Deluded Ideologues and a Frivolous Media: A Deadly Combination

In the interest of fairness and balance, and before I get negative and nasty, here are a couple of genuine media achievements to cheer about. Just don’t get carried away: any notion that mainstream media are dedicated to presenting the truth would be naive. With that caveat, I propose three hearty cheers for the British Medical Journal and award-winning journalist Brian Deer for his meticulously documented report about a major scientific fraud that led to a significant public health problem. To quote the Journal’s sharply worded introduction:

In the first part of a special BMJ series, Brian Deer exposes the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school.

Also, a somewhat restrained Hip Hip Hooray for ABC's Anderson Cooper, who conducted a scathing interview with Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced British researcher Deer caught in the headlights of his first-rate investigative journalism. The contemptible Wakefield moved to Texas in 2001 and subsequently became a hero in the weird world of the U.S. anti-vaccination movement. He has been embroiled in problems stemming from his infamous 1998 MMR-autism study since at least 2004. Last May his medical license was revoked for “serious professional misconduct” related to that study. Predictably, Wakefield and his supporters claim he is the victim of a conspiracy by the vaccine makers and their allies in the medical establishment.

I am hesitant to praise Anderson Cooper, mainly because of the shoddy medium he works in, with its history of cynical pandering to popular myths and misconceptions. But I'll make an exception in this case while remaining keenly aware that corporate TV news coverage is not going to improve (e.g., by valuing facts and well-reasoned analysis), at least not in my lifetime.

My disdain for mainstream media, especially for its chronically inept science coverage, is shared by many in the scientific community. Dr. David Gorski, writing at the Science-Based Medicine blog site about Wakefield's ethical problems, referred to the mainstream news media as “useful idiots.” Generally, prominent charlatans and sincere but deluded ideologues like the anti-vaxers have little to fear from popular network “news” and “documentary” programs or even from the mainstream press. More often, they can count on “fair and balanced” network TV to directly or indirectly promote their unproven medical, paranormal, political, and religious claims.

I offer The Oprah Winfrey Show as exhibit number one. Oprah has consistently been one of the prime media culprits, irresponsibly providing an uncontested national platform for all kinds of pseudoscience, quackery, New Age mysticism, and woo. Two of her star guests were the irresponsible anti-vax celebrity spokespersons, actress/whatever Jenny McCarthy and her former boyfriend, the noted scholar, Jim Carey. Amazing, and shocking, that a couple of deluded actors can persuade millions of people to doubt or reject the scientific consensus on a simple, affordable procedure that saves on the order of 9 million lives a year and could save almost twice that number if all children were immunized. What these prominent anti-vaxers are doing is nothing less than a life-and-death proposition for some victims of their misinformation campaign. Just check out this web page at Oprah.com for a sample of the quality of McCarthy’s evidence and reasoning. You have to be impressed by her “warrior spirit” persona and her emotional appeals, like this one:

What number will it take for people just to start listening to what the mothers of children who have seen autism have been saying for years, which is, “We vaccinated our baby and something happened.” 

Something happened. Wow, that’s great, Jenny, I guess correlation is causation after all. Thanks for the enlightenment. I was sort of under the impression that autistic symptoms often are noticed around the time children receive their first vaccinations, but from now on I’ll get my information from mothers. I know there are skeptics who say your son is not autistic, that he most likely had a different condition with similar symptoms to autism. But who are they to question the assertions of an indigo mom of a crystal child whose autism was cured by chelation therapy? Or of a mother who wrote the foreword to Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s latest book? I guess I was too busy reading all that sciencey stuff to pay proper attention to you and Oprah.

