Mob Rule Destroys Credibity; Maybe That's The Point

Cross-posted from My Firedoglake (which was hacked to make it appear as though I hated young children; everything I held dear was destroyed.  Here is an example of the opposite of plagiarism; everything is original (except of course I did not write Freud's theory of the unconscious, pilfer from Richard Hofstader or Shirley Jackson).  I never realized that people planned my death.

Violence, high unemployment and malaise pervade the atmosphere.  Things fall apart; the center will not hold.

It's time for witch trials and a scapegoat carved out of sexual hysteria and the fear of pandemics.

The discarded outcast is destroyed (or destroys him/herself) for the sake of the community. She serves a vital purpose, to draw the ire and inchoate hatreds of the group upon herself. She exists to be the outsider and functions to enhance the well-being of those within.

The only action to be taken to appease the community in the face of this loathsome creature is to institute a form of social control.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Social control used in this way covers a multitude of sins.  Snarking self-satisfaction and superiority, the members of the community only wish her to be banished from their sight.

This dynamic is seen starkly in the short story, "The Lottery", by Shirley Jackson, which depicts a wholesome farming town that depends on the community to gather together for the harvest day ritual.  Just ordinary people trying to guarantee their survival against the prospect of famine.  Spoiler alert: human sacrifice.  It can happen here.  It can happen to you.

The fear that spread like a virus through the country tore apart lives but helped put notches on the belt of Roy Cohn and Richard Nixon, who later became President. In the late 17th century in Salem, Massachusetts, accusations of witchcraft ended the lives of several women. The sexual hysteria whipped up serves several functions: bind the group against a common enemy and project internal hostility and rage upon an outsider.
Unfortunately, it is probably difficult to actually be the outsider, the target on whose destruction the group depends. There are many methods utilized against the target: threats, attempts to discredit, or even driving her to the brink of sanity. On a continuous basis, day in and day out, the perpetrator cannot help but succeed, particularly if the group does not step in for fear of becoming tainted themselves.

Individual Responsibility and/or Societal Conditions?

In the horrifying case of Adam Lanza, using a Bushmaster automatic weapon to kill 28, including 20 children, while they were attentively sitting listening to their teachers (sitting ducks), the nation turned to a discussion about guns in society.  His act was discussed in context with America’s love affair with guns, the power of the NRA and pro-weapons-at-all-costs.  Should we look at larger social conditions that exacerbate a deranged individual’s ability to kill?  Or should we seek to limit responsibility to that one individual?  The conundrum between nature and nurture is one that has afflicted philosophers, psychologists and sociologists for decades, if not centuries.

If a deranged individual kills someone and claims the motive is hatred of Muslims and is indeed charged with a hate crime, do we look at social conditions or the individual?  Is our society rife with Islamophobia that might tip someone deranged over the edge?  In my next post, I will discuss blatant Islamophobic messages (assuming they do exist in American society) and whether there is some connection between them and actions taken by violent individuals taken in response.

After all, we still don’t know why Adam Lanza would kill 20 innocent children in their classrooms.  What was he influenced by?  Was he pure evil?  We may never know.

Anti-Muslim Subway Posters Prompt NYPD To Increase Security in Stations 

Anti-Islam Subway Ads By Pam Geller Featuring Exploding World Trade Center, Quote form the Quran

Is Rupert Murdoch an anti-Semite? Is Peter Beinart?

SPOILER ALERT:  I am a Jewish person as are many of those mentioned in this blog post.  It's up to the reader to decide whether that is relevant.

Rupert Murdoch, doyen of Newscorp, tweeted himself into radioactive territory by writing, “Why is Jewish-owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?” Saturday night, 11/17/12.  One can criticize the paper of record and the Washington Post as propaganda, an irony for the owner of “fair and balanced” Fox News, but using the phrase “Jewish-owned press” references 1930s Germany.

In his post on Open Zion in The Daily Beast, Peter Beinart poses his own question, “Why is the conservative press defending Murdoch?”:

After noting that perhaps Murdoch did over-generalize a bit, Commentary's Jonathan Tobin argued that, “it wasn’t unreasonable for the non-Jewish Murdoch to wonder why these [Jewish-owned] papers as well as much of the liberal media are often so reflexively hostile to Israel’s cause.” The New York Sun declared that Murdoch’s “apology was unnecessary.” Michael Goldfarb, chairman of the hawkish Center for American Freedom, tweeted “New York Times proves @RupertMurdoch correct."

Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote The Crisis of Zionism, which came out in April 2012.  He was roundly pilloried and accused of promoting anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic sentiments with his book.

