Wrongheaded Reactions

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Why are the reactions to terrorist attacks always wrongheaded?

The first response by politicians and pundits to the recent attack in London is once again to call for an increase in security activity, which inevitably involves a reduction (temporary, of course) of rights and freedoms.  The security forces require greater access to personal information.  They need the right to detain people with fewer justifications and for longer periods.  Somehow, normal people are always far more inconvenienced than the terrorists.

That, of course, is part of the terrorists’ intent.  As security processes become more onerous, resistance to those processes becomes greater, and the forces standing against the status quo gain increasing sympathy and support.  And, as usual, paying for expanded security processes is not going to take any financial toll on the wealthy.  The costs will be met by reducing social programs.

This kind of response is exactly opposite to the response that is needed.

Where do these terrorists come from?  Why are they susceptible to the call of radicalism?  They come from marginalized communities, from groups that feel excluded from the wider society’s access to progress, improvement, and prosperity.  As has always been the case, this marginalization is felt by groups identified by ethnicity, by culture, by origin, by religion, and by economic status.  The groups that control the government, the society, and the culture do not foster rebellion within their ranks.  It is only people who feel themselves outside the “power elite” that feel a need to rebel and look for causes and justifications that will allow them to strike out at oppression.  All it takes is for an angry activist to identify some person or an institution as oppressive, and other angry people will heed the call to action.

There’s no mystery here.

There’s also no mystery to why nothing effective is ever done about terrorism.  The only thing that will really resolve this problem is to build an inclusive society, to stop marginalizing groups, to stop strengthening a system that protects the wealthy few at the expense of the many.  What is really remarkable in all this is that the wealthy few, who have the means to obtain good educations, who have access to the best expertise, are too foolish to realize that it is by empowering the wider community that you best protect and expand markets, social satisfaction, social order, and stability.

As soon as you start trying to protect “us” by setting up barriers to the growth of “them”, you sow the seeds of discord, violence, and destruction.  Embracing change and encouraging growth are the primary requirements for moving safely into the future.  Fighting against progress only leads to ever greater tension, conflict, and, eventually, full-scale revolution.

But you won’t hear that on the news.

An Unfinished Election

For some inexplicable reason (as I watch growing protests, rising hate crimes, and shocked responses to Trump’s first announced appointments), I get the feeling that the 2016 presidential election isn’t over yet. 

The same thing seems to be going on in the US that happened with the Brexit vote in the UK — the voters assumed how things were going to turn out, didn’t take the event seriously, were shocked at the result, and then started asking for a do-over.  Like Teresa May in the UK, Obama has accepted the result and has promised an orderly transition.  But there are more people looking at the transition with nervousness than looked at the election that way.

A great number of moderate Republicans voted for Trump with the assumption that he didn’t really mean literally all the things he said in his rabble-rousing speeches.  But now he’s appointed Steve Bannon, a virulent white nationalist, as his special advisor.  If Trump sends out enough signals that he was serious about his reactionary, exclusionist rhetoric, he may face a backlash not only from the Democrats who are so dismayed at his victory, but from the moderate Republicans and the Republican Establishment that were critical to his reaching his winning margin.

What could the implications of this be?  Before I speculate, let me say that things move slowly enough in the political world — and people are reluctant enough to admit to making mistakes — that I really don’t believe the possibility I’m going to outline below will become a reality.  Still, it is a possibility, and possibilities are the avenues for change.

First, look at who the Electors are who will be casting their votes when the Electoral College meets:  they’re practically all Establishment politicians.  Party regulars.  This is true on both sides.

Second, look at Trump’s margin of victory in Electoral votes:  he’s ahead by around 75 votes, depending on whose “final” figures you look at.  If he lost 40 of these, his total would be below 270.

Third, while it’s traditionally been considered Very Bad Form for Electors to vote for someone other than the candidate who won in their state, it has happened, and it is perfectly legal.

So suppose 40 moderate Republicans, serving as Electors, decide that Trump’s threat to establish a racist, sexist society ready to use nuclear weapons is simply too much to accept.  Trump would not become President.  This does not mean Clinton would become President.  If the rogue Republican Electors didn’t vote for Clinton either, no one would have the 270 votes necessary to win.  That might mean that the election would be turned over to the House of Representatives.

