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The annual State of the Union address is the president’s laundry list for Congress: what he wants to see them do in the next year. Except, of course, in a campaign year, when the State of the Union address is the president’s kick-off speech for his campaign. Given that this is an election year, and given that Congress was paralyzed by partisan squabbling last year, Obama’s State of the Union speech was unusually larded with admonitions for Congress to pass bills for the president to sign. This has been the modus operandi of the Obama administration: Congress is in charge, they’re responsible for this mess, it’s out of my hands.
Take, for instance, the lead issue in the State of the Union speech: jobs. After admonishing US corporations to bring jobs back to the US, Obama offers up a host of tax credit sweeteners, as if the federal government is wallowing in money right now. Commentators pointed out immediately that taxes are not the main reason for offshoring. Cheap labor, lack of labor laws and safety regulations, and closer proximity to commodities and parts are the main reasons corporations send jobs overseas. Obama didn’t say, “We’re ready to repeal labor laws; Congress, send me a bill and I will sign it!” Although that’s what it would take to move these jobs back here.
In fact, the Obama administration doesn’t need to do this on a federal level, because similar actions are occurring at the state level. Last week, Indiana became the 23rd state in the union to pass a “right-to-work” law that undermines labor unions, and a number of other states are considering doing the same. The Obama administration has chosen to remain silent on the “right-to-work” movement, which amounts to a strategic decision to passively support corporations’ efforts to create a Third-World underclass here in the US.
Likewise, his job training initiatives will help employers at the expense of students. A proposal to create a public-private partnership between corporations and community colleges begs the question: while students are learning how to measure, calculate, cut, solder, clean, and assemble, will they be learning civics, reading comprehension, history, or critical thinking? These latter skills are essential for an informed populace in a democratic society, as many Middle Eastern nations are learning today. Will we lose an important edge in our capacity for freedom and democracy in order to gain a competitive edge in the international job markets?
Many listeners celebrated Obama’s call to free K-12 students from standardized testing, expand work-study opportunities for college students, allocate more pay for teachers, extend the tuition tax credit, and lower college tuition rates. He didn’t say, however, where the money would come from for all of these expensive proposals.
No, instead he changed the subject to immigration reform, sending a deeply contradictory message: yes, we should pass laws allowing immigrant students to become naturalized citizens. But then he beat his chest about how he’s closed the borders by putting more “boots on the ground” than any previous president. These two statements don’t constitute an effective immigration reform policy, and certainly don’t fulfill the promise he made in his campaign three years ago to reform our broken immigration system. Under his presidency, that system has become more militarized—an overzealous arm of the anti-terrorism campaign—and has torn many families and communities apart.
Much has been written since the State of Union speech about Obama’s new taskforce to crack down on banks and mortgage lenders who engaged in shady lending practices in the past decade. It’s three years too late and millions of dollars short. The SEC and the Department of Justice have already covered this ground, suing big banks and their former CEO’s and extracting insufficient settlement payments—most of which were paid by shareholders of those companies, not the executives responsible for the misdeeds. The banks will argue strenuously and with great success that this is double jeopardy: they can’t be sued twice for the same crimes. Proponents’ arguments that the taskforce will uncover new crimes are not persuasive, given that that the taskforce will be staffed with many of the same lawyers from the SEC and the DOJ who pursued the earlier cases.
The clearest example of the Obama administration’s approach to governance can be seen in its energy and environmental policies. In his speech Obama said, “Tonight I’m directing my administration to open more than 75% of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.” So much for cracking down on oil company polluters in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf. He went on to say that hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is okay, as long as companies tell us which chemicals they’re pouring into the ground. No mention was made of how those chemicals often migrate into groundwater and drinking water supplies, harming human, plant, and animal life. No mention was made of recent studies of earthquake activity near the deep-well disposal sites for contaminated fluids used in fracking.
Boasting that we have 100 years of natural gas reserves in the US, Obama ignored recent estimates by his own Energy Information Administration that show those reserves to be much lower—more than 40% lower, in fact, than earlier estimates. In addition, the US is set to become a net exporter of liquefied natural gas by 2016, belying Obama’s assumption that that our natural gas supply is for domestic use only.
The president then tossed a bone to environmentalists by calling for the opening of public lands to clean energy projects. Unfortunately, this shows the Democratic Party’s vast ignorance of the debate raging in environmental circles about such projects. Many enviros condemn the effort to place, for example, solar panels in a pristine and fragile semi-desert environment, when there are many private lands that could be used for clean energy development. The difference: energy companies would have to pay private landowners, when they could get access to public lands much more cheaply. Again, financial incentives to corporations trump environmental policy.
