He acts kind of funny
And has scads of money
He doesn’t have hooves
But puts dogs on car roofs
He has homes everywhere
And sports perfect hair
His laughs seem so forced
And he’s not even hoarse
And he won’t drink or cuss
He’s not one of us
As we exit the Republican primary circus and enter the face-off between a black incumbent president and a white opponent, we are forced to encounter ourselves along the way. It is interesting on so many levels that I know that many of you readers will tell me how many factors that I have missed during the journey. When we compare the two major candidates on a personal basis as happened during the electioneering for the GW Bush presidency where lots of folks simply went on their gut reaction “I’d like to sit down and have a beer with W.” Somehow, I don’t think that any of us would qualify to sit in the same beer tent with the non-drinking Romney. While I can afford a beer, I cannot afford getting into a $10,000 bet, or a fund raising event in the Hamptons. I will attempt to compare the candidates to each other as well as the candidates to you and me. I am going to make a non-monetary wager right up front, however. I’ll bet that you have more in common with Mr. Obama than you do with Mr. Romney. I hope that does not spoil your day.
Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother moved several times in childhood. She lived in California, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and Washington. Obama was born into the middle class and had a single parent mother whose husband left her and Barack to fend for themselves after 4 years. Stanley Ann Dunham was only 18 when Barack was born. She and her family valued education highly and sacrificed for it. Stanley (“Ann” in college) moved between the US and Indonesia as an adult as she studied and raised her son. She married a second time (to Lolo Soetoro) and divorced him in 1980. Barack’s father went to Harvard for his Master’s degree while his mother received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii in 1992. Her 20 year study covered blacksmithing in Indonesia and both her M.A. and PhD degrees were awarded by the University of Hawaii. The Obamas were dependent upon public education for some schooling although Barack spent eight years at the Punahou (prep) School in Honolulu. Although Punahou is heavily endowed, Barack’s family sacrificed to provide tuition. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, was born into wealth in Michigan and never attended a public school after grammar school, nor did he send his children to public schools. George Romney chose to surround his children with other kids of privilege, as did his son Mitt. Both Barack and Mitt are distinguished Harvard JD graduates although Barack was elected President of the Harvard Law Review.
Obama’s grandparents were interesting in their own right. Stanley Ann’s father, Stanley Armour Dunham, volunteered and served in the US Army during WW II. He is related to six presidents (James Madison, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and both George H. W. Bush and GW Bush). Obama’s great-uncle Ralph Dunham also served in WW II and landed on Omaha Beach on D +4. Stanley Dunham never was quite able to open a furniture store as he had hoped, but Barack’s grandmother Madelyn Dunham worked in a Honolulu bank and ended her career as vice president of the bank. Ralph Dunham was especially proud of his service under General Patton in Europe. The Dunham family seemed solidly middle class and patriotic Americans who did their duty and served when called as did millions of others. They participated in the economy and did the best they could with the resources they had including educating Barack. They intermingled with others as part of the American melting pot.
Romney’s parents and grandparents were interesting as well. Mitt’s actual first name is Willard; named for J. Willard Marriott, the hotel magnate. When the US government made it clear that the Mormon practice of polygamy was going to be outlawed, Mitt’s grandfather moved his family to Mexico in 1885 where George Romney was born later. Mitt’s grandfather moved back to the United States in 1910 to escape the Mexican Revolution. In that sense, the Romneys faced some obstacles due to polygamy, but George Romney became monogamous and a successful businessman who entered politics as a Republican in Michigan. Mormon polygamist colonies in Mexico were assisted by the US government with transportation and payments to return from Mexico about 20 years after renouncing polygamy as a tenet of the Mormon religion. Later, Mexico paid reparation, although many Mormons remained in colonies there. George Romney was eligible for dual citizenship due to his birth in Mexico. By Mexican law, Mexican citizenship eligibility extends to Mitt Romney. He could be a reverse “anchor baby.”
Mitt’s family faced little deprivation in the US and his father George Romney became a successful automobile executive in Michigan although he was criticized for moving American Motors to Wisconsin almost as a precursor to Mitt’s practice with Bain; moving jobs and shrinking employment to increase profits. George Romney did become the Governor of Michigan and served three two-year terms. He ran for the Republican nomination for president, but was seriously hampered by his statement that he was “brainwashed” by the military over the Vietnam War. His opposition to the war put George Romney in direct conflict with Barry Goldwater who was far more conservative. Mitt, however, strongly defended the war during his thirty-month missionary tour in France and was surprised by his father’s opposition to it when he returned home. Mitt had a total of four deferments matching the achievement of Dick Cheney, another advocate for the Vietnam War, as long as war was not personal.
There has been little discussion of an odd similarity with the two families in that both were polygamist at some point; Mitt’s great grandfather and Barack’s grandfather and perhaps even his father, were polygamists. Ooh, small world.
Ironically, days ago, on 17 July 2012, John Sununu set up our situational questions with his campaign conference call: “I wish this president would learn how to be an American.” That has been the GOP talking point since before Obama took office. “He is not one of us.” We have endured “birthers” and pundits from the right shouting how Obama just does not act like the rest of us. “He had foreign training in a Madrassa?” “I don’t believe he can be a Christian.” Putting aside the obvious question as to whether Mormons can be Christians for the moment, can we change this flow and ask a few questions that let us examine similarities among Romney and Obama and us.
How many of you have elevators for your three Cadillacs? How many of you have made public $10,000 bets? How many of you have never put your kids into a public school? How many of you have mansions scattered across this nation and overseas? How many of you never had to fight for work or shelter(s) or education? How many of you have been able to avoid income taxes? How many of you got draft exemptions for the Vietnam War? How many of you outsourced jobs? How many of you assaulted an effeminate classmate; forcibly cut his hair and humiliate him using other classmates to hold him down? How many of you raided pension plans to increase your profits (and had the government make up pension shortfalls)? How many of you have tax shelters in the Caymans? How many of you have Swiss bank accounts? How many of you have not had to provide tax returns to get a home loan? How many of you agree “Corporations are people, my friend?”
You get the point. Yes, Obama is black. Is that what makes him “less American?” Think about it. When was the last time you traveled with a live dog on the top of your car? Finally, how many of you agree: Mitt Romney said he finds "it hard to disagree with Rush Limbaugh on topics?"
