View from the Loft

Can it happen here? Oh yeah.

Wow. I've heard of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here (1935), but I've not read it. Now I'm thinking it's a natural for our book group--if only it were still in print! From the Amazon customer review by Charles Haberl:

It starts with the highly contested election of an oafish yet strangely charismatic president, who talks like a "reformer" but is really in the pocket of big business, who claims to be a home-spun "humanist," while appealing to religious extremists, and who speaks of "liberating" women and minorities, as he gradually strips them of all their rights. One character, when describing him, says, "I can't tell if he's a crook or a religious fanatic."

After he becomes elected, he puts the media - at that time, radio and newspapers - under the supervision of the military and slowly begins buying up or closing down media outlets. William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his times, directs his newspapers to heap unqualified praise upon the president and his policies, and gradually comes to develop a special relationship with the government. The president, taking advantage of an economic crisis, strong-arms Congress into signing blank checks over to the military and passing stringent and possibly unconstitutional laws, e.g. punishing universities when they don't permit military recruiting or are not vociferous enough in their approval of his policies. Eventually, he takes advantage of the crisis to convene military tribunals for civilians, and denounce all of his detractors as unpatriotic and possibly treasonous.

Man, is that prescient or what? Not really--Lewis was simply able to see how easy it can be to subvert democracy when vigilance ceases and illusion is embraced, when conditions allow certain passions take over--in other words, when emotions are manipulated so as to truncate thought and rationality.

So many things in the above summary of the novel have already occurred or are in the process of occurring. While the road to fascism didn't start from nothing with the "election" of George W. Bush, his coming to power combined with 9/11 and the manipulation of emotion surrounding that national trauma put us on the fast track for fascism. Particularly disturbing to me has been the wholesale abandonment of rational thought that has accompanied the shameless fearmongering of the Republican apparatus. Is such abandonment inevitable? Accidental? I very much doubt that it's either. Critical thought and the demand for proof, along with skepticism and the distrust of those in power, are the enemies of fascism. When Cheney and Bush came to office with an insatiable desire for power, they didn't have to invent the wheel. BushCo knew there was already to hand a tried-and-true set of emotional responses ready to be exploited.

Via Orcinus, take a look at these "mobilizing passions" described in Robert O. Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism:

1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions
2. the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual, and the subordination of the individual to it
3. the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group's enemies, both internal and external
4. dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences
5. the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary
6. the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny
7. the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason
8. the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success
9. the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle

Orcinus examines these points particularly as they relate to the recent passage of the Military Commissions Act (warning; pdf) with its far-reaching implications, including the death of Habeas Corpus, the conferring of exraordinary power upon the president, and the institutionalizing of torture in the US.

We can see these various "passions," however, as they resonate more broadly. Every one of emotions or attitudes listed has been vigorously promoted under the banner of patriotism and national security. Every one has been used for the attainment of greater and greater executive power.

Number 1, for example: we are frightened by being told repeatedly that we face an enemy like none we have ever faced before, that traditional solutions can't save us now, that the traditional rules and restraints that have characterized America's official actions (if not always the unofficial) are now too dangerous for us to abide by. "Even worse than Hitler!" comes the cry again and again.

Under number 2 we can see that civil liberties and individual rights must give way, so Bush's argument goes, to the safety of the group. Further, American exceptionalism makes America's needs primary over and against all considerations of the safety and well-being of any and all others. To disagree with this is to be called a traitor. I know, because I've been called one.

Number 3 we have seen repeated countless times by countless numbers of useful right-wing idiots: the deaths of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001 justify any amount of brutality and lawlessness, including torture, the invasion of a sovereign nation who posed no threat to us, and the claim that we are no longer bound by international treaties and conventions.