The second irony are the pithy statements condensing the arguments against The Crisis of Zionism in a strongly worded book review in the The New York Times.  Jonathan Rosen, the reviewer, pointed out what he saw as the flaws in Beinart’s argument: not understanding or empathizing with Israel as a small country adrift in a sea of hostile neighbors who would like nothing better than its destruction.  Rosen wrote of Beinart’s work:

Like a majority of Israelis, Beinart believes that it is depleting, degrading and dangerous for Israel to oversee the lives of millions of stateless Palestinians, and also like a majority of Israelis, he thinks the solution is the creation of a Palestinian state.

But because he minimizes the cataclysmic impact of the second Intifada; describes Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza not as a gut-wrenching act of desperation but as a cynical ploy to continue the occupation by other means; belittles those who harp on a Hamas charter that calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews the world over; and plays down the magnitude of the Palestinian demand for a right of return — not to a future Palestine but to Israel itself, which would destroy the Jewish state — he liberates his book from the practicalities of politics.

If this is a display of anti-Israeli feeling in the "Jewish-owned press", rhen the year is 1984. 

That turns Murdoch’s tweet on its head.  Just as Romney revealed his true feelings when he spoke about the 47% eschewing personal responsibility or that Obama gave gifts to get people to vote for him, Murdoch is revealing more than he might think.  And his eager acolytes, the same that condemn Beinart for anti-Semitism, fall all over themselves to excuse his behavior.

Wal-Mart Loves the NLRB: Who'da Thunk It?

In a hilarious switcheroo, according to an article in today’s NYT, Wal-Mart has filed a complaint with the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) to prevent its employees from participating in demonstrations on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving generally known as the biggest shopping day of the year.  The Chamber of Commerce loathes the NLRB almost as much as the ACLU.  Certainly if Romney/Ryan had been elected, one order of business would have been to eliminate it.

It’s interesting how reporter Steve Greenhouse differed in his presentation of Wal-Mart and its battle with OUR Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart) when he wrote about their relationship back in June 2011.  That article focused on OUR Walmart and gave the employees a voice; today’s article is told mainly from the point-of-view of Wal-Mart’s management and law professors.  Today’s article assumes throughout that OUR Walmart is a union, providing a foundation for Wal-Mart’s claim that:

Continuing protests were illegal because under the National Labor Relations Act, a union seeking recognition can picket for a maximum of 30 days.  After that, it must either stop picketing or take a formal unionization vote.

In the June 2011 article, Greenhouse made it clear in the first paragraph that OUR Walmart was not a union:

After numerous failed attempts to unionize Wal-Mart stores, the nation’s main union for retail workers has decided to try a different approach: it has helped create a new, nonunion group of Wal-Mart employees that intends to press for better pay, benefits and most of all, more respect at work.

Ironically, the fact that OUR Walmart is not a union is supposed to protect them under federal law:

Unlike a union, the group will not negotiate contracts on behalf of workers.  But its members could benefit from federal labor laws that protect workers from retaliation for engaging in collective discussion and action.

Now Wal-Mart is seeking protection under federal law.  Poor baby!  Wonder who it supported for president with mucho dead presidents.

Why don’t the workers unionize at Walmart?  Because Wal-Mart will use deadly tactics.  (Although not as deadly as when Frank Little, union organizer for Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] was forcibly taken from his home and lynched from a train trestle while he was helping organize a strike against the Anaconda Copper Company.  Yet.)  It's ferocious:

Wal-Mart has aggressively battled organizing drives at its stores—it even closed a Canadian store after its workers voted to unionize.

Greenhouse quotes a worker in the first article, which he doesn’t do in the second:

“Someone has to stand up to say something,” said Deondra Thomas, a shoe department employee at a Dallas Wal-Mart, who earns $8.90 an hour after three years there.  “So many people have been quiet for so long.  A lot of us think Wal-Mart is an awesome company, but as far as the employees, they treat us like dirt.”

A family of 4 making $23,050 qualifies as poverty-level according to the 2012 guidelines.  If Deondra works full-time, 40 hours a week), she would gross $17,800.

In today’s article, the only reference to the workers is indirect:

Many of [Walmart’s] workers assert that Wal-Mart pays poverty-level wages, assigns too few hours a week and retaliates against protesting employees.

Note the use of the word “assert” which qualifies it, making it open to interpretation, as opposed to the quote from Ms. Thomas in the first article.  (I wonder what ever happened to her.  Is she still working for Wal-Mart?  Greenhouse could have followed up his own story to check if Wal-Mart retaliated against her.  He also could have checked pay stubs to verify poverty-level claims.)

The not-so-funny thing about Wal-Mart’s poverty level wages is that it depends on government benefits to fill in the food and health care gaps.

What would the service economy do without the government?

