Thursday, December 18, 2014

Robocall scandal: Sona hung out to dry?

abbreviations used in this article:

FOI - Freedom of Information (Act)

            Years ago, when the Harper Conservatives were running against the scandal smirched Liberals they promised a bouquet of "responsible government", "transparency" and "law and order". A Great Conservative grab bag. Actually, if you ignore the vagueness it sounds pretty good! Who - aside from the Black Block anarchists - really does oppose "responsible government, transparency and law 'n order??

            Once in power though, Canada experienced government that hardly meets these criteria, no matter how "liberal" one tries to be in judging.


            One problem that seems to keep cropping up sporadically is obtaining information from the government under the freedom of information law. Delays are often in excess of those required in the legislation, sometimes egregiously so, which suggests that political interference is taking place hot button issues. Too much of what is finally received by the requestee is "heavily redacted" (blacked out). All of which makes a farce of the law. "Justice delayed is justice denied." True, but information delayed is also information denied: a delay may effectively kill a journalist's or a lawyer's hunt for facts.

            Freedom of information (FOI) legislation is laudable of course. One can even make an argument that information is the lifeblood of a living democracy. How are citizens - or the representatives they elect - to judge wisely if they do not have the facts set before them in an objective unbiased way? (Such an argument represents an idealization, of course, but it should be seen as a target to aim for in order to improve our daily performance, to provide a standard against which real-world behaviors are to be judged.) There is increasing evidence, for example, that political interference is taking place in the application of FOI due, in part, to fearful atmosphere cultivated in the civil service. Job cuts, top-down micro-management from the prime minister's office and internal censorship have created a poisoned atmosphere in federal service ranks.

          Recently Federal Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault

"
.. made a pointed reference to the responsibility of ministers and top bureaucrats to make sure the access to information system is protected. She said that a culture of "pleasing the minister's office" had been fostered among public servants."

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/04/10/suzanne-legault-information-watchdog-tories_n_5125723.html

          As journalists covering the house of commons have observed, the Harper Conservatives have inculcated an authoritarian, top-down mode of governance: Harper himself is derided as a "control freak" especially with respect to media access to controversial files (climate change, for example). Witness the pathetic attempts to muzzle climate scientists who produce results unfavorable to the fossil fuel industry.


internal blog links:

 http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-imperial-prime-minister-wither.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/03/decline-and-fall-of-canadian-science.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2011/12/laffin-fiddlin-while-rome-burns.html 

 http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/03/experimental-lakes-areas-curious-episode.html

             The desire to control - suppress, modify, interpret - information flows seems omnipresent in this Conservative government. Thus while FOI legislation does not require background information from requestees, the Harper government has been doing so. Why? Moreover, they have continued to do so, despite having promised to stop the offending practice. Is this what the Harperites mean by "transparency"?

"The access law does not authorize the collection of background information from individual requesters, and a government-wide directive from 2010 requires institutions to process requests without regard to the identity of the person seeking records."

              While, strictly speaking, not illegal, federal information commissioner Legault, signaled another problematic practice: the monitoring / surveillance of FOI requests in sensitive areas (especially requests emanating from opposition parties or the press).

"
The Conservative government has been criticized in the past for flagging some sensitive requests — typically from the news media or opposition MPs — for special scrutiny in ministers' offices, delaying release or even improperly censoring material."

              "Flagging" potentially explosive FOI requests for pre-scrutiny by federal ministers amounts, effectively, to the censorship one expects in those "Communist states", like China, that the Harperites so love to excoriate! Shades of Orwell' "1984". 


http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/05/31/access-to-information-canada_n_5422765.html

                 Another classical way of killing embarrassing information and questions is simply to cut off funding. This, too, is an established practice of the "transparency-loving" Harper government.

http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/12/12/the-harper-government-is-killing-access-to-information-slowly/


The Michael Sona saga

 

                Other forms of authoritarian behaviors are evident on the part of the Harper government. One particularly egregious tactic: telephoning voters who are supporters of other political parties on election day, telling them that their voting station has been changed and they must go elsewhere to vote. When the voter gets to the alternative polling station they find they are not registered to vote there and, if they do not have the time or inclination to go to their legal voting station, they lose their vote. Dirty political tricks, of course, are older than the ancient Athenians. Liberals, for example, have not been above stooping to the tactic of voter diversion on occasion in recent elections. Traditional Québec elections, in particular, were noted for multiple voting, fraudulent voting (the dead voted..), ballot box stuffing, ballot box theft and destruction, goon squads to enforce politically correct voting and marked ballots (so if you were someone important, the pols would know who you voted for).. But those were the "good old days" and we were supposed to be beyond all that..