Right now, the House of Representatives is controlled by the Republicans, 238-193 (with a few not yet determined).  Who would the House select as President?  Again, the majority of the Republicans in the House are Establishment politicians.  If the Electors failed to support Trump, would the House go ahead and re-establish him, or would they take the opportunity to select someone more predictable and less controversial?  Would they once again turn to Paul Ryan?  What is the House’s attitude toward him now, after his wishy-washy refusal to be clear about Trump?  Is there another candidate out there?

Or a bi-partisan group of House members could vote for a centrist candidate who could garner support from both parties, in order to pull the country together without clearly jeopardizing either party’s agenda — a caretaker government to get us through the next two years to the start of the next presidential campaign.

That’s if the vote went to the House.  But what if the rogue Electors conferred with other Electors and came up with their own compromise candidate whom a majority of Electors of both parties could get behind?  Again, since the majority of the Electors are Establishment Republicans, they’d want to make sure the choice didn’t risk putting a liberal voice in the White House.  But there are moderate Republicans that many Democrats would be willing to get behind if Trump were the alternative.  John Kasich and Jeb Bush are two that had broad appeal at the beginning of the primaries (and it was that broad appeal that made them less appealing to the rightists of the Republican base).

So there are several routes that could be followed to a non-Trump Presidency. 

Whichever route might be followed, though, severe problems remain.  One is the reluctance of Establishment politicians to sail into uncharted waters.  Another is the likelihood that such a shift would release a tremendous backlash from those core Trump voters who are unconcerned with (or even happy with) his worst features.  If anyone is likely to erupt in violence, it is these people.

On the other hand, there could be no more effective way to gather broad-based support from the American people than to provide relief from the threat at hand by compromising on a coalition candidate who promises an inclusive, non-partisan government.

The whole thing seems unlikely.  As far as I’m concerned, though, the benefits to be gained from the attempt far outnumber the risks that already face all of us, of both parties and of all countries, if we proceed down our current path.

The Great American Divide

What happened on November 8?  Why did the pollsters get it so wrong?  Why did so many working class voters support a party that for decades has stood on the side of the rich and privileged?

Change is happening in America, and it’s not being handled well.

We’re used to referring to the Democrats and the Republicans as the “Liberals” and the “Conservatives”.  For a long time, this meant that the Democrats supported socio-economic improvement for the less-well-off, the disenfranchised, and others whose rights were limited by the ruling elite.  An extensive role for government was often involved.  The Republicans fought a rear-guard action to keep their privileges intact and their wealth protected, usually resisting government regulation.

But the old “Liberal” and “Conservative” labels no longer work.  This year’s election was not decided on the basis of which policies were better for the country or even for the individual voter.  This election pitted the Fearful against the Hopeful, and the Fearful think they won.

Why is there so much fear in America?  Why do so many people ignore the facts of economic and social improvement and believe the unfounded lies that tell them their country is being stolen and destroyed?

The reason is relatively new, in terms of human history.  It is simply this:  Change is happening far faster than the bulk of humanity can cope with.  If you had transported a farmer from the 15th Century to the 17th, he might have found styles different, and equipment better, but his activities would have been the same, by and large, and he would not have needed to change his way of thinking about things in order to raise crops and make a living. 

But consider the pace of change since the beginning of the industrial revolution.  At first, it was simply a matter of improving technology enabling the farmer to work more land with the same amount of labor, to raise and harvest more crops, to increase his income.  By the end of the 20th Century, he was having to deal with constant equipment upgrades, with the encroachment of vast agribusinesses, with the financial complexities of loans, mortgages, and insurance, with comprehending the appropriate use of a wide variety of fertilizers, with working his way through the maze of genetic modification.  The pressures are enormous, and few of them have anything to do with working a spade into the earth.

The amount people have to know in order to cope with day-to-day existence in the 21st Century is staggering, pushing many not only to their limits, but beyond.  And when they feel they can no longer cope, when they feel they can’t rely on themselves and their own decisions in order to survive with reasonable expectations of security — when they become aware of their own powerlessness — that’s when panic sets in.  It may not be full-blown hysteria, but it is panic, nonetheless.  They stop making decisions based on logic, because their efforts to use logic and sense have ceased to lead anywhere.  Instead, they fall back on emotion.