Scapegoat Needed: Group Hysteria

Violence, high unemployment and malaise pervade the atmosphere.  Things fall apart; the center will not hold.  It's time for witch trials and a scapegoat carved out of sexual hysteria and the fear of pandemics.

The discarded outcast is destroyed (or destroys him/herself) for the sake of the community. She serves a vital purpose, to draw the ire and inchoate hatreds of the group upon herself. She exists to be the outsider and functions to enhance the well-being of those within.  The only action to be taken to appease the community in the face of this loathsome creature is to institute a form of social control.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Social control used in this way covers a multitude of sins.  Snorting the air of self-satisfaction and superiority, the members of the community only wish her to be banished from their sight.

This dynamic is seen starkly in the short story, "The Lottery", by Shirley Jackson, which depicts a wholesome farming town that depends on the community to gather together for the harvest day ritual.  Just ordinary people trying to guarantee their survival against the prospect of famine.  Spoiler alert: human sacrifice.  It can happen here.  It can happen to you.

It's tantamount to sexual hysteria and can be whipped up in several ways. We saw this occur during the McCarthy era, when Joseph McCarthy, Senator from Wisconsin, seized upon the idea of Communists lurking among the American population, stoking the notions that ordinary citizens were infiltrating society in order to bring it down.

The fear that spread like a virus through the country tore apart lives but helped put notches on the belt of Roy Cohn and Richard Nixon, who later became President. In the late 17th century in Salem, Massachusetts, accusations of witchcraft ended the lives of several women. The sexual hysteria whipped up serves several functions: bind the group against a common enemy and project internal hostility and rage upon an outsider.

Unfortunately, it is probably difficult to actually be the outsider, the target on whose destruction the group depends. There are many methods utilized against the target: threats, attempts to discredit, or even driving her to the brink of sanity. On a continuous basis, day in and day out, the perpetrator cannot help but succeed, particularly if the group does not step in for fear of becoming tainted themselves.

Failed Actress, Demagogue, Finally Makes It To White House

So, you want Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan a heart beat from the presidency?  Do you know anything about Ayn Rand, failed actress, screenwriter and cult leader who hated altruists yet took full advantage of Medicare while in U.S.?

Now that Bauman Rare Books is trumpeting her book "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" and calling her one of "capitalism's most popular and influential philosopher at a mere cost of $3500, I think you should get ejjicated.  Remember the destruction of the middle-class's hope for weath: home equity, over the course of the W administration?  Remember those nasty mergers-and-acquisition guys who bought companies with debt then piled the debt on top of the companies they bought, not before taking a huge chunk of cash out of them, fired everyone and sold them off after they were squeezed dry?  Now no more m&a branding.  These vulture companies are now called private equity firms.  You know, like Bain Capital.

To jog your memory about how the 1% got so much and the rest were took for a ride, here's a piece I wrote back in 2007:

As America enters an unprecedented time of falling housing prices and widespread foreclosure, I found the article in The New York Times “Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism” by Harriet Rubin (9/15/07) very interesting. 

According to the article, many business leaders, including Alan Greenspan, who is currently flogging his book, “The Age of Turbulence”, were strongly influenced by Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged.  Greenspan blamed everyone but himself for the credit crisis, although he was at the Fed’s helm when the interest rate was cut to 1% in 2003 and praised adjustable rate mortgages as most efficient. 

Wall Street decided to offer mortgages borrowers could not afford simply because they could repackage these loans into mortgage-backed securities and assert that they eliminated risk and pay high yields at the same time. 

Although many of these “packagers” such as Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, protested that these methods allowed a greater pool of people to become homeowners, in actuality they were far more cynical.  On the Street subprime and other versions of mortgages were known as “liar loans” or NINJAs (no income, no job, no assets).  The Street divided up their mortgaged-backed securities into “tranches”, slices that they said spread the risk and therefore eliminated it.  But those in the know knew it was a scam because Streeters called the lowest rung tranche “toxic waste.”

Back to Rand.  These business leaders were greatly influenced by her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged.   Atlas Shrugged is the story of the prime movers of society going on strike because society doesn’t appreciate them; in fact, they are exploited and robbed of their dignity.  They refused to contribute their inventions, art, business leadership, scientific research or new ideas of any kind to the rest of the world. 

Society hampers them by interfering with their work and underpays them by confiscating the profits and dignity they have rightfully earned.  The peaceful cohesiveness of the world requires those individuals whose productive work comes from mental effort.  But feeling they have no alternative, they eventually start disappearing from the communities of “looters” and “moochers” who bleed them dry.  The strikers believe that they are crucial to a society that exploits them, and the near-total collapse of civilization triggered by their strike shows them to be correct.

