the expansion from a safety net to a sort of guaranteed livelihood. The spread of food stamps to almost 50 million recipients, the increase in unemployment to 99 weeks, the plethora of housing, health, and education supplements — all that creates not just necessary charity, but a mechanism for millions to find an alternative lifestyle, where subsidies, occasional cash, off-the-books work, and “other” activities can supplant work. Mindless “Black Friday” splurging is not just done by the well-off. Once legitimate questions have simply became taboo: “Do you make enough to support that additional child? Do you really think you needed to buy that flat-screen TV? Do you avoid alcohol and drugs?” To inquire like that is to earn liberal invective, but not to is intellectually dishonest. The number of generally fit men my age (e.g., 58) in my small community that, I know personally, are not employed full-time, and have not been so for years, is in the dozens. They are not starving. Obesity is the plague, not malnutrition, as the first lady understood.
4) Always More Spending?
Generally as revenues increased, spending on social programs and entitlements far outpaced them. We have almost doubled federal spending since 2000. Deficits widened despite (until the recent recession) constant annual gains in revenue. In the conservative mind, the higher the taxes, the more likely it is that millions will disconnect from the private sector and dream up ways of spending hundreds of billions on entitlements and billions on those who administer them. Whether the top rate is 35% or 50%, the deficits will probably be the same, given trends in spending. (Yes, I know a Republican Congress forced the Clinton administration to accept spending caps in exchange for higher taxes; but try that now [e.g. back to the Clinton tax rates and freeze spending at 2011 levels] and the deficit is still there.)
The Fannie and Freddie University
November 20th, 2011 - 11:52 am
It’s More than Just PC
The traditionalist critique of the university — I made it myself over thirteen years ago in the co-authored Who Killed Homer? — was that somewhere around the time of the Vietnam War, higher education changed radically for the worse. Note I am talking mostly about the liberal arts. America remains preeminent in math, physics, hard sciences, medicine, and engineering, subjects that are largely immune to politicization and race, class, and gender relativism. The top students, and often the more hard-working, gravitate to these fields; indeed, in my general education courses on the ancient world, I often noticed that math and science students did far better than did their sociology or anthropology counterparts.
Such excellence in math and science explains why the world’s top-rated universities in all the most recent rankings are overwhelmingly American. (Indeed, liberal arts professors piggyback on such findings and often, in a sense quite fraudulently, point to these polls as if to confirm their own superiority.)
I spent a great deal of my life in the university as a student and professor and now as a researcher. Higher learning in the arts and humanities has enriched American life for 200 years. Small liberal arts colleges like Hillsdale, St. John’s, St. Thomas Aquinas, and dozens of others continue to be models of enlightened learning. But all that said, increasingly public universities and the larger private institutions have become morally and fiscally bankrupt. Here are some reasons why.
Monotony of Thought
By 2011 we all know that faculties are overwhelmingly liberal. That in and of itself would not be so alarming if they were not activist as well. By that I mean academics are not just interested in identifying supposed past American sins, but also in turning disinterested instruction into political advocacy, especially along race, class, and gender lines. Rosie the Riveter, the Japanese internment, and Hiroshima all deserve study, but they are not the sum total of World War II. Today’s average undergraduate may know that African-Americans were not integrated into American units during World War II, but they have no clue what the Battle of the Bulge, a B-29, or Iwo Jima were. They may insist that global warming is real and man-caused, but would have trouble explaining what exactly carbon is.
The effect of politicized learning on the quality of education was unfortunate in a strange sort of cyclical fashion. The more “–studies” classes saturated the curriculum, the less time there was for classical approaches to literature, philosophy, language, or history. The more the profile of the student body became more important than its preparation, the more these classes had to be watered down, as if thinking the right thoughts could justify the absence of the old rigor.
Deans begin quoting the ethnic profiles of the incoming classes, the supposed expanded diversity of the faculty, their own commitment to various progressive causes, and kept absolutely mum about the average GPAs and SAT scores of the new student body or the content of the new curriculum. And why not? No provost was ever fired for having fewer students graduate with less skills; many were for not “reaching out” to “underrepresented” groups.
A Blank Check
We know all the other pathologies of the modern university. Tenure metamorphosized from the protection of unpopular expression in the classroom into the ossification of thought and the proliferation of the mediocre. Faculty senate votes did not reflect raucous diversity of thought among secure professors, but were analogous to Saddam’s old plebiscites in their one-sided voting. Tenure created the notion of a select cloister, immune from the tawdry pursuit of money and neurotic worry over job security so true on the crass “outside.”
Campus ethics and values were warped by specialization in both faculty instruction and publication. The grandee that butchered a graduate class every semester was deemed more valuable to the university than the dynamic lecturer who enthused and enlightened three undergraduate introductory classes each term — on the dubious proposition that the former serially “published” peer-reviewed expansions on his dissertation in journals that at most five or ten fellow academics read.
Not teaching at all was even preferable to teaching very little, as a priestly class of administrators evaded the “burdens” of instruction. The new bureaucrats were often given catchy titles: “Assistant to the Provost for Diversity”, or “Associate Dean for Cultural Studies”, or the mundane “Special Assistant to the President for Internal Affairs”, in the manner of late Soviet apparatchiks or the power flow charts of the more mediocre corporations. Although the faculty was overwhelmingly liberal, it was also cynical, and understood that the avalanche of self-serving daily memos it received from the nomenklatura need not be read. I used to see entire trash cans filled each morning with reams of xeroxed pages, as professors started off their days by nonchalantly dumping the contents of their mail slots. Most of the memos read just like those “letters” congressmen send to their constituents, listing a dean’s or vice-provost’s res gestae and detailing how they were “working for you.”