               In the last federal election, the Harperites apparently employed an updated form of voter diversion using robo-calls from automated call centers. This came to a head in the notorious Sona affair in which a young Conservative party worker, Michael Sona, was indicted, then convicted, of voter interference. Sona, the first person to be actually convicted of voter interference, was sentenced to 9 months prison and a year of probation. The judge felt Sona did not act alone in the diversion of 6,700 voters although Sona himself still proclaims innocence. Given that Sona did not act alone, why were others not indicted? Was it a simple lack of evidence? (And, if so, why the lack?) Was there political influence in the police investigation? Was Sona - who was in his early 20s during the robo-calls escapade and rather naive - hung out to dry, a convenient and powerless scapegoat who could be sacrificed at little cost? (The above photo gives an indication of Sona's age and maturity at the time of the infractions, May, 2011.)



http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/11/19/michael-sona-sentence_n_6183510.html?utm_hp_ref=michael-sona

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/08/13/michael-sona-robocalls-trial-verdict-guelph_n_5674098.html 


Thursday, December 11, 2014

three variations on a theme

Miguel Guardia: Tema y variaciones



Pero renazco de mi sombra. Vivo.
Vivo junto a la espiga
y junto a la mañana.
Vivo con todo lo que tiene vida,
color y forma y luz. No ha sido en vano
trasponer las orillas
y vivir un minuto la renuncia
con la voz encendida,
las manos palpitantes
y el corazón en sangre todavía.
Aunque la muerte sea
tan diáfana y sencilla 
quiere decir la muerte: no sentirse,
no verse ni dolerse. Significa
la sola soledad,
la sola soledad sin compañia,
ni anochecer la noche
ni amanecer el día. 
No ha sido, pues, en vano 
trasponer las orillas
y vivir un minuto la renuncia
con la voz encendida, 
porque aprendi la ciencia inexpresable
de amar la luz y conocer el día.
Hoy nada existe junto a mí ignorado;
hoy comprendo la sed y la semilla,
hoy no quisiera ya sino el milagro 
de poderme morir todos los días, 
porque mi diario renacer me diera
la latitud exacta de la vida. 






I am risen from my shadow, I live.
I live like the stalk of wheat 
or the fruit on the tree.
I live with all that holds life,
color, form and light. Not in vain
have I crossed shorelines
and lived abandonment,
my voice fevered,
my hands shaking
my heart full filled with lifeblood. 

Ah yes, death would be so lucid

and so simple.
I would like to say yes to death.
There is no feeling,
no seeing, no pain.
Death signifies only solitude,
solitude without companionship;
night without sunset, day without sunrise.

No, I did not cross shorelines in vain

to be abandoned for a while,
my voice fevered,
because I learned the inexpressible science
of loving light and knowing the day.

Today I see to the heart of all things:

I understand thirst and the seeds of things,
I desire nothing but the miracle
of being able to die daily,
because my daily rebirth
is my compass, my direction giver. 





Parce que je renais de mon ombre, je vis.
Je vis comme le grain de blé
ou la pomme de l'abre.
Je vis avec tout ce qui tient vie,
couleur, forme et lumière.
Ce n'est pas pour rien 
que j'ai traversé les côtes,
que j'ai vécu l'abandon,
la voix fébrile,
les mains palpitantes
et le coeur plein du sang de la vie.

Mourir est lucide, est facile.
Je dirais oui à la mort:
de ne plus s'émouvoir,
voir, ni souffrir signifie
seule la solitude,
la seule solitude - sans compagnon,
nuit sans crépuscule,
jours sans aube.

Et je n'ai pas en vaine traversé des côtes
pour vivre des moments d'abandon.
avec la voix enflammée,
parce que j'ai appris la science ineffable
d'aimer la lumière et connaître le jour.
Aujourd'hui le monde m'ouvre son coeur: 
aujourd'hui je comprends la soif et la semence,
aujourd'hui je ne désire rien
que le miracle de mourir chaque jour,
parce que ma renaissance journalière
me donne la latitude exacte de la vie.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

compte-rendu: Carles Casjuana, Le dernier homme qui parlait catalan

 Carles Casjuana, Le dernier homme qui parlait catalan. Robert Laffont, Paris, 2009, 238 pages.


            Ramón, 40 - 50 ans, est romancier, idéaliste déchu. Il vit à Barcelone, est catalan mais écrit en castillan. Il vient de quitter son poste pour finir un roman, pas son premier; il était fonctionnaire. Il écrit la roman de la désillusionnement de sa génération, là dans le quartier de Barcelone où ses idéaux l'ont conduit dans sa vingtaine. Il faut que Ramón reste dans le quartier jusqu'à la fin du premier jet, sinon il perdra la trame de son récit (c'est qu'il croit, du moins..)

             Malheureusement, le vieux quartier des artistes et des intellectuels s'embourgeoise. Ramón doit quitter son appartement parce que son proprio veut faire du fric en rénovant le bâtiment pour louer plus cher. Mais Ramón décide de jouer le Dom Quixote et refuse de vendre. Tous les autres locataires ont déjà quitté les lieux il y a belle lurette et Soteras, le proprio avare, rend la vie misérable pour Ramón. Il lui coup le gaz, menace de couper l'électricité aussi et de commencer des travaux inutiles mais très bruyant. Ramón s'entête et reste seul dans le bâtiment vide et délabré, jusqu'au jour où il découvre un squatter habitant un appartement trois étages en bas de chez lui.