Most important are the elements missing from an Obama administration energy and environmental policy, primarily energy conservation plans and any effort to require power plants to clean up their carbon emissions. Corporations and the Republican Party have called these “job-killing” initiatives, and the Democratic Party has swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
Aside from the tax credits for businesses to bring jobs home, the expensive educational initiatives, and the call to fund clean energy projects, the centerpiece of Obama’s State of the Union address, the words that everyone was waiting to hear were: “Here’s how we’re going to pay for all this.”
Again, Obama disappointed us. He made two, brief statements about funding for his proposals. First, he claimed that the federal government will get a peace dividend from ending the war in Iraq, which Congress should spend to pay down the deficit and fund infrastructure projects.
The peace dividend is a mirage. The US is still pouring billions of dollars into the War on Terror. Sure, not as much of it is going to Iraq, although we still have the largest US embassy in the world in Baghdad, and we’re still funding Iraqi infrastructure and security forces training there. But we’re pouring increasing amounts of money into secret and undeclared wars all across the Middle East and Africa, from Pakistan to Yemen, to Somalia. And let’s not forget Afghanistan, where the US military estimates we’ll be involved for at least the next decade or longer.
Secondly, Obama embraced Warren Buffet’s proposal to raise taxes on people who make more than a million dollars per year. This does not constitute a comprehensive, detailed tax plan. He didn’t say a single word about letting the Bush tax cuts expire, he didn’t mention raising taxes on carried interest (wages earned by hedge fund managers that are taxed at only 15%), or raising capital gains tax rates. He didn’t mention revising the alternative minimum tax to capture more wealthy taxpayers instead of middle-class taxpayers. He didn’t mention a special tax on investment transactions, nor did he make a case for the estate tax or closing loopholes that allow the wealthy to transfer their assets tax-free to their children and grandchildren. He didn’t discuss how many businesses in the US paid little or no tax on their profits last year. In short, he presented no plan to deal with the federal government’s fiscal woes. And that’s a massive failure of governance.
Congress bears some responsibility for not passing a comprehensive budget, but that doesn’t let the president off the hook for proposing a solution to the most important problem in the national political arena. Obama failed to do that, and in doing so, proved himself as much removed from reality and divorced from the concerns of average Americans as George W. Bush ever was.
Obama’s State of the Union speech can be viewed as a campaign speech, but it should also be viewed as a gauge for the state of his presidency. In spite of rhetoric meant to appeal to middle class Americans, his administration has done everything it can to help the wealthy maintain their privileges, and to help corporations erode democracy, workers’ rights, and the environment in pursuit of more profits for their shareholders. None of the Republican candidates for president would be better, but they also wouldn’t be much worse, and that makes me shudder for the future of democracy in America.
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Rush Limbaugh sees a sinister conspiracy. Again. Thing is, this time he might be on to something:
“But the resentment for the base that the Republican establishment has is obvious, and of course the Republican establishment knows that. They know that the Tea Party is not embraced, that the Republican establishment’s trying to marginalize the Tea Party. So really, at least for me, it’s not hard to understand. Now, there’s an abject sense of panic that has set in over, ‘Oh, no! You mean this race is gonna go on? Oh, no!’ Yeah, the race is gonna go on. See, they thought that this would be over before it started. Remember what I told you. ‘They’re gonna split the conservative vote and elect the moderate.’ They were gonna stand traditional theory on its head.…
They decided, ‘We’re gonna lose from the get-go. We’re gonna nominate a moderate. We’re gonna take conservatives in our party that we can’t stand and we’re gonna have as many of them up there as possible splitting vote.’”
Okay, so he’s a little bit batty with the “The Republican establishment wants to lose” and “they encouraged tons of conservatives to split the vote” paranoia. Rick Perry jumped in because he had money and a lot of people telling him he could win. Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich wanted to sell books and get a gig on Fox. Michele Bachmann wanted to hear the sound of her name. Rick Santorum just wanted to be in the mix. None of them were there because the Wizard of Oz ordered them there.