Lala Land
Self-invention proliferated. Under the system of “faculty governance” (analogous to carpenters assuming the roles of the contractor and architect), curriculum, hiring, promotion, and firing were managed by peers. An article “in progress” or “under review” was passed off by committees as good as published (And why not? You, in hand-washes-hand-fashion, might be on the other end of a faculty committee and need the same life raft someday). Linda Wilson-Lopez, a third generation one-quarter Mexican-American, was deemed as much a victim as if he she had just crossed the Rio Grande. Old white guys in their sixties, who were often hired sight unseen in the early 1970s, suddenly demanded diversity hires — with the assumption that when the music stopped in the 1980s they had already found chairs and the new discrimination did not apply to the already tenured. (Had affirmative action involved replacing sixty-something, full-professor white males, it would have had a very different reception). Proposals for envisioned research on sabbaticals were as common as post-sabbatical reports of actual work were rare.
The traditionalist critique of the university — I made it myself over thirteen years ago in the co-authored Who Killed Homer? — was that somewhere around the time of the Vietnam War, higher education changed radically for the worse. Note I am talking mostly about the liberal arts. America remains preeminent in math, physics, hard sciences, medicine, and engineering, subjects that are largely immune to politicization and race, class, and gender relativism. The top students, and often the more hard-working, gravitate to these fields; indeed, in my general education courses on the ancient world, I often noticed that math and science students did far better than did their sociology or anthropology counterparts.
Such excellence in math and science explains why the world’s top-rated universities in all the most recent rankings are overwhelmingly American. (Indeed, liberal arts professors piggyback on such findings and often, in a sense quite fraudulently, point to these polls as if to confirm their own superiority.)
I spent a great deal of my life in the university as a student and professor and now as a researcher. Higher learning in the arts and humanities has enriched American life for 200 years. Small liberal arts colleges like Hillsdale, St. John’s, St. Thomas Aquinas, and dozens of others continue to be models of enlightened learning. But all that said, increasingly public universities and the larger private institutions have become morally and fiscally bankrupt. Here are some reasons why.
Monotony of Thought
By 2011 we all know that faculties are overwhelmingly liberal. That in and of itself would not be so alarming if they were not activist as well. By that I mean academics are not just interested in identifying supposed past American sins, but also in turning disinterested instruction into political advocacy, especially along race, class, and gender lines. Rosie the Riveter, the Japanese internment, and Hiroshima all deserve study, but they are not the sum total of World War II. Today’s average undergraduate may know that African-Americans were not integrated into American units during World War II, but they have no clue what the Battle of the Bulge, a B-29, or Iwo Jima were. They may insist that global warming is real and man-caused, but would have trouble explaining what exactly carbon is.
The effect of politicized learning on the quality of education was unfortunate in a strange sort of cyclical fashion. The more “–studies” classes saturated the curriculum, the less time there was for classical approaches to literature, philosophy, language, or history. The more the profile of the student body became more important than its preparation, the more these classes had to be watered down, as if thinking the right thoughts could justify the absence of the old rigor.
Deans begin quoting the ethnic profiles of the incoming classes, the supposed expanded diversity of the faculty, their own commitment to various progressive causes, and kept absolutely mum about the average GPAs and SAT scores of the new student body or the content of the new curriculum. And why not? No provost was ever fired for having fewer students graduate with less skills; many were for not “reaching out” to “underrepresented” groups.
A Blank Check
We know all the other pathologies of the modern university. Tenure metamorphosized from the protection of unpopular expression in the classroom into the ossification of thought and the proliferation of the mediocre. Faculty senate votes did not reflect raucous diversity of thought among secure professors, but were analogous to Saddam’s old plebiscites in their one-sided voting. Tenure created the notion of a select cloister, immune from the tawdry pursuit of money and neurotic worry over job security so true on the crass “outside.”
Campus ethics and values were warped by specialization in both faculty instruction and publication. The grandee that butchered a graduate class every semester was deemed more valuable to the university than the dynamic lecturer who enthused and enlightened three undergraduate introductory classes each term — on the dubious proposition that the former serially “published” peer-reviewed expansions on his dissertation in journals that at most five or ten fellow academics read.
Not teaching at all was even preferable to teaching very little, as a priestly class of administrators evaded the “burdens” of instruction. The new bureaucrats were often given catchy titles: “Assistant to the Provost for Diversity”, or “Associate Dean for Cultural Studies”, or the mundane “Special Assistant to the President for Internal Affairs”, in the manner of late Soviet apparatchiks or the power flow charts of the more mediocre corporations. Although the faculty was overwhelmingly liberal, it was also cynical, and understood that the avalanche of self-serving daily memos it received from the nomenklatura need not be read. I used to see entire trash cans filled each morning with reams of xeroxed pages, as professors started off their days by nonchalantly dumping the contents of their mail slots. Most of the memos read just like those “letters” congressmen send to their constituents, listing a dean’s or vice-provost’s res gestae and detailing how they were “working for you.”