            Le squatter s'appelle Miquel. Il est dix ou quinze ans plus jeune que Ramón mais, comme lui, il est romancier (quelle coïncidence!) Mais, à l'encontre de Ramón, Miquel écrit en son catalan natif. Ils commencent à se fréquenter, de se rendre des services, de manger ensemble.. Miquel est catalan très nationaliste et n'est pas d'accord que Ramón écrit en castillan: il croit qu'il a vendu son âme. Le roman d'"anticipation" qui Miquel est en train d'écrire raconte les derniers jours du dernier homme qui parlait catalan.

            Casajuana dépeint fort bien un monde en décomposition: décomposition du quartier artiste, de la langue catalane, du bâtiment de Ramón, des idéaux généraux de la jeunesse, de la vie intellectuelle, des modes de vie traditionnels et des culture nationales (grâce à la mondialisation envahissante et abrutissante). Comme dans un rêve, les décors du roman reflètent des états d'âme. Le délabrement du bâtiment dans lequel vivent deux écrivains plutôt marginaux symbolise le délabrement de la vie intellectuelle. Ici, le macrocosme se reflète dans le microcosme: le désarroi moral du monde se reflète dans celui des personnages.

           Les personnages sont vraisemblables, on s'y engage parce qu'on a fait ou pensé comme ça soi-même. Ils ne sont ni héros ni vilains (sauf le proprio avare de bâtiment de Ramón). Ramón boit pas mal - comme les autres - mais il ne se drogue ni fume. Parfois il vole les femmes de ses amis mais, au fond, c'est un garçon honnête (peut-être trop parfois..) Il est contradictoire - signe de décadence probable. Mais on finit par embrasser l'humanité des personnages. Il y a là une psychologie de la rue qui sonne vrai: ces gens font le mieux qu'ils peuvent dans une société en dérive. Mais ils auraient pu faire beaucoup pire! 

               Ce roman marche sur deux plans. D'abord, Casajuana dépeint symboliquement, comme un rêve, notre monde. Il le fait avec une grande véracité existentielle. Pour sortir de ce bourbier qu'est la vie avec honneur, il faut être connaissant: ce roman parle des vérités.

              Le deuxième point  fort du roman: il affirme l'humain même dans ses défauts. Il faut le faire, surtout dans ces temps de transition où les valeurs s'écoulent et où beaucoup succombent au désespoir et son fils, le cynisme. L'humanisme de ce livre est un antidote au cynisme ambiant. Oui, le monde se dérive mais on peut garder son humanité ou, au pire, essayer..

              Les thèmes, les défis spirituels et moraux sont semblables un peu partout aujourd'hui - mondialisation oblige! - seulement varie leur contexte ou intensité. La province du Québec au Canada, par exemple, s'affronte aux défis de survie linguistique et culturelle semblables aux celles qui travaillent la langue et culture catalane en Espagne. Nous aussi parlons une langue minoritaire menacée par la mondialisation. En effet, c'était cette ressemblance de situation qui m'attirait à ce livre.

               À la fin de ma lecture, je me suis posé les questions, est-ce que je viens de lire soit utopique? Dystopique? Les deux? Ni l'un ni l'autre? Peut-être tous ces jugements sont corrects selon son critères?

              Je crois que Casajuana a réussi à dépeindre l'émergence difficile de la "société hypercomplexe" du futur qui sort du sein de la "société historique" actuelle (E Morin, La Méthode). La crise de valeurs actuelle exprime traduit cette transition. Les anciennes valeurs ne marchent plus (et surtout leur articulation "traditionnelle" en systèmes de valeur, en modes de vie traditionnels, en cultures vivantes ne marche pas du tout). Nous avons perdu nos repères et n'en avons pas trouvé de nouveaux. Ce roman reflète bien cette situation de fait. Mais ce qui sauve les personnages de la déréliction totale, c'est leur capacité de toucher un fond de moralité, un étalon ou code de valeurs interne par lequel juger nos actes et ceux d'autrui ("l'auto-critique" - La Méthode). Le roman de Casajuana est donc dystopique dans l'exactitude de son portrait de notre transition chaotique mais il est aussi utopique dans la possibilité pour l'homme de s'élever "au dessus de" son milieu et d'évaluer sa réalité plus objectivement depuis cette hauteur. La psychologue Carl Jung disait qu'en vieillissant on montait une pente afin de voir la totalité du trajet qu'est sa vie étendu là-bas sur la plaine. On peut y saisir sa totalité, son sens et sa signification..

