By: DI Editor, Dusty Schoch

June 26, 2012

With the political poles chattering and crucial elections looming I am writing to sound the alarm of potential pending doom and disaster — A disaster which will come full circle if we again elect the wrong president (Sorry, we didn’t actually elect Bush; he was crowned king by fiat of the Supremes chorusing in 5/4 Republican harmony to corporate sponsors in the Con law case of Gore v Bush).

But to what “tower” do I refer?  It’s the terrible tyrannical tower which will determine whether we respond to disaster with a plea for deliverance or …  greater disaster.  I promise you – errant government is not like wild fires; electing more nitwitted neocons to “back-fire”–fix the disasters of former neocons won’t work. Now back to the tower: Don’t sneak-peak  the end of my essay – I buried my lead for a good cause:  I want to take you on a stroll through American History before pointing you to the tower where America’s history and fate will be determined.

This essay was provoked by today’s headlines showing Obama and Romney presently running even in the polls. The article rang true when it said that polls are often misleading because (as Dukakis in 1988) 9^th-inning flukes and other things often reverse the tides of presidential elections. The op/ed writer today said that next to “flukes”, campaign contributions today are the prime determinant of election outcome.  I agree and because of that am sounding this alarm that all beware of the sinister and potentially catastrophic co-workings of (1) the money (campaign contributions) and (2) what “the terrible tower” does with the money.

History lessons abound with caveats we’ve ignored and have gotten us Americans to the brink of national industrial, moral and financial bankruptcy.  People want to blame Obama for heading the glue crew that’s failed to put Humpty Dumpty (Uncle Sam) back together and on global Wall Street.  Most voters (and all Republican voters) are blind to the fact that Bush converted America from a beloved defender to a loathed aggressor nation, and while his corporate consorts were exporting America’s industry to China, his military subordinates were exporting our cash reserves (and the wealth of our grandchildren) to the Middle East to secure corporate control of diminishing oil reserves.

But the whole world knows that. The question is why (polls indicate) half of America is not SORELY aware of this…to the extent that 50 percent of us are presently undecided as to whether we’ll put America back in the hands of another corporate-controlled Republican imperialist.

Relevant history lessons include 3 modern and one ancient philosopher/writers and…prophets (predictors of American and world evolution).  The three—generally contemporary–modern thinkers I write of are George Orwell (author of Nineteen Eighty Four),  Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), Marshall McLuhan (“Understanding Media”). The ancient author, who wrote about “the tower” is, I believe, the one who got it “all right”, and is, therefore the one we need to study more closely and …. before the next election….heed, in order to rescue ourselves from pending disaster.

Long stories short – Orwell (English) in his “1984” warned us that there would come a day when the governments of our nation states would have seized sufficient power to become absolutely corrupt and despotic, and that as a result, all individuality and personal freedoms would be extinguished by the “Big Brother” rulers’ “Big Lies” and myriad forms of mind control designed to stifle our treasured individualized selves.  This really hasn’t happened, at least as Orwell envisioned.  Perhaps Huxley came closer to our evolved reality as he presaged a time when industrialization would transport America into an era where capitalistic/materialistic and pleasure-seeking people would become so narcissistically wrapped up in achieving fame, fun and fungibles that they would entirely lose sight of and empathy with anything outside their accreting fortunes and egos…like their environment or the rights of others (creatures and countries) to remain free and viable.   Looking to my right and my left today, I see no one screaming in protest that we have in the past ten years criminally invaded and occupied two sovereign foreign countries. Four of eight Americans today know who the Kardashians are (commercially-synthesized cyborg celebrities)  but have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals we have killed in the past decade (FYI, over a half million!).

Among the modern thinkers, I believe Marshall McLuhan takes the prize for predicting how a cabal of corporate bullies managed to machinate our national devolution from defender nation to international bully, and from prosperous democracy to impoverished corporate plutonomy.  Corporations clearly run all the shows that the American people now watch. Corporations have now acquired such plenary—absolutely corrupting power—that they’ve enabled presidents  to so sack and stack a Supreme Court bench that the Court has redefined Corporations as “people”…American citizens, having the right to elect leaders by direct means of money and might…because they can take their money and control our media.

As Orwell warned us in 1984, the corporate-sponsored (thereby controlled) media tell us big lies so often and so loudly that the majority of us can no longer see the truth….because as Huxley predicted (of America), our hedonism and self-servicing narcissism would one day make of independently-reasoning men, media-malleable sheep. Sheep stupid enough to believe bin Laden was an agent of Saddam Hussein; Sheep stupid enough to believe Saddam had anything to do with 9/11.   Sheep stupid enough to believe that Obama was born in Kenya. Stupid enough to believe America’s financial meltdown is the fault of the president who inherited the White House after Bush  sold it to Halliburton and China.

Before I point to the tower…and the tale of truth that could actually save us–if anything can– with its wise and prophetic view of where America stands teetering today….I’ll write a little more about the money part of the present disaster…the powerful money that has resulted in the fulfillment of Marshall McLuhan’s prophesy that one day in America and the world the MEDIA WILL BECOME THE MESSAGE.  Today, it is estimated that over three billion dollars will be raised by the corporate and fat-cat superpaks to control America’s perception of—and votes for–the men running for public office. THINK ABOUT THAT FIGURE!  Dividing 3 billion by America’s population shows that, on Television and Radio, corporations and fat cats will spend enough money that otherwise could drop $1,000 into the pockets of each and every living American, and $3,000 into the saving accounts of the average American family.  But instead, under the new corporate-lobbied laws, that $1,000 per citizen fortune will be dedicated to molding American opinion in tune with the agendas (e.g. Romney is smart. “Fracking is safe.”) corporations are marketing to us on commercial media ads.

Well, isn’t that what Orwell, Huxley and–more specifically–McLuhan were all warning us about…big lies…propaganda…molding our thinking to the eventual point the media has become the message? Yes, yes and  yes. But now I’ll reveal how: Now I’ll point to the
“terrible tower” …and the infinitely-prescient writer who envisioned it and whose identity must remain anonymous.  The precursor to our terrible tower was named Babel. Open your Bibles to Genesis 11 but don’t think Judeo-Christian  or Mosaic prophesy….Just think…human history and sage prophesy.

Warning to you the reader (and me the writer):  The odious  and inadvertently-evil builders of the terrible tower I have in sight and mind today were mostly innocent…just like the ambitious architects and builders of the Biblical Tower of Babel.  While those ancient builders were so busy trying to project their stones, mortar and influence into heavenly realms where, logically and ecologically no being without feathers belongs, they had their minds so much on their “selves”, they lost sight of—and touch with– one another…and their shared planet.   When they got to the sky-scraping floors, they suddenly realized that they had lost the ability to communicate with one another. The only thing they had in common was the arrogant edifice they were building, and without concern for one another, the tower was just that—an arrogant sty in the eye of heaven.   In the ancient parable, man’s Creator made it impossible for him to speak to his fellow humans…and as a result, the tower came crumbling down to earth, as did America under George Bush.  Unfortunately you can’t keep a bad thing down. The tower, I am loathe to report, has…risen! Sadly and to our detriment, its present embodiment is more terrible than ever.   Under the shadowy influence of that terrible tower, people in America and the rest of the world are in regards to one another, becoming babbling idiots.  Even the 100 sectors of America’s Wall Street Revolution have no unifying mantra or agenda.  We are all speaking as with different tongues, and as a result are heading towards cultural, political, ecological and economic Armageddon.