When things don’t go right, people tend to look for whatever help and reassurance they can find.  They stop listening to the people who tell them things will turn out all right.  They used to believe that, but where did it get them?  Instead, they turn to those who tell them their panic is reasonable, that it’s not their fault, that they can blame something or someone outside themselves.  If only that evil outside agency could be brought under control, they’re told, they’d regain control over their lives.

Is it true?  Hardly.  But it certainly relieves them of responsibility and self-doubt.  Is it any wonder that they’re happy to accept lies that relieve their panic rather than facing the facts that show how little power they have?

Until this election, candidates of both parties have told voters things would turn out all right if only they’d vote for a government that pursued the right policies.  The percentage of eligible voters actually voting has become remarkably low, because fewer and fewer people felt capable of making such decisions.  Whether the party was liberal or conservative, it was essentially peddling the argument that “everything’s under control.”  Voting simply determined which group of Washington insiders divvied up the spoils.

But this time around, Donald Trump stepped up from outside.  He mouthed the same scapegoat-blaming lies that had already successfully appealed to the powerless.  He drew forth denunciations from the establishment politicians, clearly demonstrating his distinction from them.  Suddenly, those who had given up on voting years ago had a candidate they recognized as one of their own.

This explains the failure of the polls.  Pollsters build models for correct prediction based on past experience.  Unfortunately, there was no past experience of a candidate appealing to that group previously identified as “unlikely voters”.  This group didn’t vote, so they weren’t broadly represented in the pollsters’ databases.  The polls we saw probably reflected the interests and intentions of traditional voting pools quite well, but they left out a great number of this year’s actual voters.

Generally speaking, the Trump voters came from that quadrant of the voting spectrum in which conservatives have traditionally resided.  Why is that?  Because this is the group that is resistant to Change.  Change in and of itself is a threat to those who have identified themselves as Change’s powerless victims. 

In his article, “Are Conservatives Less Creative Than Liberals?” in Psychology Today (<https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200811/are-conservatives-less-creative-liberals>), Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman reports on psychological studies that suggest “that conservatives prefer simple representational art over abstract art, traditional poetry over the avant-garde, and music that is simple, familiar, and 'safe'.”  Another study featuring a test requiring the completion of creative tasks by the subjects found that

. . . conservatives are indeed less creative than liberals. . . . [C]onservatives may have found the ambiguity of the creativity tasks threatening, and the anxiety associated with this sense of threat may have hindered the expression of creativity. Prior research has indeed shown that those that are more conservative have lower cognitive-complexity and therefore may dislike ambiguity more than those who are less conservative.

. . .

Another explanation is that conservatives are more inclined to follow convention in general. And of course, convention sounds the death knell for creativity. A related possibility is that the authoritarian and anti-hedonistic aspects of conservatism may cause imagination to be devalued amongst conservatives. It is interesting to note that in support of this hypothesis, Dollinger did find that conservatives in the study scored lower on openness to experience.

If conservatives are less creative than liberals, what is the causal factor?  Does a conservative attitude limit creativity, or does limited creativity foster conservatism?  If my argument above is correct — that the pace of change can create panic and resistance in those individuals who lack the ability to adapt effectively — then it is not at all surprising that there is a high correlation between a sense of powerlessness and a conservative outlook.  This may also account for the expressions of violence among Trump followers.  People who feel themselves under threat are those most likely to lash out against their perceived or assumed enemies.

What I want to leave you with as a result of all this verbiage is the idea that the real divide between the voting blocs that supported Clinton on the one hand and Trump on the other may have had nothing to do with any of the policy positions that Clinton kept trying to place before the voters and Trump kept sidestepping during the debates.  Instead, the divide was between voters who felt powerless, desperate, and fearful, and voters who felt hopeful and able to believe that human effort could find a way out of their difficulties.

That divide may be the new demarcation between Republicans, fast becoming the party of Irrational Fear and Resistance to Change, and the Democrats, a party of Hope and Change and all the uncertainty that goes with those factors.  Unfortunately, Fear is far more motivating than Hope.  Fear is susceptible to lies that are intended to reinforce the Fear, where Hope must rely on an optimismic interpretation of the possibilities that are out there.  How the Democrats can build a positive voting bloc in the absence of the emotional power of Fear remains to be seen, but if they are to move forward effectively it will have to be done.  As long as the Republicans can keep fostering fear among the voters, they’ll continue to win elections despite any Democratic appeals to facts or logic.