               Même dans les décombres d'un civilisation écroulant, Casajuana suggère que cette possibilité d'une vie consciente - rationnelle, morale, humaine - existe toujours. Et dans cette possibilité est aujourd'hui notre seul espoir. La technologie seule ne saura jamais nous sauver..

Monday, December 8, 2014

Faith, autumn 2014



Leaves fall and drift.
Nature's havest is stored away.
Life will survive drifting snow
        and glacials suns
till spring's warmth..





Wednesday, November 19, 2014

délcieuse angoisse d'être..



Albert Camus: Noces, (suivi de) L'été, Éditions Gallimard, 1959

DE La mer au plus près (in L'été):

         " ... Un brusque amour, une grande oeuvre, un acte décisif, une pensée qui transfigure, à certains moments donnent la même intolérable anxiété, doublée d'un attrait irrésistible. Délicieuse angoisse d'être, proximité exquise d'un danger dont nous ne connaissons pas le nom, vivre, alors, est-ce courir à sa perte? À nouveau, sans répit, courons à notre perte.



           J'ai toujours eu l'impression de vivre en haut mer, menacé, au coeur d'un bonheur royal."




Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Book Review: Tar Sands, Dirty Oil, and the future of a continent by Andrew Nikiforuk

Andrew Nikiforuk: Tar Sands, Dirty Oil and the future of a continent (David Suzuki Foundation, 2010). 219 pages, index, bibliography, appendices, maps.

abbreviations used in this article

CO2 - carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas
GHG - greenhouse gas(es)


                           Albertan boreal forest: before oil sands "development"

                          After "development": looks like Mars.. inorganic..

                          Mars: definitely inorganic (or maybe a few hardy microbes)

"Our principal impediments at present are neither lack of energy or material resources nor of essential physical and biological knowledge. Our principal constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of non-growth" Marion King Hubbert, geophysicist, 1976

"In 2006, Canada's environment commissioner, Johanne Gélinas, laid out the dirty math. She reported that oil and gas production, including tar sands mining, had produced 150 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2004, a whopping 51 percent increase since 1990. Oil and gas destined for the United States accounted for nearly a third of Canada's increase in total greenhouse gases, approximately the same amount by which Canada failed to meet it Kyoto protocol targets.

 Noting that the tar sands had made a major contribution to "increasing greenhouse gas emissions", Gélinas found overall an astounding level of federal neglect and incompetence on climate change and oil production" "Few federal efforts are underway to reduce these emissions and those efforts have had minimal results to date. For its part, the federal government is counting on regulatory and long-term technological solutions.. However, it is not leading the way by clearly stating how and to what degree Canada will reduce greenhouse gas emission when oil and gas production is expected to increase." Gélinas concluded that any further growth in tar sands production would likely cancel out national efforts to lower emissions. Shortly after she produced her damning report, the government fired her." Tar Sands, page 128 (Canada, a land of freedom of opinion and freedom of speech..)

"The real work of transforming Canada's fossil fuel-dependent economy will not be big or glamorous. It will be humbling work. Our tasks, as social critic Wendell Berry has noted, 'will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.'" Tar Sands, page 5

".. fifty  years ago, the world annually burned up four billion barrels of oil and discovered thirty billion more. 'Today we consume 30 billion barrels per year and the discovery rate is dropping toward 4 billion barrels per year," Tar Sands, page 189. Kjell Aleklett, director of the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group before the US House Subcommmittee on Energy and Air Quality, 2005 


             Essentially, we moderns have become idolaters of Mammon, profit, specifically the profit of high flying multinational corporations and the investment banking sector which finances their capital intensive megaprojects. Everything must be sacrificed to this hungry, arrogant, jealous divinity. We have lost our way. The natural order of things is reversed: wo/man now serves the economy. The economy has become our master, not our slave - the world turned upside down..

             One of the major themes of this book is that in the process of selling off her oil and gas to the petro-giants, the province of Alberta has morphed into a North American petrostate.

Petrostate, you say?

               A petrostate is a State controlled by the petroleum industry. This influence has, over time, repeatedly proven inimical to democratic institutions. A government which depends on oil revenues is beholden to the oil companies, not the voters. Thus Alaska and some Gulf States (USA) have no income tax. The citizen therefore becomes less engaged, less vigilant about how government is run and how money is spent. After all, it's not his money! In the long run, the political process with its healthy, inherent antagonisms withers and dies on the vine. Alberta has had about 40 years of unbroken years of conservative party rule, voter turnout is abysmal. Is this a healthy democracy? 

                Petrodollars prop up one party rule: Mexico, Indonesia.

               Giving away a non-renewable resource (oil, diamonds..) dirt cheap has negative knock on effects that can affect other sectors of the economy. Thus we suffer a high Canadian dollar and attendant job suppression in the manufacturing sector. While Alberta - with the collusion of the Feds - is responsible for the oil and gas give away, central Canada - Ontario and Québec - bear the brunt with their relatively large populations and depressed industrial sectors. However, not all of the economic and social distortions are exported to other parts of the country. Alberta suffers from a boom 'n bust economy, typical of economies based on rapid, non-renewable resource extraction: absurd housing prices, inadequate infrastructure (access to doctors and other professionals, insecure highways..), crime, drugs, homelessness, drunk or drugged driving, divorce, breakdown of community spirit.. 
 
