Time to Deliver

Time to Deliver: No Turning Back, Part II

Sara Robinson — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:52:27 -0400

Last week, in Part I of this short series, I talked about the three main scenarios that dominate progressive conversations about America's future:

1) Permanent Decline -- Due to Americans' native hyperindividualism, political apathy, and overweening willingness to accept personal blame for their country's failures, the corporatists finally succeed in turning the US into Indonesia. This time, we will not find the will to fight back (or, if we do, it will be too late). As a result, in a few years there will be no more middle class, no upward mobility, few remaining public institutions devoted to the common good, no health care, no education, and no hope of ever restoring American ideals or getting back to some semblance of the America we knew.

2) Reinvented Greatness -- Americans get over their deeply individualistic nature, come together, challenge and restrain the global corporatist order, and finally establish the social democracy that the Powers That Be -- corporate, military, media, conservative -- have denied to us since the 1950s. This happens in synergy with a move to energy and food self-sufficiency, the growth of a sustainable economy, a revival of participatory democracy, and a general renewal of American values that pulses new life into our institutions and assures us a much more stable future.

3) Happy Face -- Prop up the banks, keep people in their houses, and by and by everything will get back to "normal" (defined as "how it all was a few years ago.")

I also set out three tectonic shifts that have already foreclosed on any chance we'll make our way back to the Happy Talk scenario -- deep trends that are driving us forward toward a new century that's going to be substantially different than the one we left behind. To wind up the discussion, here are three more trends that are going to have a huge effect on where America will land when this crisis ends.

4. The globalization of power
For the past 20 years, when we've used the word "globalization," we've mainly been referring to the globalization of corporate capital, labor, and trade. But where business goes, government regulators follow (and if they don't, it soon becomes obvious why they should). The recent G20 meeting to design a global response to the economic crisis and next December's Copenahagen meeting on climate change are two signs that this is, in fact, happening. Emerging global problems are being met with emerging attempts at increased global governance. And this trend has important implications for how America's role in the world might shift in the years ahead.

The Happy Talk scenario rests on the assumption that America's role as the undisputed leader of the world will remain intact through this century. There are important reasons this assumption may not be wrong. Americans -- especially those on the left -- tend to underestimate our vast economic, geopolitical, and cultural strength compared to the rest of the world, as well as the essential resilience of our democratic system. It's not a foregone conclusion that our glory days are behind us. The global outpouring of enthusiasm for our new president is just one signal that the world still very much counts on America to lead -- and will follow willingly as long as we use that power to make the whole world a better place.

But that doesn't mean things aren't going to change in some very fundamental ways. A lot of smaller countries have been traumatized by 30 years of neo-liberalism, and are banding together to demand their seat at the table. They're forming strong regional alliances that increase their ability to bring power to bear on the world stage. This cooperation is being driven by a huge and growing pile of global issues that transcend national boundaries and existing treaties, and will require the world's nations to work together closely and constantly in this century for the sake of our collective survival. (Going to war, in this closely interdependent world, will become a far less viable option.) And, as noted above, all of these countries are becoming inextricably linked by the Internet and commercial ties, giving the world's people the means and incentive to work far more closely together than we ever have before.

Because of all this, while America may still continue to dominate much of what goes on in the world, it's also going to be far more accountable for its choices to the rest of the family of nations. It's not something we've been used to, and the conservatives are already resisting it mightily (anybody who thinks state and federal government is bad is going to absolutely loathe the new global regulatory agencies). But anybody who's betting against this is betting against a strong historical tide. There's too much at stake now: on a growing number of fronts, our choice is to cooperate or die.

5. Unequal, unemployed, and unhappy
The Happy Talk scenario also completely bypasses a central political fact of this moment: Nobody trusts the rich any more. They've had 30 years to run things, unmolested by regulators and supported by a general belief that they'd do the right thing by the rest of us. American invested them with control over our futures -- only to find that those futures are now wholly-owned subsidiaries of MonsterCo. In the process of instituting the widest gap between rich and poor since the Great Depression, they betrayed that trust to enslave the working class, destroy the hopes of the middle class, and strip the professionalism out of the upper-middle class.

And we are rather out-of-sorts about this, in ways that Wall Street and Washington haven't yet begun to reckon with. If the upper classes think the country will just turn right around and go back quietly to those minimum-wage McJobs after enduring what can only be described as protracted economic rape, they're delusional. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose -- and there are too many of us out there now with that kind of freedom on our hands. Decades of repressed rage over the loss of the American Dream is surging through the cracks in our economy. There will be a reckoning -- you can bet on it.

6. Generational shifts
William Strauss and Neil Howe argued persuasively in several books that Anglo-American history has been driven in no small degree by the moods and expectations of succeeding generations. Whether America's future looks more like The Permanent Decline or Reinvented Greatness depends heavily on us -- on what we value, where our priorities lie, and which future we're more inclined to put our energies into creating.

The choice of whether to accept decline or fight for greatness is currently being negotiated between the three distinct generations that are politically active right now. On the older end are the Boomers -- the original authors of both scenarios. They've understood since they were teenagers that Decline or Greatness were the only two options; and have vacillated wildly through the years between fatalistically accepting the first and giving everything they had to achieving the second. That split is widening: now in their last productive decades, some have given into the cynicism bred by decades of loss, while others quietly kept the dream alive in their souls and now feel a growing urgency to reach for it one last time. It's now or never. They're getting old, the world's falling into chaos, and there's nothing left to lose.

In the middle is Generation X, now between the ages of 30 and 50. Fiercely pragmatic and individualistic, these children of Reagan have never seen government function effectively. Nor have they ever been impressed by collectivist visions of any kind. Whatever they have, they mostly built for themselves. ("Just Do It" and "Look out for #1" are their generational mottoes.) But now, at midlife, they're also confronting the collapse of the world this kind of me-first nihilism has wrought. They're not surprised -- failure never surprises them -- but they want something better; and they're starting to think that getting the government involved in that might not be a terrible idea, after all. In fact, it may be the only way left to git 'er done.