Here’s the buried lead…finally.  What is today’s “terrible tower”? It is a tower that never existed in the days of Lincoln and Jefferson or even the Roosevelts.   These leaders were elected because we met and came to know them on the covers and in the coverage of newspapers and on the parchments posted in our city squares, right there in the hearts of our cities, at sea level where we belong…together.  In these papers and parchments were published the words of non-partisan journalists whom we had, through time and testing, grown to trust, as purveyors, distillers and disseminators of political truths. Today we sit at home and stare at images delivered to us now serially at light speed in a language Orwell termed “double speak” (truth and falsity in the same statement) in which it is impossible for us to discern truth from lies. The messages are all partisan “newspeak” and emanate from one party or another, all according to either the corporate fat-cat (Republican, a.k.a. “conservative”) or the working class Democrat (a.k.a. “liberal”) agendas.  The very idea of adversity between the parties is itself a double-speak lie, because in today’s reality, both Republicans and Democrats are merely corporate proxies. If you are a free-thinking independent such as I, your thoughts in transit in this media are labeled “liberal”.   We stare at these messages from the sinister towers empowering our televisions, our Ipods, our “virally-spreading” e-mails from god/knows/who/or/where and most recently our Twittering, FaceBook and YouTubing friends who for the most part are really not our friends, but really just others who make—and take–little vampire-lie  “bytes” of us while the only thing we have in common is our watching and ….obeying (by “forwarding”)… signals from the same …terrible tower.

The terrible tower to and about which I refer and rant is the broadcasting tower,  my friends—the instantly-gratifying Babeling Tower that today can make a mental mouse’s message roar like a prophetic lion’s. Any little agoraphobic nerd on the planet can now, with a little effort and skill with computer technology, launch any lie he can conjure up into the orbital clouds of cyberspace and “go viral” with any lascivious thing he wants to say about the sitting president of the United States. Corporations can now invest billions of dollars directly in TV ads designed to stream half-truths and out-of-context lies before our eyes on a 24/365 basis until a sizable number of us are Tea-party tricked into viewing a native-born American president, who was previously president of Harvard Law Review, as a Kenyan-born Islamic terrorist.
This is insanity.

So what makes the media broadcasting tower of today more “terrible” than the tower in the time of ancient Babel?  It’s the difference between ignorance and arrogance.  It took the Babel Tower builders a lot of time and talent to build a stone and mortar structure sky-scraping tall way back then; so, apart from the egoistic arrogance and environmental insult, the tower of ancient Babel was offensive mainly to diety and comparatively innocuous within its own cultural context. The media broadcast towers of today, on the latter hand are, functionally, arrogance compounded by ignorance.  Just as bottom-line dollars sustain the soulless cyborg vivacity of corporations today that will continue fracking our water and air, warming the planet,  MSG/ing and transfatting our food and arteries so long as their stock manages to accrete  dollars on Wall Street,  the terrible towers of broadcast media will continue to telegraph, cell-phone, e-mail, radio, televise, twitter and satellite bounce, blog and otherwise transmit to every corner of the universe any ignorant nonsense and lie contrived by anyone living or dubbed “human” by Supreme Court edict so long as said imbecilic cyborg has the  dollars to purchase the “air time”.

If a candidate for elective office in Lincoln’s day received either criticism or praise in the media, the source of that information bore the authenticity associated with a journalist who had established his literary prowess and journalistic skills by earning his position on the staff of a trusted periodical journal. Moreover, maintaining one’s position as a journalist required rigorous adherence to extraordinarily high ethical standards imposed by traditional (old-school) journalistic institutions.  Today, if NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman makes a mistake, you can bet your life it was not the product of ignorance, partisan bias or dollar-driven allegiance to some corporate patron. By contrast, if you hear or view something from the tower of an oxymoronically-named “Fox News” broadcast, you can bet your life it is all three. Fox News is the arch villain in the terrible media tower, for the universally-known reason that its founder, Rupert Murdoch—just for the bucks—has with greed and mendacity aforethought, intentionally skewed (demolished) the line between “opining” and “news reporting” in broadcast journalism. It is doubtful that people regularly watching “Fox Media” programming will ever again be capable of recognizing the difference. Murdoch has proved to the world that wholly dollar-driven and unscrupulous utilization of the terrible tower can and does enable arrogance to beget ignorance. We can only hope that this maniacal media mogul’s recent scandal (with phone tapping) will begin the easing and eventually the loss of his 60-billion dollar grip on the broadcast media which—more than any other on earth—accounts for the terrible in the broadcast tower.

My ultimate warning is this: In your search for  “truth” in news and politics, try this:

(1)   Turn off your  T.V., radio and  Ipod/Phone. If it’s digital it’s dubious.    Stanch the artesian flood of fabricated falsities in your tower-tainted emails. Delete–don’t “forward” them. If you receive a “conservative” forward in the e-mail, run their key words through the Urban Legends gauntlet (Snopes.com) and discover how many of them are total fabrications.

(2)   Form your own thoughts and tell them, phone them,  email them to your friends. You can Google just about any reliable newspaper articles in the world now. If you want to know who owns the newspapers or broadcast systems you are auditing, all this information is available on Wikipedia. And yes—despite what Fox News says—Wikipedia is the most accessible and reliable source of current information on earth. Wiki invites us all to police their truth and amend their mistakes. Donate to Wiki and Public Radio; they belong to you.

(3)  Go down to your town squares, attend public meetings and talk to one another eye-to-eye about what you have learned in the still-reliable mainstream media by which we elected Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and Roosevelt(s).   That would include non-partisan journals like the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, the still free (not corporate controlled) Public Radio stations, the occasional network TV broadcasts of candidates’ debates which cost the candidates nothing, and last but not least, the people and media institutions (including blogs) you personally know and trust, including your good old High Point Enterprise and yours (always) truly.

Dusty Schoch

June 25, 2012       www.DeclaringIndependents.com

CHINA SYNDROME III:

MAD  IN  AMERICA

The Tower of Babel looming at the End of

our lockstep march towards GLOBALIZATION

By: Dusty Schoch, DW Foreign Policy Editor

Prefatory Note – On the way to China, Chris Columbus discovered “India” (he thought). Long after that (like today) Americans are making a much worse mistake…by exporting American jobs and industry to India (first) on the way to China. 

I made  America’s exporting furniture and other industry the sore subject of two articles on the DW site (“The China Syndrome” and “China Syndrome II”)

More recently, DW Editor, Bobby Dees has sounded off his discontent with having to deal with customer service reps in India in the effort to make his radio work. (See “Outsourcing Fails This XM Radio Customer”). 

The present article is my own retake on the much-wider picture of America’s present march towards industrial/economic paralysis… wherein we—even now– find even our service industries (such as the service division of good old American “General Electric”)  speaking to us from….New Delhi ! 

What is,  actually  “Made in America” these days…?  Only two things for sure- (1) those little foil stickers on the bottom of every thing we buy at WalMart that say “Made in China” and (2) the paper our Hong Kong-bound books are printed on – including the book with that old story of Babel’s Tower in it … that prophetic  parable first uttered  over 2000 years ago that today warns  that if we humans keep trying to make things bigger and better (and easier), one day, our greedy and luxury-driven industrial revolution might lead us to a time and place when and where we can’t even understand what each other are saying.  Are we perhaps there already?

Have you  recently tried  calling your “personal banker” maybe to find out what’s in your checking account ?  If so, you’ve discovered that , your “personal banker” has no name.  In fact, he has no blood, bone or any other signs  of sharing life with you.  He is, in fact  . . .  IF  you can remember your PIN number, and IF you find the toll-free number that allows you to call  your local bank’s (mine is in High Point NC) customer-service department in Tupelo (can we rename that “ cussed-service”, maybe?), and IF you can ferret your way through the punch-key code that robotic  voice gives you, and IF you can recall and correctly key in the 10 sequential numbers of your account . . .  a digital  cyber-chip , made of silicon and silver whose quantum of cognitive quality  makes Dick  Cheney seem charismatic.