In number 4 ("dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences) we've got pretty much a summary of the fears of the right-wing extremists. Right now it's easy to find examples of the white majority's fear that they are becoming a minority. The Christian fundies fear that liberalism is erasing the cohesiveness of what they think of as a "Christian" nation; conservatives and xenophobes fear multiculturalism and "exotic" religions and beliefs, as well as liberal ideas like women's rights and gay rights. These "threats" erode the rights of privileged white males and those who believe they benefit from such males' status, and/or they are seen as diluting the superior cultural influence of both the Christian and the Western traditions.

The fifth "mobilizing passion," the perceived need for a purer community, can easily be seen in the anti-immigration hysteria we saw earlier this year in calls for a wall along the Mexican border, the blaming of immigrants for crime and disease, etc. Torture itself will, of course, help to preserve our way of life (just ask the Traditional Values Coalition) and will weed out the terrorists among us.

To me, numbers 6 and 7 are perhaps the scariest of the emotions running dangerously loose and unchecked: "the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny" and "the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason." We have seen these in spades, and they are very, very dangerous. As Orcinus comments:

It is astonishing, really, just how broad-ranging are the powers President Bush will have acquired if this legislation survives its inevitable court tests. Moreover, the public is constantly admonished not to question Bush's basic decency when it comes to granting him powers typically only granted to totalitarians [my emphasis]. Of course he wouldn't apply these powers to ordinary citizens. And five years ago, he similarly assured us that of course he wouldn't seek wiretaps without a warrant.

I am reminded, upon reading number 8 ("the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success"), how often the extreme right wing has urged greater use of force and brutality, going so far at times as to call for near-genocide, so that America may emerge victorious and so demonstrate the superiority of the American Way. Lost is any idea that the sort of action for which they militate would demonstrate the complete collapse and end of American ideals as they have been expressed, if not lived up to, for the past 230 years.

And finally, we know that number 9, "the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law," is the Bush Doctrine. It applies not only to those individuals whom we torture, but to entire nations, entire religions, entire wide swathes of the earth.

As far as I'm concerned, fascism is already here. It simply hasn't yet been implemented. I fear that the coming months and years will see such implementation happen, to our eternal regret and our imminent disaster. I'm not one of those who sees in a Democratic takeover of one or both houses of Congress a sure-fire reversal of the horrifying trends we have seen and are seeing. Once the machine is set into motion, stopping it--let alone reversing it--is a monumental task against which all the bureaucratic, economic, social, and political forces are aligned.

Noam Chomsky on the US as a "failed state"

(Yes, it's been quite a while since I've posted. It's that time of year, as the planting and outdoor work go forward and Jim takes time off from his paid job to catch up on chores around the homestead. But don't give up on me!)

In Failed States, Noam Chomsky argues that the United States falls into that category:

The "system" is coming to have some of the features of failed states, to adopt a currently fashionable notion that is conventionally applied to states regarded as potential threats to our security (like Iraq) or as needing our intervention to rescue the population from severe internal threats (like Haiti). Though the concept is recognised to be, according to the journal Foreign Affairs, "frustratingly imprecise", some of the primary characteristics of failed states can be identified. One is their inability or unwillingness to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction. Another is their tendency to regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law, and hence free to carry out aggression and violence. And if they have democratic forms, they suffer from a serious "democratic deficit" that deprives their formal democratic institutions of real substance.

Among the hardest tasks that anyone can undertake, and one of the most important, is to look honestly in the mirror. If we allow ourselves to do so, we should have little difficulty in finding the characteristics of "failed states" right at home.

I don't know enough about the concept of failed states to argue either way about the status of the United States in such terms, but I do recognize the existence in the US of the features Chomsky enumerates.

Bush supporters would find ludicrous, if not outright treason, the idea that the administration is unwilling to protect the citizenry from violence or outright destruction. What else, after all, is the War on Terror, that elaborate kabuki meant to soothe our fears and somehow protect our hides from the demonic haters of democracy and freedom?

