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As I was entering a “Bestbuy” store one summer day wearing shorts and a tee shirt and carrying my ubiquitous book bag (as you might expect), the security person, whom the manager later told me also works at a prison, walked after me as though stalking me, practially yelling “Sir! Sir!” Reaching me as I was talking to a salesperson who was treating me as though I were a customer, the lineback demanded to look in my book bag immediately. I stated matter of factly that I had had no opportunity to stash anything from the store in my bag while walking in the front door (after which he saw my every move).  Nevertheless, I opened my pouch for him and he was satisifed. After I left the salesperson, I reported the incident to a manager, whose “company apologizes” was belied by his curtness and saccarine politieness.

Can a company even apologize? That sounds anthropomorphic to me. Perhaps if an employee is rude in “correctly” following a company policy—such that the policy itself is odious—a manager could apologize for the store. But can a store apologize? That sounds a bit like corporate “spending” being counted as “free speech" and like a company being regarded, moreover, as a legal person. In my view, the legal person status of a company does not mean that “it” can speak and apologize. Perhaps it makes more sense to say that only the person who committed some act can apologize for himself.

In the case of my “Bestbuy” experience, the manager added insult to injury. After I told him about the security person’s behavior—the manager agreeing with me that the employee had been excessively zealous—the manager told me that typically people with book bags are, in his experience, thieves. When I objected to his assumption, he turned dismissive, accusing me even of “going in circles” in spite of the fact that I had not repeated myself at all in my one sentence reply.  The manager seemed utterly unaware (or indifferent) to the fact that he was adding insult to injury, even as he was apologizing for the company! This is a perfect example of the duplicity of corporate-speak.

A company is an economic organization. Hence, for “it” to apologize, there really must be some economic sacrifice involved; otherwise, the apology does not register in terms of what the company is. The vacuousness of “We do apologize for any inconvenience” (which we all have heard) is attested to by how easy it is for a manager to utter it while simultaneously insulting the customer (e.g., “you’re going in circles; can I go now?”). I contend that for a “company’s” apology to be valid, some economic sacrifice must be given up without the company benefitting in any way such as by a future purchase with a coupon. Customers, I contend, should indicate that the apologizing manager must put his or her company's money where its apology is; otherwise, the customer should say in like terms, "unfortunately the apology cannot be accepted as valid.” How, I wonder, would a manager or clerk react to being the recipient rather than the source of policy-speak? He or she would probably reply, “well, I can’t do anything about that.” His "can't" is probably disingenuous, as it is undoubtedly convenient, at least at the moment. The customer might reply, 'unfortunately I can't shop here again." This exchange evinces the sheer rigidity that is so ingrained in corporate-speak as well as the underlying mentality.  I suspect that businesses are so used to their customers accepting the rigidity as given (rather than as contingent or affected) that the managers and employees take their own rigidity as required, as though deterministically rather than by their free will. Essentially, I am arguing that only certain things—money and policies—are recognizeable to the managerial birds of prey, hence their “apologies” must be converted back into such terms by customers or rejected for what they are--mere attempts to pacify customers so they will buy something.  That it never occurs to a manager that the actual employee who had offended the customer ought to be the person to apologize suggests some strange surrogate type of apology is therefore valid. Just like if I offend someone only I can apologize for what I have said or done, so too only the offending employee can proffer a viable and thus acceptable apology.  For a customer to accept anything less is to enable weakness and subterfuge.

While watching Lord of the Rings on TBS in 2010, I noticed that the network was posting not only its logo on the bottom right of the screen, but also advertising for its programming on the bottom left. Also, “more movie, less commercials” was written to accompany the logo. What really got to me during the movie was when pictures advertising a television show were shown. They took up almost an eighth of the screen and thus could not but distract the viewer from watching the movie. I decided I would not watch movies on networks that compromise or prostitute their own programing in order to sell themselves while "in progress." It is like sitting down at a restaurant and having the waitor sell me on other dishes while I am trying to enjoy the one that I'm eating. “I just want to enjoy this fine meal, thank you,” any discerning customer would be wont to say. Once at Starbucks, the customer in front of me at the register was paying $25 for a variety of products.  As I was thinking that the store had made a good sale, the clerk tried to sell the customer on a certain food item for the next visit--as if the present sale was not enough.  The same propensity wherein nothing is ever enough is evinced by the television networks that can't seem to restrain themselves from adding more and more self-promotions onto the screen during their own programming.  These networks are playing off the mitigated nature of the additions being incremental, and thus not objectionable to the average viewer. 

It is simply bad business to interfere with a customer’s enjoyment of a product by trying to promote the business or another product. The over-reaching has the bad smell of self-indulgence knowingly at others’ expense. It is impossible to enjoy a movie while animated characters run around the bottom of the screen to get the viewers' attention. The perpetrators ought to be regarded as children wherein if we give them an inch, they will indeed take a mile. Sadly, too many of us allow ourselves to be strung along the slippery slope--perhaps some viewers don't even notice the incremental intrusions. The smell of the network managers' over-reaching ought to be emetic, but perhaps the stench is so ubiquitous that we as a soceity are innoculated against even smelling it.  One can hope that one day, we shall wake up to the decadence and "smell the coffee." Perhaps only the loss of a significant viewership would mean that the sordid managers will be out of their jobs–unable to earn their high salaries for trying to manipulate us in new subterfuges. That, ladies and gentlemen, would be justice and a more salubrious society.  In the meantime, American television will increasingly come to reflect the lowest common denominator in the viewership because that is where the numbers are. In fact, perhaps it could be said that this nature of television reflects the values that are taking hold in American society.

Do we as a society value mutual respect and self-restraint, or are we too tolerant of selfishness and manipulatory behavior? Do we not value strength, but instead enable weakness? Are the stars of reality shows famous for fifteen minutes because they evince our society's actual values?  In other words, have we become a self-absorbed, petty people without realizing it?  If so, the television networks may simply be us taking advantage because it is condoned.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), was the Tea Party candidate who challenged the Republican establishment to win the party’s Senate nomination in Kentucky on May 18, 2010. A day later, he publically criticized a plank of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Specifically, he said in an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC television that he supported the sections of the Civil Rights Act that applied to public accommodations but had concerns when it came to its applicability to private business. He had raised similar concerns earlier in the day about the Americans with Disabilities Act in an interview on National Public Radio. Asked by Maddow if a private business had the right to refuse to serve black people, Mr. Paul replied, “Yes.”

In citing the rights inherent in private property, Mr. Paul, an eye surgeon, was refusing to recognize the “publicness” in a business being open to the public, as distinct from someone’s house, which is not open to the public. In other words, Mr. Paul was ignoring the qualification to private property that comes into play as soon as said property is opened to the public.  Such property is quasi-public precisely because it is open to the public.  Hence, society, through its government, has a right to dictate the obligations going with that element of publicness.  Mr. Paul would have been on firmer ground had he limited his statement to private clubs, such as country clubs, which do not receive public money and are not open to the public.  However, even here, if people associate in a way that hurts others by intentionally excluding them, there might be an argument in favor of subjecting them to the Act, though such an argument seems weaker than those for freedom of association and on private property not open to the public.

Rand Paul also said on ABC TV that President Barack Obama’s criticism of BP in the wake of the Gulf oil debacle sounds “really un-American.”  Paul said that the president’s response is part of the “blame game” that’s played in the United States. The game, he argued, leads to the thinking that tragic incidents are “always someone’s fault” when sometimes accidents just happen. Sen. Paul was ignoring that BP overrode Transocean in directing its employees not to use “mud” to maintain pressure in the well as cement “corks” were being inserted.  Also, managers at BP claimed to have the technology to stop any leak or spill when no such technology existed. In short, the managers at BP put the Gulf at risk in order to cut corners so as to earn more profit (as if $2 billion a month was not sufficient).  Rather than go after the mentality of shirking amid a “more, more, more” mentality wherein nothing is ever enough, Paul went after the representative of the victim–society as a whole.  That is to say, he added insult to injury by going after the victim rather than the culprit.  In so doing, he ignored key elements of the culpability.