By the end of this experience, you will have discovered that , though your dollars and bank account may  in fact be  “made in America”,  they are serviced elsewhere… out there in the neverland of corporate cyberspace,  somewhere clearly east of Eden and  in close proximity to the Tower of Babel.

A recent case in point.  Sue – my very sweet and trusting step mom  recently re-did her entire kitchen –  filled it completely– floor to ceiling with brand  new appliances – all of which were , of course “Made in America” – -  fine  modern machines  made by trusted old-brand  National  industrial heroes like Whirlpool , Matag and our own , still “bringing-good-things-to-life”  U.S. o f A. icon, General Electric.   Of course, Sue ordered all her new stuff from our equally  home-grown home supply super-store in High Point (not Home Depot, but rather the “other one”…the more locally-based, Lowe’s). 

When the remodeling was done and the delivery guys (who did actually have blood and bone) came and installed her new stove , refrigerator and dishwasher (all G.E.) , Sue was beside herself , surrounded by all that new glistening reaffirmation of American innovative  technology … the wherewithal  and embodiment of her lovely life of industrially-engineered comfort and leisure. Surrounded and pampered by all her spanking-new American appliances , Sue wasn’t at all shaken initially when her dishwasher and refrigerator wouldn’t work, because,  they failed to drain and cool  (respectively or respectfully) ,  thinking she’d “just call down to the store and they’d come and fix things”.   Memories of current “Maytag” commercials flashed on the screen of her  nonchalant noggin  as she dialed up her local appliance megastore. 

She held her own while navigating through the computerized telephone maze which connected her finally  to yet  another flesh-and-blood primate.  This “customer service” man  , addressing the non-draining dishwasher  first, said “No problem – let me connect you with the GE repair department”.   Seconds later, a heavily -accented  middle-eastern  male voice comes on the phone and , after identifying himself and taking the dishwasher’s vital signs and symptoms from Sue,  informs her as follows (in an authoritative  – but soothingly-exotic version of English that brought to mind the Gandhi character Ben Kingsley played in  the Made-In-England movie of the same name): “ Your dishwasher (assures Gandhi) is not broken.  Merely it is most probable dysfunctional temporarily because it is not used to its environment.”   Whereupon, my step mom, of course says…”What????”…And the Gandhi-guy on the other end haltingly  continues…. “Just leave it  to be.  When the machine is adjusted to new environment… a few days only it will take  …. it will swallow the  water and it will be fine…Not to worry.”     

Sue, thought this pronouncement (not-to-mention pronunciation)  a little strange, but when an appliance is made from parts emanating from a dozen venues around the globe…why be concerned  if  the repairman (and his remedy) seem a little . . . exotic?  And maybe those various alien parts in her dishwasher needed time  to adjust to the temperature and humidity-controlled climate of her new Carolina kitchen.

So , Sue resolves to give her dishwasher time to “adjust” to its new environment, and , calling the store again,  addresses the problem of her refrigerator’s refusal  to refrigerate.  This time the very same virtual  humanoid at the mega-store she talked to about the dishwasher answered and declared that  Sue was  “in luck”.  This was the second call on a un-cool GE fridge  he’d handled  that week, and he knew just how to fix things.  He had personally called the repair department for General Electric… “Did  I tell you they’re in India ? “ , he asked her.  “In India?” ,  says Sue -  thinking  “No wonder that guy sounded strange… and took so long to answer—we were talking on satellite .”   “Why is the GE repair department in India?”  , she asks,  naturally.   “Well, it’s not really the repair department– just the customer service part of it.  GE can afford to have them talk to you long distance because they work for $10 a day in India, and the union workers in the States get paid more than that  an hour.”

“I see”, says Sue, “but what about the fridge?”   “Oh, that one’s easy”, says the store guy.  “I called and talked to the guy in New Deli myself when a customer last week had the same problem and the Indian guy just told her all she needed to do was put stuff in .”   “Put stuff in?” , Sue pursues.  “Yeah,” the guy continues,  “The Indian fellow says that the new GE refrigerators won’t cool unless they sense that they have food inside them, and so you have to put your food in so they will decide to cool.”  “Really”,  quizzed an  increasing incredulous North Carolinian customer  named Sue,  who by then couldn’t resist ruminating on the odds of an environmentally-traumatized dishwasher and an  on-a-food-strike refrigerator having  been delivered to her by an  All-American General Electric  Company on the same day.

“But don’t do what that other lady did”, continued the store guy , still  relaying to Sue the New Deli guy’s remedy for her  refusing refrigerator … “That lady tried to trick her refrigerator into working by filling it up with magazines… and it didn’t work.”   By this time, Sue, feeling herself somewhat Alice-one-toke-over the-looking-glass-line , said,  “Maybe it (the refrigerator) would  prefer  newspapers …. I have a lot  of those”.  And she wasn’t altogether kidding.  Certainly the store guy wasn’t, because he responded , sincerely and artlessly ,  “No m’am.  I’m sure that won’t work …The Indian guy said for sure the refrigerator needs food.  You need to fill it with food and than call me back if the refrigerator won’t cool it.”

By now , any sane reader will think this story is being made up. That at least part of it has to be a joke.  Sorry, my comfortable compatriots.  The sad (if comical) story is , the story is true.  Every weirdly  worrisome word of it.  As things turned out,  my  step mom, Sue,  finally came out of  the Indian ether  and  called General Electric’s corporate  home office (some place…you never know where you’re actually calling these days).  When the  “all-American” (i.e.,  $18/hour)  boys heard Sue’s story, they had the store send out  union-card-carrying blood and bone  American repairmen that very day, and within minutes, the fuse and o-ring required by the GE fridge and dish-washer were installed , and the rebellious machines were contentedly  cooling and draining their food and water like  GE and the Heavens had ordained.

IS IT MAYBE….BABEL?

But speaking of “ordained”:   More than a comfortably few  prophesies in the Good Old Book seem to be  being ordained of late.  Our blind, heedless greed and endless quests for affluence, leisure and dominance of our natural environment (not to mention our neighbors’) may have finally led us again to the top of that tottering tower of  mythical Babel.  Some how, to some degree, that filthy  lucre (the Dollar)  and perhaps increasing  human laziness  and narcissism are involved. But as far as who’s ultimately to blame (or to become responsible )  for this creepingly-ubiquitous state of American affairs is a little  harder to pin down. 

Maybe we can go back to that ancient Myth in Genesis (11:4-9) for clues.  When mankind’s pride, heedless striving and ambition got to the point that he offended his maker, what did that Ultimate Authority (in the story)  ultimately do?   He made it impossible for men to continue building their structures- stopped them dead in their progressive tracks and scattered them to the four corners of the globe by …making them speak different languages… 

Is that what all this  . . . madness in American means?  Has the ultimate cosmic authority commenced another remedial intervention in our collectively-dysfunctional lives?  If so, we need to be aware: Men, speaking in “different tongues”  simply can’t help each other fix things. Over the phone, the internet, through the media, or at a Middle Eastern Summit.  From the terrifyingly-toppled twin towers to my step mom’s  tiny refrigerator,  this trend poses  a chilling question: Where is this shrinking world – this swelling separateness – this so-called “globalization” taking us?   I don’t think  we’re likely to find the answer in calling  General Electric via New Deli.  I think that , eventually , we’re going to have to  look inward, and maybe  take a few steps backwards , in the direction  of a time and  place where in fact, truly good things  were  brought to life …by Americans,  for Americans . . .  in America.

At the same time we’re looking inward and possibly  slowing down some, we need to be further aware, as humans, that in separateness, there is …madness;   In Unity, Strength.  Accordingly, compatriots,  in the contrails  of September’s (9/11/01) grave awakening,  as we individually persevere and resume  the pursuit of our comforts—from refrigerators to flights abroad—there’s a new and vastly smaller globe out there…So we need – collectively – to expand and promulgate   as vastly  the motto of the motherland – -  E.  Pluribus Unum.    Including  the last time we glanced at   the  words ensconced on  that tiny  ribbon of a banner,   clenched  in the beak of the raptor  printed on our … U.S. Dollars,  when’s the last time we paid any serious mind to the most profound, potent and promising  standard  a nation ever had the prophetic vision to give itself?