One final note:  In a country so divided, the rise of either party to power strikes some level of fear in the hearts of the other.  The powerless gain power, those who had been in control lose control.  And as a result, the motivators shift.  When Obama ran on a promise of Hope and Change, he represented — right down to the color of his skin — the possibility of power for a wide range of previously powerless voters, particularly those in groups easily identified and discriminated against.  Clinton’s campaign promised power to one more suppressed group — women — but despite early indications, failed to crusade forcefully for many of those feeling left out, notably African-Americans.  A stronger, more emotional push for reform of the judicial system might have energized these voters and changed the results of the election.

But even if the turnover of the Executive Branch to Donald Trump represents a loss of power for those invested in the Democratic Party, the Democrats remain dedicated to optimistic, positive change,  and thus more resistant to fear-mongering.  It’s a complex puzzle, and true progress for the US won’t happen until it’s figured out.

Inspiring the Millennial Voter

The TV pundits bewail Clinton’s “failure to articulate a clear and compelling message.”  This, they say, is why the millennials are failing to rally to her campaign.

It is true that Clinton hasn’t mounted an effective crusade.  There are various reasons for this, but those reasons should have been overcome by now.  If we look at the reasons, we might be able to come up with strategies that could have worked.

The first reason is the Clinton isn’t trying to change the current system dramatically.  She wants to make adjustments to the system we already have.  She wants to maintain the same general course, but increase speed and momentum.  The candidates who advocated dramatic change — Trump negatively and Sanders positively — were able to appeal to emotion and the fervent dedication of the converted.  Clinton looks at things very differently.  She’s interested in stability and practicality, and those virtues rarely gather enthusiastic support.

The second reason is that Clinton’s view is holistic.  She hasn’t latched onto one issue as the key element in her campaign.  Instead, she’s trying to improve everything.  She can detail the changes she advocates in each aspect of federal activity — modifying the tax code, paying for education, revising the criminal justice system, increasing the effort to halt climate change, providing family leave, establishing a no-fly zone in Syria — the list seems endless — but these are all details, and while each one may seem a positive step in the right direction (though many voters might disagree with some), they remain dry details.  None of them in itself is a reason to rush out and vote.  And when you take them all together, what are they?  It’s hard to see the shape of the future they promise.

The third reason is that no one has been able to direct attention to Clinton’s goals.  Since the post-primary campaign began, there hasn’t been a quiet moment in which to discuss alternative approaches to policy in calm and thoughtful tones, and even when the primaries were underway, the policy disagreements between Sanders and Clinton tended to take second place in the news to the latest outrages committed by the Republican contenders, or the most recent mass shootings, or to forest fires or hurricanes or terrorist incidents.  The media have no patience with policy details, because policy details don’t attract viewers, listeners, or readers.  Even when events are created specifically for the purpose of providing insight into policy differences — the debates — the moderators try with their questions to focus the discussion on those areas where heat will be created, not where clarification can be obtained.

Another reason may be related to Clinton’s practicality itself.  One TV pundit noted that Clinton is trying to attract millennials by proposing tuition-free education for most students, and is failing to recognize that the millennials are NOT practical.  They aren’t looking for money, they’re looking for a cause.  If you look behind Clinton’s plan to offer low-cost education, there is definitely a broader goal there.  She believes low-cost education will allow more students to move through the system, thus developing a more capable work force for the demands of the future.  This effectively educated group will be able to produce more, innovate more effectively, solve more problems, earn more money (and thus provide more tax revenue even if rates remain the same or are lowered), interact with each other more equally, and generally provide for a better-integrated, more effective, more prosperous country.

That’s a goal that millennials can get behind, but it remains rather fuzzy.

In fact, if you look at all of Clinton’s details, you can see that they’re all intended to move the country in the same direction.  Changing the tax code improves the options open to all members of society while reducing the inequalities that restricts those options.  Providing family leave promotes a society with greater physical and mental health.  Reversing Citizens United equalizes the voting power of all citizens by eliminating the added influence that Supreme Court ruling gave the wealthy.  Reforming the criminal justice system leads to more equal treatment of all citizens.

And so on.  Clinton’s team has come up with the slogan “Stronger Together”.  At one point, they talked about “Building Bridges” in contrast to Trump’s advocacy of raising walls.  But perhaps the best term to pull all of Clinton’s policy goals together into one package is “Equality”.  Everything she’s trying to do is aimed at giving everyone equal chances, equal respect, equal power, equal rights.