Listening to the candidate the Maddow show on MSNBC, I was more concerned by the way he chose to evade questions than by his failure to take “being open to the public” into account in his view on civil rights law. At one point, Rachel Maddow asked him, “yes or no,”  on whether he would exclude private businesses from the Civil Rights law.  He replied that he was against the violence that took place in the 1960s in association with Walgreen’s lunch-counters. Beyond not answering the question, Mr. Paul seemed to be continuing with what he wanted to say–ignoring the question entirely as a mere interruption to be dismissed. I noticed a few times that after Maddow did indeed interrupt him, he simply picked up with what he had been saying.  Could his ignoring the questions be related to his ignoring the “open to the public” qualification and the risky shirking of BP?  In other words, might it be that Mr. Paul simply does not see what is inconvenient to his world view?  If so, I contend that this character trait is far more alarming than even his evasions and his over-simplified view on private property and the oil spill.  If you have ever tried repeatedly to tell someone something only to have your statement ignored as the other person continues on with what he or she was saying, you know what I mean. Sadly, I suspect that Rand Paul didn't notice it. This character flaw is by no means limited to him. Nor is this an invitation for partisan aspersions on the Republican Party.

Rather, I suspect that not answering questions--even asking one's own instead of given any answer to a question outstanding--is a growing attitude in modern America. I have witnessed it myself in emailing people I don't know on matters involving an actual or potential commercial transation. Does the computer come with Office 2007? Reply: When you would like to come by to look at it?  But what about Office 2007?  Or take apartment hunting:  Are utilities included in the rent? Reply: Call me to make an appointment to see the unit. Nietzsche would have a field day with such a mentality that vaunts itself as superior by "virtue" of its own assumed dominance. The basis of Rand Paul's non-answer, in other words, could have been an attempt to dominate beyond his place on Maddow's show. In other words, his non-answers could have been refusals rooted in a will to power that was biting off more than it could chew on someone else's show.

In terms of having a will to power based on strength, many of the stations or offices in modern society that we view as being entitled to dominate are in fact weak.  Nietzsche points to the modern moralist's thou shalt not as an attempt by the weak to dominate beyond their innate weak constitution. He also points to the attempts of the modern manager to dominate in such terms (and the priest as well). In watching various personalities giving non-answers while being interviewed on television, I find myself wondering if they know they are doing it. If they do, they are indeed rascals; if they do not, their stygian pathology is much deeper than I am equipped to investigate. Perhaps the modern illness is malignant narcissism to such an extent in a personality that the delimited perspective eclipses even awareness of what oneself is doing.

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/us/politics/21paul.html?ref=politics   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37273085/ns/politics-decision_2010/

In mid 2010, I engaged in a spontaneous conversation in passing with a man who told me that he was the manager of the diving facilities of the Rockford Country Club in Illinois. I was stunned to learn that that country club had only two black members out of what must have been at least a thousand, if not more. He told me there were not many “people of color in positions” in the city. I stood there stunned. In 2010, people still have that mentality? He said the city was twenty years behind.  I would say more something more like forty. Yet strangely, he noted that because families had changed, he had recently changed the dress code in one of the dining areas so kids from the pool could be accommodated. So, we are to believe that the situation of blacks hasn’t changed, but families have. To be sure, the family structure and dynamics had indeed changed in the last quarter of the twentieth century as women entered the workplace en masse and the number (and proportion) of diverces increased. However, it is unclear to me how these changes translate into making a dining area “informal."

The caucasion manager’s selective view of societal change—being no doubt convenient for him—struck me as strange. I got the impression that people in that city must be averse to (or scared of) virually any kind of change. How is it, I thought to myself as he spoke, that people could find so much satisfaction in the status quo? The manager told me that status and race were still important in that city. Relatedly, he characterized the city of 150,000 as a southern town interlarded in the north. His country club was the epitome of consciousness based on status and race.  Moreover, that club evinced what both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson called the artificial aristocrisy, which is comprised of wealth and birth.  This kind of elitism is distinct from the natural sort, which the two American founders took to be based on virtue and talent. Racism, and the segregation that ensues from it, is of the artificial sort.

Lest any kind of segregation be excoriated against, it should be noted that it can be quite natural for polite people to want to segregate themselves from the vulgar. There is indeed a marked difference in how people have been raised, and in how they conduct themselves.  This is not to say, however, that manners are on the side of the country club, for arrogance and elitism are quite rude qualities.  It seems to me that politeness can be reckoned as a virtue, and thus placed in the natural aristocrisy.  Perhaps education too, or at least valuing it, is also akin to virtue. The city in which the country club is located is at least historically heavily blue-collar.  Traditionally, the people holding such jobs felt threatened by education, and thus looked down on it.  Is it not natural that a highly educated person would rightfully want some distance from being disvalued?  There is, I submit, a natural aristocrasy that legitimates the natural grouping tendency of human beings.  We tend naturally to segregate ourselves. It is difficult to generalize against this propensity.  A mother of young kids is apt to segregate her family from a known child molester (one of the Catholic churches in the city had one as a priest). Ex-smokers are apt to segregate themselves from people who impose with their addition.  Furthermore, people with common interests are apt to associate. An apologist for the country club might say that it is composed of members who have common interests and generally get along. In this respect, it seems quite natural. However, it is not clear to me that these qualities cannot pertain to people of different races. Such artificial delimiters are perhaps why artificial aristocrisy is so squalid; there is also a rather significant opportunity cost to it. Sadly, the manager seemed utterly unaware that he subscribed to it at all, yet fully sure of himself nonetheless.

A venture more useful than bashing presumption at a country club involves coming up with a criterion on which “good” from “bad” segregation can be determined. Generally speaking, segregating a virtue from its associated vices is justifiable. Immediately a problem can be detected. Namely, although there are a cluster of virtues on which most people would agree, there is no fixed number. Furthermore, people such as the dining manager at that country club can use a virtue (e.g., gaining a vocational position through talent and effort) to attempt to justify what is really just garden variety racism and elitism.  In short, segregation of virtue from vice, while in itself laudable, can involve a slippery slope that can essentially whitewash segregation that could be considered as a vice.  Can we trust in nature, such that the natural associative instinct can be distinguished from the squalid instances of segregation?  Furthermore, are there certain virtues that can be deemed as legitimate sources of segregation—such virtues being agreed to explicitly or tacitly in a social contract?  In modern society, segregation by race is explicitly excoriated against, though I’m not sure if it is implicitly agreed to by all. There might be a natural instinct to associate with similar people. Just as people include physical appearance in determining whom to date, external features could be part of the mix in how humans are hardwired to associate. Likeness might be associated in evolution with survival as like is not apt to fight with like.  However, external features are an imperfect indicator of whom a person is apt to get along with—though not irrelevant.  So modern man may well have to sometimes choose to override instinct in the knowledge that going by virtue can have more survival value.  Similar values can trump similar skin-color, even if the clubby vestiges of racism make it more difficult to trust across the artificial lines even in the twenty-first century.

The EU and US can be seen to differ markedly in the degree to which the interests of big business are etched in the respective societies and polities.  That is to say, the difference goes beyond the question of the relative influences of the lobbyists. I contend that the relative proclivity toward business in the American states tilts the political playing field in the direction of the financial interests. This difference reflects a more basic subterranean difference on how much wealth and its manifestation as business are valued.  That is to say, it is easier for financial sector lobbyists in the United States because the societal values lean in their favor. This can be seen from the respective financial reforms in the EU and US after the financial crisis of 2008. This case bears strongly on my thesis because in both economies the financial sector was viewed as culpable. So one would expect the ensuing laws to come down on the banks rather than be conducive to their interests, unless a societal value on the profit-motive were still in force.

On March 10, 2010, the EU Parliament adopted a Resolution (536 votes in favour to 80 against) calling for the financial sector to contribute fairly towards economic recovery since the costs of the crisis are being borne by taxpayers. On 25 March, Members of Parliament’s special “Financial, Economic and Social Crisis Committee” debated the rationale behind a possible financial transaction tax. Stephan Schulmeister of the Austrian Institute for Economic Research in Vienna said short-term financial transactions can make short-term prices of currencies and other financial products such as derivatives and shares vary wildly. Schulmeister claimed that a tax on financial transactions of just 0.05% would eliminate these short-term transactions, bring greater stability and bring €300 billion of additional revenues to the EU. While the tax would undoubtedly bring in revenue, it is not clear to me that short-term transactions would be eliminated, as they can be worthwhile even with such a tax. Moreover, the financial crisis of 2008 shows us that the volitility can come from the market mechanism itself (in so far as it magnifies irrational exuberance). At any rate, even as there has been division on the matter of such a tax in the parliament, that the proposal has been made distiguishes the legislative body of the EU from the Congress in the US, where such a proposal would undoubted by blocked. Indeed, the EU Parliament has gone ever further.