Lala Land
Self-invention proliferated. Under the system of “faculty governance” (analogous to carpenters assuming the roles of the contractor and architect), curriculum, hiring, promotion, and firing were managed by peers. An article “in progress” or “under review” was passed off by committees as good as published (And why not? You, in hand-washes-hand-fashion, might be on the other end of a faculty committee and need the same life raft someday). Linda Wilson-Lopez, a third generation one-quarter Mexican-American, was deemed as much a victim as if he she had just crossed the Rio Grande. Old white guys in their sixties, who were often hired sight unseen in the early 1970s, suddenly demanded diversity hires — with the assumption that when the music stopped in the 1980s they had already found chairs and the new discrimination did not apply to the already tenured. (Had affirmative action involved replacing sixty-something, full-professor white males, it would have had a very different reception). Proposals for envisioned research on sabbaticals were as common as post-sabbatical reports of actual work were rare.
The Imaginarium of Barack Obama
November 16th, 2011 - 8:44 am
The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that
need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out,
without worry of inconsistency, contradiction, or hypocrisy. It’s a
fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium
of our president.
In the imaginarium there are no revolving doors, earmarks, or lobbyists. So Peter Orszag did not go from being OMB director to a Citigroup fat-cat. Once chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not make $16 million for his well-known banking expertise. The more you damn the pernicious role of lobbyists and the polluting role of big money, the more you must hire and seek out both. Public financing of campaigns is wonderful for everyone else who lacks the integrity of Barack Obama who understandably must renounce such unfair impositions.
Those who now vote against raising the large Obama debt ceiling are political hucksters and opportunists; those who not long ago voted against raising the smaller Bush debt ceiling were principled statesmen. “Unpatriotic” presidents borrow $4 trillion in eight years; patriotic ones we’ve been waiting for can trump that in three.
Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations — and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity — is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.
A million Iranians protesting a soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy is false revolutionary consciousness and to be left alone; a few thousand Israelis wanting to buy apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs is subversive and worthy of presidential condemnation. And when atoning for supposed American lapses, what better place to begin apologizing than in Turkey, the incubator of the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish mass killings? We need to deny history to make the case that America is not exceptional, and to invent it to persuade us that the Muslim world is extraordinary.
Twenty-four months of a Democratic Congress, and over $4 trillion in spending, resulted in 9.1% unemployment and near nonexistent growth. Yet the culprit for the current situation is ten months of a Republican-controlled House that has yet to approve another $500 billion of borrowing. In the imaginarium, just a little more of the massive amount that has failed will not fail. But if the Republicans are to be blamed for not wanting to waste the last half-trillion, are the Democrats to be praised for borrowing the first wasted $4 trillion?
In the imaginarium, all sorts of demons and devils can unite to derail the brilliance of Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. ATMs have for the first time after 2009 begun to eliminate jobs. But then so did the Japanese tsunami and the EU meltdown. The DC earthquake did its part, but then so did climbing oil prices and the Arab Spring. Of course, the ghost of George Bush floats over all the present mess. Economic gurus like Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and Larry Summers used to write brilliant essays of what would work if they were to be in charge, and now write brilliant essays about why it did not work when they were in charge.
In the imaginarium there are no revolving doors, earmarks, or lobbyists. So Peter Orszag did not go from being OMB director to a Citigroup fat-cat. Once chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not make $16 million for his well-known banking expertise. The more you damn the pernicious role of lobbyists and the polluting role of big money, the more you must hire and seek out both. Public financing of campaigns is wonderful for everyone else who lacks the integrity of Barack Obama who understandably must renounce such unfair impositions.
Those who now vote against raising the large Obama debt ceiling are political hucksters and opportunists; those who not long ago voted against raising the smaller Bush debt ceiling were principled statesmen. “Unpatriotic” presidents borrow $4 trillion in eight years; patriotic ones we’ve been waiting for can trump that in three.
Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations — and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity — is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.
A million Iranians protesting a soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy is false revolutionary consciousness and to be left alone; a few thousand Israelis wanting to buy apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs is subversive and worthy of presidential condemnation. And when atoning for supposed American lapses, what better place to begin apologizing than in Turkey, the incubator of the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish mass killings? We need to deny history to make the case that America is not exceptional, and to invent it to persuade us that the Muslim world is extraordinary.
Twenty-four months of a Democratic Congress, and over $4 trillion in spending, resulted in 9.1% unemployment and near nonexistent growth. Yet the culprit for the current situation is ten months of a Republican-controlled House that has yet to approve another $500 billion of borrowing. In the imaginarium, just a little more of the massive amount that has failed will not fail. But if the Republicans are to be blamed for not wanting to waste the last half-trillion, are the Democrats to be praised for borrowing the first wasted $4 trillion?
In the imaginarium, all sorts of demons and devils can unite to derail the brilliance of Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. ATMs have for the first time after 2009 begun to eliminate jobs. But then so did the Japanese tsunami and the EU meltdown. The DC earthquake did its part, but then so did climbing oil prices and the Arab Spring. Of course, the ghost of George Bush floats over all the present mess. Economic gurus like Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and Larry Summers used to write brilliant essays of what would work if they were to be in charge, and now write brilliant essays about why it did not work when they were in charge.
From Herman Cain to Blue Wall Street—the News Behind the News
November 10th, 2011 - 7:45 am
The News Behind the News
Here are some things in the daily news that do not quite make sense.
I.The Joe Paterno Implosion
To the outsider, it is inexplicable how a coach/former coach like Mr. Sandusky could serially molest boys, even after the crimes were known to many of the athletic staff, apparently at one point even to the campus police, and many in the higher administration.
We are supposed to assume that over decades Joe Paterno had no inkling that his most trusted coach was a pederast/pedophile in a gym-like environment where male youth were ubiquitous? An athletic program is a sort of petri dish for the bacillus of the pederast.