Best to all,

Dusty

2-24-07

The CHINA SYNDROME

Part II

PREFATORY NOTE:  On December 18, Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch, posted on this DW site an essay entitled “The China Syndrome” in which he expressed his great concern with the domestic and foreign consequences of American Corporations exporting jobs and industry to China. (Link:http://democratswrite.com/the_democratic_opinion/page247.htm).

As a follow-up, and with the kind permission of this distinguished new DW contributor, Paul C. Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury under Reagan, and Wall Street Journal Editor, DW readers are urged to  consider further—and to QUESTION CRITICALLY –THE NEO-CON PARTY LINE ON THE PRESENT STATE OF OUR ECONOMY.

As jobs and industrial production are being “off-shored” to China and other places where the fat corporate cats can exploit the labors of economically-desperate peoples in “multinational” combines with foreign fat cats, are Americans being told the truth when their Congressmen and the Corporate-controlled media are telling us all that economic indicators are “up” and there is “healthy activity” in the stock exchanges, and that the “dollar is sound” and there is reason for optimism based on decreases in unemployment in the U.S. and all that …..B___  ____  (read the article before you fill in these blanks)…

?

Will the Unemployed Become Cannon Fodder for Bush’s Wars?

Artificial Recovery; Real Job Losses

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS*

Readers want to know why I have not reported on the payroll jobs statistics for the past two months. Does this mean, they ask, that the situation has turned around and that the US economy is again creating jobs in export and import-competitive sectors?

Alas, no. I did not write about the past two payroll jobs data reports, because it is the same distressing story that other readers say they are bored with hearing.

The July report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics lists 113,000 new jobs, all of which are in services.

“Leisure and hospitality” accounted for 42,000 jobs, most of which are waitresses and bar tenders.

“Education and health services” accounted for 24,000 jobs.

“Professional and business services” accounted for 43,000.

Manufacturing lost another 15,000 jobs.

In the US today, government employs 7.7 million more people than does manufacturing. Little wonder we have an $800 billion annual trade deficit when the government sector is larger than the manufacturing sector.

American economists are yet to face up to the fact that off shoring high productivity, high value-added jobs that pay well and replacing them with waitresses and bartenders is a knife in the heart of the US economy. Charles W. McMillion of MBG Information Services reports that compensation is falling behind price rises and that the US economy has been kept afloat by consumers overspending their disposable incomes by drawing down their accumulated assets and going deeper into debt.

McMillion reports that according the Bureau of Economic Affairs, households outspent their disposable incomes by 1.5% in the second quarter of this year, a rate of dissaving equaled only by the depression year of 1933.

McMillion also reports that recent BLS data indicates that 25 states have lost manufacturing jobs year over year and that 25 states have lost jobs in the information sector.

Little wonder that permits for new private housing are down 20.5% year over year and that new housing starts are down 13.3% year over year. What will we do with the millions of illegal Mexicans when construction jobs dry up?

Wage data covering 82% of all private sector jobs show that the purchasing power of weekly wages today is less than it was when the economic recovery began in November 2001.

What kind of economic recovery is it when the purchasing power of wages falls instead of rises?

In my opinion, the recovery was artificial. It was based on extremely low interest rates orchestrated by the Federal Reserve. The low interest rates discouraged saving, but the low rates reduced the mortgage cost of real estate, inflated home prices and encouraged consumers to refinance their homes and to spend the equity.

The federal government has been overspending its income also, and has wasted a minimum of $300 billion on an illegal, pointless, and lost war that has turned Iraq into a terror zone.

It is unclear how much longer the world will trade Americans real goods for pieces of paper that the US economy cannot redeem with tradable goods and services.

Considering the loss of good jobs, the high debt burden, and the dependence on imports, it is unclear what will enable America to pull herself out of the next recession.

Perhaps growing ranks of the unemployed will become cannon fodder for Bush’s wars in the Middle East.

*Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Originally written in August, ‘06 and reprinted here with his gracious permission.

PS  From Leonard Carrier

DW In-House Historian and Philosopher:

Even the economic policy wonks on Larry Kudlow’s Wall Street-oriented TV business show are agreed that the U.S. dollar will sink against the euro, and they hope that it won’t sink against Asian currencies.  Yeah, right, fat chance.

     We’re going down the tubes slowly, but inexorably.  It’s like the grim joke I heard as a youth:  One man faces his rival and swipes at his face with a straight razor.  The other says, “You missed.”  Then the first says, “Just try turning your head.”  That’s what I think we’re in for.  When we turn our heads we’ll be in real trouble. – Len

PPS From Dusty

Len, the way I heard the same story, it was told thusly:  The Wall Street guy, to persuade everyone to keep believing in him and his bullish faith in American dollars and blue chip stock, conceived a way to demonstrate his bullishness and climbed to the top of the Empire State Building with an exact replica of De Vinci’s mechanical wings – you remember, the 1488-model ones with the cloth and wood that you flap like bird wings to manage man-powered flight.

With honest zeal and perfect confidence he leaps from the guard rail at the cloudy top and begins immediately flapping away his mechanical wings. He has a cell phone taped to his helmet as he descends and is shouting optimistic things all the way down in the precipitous angle that appears from the street to be more vertical plumb than take-off parabola. He is down to the first floor plummeting with now terminal velocity as the cracks in the sidewalk are to him coming cataclysmically into focus and as he descends is overheard in spite of all apparent odds and ends,  “so far…so good!”.

The   CHINA  SYNDROME

By  Dusty Schoch

An open letter, by DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch, to Mr. Robert Culp III, High Point, N.C. (DW hometown) C.E.O. of Culp Inc., a furniture, upholstery and fabrics conglomerate which in the past decade has closed most of its manufacturing doors and shipped its fabrication division (labor) “off shore” to China. The company announced the closing of the last remaining two of its plants in N.C., with the sacrifice of 185 jobs.  On December 15, 2006, Mr. Culp was quoted in his local paper, the High Point Enterprise,  as saying “By further consolidating our U.S. manufacturing operations and utilizing lower cost manufacturing alternatives, we are reducing our operating costs and improving our domestic capacity utilization…” Mr. Culp went on to claim that all this means that “We have  been “…highly  successful with our China platform…and continue to be encouraged by the progress we are making in selling non-U.S.-produced products.”

What has this to do with U.S. foreign policy you might ask?  Well…. Consider this:

Who’s “We”, Mr. Culp?”

The quote from C.E.O., Robert Culp, in your Dec. 15 business section was that through the closing of Culp Inc’s last two NC-based fabric plants—eliminating 185 jobs for residents of Lincolnton and Graham—“We have been highly successful with our China platform….”.   Does the “we” include those 185 Culp employees whose jobs have been quite literally Shanghai’d?

About 3 years ago I recall an article wherein Culp stated  he was satisfied with the “balance” of off-shoring his company had achieved and hoped to maintain. Now there is no Culp Inc. in NC unless you count what remains of their former industry, where they apparently have switched  roles from American manufacturers to Chinese sales reps.

What remains of the furniture and textile industries in this town that prompted its patriarchs to name their  club “The String and Splinter”?  Isn’t it time we call it the “Lint and Dust Club?”

As Christmas nears, Mr. Culp,  will your former employees be seated around their tables celebrating their “high success” along with you?  Who’s the “we”, Mr. Culp?   Would that be you and your Chinese partners—the ones paying their employees $179/mth?