Definitely, Romney is not one of us. This is just the opposite of what the noise machine has blared since before Obama was elected. It is time to consider whom you are most like. It may make a huge difference when decisions are made on jobs and taxes and privileges versus rights and responsibilities. Come to think of it, wouldn’t you also rather have a beer with Obama?
Peace,
George Giacoppe
18 July 2012
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The Obama Administration is Dead
The just-announced compromise between President Obama and gloating Republicans seems to be the final nail in the coffin of the Obama Administration. This guy, to put it simply, seems to have no stomach for a fight at all. Like some modern anti-hero, when the going gets rough, he caves. So today, as he’s been hinting all along, he announced that he would extend the Bush tax cuts for all Americans, including those making over $250,000/year or even $1 million a year (as Senator Schumer proposed.) No, Obama ate the whole poisoned meal, and tried to defend it to outraged colleagues. More than that, he added a couple of new wrinkles. First, he proposed to provide a year’s drop of 2% in the FICA or Social Security taxes that all Americans pay (progressives have proposed making wealthy Americans pay more by extending the amount of income subject to SS taxes, but Obama, predictably, went the other way). While Obama claims that this will put more money in the hands of working Americans (and it will, short term), other progressives have pointed out that it makes a start in a direction favored by the most rabid reactionaries, who have been trying to get rid of Social Security for 80 years. That is, by reducing the amount going into the Social Security Trust Fund (already raided for years by mainly Republican presidents to finance their shitty wars), the President’s action will add to the pressure to bankrupt Social Security to the point where it will be abandoned as too costly. After all, Americans need their military-industrial complex. But there’s another element to the plan as well, again a major cave-in to slavering Republicans and their millionaire constituency. The hated estate tax would be lowered, on estates worth more than $5 million, to 35%. Democrats, Obama’s party, wanted to make the tax 45% on all estates over $3.5 million (still a lowering from the 55% it had been), but again, the Republican plan won.
Sort of makes you wonder if perhaps Obama isn’t a closet Republican, doesn’t it?
Whatever he is—and it certainly is not progressive—it now seems clear that he has decided that his only hope for winning in 2012 is to follow Bill Clinton’s example, and turn to the right after a mid-tern ‘shellacking’. It is a bitter pill for progressives to swallow after the euphoria that greeted his election. It is also, unless I miss my guess, the death knell for his administration. Because the one thing Americans despise more than a loser is a president so weak he can’t even muster the courage to use his bully pulpit to fight for what he believes in. Instead, at every turn, Obama has caved in to conservative forces—whether it’s on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Health Care “reform”, or taxes on the rich. Perhaps he long ago concluded that as a black man, he had to present himself as a non-threatening, non-combative intellectual. But he’s done that, and it has backfired every time. According to Republican rhetoric, he’s a socialist, a communist, a Muslim and a Nazi all rolled into one. Why he thinks he can somehow ingratiate himself with them and their constituency now is a mystery no one seems able to solve. The only thing that appears certain to me, again, is that it—plus his continuing cowardice in confronting his enemies—will condemn him to one term. Given the lack of backbone he’s displayed thus far (and sadly, he has tons of company among his Democratic comrades in Congress), perhaps that’s a good thing.
Lawrence DiStasi
Sort of makes you wonder if perhaps Obama isn’t a closet Republican, doesn’t it?
Whatever he is—and it certainly is not progressive—it now seems clear that he has decided that his only hope for winning in 2012 is to follow Bill Clinton’s example, and turn to the right after a mid-tern ‘shellacking’. It is a bitter pill for progressives to swallow after the euphoria that greeted his election. It is also, unless I miss my guess, the death knell for his administration. Because the one thing Americans despise more than a loser is a president so weak he can’t even muster the courage to use his bully pulpit to fight for what he believes in. Instead, at every turn, Obama has caved in to conservative forces—whether it’s on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Health Care “reform”, or taxes on the rich. Perhaps he long ago concluded that as a black man, he had to present himself as a non-threatening, non-combative intellectual. But he’s done that, and it has backfired every time. According to Republican rhetoric, he’s a socialist, a communist, a Muslim and a Nazi all rolled into one. Why he thinks he can somehow ingratiate himself with them and their constituency now is a mystery no one seems able to solve. The only thing that appears certain to me, again, is that it—plus his continuing cowardice in confronting his enemies—will condemn him to one term. Given the lack of backbone he’s displayed thus far (and sadly, he has tons of company among his Democratic comrades in Congress), perhaps that’s a good thing.
Lawrence DiStasi
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Health Care and Other Sorrows
President Obama and various Democratic Senators trumpeted their “victory” this weekend, when they managed to bribe Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson to pledge his vote for the Health Care Bill in exchange for concessions on abortion (how abortion became part of the health care debate is another matter). Here is how an AP report characterized the concessions: Not only would health plans not have to offer coverage for abortions, but
“In plans that do cover abortion, beneficiaries would have to pay for it separately, and those funds would have to be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money.
Moreover, individual states would be able to prohibit abortion coverage in plans offered through the exchange, but after passing specific legislation to that effect.”
Thus, one reactionary senator from one corny state has dictated the health benefits offered to women in the entire nation.
The rest of the benefits once considered firmly in the bill have been torpedoed by other reactionary senators like Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. So gutted has the final bill become that Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate and until the party election this year, chairman of the party, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that appeared today, condemning the compromise in no uncertain terms. His words pretty much sum up the defeat of Senate liberals on healthcare:
“If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health care reform.
Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Real health care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company…
If you want to read more of what Dean said, and it is powerful, check out his op-ed.
But the important thing here, as in numerous other initiatives of the Obama Administration and the craven Democrats who promised reform in this and other areas, is the continuing abandonment of long-held principles upon which they were elected. A recent article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone Magazine (“Obama’s Big Sellout” Dec. 9, 2009) cites these concessions chapter and verse. It is not a pretty picture. Basically, according to Taibbi, the Obama Adminstration took action as soon as Nov. 5 to abandon the promises (and people—Austin Goolsbee, Karen Kornbluh) that got him elected, and steered deliberately towards the center and the moneyed interests who reign there. It was clear in the appointments Obama made to his economic team—and which we have commented on before. People like Tim Geithner as Secretary of Treasury, Lawrence Summers as Head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, Michael Froman as head of the National Economic Council, and countless others, all came out of a very specific area of Wall Street, many of them aides or protégés of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. According to Taibbi, Rubin, who came originally from Goldman Sachs, has screwed up every job he’s ever had. Nonetheless, he has been consistently demoted upward, most recently to the Chairmanship of Citigroup, which the Federal Government has bailed out with billions (upwards of $300 billion) of taxpayer dollars. His legacy in the current administration has been extensive and toxic:
The significance of all of these appointments isn't that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It's that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants. “Bob Rubin, these guys, they're classic limousine liberals,” says David Sirota, a former Democratic strategist. “These are basically people who have made shitloads of money in the speculative economy, but they want to call themselves good Democrats because they're willing to give a little more to the poor. That's the model for this Democratic Party: Let the rich do their thing, but give a fraction more to everyone else.