What was going on? Did the campus community close ranks, in the manner of the Catholic Church, to avoid the tabloids, and in fact did so successfully for years? Was the attitude that a ten-year-old who was sodomized in the shower was expendable, given the careers that might otherwise summarily end? If Paterno reported the matter to officials, and even to campus security, and nothing followed, was he not curious as to why that was so?
Did the alleged pervert demonically masque some of his lust in the context of locker-room frolicking to fool his colleagues, as if his groping was just “horseplay” and then by design would escalate at the opportune moment? The Penn State community must have informally considered Sandusky a mere in-house embarrassment? But if so, what a travesty, given the predator’s proverbial ingenuity in finding new victims, and the raw calculation that others were to suffer to protect the reputations of university grandees. So Paterno et al. resigned, but far too late; the tragedy was that it came only after so many new victims.
II. The Herman Cain Mess
If one were to believe some of the narratives about Herman Cain, what exactly is he guilty of? Buffoonery? Lying? Assault? Bad manners? Perversion? Nothing at all? We are never quite told in any meaningful detail.
1) In regard to the current five complainants, is Cain a married roving eye? A sort of unfulfilled man, eager to flirt and fantasize, or, to quote Jimmy Carter, to lust in his heart? That is, did he vent his sexual frustrations, by occasional loose talk, but draw the line by eschewing classical sexual harassment of the casting couch sort that leads to intercourse? Note that no women have come forward in the last, say, ten years. Did age and cancer change Herman Cain? But from what to what?
2) Is Cain a crude groper? A sort of Strom Thurmond or sex-poodle Al Gore? Are there third-party witnesses who can attest that Cain grabbed thighs? If not, are we back to he said/she said? Are we once more to ponder what is “sexual harassment”? We can all agree it surely is the gross quid pro quo, ‘screw’ me for your job. But is it also the asymmetrical relationship between the man with power and the woman subordinate without so much of it? (If we think Cain’s tête-à-tête evening with Ms. Bialek was stupidly above and beyond the call of duty, what in the world was hair over the eye Sharon Bialek thinking in scoring a private coffee break/dinner with CEO Herman Cain?) How odd, that in the age of trashy media sex and crass overt nudity, we act as if we are in the age of Puritanism. In 2011, a coffee break will be both more overtly sexual (even a group discussion of last night’s sitcoms would ensure that) and yet prudish (as in one false slip, a bad joke, a crass compliment can become 14 years later a sexual harassment charge).
Here are some things in the daily news that do not quite make sense.
I.The Joe Paterno Implosion
To the outsider, it is inexplicable how a coach/former coach like Mr. Sandusky could serially molest boys, even after the crimes were known to many of the athletic staff, apparently at one point even to the campus police, and many in the higher administration.
We are supposed to assume that over decades Joe Paterno had no inkling that his most trusted coach was a pederast/pedophile in a gym-like environment where male youth were ubiquitous? An athletic program is a sort of petri dish for the bacillus of the pederast.
What was going on? Did the campus community close ranks, in the manner of the Catholic Church, to avoid the tabloids, and in fact did so successfully for years? Was the attitude that a ten-year-old who was sodomized in the shower was expendable, given the careers that might otherwise summarily end? If Paterno reported the matter to officials, and even to campus security, and nothing followed, was he not curious as to why that was so?
Did the alleged pervert demonically masque some of his lust in the context of locker-room frolicking to fool his colleagues, as if his groping was just “horseplay” and then by design would escalate at the opportune moment? The Penn State community must have informally considered Sandusky a mere in-house embarrassment? But if so, what a travesty, given the predator’s proverbial ingenuity in finding new victims, and the raw calculation that others were to suffer to protect the reputations of university grandees. So Paterno et al. resigned, but far too late; the tragedy was that it came only after so many new victims.
II. The Herman Cain Mess
If one were to believe some of the narratives about Herman Cain, what exactly is he guilty of? Buffoonery? Lying? Assault? Bad manners? Perversion? Nothing at all? We are never quite told in any meaningful detail.
1) In regard to the current five complainants, is Cain a married roving eye? A sort of unfulfilled man, eager to flirt and fantasize, or, to quote Jimmy Carter, to lust in his heart? That is, did he vent his sexual frustrations, by occasional loose talk, but draw the line by eschewing classical sexual harassment of the casting couch sort that leads to intercourse? Note that no women have come forward in the last, say, ten years. Did age and cancer change Herman Cain? But from what to what?
2) Is Cain a crude groper? A sort of Strom Thurmond or sex-poodle Al Gore? Are there third-party witnesses who can attest that Cain grabbed thighs? If not, are we back to he said/she said? Are we once more to ponder what is “sexual harassment”? We can all agree it surely is the gross quid pro quo, ‘screw’ me for your job. But is it also the asymmetrical relationship between the man with power and the woman subordinate without so much of it? (If we think Cain’s tête-à-tête evening with Ms. Bialek was stupidly above and beyond the call of duty, what in the world was hair over the eye Sharon Bialek thinking in scoring a private coffee break/dinner with CEO Herman Cain?) How odd, that in the age of trashy media sex and crass overt nudity, we act as if we are in the age of Puritanism. In 2011, a coffee break will be both more overtly sexual (even a group discussion of last night’s sitcoms would ensure that) and yet prudish (as in one false slip, a bad joke, a crass compliment can become 14 years later a sexual harassment charge).
Occupy What?
