Re: Two Civilized Men Among the Barbarians

This is insanity!


"Sarah" <newsgroupsdon'[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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> http://www.blackcommentator.com/58/58_cover_dems.html
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> The character of much of what passes for debate in the United States
> signals that the nation has become the moral equivalent of Tobacco
> Road, a backwater of civilization.
>
> Humankind has traveled a long journey since the time when some folks
> walked out of Africa, and others decided to stay. Yet at the American
> center of the Earth's material wealth and military power, human
> progress has been short-circuited - smothered - by a ruling group bent
> on dragging the rest of the species down a social and moral dead end.
>
> This hyper-aggressive group maintains an iron grip on both the
> mechanisms and the terms of civil discussion, retarding the rest of
> the citizenry's ability to think and speak like other humans
> privileged to live in the developed countries. American political
> conversation is becoming nonsensical, divorced from the very purposes
> of life.
>
> Measured by the most minimal standards of the modern, industrial
> world, only two of ten Democratic candidates for President passed
> civilized muster at the September 25 debate in New York City: Rep.
> Dennis Kucinich and Rev. Al Sharpton. The rest of the field, to
> varying degrees, fail to even comprehend modern assumptions of what it
> is to be human, living among other humans.
>
> The civilizational divide
>
> Why do we work? What is the purpose of industry and commerce? Do other
> peoples have rights that stronger nations are bound to respect? Only
> Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton appear prepared to take part in the
> evolving global discussion on the central issues facing humanity,
> Americans included. Other nations have begun fashioning answers to
> these questions, to the moral, material and physical betterment of
> their inhabitants. They are reaping the benefits of a long and
> sometimes bloody debate over humans' obligations to one another, and
> the proper uses of wealth and power.
>
> In the U.S., Sharpton and Kucinich must shout to even broach these
> subjects. Kucinich is labeled a kook when he argues for "health care
> for people, not for profit" - although this is the premise on which
> all the other wealthy societies begin their discussions of health
> matters. Rev. Sharpton's platform calls for a constitutional amendment
> guaranteeing quality health care as a right, and seeks universal,
> single-payer coverage in the interim. "I would rather have no bill and
> fight for something real," he told the Pace University crowd.
>
> The mind-shrinking corporate media snicker and sneer, focusing instead
> on the other candidates' partial schemes based on the concept of
> "affordability" - barbaric constructions in which the lives of fellow
> citizens are endlessly devalued. (Candidate Carol Moseley-Braun favors
> single-payer national health care, but reveals her barbaric side in
> other matters - casting doubt on the moral grounding of all her
> positions, as we will explain, below.)
>
> The "top tier" is oblivious to the obscenity of their Social Security
> retirement age debate. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean is in
> trouble for having once suggested that the age be raised to 70, to
> ensure the continued "solvency" of the system. However, Dean's sin is
> worse than the rest of the media-favored pack only in degree - they
> all discuss Social Security retirement in insurance company actuarial
> terms, morbid calculations that fail entirely to address the basic
> questions: why are people expected to work hard for much of their
> lives, and what is the value of life after one's time in the workforce
> is over? These are the logical, natural and civilized questions with
> which societies grapple once there is enough wealth to provide
> acceptable standards of food, clothing, education and shelter for all.
> It is at this point that human populations can envision the larger
> possibilities of existence, as individuals, as nations, and as a
> species.
>
> Western Europeans treat time not spent on the job very seriously - and
> have arranged a social contract that finds many of them in the
> Caribbean for long stretches of the summer. They debate ways to
> implement national goals for progressively shorter work weeks and
> earlier retirement ages, so that the collective nation can enjoy its
> wealth and become - more interesting! The United States is even richer
> than Western Europe, but the debate over Social Security is confined
> to formulas that leave concentrated wealth untouched. In this sense,
> U.S. Social security is not a "national" program, at all, since the
> futures of citizens who have outlived their usefulness to employers is
> not financed as if it were a key component of the common, national
> mission. Longer life spans, the greatest benefit that society can
> convey to its members - and the reason humans band together to create
> societies - becomes a "problem," or so it is treated by the leading
> voices of the two American mass political parties.
>
> Dennis Kucinich promises to restore the retirement age to 65. He is,
> at least, peeking through the window at civilization.
>
> Non-thought processes
>
> Americans have been trained to cheer when the stock market goes up.
> They don't know why. Nowadays, the closing bell on Wall Street is
> likely to be tolling for their jobs. No matter - the Pavlovian
> conditioning is general: up is good. "Trade" has also become a
> positive mantra to be chanted rather than debated, even when what is
> being traded away is millions of jobs and the industrial capacity of
> the nation. None of the top tier Democrats can find the words to
> directly address the vast dislocations and suffering that other,
> corporate Americans are inflicting on their fellow citizens and the
> world. Better to bash China, instead.
>
> Kucinich is made to seem hallucinatory, when he points out that U.S.
> government policy is facilitating the impoverishment of America. "We
> need to cancel NAFTA, cancel the WTO, which makes any changes in
> NAFTA.illegal." But even "staunchly" pro-union Rep. Dick Gephardt
> cannot bring himself to "challenge the underlying structure of our
> trade," as Kucinich puts it. Dean and Kerry make just enough noises
> about workers rights and such to convince wishful thinkers that they
> are really listening.