Sanders’ Revolution had the same intentions.  The primary difference between the two lay in the methodology to be used.  Sanders proposed a movement developing “People Power”, a matter of using broad-based, social-media-fostered public demand to force action by the government.  It was a matter of shifting the power base through modern communications.  This approach depends on building and maintaining a sense of zeal in the public, and that in turn would depend on demonstrating effectiveness after the election was won.

Clinton’s approach, by contrast, does not reject the current system as outmoded and suffering from a kind of political rigor mortis.  Instead, it seeks to use the system, but to be more practical about using it.  We’ve seen how attempting to use the system served Obama.  He made significant progress, but only by swimming upstream energetically through an unending flow of molasses.  A large part of the reason he was resisted so fiercely was because he was black.  Is it likely that Clinton is going to be much more successful, given her gender?  Once again, the White Male Defenses, protected by gerrymandered Congressional districts, are going to be mounted against everything she tries.  She may be more practical and less idealistic than Obama, but her goals (and those of a majority of the American public, despite how they feel about her personally) are just as unlikely to be supported by the federal legislature.

The only hope I see here is for Trump to go down to such defeat that he drags marginal Republican legislators down with him, giving Clinton a first-term voting majority in the Congress.  Unfortunately, it looks like moderate Republicans are capable of dropping Trump without abandoning their Tea Party congressmen.

And that’s why a millennial crusade is necessary.  Clinton should be able to make it into the Presidency as things stand, but with the millennials at her side with a significant cause, she could get the legislative majority she needs for her approach to work.

So how should she approach these last few weeks?  Ignore Trump, and go for Equality.  Demand that the statement “All men are created equal” be realized throughout American political, social, and economic life.  Every detail discussed should be presented in its broader context as part of achieving the American Dream of Equal Opportunity.

Clinton does have a broad goal that should inspire every American, but it isn’t “Stronger Together”.  It has everything to do with Equality, and she needs to start saying so clearly.

Back to Havana: Rejecting a Counter-Productive Foreign Policy

About 50 years ago, Fidel Castro stepped out of the Cuban jungles at the head of a ridiculously small group of rebels and took control of the country. His aim: to take Cuba’s economy out of the hands of a privileged and corrupt elite and put it to worrk for the benefit of the entire population.

Unfortunately, several things went wrong. First, Castro himself was a little too proud and too much of an ideologue to be able to accommodate himself or his government to practical politics. Second, he dared to voice approval of Communist ideals at a time when Americans were being told that Communism was the greatest threat to peace and prosperity that Western Democracy had ever known. And third, his revolution simply took place too late.

By the 1950s, Cuba’s economy was the playground of big US financial interests working hand-in-glove with a rich Cuban elite. It was obvious to Castro when he took over the country that the only way to separate the elite from its power base was to remove the source of its funding. And the only way to prevent the wealth generated by Cuban labor and resources from flowing directly into US bank accounts instead of into local development was to take the major national industries out of US hands.

In an ideal world, a country devoted to improving the lot of the world’s citizens — a country such as the US claims to be — would do its best to work with a group that had just deposed a repressive dictator and was seeking to provide education, health care, and economic opportunity to its citizens. Isn’t that the kind of thing the US claimed it itself was doing in Iraq? Isn’t that kind of freedom what the American Revolution was all about?

What Drives US Foreign Policy
But the US has not operated in the interests of the ordinary citizens of the world for a long time. What drives US foreign policy — and what has driven it since the US became an acknowledged world power following the First World War — are the interests of major American businesses. If these interests were enlightened this would not be a great problem. If American business realized that developing the economies of poor countries would increase markets and expand prosperity, then American business would be behind efforts at democratization and development.

But just as it did when dealing with mortgages in the US, American business tends not to look at the Big Picture. Rather than plan for long-term prosperity and a viable future for coming generations, American business, with a few minor exceptions, opts for maximizing short-term gain, whatever the future costs. If there are poor people or countries in the world, America doesn’t think about improving their condition and turning them into possible purchasers of American goods; instead it sees them as sources of cheap labor and raw materials as long as they can be kept poor.