Okay, enough of that, except that it’s pretty typical of what the U.S. has come to in terms of the kinds of messages that influence people. Oprah, with her millions of adoring viewers, is but one prominent culprit – the liberal Huffington Post also provides a national platform for McCarthy, Carey, and their ilk. As the estimable Brit Dr. Ben Goldacre points out at his Bad Science blog,

. . . the media have systematically and irresponsibly misrepresented the evidence on MMR. . . . MMR vaccine uptake has dropped from 93% to around 75%, and to below 50% in London. Furthermore, the media have shown no sign of recognizing and acknowledging their role, and so it seems likely that they will go on to cause further harm on this but also, more importantly, on many other issues.

So that's what's been going on, in Britain and in the U.S., and it will likely persist as long as a gullible public continues to uncritically swallow an endless variety of ignorant, manufactured, and misleading claims made by celebrities and interest groups distinguished mainly by their lack of knowledge and appropriate credentials. All the while the purveyors of misinformation continue to become more sophisticated and effective in persuading the public to reject scientific findings (e.g., evolution and climate change). I attribute this lamentable state of affairs in part to the failure of our educational system to teach anything remotely approximating critical thinking or an appreciation of scientific method.

Call me a cynic if you want, but it's basic: corporations and interest groups are not going to spend millions to sponsor accurate and honest programming that challenges viewers’ biases and interests. They and the networks want nothing as much as high ratings, and truth is often an annoyance and a casualty. Yes, it is almost that simple: If most viewers believe in spooks – and they do – then you don't debunk spooks or other popular paranormal or pseudoscientific beliefs, certainly not in prime time. The monied class has appropriated the medium and the message to its own advantage – no surprise there.

Are the broadcasters and sponsors really that cynical? I say yes, absolutely, certainly, without any doubt – that is who they are and what they do. Deception in news and so-called documentary programming is so pervasive that the public has become desensitized and indifferent, so that when nut jobs like Sarah Palin start shrieking about “death panels,” there is little or no outrage, no proportional response. Basically, they just get away with it. For another thing, lots of citizens want to believe deliberate claptrap – there’s a huge market for reasons to hate Obama, liberals, gays, etc., and it matters not to that market if the information is true or false. The torrent of dangerous misinformation is now so overwhelming that those who might be moved to express their outrage don't even know where to start. So when someone tells me to temper my anger and be more loyal to the country – and it has happened – my immediate inclination is to ask, “Loyal to what?” But that’s another topic for another column.

A few conclusions:

Vaccination stands as one of the great triumphs of medical science. The current vaccination schedules are safe, and opposition to them is irrational and harmful.

If the eminently sensible, science-validated precaution of getting one’s children vaccinated can be undermined in just a few years by well-funded groups of mostly sincere but misguided ideologues, what hope is there that this country will get back on a rational course?

Journalists in mainstream news media have largely abdicated their responsibilities and sold out to the infotainment demands of their corporate employers, who expect them to pander to or manipulate a gullible public. Instead of aggressively investigating and exposing deceptive practices, today’s crop of journalists downplay or ignore those practices. Honest, investigative reporting is increasingly relegated to dedicated bloggers such as Drs. Goldacre and Gorski who work from ethical conviction rather than for money. But then almost all the best information and analysis I read these days comes from people who do it for free, out of a sense of ethics and public service rather than for monetary gain.

Ideologies are often faith-based, unsupported by sound evidence and reason; and committed ideologues are extremely resistant to facts and rational arguments, much like religious fanatics, maybe worse.

A major reason for public acceptance of dangerous nonsense is the failure of the education system to teach a basic understanding of and respect for the methods of scientific inquiry and critical thinking.

We in the reality-based community must take the initiative in an aggressive and organized fashion and form what amounts to an army of truth squads. Scientists, educators, journalists – everyone who respects science and reason – should get involved to the best of their ability, as some few already have. We must start speaking out consistently and forcefully to counter the toxic messages of deluded ideologues and corrupt media. Responses to falsehoods should be timely, widely disseminated, and sustained. And consistent: Even if the deceivers are on our side, any public figure or organization that deliberately misleads the public should be ruthlessly exposed – named, shamed, and shunned (audio interview). What is true must take its rightful place as our foundation value.