Rising up at the bottom are the under-30 Millennials, who raised their collective political voice for the first time in the 2008 election. They believe, with every fiber of their being, in teamwork and collective solutions. They don't doubt for a moment that Greatness is possible, and have a strong shared generational vision as to what it should look like. (On both the left and right, it looks a whole lot like the fondest 1960s dreams of their Boomer parents.) They're the best self-organizers we've seen since their GI grandparents died; and they approach the visions of their idealistic Boomer elders and the authority of their experienced Xer bosses with astonishing respect.

Strauss and Howe argued that these three particular types -- older idealists, mid-life can-do managers, and a young adult generation of teamwork-oriented optimists -- have lined up in just this way three times before in American history. The first time, it produced a revolution. The next time, 80 years later, it produced a civil war. The third time -- again, 80 years on -- this same combination waged and won World War II.

This particular constellation of generations isn't capable of letting things be. It has the vision, the organizational skill, and the cohesiveness required to ignite transformative shift on the grandest possible scale. Working together, they are a force of history that's got everything required to rewrite the economic rules, re-envision our way of life, and re-create the way the entire world works.

Their transformative season is upon us, and will be for another 15 years. While it runs, anything is possible -- certainly more than has been possible since the 1960s, and maybe even since the New Deal. By 2025, we may not recognize the world they leave us. Right now, their very presence signals that it's unwise to bet that the world will stay as it is.

* * *

The very fact that the conversation has come down to the particular two mutually exclusive scenarios tells us, all by itself, something important about this moment. The truth is that there are plenty of other options for how our future might go. But it's also true that we tend to get the future we work and plan for -- and right now, progressives believe viscerally that we have a stark choice to either get our act together and decisively reach for Greatness, or accept the only other option -- Decline.

Which means that, in the end, one of these is where we're in fact most likely to end up. Destiny has presented us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ride some powerful historical tides, and create the future we've always wanted. From this point, the outcome will depend on how boldly and courageously we strike out on that rough water, how firmly we keep our eyes fixed on the far shore, and how determined we are to make these waves take us where we want to go.

Greatness or Decline? The time for debate is over. The time to deliver is here.

Time to Deliver: No Turning Back, Part I

Sara Robinson — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:40:45 -0400

Terrance's last post heroically set out and engaged the two dominant scenarios about the American future that progressives seem to be wrestling with right now. These two scenarios might be described as:

1) Permanent Decline -- Due to Americans' native hyperindividualism, political apathy, and overweening willingness to accept personal blame for their country's failures, the corporatists finally succeed in turning the US into Indonesia. This time, we will not find the will to fight back (or, if we do, it will be too late). As a result, in a few years there will be no more middle class, no upward mobility, few remaining public institutions devoted to the common good, no health care, no education, and no hope of ever restoring American ideals or getting back to some semblance of the America we knew.

2) Reinvented Greatness -- Americans get over their deeply individualistic nature, come together, challenge and restrain the global corporatist order, and finally establish the social democracy that the Powers That Be -- corporate, military, media, conservative -- have denied to us since the 1950s. This happens in synergy with a move to energy and food self-sufficiency, the growth of a sustainable economy, a revival of participatory democracy, and a general renewal of American values that pulses new life into our institutions and assures us a much more stable future.

Conservatives and the mainstream media, of course, are also offering a third scenario:

3) Happy Face -- Prop up the banks, keep people in their houses, and by and by everything will get back to "normal" (defined as "how it all was a few years ago.")

In my last article, I argued that Scenario #3 is a chimera -- and Terrance's sobering list of everything that's wrong "here" and now brought it home with grave finality. There is no going back. That future was foreclosed on right along with the houses and the banks. You can only believe in the Happy Face story if you willfully ignore the deep structural changes afoot in the way the world works -- the changes that have closed and locked the door back to "normal" behind us for good.

There's a small number of overwhelmingly strong global trends that explain why all this stuff is breaking, and why just fixing it isn't even on the table. I originally wanted to summarize all of them in one post; but after struggling with it last week, I finally realized that it wasn't going to be that easy. So, starting today, I'm kicking off a short series of posts outlining the big, deep trends that are driving us toward change. Some of these will be familiar to regular readers (they're horses I flog often); others will be new. But when we take full stock of the size and quantity of major moving parts in the machinery that's propelling us on toward the next future, it becomes very, very clear that going back to the 20th Century isn't anywhere among our current options.

Today, I'll start with the first three, with the rest following later in the week.

1. Energy regime change
The first reason there's no going back to the way it was is that there's simply not enough oil left in the ground -- or carbon sinks left in the world -- to sustain America as we've known it. We may well be able to sustain some semblance of that way of life (or perhaps, find our way to one even more satisfying); but we won't be running it on oil or coal.

And when the oil goes, so goes the empire. Empires rise and fall on their ability to dominate and capitalize on the world's dominant energy supply (whatever that might be at the time). Thomas Homer-Dixon of the University of Toronto has argued persuasively that the Romans rose on their unsurpassed ability to organize and deploy the Mediterranean sunlight and turn it into wealth. The Dutch rose on their ability to develop technology to harness wind and turn it into wealth. The British invented a repertoire of machines that ran on coal, which they had an abundance of, and turned it into wealth. The American empire, of course, has been built on oil and the things that ran on it. (It's probably true that all the wealth you personally own is somehow traceable back to that resource.) America's power is rooted in the geopolitical fact that we've been able to control the most potent form of energy ever found, and turn it into more wealth than anyone's ever seen.

In all cases, empires finally failed when the systems that enabled them to dominate that energy resource collapsed (Rome, and probably us); or the energy source itself was made obsolete when some newer, more concentrated form of energy came along (the Netherlands, England). And in no case did an empire built on one energy regime successfully position itself to dominate the next one as well: they were are almost always too deeply invested in the old ways to recognize or capitalize on the next thing when it came. Based on these precedents, America's future imperial ambitions in an age of peak oil and global climate change look questionable at best.