November 4th, 2011 - 11:35 am
Playing With Fire
Occupy Wall Street follows three years of sloppy presidential name-calling — “millionaires and billionaires,” slurs about Las Vegas and the Super Bowl, profit-mad, limb-lopping doctors, introspection that now is not the time for profits and at some point we should cease making money, spread the wealth, punish our enemies, and all the old Obama boilerplate. Someone finally got the message about the evil 1%.
When Ms. Pelosi and President Obama voice support for the protestors, we enter 1984. Does that mean that the Pelosis now pull their millions out of Wall Street, that the First Family eschews the 1% at Martha’s Vineyard and Vail? That Obama turns his back on Wall Street cash, and, for once, accepts public funding for his 2012 campaign? Postmodern class warfare is an insidious business, and hinges on its advocates not looking in the mirror.
No wise politician should invest in the bunch like those rampaging in Oakland. Their nocturnal frolics are a long way from Woody Guthrie’s Deportee, the Hobos’ “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” and the world John Steinbeck fictionalized. It is the angst of the wannabe class, overeducated and underemployed, which chooses to live not in Akron or Fowler, but in tony places like the Bay Area or New York, where annual rents are far more than a down payment on a starter house in the Midwest. Being educated, but broke and in proximity to the wealthy of like upbringing and background, are ingredients for riot.
I saw videos of youths burning things in Oakland, but was told that it “was a small minority” and atypical of the protest. Not long ago I saw no clips of anyone spitting at black congresspeople wading into the Tea-Party demonstration, but was told they did and that it was typical of tens of thousands of racialists on the Mall.
But Some Are Less Equal Than Others
I don’t think the protests are really much over the Goldman Sachs bailout, or jerks like revolving-door Budget Director Peter Orszag starting back up at Citigroup, or Solyndra crony capitalism. Apparently, most middle-class and upper-middle class liberals—many of them (at least from videos) young and white—are angry at the “system.” And so they are occupying (at least until it gets really cold and wet) financial districts, downtowns, and other areas of commerce across the well-reported urban landscape. As yet there is no definable grievance other than anger that others are doing too well, and the protestors themselves are not doing at all well, and the one has something to do with the other. I am not suggesting union members and the unemployed poor are not present, only that the tip of the spear seems to be furious young middle class kids of college age and bearing, who mope around stunned, as in “what went wrong?”
Then there is a wider, global phenomenon of the angry college student. In the Middle East, much of the unrest, whether Islamist, liberal, or hard-core leftist, is fueled by young unemployed college graduates. Ditto Europe in general, and Greece in particular: The state subsidizes college loans and the popular culture accepts an even longer period between adolescence and adulthood, say between 18 and 30 something. Students emerge “aware,” but poorly educated, highly politicized, and with unreal expectations about their market worth in an ossifying society, often highly regulated and statist.
The decision has been made long ago not to marry at 23, have two or three kids by 27, and go to work in the private sector in hopes of moving up the ladder by 30. Perhaps at 35, a European expects that a job opens up in the Ministry of Culture or the elderly occupant of a coveted rent-controlled flat dies.
Students rarely graduate in four years, but scrape together parental support and, in the bargain, often bed, laundry, and breakfast, federal and state loans and grants, and part-time minimum wage jobs to “go to college.” By traditional rubrics—living at home, having the car insurance paid by dad and mom, meals cooked by someone else—many are still youths. But by our new standards—sexually active, familiar with drugs or alcohol, widely traveled and experienced—many are said to be adults.
Debt mounts. Jobs are few. For the vast majority who are not business majors, engineers, or vocational technicians, there are few jobs or opportunities other than more debt in grad or law school. In the old days, an English or history degree was a certificate of inductive thinking, broad knowledge, writing skills, and a good background for business, teaching, or professionalism. Not now. The watered down curriculum and politically-correct instruction ensure a certain glibness without real skills, thought, or judgment. Most employers are no longer impressed.
Students with such high opinions of themselves are angry that others less aware—young bond traders, computer geeks, even skilled truck drivers—make far more money. Does a music degree from Brown, a sociology BA in progress from San Francisco State, two years of anthropology at UC Riverside count for anything? They are angry at themselves and furious at their own like class that they think betrayed them. After all, if a man knows about the construction of gender or a young woman has read Rigoberta Menchu, or both have formed opinions about Hiroshima, the so-called Native American genocide, and gay history, why is that not rewarded in a way that derivatives or root canal work surely are?
Occupy Wall Street follows three years of sloppy presidential name-calling — “millionaires and billionaires,” slurs about Las Vegas and the Super Bowl, profit-mad, limb-lopping doctors, introspection that now is not the time for profits and at some point we should cease making money, spread the wealth, punish our enemies, and all the old Obama boilerplate. Someone finally got the message about the evil 1%.
When Ms. Pelosi and President Obama voice support for the protestors, we enter 1984. Does that mean that the Pelosis now pull their millions out of Wall Street, that the First Family eschews the 1% at Martha’s Vineyard and Vail? That Obama turns his back on Wall Street cash, and, for once, accepts public funding for his 2012 campaign? Postmodern class warfare is an insidious business, and hinges on its advocates not looking in the mirror.
No wise politician should invest in the bunch like those rampaging in Oakland. Their nocturnal frolics are a long way from Woody Guthrie’s Deportee, the Hobos’ “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” and the world John Steinbeck fictionalized. It is the angst of the wannabe class, overeducated and underemployed, which chooses to live not in Akron or Fowler, but in tony places like the Bay Area or New York, where annual rents are far more than a down payment on a starter house in the Midwest. Being educated, but broke and in proximity to the wealthy of like upbringing and background, are ingredients for riot.