In my previous column I proposed that ideological commitment stems from human nature. It once served us well during our evolutionary era, but no longer. Ideologies now collectively pose the greatest threat to peace, prosperity, and survival. People in advanced nations must get serious about transcending many of homo sapiens’ natural inclinations if we’re going to safely navigate the treacherous currents of the 21st Century.

REAL Wellness Volunteers Needed - A Call to Advance Reason and Free Expression

There is a great deal of zealotry on the loose in this country, which would be a good thing if only the zealots on the loose were zealous about the right things. But, what animates most of the ordinary American zealots are the tax cuts, fear of big government and the slogan-based patriotism of the Tea Party-Sarah Palin-Rush Limbaugh-Michele Bachman Right-Wing extremists. The masses are thus zealots with fascist impulses seeking to impose fundamentalist Christian values, laws, restrictions and beliefs on society. There is a great need, therefore, for undercover freethinkers to volunteer for the cause of a 21st century Enlightenment. Freethinkers who have allowed neighbors, family, friends and business associates to assume they are god-fearing, miracle-believing, going-to-heaven someday believers, should consider disabusing people who believe such things about them. How? By coming out in support of a counter-movement already underway, one that offers rational if polite zealotry in the cause of reason and free expression.

Philipp Blom has written an important book entitled, "A Wicked Company." It outlines the forgotten radicalism of the Enlightenment. Reading it makes me think that it may be time to remember this period in Europe during the 18th century, a time when conditions of church/state integration existed that contemporary Republicans seem set on recreating today.

Blom devotes much attention to the promotion of reason and free expression credited to Spinoza, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Jean d'Alembert, Kant, Hume and Baron d'Holbach, among others, names often cited by America's 19th century champion of freethought, Robert Green Ingersoll. These men were the freethinkers or "New Atheists," humanists and rationalists who in the 18th century advanced ideas still under assault today and defended by rationalist organizations such as the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, The Center for Inquiry and the Secular Coalition of America, as well as prominent individual writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, P.Z. Myers and Tom Flynn, among many others.

What were the key ideas professed by Enlightenment zealots? It is important, I believe, that we not forget that many of the rights we take for granted were once thought radical and even criminal to promote, such as:

* Support for democratic forms of government rather than either monarchy or aristocracy.

* The promotion of racial and gender equality.

* A belief in the inherent right of all citizens to choose individual ways of life.

* Freedom of thought and expression.

* Religious freedom and tolerance for non-belief with the right to freely express such views in print and otherwise.

Philosophic reason was valued over religious faith. These REAL wellness advocates were also, according to Mr. Blom, very much interested in the exuberance dimension of a quality lifestyle. The author reports at length on what one novelist (Laurence Sterne) called "an infinitude of gaiety and civility (that) reigned among them."  

Nobody will ever say that about the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachman and the other Right-Wing extremists of our time. They all strike me as an angry, mirthless bunch who, like the Puritans, worried most of all about the possibility that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time. The Puritans would not have appreciated or suffered the presence of Enlightenment thinkers among them. The Catholic Church (and Calvinists in Geneva and other Protestant strongholds elsewhere throughout Europe) were power-addled reactionaries, burning books and heathens alike in attempts to enforce their ludicrous faiths. Freethought then was a lot more dangerous than it is today, in good part because those brave wellness pioneers lived and risked as they did. We are the beneficiaries of their heroism. It might be appropriate for us to do our part for future generations.

So, if you favor a philosophy consistent with that of secular progressives who support evidence over faith, reason over religion, science over superstition -consider becoming a visible volunteer for the New Enlightenment of REAL wellness advocacy. There are so many of us still undercover, often for strategic, fear of discrimination reasons. This is a luxury non-enthusiasts for the hazards that could come from Republican rule can no longer afford. An America dominated by Christian reactionary conservatives will be no place for freethinkers fond of the hard-earned guarantees of our Constitution. And remember, despite what is asserted in the Pledge of Allegiance to the contrary, we are still under the Constitution, not a generic god or any of the specific imaginary deities who have ruled over people since the dawn of human times.