I’m not an economist and admittedly  have very little knowledge and even less appreciation for mega-million-dollar corporate margins and maneuverings.  But what little I do know includes the fact that exporting jobs and manufacturing  to China betokens industrial defeat and a quest for short-term profits, and one day there will be hell to pay when we are totally dependent on China (our most formidable  nuclear-armed enemy on earth) and they suddenly declare  the dollar is worth about a nickel. When that happens, no Federal Reserve ping-ponging with  prime will keep Peking’s hands off the switch of American inflation and/or depression.  Happy Christmas, Mr. Culp, and

God Bless us…every one.

Dusty Schoch

December 15, 2006

My Current Sadness

An 18-Year Old College Student and first-time DW

Contributor shares his views…and Feelings about

Today’s America

By: Bradford Clinard

This is my frame of reference. It is late and I want to sleep, but sleep alludes me. In its place is a small pain in my head over the sadness I am feeling. The sadness is for my generation, for my country, and for my world.

I do not feel I am extremely educated. I am a college student working hard to learn, grow, and discover more about myself and the world around be. This is of course following the implicit politically correct path—constantly reinforced by others telling me how well I am doing. I quickly admit that I don’t think I know a lot. In fact, the more I learn the more I realize I don’t know—one of the great reasons I see to live and learn more.

For about the last eight years, I have struggled for understanding about the world around me, a journey taken by most, yet uniquely mine. At this point in my journey, I am very saddened for I feel intrinsically something is very wrong with our system of being. I truly hope that someone wiser than myself can tell me otherwise.

In gathering an understanding of the American Way into which I have been so proudly born and indoctrinated, I begin to see increasing discrepancy and hypocrisy. Many of the instruments used to run the show are inherently undemocratic. I can’t be the only one who sees this. However, just in my attempt to write down my thoughts fear has arisen inside myself. The fear says I shouldn’t write my true thoughts for they are not safe; in fact they are oppositional and controversial. Paranoia arises. What might happen to me at the hands of people who enjoy the status quo my writing clashes with and rejects? It’s as if in my mind I see myself in a Communist Regime; where is my democratic free speech in that? I fear not the tar and feathering received by my prior free-thinkers but there is an underlying fear of being stigmatized.

I was taught, in school, that America was founded as a free society. It is a safe haven of escape from the tyrannous rule of Monarchs. A place where all men enjoy freedom and are equal. Hard work and dedication can achieve anything. We are told, not so discretely, BE ALL YOU CAN BE! Subscribe to a version of Adam Smith’s capitalism—competition creates competitive markets that self-regulate price and demand. There is a wonderful idea of Meritocracy. And of course how can one leave out the granddaddy of them all–THE AMERICAN DREAM. All this and so much more is packaged and discretely feed to us from infancy. All the dominant ideology running through my head…aches.

As I look around, I can see great strides have been taken as we are less racist, sexist, and homophobic than in the past; at least today it has ceased to appear in overt ways. Given that, there is a way to go still, but progress has been made. At the same time, some say there has been a moral landslide, but others call this “toleration” and “liberation.” I find out that primary education system itself is somewhat corrupt, as it taught me “facts” that turned out to be not so factual. It attempted to deprive me of critical thinking skills while teaching me to conform to massification. Meritocracy turned out to be a joke—acceptance to the “Ivy League Club” turned out to be based predominantly on family name or wealth donation potential. I no longer want the American Dream, which I view now as little more than self servitude—servitude to the system in exchange for consumption privileges and escapism. I don’t want to worship the celebrities who live the “great life.” They are wonderfully-employed red herrings, concealing the deliberate injustice and elite capitalist tycoons marketing them.

So where does that leave me—still trying to translate and play the game? Every time I am told “you are doing the right things,” or “keep up the good work,” it hits me as a reminder. I see myself, like others, as being goaded through the process of life; be as quiet, containable, predictable, consuming, and possibly productive as possible. Still, I suppose I will continue this until a better alternative presents itself. Ah yes, the self- empowerment junkies. I hear them preaching in the distance—positive thinking is the key to self improvement. What was it Dirken said, “Self improvement is masturbation?” Ok so honestly it’s not that bleak, but it is easy to view things that way.

Possibly this is why so many of my peers are habitually depressed and suppressing toxic levels of anger. It seems plain enough to me where one, especially an impressionable young adult or adolescent, could be confused about society. Maybe this is the real reason so many are ambivalent or apathetic about deep issues. They then run to hide in the safety and comforting escapism afforded through technology.

All this seems like a big pile of ____. Continually contributing to the pile are the real rulers. One word—OGILOPOLIES. They are running the show now. It seems to me that the US has cast democracy into the hands of the oligopolies. They used (and abused) the capitalist system to push it into its own quiet extinction without a word being said. Corporations did this by predatorily eliminating most of their competitors and allying with the remaining competition. Now they control the media, the government, the people and our way of life.

This can easily be seen in the Iraq war. It is the true injustice of today. Corporations are the imperialistic empires of today. First they took over our country by exploiting our people. (Do you think we are not exploited? What do you call it then when junk food is marketed to a five-year old by a Sponge Bob picture?) The country takeover was easy as they (corporate lobbyists) put money into the hands of men running the government, taking on the role of puppet master. They guarantee influence by using the formula—donate roughly thirty percent to Democrats and the remaining to Republicans. No matter who is in control they have a pocket paid for.

At the same time, people were sedated by already-available escapist leisure consumption. It is taught that to be democratic one should support the capitalist economy through proper consumption. However, we are never satisfied. Eternal Progress means there is always new and better stuff we can’t live without, just around the corner. Now they seek to expand their Machiavellian interests and policies throughout the world.

I now realize my sadness comes from the dehumanization I so vividly see being played out before my eyes, in part because, I choose to reject oppression, a sentiment I grew up believing this country also supported. But sadly, in today’s world like that of yesterday people are simply pawns used by Ogolopolies that further the interests of the powerful…now called corporations. The dehumanization is seen by the prostitution of our lives for a material world in the name of progress.

I constantly hear people complain about Bush and his war. The real problem is America. Moral and ethical lines I once knew and looked to have been blurred to non-distinction. Those between Democrats and Republicans, corporations and government, and the exploitation of a notion of freedom. For what purpose or cause is this war being fought? Terrorism, Sadam… democracy in Iraq? Sadam is sentenced to execution and nobody seems to care. Was it not just two years ago when we triumphantly dragged him out of his hole? What has changed?

Change has come in the elevation of our day-to-day fear. Maybe this is the true victim of terrorism—our enjoyment of life without fear. Worse yet, our fears today wear numerous faces that are inscrutable. It threatens to strike anywhere anytime. From the awaking bang of September eleventh we have seen shoe, sports drink, roadside, and suicide bombers. All share a similar resolution—they create more destruction and fear. The news media have also had their hand in adding to the flames of fear. Once again corporate profit-driven interests control news media. Because destruction sells news, terrorism is overexposed and under-explained, fueling the fear and more importantly giving our enemy a venue for their message. It is a message of hate, but their propaganda is selling.

In America, we relish our celebration of Eternal Progress. I don’t see our state of fear as progress. I don’t think we are getting closer to the Utopia we project; in fact I see this projection as dangerous. It is anti progress. I would gladly trade technology and luxury consumption for a simpler time of yesteryear. A time of relative innocence. Maybe that is in part where my sadness is rooted—a break with that former innocence, a shift to the adult world, and growing pains. Still, maybe it is the pain felt and shared by all who refuse to be inebriated and immersed by consumer media-ism lifestyle.

What has changed is the corporation’s agenda. They don’t care who wins—the war in Iraq or the elections. Neither do they care about the lives lost or the injustices done again and again to humanity. In the end they think they will win because they get more power and the “all-mighty dollar.” At least now I understand that expression.

I see my sadness more clearly now. My sadness is for lives forever changed, lives never truly lived, and for the ultimately lost. I will not forget.