That's exactly what it is, so much theater. As Pach over at Firedog Lake says,

Bushco has enslaved Americans into a psychological reign of "War on Terror" that amounts to a criminal protection racket.  We are told we must be afraid.  That is, we are told we must live in terror.  This is to protect us from. . . terror.  Then, because we feel terrified, we must give up our freedom - freedom to write what we believe without fear of reprisal, freedom of due process and habeas corpus protection, freedom from secret intrusion into our private lives by government.

Which brings us to that "democratic deficit," but more on that later. Right now I want to focus on the sham that is the War on Terror.

First, the search for actual terrorists was abandoned when Bushco relegated Afghanistan to being a minor concern compared with Iraq, which became the focus of massive amounts of money, military presence, and propaganda. The administration's Iraq adventure has done nothing to further the safety of the people of the United States. In fact, aggression against Iraq has made the world a far more dangerous place: terrorist acts have increased worldwide, the Middle East is becoming ever more unstable, and large numbers of frustrated, enraged young Muslims have joined the jihad.

Second, while Bush, supposedly to save American lives, sends soldiers into the meatgrinder that is Iraq, he has done nothing to beef up security at home. Oh sure, a few half-hearted measures that succeed mostly in annoying airline travelers, but when it comes to port security, securing our chemical plants and our food supply, protecting mass transit, and the like--nada. Sell off port operations to Dubai? No problem. Ensure that nuclear weapons can't be smuggled into our ports? Surely you jest. Because none of this grandstanding about the War on Terror has anything to do with reality.

Third, this administration has abandoned channels of diplomacy and has a knee-jerk response to every perceived threat, every international difficulty: use military force. This has made the United States feared and despised and recognized for the lawless aggressor and bully it's become under the auspices of George W. Bush and his enablers. Surely safety does not lie that way, when the world views our every move with suspicion while hurrying to forge new alliances with those countries not named the United States of America (see Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Venezuela-China accords, South South collaboration, cooperation among South American countries, etc.). Many of these new alliances center on access to resources like fossil fuels and minerals. Bush's reckless action in illegally invading Iraq is thus having consequences diametrically opposed to the administration's desire to protect US access to oil and natural gas.

Fourth, this administration has written off the Non-Proliferation Treaty, while other countries are scrambling to arm themselves with nuclear weapons in order to deter the use of such weapons against them. The lesson that North Korea, which has nuclear weapons, has not been attacked by the United States despite the US's aggressive rhetoric has not been lost on those outside the nuclear club. Thus we find ourselves now in a far more dangerous world where nuclear weapons are likely to proliferate as the number of nations possessing these WMDs grows.

So tell me again how George W. Bush is protecting us.

None of this even touches on the failure to address the environmental issues that pose great risks to continued human life on this planet. The administration's stubborn refusal to accept scientific expertise on global warning is irresponsible and dangerous. But then we saw the administration's refusal to acknowledge warnings about the levees of New Orleans, allowing US citizens to drown, starve, become separated from their children, remain homeless, or die in hospitals that were not evacuated. Once again, so much for making us safe.

The War on Terror is nothing more than a convenient device for propaganda and a cover for the stripping away of our Constitutional (and human) rights. I never thought I would see an administration defend the use of torture, fly people to foreign nations to have them tortured, claim the right to detain people indefinitely with no access to an attorney, defiantly announce the intent to continue an illegal warrantless wiretapping program against its own citizens, threaten to imprison journalists, declare the intention to disregard laws passed by Congress if the President so decides, and the myriad other "thousand cuts" that not only demonstrate a complete disregard of law and morality, but are killing our democracy.

Democracy deficit indeed. There are two features of this deficit: the lawlessness and the shredding of the Constitution, and the stark contrast between what most Americans want and the policies put forward by both the Republicans and the Democrats who are supposed to represent us. Of the first we can say that Constitutional and other legal protections of democracy are being methodically, intentionally stripped away, so that in terms of actual democracy there is a fast-deepening deficit as compared to rhetoric about democracy. Of the second, we must realize that we--ordinary American citizens, that is--have little to no representation in Congress.

