The Power of No

First let me say that the young are not stupid. Certainly not in the way that some of our supposed grown-ups sound when the discussion turns to matters like global warming, gay marriage or the policies of Barack Obama. On the whole, they are far more broad-minded and savvy, but they are absolutists. However, by sitting out this year's midterms America's young have done something that when they look back from the wisdom-producing distance of ten or twenty years they will probably admit was pretty stupid. How stupid will depend on how we survive the next several years.

The Phantom Left

Chris Hedges, in excoriating Jon Stewart's "Rally for Sanity" pins the blame for our current political apathy and civic dysfunction on the vanquished Left:

"The phantom left took a central role on the mall this weekend in Washington. It had performed admirably for Glenn Beck, who used it in his own rally as a lightning rod to instill anger and fear. And the phantom left proved equally useful for the comics Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who spoke to the crowd wearing red-white-and-blue costumes. The two comics evoked the phantom left, as the liberal class always does, in defense of moderation, which might better be described as apathy."

I admire Chris Hedges but despite his persuasive points I mildly disagree. Jon Stewart's audience may be liberal but despite being cast as such by our corporate media, it is not the Left, it is the 'hip' bourgeoisie. The comics were there to plead, not for Malcolm X or Emma Goldman, but for the status quo, a status quo that the young who do fret about their future rightly suspect is less democratic than authoritarian and fascist. When the campaign that promised you "Change" sees your standard-bearers like Van Jones and Dawn Johnsen tossed from the bus, voting begins to feel like a farce.

And yet, if there is any political space where the system still allows movement it is on issues the liberal class as a whole holds dear: namely civil liberties and the environment. The issue that once inspired the evanescent American Left was not the quality of the air but the workers' standard of living. Tangible, material things that Leftists like Eugene Debs died fighting for:

“I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man."

Twenty years after the collapse of Soviet Communism Debs' altruism would likely earn snickers from the Stewart crowd. Poverty is no longer a scar on a country's civilization in a world surrendered to Monopoly Capitalism. Social Darwinism is the de facto order of the day. The consequence for our privileged young is a dispiriting paralysis: why sacrifice when everyone expects to have to cope on their own?

But in allowing the political void to be filled by the abandoned proletariat's unreasoned passions, when our hopelessly dysfunctional state confronts the crisis of its own neglect it will be the Becks and Limbaughs leading the way right off the cliff and into nihilism. As Chris Hedges knows very well, it has happened before-- "the masses realize very well that they cannot direct themselves."-- Moeller van den Bruck, author of Das Dritte Reich

The young can only hope that the clowns are right: that history can only repeat itself as farce.

The Goo-goos, the Bad and the Ugly

Everything Old is New Again. Although it is portrayed as an Obama-inspired phenomenon, at its root, the Tea Party movement is a reincarnation of the Goo-Goos and Mugwumps. Born at a time when government at the state and national level was enthralled by the Spoils System, the "Goo-Goos" were intent on reforming both political parties and dismantling the patronage machines they saw as turning government increasingly corrupt and incompetent.

For the Tea Partiers already riled by the failures and indifference of government Obama's election was a galvanizing lightning rod. Like their Goo-Goo forebears alarmed by the immigrant hordes pouring into their cities, the Tea Partiers see Washington's ills as a result of their vote being marginalized by the unwashed and uneducated. Never mind that as the Washington Post reveals under Cheney and Bush aided by a disinterested Republican Congress, the government has largely been outsourced to corporations (Booz Allen Hamilton, L-3 Communications, CSC, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, SAIC and thousands of others): [there now exists], "a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine... "affluence is another attribute of Top Secret America. Six of the 10 richest counties in the United States are in these (tax-payer funded) clusters."

B.A.D. Beyond All Decency: A black woman whose farmer father was murdered for defending his rights sacrificed on the altar of white victimhood to appease ... Glen Beck?

There are villains, cowards and hypocrites to spare in the defaming of Shirley Sherrod but what the episode exposed is the ferocity with which those who profit from the selling of our government keep us grabbing for each other's throat. As the wise old farmer said scoffing at the charge of racism against Ms. Sherrod, "there's somebody trying to stir up trouble."

An Ugly History

The Mugwumps and Goo-Goos like the present-day Tea Partiers, were nothing new. Before them were the Nativists and the Know-Nothings and the Americans for the Star Spangled Banner, all convinced the moment times grew dire that only they were the true Americans.
Over time those Yanks have grown to accept the Irish, the Italians and the right kind of Jew, not once realizing that without the mess called democracy, those poor immigrants would never have risen to join their blessed middle class. For others, like Shirley Sherrod, that line stays drawn at color. Let's hope as the time again grows dire that the real bad ugliness is behind us.

Between 1865 - 1920, immigration trends shifted from Western Europe (Great Britain, Germany, Netherlands) to Southern and Eastern Europe (Italy, Poland, the Balkan states). This trend alarmed the mainly Protestant “old immigrants,” who felt threatened by the mainly Catholic “new immigrants.” Nativist organizations demanded literacy tests and quota systems to curb what they saw as a demoralizing and worsening situation for the country. Such efforts culminated in the passage of the National Origins Act in 1924.

During the Great Depression, the Federal Bureau of Immigration and local authorities rounded up Mexican immigrants and naturalized Mexican American citizens and shipped them to Mexico to reduce relief roles. More than 400,000 repatriodos, many of them citizens of the United States by birth, were sent across the U.S.-Mexico border from Arizona, California, and Texas. In Los Angeles, the only Mexican American student at Occidental College sang a painful farewell song to serenade departing Mexicans.

The National Origins Act of 1924 set no legal limit on immigrants from the Americas.