But the other, potentially stronger GOPers that could have challenged Perry all had good reasons to demur, above and beyond their calculus that an incumbent President, even a black man in a bad economy, would be tougher to beat than an open seat in 2016. Jeb Bush needs more time for people to forget his brother. Mitch Daniels couldn’t convince his family. Chris Christie decided, probably wisely given his often anemic approval ratings in New Jersey, that he wasn’t ready. Sarah Palin didn’t want to have to work. Haley Barbour was smart enough to cop to the fact that a fat white man from Mississippi challenging the nation’s first black president was terrible optics. And all of them saw what happened to the money supply when others tried to tap the same fat cat money base Mitt Romney has had sewn up for two years. You remember Tim Pawlenty, right? Jon who?
For the same reasons, none are about to jump in at the last second. Plus, they all value their chances in 2016 too much.
And, so, the Republican field is what it is: no conspiracy necessary. But Limbaugh is correct that the GOP powers that be are in full panic mode over the emergence of Newt Gingrich. Romney and Gingrich (and Santorum and Ron Paul, for that matter) don’t match up well against Obama, but for different reasons. Romney, with all his millions in SuperPAC money, still can’t buy enough consultants and Madison Avenue magic to fool people into thinking he’s authentic. He’ll say anything to convince people of it, true, but he’s never had a real emotion in his life – his public life, anyway – and the GOP crazies know he’s not one of them. Not to mention that whole Mormons descended from ancient aliens thing, and that Romney himself may well have been an anchor baby. Willard is a bizarre combination of plastic panderer and smug, unapologetic banner-carrier for the one percent. And, it turns out, he’s also an inept campaigner. No wonder the base hates him.
Gingrich, on the other hand, is a skilled server of red meat to the GOP base – but has extraordinarily high negatives among everyone else. You need a good chunk of that everyone else to win the White House.
And, so, panic. Romney doesn’t excite anyone, and unless he taps a so-far-not-seen flair for connecting with, well, anyone, Obama will probably beat him. But the GOP establishment panic comes because the more volatile Newt is more likely to drive people to vote against him. They see their chances at winning the Senate and even keeping control of the House as much lower with a Gingrich nomination.
And, so, with the regularity of a stopped clock, Rush is right on this one. The big money and elected officials who traditionally run the GOP really are going to pull out all the stops to torpedo Gingrich. But Rush is wrong that they want to lose. Quite the opposite: unlike His Flatulence, they know that the special brand of craziness that the GOP has become is, fortunately, still a recipe for slaughter in a general election. They’d rather not go there. Even if it means nominating a lameass like Willard Romney.
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Oklahoma (natch) state senator Ralph Shortey has introduced a bill that would ban the use of aborted fetuses in food products. Seriously.
Sen. Ralph Shortey of Oklahoma City introduced on Tuesday Senate Bill 1418, which prohibits “the sale or manufacture of food or products which contain aborted human fetuses.” He says he based the bill on an article he read online about an anti-abortion group boycotting companies that allegedly use embryonic stem cells to research and develop artificial sweeteners.
Hey, I read an article online that says the government is hoarding alien technology in a secret warehouse in Nevada. Let’s pass a bill requiring that the technology must have U.S. citizenship.
Presumably food products using fetuses that died a natural death are A-OK.
Never, ever think that Republicans cannot get stupider. It’s one challenge they’re always up for.
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Back in the day, I spent a couple of years with Dan Savage as my editor and immediate boss at The Stranger, so when I say that I blame Dan for many things, know that it’s personal. And one of those things, unfortunately, is that I can’t stop giggling about Santorum’s come-from-behind victory (OK, near-victory) in Iowa.
OK. I’ll stop now. Really.
But in the glare of media attention this week that has followed, one bit of history has been almost totally absent, and it shouldn’t be. That is the utter venality of a man whose entire campaign has been a crusade – and I use that term carefully and intentionally – to impose his morals on the rest of us.
Santorum’s righteous morals, however, don’t extend to political corruption, as we learn in this snippet from DubyaTime:
Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum’s responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican–a senator’s chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors. “The underlying theme was [to] place Republicans in key positions on K Street. Everybody taking part was a Republican and understood that that was the purpose of what we were doing,” says Rod Chandler, a retired congressman and lobbyist who has participated in the Santorum meetings. “It’s been a very successful effort.”
That’s a passage describing the so-called “K-Street Project,” a pay-for-play scheme, launched by Tom Delay and Grover Norquist, which tied lobbyist “access” to Congress with a revolving door of lucrative jobs for Republican staffers and ex-elected officials like Chandler (who once represented Dave Reichert’s current district before losing a Senate race to Patty Murray and going on to enrich himself in the lobbyist trough).