Again and again we hear politicians and pundits declaring that this or that non-DLC Democrat is from the "angry left," "out of the mainstream." Yet when you look at polling on such issues as health care, the environment, taxes, the war in Iraq, and a host of other issues, it becomes obvious that it's our prominent, office-holding Democrats and Republicans--and the media lapdogs on the cocktail circuit--who are out of the mainstream.

Congress has shown no stomach for fighting for its own prerogatives as one of the three branches of government, no interest in preserving its power to act as a check on presidential power gone dicatatorial. Most members of Congress have failed to uphold their oath of office, an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. In doing so, they have declared that their first loyalty is not to the people who elected them, not to the people they work for, but to the moneyed interests that help to maintain their power. We have now in place a system so corrupt it gives all those Third World countries a run for their money in terms of how far from the people's wishes are the actions of the powerful.

Our talk of democracy is thus a far, far cry from the practice of democracy in this nation. It's hard to disagree with Gar Alperowitz in America Beyond Capitalism, as quoted by Noam Chomsky, that

the American "system" as a whole is in real trouble - that it is heading in a direction that spells the end of its historic values [of] equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy.

I don't know that I can agree with Chomsky that the US is, at present, a failed state. But I can agree that the US does exhibit characteristics thereof, and that we are moving toward a very gloomy scenario. It has always amazed me, and given me some hope, that Chomsky is able to maintain a level of optimism and faith in people, and indeed, the excerpt I link to above ends with this:

Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to seek to induce pessimism, hopelessness, and despair, reality is different. There has been substantial progress in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years, leaving a legacy that can be carried forward from a higher plane than before. Opportunities for education and organising abound. As in the past, rights are not likely to be granted by benevolent authorities, or won by intermittent actions - attending a few demonstrations or pushing a lever in the personalised quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as "democratic politics". As always in the past, the tasks require dedicated day-by-day engagement to create - in part recreate - the basis for a functioning democratic culture in which the public plays some role in determining policies, not only in the political arena, from which it is largely excluded, but also in the crucial economic arena, from which it is excluded in principle. There are many ways to promote democracy at home, carrying it to new dimensions. Opportunities are ample, and failure to grasp them is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations.

Early warning signs of fascism

[For a fuller description of each of the characteristics Laurence Britt found to be warning signs of fascism, go here .]

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism. (Check.)
2. Disdain for human rights. (Check.)
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. (Check.)
4. Supremacy of the military. (Not yet there in all aspects, but growing.)
5. Rampant sexism. (Check.)
6. Controlled mass media. (Check.)
7. Obsession with national security. (Check.)
8. Religion and government are intertwined. (Check.)
9. Corporate power is protected. (Check.)
10. Labor power is suppressed. (Not violently--yet.)
11. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts. (Check.)
12. Obsession with crime and punishment. (Unless it's the president who commits crimes--check.)
13. Rampant corruptions and cronyism. (Check.)
14. Fraudulent elections. (Check.)

Add to that the lack of an independent judiciary, the declaration that laws don't apply to the head of state, and the gutting of the Constitution, and it's pretty damn scary.

Serendipitous garden foods

Well, if TSHTF (for all you non-Peak-Oilers, that's "the shit hits the fan"), it might be useful to know a little about wild foods. And even if TSNHTF ("the shit never hits the fan"), it's still fun, useful, and nutritious to do a little foraging.

Actually, not even foraging. If you have a garden, you probably already have these "weeds": lamb's quarters and purslane.

Lamb's-quarters is sometimes called wild spinach, because it's a tasty green you can use like spinach. According to an article in Mother Earth News, lamb's-quarters

is   a relative of spinach and one of the most widely distributed plants on earth.   In years gone by, both Europeans and American Indians cultivated this leafy   annual   for its abundant yield of seeds (seeds   which—incidentally—contain an average of 16% protein, compared to   wheat's 14%).