ABOUT THE WRITER:

(Brad Clinard is a High Pointer and a sophomore attending the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where, when he is not ruminating on the state of our nation and culture, he makes excellent grades in his area of scholastic concentration (presently business) and excellent strokes on the tennis court for his University’s Varsity Tennis Team. )

Al Cambell’s recent essay observing how America’s addiction to having it’s news media and other appetites satisfied “now” at the expense of what we used to do: e.g., logically and responsibly plan for future events, such as predicted hurricanes, terrorist attacks and SUV-generated gas shortages, inspired me to reprise some earlier ruminations of my own on collateral topics: What’s really happening to America’s former “character” and what parts do our addictions to media and money play in the mix?

It’s not like we got to this point without fair warning. Some of the most profound truth in cultures is found in their mythology, both religious and secular; other truths are found collaterally in scientific disciplines. Two of these I see converging today are the Biblical story of Babel’s Tower, and Marshall McLuhan’s (media philosophic commentator) prophetic warnings about the emergence of the media in our culture…popularly called “McLuhan’s Monster” by academics since he expounded his caveats at mid Century Twenty…that “The Media were BECOMING THE MESSAGE.

I say there’s reason to believe that both prophesies have been fulfilled in recent times…both Babel’s terrible Tower and the birth and maturation of McLuhan’s Media Monster. Al Campbell’s article made me ponder bottom lines…common denominators. Behind the “Madness” of our war on terrorist phantoms in Iraq, and the near-anarchal para-apocalyptic mess we find ourselves in with Katrina and her sister in our Gulf, is there any semblance of a central flaw….a crack in the tectonic shelf of America’s former E-Plurbus Unum terra firma? I think there might be. I think Al came close with his synthesis of the situation as being defined by our creeping addiction to “immediate gratification”…both in our public and private lives. We want to SEE IT, EAT IT, UNDERSTAND IT, HAVE IT, OWN IT, FLAUNT IT, GO THERE, BE THERE ….N O W! And by God (primarily Judeo/Christian) if we can AFFORD IT, IS IT NOT OUR DIVINE RIGHT TO …HAVE IT?

OK, if we and our media and our politicians are all becoming critters of immediate impulse and gratification, is there anything in our chaotic courses that we can put our hands out and touch…and thereby have the hopes one day of manipulating back into place…into a place of sanity? I think, maybe so. What are the seeds of America’s Madness which if found and…perhaps genetically re-engineered (or maybe simply sprayed with Round-up) might provide saving grace for a Culture in an Increasing State of Shock?

I submit it’s a potentially fatal mixture of Media Might, and Corporate-Driven Money Madness. In short, McLuhan’s Monster and Human Hubris (Greed). In view of our shrinking ….AND WARMING….AND INCREASINGLY WIND-BLOWN WORLD, we’d better heed the seeds of warning.

MAD IN AMERICA
(Turning now to where the Rubber no longer
Hits the American Road)

What is, actually “Made in America” these days…? Only two things for sure- (1) those little foil stickers on the bottom of every thing we buy at WalMart that say “Made in China” and (2) the paper our Hong Kong-bound books are printed on – including the book with that old story of Babel’s Tower in it … that prophetic parable first uttered over 2000 years ago that today warns that if we humans keep trying to make things bigger and better (and easier), one day, our greedy and luxury-driven industrial revolution might lead us to a time and place when and where we can’t even understand what each other are saying. Are we there already?

Remember your “Personal Banker”? 
We are all now PIN-heads.

Have you recently tried calling your “personal banker” maybe to find out what’s in your checking account ? If so, you’ve discovered that , your “personal banker” has no name. In fact, he has no blood, bone or any other signs of sharing life with you. He is, in fact . . . IF you can remember your PIN number, and IF you find the toll-free number that allows you to call your local bank’s (mine is in in High Point NC) customer-service department in Tupelo (can we rename that ” cussed-service”, maybe?), and IF you can ferret your way through the punch-key code that robotic voice gives you, and IF you can recall and correctly key in the 10 sequential numbers of your account . . . a digital cyber-chip , made of silicon and silver whose quantum of cognitive quality makes Dick Cheney seem charismatic. By the end of this experience, you will have discovered that , though your dollars and bank account may in fact be “made in America”, they are serviced elsewhere… out there in the neverland of corporate cyberspace, somewhere north , east , south and/or west of the Tower of Babel.

“G.E. Brings Good Things to…New Deli”

A recent case in point. Sue – my very sweet and trusting step mom recently re-did her entire kitchen — Filled it completely– floor to ceiling with brand new appliances – all of which were , of course “Made in America” – - fine modern machines made by trusted old-brand National industrial heroes like Whirlpool , Matag and our own , still “bringing-good-things-to-life” U.S. o f A. icon, General Electric. Of course, Sue ordered all her new stuff from our equally home-grown home supply super-store in High Point (not Home Depot, but rather the “other one”).

When the remodeling was done and the delivery guys (who did actually have blood and bone) came and installed her new stove , refrigerator and dishwasher (all G.E.) , Sue was beside herself , surrounded by all that new glistening reaffirmation of American innovative technology … the wherewithal and embodiment of her lovely life of industrially-engineered comfort and leisure. Surrounded and buttressed by all her spanking-new American appliances , Sue wasn’t at all shaken initially when her dishwasher and refrigerator wouldn’t work, because, they failed to drain and cool (respectively or respectfully) , thinking she’d “just call down to the store and they’d come and fix things”. Memories of current “Maytag” commercials flashed on the screen of her nonchalant noggin as she dialed up her local appliance megastore.

She held her own while navigating through the computerized telephone maze which connected her finally to yet another flesh-and-blood primate. This “customer service” man , addressing the non-draining dishwasher first, said “No problem – let me connect you with the GE repair department”. Seconds later, a heavily -accented middle-eastern male voice comes on the phone and , after identifying himself and taking the dishwasher’s symptomology from Sue, informs her as follows (in an authoritative – but soothingly-exotic version of English that brought to mind the Gandhi character Ben Kingsley played in the Made-In-England movie of the same name): ” Your dishwasher (assures Gandhi) is not broken. Merely it is most probable dysfunctional temporarily because it is not used to its environment.” Whereupon, my step mom, of course says…”What????”…And the Gandhi-guy on the other end haltingly continues…. “Just leave it to be. When the machine is adjusted to new environment… a few days only it will take …. it will swallow the water and it will be fine…Not to worry.”

Sue, thought this pronouncement (not-to-mention pronunciation) a little strange, but when an appliance is made from parts emanating from a dozen venues around the globe…why be concerned if the repairman (and his remedy) seem a little . . . exotic? And maybe those various alien parts in her dishwasher needed time to adjust to the temperature and humidity-controlled climate of her new Carolina kitchen.

So , Sue resolves to give her dishwasher time to “adjust” to its new environment, and , calling the store again, addresses the problem of her refrigerator’s refusal to refrigerate. This time the very same virtual humanoid at the mega-store she talked to about the dishwasher answered and declared that Sue was “in luck”. This was the second call on a un-cool GE fridge he’d handled that week, and he knew just how to fix things. He had personally called the repair department for General Electric… “Did I tell you they’re in India ? ” , he asked her. “In India?” , says Sue – thinking “No wonder that guy sounded strange… and took so long to answer-we were talking on satellite .” “Why is the GE repair department in India?” , she asks, naturally. “Well, it’s not really the repair department– just the customer service part of it. GE can afford to have them talk to you long distance because they work for $10 a day in India, and the union workers in the States get paid more than that an hour.”