Santorum’s partner in crime in his shepherding of this scheme? Jack Abramoff, the eponymous center of a corruption scandal that sent one Republican lawmaker and several staff members and Bush Administration officials to prison, and should have resulted in the imprisonment of many more.
The campaign of Newt Gingrich has gotten a lot of attention for the jarring dissonance between Gingrich’s smug calls for morality (if you’re, say, a poor black kid) and his own past ethical lapses, but Santorum’s hypocrisy is just as glaring. And there’s a bonus: focusing on Santorum’s links to the worst DC corruption case in a generation also reminds voters that much of the Republican field, including likely nominee Willard Romney, is just as cozy with and eager to do the bidding of the corporate lobby industry – exactly the sort of financial cronyism that has pissed off so much of the country.
This bit of fairly recent history should be shouted from the rooftops. The last time Republicans ran all three branches of government, they turned DC into an ethical cesspool. What better way to remind voters of what that looked and smelled like, than with the sudden emergence of a generous pile of Santorum?
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Kitchen Note: Our 16th year of compiling the most overhyped and underreported stories of the year kicks off with Maria Tomchick’s fine lead story on this past year’s most underreported economic stories. In the next couple days we’ll also be rolling out stories on both local and national/international overhyped and underreported stories. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments!
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I didn’t vote for the motherfucker. I found the motherfucker’s pre-election Hope-hype transparently bullshittable. I cackled long and loud when the motherfucker won the Nobel Peace Prize. I’ve argued a million-and-one times that the policies of the motherfucker’s administration have been wholly indistinguishable from those of his predecessor’s.
But I guess I’m not cynical enough, because his latest trick has truly shocked me.
Barack Obama marked an end to a war he once described as “dumb” by declaring the conflict in Iraq a success and saying the last US troops will leave in the coming days with their “heads held high”.
Shocking…but even more, just absolutely sickening.
In true Bush-era fashion, there was plenty of merriment in Obama’s speech (transcript courtesy the official White House website) at Fort Bragg…
Now, I’m sure you realize why I don’t like following Michelle Obama. (Laughter.) She’s pretty good. And it is true, I am a little biased, but let me just say it: Michelle, you are a remarkable First Lady. You are a great advocate for military families. (Applause.) And you’re cute. (Applause.) I’m just saying — gentlemen, that’s your goal: to marry up. (Laughter.) Punch above your weight.
…and plenty of good old-fashioned Nuremberg-esque jingoism…
AUDIENCE: Hooah! (Applause.) [...]
THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody! (Applause.) Hello, Fort Bragg! All the way!
AUDIENCE: Airborne! [...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah! [...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah! [...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah! (Applause.) [...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah! [...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah! (Applause.) [...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah! [...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah![...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah![...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah![...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah![...]
AUDIENCE: Hooah! (Applause.) [...]
…but nowhere to be found is any mention of the humanitarian and ecological toll of the second Gulf War, which mark it as one of the more depraved crimes in American history (and that’s saying a helluva lot).
Hundreds of thousands dead? More than a million internal refugees? Unexploded cluster bombs maiming and killing even more? Radiological munitions? Civilian infrastucture laid waste? Wanton torture and cruelty?
Hooah!, and pass the motherfucking popcorn.
Barack Obama, like his predecessor before him, is a War Criminal. Like his predecessor before him, he thinks his crimes are praise-worthy, and joke-worthy. Like his predecessor’s before his, his Administration has been a pox upon this world.
A vote cast for this man in 2012 is a vote for death, destruction, and misery untold. Just don’t do it.
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Every year since 1996, ETS! has run our annual list of the year’s most overhyped and underreported stories, both national/international and local (here’s the list from 2010). This year is no exception. And, as in past years, we’d love to hear from you?
Got any nominations for the year’s most overhyped stories? (Hint: we may have to name an annual award after Donald Trump.) Want to make sure we include that story you know is critically important, but corporate media keep choosing to inexplicibly ignore? (We may have to name that one after climate change, too.)
Leave your suggestions in the comments below, or e-mail them to editorial@eatthestate.org. And look for the 2011 Media Follies, coming soon!
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More, please:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday entered the turbulent political waters of voting rights, signaling that the Justice Department would be aggressive in reviewing new voting laws that civil rights advocates say will dampen minority participation in next year’s elections.