On July 7, 2010, the EU Parliament approved some of the strictest rules in the world on bankers’ bonuses.  In the legislation, caps are imposed on upfront cash bonuses and at least half of any bonus will have to be paid in contingent capital and shares. MEPs also toughened rules on the capital reserves that banks must hold to guard against any risks from their trading activities and from their exposure to highly complex securities. “Two years on from the global financial crisis, these tough new rules on bonuses will transform the bonus culture and end incentives for excessive risk-taking. A high-risk and short-term bonus culture wrought havoc with the global economy and taxpayers paid the price. Since banks have failed to reform we are now doing the job for them”, said British MEP Arlene McCarthy. Upfront cash bonuses are capped at 30% of the total bonus and to 20% for particularly large bonuses.  Between 40 and 60% of any bonus must be deferred for at least three years and can be recovered if investments do not perform as expected. Moreover at least 50% of the total bonus would be paid as “contingent capital” (funds to be called upon first in case of bank difficulties) and shares. Bonuses also have to be capped as a proportion of salary. Each bank must establish limits on bonuses related to salaries, on the basis of EU wide guidelines, to help bring down the overall, disproportionate, role played by bonuses in the financial sector. Finally, bonus-like pensions are also covered. Exceptional pension payments must be held back in instruments such as contingent capital that link their final value to the overall strength of the bank. This is to avoid situations, similar to those experienced in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 in which some bankers retired with substantial pensions unaffected by the crisis their bank was facing. The rules apply to foreign banks operating in the EU and to subsidiaries of EU banks operating abroad. The law gives state regulators in the 27 EU states binding powers to take action against banks that fail to comply with the new rules (contrast this with the US Gov’t going after Arizona for trying to enforce US immigration law).

Clearly, the US financial reform does not go this far. Notably, it does not put much of a crimp in the American bankers’ life. This is no accident. The feeling among big bankers in the US is that they dodged a bullet concerning what could have been in the bill. That is to say, there was no “too big to fail” limit put on a bank’s capital or size generally speaking, or on the bankers’ compensation. The American media and President Obama have been strangely silent on why.  Perhaps it is as in the case of the health reform, where the President removed his objection to an insurance mandate and dropped his desire for a public option after the lobbyist for the American health insurance companies told him that her support was contingent on these changes. My point is simply this: Were not American society leaning in a pro-business direction (e.g., economic liberty being salient in how liberty itself is viewed), the President might not have felt the need to be bent in the lobbyist’s direction. That is to say, the lobbyist would not have had so much leverage. Wall Street no doubt had massive influence in the crafting of the financial reform as it was making its way through Congress (even though the banks were culpable in the financial crisis—which is itself telling). I submit that the reasons go beyond the sheer power of money. Fortunately, we can look across the pond for a better look at ourselves.

Sources: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/story_page/044-71441-088-03-14-907-20100329STO71433-2010-29-03-2010/default_en.htm
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/focus_page/008-76988-176-06-26-901-20100625FCS76850-25-06-2010-2010/default_p001c011_en.htm
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0„5769943,00.html

See related:http://euandus3.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/regulating-financial-and-commercial-derivatives/ (for a look at the US financial reform—esp. derivatives) and http://euandus3.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/immigration-and-federalism/ (contrast this federalism with that of the EU wherein the states are to enforce the bank bonus limits passed by the EU Parliament).

Two things stood out for me in the wake of the World Cup of 2010: the sheer number of low-scoring games and the number of bad calls. The latter is the easier to fix. FIFA can relax its opposition to instant replay even though it is not feasible technologically or financially for every game in the world.  FIFA could simply state that every game in the World Cup is subject to instant replay. The problem of low-scoring games is seemingly more intractable, but actually quite easy to solve.  One possible solution would be to elongate the goal area so it is more difficult to defend.  If that doesn’t work, the area could be heightened—then it would be a matter of skill in kicking the ball in the added area above the defending players’ reach.  The problem lies in the status quo. Even though low-scoring games are more boring, some people would object that too much scoring would get to be boring as well.  There would be a solution for that too, as the goal area could be retracted a bit. In fact, a twenty-first century way of approaching the problem would be to have the goal parameters movable according to a computer program that enlarges the area if there is little or no scoring and retracts it if there has been too much.  Such changes would presumably only be made when the score is tied so not to disadvantage the losing side.  My main point is that we are woefully slow in thinking in terms of the twenty-first century.

 Of course, the stats-oriented fans would object to the problems terms of the consistency of records. To be sure, there is a downside to every improvement.  I contend that improving the enjoyment of the game is worth the interference with comparisons with prior years.  Particularly with regard to sports as a past-time, the primary concern should be the present time. Sadly, the forces of the status quo give today short thrift.  Moreover, change itself, even to improve something, often faces and up-hill battle.  Perhaps this is partly because most people in a position to make changes are old, and thus too used to the way things have been.  The road for change seems to be uphill, with the status quo enjoying hegemony.  My reaction to this is: life is too short. We ought to do what we can to enjoy it more.  With its constant action, soccer, or football, could become a very exciting game.

Related on the World Cup: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/38190556/ns/sports-world_cup/

Just after winning the World Cup of 2010, FIFA officials handed the trophy to the team captain of the Spanish team rather than to the coach or a team owner (in this case, an official of Spain).  In contrast, at the Kentucky Derby, the honors went to the horse’s owner, rather than to the jockey. The distinctively American value on wealth could not be more evident, and the contrast with the World Cup confirms it.  We value wealth so much that we regularly hand trophies to team owners rather than to the players, even as the world does otherwise.  Hence when George Steinbrenner died, the NYT ran a front-page article describing him as “a visionary and a giant in the world of sports.” To be sure, he was a notable team owner. However, in terms of the winning, what of the players and coach of the renowned Yankee teams that won the World Series? It was their talent that was decisive. It is odd at best that at Steinbrenner’s last appearance at the 2010 home owner, the manager and team captain presented him with his 2009 World Series championship ring. That being an owner would justify getting a ring evinces a sort of sordid category mistake—and at the very least an over-reaching.  Putting money on the table does not mean you won; rather, to be out on the field would be necessary.  Sports, in other words, cannot be vicariously won.  Yet wealth is vaunted so in the U.S. that such a stretch is accepted without question.  So, too, we allow physcians to go by the “Dr.” title in front of their names even though they have not earned a doctorate (unless they have the D.Sci. M. degree, which is the graduate degree in Medicine, for which the first degree—the MD—is a prerequisite).  I would even say that we (meaning Americans) are blind to how distortive our dominant value on wealth is, and how it has been exploited.  Essentially, I am pointing to a societal blind-spot rather than merely complaining over trophy ceremonies. Once the blind-spot becomes transparent, it is apt to be approached differently.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/sports/baseball/14steinbrenner.html?ref=sports

Barak Obama has a tendency to modify his manner of speaking, and even his dialect, to fit with his audience. Listening to his speech to the National Urban League, I was stunned; early on, he pivoted off from his ordinary manner of speaking to speak in what was surely a more familiar way to much of his audience. The crowd loved it. The audience must have been looking at him as the first black US President. It occurred to me while listening to him and observing his strategy to connect to his audience that although there would be less political advantage in it, he could have run for president by presenting himself as multi-racial (technically, mulatto). To be sure, there are less multi-racial Americans who would identify with him, but is that even the point? The multi-racial segment of the US population is small, but growing.  It points to what most states will look like in fifty or a hundred years from 2010, when I heard the multi-racial US President speak. Were Barak Obama to make explicit his multi-racial identity (his mother was caucasion and his dad was black), he could personify the leading edge of what America will become, and thus serve innately as a leader.  That is to say, he will have led through his person—as a symbol personified—as the a sign of things to come.  The USA  is finally becoming a real melting pot, transcending “black vs. white.”  Nature’s integration will solve the artificial problem of racism far more than any government program or even a US President who identifies himself with one “side.”

Perhaps it is the tacit duplicity in a multiracial man permitting himself to be labeled as black, presumably for political expediency, that lies at the core of why some people do not trust him (e.g., the “birthers”).  Such duplicity is like a subterranean fault-line undergirding the tension between campaigning for real change and then stocking people of the old guard, such as Larry Summers, in his administration.  The duplicity of promising systemic change then dropping his insistence on a public option and no mandate for health coverage—essentially guaranteeing a new mass market to the same health insurance companies that actively purged people with pre-existing conditions—finds a resonance in the multi-racial man using the term “black.”  Were it to be said that the “one drop” criterion still applies so he really is black, we would need to start calling a whole lot of caucasions black as well. Moreover, to use an antiquated and faulty criterion as though it justified Barak’s practice is itself a mark of duplicity.  Barak Obama is as much white as he is black.  Were he to “run with this,” he would instantiate a leader on the forefront even though there is little political capital to be made on it.  However, the US Presidency is an office that is geared to representing the people of the US—the office does this most tangably when functioning abroad. As an explicit multi-racial symbol, President Obama would show to the world where America is headed, and that we are facing that future with our heads held high and with  pride. While perhaps not helpful in elections here at home, such a function, which can only be done by the US President, is sorely needed, given America’s image abroad. We are finally becoming the melting pot that has been proclaimed for so long—finally getting past the need for duplicity.  President Obama can symbolize this in his person, and thus do America a service far more valuable than any legislation.