When President Eisenhower warned against the “military-industrial complex”, he wasn’t only talking about collusion between the military establishment and weapons manufacturers. He was talking about American industry’s drive to dominate the world, and the economic power could wield in convincing government to back them politically and militarily.

And that’s where things stood when Castro took over Cuba. American business used its clout to convince the US government to resist Castro instead of negotiating with him, to focus on overthrowing his regime instead of concentrating on the welfare of his people. An embargo was put in place, and it exists to this day.

The Practical Effects of US Policy
The embargo has been a failure on one hand and an unfortunate success on the other. It has not managed to topple the regime. Cuba has effectively been kept poor, but that has not been enough to convince the population to rise up in anger. Perhaps the fact that the population isn’t significantly worse off than it was under the brutal dictatorships that existed before Castro has some part in this response. Perhaps the fact that education and decent health care have been made accessible to all citizens, despite by the country’s starved economy, has made the population feel that the Castro regime has some positive aspects. The embargo has not succeeded in its stated goals. All it has managed to do is keep ordinary Cubans poor and their country underdeveloped.

Contrast the US policy toward Cuba with its policy toward China. China is a little too large and a little too distant to bully effectively. For a long time the US maintained a policy of ignoring China and hoping it would go away. Then American business began to see some potential in China — how many McDonald’s burgers, Nike shoes, Coca-Colas and Starbuck’s coffees could be sold in a land of a billion or more people? Even if they were poor? So where the US tried to shut Cuba down, it sought to open China up.

And we can see the result of US economic cooperation with China all around us. First, lower cost goods are available at Walmarts across the land. Second, China’s economy is growing by leaps and bounds. Even during the current world recession, China’s economy is not shrinking — it’s simply growing a little more slowly. Without that economic growth and China’s tendency (following years of poverty) to save, China would not be in the economic condition to provide us with the loans we need to fight the current downturn.

Was China signally more democratic or more supportive of human rights than Cuba? Clearly not. But the US wanted to make money in China, and Cuba was small enough to ignore. And what has happened to democracy and human rights in China since they opened to US and other Western business interests? They have expanded. As the threat from the West decreases and China’s ability to provide decent opportunities to its citizens grows, the need to exert force to control the citizenry and the need to resist popular control of government both decline.

Wouldn’t it have been nice if the US had adopted this approach to Cuba a long time ago? America might have had a democratic, prosperous trading partner by the 1980s, instead of ensuring itself of an enemy into the 21st century.

Cuba Is Not Alone
Cuba is far from the only example of this wrong-headed, business-driven tradition in US foreign policy. Look at Viet Nam, Iran, Chile, Panama, Iraq, and other cases. And look at places like Darfur, where an activist policy could actually do some good.

In Vietnam, French colonialism supported a corrupt regime not unlike that attacked by Castro in Cuba. Ho Chi Minh, a leader of the popular resistance to this regime, approached the US for assistance in bringing democracy to Vietnam. Across the world, ordinary people shared his assumption that the US government espoused the values that led to America’s own successful revolution. But the US of the 20th century was not the US imagined by America’s founding fathers. Instead, the US chose to back American business interests that associated themselves with the same ruling elite the French had supported. To do this meant demonizing Ho Chi Minh and the resistance movement, now the government of North Vietnam. The easiest way to do this was to call them Communists and trust in the knee-jerk reaction of patriotic Americans.

Were the North Vietnamese Communists? Of course they were. But the people who start Communist movements do so out of idealism. Before their movements bring them to power, they are in prime condition to be worked with in a practical way to make sure that their efforts lead to peaceful, successful democracies that promote the interests of their populations. Unfortunately, almost since the success of its own idealistic revolution, the US has refused to work with other idealistic revolutionaries. The first successful Communist revolution was in Russia, where an autocratic ruler and his powerful elite were overthrown. Did the US provide aid, counsel, or guidance to the new government? No, the US chose to send assistance to the White Russians seeking to restore the Romanovs to power. If the present US, following its present foreign policies, were to be able to send troops back in time to the American Revolution, they would have been ordered to fight on the side of King George.

So what happened in Vietnam? Thousands of US soldiers died, an entire country was ravaged and polluted, and a host of new enemies was trained to hate the US where once the US had had eager supporters. And still the popular revolution ended up succeeding. The US then imposed embargoes and rejected diplomatic relations. The regime in Vietnam has not been turned out since then, but the embargoes have been severely reduced, diplomatic relations have been restored, and Vietnam is developing. All those lives gone, all those emotions scarred, and for what? For nothing. For the short-sighted demands of American business, which can’t see the forest for the trees.