“I see”, says Sue, “but what about the fridge ?” “Oh, that one’s easy”, says the store guy. “I called and talked to the guy in New Deli myself when a customer last week had the same problem and the Indian guy just told her all she needed to do was put stuff in .” “Put stuff in?” , Sue pursues. “Yeah,” the guy continues, “The Indian fellow says that the new GE refrigerators won’t cool unless they sense that they have food inside them, and so you have to put your food in so they will decide to cool.” “Really”, quizzed an increasing incredulous North Carolinian customer named Sue, who by then couldn’t resist ruminating on the odds of an environmentally-traumatized dishwasher and an on-a-food-strike refrigerator having been delivered to her by an All-American General Electric Company on the same day.

”But don’t do what that other lady did”, continued the store guy , still relaying to Sue the New Deli guy’s remedy for her refusing refrigerator … “That lady tried to trick her refrigerator into working by filling it up with magazines… and it didn’t work.” By this time, Sue, feeling herself somewhat Alice-one-toke-over the-looking-glass-line , said, “Maybe it (the refrigerator) would prefer newspapers …. I have a lot of those”. And she wasn’t altogether kidding. Certainly the store guy wasn’t, because he responded , sincerely and artlessly , “No m’am. I’m sure that won’t work …The Indian guy said for sure the refrigerator needs food. You need to fill it with food and than call me back if the refrigerator won’t cool it.”

By now , any sane reader will think this story is being made up. That at least part of it has to be a joke. Sorry, my comfortable compatriots. The sad (if comical) story is , the story is true. Every weirdly worrisome word of it. As things turned out, my step mom, Sue, finally came out of the Indian ether and called General Electric’s corporate home office (some place…you never know where you’re actually calling these days). When the “all-American” (i.e., $18/hour) boys heard Sue’s story, they had the store send out union-card-carrying blood and bone American repairmen that very day, and within minutes, the fuse and o-ring required by the GE fridge and dish-washer were installed , and the rebellious machines were contentedly cooling and draining their food and water like GE and the Heavens had ordained.

But speaking of “ordained”: More than a comfortably few prophesies in the Good Old Book seem to be being ordained of late. Our blind, heedless greed and endless quests for affluence, leisure and dominance of our natural environment (not to mention our neighbors’) may have finally led us again to the top of that tottering tower of mythical Babel. Some how, to some degree, that filthy lucre (the Dollar) and perhaps increasing human laziness and narcissism are involved. But as far as who’s ultimately to blame (or to become responsible ) for this creepingly ubiquitous state of American affairs is a little harder to pin down. Maybe we can go back to that ancient Myth in Genesis (11:4-9) for clues. When mankind’s pride , heedless striving and ambition got to the point that he offended his maker, what did that Ultimate Authority (in the story) ultimately do? He made it impossible for men to continue building their structures- stopped them dead in their progressive tracks and scattered them to the four corners of the globe by …making them speak different languages…

Is that what all this . . . madness in American means? Has the ultimate cosmic authority commenced another remedial intervention in our collectively dysfunctional lives? If so, we need to be aware: Men, speaking in “different tongues” simply can’t help each other fix things. Over the phone, the internet, through the media , or at a Middle Eastern Summit. From the terrifyingly-toppled twin towers to my step mom’s tiny refrigerator, this trend poses a chilling question: Where is this shrinking world – this swelling separateness – this so-called “globalization” taking us? I don’t think we’re likely to find the answer in calling General Electric via New Deli. I think that , eventually , we’re going to have to look inward, and maybe take a few steps backwards , in the direction of a time and place where in fact, truly good things were brought to life …by Americans, for Americans . . . in America.

AMERICAN CORPORATIONS HAVE EXPORTED….AMERICA

Unsupervised, unsanctioned, unfettered corporate American corruption and greed buttressed by political collaboration and co-conspiracy and greed have brought us here. Hallibuton’s Pentagaon-machinated attack on Iraq was only the most recent in a long evolution in the Corporate scuttlings of the American ships of industry and state. Corporate piracy of the Enron ilk is but the tip of our Titanic ice berg of outlaw corporate fascism.

The Kevlar-lined suits at the top of all the corporate worm hills all have Harvard and MIT-trained MBA “margin men” blueprinting all their plans of corporate fleecing from the RJR-Nabisco “Barbarians at the Gate” to the still-unresolved scandals of Enron and on-going ravages of Cheney’s Halliburton.

Self-serving corporate management has exported substantially all of America’s jobs to China and has stolen untold quantities from the tills of our domestic companies and their workers’ retirement investments, not to mention our own Congressionally-pilfered Social Security funds. The solution offered by the Bush neocons is to punish those corporations with further corporate welfare and their criminal leadership with perpetual income tax cuts, and to continue buying products made in China with counterfeit U.S. Dollars.

The damage in terms of lost competence and capabilities we are reeping in this process is now trickling down like Reagan’s Republican economics even to the federal and local governmental bureaucracies responsible for the obliteration of New Orleans. The first ten thousand callers from that disaster area were in all likelihood put through by some automaton telephone robot to an emergency service assistant in New Deli.

McLuhan’s Monster:

The Media as Frankenstein Fabricator of
America’s (Fictionally) Monstrous Character

Because no one listened to Marshall McLuhan’s warnings about the way the media were changing the character of America, his worst prophesies have been ordained. The media have “become the message” as McLuhan frenetically forecast in the early 60′s.

But McLuhan was really ruing the unlocking of the barn door when the cattle had already gone…The alleged transmogrification of television was but a geometric expansion of what the film industry had already done to and for American “character”. A strong case could be made for the proposition that some predominantly Jewish immigrants invented the American “character” -and perhaps saved America and the free world in the process. These progenitive, essentially European, film artists immigrated America’s West Coast between the two wars, and for combined motives of self-preservation and prodding America away from its isolationism to become big-brother defender of the free world, created the image of America that united diverse populations of previously warring Irish, German, French, Italian, Spanish and African peoples into the image of…well, John Wayne. John Wayne’s character, as Maureen O’Hara, would subsequently proclaim to Congress, became America’s character – either commanding platoons of eager “Sea bees” or heroically assaulting the sands of Iwo Jima.

Up until the tandem threats of the Kiser and Hitler, America appeared to the rest of the world just as it was… a refuge for immigrant fugitives and rebels who followed European pilgrims to America for reasons as diverse as their genetic roots. Even before the first 4th of July, America had no “national character” other than the proud mongrel essence that eventually gave metropolitan melting pots like N.Y. City labels like “hell’s kitchen.” And because it was a haven for rebels and “rugged individualism”, America’s diversity spawned further diversity and rugged individualism. It took a depression and two world wars for America to acquire a “face” recognizable to the rest of the world, and the face was not established by traditional books or news print. The face of America assumed its unique character on the silver screens of Hollywood.

BEFORE TV, HOLLYWOOD WAS US

Without the images of John Wayne, Rosie the Riveter and similarly waspish Hollywood effigies of the American G.I. and fly-boy “Hero”, it is unlikely America would have learned to beat its mongrel heart with the strength and endurance it took to leap from the ashes of Pearl Harbor and storm the Beaches of Normandy on the way to Berlin’s final bunker. Certainly, to win the wars against the enemies of freedom, in America “all gave some, and some gave all”, but that clever and cohesive core of kosher movie makers artistically-and effectively– gave America and the world the first clear (if essentially-contrived) image of America’s “face”. Post his image today on the corner of any 50 culturally-distinct metropolises in the world, and in as many tongues they will salute “John Wayne”. The same cameras subsequently codified and exported America’s peacetime image in the equally waspish forms of Mickey Mantle and Marilyn Monroe.


THE MEDIA (TV) BECOMES THE MESSAGE
TV’S BOSSES-THE CORPORATIONS–CONTROL THE MESSAGE

McLuhan’s Monster is Born

But then came the mid-century emergence of Television, and Hollywood’s position as America’s image-artist was challenged. Actually, with the passing of the art/media torch from Hollywood to …ubiquitous Television, a cataclysmic conversion of American’s character occurred. The artistically-inspired face of America passed from the hands of fond and symbiotic Hollywood moguls to a menagerie of Mr.-Hyde-mad–monster TV producers (inanimate, corporate “networks”).