It is sickening to realize that this pretty much sums up the moves made by the Obama administration in virtually every arena of government: the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, the policy on torture and Guantanamo, health care reform, and global warming. It is always a compromise with the most reactionary forces, and justified by the catch-phrase that has now become their mantra: Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. But what good is a good that makes matters worse, as Dean says about the current health care compromise? What good is a Nobel Peace Prize for a president who has just ordered 30,000 more troops to a war that never should have been started in the first place?
All one can conclude is that one’s optimism that Obama was a “necessity” ran its course on Inauguration Day when people wept to see a black man as President. Since then, it’s been downhill all the way. The real power in this nation has remained unchanged, and firmly in the hands of Wall Street bankers, corporate CEOs, health-care moguls, and the same wealthy elites who have run things since the beginning. One might have thought that the near-catastrophe that brought the financial system to its knees would change this, but, if anything, it has made conditions for most of us worse. Now the health care “reform” bill threatens to add to the stench.
In this dark season, one cannot help but veer towards that prophetic question of William Butler Yeats:
“what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Lawrence DiStasi
=
“In plans that do cover abortion, beneficiaries would have to pay for it separately, and those funds would have to be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money.
Moreover, individual states would be able to prohibit abortion coverage in plans offered through the exchange, but after passing specific legislation to that effect.”
Thus, one reactionary senator from one corny state has dictated the health benefits offered to women in the entire nation.
The rest of the benefits once considered firmly in the bill have been torpedoed by other reactionary senators like Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. So gutted has the final bill become that Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate and until the party election this year, chairman of the party, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that appeared today, condemning the compromise in no uncertain terms. His words pretty much sum up the defeat of Senate liberals on healthcare:
“If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health care reform.
Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Real health care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company…
If you want to read more of what Dean said, and it is powerful, check out his op-ed.
But the important thing here, as in numerous other initiatives of the Obama Administration and the craven Democrats who promised reform in this and other areas, is the continuing abandonment of long-held principles upon which they were elected. A recent article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone Magazine (“Obama’s Big Sellout” Dec. 9, 2009) cites these concessions chapter and verse. It is not a pretty picture. Basically, according to Taibbi, the Obama Adminstration took action as soon as Nov. 5 to abandon the promises (and people—Austin Goolsbee, Karen Kornbluh) that got him elected, and steered deliberately towards the center and the moneyed interests who reign there. It was clear in the appointments Obama made to his economic team—and which we have commented on before. People like Tim Geithner as Secretary of Treasury, Lawrence Summers as Head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, Michael Froman as head of the National Economic Council, and countless others, all came out of a very specific area of Wall Street, many of them aides or protégés of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. According to Taibbi, Rubin, who came originally from Goldman Sachs, has screwed up every job he’s ever had. Nonetheless, he has been consistently demoted upward, most recently to the Chairmanship of Citigroup, which the Federal Government has bailed out with billions (upwards of $300 billion) of taxpayer dollars. His legacy in the current administration has been extensive and toxic:
The significance of all of these appointments isn't that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It's that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants. “Bob Rubin, these guys, they're classic limousine liberals,” says David Sirota, a former Democratic strategist. “These are basically people who have made shitloads of money in the speculative economy, but they want to call themselves good Democrats because they're willing to give a little more to the poor. That's the model for this Democratic Party: Let the rich do their thing, but give a fraction more to everyone else.
It is sickening to realize that this pretty much sums up the moves made by the Obama administration in virtually every arena of government: the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, the policy on torture and Guantanamo, health care reform, and global warming. It is always a compromise with the most reactionary forces, and justified by the catch-phrase that has now become their mantra: Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. But what good is a good that makes matters worse, as Dean says about the current health care compromise? What good is a Nobel Peace Prize for a president who has just ordered 30,000 more troops to a war that never should have been started in the first place?
All one can conclude is that one’s optimism that Obama was a “necessity” ran its course on Inauguration Day when people wept to see a black man as President. Since then, it’s been downhill all the way. The real power in this nation has remained unchanged, and firmly in the hands of Wall Street bankers, corporate CEOs, health-care moguls, and the same wealthy elites who have run things since the beginning. One might have thought that the near-catastrophe that brought the financial system to its knees would change this, but, if anything, it has made conditions for most of us worse. Now the health care “reform” bill threatens to add to the stench.
In this dark season, one cannot help but veer towards that prophetic question of William Butler Yeats:
“what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Lawrence DiStasi
=
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Deep Beauty of Conspiracy Theorists
Just how wrong are you now
If you don’t see that cow
That used no steroids or spoon
And leaped joyfully over the moon?
If I lie and you swear it is so
Then where do we go
On our journey to fashion a tale
Of intrigue and sinister woe
When breaths become gales
And minnows are whales
Then just where do we go?
For the past decade or so, it has been fashionable to equate one opinion to another, even when an “opinion” is unsupported with facts. FOX news has made a business out of reporting rumor and then commenting and operating on the assumption that a rumor, or worse, a lie, is true and worthy of further coverage. If we take the “birthers” for example, FOX and now CNN, through Lou Dobbs have extended the life and the strength of the false accusation that Mr. Obama is not a natural born US citizen. True, even Lou Dobbs does not directly say that Obama was not born in Hawaii, but he gives credence to the lie by constant repetition and by asking for proof that has already been provided. More recently, the “deathers” have pumped up the volume, even after being alerted that their statements are false.