               Alberta has failed to implement even the most minimal regulation of its boom 'n bust tarsands fueled economy. In comparison, Norway has used its oil royalties to build a fund for future social investments, for example, in alternative energy development as cheap oil reserves deplete. Meanwhile, Alberta burns the candle at both ends and gives no thought for the morrow. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!

              There are, in reality, a host of reasons why Canada, with the aid of federal government investment, should prioritize the green energy sector: zero carbon footprint buildings, wind power, thermal solar, photovoltaics, geothermal power, biomass, hydro-electricity, tide and wind power.. Converting tarsands - literally sand soaked with bitumen, bottom of the barrel stuff - into usable fuels and petrochemicals is highly energy consuming and thus greenhouse gas (GHG) producing. The bitumen must be released from its sandy matrix with heat which consumes much energy. Because of bitumen's high molecular weight it also requires more energy input to "crack" its long molecules into usable fuels and petrochemicals. Alberta's tarsand industry is a major reason Canada has failed to meet its Kyoto Protocol GHG emission quota.

             Extracting tarsands, either with giant mechanical shovels or by "in situ" underground steam heating is a messy process. Not only does it destroy fragile - sometimes unique and important  - ecosystems, it also generates a lot of toxic waste presently stored in "holding ponds". Like nuclear waste, no one really knows what to do with the carcinogenic mess, so it keeps piling up. Occasionally flocks of wild birds mistakenly land in bitumen rich portions of these ponds and die..


                                          petrochemical soaked duck


             There is some evidence - much of it anecdotal admittedly - that people downwind or downstream of tarsands refineries are physically ill and / or have higher rates of cancer.
 

http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/08/30/TarSandsStudy/

             "Reclamation" of used lands is proceeding at a rate far lower than oil companies originally promised.  

              Finally, Nikiforuk points out, the entire tarsands industry is an accountant's nightmare. It is even hard to estimate how much the oil companies have ripped off the people of Alberta and / or the Canadian federal government, so poorly are records maintained. Environmental monitoring and auditing of air, water and soil by the Alberta government is, bluntly, a farce (see link above concerning heavy metal contamination exceeding nationally mandated limits). All of which leads  one to concur with Nikiforuk: Alberta is a de facto petrostate.

               In a concluding section, "Twelve steps to Energy Sanity", Nikiforuk sketches out a programmed withdrawal from a fossil fuel economy (page 200). While any or all of these steps are debatable (while we still live in a democracy-of-sorts...), they deserve perusal by anyone who gives a tinker's dam about humanity's common future:

1- Admit the nature of the Peak Oil crisis. Cheap oil is going. We must prepare for Energy Descent - or suffer.. Forewarned is fore-armed!

2- Slow tarsands development and cap production at 2 million barrels / day. In the future, as cheap oil really begins to run out, "non-conventional" sources of petroleum will be extremely valuable, less as fuel sources than as feedstocks for the chemical industry (pharmaceuticals, plastics, paints and pigments, synthetic fibers..) and as lubricants (for all those renewable energy powered vehicles..) I personally would cap production at a somewhat lower level, maybe a million bbl / day.
  
3- National Canadian Energy Policy with emphasis on green energy development.

4- Carbon tax to spur development of non-carbon energy sources.

5- Say no! to petropolitics:
     (a) greater transparency and freedom of information to follow dirty $ trails
     (b) use oil royalties to build a sovereign investment fund to spur future conversion to a green energy economy. Norway, Australia, China, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates did it! Why can't we, duh..
     (c) boost royalties to current "best practice" levels. Once again, Norway has led the way..


6- Fight continental energy integration schemes. These benefit energy and capital intensive multinationals. But the future we face is one of Energy Descent as cheap energy reserves deplete. We should therefore be moving toward decentralized, labor intensive green energy networks where energy is produced locally (home installed photovoltaics, for example) and consumed locally. This reduces the need for expensive infrastructure (high volume transmission lines) and the energy needed to produce and maintain it (for example, long distance transmission losses).

7- Relocalize food production. Globalized food production will become a thing of the past as cheap energy reserves deplete. We need to get ahead of Energy Descent and begin the Great Transformation now, to reduce impacts..

8- Abandon "dead end" technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage. These technologies are merely stopgap measures designed and promoted by the fossil fuel industry to prolong their dominance in the energy sector as long as possible. We need to think outside the box: think green energy and decentralized energy networks. We need to invent tomorrow's technologies, not prolong yesterday's..