…Mr. Holder also laid out a case for replacing the “antiquated” voter registration system by automatically registering all eligible voters; for barring state legislators from gerrymandering their own districts, and for creating a federal statute prohibiting the dissemination of fraudulent information to deceive people into not voting.
We now have a decade’s worth of evidence that vote fraud, of the type that involves unregistered people voting or people voting multiple times, is so rare as to be inconsequential, while reports of voter suppression (almost all by Republicans) have over the same period been epidemic.
Holder and the Obama administration should run with this. It is, first of all, morally the right thing to do. Secondly, it’s politically advantageous, given who is primarily being targeted by these local efforts. But it is also a winning argument. On the one side, you have Republicans engaging in self-serving behavior ostensibly to combat a problem that according to the experts does not exist. On the other side, you have a large group of Americans being denied a fundamental constitutional right.
It’s also good to see that Holder is expanding this discussion beyond voter ID laws, and treating such laws, gerrymandering, and voter suppression tactics as of a piece. Hopefully he will add caging, frivolous voter eligibility challenges, and other vote suppression tactics to his agenda. And in the best of all worlds his people will also explore and highlight the coordinated national effort to enact such laws on the local level.
Politically, taking on this issue should be a no-brainer for the Obama administration, particularly since it’s not just minorities but also the elderly, disabled, and young adults who are disproportionately affected by many of these tactics. It’s always easy to scare people, and Fox News has raised it to an art form. But there are probably literally millions of people who can tell stories of being shut out from their own democracy, where a straight line can be drawn from their stories to the coordinated Republican efforts to shut them out. That sort of storytelling needs to happen. If the civil rights division of the Department of Justice can document the abuses and get some of these laws shut down, great. But even the effort to do so has the benefit of telling a story: Republicans don’t want you to vote.
Also, too, there’s no reason the White House and civil rights advocates should be taking this on alone. Hopefully, somewhere, some PAC is making a slick “I deserve to vote” TV ad with a rainbow of people (young, old, white, minority) describing how some politicians are passing laws and enacting policies and regulations because they’re afraid of us exercising our constitutional rights. It dovetails perfectly with the 99% narrative, too, since most of the politicians pursuing that agenda are in the pocket of the one percent. It’s an issue that needs to be pushed. Hard.
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He goes and proves you wrong.
Er, considering his is probably gonna be a one-and-done presidency, you’d think he’d get busy and work out the Obama Doctrine already. You know, for his “legacy”, and all.
Hey dude, if you’re looking for suggestions, here’s one (free of charge):
Everything Dubya Bush did, we’ll just keep doing it — only maybe a little more extreme-like. Gotta show all these fuckin’ numb-nuts protestors who’s boss, yo.
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In his thoughtful column for the November 9 Seattle Times, Steve Kelley suggested what only a few other commentators have: that Joe Paterno was aware, by no later than 1999, of Jerry Sandusky’s crimes…yet allowed them to continue. At any rate, it’s clear that Paterno and many others in the Penn State chain of command were aware by no later than 2002 that there was something seriously amiss. And yet it was swept under the rug. The mind boggles. But, really, ought it?
Does anybody think that if these sorts of crimes can be committed in the Penn State football program — the very embodiment of virtue — that they can’t/aren’t/won’t be happening in other programs of similar stature? So long as the games go on, so long as we may continue to receive our Saturday fix, we shall choose to remain blissfully in ignorance.
Don’t believe it? Here’s the reaction in Happy Valley — the community in which contrition should have been the strongest – to Paterno’s dismissal:
After the firings, thousands of students descended on the administration building, shouting, “We want Joe back!” then headed downtown to Beaver Avenue. The mood there was boisterous but not angry — almost all the students were decked out in Penn State gear.
Beyond football, are Sandusky’s actions worse than those of the perpetrators and enablers of Abu Ghraib — about which nobody remembers, even though abuses of this nature are still ongoing in Imperial gulags the world over (including U.S.-run gulags, if it needs to be stated), the punishing of a few so-called “bad apples” notwithstanding? (See related post, from April of 2004.)
Are Sandusky’s victims more emotionally scarred than are the victims (i.e., the entire populations) of our sickeningly violent blood-lettings in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, by proxy, Palestine — to name just a very few of the latest sites which have been visited with (what ought to be) utterly shocking horror at the hands of the American War Machine (and by extension any who, by consenting to pay their taxes, enable it)? Not only are we not shocked by the ongoing horrors, not only do our lives continue as though the horrors weren’t ongoing, we revel in them, glorify them when they’re at their very height. We allow them to occur time and time and time again.