America's industrial powers spent the 20th century amassing vast stores of political and economic power based in an oil economy. They're gearing up to fight the change away from that for all they're worth, for as long as they can hold out. But the alternatives are actively emerging all around them now -- and if history holds true, the odds are that their very resistance will cost them any chance they might have had to become the dominant players in that new regime.

The good news is that losing the basis of our empire will greatly increase the odds that we'll be able to restore our democracy. Another lesson of history is that these are two incompatible ideals, and when a country truly chooses to be one, it necessarily gives up on on being the other.

2. Environmental collapse
It's not just climate change. We're losing topsoil, fresh water, fisheries, forests, and useful plant and animal species faster than our scientists can count the losses. The first three, in particular, are so urgent that it's entirely possible that one of them may emerge as a serious threat to continued human life long before climate change does. (And climate change, of course, is happening faster than even last year's pessimists dare to imagine.)

This change slams the door on any hope of ever going back to the world we knew. Capitalism as we've known it was based on the assumption of a world with infinitely exploitable resources. We're bumping up hard against the limits now, and our economic system is either going to adapt to this new reality (and there are plenty of ways that it could do that, given a proper shove from suppliers, consumers and regulators), or give way to some other form of economic organization that incentivizes us to preserve and invest in the earth's resources and processes rather than gain profit by permanently destroying them.

(This is what cap-and-trade is about, at its core: creating a market in something that has very real value to us -- a low-carbon atmosphere -- but currently doesn't show up on the balance sheets. That's not a "tax," as the Republicans would have it; it's simply finally putting a price to a real cost that's currently visible to everybody but the market.)

Progressives have been saying since the early 1970s that that the limitless-growth model isn't sustainable over the long run. Forty years later, the long run is today: we ignore the accumulating list of undeniable environmental breakdowns at our own peril. As long as the powers that be keep placing their bets on the old assumptions and try to go back to business as usual, it's a safe bet for us that they won't survive as dominant players in the future. Unfortunately, humankind as a whole may not, either.

3. The dawning of the Information Age
The people currently running the show in America understand that the global spread of computer technology is changing the way the world does business and culture. What they don't understand -- and we must -- is that they've grossly underestimated the depth, breadth, and deep nature of that change; or what it means over the longer haul for them...and for the rest of us.

We're already seeing signs that getting the world on one big network (assuming we can find the energy to sustain that -- see #1) may be triggering the biggest ontological shift since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment deposed the Earth (and God) at the center of the universe. What followed was the biggest revolution in human culture in 2,000 years. Philosophy and religion (the Reformation, humanism), art and education, science and mathematics, technology and architecture, banking and commerce, and social mores and politics were completely transformed by these new ways of understanding reality. (Our own constitutional democracy is one of that era's brightest artifacts.) The birth pangs of this modern era convulsed the West for centuries. It was damned bloody -- but sweeping revolutions in human consciousness always are.

And we may be there again. The image of the local node intimately connected to a worldwide network -- and our deepening collective understanding of the ways complex systems behave -- are combining to fundamentally change the way we view ourselves and our relationship to the global whole. Those ontological shifts, coupled with the new sea of information we're all floating in, have already transformed science and math. The coming century will likely see the biggest revolution in medicine since Hippocrates as we explore the genome. Information technology has been the platform on which the globalization of banking and commerce began to rise, which is in turn demanding new kinds of trade and new regulatory structures.

These new models of reality are revolutionizing art, media, and education; and providing new metaphors for human experience that are re-awakening religion and philosophy. Wealth is dematerializing: we are owning less stuff and more bits, which will come in handy in a world where resources are running short. Basic concepts like "humanity," "privacy," "property," and "community" will be challenged and re-defined as the transformation proceeds; and those new definitions will in turn force us to re-think the meaning of our existence and our aspirations for this world.

This shift could be one of the dominant forces shaping the history of the coming century. There's enough to be said about it for a whole post (and more); but right now, what's important is that transformations of this magnitude always demand the creation of new political and economic forms. I've already outined the ways in which Enlightenment-era economic ideas are failing us. But it's also quite possible that American-style democracy, which dominated the modern era and proceeded from its assumptions about the world, won't be adequate to this age (at least, not in its current form). Political power flows differently now; and it may turn out that we'll need to find different ways to organize it.

A couple of examples may help. First, the movement toward localized food, water, and power may mean that local politics become far more important -- though they'll exist within a global matrix of small governments sharing solutions, sponsoring research, and forming coalitions where needed. Second, large ecological, urban, and cultural regions are becoming more important than counties or states, especially when it comes to solving environmental and infrastructure issues. Both these forces may eventually lead to a structural re-ordering of government power.

In the next few decades, as these changes accelerate, computer-based democracy spreads, the breakdowns become more acute, and the need for a new approach becomes more evident to everyone, we or our children may be having serious discussions about what the post-Enlightenment Constitution America 2.0 should look like. In the short run, the challenges to politics-as-we've-always-done it are already reverberating through the system, creating accountability loops that Washington and the statehouses have only begun to understand, let alone reckon with.

They understand that they can use the Web to raise money. What they don't yet understand is just how often they're going to have to dance now with the folks that brought them to the party.

---------------
That's the first three. They're huge. And we're just getting started.

Time to Deliver: The Transformation to Come

Terrance Heath — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:34:07 -0400

Last week, I wrote: "After a transformational election and at the beginning of a transformational presidency, progressives need to remember: the real transformation hasn't happened yet." The truth is, there will be a transformation. The question is what kind of transformation.

A few days later, when congressional Republicans rolled out their "budget," I wrote:

Now, [Republicans'] "Road to Recovery" shows that the party has reached a dead end, and inadvertently (or perhaps intentionally) told Americans the truth: When it comes meeting the challenges America faces, and relieving the increasing economic pain visited upon our families and communities, they have no ideas.

The question is what their arrival at this dead end signifies. Are they just out of gas? Or have they — and we — finally arrived at the destination they had in mind all along?