9- Re-orient rural and urban planning toward renewable energy: walkable urban communities, where most of what you need is within walking or biking distance. What is not within walking distance should be accessible with public transport. We should use trains for transport - versus trucks - wherever possible to minimize energy consumption. Promote zero carbon buildings, buildings which produce more energy than they consume. What about urban agriculture? Underground buildings? Hydroponics? Restoring wetlands to treat waste? Green belts to consolidate and build organic soil content in arid zones? Capturing flue gases to feed fuel and food producing algae? The field is vast and barely explored, so fixated on high carbon life styles have we become..

10- Learn to walk lightly on the land, reduce our energy footprint. We are not talking about technology here but "lifestyles" and values (and the goals that flow from values). Scandinavians and Japanese live with half our energy consumption or less. Yet their living standards are not lower than ours. It is even arguable that theirs are higher than ours: longer life expectancy, less crime, more upward social mobility.. Under this heading we need also consider: energy audits, learning to waste less, do things more efficiently. Maintain - or improve - our infrastructures to reduce waste: retrofit house insulation to consume less energy, recycle and repair things we would otherwise throw out,..


11-  Don't wait for government: most pols have been hypnotized by conventional neoconservative "Free Market" ideology. "Power down. Eat local food. Walk more. Travel less. Be a leader in you community and family. Challenge the petrostate." (emphasis added)


12- Renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement: (better still, tear it up and recycle as toilet paper for the House of Commons.) It's really a no brainer, rather "constructive nationalism" in a world of future shortages. Who should get their hands on Canada's resources, Americans or Canadians? In a world of looming shortages, this is a definite no brainer!


             All in all, an insightful and rather well penned tirade. There are a few bloopers due to apparent sloppiness. James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia Hypothesis (the Earth seen as a living organism), is described as a climate scientist. He is, in reality, a physical chemist and inventor of scientific instruments. Worse, for the researcher or the activist wishing to validate or track down sources, all cited sources and further reading reccomendations are thrown together at the back of the text. This makes tracing sources difficult. On at least one occasion, I was not able to locate a cited source (not good, not good..) All told, a very good book, one I would recommend giving to young people who are beginning to worry about the world they are growing up in (high school or bright upper primary school).




unofficial mascot of the Tarsands extraction industry: Bertie, the albertosaur and his brood - the family that preys together, stays together..

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

(Classic) book review: The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstafter





 Richard Hofstadter: The American Political Tradition (Vintage Books, NY, 1948, various reprints), 456 pages, index, chapter notes, biographical essay (on sources consulted)

abbreviations used in this article:

APT - The American Political Tradition
FDR - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
RH - Richard Hofstadter
SMM - Self-Made-Man 

            Richard Hofstadter (RH) was a gifted (if somewhat prickly) American historian and public intellectual whose heritage was cut short by premature death at age 54 from leukemia. In later years RH referred to The American Political Tradition (APT) as "a young man's book" yet this work of youth served to break American academic history out of the Left-Right ideological ruts into which it had fallen during the war years and the subsequent rise of communism. It initiated a more empirical, evidence based, mode of doing history whose influence is still felt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hofstadter

            RH's book filled a gap in my understanding of that most important of nations, the United States of America. (Nineteenth century prophets like Marx, Darwin and Jules Verne saw that the 20th century would be the "American century". The new century is following in the wake of the last though it is becoming more and more evident that "Nova Roma" has entered a Time of Troubles with unknown issue..)

            Although I was raised in the US, large areas of the American national character and history remained opaque. How could a people, so enamoured of their Founding Principles - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, oppress their black fellow citizens? What did they think could be accomplished? Why did the people of my town support European colonial rule? - America, after all, fought a democratic revolution in order to free herself from colonial rule. I was puzzled..

           APT helped me answer some of these questions or, at least, understand better the nature of these questions and what they might actually signify.

           To illustrate the growth and evolution of the APT, RH picked ten federal political figures, presidents or contenders, spanning 150 years from founding father Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). 

            



           In my retrospective reading, sixty six years after the first edition, RH reveals two powerful, often opposing, drives at the heart of the American soul: Personal Liberty and Greed. The former is often / usually expressed as "property rights" while the latter is acquisitiveness, particularly the pathological form: acquisition for its own sake or as an ostentatious display of personal "worth".

           In the early days of the American republic, at the turn of the 19th century, democracy was generally restricted to land owners. This democracy was the vehicle through which Personal Liberty (conceived of as property rights) and Greed (which includes Power Lust) acquired and defended turf. Or rather, various classes and groups of people, motivated by these dominant culturally reinforced drives, contended for turf.

           While America began as a colony of craftsmen and landholding farmers, (proto-)industrial modes of production began to appear in the early 19th century. Industrialization shaped the ways in which Personal Liberty and Greed developed and conflicted. Industrialization favored large scale production, mass markets, large capital expenditures and high finance. These trends concentrated capital - hence political power - into fewer and fewer hands.