During the summer of 2010, as commentators at Fox, CNN, and MSNBC were arguing, they referred to their own arguments as “trench warfare” and “hand-to-hand fighting.”  Real soldiers would doubtless dismiss such descriptors as attempts by children to count as adults—as something more.  The soldiers would be correct, of course. Insulting or criticizing another person does not constitute fighting in the sense of warfare. Someone at MSNBC calling someone at Fox a racist does not come close to shooting someone with a rifle or even slugging someone with one’s fist.  The protesters in Libya who were being shot at by their own government in February, 2011, would shake their heads in disbelief in hearing of the "war" among media personalities.

Lest it be objected that this makes little matter, the propensity of the media “personalities” to over-reach covers their depiction of news.  For example, they use “crisis” far too often.  For example, there really was a crisis in September 2008 on the Thursday evening in which Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson told congressional leaders that unless they showed some intent to act, there would not be a financial system by the following Monday. No financial system on Monday: this is what it means to be in a crisis mode. To call the BP oil in the gulf a crisis more than two months after the explosion (and weeks after the well had been capped) a "crisis" does not compare, and is thus a case of the media over-reaching. By its very nature, a crisis is short-term.  The protest in Egypt, for example, quickly reached a do or die point. Such is crisis mode.  So too, when the planes shot at the protesters in Libya: the resulting turmoil, which can only be sustained as such for a brief period before a decision has to be made one way or the other, instantiated a crisis mode.  For republicans or democrats in Congress to refer to budget talks as though they were at a crisis utterly pales by comparison. Yet journalists perpetuate the verbal inflation and get paid in increased attention.  In the process, "crisis" itself becomes like the story of the boy who called wolf too much and was practially ignored when the wolf finally showed.

Every presidential address is vaunted as critical. “The President needs to say X or the sky will fall.”  No mention is subsequently made of the sky still up there even though the President omitted X.  In other words, there is no mechanism of accountability on journalists and pundits when they over-reach. The media companies themselves seem inert to any need for self-regulation. So the media wars are allowed to intensify even beyond "war."  Fox News and MSNBC must somehow sustain and intensify their "battles" so people will continue to watch the spectacle. In the meantime, the real news is sidelined.  The medium becomes the message and the voters are not so informed.  So goes a republic in decline.  So goes a culture in decline.

Is the typical American self-centered and greedy, or is there a civic-mindedness that yearns to bracket one's own interests?  In other words, is there more to American society than being the sum of the parts? Is there something more than the aggregate?  I don’t mean to criticize individualism here; creativity and liberty, for example, are individualistic traits that highlight a person's character and virtue. Nor do I mean to point to one of the two major parties. One could point to the democrats protecting unions at the expense of a free market for labor just as one could point to rich republicans holding tax cuts hostage unless they are included even though they could afford higher taxes.  If there is something more to American politics than asserting one's own interests, who is to represent the civic component?

The American Founding Fathers assumed that a given republic requires a certain level of disinterestedness or impartiality among the citizenry. The Founders thought that gentlemen freed up from the pressures to make money were obliged to serve in government precisely because selfish monetary pressures would be less pressing among the already rich. So the Founders were startled when common folk began winning more state legislative seats.  The concern was that the immediate economic interests of the folks would carry the day over what would be needed legislatively for the public good.  Reading this, a modern American is apt to be surprised that the Founding Fathers might not have been so populist as the American mythos might have suggested. The Founders might also be critiqued for being blind to the possibility that moneyed gentlemen might legislate in the interest of their class at the expense of the folks. In short, American populism may not have been an ideal at the inception of the union of states. The question here is less historical, however, than on how and by whom the pubic good might be asserted.

Lest one look to the presidency, the sheer amount in financial backing renders the occupant captive to the financial elite, which in turn has a vested interest in its own interest and the status quo in which it has done so well.  Real change in the public good at odds with the status quo is not likely to come from the White House. Lest one look to the U.S. Supreme Court in protecting individual rights, the fact that justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, which among other things represents wealth, suggests that the high court will stamp rather than impede extensions in Congressional and presidential power, which in turn has a strong financial-interest backing.

The question of standing up for the public good where the financial elite such as Wall Street has a direct financial interest in perpetuating systemic risk was at the fore in the wake of the financial near-meltdown in September of 2008.  The subsequent banking regulation reform was highly watered down by Wall Street's involvement in the very writing of the law. For example, the existence of investment and commercial banks that are too big to fail was not seriously questioned, not to mention confronted. Instead, "incentives" not to increase further in size were included. Whereas in history monoliths such as Standard Oil and ATT were broken up by the high court, Congress could not bring itself to break up the still risk-prone banks even in the wake of the banks' self-induced crisis.

So the question remains: what of the public or common good--the public square that goes beyond the sum of the parts?  Who, if anyone, is to stand up to the vested interests to push through real change that is necessary to the survival of the United States as a going concern?  I suspect that the usual suspects have the American public debating secondary issues so such primary questions are kept off the radar screen of public discourse. Lest it be forgotten, the American media companies are interwoven into corporate America. There may be a vicious self-perpetuating feedback cycle wherein the public is kept from raising a movement that would question the matrix on which the financial elite has thrived. The question may thus be whether this cycle can even be broken.

Fourteen times a thousand times a billion.  Such a number can only be known abstractly to the human mind.  A person is not apt to see 14 trillion widgets and thus fully realize how many that number signifies.  Just in an abstract sense, however, the number can be understood represent debt that is beyond sustainability.   If not, then exactly how much signifies the threshold over which any additional debt will never be paid back? At the beginning of 2011, the U.S. Government's debt was at about $14 trillion.

Consider the following from The New York Times when the debt figure was just $12 billionin 2009. “With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher. In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” As much as the interest expense is expected to be (and the implied difficulty in paying down the debt, let alone covering its interest expense, it may be even harder before long.  According to The New York Times, “Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.”

While the deficit-spending is perfectly understandable in the context of a financial crisis and otherwise likely economic depression, such spending has hardly been saved for such times.  In fact, it has been part of “normal” US Government budgeting.  What the newspaper doesn’t mention is that even in the late 1990’s when the government was running surpluses and the economy was booming, only part of the surfeit was used to reduce the government’s debt.  At the time, Bill Clinton’s administration used the “rationale” that the boom that had been going on since the mid-1980s would go on for another fifteen years from the late 90’s.   Even had that forecast been realistic, I’m not sure that all of the government surpluses together could have eliminated the public debt. 

In any case, fiscally the US Government has been out of balance for decades.   What might be the cause?  Two candidates come readily to mind.  The American culture is a rather self-consumption-oriented society wherein spending beyond one’s means is not a matter of moral disapprobation.  In other words, the problem may boil down to a “gimme, gimme, gimme” mentality—a lack of maturity, really.  Secondly (and relatedly), representative democracy itself may itself favor spending over taxation to cover it.  Any normative constraint that might operate at the individual level may not exist at the institutional level where representatives are effectively rewarded for bringing home the bacon and punished for raising taxes.  Although it could be argue that the representatives should be more responsible nonetheless (as their goal ought not be simply to be reelected), we can point to ourselves, the American citizens, as the force behind the unsustainable fiscal situation.  We don’t have to endure incumbants who have spent in deficits, but we do.  The US House incumbancy rate almost guarantees that once someone is elected, he or she can be virtually assured of being re-elected in two years, und so weiter.    The problem, in other words, lies within us.  Too few of us value self-discipline in ourselves.  We are unwilling to call other people on their profligate credit-card spending, and we refuse to vote out of office those representatives who have voted outside of a financial crisis for an unbalanced budget.  Consider how different a people we would be were to insist at the ballot box that our representatives actually make a contribution to paying down some of the debt (again, not during a financial crisis) each year during their terms.  How different we would be if we held our officials accountable for more than scandal.   How different we would be if we “just said no” to the credit card companies and went without the plastic (using debit cards that could be used only on positive balances and having a savings account for emergencies).  If we look at the US Government as unsustainable, what we are really saying is that we, ourselves, are fundamentally flawed as concerning being adults.  The problem, in other words, transcends finance and politics.  We are living beyond our means.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/business/23rates.html?_r=1&hp