After all, thirty years of their best thinking, and policy making paved the road we traveled to get here.

But where's "here"?

The headlines — and the statistics they report with such a stead drumbeat that we may already be growing inured to them and their implications — are familiar by now.

"Here" is where the unemployment rate is likely 9.5%.

"Here" is where job prospects are the lowest in 27 years.

"Here" is where the unemployed are forced to take lower paying jobs in order to survive.

"Here" is where consumer prices continue to rise.

"Here" is where wages have remained stagnant for more than a decade, despite rising productivity.

"Here" is where the rising cost of college has widened the higher education gap and slowed upward mobility.

"Here" is where 1 in 5 mortgages are "under water".

"Here" is where one in nine homes stand vacant.

"Here" is where those hit hardest by the economic downturn have gotten no help; where food stamp enrollment has jumped to a record 31.8 million.

"Here" is where more Americans are facing "food insecurity," formerly known as "hunger."

"Here" is where tent cities are rising and 1 in 50 children are facing homelessness.

"Here" is where the richest have gotten far richer, as the richest one percent in 2006 earned the highest share of the nation's income possibly since 1929.

"Here" is where the richest 400 Americans nearly doubled their share of all the income earned in the United States.

"Here" is where in 2007 the top one percent owned 35% of the world's wealth and the top 0.001 percent held one fifth.

"Here" is where income inequality has increased sharply since 2000, placing the United States between Mexico and Turkey based on its rate of inequality.

"Here" is where the previous decade's progress in reversing poverty have been erased in this one, and poverty has become more concentrated.

"Here" is the destination some conservatives had in mind all along. Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote:

Anti-unionization, deregulation, and increased outsourcing are all hallmarks of contemporary conservatism. So, at least we know who to thank for our current situation. But that's the unspoken message of conservative economic philosophy in a globalized economy: the only way Americans can "compete in a global economy" as envisioned and delivered by conservatism is to accept a lower standard of living. As low as the market demands. How low? Read up on working and living standards in just about any country you can find on any label on just about anything in your own house.

If, in your closet or cupboard, you find something made or manufactured in Indonesia, It might interest you that for some conservatives the ultimate goal is to make the U.S. more like Indonesia.

AMY GOODMAN: What should we understand right now, Michael Parenti?

MICHAEL PARENTI: Well, we should understand that the problem we're facing is one which has to do with equity and fairness, that when the foundation gets consumed, the apex gets bloated, it's going to collapse. And that’s just what’s happened. We had eight years of a president telling us that the economy was doing very well, and for his guys, it was doing very well. But in those eight years, wages remained flat or actually declined. And what we had here is so much money and nowhere to put it anymore. But that's because there were no people below able to consume and buy the things they were supposed to buy. The assumption was that the housing market would just continue to go up and up and up, so you can do all these finaglings, but there weren’t enough people to buy these new houses. You had, in 2006, five people doing the work. By 2007, four workers were doing the work that it took five to do in 2006. That was a 20 percent increase in productivity, but there wasn’t any 20 percent or ten or five or three percent increase in income to those workers. People are just working harder and harder for less and less.

And the goal really — the goal is really to bring America to a closer resemblance to Indonesia. The goal is to avoid Denmark and get Indonesia. I mean, they say things like that. In 1978, a number of these financiers came out and said, "This country is just heading for a social democracy, and we don't want that." I mean, they used the term "social democracy." They're aware of these things. A few months ago in The New Yorker, there was an article about how Republicans had a loss for issues, and one of them said, "Well, the reason we're at a loss is because we've accomplished all we wanted to. We've destroyed the social democracy." And that's their goal.

In The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein writes about how Indonesia among other countries were introduced to globalization via a free-market fundamentalist makeover — called "the Asian Miracle" — by the IMF, which demanded that in order to receive much needed loans countries make deep budget cuts, leading to mass layoffs and the absence of services at a time when citizens were reeling from the shock of their sudden introduction to poverty and hunger. In Indonesia, workers who could afford to buy fish and rice were reduced almost overnight to surviving on rice alone. Basic services — formerly public enterprises — were privatized, and prices quickly rose above the what the newly jobless and poverty stricken could afford. In some countries, laws against massive layoffs were repealed so that foreign corporations about to take over the privatized industries could slash overhead as much as they wanted. In others, minimum wage requirements were repealed, making it more difficult for those who did have jobs to sustain themselves.

Sound familiar yet?

From the conservative insistence of cutting budgets — and, by extension, social services at the exact moment when more people need them — to their desire to see the auto worker unions weakened, auto workers paid far less, and the auto industry — the largest remnant of an all-but-dead manufacturing sector — finally dead so that foreign auto companies (that pay far less and offer far fewer benefits) can move in to employ a population sufficiently softened up to accept almost any work, at any wage, and under any conditions (because it's at least a step above living in a tent, or dancing topless) the conservative program bears a close resemblance to the "shock" treatment Klein describes.

That's not to say that the current crisis was entirely planned or purposely caused. But the consequences of conservative economic policies are coming together now to create a transformational moment for those whose ideal vision is an America much more like Indonesia, or any other country sufficiently shocked into submission by the free-market fundamentalists.

The multiple "shocks," as Klien calls them, serve a purpose.

And if you listen to them now, I mean, it's fascinating and outrageous. They're talking about doing nothing, just putting a cap on all spending, that the market is in a stage of correction. They use terms like "correction" or "adjustment." They don’t mind recessions. Recessions are fine. It allows them to buy up smaller companies at bargain prices. It disciplines labor. It humiliates and beats back people. And this, I think, is what we're facing. And I'm infuriated by the Republicans in the Congress and the way they're going at this. The only passion they show is to protect the tax cuts for the super rich. That seems to be the only interest they have.