          Opposing these "concentrative" trends: the great American mythic hero, Self-Made-Man (SMM). He is the little guy who, through determination, integrity and ingenuity "makes it", that is, "proves he is a man", acquires status and worth in the social hierarchy. A particularly romanticized - and moralized - vision of  the oppressed yet noble SMM rose in the southern states in reaction to a perceived power imbalance between North and South. The agrarian, slave economy of the south was, in the long run, no match - economically, politically, demographically or culturally - with the emerging industrial states of the North. Ironically, slave-holding southern plantation owners saw themselves as Davids fighting the Goliaths of northern high finance. To embitter things, northern abolitionists decried slavery as moral evil before the face of God, heightening southern feelings of social and cultural inferiority. One suspects that much of the paradoxical nature of American society today is rooted in the foundational paradoxes of those early dramas and the stresslines and fracture faults they created.

           Over time, the first pole of the American psyche, the thirst for Personal Liberty, has degenerated due to the need of corporations to constantly expand markets to gain profits (their raison d'être). The Late Industrial Age culture that has evolved over the last century is characterized by a narcissistic, anomic and atomistic individualism (or perhaps pseudo-individualism). (See footnote 1)

           To maximize production, hence profits, people are "programmed" from birth - TV ads! - to consume! consume! consume! Today much, if not most, of our consumption in industrial societies is way beyond subsistence levels required to hold body and soul together. Consumption beyond mere subsistence is not in itself a bad thing, of course. Culture, in any "sophisticated" sense of the term, depends upon social surpluses being generated which are then canalized into non-subsistence (optional) activities. But today, profit driven consumption generates social, ecological and climatic pathologies. We, and our world, are sick - literally - from overconsumption. We are constantly encouraged to consume way beyond elemental biological needs, way beyond our personal needs for "self expression": books, tools, skills..  

            Our self-expressive drives - "programmed" by our evolutionary history - function, in part, to establish our "worth" or "rank" within our social matrix. This is simply basic Primate Politics as they express themselves through human beings, human hands, human voices, human thought..  So what makes modern consumer culture "pathological"? What went wrong?

             One problem: overconsumption or hyperconsumption is now taken as a sign of value, not the skills, values or truth that were discovered or expressed by the consumer. Consumption is no longer a necessity or a socially sanctioned compensation for services rendered to the community. The act of consumption itself becomes a sign of worth or rank: I am worth more than you because my car is worth more than yours.. In the final stage of alienation, the work of art is not appreciated for its own sake (or even the pleasure it provides) but for the price tag that indicates our personal (quantitative) "worth" relative to those who could not afford it. Such a culture of ostentatious, rank-assigning consumption necessarily invites competitive consumption all the way down the social hierarchy. Everybody consumes as much as they can to show their superiority over those father down the pecking order. In the (pathological) limit, our sense of worth is totally driven from the exterior, we have no center. This state of being - or lack of Being - is undoubtedly reflected in existentialist observations that we moderns lack "authenticity". 

             Many people in industrial countries do lead dull lives of drudgery where no fulfillment is found in the stultifyingly repetition of the assembly line or checkout counter. For these "wage slaves" (Karl Marx), as well as for the rich, consumption has become a (futile) act of self-affirmation: I consume, therefore I exist! But like all drugs, the fix wears off quickly and the craving soon returns hence we consume! consume! consume! - even if it is killing us. Like Alice in Wonderland we run madly to hold our place..
 
             Even the scale of modern industry makes it hard for SMM to achieve the autonomy and entrepreneurial ability his agrarian or artinasal ancestors took for granted. Aside from increasingly rare exceptions, the American Dream has become a lie and, at some level of consciousness, everyone knows it. Hence the hostility and fanaticism burning so intensely at America's core these days should surprise no one. (note 2)

            AS RH understood, SMM reached the natural limits of growth, or rather, competence sometime in the 19th century. The entrant entrepreneur was now no longer on a level playing field with his larger, long established corporate competitors. Indeed, as corporations devoured one another in periodic merger mania feeding frenzies, power and wealth become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The little guy was left with the scraps. Thus many of the higher paying industrial - and now, increasingly, white-collar - jobs are shipped overseas as multinational corporations strive to maximize profits by reducing labor costs in globalized market economy. The results: middle class (especially lower middle class) economic stagnation, Mcjobs, increasing job insecurity, industrial "rust belts", urban dead zones, self-employment and contract labor, anomia (and it's evil twin, fanaticism)..

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              From my recent forays into world history and political theory, I conclude that "history" is a dynamic, evolving process, generating both transient and long lived entities. Humans are short lived. The "Institutions" of society like the State, the Church, markets, the political and economic systems,.. tend to be relatively long lived, lasting centuries without substantial change sometimes.
 
            Political theory is the attempt to generate a mental model of the Historical Process that we live as "society" at the present point in time. Political theories are only as good as they are useful at a given place and time.