>
> Rev. Sharpton also opposes NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. "I
> disagreed with NAFTA when Clinton was in, and I think that we have
> come to see that that disagreement was correct," said Sharpton,
> following up on Kucinich's broadside. "I think that we cannot have
> trade policy that overlooks labor, overlooks workers' rights,
> overlooks environmental concerns. We can't act like just because
> something is trade, that also that makes it right. African-Americans
> are here on a bad trade policy."
>
> Now that's breaking it down in civilized language. The slave trade was
> fantastically lucrative, a centuries-long commerce that shaped every
> society in the Americas south of Canada and allowed Europe to assume
> its unnatural position of dominance in the world. "I'm here on a bad
> trade policy," said Rev. Al. "So just because it's trade, doesn't mean
> that it is good and it is something that we should support."
>
> The largely conservative audience and the Wall Street Journal and CNBC
> hosts got a good laugh out of that one. No doubt they considered Rev.
> Sharpton's remarks gritty and homespun, a kind of comic relief. In
> fact, he is by far their superior in both intelligence and
> civilization.
>
> Trade in what, and on what terms? Business and commerce for whose
> benefit? These are the burning questions, the stuff of national and
> global debate - except in the United States, where substantive
> discussion is confined to the bottom tier of the out-of-power party.
> (Were conservative Democrats in power, as in the Clinton years, we
> would likely hear even fewer challenges to "underlying structures.")
>
> "No choice" candidates
>
> Printer friendly version of "Bush Flag Covers All" Cartoon
>
> Wars, and war profiteers, require money. No funding, no war.
> Occupations can be even more expensive. The entire cast of characters
> running for the Democratic nomination - including Lieberman - now
> claims to be opposed in some fashion to Bush's Iraq policy. But only
> two propose that Bush's policy be de-funded.
>
> Howard Dean: ".even though I did not support the war in the beginning,
> I think we have to support our troops."
>
> Joe Lieberman: ".we have no choice."
>
> Bob Graham: ".whatever is required for the troops in Iraq."
>
> John Edwards: "I will vote for, what's necessary to support the
> troops."
>
> "We have no choice" is also the Kerry and Clark position. Thus, the
> entire top tier sees no alternative to funding a policy that they so
> loudly oppose. They denounce the madness - and then hand the madman a
> check.
>
> Kucinich: "I will not vote for the $87 billion. I say bring the troops
> home unequivocally."
>
> Sharpton: "I would unequivocally vote no. Real patriots don't put
> troops in harm's way."
>
> It is eminently logical to withhold funding from adventures that one
> opposes. In a sane society, Kucinich and Sharpton would be thought
> neither courageous nor kooky for following the logic of their stated
> positions. However, voices of reason and logic are forced to the
> margins of American discourse.
>
> Possibly hoping to somehow escape from marginality, Carol Mosley-Braun
> revealed that in the final analysis she, too, is a creature of
> barbarism. Moseley-Braun has opposed the war for nearly as long and as
> fervently as Kucinich and Sharpton but, like Lot's wife, at the
> critical moment she looks back - and is lost.
>
> Braun: ".it is absolutely, I think, critical that we not cut and run."
> In the end, the former U.S. Senator cannot escape the imperatives of
> Manifest Destiny. By her moral compass, demonstrations of U.S. resolve
> are more important than other people's national sovereignty. The Black
> woman from Chicago cannot imagine that she is talking like a
> barbarian, that such patterns of thought are the principal threats to
> the survival of the human race - in short, that she is warring against
> civilization.
>
> Seconds later, Moseley-Braun waged war against English as a coherent
> language: ".it's going to be important for us to come up with the
> money to make certain that our young men and women and our reputation
> as leaders in the world is not permanently destroyed by the folly of
> preemptive war." It's not so much Moseley-Braun's fault that this
> sentence makes no sense. The logic of barbarism does not mesh with the
> realities of an inter-dependent globe. It becomes difficult to
> communicate in civilized company - the essence of George Bush's
> problem at the UN, last month.
>
> Civilized language
>
> Americans think they are guardians of civilization. In reality, they
> don't even live there. The proof is plain for all to see in the
> statistics on wealth and public service disparities, infant mortality
> rates and, most damning, incarceration levels that certify the U.S. as
> the world's gulag (25 percent of the planet's prisoners). This is
> barbarism writ large, since these conditions exist as the direct
> result of public policy, rather than as a consequence of general
> deprivation or factors external to the nation.
>
> The U.S. evolved as a nation without a real "social contract" - merely
> an agreement that white males could pursue riches without too much
> interference from the state. The contract for Indians and Blacks took
> the form of bounties for scalps and bills of sale for slaves. Now a
> relatively small elite comprised of a few million millionaire
> households and led by piratical corporate politicians, have seized the
> state. The people - the whole people - face a multitude of disasters,
> and desperately need to forge the beginnings of a real social
> contract, but they have few national historical references to draw
> upon. The dramatic exception is Black America, which has been
> compelled by history to value justice above all else.
>
> Sharpton and Kucinich bring social justice to the national political
> conversation, for which they deserve our deepest gratitude. The Black
> activist preacher and the white leftist congressman speak to civilized
> values, without which the United States will become a failed nation.
> At a pace that corporate media cannot comprehend and, therefore,
> cannot convey, the world recoils from the backward model that the U.S.
> presents in domestic as well as foreign policy. There is nothing surer
> than that the U.S. will in coming years be shrunk to normal size in
> the community of nations. When that day arrives, Americans will only
> prosper if they have learned to speak to a world of equals, in
> civilized language.
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> "When our children fail competency tests the schools lose funding.
> When our missiles fail tests, we increase funding."  ---Dennis
> Kucinich
>
>