Very recently, as congress members and senators have hit the trail to discuss the need for changes in our healthcare system, they have been systematically attacked by shout-down tactics that eerily remind me of the bullying by Stalinists in their early rise to power. Regardless of their heart felt conviction in their cause, their tactics are unconscionable. Instead of soliciting and enabling discussion, the process inculcates fear and shuts down discussion before it can begin. Recent revelations indicate that professional lobbyists have had their fine fingers on the puppet strings of many meetings that have issued “guidelines” to shut down meetings by filling rooms quickly to shout down and to stop politicians from speaking. In addition to being rude, the tactics do not bode well for an improved outcome for the healthcare programs we are trying to improve. Another approach is the old fashioned big lie. One specific example of using a known untruth is the introduction by Sarah Palin of “Death Panels” in the White House proposals. There are no “Death Panels.” Republican Senator Johnny Isakson proposed that there be a provision for end of life counseling that would help the elderly get living wills and similar advice to ease their minds and would help them make care decisions while they were able to do so. While the Palin accusations may sound ludicrous, she has defended her statements by saying that it could happen. So could “free bubble up and rainbow stew,” but making a campaign of either event is suspect and it panders to the lesser side of constituents. And, yes, Palin is campaigning despite quitting her job as governor with half her time to go. She only attacks Obama and not Isakson, so her motive seems more clear than her specific accusation. If you cannot see the conspiracy, then you are simply not looking for it. It must be there…somewhere.
Both the above tactics are simple and as old as politics itself. The elegance of simplicity, however, is overwhelmed by the negative purpose and outcome. This approach confuses and angers people, but will not add much in the way of alternative proposals for healthcare. Of course, there is also a simple elegance in the use of conspiracy theories by politicians and, in fact, any of us. It is impossible to prove a conspiracy theory to be wrong. No matter how much evidence you pile up, the conspiracy theory lives and even thrives. Hawaii has twice published the true extracts of the Obama birth certificates…doing it the second time to dispel the rumors and false statements by Rush Limbaugh and FOX News as well as others who simply want to keep the myth alive. People who insist that the earth is 6,000 years old and scoff at carbon dating and tons of evidence of early life on earth going back millions of years love conspiracies. Conspiracies explain faith. Conspiracies define enemies. Conspiracies define evil in the world. Unfortunately, they also define the holders of the “conspiracies.”
We need to look at the motivations of those who espouse and spread the conspiracies in order to expose them for the frauds that they are. Take, for example, Betsy McCaughey (pronounced McCoy) who has spread outright lies about the living wills recommended for the healthcare legislation. She is a lobbyist for healthcare insurers who want no limitations on their power to provide or deny coverage or charge rates that provide excess profits. Betsy is a member of the Hudson Institute. This is a group of neocons that helped bring you the war in Iraq. If you liked Iraq, you will love Betsy. She has twisted the provision to allow voluntary counseling to create living wills into a mandatory program for seniors to get death counseling to choose a poison or other means for euthanasia. It is not only dishonest, but is being used to scare the hell out of seniors. Others in this sinful cabal include Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. They are spreading misinformation and doing the bidding of “Freedom Works” headed by Dick Armey. That catchy name is a cover for privatizing Social Security (can you imagine the disaster had that been made law in today’s economic supply side disaster?); also to limit tort liability; to expand school vouchers and otherwise solidify the position of the rich as a permanent and deserving arrangement. In fact, supply side member Jack Kemp hailed the Katrina disaster as an opportunity to make the new economic order permanent. That alone makes the disaster seem caused by deliberate action instead of sheer incompetence. The connections of “Freedomworks” are prolific and include DLA Piper (an international lobbying and law firm) that lobbies for Bristol-Myers Squibb, for example.
If my information sounds like a special conspiracy, I apologize. It is the reality of big bucks calling the tune and FOX and the bobbleheads doing the dance. “Freedomworks” is a Republican pressure group that sends “aggressive” and “disgruntled” healthcare activists to disrupt meetings held by congressional advocates for change in the healthcare system. DLA Piper also employs Dick Armey and, surprisingly, Bristol-Myers Squib stands to lose about $400 Million if it has to negotiate drug prices due to new legislation. Imagine that! The gravy train established by the Bush policy of forbidding drug price negotiation might slosh to a halt. Unforgivable. If you find that my brief research is too bizarre to be accepted, then do your own, but do not accept the claim that these are simply unguided and spontaneous (rude) people expressing themselves in open forums. They have scripts and follow them. The scripts are provided by major lobbies and the Republican party.
Now why would all these folks spend this time, money and energy to kill improvements to healthcare? Their reasons are really simple. Large companies providing drugs or insurance want to dictate terms to maximize profits. Nothing is new there. Politicians on the right also need to prevent changes in healthcare to protect their major donors and to remain relevant in politics. Can you imagine what would happen if Obama succeeds? There would be no place for right-wingers at the money trough and they would have to say something other than “no” and that would mean learning a vocabulary beyond obstruction. Incidentally, they also have a lot invested in stopping the economic recovery for similar reasons. If the recovery plan works, the curtain is drawn open for everybody to see the Wizard of Oz and he is not very pretty. We are seeing some whoppers in print and on the cable news sources, but the whoppers are only red herring minnows that distract us from the goal of improving healthcare and our economy. Set the hook and don’t make this a catch and release program. Make them accountable for engaging in a program of outright lies by calling them on each one and exposing their connections to the lobbies that bought them.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
15 August 2009
If you don’t see that cow
That used no steroids or spoon
And leaped joyfully over the moon?
If I lie and you swear it is so
Then where do we go
On our journey to fashion a tale
Of intrigue and sinister woe
When breaths become gales
And minnows are whales
Then just where do we go?
For the past decade or so, it has been fashionable to equate one opinion to another, even when an “opinion” is unsupported with facts. FOX news has made a business out of reporting rumor and then commenting and operating on the assumption that a rumor, or worse, a lie, is true and worthy of further coverage. If we take the “birthers” for example, FOX and now CNN, through Lou Dobbs have extended the life and the strength of the false accusation that Mr. Obama is not a natural born US citizen. True, even Lou Dobbs does not directly say that Obama was not born in Hawaii, but he gives credence to the lie by constant repetition and by asking for proof that has already been provided. More recently, the “deathers” have pumped up the volume, even after being alerted that their statements are false.