I saw videos of youths burning things in Oakland, but was told that it “was a small minority” and atypical of the protest. Not long ago I saw no clips of anyone spitting at black congresspeople wading into the Tea-Party demonstration, but was told they did and that it was typical of tens of thousands of racialists on the Mall.
But Some Are Less Equal Than Others
I don’t think the protests are really much over the Goldman Sachs bailout, or jerks like revolving-door Budget Director Peter Orszag starting back up at Citigroup, or Solyndra crony capitalism. Apparently, most middle-class and upper-middle class liberals—many of them (at least from videos) young and white—are angry at the “system.” And so they are occupying (at least until it gets really cold and wet) financial districts, downtowns, and other areas of commerce across the well-reported urban landscape. As yet there is no definable grievance other than anger that others are doing too well, and the protestors themselves are not doing at all well, and the one has something to do with the other. I am not suggesting union members and the unemployed poor are not present, only that the tip of the spear seems to be furious young middle class kids of college age and bearing, who mope around stunned, as in “what went wrong?”
Then there is a wider, global phenomenon of the angry college student. In the Middle East, much of the unrest, whether Islamist, liberal, or hard-core leftist, is fueled by young unemployed college graduates. Ditto Europe in general, and Greece in particular: The state subsidizes college loans and the popular culture accepts an even longer period between adolescence and adulthood, say between 18 and 30 something. Students emerge “aware,” but poorly educated, highly politicized, and with unreal expectations about their market worth in an ossifying society, often highly regulated and statist.
The decision has been made long ago not to marry at 23, have two or three kids by 27, and go to work in the private sector in hopes of moving up the ladder by 30. Perhaps at 35, a European expects that a job opens up in the Ministry of Culture or the elderly occupant of a coveted rent-controlled flat dies.
Students rarely graduate in four years, but scrape together parental support and, in the bargain, often bed, laundry, and breakfast, federal and state loans and grants, and part-time minimum wage jobs to “go to college.” By traditional rubrics—living at home, having the car insurance paid by dad and mom, meals cooked by someone else—many are still youths. But by our new standards—sexually active, familiar with drugs or alcohol, widely traveled and experienced—many are said to be adults.
Debt mounts. Jobs are few. For the vast majority who are not business majors, engineers, or vocational technicians, there are few jobs or opportunities other than more debt in grad or law school. In the old days, an English or history degree was a certificate of inductive thinking, broad knowledge, writing skills, and a good background for business, teaching, or professionalism. Not now. The watered down curriculum and politically-correct instruction ensure a certain glibness without real skills, thought, or judgment. Most employers are no longer impressed.
Students with such high opinions of themselves are angry that others less aware—young bond traders, computer geeks, even skilled truck drivers—make far more money. Does a music degree from Brown, a sociology BA in progress from San Francisco State, two years of anthropology at UC Riverside count for anything? They are angry at themselves and furious at their own like class that they think betrayed them. After all, if a man knows about the construction of gender or a young woman has read Rigoberta Menchu, or both have formed opinions about Hiroshima, the so-called Native American genocide, and gay history, why is that not rewarded in a way that derivatives or root canal work surely are?
Liberal Indulgences
October 28th, 2011 - 10:02 pm
Medieval Liberalism
Recently I saw some TV clips from MSNBC and CNN, one critiquing Herman Cain, the other an interview with Michael Moore. They both reminded me that one of strangest aspects of modern American society is the system of indulgences that permeates our entire culture.
In a nutshell, our American elites, even if well-meaning with real concern for the less fortunate, have adopted the medieval practice of compartmentalization. Loud demonstrations of general progressive piety exempt one from consistency. Our medieval ancestors could practice usury if they helped repair a collapsed nave or joined a Crusade, as traditional Christianity tried to deal with an imperfect world of important Christians who did not wish to live by their doctrine.
Today, liberalism puts a comparable burden on its elites: can one occupy Wall Street and still enjoy the luxury of that iPhone 4s? Did the university professor in Zuccotti Park worry about Wall Street when his TIAA-CREF account used to return 8% plus per annum? Can we still jet to Tuscany and worry about carbon footprints? Can we live in Chevy Chase, Malibu, or Woodside and be stalwarts on the barricades of racial integration and multiculturalism? How can we make $200,000 a year as assistant vice provost for diversity affairs, when a part-time lecturer gets 1/5 for the same class a full-time, top-step professor teaches?
Examine the burdens of modern liberal exemption and indulgence.
Race
Democratic strategist and MSNBC analyst Karen Finney said this the other day, “One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy. I think he giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place. I know that’s harsh, but that’s how it sure seems to me.”
Accusing either Cain of being an Uncle Tom sort or his supporters of being racists in backing a supposedly minstrel-like African-American (and that is what the successful entrepreneurial Cane is reduced to) is now a sort of standard left-wing narrative. There are no repercussions in such smears, no charges of racism. I assume that when Cain authentically drops his g’s, he is a sort of embarrassment to the liberal elite; when Obama does that in front of the Black Caucus, apparently we are to assume that this is some sort of wink-and-nod necessity for the former Harvard Law Review editor to do the necessary pandering to his “base.” Indulgences for racist stereotyping are purchased by loud proclamations of liberalism. Were Cornel West or Harry Belafonte a conservative, their rantings would long ago have been written off as false-consciousness racism.
Big Money
Michael Moore’s wealth is usually pegged around $50 million. If half his fortune were liquid and conservatively put into a savings account at about 2% interest, Moore’s annual income would be about $500,000 per year. That income would easily put him into the now hated “1%”, a group which he and others have blasted as schemers who benefit from capitalism at the expense of the 99%.