What's being all but destroyed, is the social contract and the concept of a common good. It's among those contracts that the crisis has made rewritable It's also that which Josh Marshall describes as a set of "social bargains that explain why it is that the overwhelming number of people are content with the fact that some people make $45,000 a year and other people make $45,000,000 a year." But that's not all that's being destroyed. What was left of that contract after being whittled away for the last few decades, was worn way even further by privations (mentioned above) endured by citizens who have watched hundreds of billions of dollars being handed over, with few if any strings attached, to the very corporate entities who helped cause the current crisis and profited handsomely in the process.

All that's needed is a little more time, and that's what conservatives in Congress and the media are doing: running out the clock, and betting that if nothing is done to relieve Americans' current economic pain, the effect of all the previous shocks — whether delivered by chance or design — will set in, and with it resignation.

Signs indicate, we're nearly there now. Despite all the ink spilled over "populist anger," little has — or probably will — come of the outrage that flared up in the last few weeks, and that has flamed up with every report of corporate excess or another bailout disbursement.

The furor over the AIG bonuses (bonuses that were $53 billion more than we thought) effectively ended with the 90% tax bill (whether or not anyone thought it was a good idea) quietly tabled in the Senate. . Previous attempts to ~~address~~ placate the anger of not-yet-bailed out taxpayers who nonetheless foot the bill for the bailout met a similar fate, ending up de-fanged or drowned in the ~~bathtub~~ quietly killed.

Even wealthy tax cheats will get a break, with a huge reduction in penalties, if they come forward voluntarily, after hiding upwards of $13 trillion in what would be taxable income. (Herein lies the problem with an economic policy consisting of little more than massive tax breaks for the wealthy; there's no way to ensure that what would have been tax revenues will be invested into anything that would create jobs, or put back into the economy.)

Yet, national protests across the country this month drew only small crows of protestors, far short of the 10,000 forecasted by organizers. Despite much-reported death threats, the tour bus for the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous" (I prefer something like "Lifestyles of the Rich and Blameless"), delivered to the driveways of AIG's executives, some incredibly polite activists. They chatted with the security guard at the home of one AIG employee, read a letter a letter they wished to deliver to the executive (who refused to come outside), placed it in the mailbox when they couldn't, and quietly drove away.

We've seen nothing like the rising anger in Europe. Sure, Americans protested outside the homes of AIG executives, but — despite death threats and one Senator's nostalgia for harakiri — we saw no vandalism, like that visited upon the home and car of former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin, by Europeans who were upset over his ₤700,000 ($1,006,935.26) pension and ₤1.8 million ($2,590,047.25), after RBS lost 91% of its value in slightly less than two years under his leadership. RBS was save only when the UK government took a 68% stake in the bank. And Goodwin firmly refused to give up his pension, even though his "leadership of RBS" caused pension funds to lose millions.

Sure, the workers at Republic Windows & Doors staged a sit-in that eventually won them a $1.75 million deal that included two months of salary and benefits. They became "a symbol of the plight of employees put out of work at a time when banks and financial institutions have been receiving federal bailouts," by locking themselves in the factory for six days. They did not, however, take their manager hostage as workers at a 3M factory in France did, due to anger over layoffs, only to release him two days later, as negotiations with the company continued.

It's not that Americans aren't as angry as Europeans. Indeed the anonymous email claiming credit for the vandalism against Goodwin could have been written by any American worker experiencing the worst of the downturn.

The author of an e-mail message sent anonymously to a local newspaper Wednesday claimed responsibility for the damage and said: "We are angry that rich people, like him, are paying themselves a huge amount of money and living in luxury while ordinary people are made unemployed, destitute and homeless."

(Of course, this isn't intended to condone such actions or advocate for similar action here or anywhere else.)

Americans are plenty angry, and justifiably so.

Americans aren't mad at the bonuses in and of themselves. Americans are angry about the bonuses because they are angry about the recession. Because they are angry at Wall Street. Because they are angry at the bailout. The specific anger at the bonuses is just a vehicle for other, broader anger right now. To not recognize this is an extraordinary level of tone-deafness. There is a direct, obvious connection between anger over the bonuses and people being worried about their jobs.

As much as many political observers like to think otherwise, people are not dumb. Right now, Americans can quickly draw a connection between their economic condition and people on Wall Street getting rich.

But, as journalist Matt Taibbi writes, not nearly angry enough. And that may be the most significant sign of the danger we face.

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

They are not angry enough, because — though the course of treatment took a litte longer for Americans — the shock therapy has worked frighteningly well.

The texture of discontent (or lack thereof) can say a lot about a nation, and that Americans today are less likely to rebel may not be an entirely positive sign.

It certainly doesn’t mean we have more love, patience or tolerance for one another. Indeed, it may mean just the opposite, that we tend not to trust one another and that we are more alienated from our neighbors than ever before. The lack of direct action could signal the weakening of a social contract that keeps people meaningfully invested in the fate of our country — which may, in turn, be hindering our ability to resolve this crisis.

...We may also have anger fatigue. Each day brings more layoffs and more news of taxpayer-financed corporate office renovations. Add to this the Iraq war, which is six years old this month, and a national debt that will likely rise by trillions. Such reports provoke fury but after some time, even the righteously indignant can tire and accept the outrageous as status quo.

Ultimately, however, what could keep the lid on unrest is the very issue that has pushed us toward the cliff: our high levels of personal and household debt. The average American owes about $9,000 on credit cards alone. Indebtedness redirects an individual’s energies inward: failing to pay the mortgage and college tuition can bring up feelings of anxiety, shame and a sense of personal failure.

Beyond blog posts, ranting in online forums, and emails to lawmakers (which have produced such obvious results as...) too many Americans may isolate themselves out of shame, and decline direct action out of fear.

After all, if the steady drumbeat of layoffs has you worried that you're next, how likely are you to take time off to show up for a protest? The day the boss doesn't see your face may be the day he decides he doesn't need you. Lose your job, and you lose your health insurance. How are you going to pay for those medicines that keep your blood pressure, or some other condition under control? How are you going to get your kid's asthma treated. Beyond that, how are you going to continue to pay your mortgage? Not to mention payments for the car you need in order to get to work? And what about that credit card bill? (You know. The one with the newly increased interest rate you just found out about?)