Just as the US Senate was to take up the matter of Ben Bernanke’s re-appointment as Chair of the Federal Reserve in 2010, Time magazine came out with its announcement that he is to be its person of the year.  According to the magazine, “when turbulence in U.S. housing markets metastasized into the worst global financial crisis in more than 75 years, he conjured up trillions of new dollars and blasted them into the economy; engineered massive public rescues of failing private companies; ratcheted down interest rates to zero; lent to mutual funds, hedge funds, foreign banks, investment banks, manufacturers, insurers and other borrowers who had never dreamed of receiving Fed cash; jump-started stalled credit markets in everything from car loans to corporate paper; revolutionized housing finance with a breathtaking shopping spree for mortgage bonds; blew up the Fed’s balance sheet to three times its previous size; and generally transformed the staid arena of central banking into a stage for desperate improvisation. He didn’t just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy.”  Not to be outdone in service to the Chairman, CNN furnished its own reporters, who gave credit to Bernanke for these measures.  Interestingly, however, even though one reporter admitted that Bernanke had said in 2007 that the subprime market and its derivatives would not threaten the financial market and the banks, she attributed the fault there to the imperfections in the market rather than to Bernanke himself in being wrong.   So, he gets credit for cleaning up the mess (ignoring the foreclosed homeowners) but not the blame for being wrong about the contagion (and not urging regulation of the derivatives).  He could have urged the regulation of derivatives (he is a smart person), and once the crisis occurred, he could have tailored his response to the homeowners facing foreclosures that could have been stopped. For example, the Fed could have created dollars to subsidize the inordinate rates on the variable rate subprime mortgages (i.e. those bank assets would not have been toxic and the banks’ balance sheets would have been fine…two birds with one stone…rather than doing the bidding of one of the parties).  To be sure, if the Fed is inordinately friendly to banks because of the power they have in selecting their regulators (the NY Fed Chair’s appointing committee consists of bankers), then Bernanke might have simply been playing the good politics for staying in office.   “Our ships must all sail in the same direction; otherwise who can tell how long you will…last…with us.” (The Godfather, part III)  Bernanke is a player from the perspective of the real power behind the throne: America’s financial elite.  That elite literally owns the media companies. So what I want to point out here is that the timing of Time’s announcement and the asymetry in CNN’s laudatory coverage of the Chairman just as the Senate was about to consider his re-appointment led me almost instinctually to  be convinced that coincidence was not the driver here.  The Chairman undoubtedly had some powerful friends in the media who were giving him a publicity offensive, or campaign, just in time for the Senate debate on whether to appoint him.

Through all the admiration of this person of 2009, it should be remembered that he did not urge the regulation of sub-prime derivatives issued or held by the banks regulated by the Fed.  He was wrong about the subprime housing bubble being contained.  And he failed to protect homeowners sufficiently.  If the media was being used by the Fed Chair in his re-appointment campaign, it could be that what we are fed by CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the main network newscasts is not really as neutral or beyond their control as we think.   News as a campaign.  News because it is in some powerful actor’s vested interests.  While there is certainly coincidence in life, an alignment such as I have outlined here is far too transparent—or at least it ought to be.

The subtext here is that we, the American people, have become too much the pawns even as we think we are not.  The illusion of popular sovereignty is that we are in control.   I don’t think we have any idea of the extent to which we are manipulated by the powers that transcend our elected representatives and their appointees.  It is no wonder that real change does not get beyond the interests of the real power in America, whose interest is in the status quo or at best in an incremental change.   Essentially, we have allowed the anti-democratic power to concentrate to a degree that is dangerous to a functioning republic (i.e., a representative democracy).  We should not be surprised to find that powerful actors are operating at a subterranean level where transparency is intentionally lacking.    How do we get it back, you ask?  Hah!   We would have to see it first—realize its extent and depth—and I’m not holding my breath that enough people will wake up to see the light.

Too many of us are ensconced in Plato’s cave, taking what the puppets say for reality.  As Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, “You want answers? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”    Even if we could stomach the emetic manipulation behind the scenes that is directed to us (and even our representatives—when they aren’t doing it themselves), we would have to be able to see it—and it is so well hidden.  We can only grasp at straws…confluences that seem like more than coincidences.  As a member of the black caucus of the US House (surprisingly) said to a reporter of Frontline on the TARP program passing the House just days after it had been voted down by that same body, “You have no idea how powerful the anti-democratic forces are here.”    You and I get only glimpses.  The puppets seem more real so we believe in them.   Please don’t take my thesis to be that there is one huge orchastrated conspiracy; rather, I’m simply suggesting that our system of representative democracy does not seem to be able to sufficiently constrain the invisible powers that are pulling strings without being accountable to the public power.  It is my ardent hope that the people will look beyond the status quo in voting for candidates—perhaps getting back to citizen representatives who do their duty then return to their preferred occupations—that we would elect people sufficiently principled and not desirous of a life in power to be willing to take on the financial power.   Do I think it will happen?  Sadly, no.  I’m sorry, but I just don’t think we have it in us…or we don’t have enough of what it would take to confront that which is in us that favors comfort and sleep.   In the story of the rise and fall of empires, the United States is not exempt.  The culprit, as with most things, lies within.   It is ultimately about what kind of people too many of us are.  Such a thing is very, very difficult to change, let alone see.  Decadence tends to be invisible to itself.

Note: A day after CNN covered the announcement, the Senate finance committee debated and voted on Bernanke’s re-appointment. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34463144/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

 Source: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html#ixzz0Zs8WgpV1

The death of a Georgian luge athlete on the day of the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympics occurred amid concerns about the speed of the record-setting track at the Whistler Sliding Center, according to a Georgian official. “There were some questions asked by other athletes even before this tragic accident,” said Nikolas Rurua, Georgia’s deputy minister for culture and sports, adding that there had been several crashes in the same area. The luge is often called the “fastest sport on ice.” Sliders use their legs and shoulders to steer small fiberglass sleds down an icy track, at times approaching or surpassing speeds of 90 mph, according to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Web site. Sports Illustrated’s David Epstein, who covered the Olympics for the magazine, claims that the Whistler course is the fastest in the world “and not by a little.” He notes that while most luge courses “flatten out” around the 11th turn, the Whistler track “just keeps on dropping, so there’s really kind of no break from gathering speed toward the end.” Epstein reports that some athletes had been complaining about the speed of the course and speculating that this Winter Games could be the first time the sport sees a competitor hit 100 mph. “That’s 15 to 20 mph faster than any course in the rest of the world.”

Analysis:

The attraction of “the fastest track” is palpable in”this Winter Games could be the first time the sport sees a competitor hit 100 mph.”  Faster, higher, bigger.  Whether we are talking about luge tracks, sky-scrapers, or passenger jets, it seems to be in the human psyche to extend a threshold even further—regardless of how far it is from our natural speed, height and size.  The Titanic was the largest thing built by man in 1912. Accordingly, it was presumed it could not sink.  Or take the Hindenburg—the largest Zepplin in the 1930s.  Or the A380 today.  How big can an airplane get before it falls from its own weight? In the wake of the A380, Boeing produced a stretched 747 that is longer than the A380.  Everyone must be the biggest, highest or longest. This is the task-master of the medocre, not the truly talented, for the latter relish the talent itself.

The faster, higher or bigger we go, the more we stretch ourselves beyond what our bodies were designed to withstand.  Yet we ignore this as we turn our attention to the next faster, higher or bigger.  Nature pales in comparison with man’s designs, and there is no limit to how fast, high and big we can get.  That a track might be too fast seems to go against everything we believe in.  “Close it down?  We can’t do that.  We might even get a record on it.”

There is an old saying: what goes up must come down.  Empires rise and fall.  The higher a person gets, the harder the fall.  These lines could be translated as: the farther we go from natural human environs, the harder the fall.  In chasing after incremental records, we miss the cumulative distance, and thus the cumulative danger.  We dismiss signs as mere aberations.  It is dangerous for a blind person to go even faster or scale greater heights. It is dangerous to build something crashable even bigger, particularly if we think it is too big to sink.   ”I assure you, good sir, it is made of iron. The Titanic will sink. It is a mathematical certainty.”

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/02/12/olympic.luge.crash/index.html

On February 28, 2010 on CNN’s State of the Union, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said that the health insurance companies didn’t want a government-financed and operated insurance option for American citizens so it was off the table.  Her statement reminds me of the earlier one by Richard Durbin of the US Senate, who remarked after his forclosure-assistance amendment failed that the banking lobby owns Congress.   Would there have been the hyperbole of “socialism!” associated with the public option for health insurance were that proposal in the interest of the industry at issue (i.e., at fault)?  If so, it is interesting in a sad sort of way that a culpable person would have the gall to use exaggeration (there would still be private insurance so the sector would not be socialist…meaning owned and controlled by the state).  We have seen the same thing from the banking lobby in fighting reform efforts in the wake of the financial crisis of September, 2008.   In other words, we can isolate a pattern here: even when companies (or an industry) are at fault, they can still own Congress when their interests are at stake.