In Iran, American business interests (notably oil interests) received support from the Shah, and in return the US government gave him aid, including training his vicious secret police. The result of this collaboration: most of the population kept in poverty while the elite succeeded, thousands brutally tortured. Efforts at democratization kept being thwarted with US approval, until finally the population could take no more, and rose up in rebellion. The Shah was driven out. Did moderates come in to replace him? Of course not. The US had made sure the moderates were no longer trusted and no longer had a power base. The only people left in opposition were the fundamentalist hard-liners, including some who’d been the most abused by the US-trained secret police. Once again, by following short-sighted American business demands, the US ensured that it would have no voice in the popular regime that followed the dictator, that that regime would be as paranoid and anti-rights as possible, that the country would face severe economic difficulties, and that the US would be denied a market.

In Chile, forces favoring democracy finally managed to establish an electoral process. One of the first beneficiaries of this shift to civilian rule was the popularly-elected Salvador Allende. Like Castro, he saw that the conservative elite would maintain real power if they were not separated from their source of wealth, and once again there were significant American business interests affected. So what happened? America’s CIA supported and guided a coup that left Allende dead and the right-wing dictator Pinochet in place for years. Pinochet returned the elite to their positions of dominance and went on to rule by torture. His regime proved so objectionable that cases were brought against him for human rights violations as far away as Europe.

Everywhere it goes, US foreign policy carries on this tradition to some extent. In Panama, the overthrow of Noriega had business overtones. In Nicaragua, a ruling dictator and a wealthy elite, supported by the US, were driven from power by Communist revolutionaries. Oddly enough, the revolutionaries set up democratic systems, and when they were voted out of office in later years they turned over power gracefully. This is what the US was fighting to supress? And now, in Iraq, control of oil is at stake.

We Need a Change
Is it any wonder at all that people around the world, looking at this history, would fail to see an America that is supportive of democracy or the welfare of ordinary people? America seems willing to see its own young citizens die, see foreign lands bombed to rubble, see national economies disrupted and foreign populations kept repressed and poor, all in pursuit of American business interests that aren’t even carefully considered. Should Americans be surprised that their government has become the symbol for economic colonialism around the world? Should they be startled when extremists see America as their most legitimate international target?

This is a Change America desperately needs. We need to adopt a foreign policy based on the legitimate long-term interests of a safe, peaceful, and prosperous world, not a world in which short-term greed demands the encouragement of conflict and repression. We can see what happens when we work with other nations for mutual benefit.

Let’s stop fighting world development and start encouraging it. Cuba is the perfect place to begin.

Helpless in Somalia

I really don’t understand the confusion about how to deal with the pirates off the Horn of Africa. It seems so obvious to me.

The news reports assure us that there are so many millions of square miles of water to patrol that it is impossible to be find those speedy little pirate vessels. In the case of the hijacking of the “Maersk Alabama” this past week, the USS Bainbridge had to travel hundreds of miles to reach the attacked vessel.

Unfortunately, it isn’t true that the navies of the world don’t know where the pirates will attack. The pirates will attack where the commercial ships are. To keep the pirates away from these ships, all you have to do is provide escorts.

This, of course, is a ridiculous notion. There are not enough navy ships in the region to escort every tanker, cargo ship, or cruise liner.

But, wait a minute. Wasn’t there a similar kind of problem several years ago -- a problem that was even worse but for which a reasonable solution was found? Let’s see -- what was that problem called?

Oh, yes. It was called WORLD WAR II, and it involved U-boats attacking the ships that carried needed supplies across the Atlantic to Europe. And what was the solution? CONVOYS.

Would it be convenient for the ships that want to travel through the waters off Northeastern Africa to assemble at certain points, wait until certain times, and then travel in groups escorted by small, fast protective vessels like PT boats? Perhaps not, but it might be a lot more convenient than being hijacked and held for millions of dollars in ransom.

Would it be convenient for the navies of the countries whose vessels ply the African waters to work together to set up a coordinated program to provide protective escorts to convoys? Perhaps not, but it might be a lot more convenient and less expensive than sending larger numbers of military ships to wander around the region aimlessly.