Very recently, as congress members and senators have hit the trail to discuss the need for changes in our healthcare system, they have been systematically attacked by shout-down tactics that eerily remind me of the bullying by Stalinists in their early rise to power. Regardless of their heart felt conviction in their cause, their tactics are unconscionable. Instead of soliciting and enabling discussion, the process inculcates fear and shuts down discussion before it can begin. Recent revelations indicate that professional lobbyists have had their fine fingers on the puppet strings of many meetings that have issued “guidelines” to shut down meetings by filling rooms quickly to shout down and to stop politicians from speaking. In addition to being rude, the tactics do not bode well for an improved outcome for the healthcare programs we are trying to improve. Another approach is the old fashioned big lie. One specific example of using a known untruth is the introduction by Sarah Palin of “Death Panels” in the White House proposals. There are no “Death Panels.” Republican Senator Johnny Isakson proposed that there be a provision for end of life counseling that would help the elderly get living wills and similar advice to ease their minds and would help them make care decisions while they were able to do so. While the Palin accusations may sound ludicrous, she has defended her statements by saying that it could happen. So could “free bubble up and rainbow stew,” but making a campaign of either event is suspect and it panders to the lesser side of constituents. And, yes, Palin is campaigning despite quitting her job as governor with half her time to go. She only attacks Obama and not Isakson, so her motive seems more clear than her specific accusation. If you cannot see the conspiracy, then you are simply not looking for it. It must be there…somewhere.
Both the above tactics are simple and as old as politics itself. The elegance of simplicity, however, is overwhelmed by the negative purpose and outcome. This approach confuses and angers people, but will not add much in the way of alternative proposals for healthcare. Of course, there is also a simple elegance in the use of conspiracy theories by politicians and, in fact, any of us. It is impossible to prove a conspiracy theory to be wrong. No matter how much evidence you pile up, the conspiracy theory lives and even thrives. Hawaii has twice published the true extracts of the Obama birth certificates…doing it the second time to dispel the rumors and false statements by Rush Limbaugh and FOX News as well as others who simply want to keep the myth alive. People who insist that the earth is 6,000 years old and scoff at carbon dating and tons of evidence of early life on earth going back millions of years love conspiracies. Conspiracies explain faith. Conspiracies define enemies. Conspiracies define evil in the world. Unfortunately, they also define the holders of the “conspiracies.”
We need to look at the motivations of those who espouse and spread the conspiracies in order to expose them for the frauds that they are. Take, for example, Betsy McCaughey (pronounced McCoy) who has spread outright lies about the living wills recommended for the healthcare legislation. She is a lobbyist for healthcare insurers who want no limitations on their power to provide or deny coverage or charge rates that provide excess profits. Betsy is a member of the Hudson Institute. This is a group of neocons that helped bring you the war in Iraq. If you liked Iraq, you will love Betsy. She has twisted the provision to allow voluntary counseling to create living wills into a mandatory program for seniors to get death counseling to choose a poison or other means for euthanasia. It is not only dishonest, but is being used to scare the hell out of seniors. Others in this sinful cabal include Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. They are spreading misinformation and doing the bidding of “Freedom Works” headed by Dick Armey. That catchy name is a cover for privatizing Social Security (can you imagine the disaster had that been made law in today’s economic supply side disaster?); also to limit tort liability; to expand school vouchers and otherwise solidify the position of the rich as a permanent and deserving arrangement. In fact, supply side member Jack Kemp hailed the Katrina disaster as an opportunity to make the new economic order permanent. That alone makes the disaster seem caused by deliberate action instead of sheer incompetence. The connections of “Freedomworks” are prolific and include DLA Piper (an international lobbying and law firm) that lobbies for Bristol-Myers Squibb, for example.
If my information sounds like a special conspiracy, I apologize. It is the reality of big bucks calling the tune and FOX and the bobbleheads doing the dance. “Freedomworks” is a Republican pressure group that sends “aggressive” and “disgruntled” healthcare activists to disrupt meetings held by congressional advocates for change in the healthcare system. DLA Piper also employs Dick Armey and, surprisingly, Bristol-Myers Squib stands to lose about $400 Million if it has to negotiate drug prices due to new legislation. Imagine that! The gravy train established by the Bush policy of forbidding drug price negotiation might slosh to a halt. Unforgivable. If you find that my brief research is too bizarre to be accepted, then do your own, but do not accept the claim that these are simply unguided and spontaneous (rude) people expressing themselves in open forums. They have scripts and follow them. The scripts are provided by major lobbies and the Republican party.
Now why would all these folks spend this time, money and energy to kill improvements to healthcare? Their reasons are really simple. Large companies providing drugs or insurance want to dictate terms to maximize profits. Nothing is new there. Politicians on the right also need to prevent changes in healthcare to protect their major donors and to remain relevant in politics. Can you imagine what would happen if Obama succeeds? There would be no place for right-wingers at the money trough and they would have to say something other than “no” and that would mean learning a vocabulary beyond obstruction. Incidentally, they also have a lot invested in stopping the economic recovery for similar reasons. If the recovery plan works, the curtain is drawn open for everybody to see the Wizard of Oz and he is not very pretty. We are seeing some whoppers in print and on the cable news sources, but the whoppers are only red herring minnows that distract us from the goal of improving healthcare and our economy. Set the hook and don’t make this a catch and release program. Make them accountable for engaging in a program of outright lies by calling them on each one and exposing their connections to the lobbies that bought them.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
15 August 2009
Thursday, November 06, 2008
The Coming of Obama
What a night. The pundits have all said it ad nauseam, but it’s worth repeating: this was an historic election victory, one putting, against all odds, a Black man for the first time into our Whitest of Houses. What follows are simply some observations and feelings garnered from watching the returns starting at 4 PM Pacific Time and on to the late news after Obama’s victory speech to a crowd of more than 500,000 in Chicago’s Grant Park.
Images: Jesse Jackson at Grant Park, tears rolling down his face, his hand to his mouth trying to control his emotions—no doubt a mix of absolute joy and disbelief and perhaps regret that this Black man had done it, done what he himself could not do in his try for the presidency in the 80s. Not far from him, Oprah Winfrey, also in tears at the sight of a man she had championed in his moment of triumph. And throughout the crowd there, and at dozens of other places throughout the country—Times Square and Harlem in New York, Oakland in California, and outside the White House itself—people of all colors shouting and jumping and pumping and weeping at the breadth and depth and sheer exhilaration of the victory of this man and this movement which had inspired so many to do so much to bring home the prize. And the relief: of being at last, free at last, from second-class citizenship to be sure, but also free from the frustration and criminality of a President who had, for this election season, become a pariah, a Bush animal skulking in back rooms and back alleys and literally afraid to show his face to an electorate and members of his own party that now found him so toxic it must have told him, bellowed at him, “Stay away. The shoe is now on the other foot. Where you have slandered and ostracized millions who disagreed with your wars, now you are the leper no one can even bear to be seen with.”
Maya Angelou. Interviewed on one of the major channels, the poet and Nobelist, after expressing her real emotion at the pride for her people in this, said something like: ‘At last, the American people have shown their willingness to elect someone with intelligence.’