You probably know people who've lost their jobs, and how they've fared since. You may even walk past the empty cubicles and barren desks of former coworkers on your way to your own, as you also remember the details of their departure. Without necessarily saying as much, your employer has probably sent a clear message: "You could be next. So, watch your step."

In some cases, under the guise of "recession" pressure, [employers] may be waging a secret war against their own workers, using even the most innocuous transgressions of work-place rules as the trigger for firings -- and so, of course, putting the fear of god into those who remain. In this way, company payrolls are not only being reduced by mass layoffs, but workers are being squeezed for ever greater productivity in return for lower wages, worse hours, and less benefits. The weapon of choice is the specter of unemployment, a kind of death by a thousand (or a million) cuts.

Companies stand to gain a lot these days from such small-scale but decisive actions. After all, they reap a double benefit. Not only do they pare down the size of their payroll, often without needing -- as in Juanita's case -- to consent to unemployment compensation, but they also contribute to a climate of intensifying fear. Workers who remain on the job are now not only on edge about lay-offs or scaled-back hours, but also know that a late return from a bathroom or lunch break might mean being shown the door, becoming another member of the legions of unemployed -- now at 12.5 million and rising fast.

Nothing less than a revolution, as Taibbi put it, is underway.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

It has been for a while. And American workers have been isolated from one another, frightened out joining together in resistance by an long-standing anti-unionization campaign (one, in fact, waged by the very banks those very workers are bailing out with their tax dollars). That's why you're probably also certain your co-workers won't risk standing up for or with you. After all, there's a reason why there haven't been more events like the Republic Window & Door sit-in.

The problem is, if we don't see more Americans coming together in just that way, we may wake up to a transformed America alright, but not transformed in the way so many hoped when they voted on November 4th.

If Wall Street gets its way, the "reforms" may further consolidate power and ratify a corporate state--a grotesque hybrid that combines the worst aspects of socialism and capitalism. The reform ideas announced by Geithner would plant the seeds by creating a "systemic risk" regulator, presumably the Federal Reserve, to oversee the largest, most politically adept banks and financial firms that qualify as "too big to fail." Capitalism, with its inherent tendency toward monopoly, would have the means to monopolize democracy (see my recent Washington Post article.)

Another transformation has been set in motion, too, as William Greider points out.

Something fundamental has been altered in American politics. Encouraged by Obama's message of hope, agitated by darkening economic prospects, many people have thrown off sullen passivity and are trying to reclaim their role as citizens. This disturbs the routines of Washington but has great potential for restoring a functioning democracy. Timely intervention by the people could save the country from some truly bad ideas now circulating in Washington and on Wall Street. Ideas that could lead to the creation of a corporate state, legitimized by government and financed by everyone else. Once people understand the concept, expect a lot more outrage.

People have nearly grasped that concept, but this "revolution of rising resignation" must first be defeated by the "revolution of rising expectations" I in the previous post. To quote de Tocqueville again:

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

~ Letter to Pierre Freslon, 23 September 1853 Selected Letters, p. 296 as cited in Toqueville's Road Map p. 103

Like the proverbial woman who didn't realize she was married to a drunk until he came home sober, only a significant change can move Americans who know — as New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said of the AIG bonuses — "something is deeply wrong" to the transformational conclusion that "it doesn't have to be this way." From health care to tax reform to job creation, and more, Obama's budget proposal offers progressive the best opportunity yet to give Americans real, tangible evidence that "it doesn't have to be this way." If we can accomplish that, as Greider wrote, "Once the people understand the concept, expect a lot more outrage."

And if that outrage is fueled not just by Americans' anger at their current condition, but also by knowledge that another, better way is possible, expect change. Expect transformation. But, as Sara said, don't expect to go back to how it was, if this transformation doesn't happen.

The important fact about this new era we find ourselves in is this: We can't ever go back to how it was. The world we've known since World War II is gone, and it's not ever coming back. Americans are in varying stages of accepting this reality -- but the sooner they do, the better off we'll be. There are vast structural changes (which, in themselves, are fodder for another post) that are profoundly re-shaping our entire reality, and which are not going away no matter how insistently our elites try to obfuscate or deny them. One way or another, now or later, we are going to be forced to address those shifts, and devise a new economy, new technologies, and new social priorities that will enable us to adapt to them.

The only real choice we have right now is whether we're going do this change the easy way -- thoughtfully, exercising our collective foresight to make clear-headed decisions that will ease us through a peaceful and relatively smooth transition; or whether we'll choose to go down hard by continuing to postpone dealing with it, building up the pressure until there's an inevitable explosion that utterly flattens us economically, environmentally, politically, and socially. That's the deal now. Face up to it while it's relatively cheap and easy; or face up to it later, when our options and resources will both be much fewer.

One transformation, the one Americans truly need, is waiting in the wings for the final push that will start it on the road to becoming a reality.

One transformation has been underway for a long time now, both here and all over the world. But it's been slower here, probably because the principle of the boiled frog has applied, thus far.

They say that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water,it will leap out right away to escape the danger.

But, if you put a frog in a kettle that is filled with water that is cool and pleasant,and then you gradually heat the kettle until it starts boiling,the frog will not become aware of the threat until it is too late.

The frog's survival instincts are geared towards detecting sudden changes.

This is a story that is used to illustrate how people might get themselves into terrible trouble.

This parable is often used to illustrate how humans have to be careful to watch slowly changing trends in the environment, not just the sudden changes. Its a warning to keep us paying attention not just to obvious threats but to more slowly developing ones.

For the past 30 years, everyday Americans have withstood ever increasing economic heat. Now that some are starting to complain about the temperature, we're nearing the moment when we can either make the great leap or sit still, convinced or convincing ourselves that the water is still fine. Either way, change is inevitable.

What's the temperature now? How much longer can we afford to wait?