While we're not going to be growing this for seeds any time soon--the shit would really have to hit the fan for that to happen--

As a green . . . lamb's-quarters is delicious. And surprisingly nutritious   . . . for the uncooked plant happens to be richer in iron, protein, and vitamin     B2   than either raw cabbage or raw spinach.

I've eaten young leaves, or the small leaves at the top of the plant, raw in salads. As long as the plant isn't over about a foot tall, though, you can eat any of the leaves cooked, just as you would spinach or other greens. I promise you, it's very tasty--I've served it to guests and garnered compliments.

Purslane is notable for containing omega-3 fatty acid, an unusual attribute for plants. It's also rich in calcium and iron. When we first started our gardens, we didn't have any purslane. I actually grew a cultivated variety (available at Richters, if you're interested). Now wild purslane has spread all over the place in that creeping fashion it's noted for. The raw leaves are an excellent addition to salads, being slightly acidic. You can also cook it as a green. If you have an abundance of this in your garden, you might want to check out this page for some recipes, or visit my other blog for a potato salad recipe. I'm planning to try the recipe for pickled purslane--sounds intriguing.

There are lots of other wild plants that can be used for food. Some of them must be cooked in order to get rid of undesirable qualities; some even have to be cooked in two or three changes of water to rid them of bitterness. But purslane and lamb's-quarters are delicious, easy, and dependable, and usually grow in quantities greater than a vegetable gardener would like. The best way to deal with them is to harvest and eat them!

The apolitical blogger

My few faithful readers may be wondering if I've decided to go apolitical, what with all the recent non-political posts.

It hasn't been so much a decision as an instinctive shift to survival mode. I'm having a hard time lately on many fronts.

There are personal issues I've been trying to work through, mostly without success. But mainly, the despair I somehow managed to keep partially at bay following the election has now hit me full force. My thoughts and fears now all edge toward the apocalyptic end of the scale, and who wants to read that?

What do I mean by apolcalyptic? Well, there's global climate change; the various horrific scenarios proposed as likely outcomes of peak oil (sample), and the ongoing cluelessness and refusal to deal with energy issues on the part of our corporate-ruled government; warnings about the vulnerability of the global economy and the likelihood of economic (and material) collapse; and if that's not enough, the possibility of avian flu wiping out millions of people and crippling economies and social structures. Of course, disasters in any of these categories could well end up in a worldwide thermonuclear conflagration, apart from their other frightening effects.

My thoughts tend toward the the apocalyptic for three reasons: one, we are "governed" (if you can call it that) by people who haven't a clue as to what they're doing, but act solely on behalf of their corporate masters out of greed and a limitless lust for power; two, we no longer have independent, investigative journalism that would point out both the sins of those in power and the catastrophes that are around the corner if government continues on its present course; and three, the American people themnselves, who don't seem to care how ill they are governed, how corrupt, mendacious, and avaricious their leaders are, as long as they can keep buying pretty baubles at the nearest megastore. Americans of every level exist on a plane of denial that is breathtaking in its self-centeredness and greed.

For all those reasons, I can't shake the certainty that we are headed for a future so profoundly changed that those of us who live through it won't be able to describe it in such a way as to render our tales credible to those who come after us. In the U.S., we have already forfeited our democracy, and I fear it is all too likely that the last shreds of the republic will soon be swept away in a wave of fascism fostered by a campaign of fear on the part of the government: fear of terrorists, fear of foreigners, fear of nonconformists, fear of any who dare to question. All in the name of security, of course. Social instability brought on by any of the aforementioned apocalyptic forces will only serve to foster and accelerate fascistic tendencies.

So I'm looking way, way beyond the next presidential election (assuming there is one). That tends to bring about a perspective both broader and narrower than politics-as-usual. I'm tending more towards discussions about how to protect ourselves in terms of economics and energy. I'm focused on "what ifs" and worst-case scenarios. And I'm aware that this all seems more than a little crazy to most people. I hope I'm wrong that the optimists really aren't in denial--I fervently hope it.