Unfortunately, Atlas Shrugged reflects the mindset of many of those who helmed Wall Street institutions that are now extinct or swallowed up.  To regulate them is to “loot” or “mooch” off them, or as Sterling Hayden as Jack Ripper said in Dr. Strangelove, to steal their precious bodily fluids.  They are of a superior class; therefore they are entitled to play by different rules, all for the benefit of society.  I don’t think Rand even believed that self-interest had to be enlightened to benefit society; all the prime movers like Mozilo, Thain (Merrill Lynch), Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), Paulson (formerly Goldman Sachs, now sadly our Treasury Secretary) just have to be self-interested and somehow, voila! Wave an invisible hand and society benefits.  They took the gold; we the taxpayers take the dross, and none of them accepts responsibility or faces any kind of comeuppance.

I, too, was influenced by literature but not Ayn Rand.  She wrote stiff characters who spoke ridiculous dialogue and had romance-novel sex.  I suggest these business leaders try two other novels:

The Jungle (1906) by Upton Sinclair

The Jungle is the story of Lithuanian immigrants working in Chicago’s Union Stock Yards at the beginning of the 20^th century.  It depicts a world of poverty, lack of social security or any sort of social contract, scandalous living and working conditions and generally utter hopelessness prevalent among the have-nots, contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption on the part of the haves.  The novel thrusts the existence of wage slavery into the face of the American public.  Wage slavery is a condition where a person must sell his or her labor power by submitting to the authority of an employer in order to subsist.

In The Jungle workers are shown falling into meat processing tanks and being ground, along with animal parts, into “Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard.”

The disgusting, fetid, filthy working conditions and exploitation of women and children depicted in the Jungle led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which in turn led to the Food and Drug Administration.

Another great novel:

Elmer Gantry (1927) by Sinclair Lewis

Elmer Gantry is the story of a young, arrogant, womanizing college athlete who, upon realizing the power, prestige and easy money that comes with being a preacher, pursues his “religious” ambitions with gusto, contributing to the downfall, even death, of key people around him as the years pass.  Although he continues to womanize, is often exposed as a fraud and frequently faces a complete downfall, Gantry is never fully discredited and always manages to emerge triumphant and reach ever greater heights of social status.  The novel ends as Reverend Gantry prays for the United States to be a “moral nation” and simultaneously ogles the legs of a new choir member.

Lewis researched the novel by, among other things, attending 2 or 3 religious services a week in Kansas City.  He immersed himself in the religious community.

After publication, the book was banned in Boston and a cleric suggested that Lewis be imprisoned for five years.

What would a Romney-Ryan presidency look like?

Vouchers galore.  $2,000 for a cancer operation.  Vouchers instead of direct payments from the government for Medicare with 2% administrative costs.  Turning over Social Security to the money men of Wall Street so they can earn a tidy profit gambling with our tax dollars.  Cognitive dissonance: let’s get rid of the post office despite cyberattacks and criminal internet behavior.  It’s going broke because for some reason it has to prepay its pension obligations 85% a year.  Why?  Ask Congress.  They don’t know either and they’re in charge.

Let the cool, pristine arms of technology dull our gaze and atomize us.  An internet provider costs money.  If you don’t have any, you lose the ability to communicate.  You drop out of the human race.

No more domestic programs.  No safety net, no food stamps, no Medicaid, no Head Start, no SNAP.  Sliding into poverty and homelessness, the better to die out and stop being a nuisance.

No jobs.  Just blame the victims for their “lack of education”.  They deserve to be obsolete.  It has nothing to do with the fact that America no longer has a manufacturing base or a strong labor movement.  We are a service economy, which pays very poorly and offers few benefits.

Without profligacy, there would be no sacrifice.  People are getting what they deserve—formerly middle class people eating out of dumpsters.  We, too, must be austere.  Tighten our belts.  We have to balance the budget on the backs of the less wealthy and hence less influential.  Even though money moves from the poorer to the wealthy (transfer of tax dollars to the private sector and VAT, sin taxes, the lottery—all of that takes a bigger bite out of those with less), which is truly redistribution of income, liberals are accused of redistribution all the time.

What happened to the middle-class version of wealth and security, housing?  It was gambled away in the sausage machine known as securitization and filed in a private system known as MERS.  MERS was set up and owned by the banks.  Simply by the nature of numbers (might makes right, saeth the judge) MERS eliminated the public function of the county clerk and cogent research of title change. 

That’s what’s known as “code is law”.  Entities swap over and over the mortgage-backed securities tucked into MERS until the titles for all the mortgages involved are clouded and ownership cannot be proven.  If you don’t have a clear title on your home, you don’t own it and you can’t sell it.  The black humor of this is that many people aren’t told and don’t realize their title is no good so they keep up mortgage payments on homes they might not even own.