Donna Brazile, not long ago Al Gore’s chief strategist and acting as a commentator for one of the networks. And she, more than once, mentioned this wonderful irony: It had been African Americans who built the steps to the White House; and now, an African American was going to actually reside in the White House.
John Lewis, the representative from Georgia, describing the scene inside the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King had begun his civil rights movement—a movement that Lewis himself had played a major part in—now filled with laughing, cheering, joyous, weeping people unable to believe that after all that had happened to them and their leaders, one was now the President-elect of the United States. And at about the same time, Andrew Young, another of King’s lieutenants in the civil rights struggle, near tears describing all that he and King and millions of others had been through to get the Voting Rights Act passed under Lyndon Johnson, and now, less than 50 years later, seeing all that work and struggle coming to fruition in this amazing election.
And all these references came rushing to the fore at the moment the President-elect took the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park, and one realized that here he was, out in the open, with bullet-proof panels of glass to each side, but with the stage open to the front where he spoke; and a knifeblade of fear raced through with the thought that this was still America, and that it was still possible that some crazy racist might try to take a shot at yet another Black man. Because after all, it had only been less than 50 years since the first of those horror scenarios erupted in Dallas, ending the presidency of another reviled young president, John F. Kennedy. And it had been even fewer years since Martin Luther King, on the cusp of becoming the real leader of the anti-war movement against the war in Vietnam, had been shot on a balcony in Memphis. And fewer than that when yet another Kennedy, Robert, had been poised to take the Democratic nomination for president to succeed Lyndon Johnson, and he, too, was shot and killed in the kitchen of a hotel in Los Angeles. And at about the same time, Malcolm X, yet another brillliant black leader beginning to stir masses of people with an even stronger message than King’s, also assassinated on the stage of a ballroom in New York’s Harlem. All these killings. All these wasted lives, radical progressive lives, cut short before they could come to fruition. And here, in Chicago’s Grant Park, was another life, a mythic Black life on an almost miraculous rise to power from near-obscurity, a political life coming to fruition on this near-miraculous election evening in the 21st Century, and the blood pumped fear that the mad, reactionary forces that seem endemic to America could do it again.
Perhaps that was why Obama’s speech seemed subdued. There were no pumping of fists in victory, no shouts of joy that “we did it” or “I did it when no one thought I could,” no hint even of gloating that many who thought it improbable that he could not only beat the Clinton machine, but also the residual resistance in this land to a black man getting too uppity, were wrong. Nothing of the sort. It was somber, that speech. As if mindful not only of the terrible road ahead, of the dangerous rocks and shoals in the way of any president being able to rescue the broken economy, the broken image of America in the world, of a military broken and bogged down by two wars, of a system that has grown rich and fat on cruelty and chicanery and outright theft and massive indifference to the suffering of “others,” not only that: but mindful as well of the risks that he, a Black man, took exposing himself here and continuously on like stages for the next four or eight years to the still festering resentment of those who would like nothing so much as to see him get his “comeuppance.” And he must have been mindful of it, for the networks told us all that though the Obama victory was sweeping, it had hardly dented the solid South. It was there that McCain racked up his only string of victories of the night. In Alabama and Mississippi and Arkansas and Tennessee and Louisiana and South Carolina and Texas and Kentucky and Oklahoma and once-bleeding Kansas, the polls showed conclusively that the white vote went for the Republican candidate by margins of 8 and 9 and 10 to 1. This was the core of the “southern strategy” evolved by Richard Nixon in 1972. Take advantage of that white resentment, the resentment of still unreconstructed southerners outraged at the rights being “given” to blacks, outraged at the northerners who came south to help get them those rights in the 60s, outraged at the “liberals” from New York who had presumed to enter their land and instruct them about rights and equality and about who had the right to sit where and eat and drink what. And vote. And that resentment, harnessed by Nixon and his followers in the Republican Party ever since, gave the minority party just the edge they needed to win four of the last six elections. And Obama knew it. And must have been mindful of it as he gave that subdued speech, emphasizing not victory but unity, not a new deal or any deal at all, but mostly coming together. It was, on some level perhaps, a plea, the same he has been making all along. We intend no major upheaval, no revolution, no attack on values. We mean only to implement a fair way to get the change America needs to get back on track. Whether it worked or not, whether it impressed that still-solid South, remains to be seen. But in Chicago, on this night of transcendent victory over the forces of unreason, that was the tone the winner struck.
And it capped what can only be called a remarkable night; a night and a campaign in which race came to the fore, but in such a way, and in such circumstances, that a huge majority of the country decided that perhaps it was time. Perhaps the time had come to put this most contentious of American conflicts behind us, at least for the moment, and let the more qualified candidate, the clearly more intelligent and compassionate and informed and humane candidate take the helm of a ship of state which eight years of greed and ignorance and criminal hubris have put on the rocks. And though it is clear that the coming of Obama is not the second coming that many hope it is, not by a long shot, it surely is a cause for relief and even joy that at long last, one long national nightmare is over, and a time of renewal, of renewed faith in community and service and the fine art of governance in its best sense may be at hand.
Lawrence DiStasi
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Friday, July 25, 2008
Hussein in Yarmulka
Among the dismaying news items from yesterday, July 23, were these two:
1) a photo of presidential hopeful Barack Obama at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, wearing a yarmulka—the skull cap worn by Jewish men on occasions deemed culturally or spiritually significant;
2) an interview on NPR with distinguished Israeli historian, Bennie Morris, concerning the op-ed piece he wrote in the July 18 New York Times predicting that “Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months.”
Consider the Morris prediction first. Despite all the talk about a new effort by the United States to engage Iran diplomatically, the war threats from Israel have never really ceased. Coming from Bennie Morris—a historian who was among the first to publicize the true story of the 1948 ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Israelis, including the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin, and so one who knows intimately the grave crimes committed by his country—this was grim news indeed. So were his reasons for why Israel cannot count on diplomacy to stop the Iranians from “getting a nuclear weapon,” and the reasons why Israel is certain that Iran with a nuclear weapon would mean an Iran which would drop a nuke on Israel. Simple, said Morris: “the Iranians are not rational people.” They are controlled, he said, by religious zealots who are irrational; they “threaten Israel with destruction every day.” Here, once again, we have the purposeful distortion of what Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, which was not so much a threat as a prediction: “the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”—and one that Iran scholar Juan Cole says “does not imply military action or killing anyone at all.” By contrast, it is Morris’ article that contains the real threat, for what he concludes it with is this: Iran should hope that Israel’s conventional strike succeeds, for though it would mean “thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation,” the alternative—Israel being forced to use its nuclear weapons on an Iran that did succeed in building its own nuke—“is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland.”