Yet when asked about his own 1% status recently on CNN, Moore was left sputtering and grasping for straws about his high-school education and all the philanthropic things he does. In other words, his liberal fides supposedly purchase him an indulgence from the supposed sins of being rich — in the manner that the left, the media, and popular culture do not go after George Soros for nearly breaking the Bank of England (making a $1 billion profit in currency speculation), or being convicted of insider trading in France (upheld on appeal). There are no signs at Occupy Wall Street damning the Soros speculations that fund “good” causes.
Savvy wealthy people — whether the Kennedy Trust beneficiaries, a Bill Gates, or Warren Buffett — understand that minimizing tax exposure, trying to avoid federal inheritance taxes through foundations, or accumulating vast riches are, in the liberal sense of ethics, offset by progressive platitudes. In short, we are supposed to think differently of John Kerry trying to avoid taxes on his multimillion-dollar superfluous yacht than we do of a car dealer’s Lexus. Warren Buffett can praise big government and higher taxes as the indulgence necessary to feel OK about shorting the government billions of future inheritance taxes by giving his fortune to a privately-run foundation that apparently is felt to be more efficient than the Department of Human Services, who, after all, could use the cash in these times of mega-deficits.
Greener Than Thou
Rarely have indulgences been more transparent than in the carbon-offset racket of the early 21st century, in which Al Gore and others established companies to do green audits on millionaires, enabling them to keep the big Malibu beach house, the Net jet account, or the 20,000 sq. ft. estate. Burning nearly 20,000 kilowatts per month or flying on private jets is the sort of indulgence purchased by Earth in the Balance or An Inconvenient Truth.
Green indulgences allow one to consume almost anything one wishes, to such an extent that one can assume that usually the loudest and most influential green advocates are themselves greater than average consumers of carbon. Loud advocacy of cap-and-trade might win you release from the purgatory of a rather large house.
Recently I saw some TV clips from MSNBC and CNN, one critiquing Herman Cain, the other an interview with Michael Moore. They both reminded me that one of strangest aspects of modern American society is the system of indulgences that permeates our entire culture.
In a nutshell, our American elites, even if well-meaning with real concern for the less fortunate, have adopted the medieval practice of compartmentalization. Loud demonstrations of general progressive piety exempt one from consistency. Our medieval ancestors could practice usury if they helped repair a collapsed nave or joined a Crusade, as traditional Christianity tried to deal with an imperfect world of important Christians who did not wish to live by their doctrine.
Today, liberalism puts a comparable burden on its elites: can one occupy Wall Street and still enjoy the luxury of that iPhone 4s? Did the university professor in Zuccotti Park worry about Wall Street when his TIAA-CREF account used to return 8% plus per annum? Can we still jet to Tuscany and worry about carbon footprints? Can we live in Chevy Chase, Malibu, or Woodside and be stalwarts on the barricades of racial integration and multiculturalism? How can we make $200,000 a year as assistant vice provost for diversity affairs, when a part-time lecturer gets 1/5 for the same class a full-time, top-step professor teaches?
Examine the burdens of modern liberal exemption and indulgence.
Race
Democratic strategist and MSNBC analyst Karen Finney said this the other day, “One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy. I think he giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place. I know that’s harsh, but that’s how it sure seems to me.”
Accusing either Cain of being an Uncle Tom sort or his supporters of being racists in backing a supposedly minstrel-like African-American (and that is what the successful entrepreneurial Cane is reduced to) is now a sort of standard left-wing narrative. There are no repercussions in such smears, no charges of racism. I assume that when Cain authentically drops his g’s, he is a sort of embarrassment to the liberal elite; when Obama does that in front of the Black Caucus, apparently we are to assume that this is some sort of wink-and-nod necessity for the former Harvard Law Review editor to do the necessary pandering to his “base.” Indulgences for racist stereotyping are purchased by loud proclamations of liberalism. Were Cornel West or Harry Belafonte a conservative, their rantings would long ago have been written off as false-consciousness racism.
Big Money
Michael Moore’s wealth is usually pegged around $50 million. If half his fortune were liquid and conservatively put into a savings account at about 2% interest, Moore’s annual income would be about $500,000 per year. That income would easily put him into the now hated “1%”, a group which he and others have blasted as schemers who benefit from capitalism at the expense of the 99%.
Yet when asked about his own 1% status recently on CNN, Moore was left sputtering and grasping for straws about his high-school education and all the philanthropic things he does. In other words, his liberal fides supposedly purchase him an indulgence from the supposed sins of being rich — in the manner that the left, the media, and popular culture do not go after George Soros for nearly breaking the Bank of England (making a $1 billion profit in currency speculation), or being convicted of insider trading in France (upheld on appeal). There are no signs at Occupy Wall Street damning the Soros speculations that fund “good” causes.
Savvy wealthy people — whether the Kennedy Trust beneficiaries, a Bill Gates, or Warren Buffett — understand that minimizing tax exposure, trying to avoid federal inheritance taxes through foundations, or accumulating vast riches are, in the liberal sense of ethics, offset by progressive platitudes. In short, we are supposed to think differently of John Kerry trying to avoid taxes on his multimillion-dollar superfluous yacht than we do of a car dealer’s Lexus. Warren Buffett can praise big government and higher taxes as the indulgence necessary to feel OK about shorting the government billions of future inheritance taxes by giving his fortune to a privately-run foundation that apparently is felt to be more efficient than the Department of Human Services, who, after all, could use the cash in these times of mega-deficits.