It is particularly disconcerting to me that so many citizens fall for the self-interested exaggerations when it would be more natural for people to be angry at the culpable people for continuing their unethical business practices (and going on to stop reform that is at least in part due to their bad practices).  Take for example, Representative Dennis Cardoza, Democrat of California in the US House. The husband of a family practice doctor, he is intimately familiar with the failings of the American health care system. His wife “comes home every night,” he said, “angry and frustrated at insurance companies denying people coverage they have paid for.” Even so, he is on the fence on the Democratic health-care reform proposal because he wants stronger anti-abortion language and more cost control.  Were he really angry like his wife, he would be pushing not only for the bill, but for the public option or for real restrictions on the insurance companies, rather than allowing secondary issues to block him.  In other words, I don’t believe he is really that angry at the companies refusing to fuffill their responsibilities to their customers who have paid the premiums.  Also, he is allowing himself to succumb to the self-interested manipulation of the same firms that he is ostensively angry at.  It is in the health insurance companies interest that costs be reduced because then their expenses are reduced (and their profits, which were very high in 2009…even as they were denying treatment to some).  If he were really angry like his wife, he would not be so willing to do something that would benefit them so much; rather, he would be working to take power and money away from them.

Unfortunately, the problem kids are able to thwart our efforts to clean up after them.  America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobby for insurers, announced in March, 2010 (as Congress was considering health-insurance reform) that it was buying more than a million dollars’ worth of television advertising time to explain why insurance premiums had been rising. The week before, the White House had indicated that the industry’s rationale for the raised premiums was unconvincing.  Too many of us are letting industries get away with their mis-representations geared to thwart reform.   The health insurance industry’s ads convince us that the companies really aren’t sharks; we ignore Sen. Rockefeller’s likening of the companies to sharks—you don’t know there is a shark until you see its fin and feel its sharp teeth.  In other words, our anger is too easily (and conveniently…for the sharks, which want to continue feeding) dissipated.  We let the bad kids off the hook and go on as if the problem were somehow no longer out there.  This puts the misbehaving kids in a position to thwart any parenting.   In short, too many of us are unwittingly being manipulated by the bullies (who are therefore getting away with murder).   I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that spoiled  kids would not feel culpable for their own bad behavior, but I am.  I am perhaps even more disappointed in the parents (i.e., the American people) who let themselves be manipulated by such kids.  It is like watching the parent of an alcoholic teenager be in denial and thereby enable the kid to continue drinking even though the kid beats up other kids when he or she drinks.  “Oh, Tommy didn’t mean it; he is really a good kid.  I don’t think we need to look at a group home or jail. He will be good if he can relax with a beer.  Here Tommy…” 

Whether in dealing with the people at the health insurance companies who are in denial or the representatives and their supporters among the public who are also in denial and are enabling them, it is an exercise in futility and utter frustration to see this dynamic and want to shape it up because the sickness has strong defense mechanisms against real change.  So I ask: can a dysfunctional system be fixed?  Can it fix itself?  Probably not.  So are there enough people in the US outside of the dysfunction who could fix it above the screams of the sick who do not want the shot?   Imagine a physician acquiescing to a kid’s demand that the shot not be given.  In a physcian’s office, the sick kid does not get to decide—or to put it another way, there are enough adults in the room that the shot is given over the kid’s objections.  So where are the adults?

Sources: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35628488/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/ ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/health/policy/10health.html?ref=us

In the European singing contest/show in which Susan Boyle competed, she lost the top spot to a rap group of teenagers.  The general public could text in to vote.  The choice was not made by the three judges.  That one of the judges explicitly advocated for her after her final performance (just before the voting) was not sufficient to sway the majority of the votes cast by the public.  To be sure, there were non-music-related reasons to vote against her. For instance, the suggestive comments she made on stage just before her first performance, including, “I’m 48, and that’s not my other half” (accompanied by swinging her hips), were downright emetic, if not strange.  So it is possible that the voters put her personality above her excellent singing.  It is also possible that most of the callers (or most of votes, as people could text more than once) could have preferred rap music.

What I am getting to is this: a tension or outright contradiction can exist between meritocracy and democracy.  Plato and Aristotle both claim that there is a dark side to each system.  Meritocracy can slide into aristocracy and democracy into government by selfish and uninformed mob.  What struck me about the results of the singing contest was that the rap singing wasn’t good singing. The teenagers seemed to be playing around, their performance being more about dancing than singing.   It was not a dancing contest.  The voters could use any reason (or none) in deciding who to vote for.  Furthermore, it can be safely assumed that most voters were not experts on what makes good singing.  They were not trained to separate their own tastes from a critical perspective focusing on the voice.  The judges presumably could do that, but they were relegated to making their views known—views that the voters could ignore without any imprecation.
In a representative democracy, popular election is held to be the best political decision-making device regarding choosing representatives because the government is supposed to be for the people.  It is not that the people will necessarily make the best decisions, even where their own interest is concerned.  The US and EU relish popular election, yet both governmental systems contain safeguards, or checks, on it by having various lengths of terms and some officials appointed rather than elected.  Yet popular election is generally regarded as sacred in both Unions and in their respective states.    But not so fast.  This is not absolute.
In the case of Susan Boyle, a good case could be made that the three judges should have decided who won because they had greater expertise concerning singing.  Or take movies: I would wager that the Oscars, whose awards are determined by members (i.e., people who have expertise in the various fields of filmmaking), is more esteemed than are the People’s Choice Awards.  I would argue that the results of the Oscars are more credible and accurate because expertise is not chucked for a flavor of the month.  For instance, in the 2010 Oscars, Hurt Locker beat Avitar for Best Director and Best Picture.  Hurt Locker was largely an Indie (i.e., on the fringes) film, whereas Avitar broke box office records and was no doubt more popular with the general public.  The Academy members were able to weight improved 3D effects, story and direction without allowing the technical dazzle to overshadow the latter two, which are very important to an excellent picture.  The most popular film is not necessarily the best.  Of course, Academy voting is not perfect.  The 5000 plus membership may be sufficiently small that cronyism or, its opposite, grudges, may play a role.  Avitar’s Cameron is apparently not the most-liked man in Hollywood, but on the other hand so many techies worked on his movie that he had his own voting bloc.  I suspect that both of these were factors, but were not determinative.  I must admit that I saw a television clip a few months before the 2010 Oscars showing Cameron being very rude to a fan who simply wanted an autograph at LAX. So I was rooting for his ex-wife and her movie.  No selection process, or person for that matter, is perfect.

My point is that in watching Susan Boyle as well as the Oscars, I would not be surprised if there were not a general recognition in society that there are drawbacks to popular election, such that it is not necessarily the best method in every case (even in terms of selecting government officials).  I am not arguing for a society ruled by philsopher kings or judges, or, moreover, by an elite (even though I suspect this is already the case).  Rather, I am arguing that maybe we don’t esteem popular election as much as we think. Ignoring our reservations has caused problems in the past.

Most notably, we have eviscerated the check that was to have been made by the Electoral College in the selection of a US President.  A charismatic, though vastly inferior, candidate can be elected if he appeals to the passions of the moment being enjoyed by the general public.  We can’t even be sure that winner was elected on the basis of one of his positions.  For example, we can’t assume that Barak Obama was elected US President because he was advocating government subsidies on the uninsured (health).   The President of the EU is selected by a body comparable to what the US Senate was until 1913 (i.e., before its members were popularly elected).  When the first EU President was appointed (or elected) in 2009, some Europeans criticized the lack of democracy in the process.  “The people had no voice!” one person claimed.  Well, the people did have a voice because they elected all of the people who made the decision.  In fact, electing a state-level official is closer to the people because the electorate is smaller.   The cases of Susan Boyle losing at the European “Idol” show and Avitar losing at the Oscars suggests that having a buffer on a popular election is perhaps not a bad idea.  Too much democracy by popular election in a system of government has its downside.  To be sure, popular election does have value. It can be used to hold officials accountable when unelected officials would let them remain in office.