Each and every day, 50,000 children are killed by starvation and poverty-related diseases; the World’s children are suffering poverty largely owing to austerity measures imposed by the World Bank and IMF. The media silence is deafening. Our silence is our tacit approval.
There are countless examples of daily injustices of varying magnitude — from the household, to the municipality, to big time athletics, to international affairs. How can we allow them to happen? Uncovered, how can we allow them to continue?
The problem isn’t “bad apples” run amok. It’s power itself. For the granting of power is a license to abuse power — and not a one of us is above corruption, nor knows whether we would have the courage to blow the whistle were we witness to abuse.
This is, apparently, human nature — as is, apparently, the ability to turn a blind eye to atrocities committed in one’s own name and yet retain the audacity to look oneself in the mirror, go to sleep at night, keep hold of one’s sanity.
Moreover, even if individuals were incorruptible, the nature of our societies’ current institutional framework ensures injustice everywhere we turn.
- Capitalism is by definition a means to exploit workers’ labor.
- Blacks and Latinos are imprisoned at rates far beyond Whites’.
- The first Gulf War and the economic sanctions which followed were carried out under the auspices of the United Nations; yet was an injustice of such immensity (considered genocidal by those most in position to know) as to make the utterly shocking Penn State revelations appear utterly trivial by comparison.
The number examples of injustice delivered at the hands of institutions working as they were designed to work is more less unlimited. The magnitude of institutional injustice undoubtedly far outweighs the magnitude of lawless, or scandalous, injustice…and that’s without even getting into injustices perpetrated against the non-human inhabitants of our blue marble.
In his column, Kelley lays blame in the Penn State case upon the “actions of one evil man and the inactions of so many others.” But Sandusky isn’t “evil” — he’s sick. And how could he not be? How could any individual be anything but a mirror of our sick fucking society? Sandusky’s sickness happened to manifest in the manner that it did. Placed in a position of power, he was enabled to act upon it.
Does anybody really believe that Sandusky wanted to be saddled with his terrible compulsion? That he enjoys it? That he has not been horribly scarred by it? That he believes his victims found their experiences pleasurable, and/or that they will someday find them to have been beneficial? Of course we don’t.
And if we don’t, we need to acknowledge that Sandusky had no choice but to commit these heinous acts. No doubt some individuals, when afflicted with his same compulsion, are able to resist. Others, surely, are able to use counseling to overcome their compulsion. They’re the lucky ones (although probably still miserable). Sandusky, and “so many others”, have been biologically unable to circumvent their compulsions — for had they been able to, they would have chosen different paths. That’s as obvious as the sky is blue.
The crimes of, e.g., Jerry Sandusky and Lynndie England, are symptoms. We may apply some ointment to the open wounds: Jerry Sandusky may go to jail; Joe Paterno has been shown the door. The teevee cameras will soon enough evaporate; on to the next one. But that isn’t “justice”: the crimes can’t be undone, and the punishments won’t prevent future crimes of similar nature taking place.
Whatever admixture of lived experience — upbringing, geography, media, dumb genetic luck, who-knows-what-else — causes one person to reflect societal ills by becoming a pedophile, another by “going postal”, another by designing high-tech weapons systems, another simply by purchasing sweatshop-made clothing — is beyond the limits of our comprehension. But merely punishing wrong-doers and sanctimoniously decrying their actions is, apart from the hypocrisy, as pointless in real life as it would be in the case of the proverbial frog-stinging scorpion.
The addressing of symptoms will not affect cause. Without removal of cause, new symptoms will continue to occur over and over again. This has been so since long before the first slave was ever enchained, or the first “blasphemer” was ever stoned to death. If we don’t change, it’ll continue to be so long after the firing off of the last missile announces the sunset of the American Empire.
It’s kinda fucked, but it’s what we’re up against. And there’s nothing to be gained in the righteously indignant pointing of fingers. We must be willing to rethink the fundamental nature of our societies: authority, institutions, the state, property (as in, it’s theft).
Naive? Fine. But until we’re willing to consider a fundamental societal reorganisation — a polity not founded upon violence and coercion — Renault-esque outrage at the latest abuse of power du jour to burn up the airwaves is nothing more than wheel-spinning hypocrisy.
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