Time to Deliver: Seven Steps to Revolution, Revisited

Sara Robinson — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:06:23 -0400

Terrance Heath kicked off our conversation by invoking Alexis de Tocqueville's observation that change comes about as a "revolution of expectations." Since how people greet and adapt to transformative change is a subject I'm rather passionate about, I'd like to riff on this a bit.

De Tocqueville was absolutely right in his observation that people will accept a brutal status quo as long as things stay pretty much as they've always been; but will revolt when their rising expectations are dashed. In the 160 years since he made that observation, other people have expanded on it considerably. For example, a little over a year ago, I wrote a piece called When Change is Not Enough: Seven Steps to Revolution, which laid out sociologist James Davies' view of the seven essential criteria that have always been present before all modern-era revolutions. Davies' criteria, published in 1962, included:

1. A refinement of de Tocqueville's observation about people's expectations. In particular, Davies said, revolutions happen when a long trend of rising expectations and living standards drops off suddenly. When people who'd always expected to do better are abruptly doing worse, their mood turns ugly, and you can expect somebody's head will roll.

2. Broken trust between the upper and lower classes. When the upper classes no longer see their fate as being tied to that of those below them, forfeit their greater responsibility for the common good, and start preying on the underclasses instead, the best you're going to get is a populist uprising. And the worst is a full-on class war prominently featuring guillotines in the town square.

3. A professional and intellectual class that breaks ranks with the upper classes (with whom they usually have a strong alliance), and sides with the lower classes instead. These disaffected bourgeoisie provide the leadership and management skills that can catalyze a small local uprising into a serious national rebellion.

4. Incompetent government that either fails to recognize the people's declining fortunes, or recognizes them but doesn't come up with plausible solutions, or comes up with good solutions but proves to be inept in implementing reform.

5. A new era requiring major structural (economic, technological, political, environmental, and/or cultural) changes that are being ignored or even actively resisted by the ruling classes because they won't let the status quo change. As JFK put it: "Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."

6. Fiscal irresponsibility, which is usually what causes the triggering decline in expectations. Almost always, these reversals are brought about by inept or corrupt governments that mismanage the national economy to the point of indebtedness, bankruptcy, and collapse.

7. Capricious use of force, both domestically and abroad. Unfettered police misbehavior at home and deployment of forces to stupid wars far yonder both undermine public confidence in the government's basic commitment to the rule of law, and eventually drives citizens to withdraw their consent to be governed and rebel.

I elaborated on these seven points at some length in that article, pointing out the specific ways the Bush Administration had pushed America past the red line on every single one of these criteria. On the up side, Candidate Obama seemed to understand these factors intuitively, and addressed them often on the campaign trail.

But what worries me -- and many progressives -- is that President Obama, now on the job, seems to have developed a tin ear for the same issues he seemed so in tune with a year ago. While still he's a virtuoso at articulating our national panic (#1), his solutions are so far doing absolutely nothing to bring the upper classes (#2) back into sync with the rest of us. (We'll see if the AIG bonus debacle taught him anything about this.) His incremental approach is also stalling progress on #4, #5, and #6 -- none of which will be resolved until he finds the intestinal fortitude to pull the trigger on the zombie banks, and Congressional leaders get serious about getting his tax reforms passed. Also: while there's been significant progress on #7, that's not going to be resolved until Obama fully and completely repudiates the entire Bush torture legacy; and Congress begins to honestly reckon with the war crimes committed by the previous administration.

In short: The Bush administration left behind a political, economic, and social pressure cooker that was building up a dangerous head of steam toward violent, revolutionary change. Obama's lifted the bobbler and let a bit of that pressure escape; but the seal is still tight, and the heat under the pot is rising faster than ever. If he doesn't find a way to resolve these issues and/or channel the outrage soon, Davies' model suggests that our last best chance for peaceful evolution will soon enough be behind us, leaving us to work this transformation out on by far more barbaric means.

This is why, while I understand the urgency many of my colleages here at CAF feel about the need to keep up pressure on the administration, I don't necessarily agree that it's now or never -- either we push through our transformative agenda in the small window of the next few years, or we miss the opportunity, the corporatists will win, and the world will somehow go back to how it was.

The important fact about this new era we find ourselves in is this: We can't ever go back to how it was. The world we've known since World War II is gone, and it's not ever coming back. Americans are in varying stages of accepting this reality -- but the sooner they do, the better off we'll be. There are vast structural changes (which, in themselves, are fodder for another post) that are profoundly re-shaping our entire reality, and which are not going away no matter how insistently our elites try to obfuscate or deny them. One way or another, now or later, we are going to be forced to address those shifts, and devise a new economy, new technologies, and new social priorities that will enable us to adapt to them.

The only real choice we have right now is whether we're going do this change the easy way -- thoughtfully, exercising our collective foresight to make clear-headed decisions that will ease us through a peaceful and relatively smooth transition; or whether we'll choose to go down hard by continuing to postpone dealing with it, building up the pressure until there's an inevitable explosion that utterly flattens us economically, environmentally, politically, and socially. That's the deal now. Face up to it while it's relatively cheap and easy; or face up to it later, when our options and resources will both be much fewer.

That's why, if we miss this political moment, we can trust that there will be another one. And another one, and another one. (When Terrence says we're only at the beginning of the process, he's probably understating the case. This is going to be a very long haul.) The problem, though, is that with every opportunity that passes, the odds that we'll be able to navigate this with minimal losses grow smaller. For one thing: the weaker the economy gets, the harder it will be dig ourselves out again. (See: Japan.) For another: the longer Obama fails to do what he said he'd do -- and what we all elected him to do -- the greater the risk that he'll lose our commitment and trust, and the less coherent our responses will be. Since our trust in him is all the political capital he has -- and the last best hope we have -- he can't afford to stall, and we can't afford to let him.

We need to do this now. Not because we're not going to get another chance; but because turning back is no longer a viable choice. In my next post, I'd like to take a closer look at that growing pile of deep structural reasons why that's so.