But in the meantime, the despair is getting me down. So I write about the little things around me in which I find beauty and meaning. I do it to keep the despair from swallowing me whole, and I do it in order to live in the moment. I do it because, despite all our human flaws, it is also human to want to share beauty and meaning with other human beings.

My outrage meter is broken anyway, to tell you the truth. There are lots of blogs that report on the politics of the day and that express the outrage response, and I'm glad they're there. But if you come here, you may or may not get politics, the draft, the war, the economy. Right now it's anybody's guess how--or whether--this blog continues to manifest itself.

Time to buy the chickens?

We've always said we wouldn't keep any animals at our rural haven, except, of course, for housepets. That is, no livestock, no poultry, no alpacas (for some reason my spouse is enamored of the idea of alpacas, but thus far I've been successful at preventing their residence here).

Every now and then, however, I wonder if we shouldn't break our vow. Usually these second thoughts pop up right after I've read a particularly gloomy prediction of economic doom, the consequences of global warming, or the like. Then I wonder aloud, "Is it time to buy the chickens?" A kind of survivalist streak, if you will. I figure at least we'd have fresh eggs along with our home-grown veggies.

Well, yesterday was one of those "time to buy the chickens" days. I stumbled across the name James Howard Kunstler in a comment on one of the Kos diaries and checked out this article in Rolling Stone and this one in Salon. Kunstler has written a book, The Long Emergency, that spells out his dire predictions of life after the demise of cheap oil.

We may be at "peak oil" already, or it may be a few more years:

The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.

Natural gas is also being depleted at an alarming rate, and Kunstler claims that all the alternative fuels and advanced technology in the world will not rescue us.

What does this mean for our future?

In addition to geopolitical conflict,

the Long Emergency will require us to make other arrangements for the way we live in the United States. America is in a special predicament due to a set of unfortunate choices we made as a society in the twentieth century. Perhaps the worst was to let our towns and cities rot away and to replace them with suburbia, which had the additional side effect of trashing a lot of the best farmland in America. Suburbia will come to be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. It has a tragic destiny. The psychology of previous investment suggests that we will defend our drive-in utopia long after it has become a terrible liability.

Before long, the suburbs will fail us in practical terms. We made the ongoing development of housing subdivisions, highway strips, fried-food shacks and shopping malls the basis of our economy, and when we have to stop making more of those things, the bottom will fall out.

Feeding ourselves will become a major problem as agribusiness, so dependent on oil, fails and we are forced to grow food locally and without the major gas and oil inputs required by factory farming. Kunstler predicts that everything large in America,  from schools to Wal-Mart, will have to be scaled down.

I don't know how accurate his predictions are, or whether he is correct in his assessment of the viability of alternative fuels. But it makes one think.

It is also true, however, that Kunstler is a long-time hater of suburbia and that his predictions sometimes reek of nostalgia for a better, simpler time. This is a strain I've been seeing repeatedly in other social critics, such as John Gatto, the crusader against government-controlled compulsory education. Reading his and Kunstler's writings, one can't help but notice a romanticization of the American past, the golden halo of myth making it all a bit fuzzy.

Still, I agree with him when he talks about the unwillingness of Americans--especially the so-called leaders--to face reality. As he writes in his blog:

Everywhere I look I see things that are not going to work in the years ahead, and see people making plans for conditions that will no longer exist. State DOT officials in Texas are planning to build a new statewide super-mega highway network just as the global oil peak forecloses a future of easy motoring. Where I live, at the rural edge of New York's Capital District, suburban housing pods are springing up in every cow pasture in complete faith that supernaturally cheap mortgages and long commutes will continue to be the norm. Municipalities everywhere are investing in multi-million dollar parking structures in the belief that we will be using cars in 2019 exactly the way we do now.

In any case, I'm going to buy the book, after which I'm sure I'll say, "Time to buy the chickens."