Think about it. In order to protect the African shipping lanes, you don’t need large, expensive ships capable of launching ballistic missiles, dropping depth charges on submarines, or carrying aircraft. All you need are small, fast, well-armed boats that are much better designed for fighting than the pirates’ own boats, and are kept near the pirates’ targets.

In the final analysis, which is better -- to spend millions having a large ship with a large crew patrol the empty sea out of reach of the commercial ships they’re supposed to be protecting, or to have a couple of smaller boats with smaller crews spend far less actually accompanying several ships grouped together?

It’s a no-brainer.

Is Obama Taking On Too Much?

This is a pretty simple topic, really. As always, it doesn’t pay to get so distracted by the details that you can’t see the Big Picture. Seeing the Big Picture is the primary element of the Change We Need. Once you see the Big Picture, you begin to understand why a lot of the smaller quibbles are either beside the point or downright destructive to our getting where we need to be.

Is our president taking on too much?

Imagine this situation: Our Hero Jim has been handed a pickup truck and told he can make a fine living delivering groceries. There’s only one problem. The truck is completely worn out. The motor is broken down, the tires have not only gone bald but have blown out, the muffler has rusted off, and the gas tank is completely empty.

So what should Jim do? He reasoned that in order to deliver any groceries he’s going to need to get the truck repaired, so he went to his friend Bill, the out-of-work mechanic, and asked him to do the work for him on credit. Jim pointed out that he had a good job working for a good company, and all he needed was to get the truck running in order to start raking in the paychecks. He’d be able to pay Bill off in no time.

Well, Bill said, things aren’t as easy as all that. Sure, he’d love to fix the truck. Nothing would please him more. But even though fixing Jim’s truck is the only job possibility he’s got right now, still, it would be taking a risk. What if Jim lost his job later? What if people stopped ordering groceries?

But you won’t have any income at all, yourself, if you don’t fix the truck, Jim argued. Isn’t it work the risk?

All right, Bill said. I’ll meet you halfway. I’ll fix the motor, but I won’t fix the tires or the muffler or give you any gas until you’ve earned enough money to pay off the motor repairs.

It was a fair compromise. Bill only had to spend half as much time working before he could sit back and wait to get paid. Unfortunately, since only part of the truck was repaired, Jim wasn’t able to go to work, he lost his job, and Bill not only did half the job, he didn’t get paid for any of it.

When I look at the attitude of the U.S. Legislature to the Obama Administration’s requests for support, I get the same feeling, only I’m a little more frustrated because I’m personally involved. First, the senators and representatives reluctantly approve the Stimulus Package, quibbling over some of its details. Then they balk at the budget. Their arguments seem to center around the notion that since we spent a lot on the Stimulus, we now have to economize on everything else. This is kind of like taking some money out of your pocket with your left hand, then putting it back into your pocket with your right hand, and claiming that you’ve accomplished something.

What they don’t seem to get is that just because it costs money to repair things, that doesn’t mean that you save money by putting off the repairs. It also costs money to try to operate with tools and machinery that are broken.

The US health care system is broken, and costs billions more to operate than it should. Obama wants to fix it. But the legislators say that fixing it will be expensive, so let’s waste a lot of money now and spend the money to fix it later, when the economy has recovered. Unfortunately, they ignore the fact that it is much harder for the economy to recover when it is staggering under the burden of a broken and inefficient and extravagantly expensive health care system.

Obama understands that the Economy is not simply a group of factories that are either making goods or not. It is not simply a group of banks and other financial enterprises that are either loaning money or not. It is the Whole Ball of Wax. If you want the Economy to operate efficiently enough to get us out of this mess, YOU HAVE TO FIX THE WHOLE THING, OR THE WHOLE THING WON’T WORK.

By refusing to fix the whole thing at once, the legislature (and the part of the public they frighten into following them) will make sure that the recovery fails to be robust. And as a result, the deficits we face will not fall, because the GDP will not be high enough to generate the revenues that could beat those deficits down. And then the legislators will say, after having prevented the recovery, See? We told you it wouldn’t work. Isn’t it lucky that we didn’t let you spend any more money?

No, it isn’t lucky. It will be the failure to spend the money to improve our Health Care system and our Energy system and our other basic services that will be responsible for dragging the recovery out over years and years instead of enabling it to take effect quickly, allowing us to move on to further improvements.