Perhaps a good solution would be  to look back at the Electoral College and understand why the Founders wanted a such a buffer.  It wasn’t until after the 1860s that in every state the people elected their respective state’s electors.  Andrew Jackson has urged that the people choose the US President back in 1828, and the contagion spread so much that the people of the American republics felt entitled to directly determine the President of the Union.   In 1913, a constitutional amendment was ratified whereby US Senators had to be directly elected by the people (at the cost of directly representing their state governments in the General Government). Today, the US Supreme Court is the only branch of the US Government not directly choosen by the American people. Originally, the US House was the only body in the US Government designed for popular election because it was supposed to reflect the immediate passions of the people (hence the short term of two years).   The US Senate was meant to be a buffer on the passions of the moment, as well as to protect the turf of the state governments against usurption by the General Government of the Union.  The US President was meant to protect the long-term viability of the Union (which hardly best served by polls).
It is perhaps no accident, kein Zufall, that the long-term viability of the Union gets short-changed for what is expedient—and that this game is now played mostly in Washington.  Blinded by the allure of popular election, we can’t have enough of it and we have adjusted our institutions accordingly.  Yet at the same time, we take the Oscars as the default and hardly pay attention to the People’s Choice Awards.  In short, we have one hell of a blindspot going on here.

So I suggest that we have annual elections for the US House (as had been suggested in the convention, but for the hardships of travel in 1786).  Further, as the appointment of US Senators was rift with corruption when the state governments did it, why not fashion the Senate on the example of the European Council?  The sitting governors themselves would periodically meet (regular summits, as they do represent semi-sovereign governments…just like the US Government itself is semi-sovereign).   That leaves the US President and the people’s entitlement.  A continent-wide election puts the candidates very far from their electors, which means a very imperfect selection (more of a popularity contest, actually).  We must bite the bullet and buffer ourselves from ourselves.  This is perhaps the hardest thing for the American people to do—we are really so arrogant concerning ourselves.  We think we can’t be wrong.  How squalid that is!  How ugly!   I would rather see Susan Boyle fully displayed in Playboy than gaze upon this attitude.  Yes, I am a native (American)—no, not an Indian. I was born and bread in the heartland, yet I can smell the air and look around me—the human pollution being palpable.   Concerning selecting a President for the Union, the trouble in creating a buffer from excessive democracy is in avoiding corruption.  I was going to suggest having both the state governments vote in one body and the people in another and where the same candidate is not chosen through the election to the US House (each state having one vote).  But this is too complicated.   As we are  Union of States and the latter have been marginalized, perhaps the US President ought to be selected by the state governments.   Perhaps the governors could nominate a candidate and the senates confirm.  The states’ executives would begin the process whereby the Union’s executive is selected, and the confirmation would be a check against corruption between a candidate and a governor.   It would give the people an added reason to pay attention to their senate races. That the people elect their governor and state senators means there would be a link to democracy.   Contrary to a continental popular election, the governors and even the state senators could have a greater opportunity to meet the candidates and thus make a better judgment, at least in removing any real losers whose marketing could nonetheless say the people.   Considering that some candidates come out of nowhere, getting to know them is important.  Consider Carter in 1976 (virtually unknown nationwide before the primaries), or Obama in 2008.  It is risky to elect people we have just met on the basis of televised debates and commercials.

If we ignore the problem of excess democracy in the presumption that we can’t be wrong, we will risk repeating on a grander scale the sort of election outcome that went against Susan Boyle.   She may not be the best looking woman, but is that really relevant to listening to her voice?  The most votes is not necessarily indicative of the best.  Ironically, in proffering an alternative that moderates the popular election element, I am asking us to rise to our best.

For the drawbacks in the Oscars voting, pls see: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1970502-1,00.html

By “a society of managerialism,” I mean a society characterized by overtly or tacitly manipulating other people.  Advertising is a notable example; it is so ubiquitous in modern society that I would not be surprised if its inherent manipulativeness has seeped into our psyches as well as human relationships.  In virtually any conversation an ordinary person might have with a person working in an organization (i.e., “on the job”), the employee makes use of his or her organization’s carrots and sticks.  It is so engrained in “organization speak” that we hardly recognize it.

In fact, some private individuals try to appropriate for themselves organizational “perks.”  That is to say, they make demands as though they were representing organizations, and they act like those demands are beyond their ability to alter.  For example, there are individual home-owners who in renting out a room, floor or the house itself  insist that an “application form” be filled out as though it were required.  Such forms typically indicate that a person’s social security number is required (even though it is against federal law for a private citizen or business to require it).  If proof of identity is desired, one could simply show his or her passport or driver’s licence.  That most property owners presume nonetheless that they are somehow owed another citizen’s government numbers is presumptuous; it is particularly rude if the person making the “demand” does not offer his or her own numbers in exchange.  The asymetry evinces a sordid and self-serving attitude that has strangely been swallowed by American society as valid.  Particularly with so many foreclosures, potential renters would be more than justified in requiring prospective lessors to fill out a property assessment form.  Potential lessees could presume their own organizational requirements too!  Information enabling the renter to assess the lessor’s mortgage payments and ability to continue paying would be relevant. Such information would include access to information on the relevant bank account and mortgage, as well as the lessor’s employment (to verify the income amount cited on the form).  If the owner can insist on an application form, a renter would be more than justified in insisting on a property assessment form.  That a given house owner would no doubt be offended by being presented with such a form, even as he or she insists on an “application form,” indicates to me that the typical property owner’s presumption is without foundation and that a double-standard is tacitly assumed.  That such presumption could be assumed as normal, even as “required,” in a society suggests to me that perhaps a managerial society is not as neutral, or “objective,” as it might seem.  In other words, its playing field is skewed—caused by the weight of managerialism and its propensity to overextend itself without any boundary.

In the film, The Matrix, Neo is eventually able to see the matrix for what it is: series of green numbers scrolling up or down.  It is only then that he has power through it.  Likewise, it is only when a person sees the allurements and arrows in an employee’s end of a discourse that the person/customer can fully resist them.  Seeing the attempted manipulation is apt to quickly lead to resentment, for it is presumptuous to assume that so much of one’s communication with another person must involve threats.  In other words, organizational employees tacitly view “outsiders” (and perhaps even their colleagues) as objects to be controlled.  It is as if these objects were feared as potential threats (so manipulations and threats are assumed necessary from the get-go).  There is also an element of unfairness in the mix.  A customer brings only the power of his or her money and word of mouth, whereas an employee representing an organization typically presumes that the potential customer is already under the organization’s policies and procedures.  Besides being presumptuous, the employee’s use of threats (as in, “you have to…”) is not fair play, given that the other person has no such weapons.  It is hardly imaginable that a potential customer would use phrases such as “you have to…”, even after one has become a customer.  It is the lack of symetry that ought to be obvious to us all, yet we tacitly accept it as “normal.”

There is evidence that the carrots and sticks have a rather narrow application with human beings, so much of the effort to induce or threaten may be in vain.  According to CNN, “In laboratory experiments and field studies, a band of psychologists, sociologists and economists have found that many carrot-and-stick motivators — the elements around which we build most of our businesses and many of our schools — can be effective, but that they work in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. For enduring motivation, the science shows, a different approach is more effective. This approach draws not on our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but on what we might think of as our third drive: Our innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. In particular, high performance — especially for the complex, conceptual tasks we’re increasingly doing on the job— depends far more on intrinsic motivators than on extrinsic ones.”

So organizational employees and their task-masters may well be selling their fellow human beings short in presuming that they must be buffeted with inducements and threats from the get-go.  Perhaps these organizational creatures are of the lower sort that function only by being manipulated and threatened.  Perhaps they project their own self-centeredness out onto ordinary, free, human beings.
In any event, we, the free-spirits, should call the presumptuous and insulting employees on their modus operendi.  Interruptions such as, “I am not in your organization so I am not subject to it as you are” or even more directly, “I do not appreciate being threatened” or “I feel insulted being sold to even as I am at the counter ordering” indicate to the employee that his or her antics have been made transparent.  Typically, the employee will feign ignorance of what he or she has been doing, or simply ignore the statements.  However, such responses will only confirm the rudeness—which is really passive aggression.  We are bombarded with organizational passive aggression every day and yet we are so used to it in the organizational society that we take it in without knowing it.  If I am correct here, much that passes for normal in managerialism is really sordid behavior that naturally causes irritation and frustration.