Time To Deliver

Terrance Heath — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:53:17 -0400

Last week, when the fury over AIG bonuses was just peaking, I read something that jolted me out of own anger and into a realization:

After a transformational election and at the beginning of a transformational presidency, progressives need to remember: the real transformation hasn’t happened yet. People don’t yet have a tangible vision of something better than the past eight years or the current crisis. They have hope, but hope wears thin if people have nothing that they can see with their own eyes, hold in their hands, or experience in their own lives as evidence of the possibility of something better.

It was a passage from a book about modern-day slavery that jolted me that morning, with a refresher on a political philosopher I read as a student but had since forgotten.

In the early nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville looked at how revolutions and democracies came about: He noted that under extreme dictatorships revolutions rarely happened: it was only when people began to have a vision of something better that they would rush toward change. He noted how it was only after reforms occurred or economic prosperity arrived that popular revolt began. Though Tocqueville never used the phrase himself, the idea became known as the "revolution of rising expectations"

As soon as I could, I searched for the de Tocqueville quote paraphrased above.

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

~ Letter to Pierre Freslon, 23 September 1853 Selected Letters, p. 296 as cited in Toqueville's Road Map p. 103

We are in the anteroom of that transformational moment we worked for during the campaign and voted for on November 4th. It's hot, crowded, and Americans have been waiting there for a long time; waiting "rush toward change."

And Americans are beyond cranky, waiting decades for a prosperity that was promised but has failed to show up.

Conservative columnist David Frum, in his own way, acknowledged as much when he wrote his recent Newsweek article. (Actually, it was in an column wrote in 2007, quoted in his Newsweek piece.)

Even before the November 2008 defeat—even before the financial crisis and the congressional elections of November 2006—it was already apparent that the Republican Party and the conservative movement were in deep trouble. And not just because of Iraq, either (although Iraq obviously did not help).

At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care. Political parties that do not deliver economic improvement for the typical person do not get reelected. We Republicans and conservatives were not delivering. The reasons for our failure are complex and controversial, but the consequences are not.

It's the same challenge progressives face: delivering proof that progressive ideas and policies can solve the problems American's are facing.

We, however, have several advantages. The public, in poll after poll, is progressive on the issues progressives are addressing. What's more, where conservatives are without a relevant message and without an effective messenger, we have a blueprint to begin building the tangible evidence of change — positive change — that the progressive majority of Americans need to see and feel in their daily lives for that transformative moment talked and written about so much to actually manifest.

In the introduction to his budget proposal, Obama focused on something that's been missed or ignored in the past two weeks. Much has been said and written about the public anger over the AIG bonuses, but less attention has been paid to the deep roots of that anger.

We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes. Our economy is in a deep recession that threatens to be deeper and longer than any since the Great Depression. More than three and a half million jobs were lost over the past 13 months, more jobs than at any time since World War II. In addition, another 8.8 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs. Manufacturing employment has hit a 60-year low. Our capital markets are virtually frozen, making it difficult for businesses to grow and for families to borrow money to afford a home, car, or college education for their kids. Many families cannot pay their bills or their mortgage payments. Trillions of dollars of wealth have been wiped out, leaving many workers with little or nothing as they approach retirement. And millions of Americans are unsure about the future—if their job will be there tomorrow, if their children will be able to go to college, and if their grandchildren will be able to realize the full promise of America.

This crisis is neither the result of a normal turn of the business cycle nor an accident of history. We arrived at this point as a result of an era of profound irresponsibility that engulfed both private and public institutions from some of our largest companies’ executive suites to the seats of power in Washington, D.C. For decades, too many on Wall Street threw caution to the wind, chased profits with blind optimism and little regard for serious risks—and with even less regard for the public good. Lenders made loans without concern for whether borrowers could repay them. Inadequately informed of the risks and overwhelmed by fine print, many borrowers took on debt they could not really afford. And those in authority turned a blind eye to this risk-taking; they forgot that markets work best when there is transparency and accountability and when the rules of the road are both fair and vigorously enforced. For years, a lack of transparency created a situation in which serious economic dangers were visible to all too few.

You can read the president's budget for yourself, online.

Obama's Budget Proposal Fiscal Year 2010

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Reports Periodicals & Report obama budget

It is a progressive budget that has at its core the understanding that government can and should have an important role in finding ways out of the current crisis and in reviving the economy.

More than that, it's a budget that recognizes that — rather than the "You're on your own," everyone-for-themselves conservative policy of the past 30 years — recovering from this crisis, reviving the economy, and thriving as families, communities, and as a nation means recognizing that we have some degree of responsibility to and for one another, because our faces are undeniably tied together.

That, itself, would be transformational. But first we have to offer more than more than a vision of something better. We have to make the beginnings of that vision, and the progressive values it embodies, felt in the lives of more Americans.

Now is our time to deliver. If we can turn progressive values into policies that make a real impact in the lives of every day people — whether it's jobs, health care, etc. — the transformation the country needs, and that the world needs us to make, will almost take care of itself. Passing the president’s budget would be a good start.

It may not be everything that every one of us wants it to be, or everything it needs to be. As Robert Borosage pointed out, it may not be as bold as it needs to be. But it’s best chance we have right now, and the last one we’re likely to get for a generation if we don’t grab the opportunity. Conservatives may hope for Obama and his budget to fail, we — and the rest of America — can't afford to let either fail.

The president has repudiated the failed conservative policies of the past and called on the country to change course. He has put forth a budget that calls for sweeping change. He has raised the stakes. This will be a transformational presidency if he succeeds. We dare not let him fail.

Starting this week, fellow blogger Sara Robinson and I will launch a "blog conversation" about the progressive values at the core of the president's budget, how to talk about it importance, and what progressives can do to pass the first truly progressive budget we've seen in decades. But it's not just a conversation between us. We hope you'll join in, whether its in the comments on this blog or in a post on your own.

We won the election. We know Americans are progressive on the issues. Now, it’s time for us to deliver.