Isn’t this rich? Here we have an Israeli scholar who has researched the international crimes his nation has committed and continues to commit. He also must be aware that his nation is controlled by a Zionist ideology which is nothing if not zealous, racist, and ruthless in its admission that in order for it to survive, it must rid Palestine of all Palestinians, and perhaps Iran of all Iranians. He also must know that his nation is animated by a sense of its own superiority—that is, the superiority of even a single Jewish life over the lives of thousands of Palestinians or Arabs or Muslims—indeed, a nation whose leaders have routinely referred to Palestinians as insects or worse. Finally, he clearly, in the very op-ed piece under discussion, threatens Iran with a nuclear holocaust. And he is calling the Iranians “irrational.” He is saying that the Iranians are so “irrational” that they cannot be trusted with a single nuclear weapon (ignoring the fact that the best U.S. evidence indicates that the Iranians gave up their nuclear program in 2003).
"But doesn’t Israel have nuclear weapons itself?" asked the NPR interviewer. “Yes,” said Morris, “but they have never threatened anyone with their use.” In other words, unlike the irrational Iranians, the Israelis are MORAL people; they would NEVER use nuclear weapons, or even threaten to use them (again, forgetting his own words). But wait: who has been at war for virtually its entire existence as a nation? Who has attacked and continues to attack a population with virtually no weapons, and certainly none comparable to the American-supplied planes, tanks, rockets, and ships possessed by armed-to-the-teeth Israel? Who has just written an entire essay that is essentially a threat of nuclear destruction? And from the other side, who has Iran ever attacked in modern times? No one, unless we call Iran’s defending itself from Iraq’s aggression in 1980 an “attack.” No, what Iran has done is make the supreme error of taking over its own oil fields. It has made the supreme error of getting rid of its U.S.-backed and-created dictator, the Shah. It has made the supreme error of telling the western powers, including Israel, that it doesn’t need them and their exploitation. And in the lexicon that pertains today in Israel and the United States, that translates into that dread word: “irrational,” which justifies not only a pre-emptive strike, but a nuclear holocaust.
The sad part of all this is that Barack Obama has made irrational statements agreeing with such propaganda. As I noted in a previous blog, Obama, groveling before the rabidly pro-Israel minions at the recent AIPAC conference in Washington, DC, said:
“Now, there's no greater threat to Israel or to the peace and stability of the region than Iran…. The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.”
Then yesterday, he continued his groveling, attending sit-downs with no less than half a dozen Israeli leaders, topping it off with his yarmulka-enhanced photo op at the Wailing Wall. This is truly disturbing stuff. For it not only indicates the lengths to which Obama now seems willing to go to demonstrate his fealty to Jewish Americans and the money they contribute to Democratic Party candidates, but also his fear of the concerted power of Jewish-controlled opinion in the United States and the West. This is a serious situation indeed. For where Obama has been at great pains to downplay what would seem to be his logical concern for his own people in his own country—the African Americans who are supporting him almost universally and who need his help—he does public prostrations meant to announce in bold type his willingness to “go to the wall” on behalf of a foreign nation that has been at the center of international conflict for its entire existence, and now threatens a neighboring nation with a nuclear holocaust.
Any hope, therefore, that an American president would finally take a look at history and conclude that the United States places itself and all its people in peril by supporting a nation that condemns entire peoples and religions to sub-human status, must be abandoned. Absent growing outrage from Americans themselves, and that includes condemnation of the powerful forces in this country, like AIPAC and other Jewish organizations, which exist to bludgeon politicians into undying support for Israel regardless of its actions or its threats, we can expect more of the same, with the consequent rising frustration and hatred from Arab and Muslim nations.
What a terrible irony for a man whose middle name is “Hussein.”
Lawrence DiStasi
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Monday, March 24, 2008
Mannaggia l'America
With all the furor and rage being expended over the past comments of Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright—especially his phrase that God Bless America really should be God Damn America—a person would think that such blasphemy had never before been heard in the history of the world. The truth is, I used to hear it almost every day. And it came from the mouth of my father, an Italian immigrant, and it came in his native language: Mannaggia l’America. And the truth is that it was rather a commonplace among Italian immigrants of that pre- and post-WWII era.
Now I can’t speak for others, but I do know what was behind my father’s use of the phrase, and it was something similar to what was behind Wright’s. That is, my father was railing at the fact that in his view as an Italian, America lacked respect for both quality and equality alike. As a hairdresser, he knew this firsthand. He invested his entire life in quality work. And what constantly drove him to distraction was the fact that peers of his were making fortunes by running strings of beauty shop devoted to quantity. “Get’ em in, get ‘em out, give ‘em dye jobs, frizzy hair, whatever they want.” My father refused to do this. Refused to ever touch hair dye because he knew, from his chemistry work, that it was poisonous. Just as he knew that the cold-wave solutions being initially marketed in those days, were even more toxic to human skin. He also considered his judgment as an‘artist of hair’ so inarguable that he refused to cater to his customers’ whims of the moment: “If they didn’t like what I wanted to do, I’d throw them out.” All this led to declining popularity and success. All of which, in his eyes, was due to a total lack of respect for quality work in Mannaggia l’America.
He ran up against the same problem in every business he ever tried. After a heart attack made it impossible for him to continue as a hairdresser, he tried building houses. He went broke on his commitment to building quality dwellings rather than hastily-raised shacks that he could sell on the cheap. And in the final movement of his life—wherein he tried desperately to market his formula for a permanent wave solution that curled hair without heat and without toxicity—he was unceremoniously rebuffed by the large corporations then making millions: they told him they didn’t care about burnt scalps and lawsuits because they had lawyers sufficient to minimize the few settlements they had to pay.
Mannaggia l’America.