              Political theories are not, however, passive, merely descriptive labels we attatch to "things" out there in the real world. Mental models of society also form and shape - to some unknown degree - the issues and processes they hope to elucidate. It's the old chicken or egg riddle: society creates political theory which then shapes the society that created it.. Once created, political and social "forms" (tensions, patterns, Institutions, values..) tend to acquire a life of their own and evolve according to poorly understood "laws" (some hard scientists - physicists and chemist especially - doubt that there are any "laws of social evolution" to be discovered, that societies are, in principle, too complex to be comprehensible in terms of law-driven behaviors and processes, the usual objects of science..)

              Idealists who associate the USA with democracy, civil rights and personal freedom will be surprised to see the degree to which democracy and socio-economic equality were really feared by many of the Republic's founders and their political inheritors. Many state and federal politicians, sons of ruling elites, openly or covertly feared the "mob". America's political elites have been and still are, on the whole, conservative - even reactionary - in their fundamental values regardless of their nominal political affiliation: Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Progressive.. After reading APT, I now understand that often repeated neocon proverb: the American Revolution was different from those in Europe and elsewhere, it was conservative revolution, fought for conservative values..

           Reform-minded presidents like FDR (his New Deal of the Great Depression years, 1929 - 1939) came from moneyed elites. Such reformers, RH argues, did not act from any real sens of identity with the common man but from general moral and ethical principles. They held and, to some degree, acted upon a Protestant - and Enlightenment - ethic of "good works" and "Progress". They did not really want radical change in the dominant socio-economic "System". They simply wanted to round off it's rough, discordant edges which offended their moral sensibilities (worse, the System's injustices provided ammunition to the Enemy, the radical socialists and the communists). American reformers were really social engineers not revolutionaries: the furthest they went was to label themselves "Reformers".

               Since APT's first printing in 1948, the Protestant Work Ethic with its emphasis on personal integrity has been deeply eroded and replaced by more reactionary "Social Darwinist" ideologies: Ayn Rand's Objectivism, Libertarianism, Neoconservatism.. (note 3) In a blatant fashion these new social philosophies move personal self interest, selfishness, greed and narcissistic status flouting front and center. Lip service is still given to SMM, the great American hero and idealized self image, but he is now a morally hollowed figure. The primary function of his cult today is to justify policies which "make the rich richer and the poor poorer", regardless of their relative merit or any real positive social contribution. Thus, funding is cut to the public school system while well-to-do parents move their kids to private schools. The expected result occurs of course: the public schools degenerate which, of course, "justifies" further cuts in the poorly performing public system.. (note 4)

               Published less than a century ago, APT already merits the title "classic". Like a good wine, it has aged rather well. RH's writing remains fresh and engaging, he makes history a page turner, a rare gift in an academic historian! His analyses of the historical evolution of the American political process remain valid though the final stage he described  (consensus politics) has long since been replaced by the contemporary phase of ideological gridlock. (note 5)   

                I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the great nation and power that is America and above all, some of those puzzling paradoxes that mark her social and political life.

notes:

1- rise in the culture of narcissism: scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory in the USA among college students have increased 30% from 1979 - 2006:

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/brad.bushman/files/TKFCB08A.pdf

          Former Le Monde environmental reporter, Hervé Kempf, has studied the pernicious effects of a greed driven society on the environment:


2- American Dream: from wiki:

"The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work."

          Over the last 4 decades, neoconservative ideology has radically cut social services and social goods because anything having to do with the public sector (except the police and the military) is bad, evil, wasteful, counterproductive, inefficient, etc. Result: the social "playing field is less level" than it used to be. The initial advantages provided by familial wealth grow stronger over time, upward social mobility declines. SMM will not get as far in life as he was taught to believe he could. The American Dream, if not dead, is at least on life support.. 

The American Dream, a lie?

If the American Dream is defined in terms of upward social mobility (reward for competence and personal initiative), then, at the present moment, the Dream is more alive in Scandinavia than in North America!


3- Social Darwinism: The idea is simple: social and economic classes correspond to some general notion of "genetic fitness". Curtly - the poor are not oppressed, as Marx would have it, they are just inferior. Such views function, in practice, to rationalize or justify current social injustices. Darwin, to his credit, pre-emptively rejected such interpretations of his work on natural selection. For him, as is now accepted by legitimate scientific inquiry, natural selection favored co-operation and mutual aid between humans, not oppression. Thus he argued that the amount of co-operation in "even the most primitive human cultures far exceeded that seen even among the great apes", our closest living relatives.
  
4- American student performance relative to other countries:

Not good, not good..
 

5- Consensus history: While Hofstadter did not invent consensus history or politics, he became a major spokesperson and popularizer of the position, particularly after the publication of APT. This approach to history and politics downplays class or group struggle and seeks to define the common values that define and structure the American political process. Hofstadter argues that political opponents tend to face off over "peripheral" issues while sharing a common set of core values: belief in democracy, property rights, free enterprise, the Protestant Work Ethic,..