Greener Than Thou
Rarely have indulgences been more transparent than in the carbon-offset racket of the early 21st century, in which Al Gore and others established companies to do green audits on millionaires, enabling them to keep the big Malibu beach house, the Net jet account, or the 20,000 sq. ft. estate. Burning nearly 20,000 kilowatts per month or flying on private jets is the sort of indulgence purchased by Earth in the Balance or An Inconvenient Truth.
Green indulgences allow one to consume almost anything one wishes, to such an extent that one can assume that usually the loudest and most influential green advocates are themselves greater than average consumers of carbon. Loud advocacy of cap-and-trade might win you release from the purgatory of a rather large house.
Rage On—and on and on…
October 23rd, 2011 - 12:17 pm
I’ve been following the Wall Street protests, in New York and elsewhere. I read as well of the Democratic Party’s sorta interest in turning the anger of a few into a left-wing Tea-Party-like movement of many.
Against that background, I’ve also been counting up Barack Obama’s excuses (ATM machines are to blame and so are the tsunami, the EU, George W. Bush, the nine-month-old Republican House, the Arab Spring, the D.C. earthquake, and rising oil prices). He’s also growing his target list of various insults (everyone and everything from Clarence Thomas, Nancy Reagan, and the Special Olympics to fat-cat bankers, corporate jet-owners, millionaires and billionaires, and “the teabag, anti-government people”).
Out of all that chaos, I think there are two constants that explain the Obama frustration and the current outpouring of invective at Wall Street, “them,” the affluent, and our capitalist system in general.
So Sorry — It Doesn’t Work
On a wider political level, there is a growing realization that today’s brand of liberalism is really a form of slow societal suicide. We see red states recovering from recession; blue states are still broke. Greece is a mess; so is the entire anti-democratic, statist, and redistributive EU. Keynesian economics is about as dead as global warming/climate change/climate chaos in the age of Climategate, Al Gore, Inc., and a planet cooling over the last decade.
The old idea of open borders is also over. The notion is discredited that teaching new arrivals multiculturalism and ethnic chauvinism, providing them massive subsidies, and ignoring federal statutes was both more humane and more efficacious than the old melting pot of our youth. Solyndra was the epitaph of the lie of “millions of green jobs.” Obama will never utter that now bankrupt phrase again. “Green” means millions of dollars in printed federal money for each job produced, but even far more millions to crony capitalists who hid their malfeasance with hope and change sloganeering.
The Façade Peels Away
Independents are starting to see the end of the latest liberal experiment. Society simply cannot continue paying a half-trillion-dollars to import gas and oil, and hundreds of billions to subsidize inefficient wind and solar, even as known U.S. coal, gas, oil, shale, and tar sands reserves soar — but remain vastly underutilized. The administration’s Energy Department (e.g., gas should reach European levels, people cannot be trusted to buy the right light bulbs, California farms will blow away) is now simply the sibling of the EPA.
Raging Against the Machine
Soon even some mainstream Democrats will grasp the lie. Obamism not only does not work; its fiscal, energy, cultural, and foreign policies result in Greek-like stasis and chaos. It hinges on scapegoating those who say it does not work. Its current anger is sort of like the furor directed at those who were either trying to change or depart from the ossified medieval Church, when altruistic doctrine hides penances, exemptions, and vast estates. Stop the Smears begat JournoList which begat AttackWatch.com.
Again, all of the above is why Obama’s target and excuse lists grow and the old calls for civility and unity fade. How can a Democratic president, with a Democratic-controlled House and Senate for two years, keep faulting the present mess on either an ex-president who left almost three years ago, or a Republican-controlled House of some nine months tenure?
Junior Has Been Had?
But on a personal level, these more cosmic issues are coming home as well. Many of the current group of protestors down at Wall Street — remember the summer’s earlier flash mobbing here and the hoodies in the UK — are unknowingly raging against just this “system” where some have more than they do and will always have more, given the current frozen economy. About 2010, the music stopped and those without chairs were out of luck.
Many are furious that they have or soon will have very expensive degrees, bought at the price of either exorbitant loans or near insolvent parents who paid the $100,000-200,000 for today’s BAs. The students cannot rage against the modern corrupt, but ideologically sacrosanct, university. There, diversity czars outnumber French professors. Academic success is calibrated by avoiding introductory undergraduate classes — and all for the “student.”
The Old Way
After all, in the old days, faculty taught 6-8 (and more) classes a year. Administrators taught too and were relatively small in number (unlike the 1-1 ratio at the CSU system, the world’s largest university). The curriculum was designed to instill inductive thinking. It prepared the student to write well, think, and have a corpus of dates, events, people, and places at his fingertips for reference and elucidation.
In the Belly of the Beast — And?
Politicking was rare even in the 1970s. Well over thirty years ago, I took some 30 courses in Greek and Latin language and literature at UC Santa Cruz, and another 12 PhD seminars at Stanford — all from whom in retrospect I would imagine were mostly hard left. But who knew? Not once in eight years of undergraduate or graduate education did a liberal professor go off topic to rant or, indeed, to mix politics with history or literature or language. There were no points given for politically correct answers. No sermonizing poured forth from the rostrum. There was also simply no time to do so, given the enormity of the assignments. Reading five pages of Thucydides in Greek for each class or understanding the structure of ancient Athenian democracy left no time to blast an aspiring Ronald Reagan. I am sure indoctrination started in the early 1960s, but even in the 1970s it had not completely taken hold.
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