It was his constant lament. For the America he encountered was even less interested in equality. As an Italian immigrant he was considered, when he arrived, one of the great unwashed, the detritus being vomited up by Europe to occupy the slums of American cities and pollute the American dream. And though he made Herculean strides in learning the language (in spite of being expelled from 6th grade), and the codes of the polite society he catered to in his beauty shop, he knew how white America assessed him—as a “dago,” as a “wop,” as a creature only nominally less degraded than the African Americans it had enslaved and dehumanized even in its founding document. The only equality that perhaps meant something was the equality of money. If one made enough money, then one might get to be equal. Otherwise, forget it. America—its creed, its commerce, its holidays, its fundamental attitude about life—was nothing, he insisted, but a “money-making proposition.” Those who made it in such a place were for the most part “thieves within the law.” Mannaggia l’America.
The interesting thing to me today is that though he clearly understood the fundamental larceny of American business, he probably didn’t know the whole truth of it. He didn’t know, as we now do, that the real truth behind Pastor Wright’s prediction that God will sooner or later “damn America” stems from an understanding of American history: its theft of the land from its original inhabitants starting with its ‘discovery’; its continuing theft of the West and Southwest from Mexico and any other people or entity that threatened its “manifest destiny”; the theft of those who run the government and the corporations for their profit and control; the theft that continues by corporations driving the economic conquest that now covers the entire globe, placing whole countries and their people in thrall; and of course the theft Pastor Wright was talking about—the continuing theft of the lives of the millions of Africans brought here in chains, and kept in the chains of poverty and injustice even into our own time. He didn’t know about that, my father, though he intuited it from what he knew—that those who control the money control the government and controlling the government means controlling the laws, which in turn means being free to be “thieves within the law.” This is the freedom that flag-waving Americans are really talking about: the freedom to plunder all those who have what we want. And, as John Perkins makes clear in his Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the freedom to sanction or starve out or bring down or invade or eliminate any leader or country that refuses to accommodate that theft. As a partial list, just think Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, not to mention the places like Pakistan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Jordan where we prop up our dictators of choice.
So, as far as my father would have been concerned, the Reverend Wright was right. If there is any justice in this world—and that is not at all a foregone conclusion—the forces that operate the universe (call it God if you like; karma if you like; history if you like) will eventually damn America as they eventually damned Rome. For though the packing of the courts with Neanderthals guarantees that the law in its conventional sense cannot provide real justice, the higher law which says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (some might call it “blowback”) perhaps can. We have already seen something like it working in Iraq, in Afghanistan, on 9/11, and in the money markets; and we will, I am afraid, continue to hear mannaggias upon l’america for some time to come.
Lawrence DiStasi
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Now I can’t speak for others, but I do know what was behind my father’s use of the phrase, and it was something similar to what was behind Wright’s. That is, my father was railing at the fact that in his view as an Italian, America lacked respect for both quality and equality alike. As a hairdresser, he knew this firsthand. He invested his entire life in quality work. And what constantly drove him to distraction was the fact that peers of his were making fortunes by running strings of beauty shop devoted to quantity. “Get’ em in, get ‘em out, give ‘em dye jobs, frizzy hair, whatever they want.” My father refused to do this. Refused to ever touch hair dye because he knew, from his chemistry work, that it was poisonous. Just as he knew that the cold-wave solutions being initially marketed in those days, were even more toxic to human skin. He also considered his judgment as an‘artist of hair’ so inarguable that he refused to cater to his customers’ whims of the moment: “If they didn’t like what I wanted to do, I’d throw them out.” All this led to declining popularity and success. All of which, in his eyes, was due to a total lack of respect for quality work in Mannaggia l’America.
He ran up against the same problem in every business he ever tried. After a heart attack made it impossible for him to continue as a hairdresser, he tried building houses. He went broke on his commitment to building quality dwellings rather than hastily-raised shacks that he could sell on the cheap. And in the final movement of his life—wherein he tried desperately to market his formula for a permanent wave solution that curled hair without heat and without toxicity—he was unceremoniously rebuffed by the large corporations then making millions: they told him they didn’t care about burnt scalps and lawsuits because they had lawyers sufficient to minimize the few settlements they had to pay.
Mannaggia l’America.
It was his constant lament. For the America he encountered was even less interested in equality. As an Italian immigrant he was considered, when he arrived, one of the great unwashed, the detritus being vomited up by Europe to occupy the slums of American cities and pollute the American dream. And though he made Herculean strides in learning the language (in spite of being expelled from 6th grade), and the codes of the polite society he catered to in his beauty shop, he knew how white America assessed him—as a “dago,” as a “wop,” as a creature only nominally less degraded than the African Americans it had enslaved and dehumanized even in its founding document. The only equality that perhaps meant something was the equality of money. If one made enough money, then one might get to be equal. Otherwise, forget it. America—its creed, its commerce, its holidays, its fundamental attitude about life—was nothing, he insisted, but a “money-making proposition.” Those who made it in such a place were for the most part “thieves within the law.” Mannaggia l’America.
The interesting thing to me today is that though he clearly understood the fundamental larceny of American business, he probably didn’t know the whole truth of it. He didn’t know, as we now do, that the real truth behind Pastor Wright’s prediction that God will sooner or later “damn America” stems from an understanding of American history: its theft of the land from its original inhabitants starting with its ‘discovery’; its continuing theft of the West and Southwest from Mexico and any other people or entity that threatened its “manifest destiny”; the theft of those who run the government and the corporations for their profit and control; the theft that continues by corporations driving the economic conquest that now covers the entire globe, placing whole countries and their people in thrall; and of course the theft Pastor Wright was talking about—the continuing theft of the lives of the millions of Africans brought here in chains, and kept in the chains of poverty and injustice even into our own time. He didn’t know about that, my father, though he intuited it from what he knew—that those who control the money control the government and controlling the government means controlling the laws, which in turn means being free to be “thieves within the law.” This is the freedom that flag-waving Americans are really talking about: the freedom to plunder all those who have what we want. And, as John Perkins makes clear in his Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the freedom to sanction or starve out or bring down or invade or eliminate any leader or country that refuses to accommodate that theft. As a partial list, just think Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, not to mention the places like Pakistan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Jordan where we prop up our dictators of choice.
So, as far as my father would have been concerned, the Reverend Wright was right. If there is any justice in this world—and that is not at all a foregone conclusion—the forces that operate the universe (call it God if you like; karma if you like; history if you like) will eventually damn America as they eventually damned Rome. For though the packing of the courts with Neanderthals guarantees that the law in its conventional sense cannot provide real justice, the higher law which says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (some might call it “blowback”) perhaps can. We have already seen something like it working in Iraq, in Afghanistan, on 9/11, and in the money markets; and we will, I am afraid, continue to hear mannaggias upon l’america for some time to come.
Lawrence DiStasi
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