Before TV, the worst rebels Hollywood artists created for our-and the world’s-imitation and adulation were the relatively benign (if still waspish) bike-braving Brando, and switchblade-shwashbuckling James Dean. Following the sadly short Halcyon days of Ozzie and Harriot, our Loving Lucy and Mayberry’s mythically “simple” society, the artists who once controlled the evolution of America’s image were replaced…as was America’s morality itself, by dollar-driven corporations intent on fashioning whatever image of America their Neilson Ratings dictated. No longer were artists sitting around creating beautiful images of how things in America COULD be, if only we continued to love, and strive…Rather, writers and producers were being told to write what would sell sponsors’ product. Madison Avenue “margin men” came up with the catastrophic concept of “demography”…. “Don’t give them all a single image of truth and beauty they can rally round…Give them what sells.” At this point, America ceased evolving as an integrating culture and began disintegrating into demographically-dictated sub-cultures. Whitie could watch the Andy Griffith Show, and later the more realistic All in the Family, and the dollar-demographers would spin off Jeffersons for the blacks and Chico for the Hispanics. This part of the media paragigm shift from silver to cathode-ray screens was arguably salutary in that diversity had been the culturally primordial stuff from which the initial character of “America” had been mined by the minds and souls of those pioneer Hollywood movie makers who were truly the romancers of American’s mythically monolithic demeanor. Watching Carrol O’Connor struggle with the funny fruits of his own bigotry was …good for white and blacks, and watching the Jefferson’s discover that previously “white-type” power can corrupt…currently black Americans, was a sharpening experience at both ends of the diversity stick.

So, what part of McCluen’s sinister prophesy has been ordained in monstrous fashion by the American media, and how has this served to transmogrify America’s image of itself and the world’s image of America? The answer to this question would afford an answer to Michael Moore’s plaintive opening querry in Farenheit 911… “Has it all (from the election heist in Florida to the War in Iraq) been a dream? The answer is the same because the cause is the same. It was all a dream. There were no WMD’s and no bin Laden/Saddam connections. The lies were told and the media printed them, and the media’s message changed the face and character of America.

The power of the media to dictate the form and content of art has been pivotal in the evolution of America’s now Frankenstinian image. The cataclysm that has made this the reality is composit-a composit of the evolution of American citizen-driven democracy into an oligarchical corporate despotism, and the evolution of the media’s prime medium from silver screen to electron machine. The music industry provides an illustration in microcosm: The illustration is relevant, because the “sound image” of America has been almost as integral as its visual counterparts in providing the world its image of American character. Before syndicated corporations bought up the air waves, there were literally thousands of family-owned (human) broadcasting stations where an artist could be heard…and “discovered” by his naturally-selecting audience of empathetic ears. Now there are literally a handful of music monopolies and our radios now blast only what these musak moguls decide the public will hear. Our children are for the most part today in our ….cars. In the cars, are the radios. Six mega-companies dictate what comes over the air, and what comes is what sells. It’s no longer a matter of artistic discrimination, because the masses are given only six options, where, in the days of their parents, there were thousands. If Bob Dylan or Paul Simon were teenagers today, their music would perish in a New York or L.A. coffee house. Diversity is for the most part …dead…and if Darwin was even close to being right, and McLuhan only 5% on the money, diversity, a vital element in any system of successful evolution….is now missing from the equation by which our American character continues to evolve.

ARTISTIC EVOLUTION SCREACHES TO HALT

In the place of diversity today, the media gives us various forms of “non-art”. On the visual side, the “reality show” epitomizes the Frankenstein-monster evolution of America’s media-spun character. The corporations currently dictating television programming have discovered that it is “dollar efficient” to wholly eliminate art from television, as, appealing to the baser audience instincts, sexual infidelity, humiliation and mahem pay greater dividends. Thanks to the “dollar efficiency” of the Jerry Springer paradigm, the rest of the world is now forming its image of America by watching its perversity in the form of wholly artless “reality TV”. In place of former art and diversity, the American media has put America’s perversity on parade…because it sells. During the crucial years the Al Qaeda was making its early sorties into the basement of the Twin Towers, the media busily enabled a lame Republican party to effectively demean and ultimately displace an American president-along with his party- by publishing video and audio tapes of his extramarital dalliance.

THE CORPORATE MESSAGE IS … WAR

When Al Qaeda finally succeeded in toppling the twin towers, a media-conscious president was more concerned with completing his TV Video op in a grade school reading class than contending with the mortal enemies of Amerians under attack. Bush’s inspired speech before Congress, and the entire “War On Terrorism” were, in practical terms, products of a media-driven society. Bush didn’t write his speech, or even formulate the globally-encompassing policies pronounced therein… Rather, he read–as any other media “talking head–from a teleprompter screen….a speech written by a media-savy speech writer ( David Frum), dictated in terms by a corporate-driven adviser named Richard Pearl. In turn, what force drove Richard Pearl, to drive David Frum to drive the teleprompter tech to put all those words of war before our Congress, and before us through, again, our TV screens? … The clear answer to this rhetorical question is, of course the Corporations, like our V/P’s own Halliburton has, through support of the Neo-Con Military-Lobbied and complexed Republican party has led us to a war for urgently-needed oil-and hense-dominance in Iraq and ultimately the entire Middle East.

The answer to this final question provides us both a conclusion and a cruelly ironic modicum of hope as we wind up our search for America’s image , and how it’s managed to devolve from John Wayne to a Machiavellian (or Straussian) Frankenstein monster in a short half century… The media. When Bush began to market his war in Iraq as a war on Al Qaeda-connected terrorism and WMD’s, the media published this corporate-contrived fiction without due circumspection or question, because the story sold.

SURVIVAL OF FREE (PAPER) PRESS PROVIDES VESTIGE OF HOPE

But, although the TV medium (E.G. Neo-Con Republican run Fox) has enabled the transmogrification of the America’s image from heroic to monstrous…more benign (greener) branches of the media tree may well have started reversing the process and restoring America’s image to one we can live, and even grow with. For example Vanity Fair, in July of 2003, published Sam Tanenhaus’ avante-guarde revelations concerning the Cabal which successfully managed the silent coup in our Pentagon which led us to wage our Neo-con Zionist-inspired wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the pretext of declaring a war of reprisal against terrorists.

As said before, lies were told and the media printed them, and the media’s message dynamically changed the face and character of America. But the change in America’s perceived character was based upon lies, and therein lies our room for hope. The change in America’s true character has been as fictional as the lies and misinformation on which the perceived change was founded. When and as the media discover and collectively reveal the truth, America’s true character and face can-and will-emerge.

Vanity Fair’s bellwether article courageously published the evidentiary core of Michael Moore’s mainstream movie production, which (film) despite neo-conservative attempts to stifle its broadcasting, has succeeded in giving America a facelift, beginning with a twenty-minute standing ovation in France, and sallying forth with box-office attendance by Americans sufficient to bode a renaissance of truth and diversity in America, and the restoration of her former character and destiny to join and perhaps eventually again lead the international brotherhood of states and souls in search of freedom, global harmony and peace.

RAGE WITH US

So, Freedom-remembering and loving Americans everywhere, unite with Al Campbell and me. Pick up your pens and your computer key boards and rage against the lying of the Right. Even with Bush’s neo-con packed Court, we’ve still got freedom of the press. The paper press remains–now expanded by the www Internet-as our final vestige and buttress of truth and hope for remediation. One day, God willing, McLuhan’s monster will be felled and the twin towers of American industry and productivity will be re-designed by one of our brave and willing pens.

Dusty Schoch
Sept. 24, 2005