CNN source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/02/pink.motivation.bonuses/index.html?dsq=38857033#comment-38857033

Today, the term ”professional” is commonly used to mean “does X for a living” (other than what, a hobby?).  Actually, the word properly refers to being sufficiently high skilled that one is subject to the industry self-regulation of one’s peers rather than to a manager who is not a peer from the standpoint of the skills.  Modern management is taught in business schools under the premise that a person can apply managerial skill to anything.  However, where a given vocation is highly skilled and a manager doesn’t have that skill (having instead managerial skill), a manager is not qualified to manage the highly skilled professionals.  Put simply, the professionals know so much more about what they are doing that managerial skill alone cannot be a basis for competency in decisions that involve the highly skilled.    The subversion of the term “professional” is meant to democratize the true professionals beyond physicans, dentists, priests, professors and lawyers—the professional class.  That is, the misnomer is actually a rejection of there being higher classes based on skill.   There is an overreaching involved in the common usage.  In Nietzschean terms, it evinces the herd animal claiming a dominance without the requisite strength.  In other words, democratication can be a case of overreaching and presumptuousness borne out of a resentment towards the wealthy and higher skilled.  The misnomer is a case of passive aggression.  I submit that the incorrect use of the term points to a tension within modern society wherein two distinct groups of people do not respect each other.  The highly skilled and the highly educated dismiss the people using the misnomer as pretentious idiots, while the non-professionals dismiss the distinction based on the skill or education.  “I’m a professional too!” the salewoman proclaims while the lawyer replied, “No you aren’t.”  Mutual dismissiveness.  The culpability is not symetric, however.
Fundamentally, the misnomer is rooted in the non-professional’s presumptuousness and resentment.  These qualities are no substitute for continuing one’s studies in graduate school to become a scholar or turning to a second bachelors degree in a professional school by earning a first degree in  law, divinity, or medicine (business is a professional school but managers are not professionals).  That one degree in law or medicine is typically presumed (mostly in the US) to be a doctorate even though it is the first rather than the terminal degree in the school (the latter degree requiring it as a prereq)  is an instance of the democratization of “professional”—but here it is the professional’s credential that is overstated.  That is to say, it is a case of a lawyer or physician rarifying herself beyond her professional grade as if a lateral move to another field were equivalent to getting two graduate degrees (a masters and doctorate) on top of a first degree. 

The professionals who are accustomed to claiming more than they have actually earned educationally may be motivated to overreach here because their professional standing is in turn being claimed by overreaching pseudo-professionals, such as managers (or bankers).  Not unexpectedly, marginal universities are turning some of their skills-oriented masters degrees (such as physical therapy)  into doctorates by adding a year of study without the required doctoral comprehensive exam of the entire discipline and book-length dissertation of original research, which are required for the Ph.D., D.Sci. M, DBA, DD, and JSD— these are the doctoral degrees of Liberal Arts & Sciences and several of the professional schools (Medicine, Business, Divinity and Law, respectively).  Two years (roughly) of survey courses and a year of senior-level seminars in a professional school does not a doctorate make.  The move is lateral from the first bachelors.  Yet the presumptuousness of the physican and lawyer claiming to have doctorates by virtue of their first degree in medicine and law, respectively, are missed by society in the effulgent gloss of “professional,” which comes to be applied by the society further and further down its chain of vocational being.   The emperor is not wearing any clothes, yet fawning crowds marvel at the cloth and claim to be wearing like material themselves.

Does this make me an elitist—pointing out that the cloth is not as refined as we have been led to believe by those claiming to wear it?  Admittedly, my argument may seem elitist prime facie.  My use of big words doesn’t help. However, it may simply be a case of good old-fashioned truth-telling in the midst of some dandy fibbing to the unknowing, who do not realize that they are being lied to by people with a vested interest in the lies.  Surely it is an act of kindness to tell a man, “excuse me, your fly is unzipped,” or to tell a woman, “there is something in your hair in back.”

Democracy is great; it is the overreaching pretentiousness whereby the demos takes itself for something more that it is—something unearned and thus undeserved—that is pernicious and nefarious.

I must admit I’m sad that the health insurance companies were active in determining the law. I don’t think the vested interests in the status quo can be invested in a sufficent degree of change. For instance, the companies vetoed the public option, even though it can be argued that it is in the public interest.  Furthermore, immediately after the health-insurance reform became law, some health insurance companies decided to interpret the requirement that children with pre-existing conditions do not have to be covered after all.  “The concept that insurance companies would even seek to deny children coverage exemplifies why we fought for this reform,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Senate commerce committee, said: “The ink has not yet dried on the health care reform bill, and already some deplorable health insurance companies are trying to duck away from covering children with pre-existing conditions. This is outrageous.”  But this is what happens when the industry’s lobby is invited to participate in writing the legislation.  Self-interested fine print is inserted for the purpose of being exploited as a loophole.  In other words, this is no accident, and our representatives should have had their staffs on the watch for it.
I believe that business/industry has too much power over public policy in the case of the US Government. After the health insurance reform bill passed the US House, President Obama said “this is what change looks like”…but can it be real change when whether the extant firms can make money off of it?

The other thing that bothers me is when the Tea Party (and Repubs) said that the health insurance reform that uses health insurance companies is socialism and the government taking over health-care. This is to take a very moderate reform and portray it as radical…so there would not be truly radical reform that says the hell with the health insurance companies. Why can’t we say the hell with them? Why can’t we recognize the conflict of interest in such a company being a player in the writing of reform? …especially if the player has a veto!

I think the hyperbole is a subterfuge for the greediness of the wealthy—which is a reflection of how much money is valued in the lower 48 States. I am just beginning to sense that the culture itself values money/wealth differently than in Europe (I’m perhaps overgeneralizing here too…not distinguishing northern from southern Europe). I’m trying to distinguish greed from how much wealth is valued…arguing that the latter is different here.  Greed is everywhere.  However, some cultures value wealth more than others do. The extent here is very hard to notice because it is so basic in the culture. It is like a fish seeing the water! But I think Europeans can see it…looking at the culture here from the outside. I’m positive that we don’t see it…for we are in it.  I think we should listen to what people around the world say about American culture.  I think we could learn something about the society we are.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/health/policy/29health.html?ref=us

The 2010, the U.S. census reignited the question of racial identity among multi-racial residents.  “I can’t fit in a single box on the census form” was the typical refrain among the fastest growing segment of the US population.  According to The New York Times in February, 2011, "when it comes to keeping racial statistics, the nation is in transition, moving, often without uniformity, from the old “mark one box” limit to allowing citizens to check as many boxes as their backgrounds demand." The number of mixed-race Americans was at the time rising rapidly, largely on account of increases in immigration and intermarriage. In 2010, for example, one in seven new marriages was interracial. Yet it is not as simple as counting people as "multi-racial." Politically, the use of a catch-all category was believed by some racial interest groups to marginalize particular minority races. As a result, the Census Bureau created 63 categories of possible racial combinations (a typical bureaucratic solution to a political problem). Regardless of how the U.S. Goverment slices the deck, the reality on the ground is that the United States was finally turning the corner in the beginning of the twenty-first century--having gone from states outlawing miscegenation (the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations) as late as the 1960s to the multiracial segment being the fastest growing, such that America would undoubtedly look rather different in even a few generations.  Life is a fluid thing, and the world today will undoubtedly be morphed by life's forces into another world tomorrow. Governmental restrictions in the face of natural forces are ultimately like sandcastles facing a rising tide.

That the multiracial “category” is the fastest growing is, I believe, the natural solution to the racial problems that have plagued North America since the time of the colonies.  Whereas New Spain quickly mixed the Indian, black and caucasian races, the British colonies kept the three distinct.  The United States followed the British tradition until into the second half of the twentieth century. That tradition has resulted in some mistakes in how race is labeled because the tradition held that some races are better than others.
Cheryl Contee, for example, writes in a CNN opinion piece, “When I look in the mirror each morning, my face epitomizes the American melting pot. I can’t ignore the pale skin of my white forebears, the slanted eyes of my Indian relatives nor the full lips and curly hair of my African blood.”  However, because there are many white Africans (e.g., in South Africa), her distinction of “white” and “African” is a false dichotomy.  She is treating two different categories as though they were one.  Better stated, Cheryl has white, black and Indian ancestors, hence she is multi-racial.  Better stated still, “caucasian” should be substited for “white” and “negroid” would be used for “black,” but Americans are not fond of technical terms even in polite conversation.  “White” and “Black” are at least of the same category, namely race, even if the explosion in interracial births will render "white" and "black" obsolete as primary descriptors. Instead, there will be a bell curve with "white" and "black" fading out to the ends. As Cheryl writes, “When I look in the mirror each morning, my face epitomizes the American melting pot.”  Her melting pot constitution is something for her to be proud of, as instantiates the natural (rather than governmental) solution to what has been an intractable  problem.  Her great grandchildren will likely look at old pictures of Blacks and Whites as strange book-ends.
Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/30/contee.who.am.i/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/us/10count.html?pagewanted=2&hpw