Take the initiative - start telling people that you favor reason and free expression, that you do not think that a sky god is necessary for moral awareness and decency, that you want to do what you can to improve human welfare in this world and that we are the source for the greatest meaning, values, and ethics, not the priestly classes. We must develop and adhere to our own values based on what best serves a good society that values integrity, trustworthiness, benevolence, fairness and other common decencies. A REAL wellness mindset is the best path to fulfilling and humane lives that are rich intellectually, ethically and emotionally, without reliance on religious faith.

Compared with other volunteer possibilities, coming out to volunteer for outspoken REAL wellness, particularly the New Enlightenment of reason and free expression in conservative Republican-oriented 21st century America, is a courageous, ambitious and greatly needed public service.

I hope you will do it - today, in your own fashion. For freethinkers, it's time to stop living under the unspoken but powerful norm of don't ask, don't tell. Tell everyone, whether they ask or not. The dialogue that follows is more likely to advance a new Enlightenment than an invitation to appear before some new version of the Roman Catholic Inquisition.

Be well and enjoy your life - and your freedoms.

But If It Gives Comfort, What's the Harm?

A good friend, a secular Jew, told me he was pleasantly surprised and a bit impressed by a recent encounter he had with Catholicism. Inasmuch as he had lived 70-some years without ever having been so impressed, I was curious. "What was that all about," I asked? He said he attended a funeral for a Catholic friend and business associate, and came away with the sense that the mourners were much comforted by the rituals and promises of a grand reunion someday in "a better place."

I thought, "my friend is showing symptoms of senility."

Unlike my friend, I know Catholicism based upon close and personal encounters in grades K through 12. I think he might be surprised if he knew more about the costs of Catholic make-believe.

Is it really harmless to embrace fantasies that "comfort," delusions that "give hope" and preposterous claims that mitigate the pains of loss? I don't think so - and I'll tell you why.

For starters, it's a bad habit to believe some things, even for utilitarian reasons, absent good evidence. It's a harmless-at-first habit that might begin with a few seemingly benign religious fables. However, doing so might add a comfort level for accepting other convenient propositions, wilder claims for which there is scant evidence. Such reality-bending propositions can be extended by different kinds of power players, including shysters and con artists with or without television ministries raising money 24 hours a day. One might start out going along with the hope of heaven and, before you know it, you are OK with virgin births and holy mysteries galore, including three-in-one and body and blood mind twisters.

No rational person should accept beliefs that the keepers of the dogma vaults want protected from inquiry, criticism, doubt and modification. The Catholic Church does not welcome or invite questions or delegate authority for impartial investigations of sacred tenets.

Beliefs that embrace the absurdity of immortality are grotesque on the face of it - they are demeaning and unworthy of educated modern humans living in a scientific era. At some level of self-awareness, those who embrace fables might lose self-respect. Gentle, pain-relief scenarios that momentarily comfort also lend credibility to nastier beliefs that come later. Many comforted by thoughts of reunions in heaven tend to forget the equal (or, according to Calvin, far greater) possibility of reunions in what Ingersoll termed, "the dungeon of eternal pain." How many nightmares might that option inspire?

There is little virtue in disabling reason in this life, the only existence anyone knows anything about. It simply is not and never will be reasonable to believe things for no good reason, just because it lets people feel better, for a while.

The amazing thing about religions is that most people who profess belief in their tenets have more in common with non-believers, secular rationalists or freethinkers than with believers in other religions. Catholics don't believe in the same god as the Baptist preacher who wanted to burn Korans recently to protest an Islamic-owned club going in at a site a mile or so from the sainted ground zero of 9/11 - or the god worshipped by the lunatic rulers of Iran. Needless to say, their varied ideas of heaven have little in common. This is not surprising when you think about it, since they all made stuff up about heaven without consulting each other.

Richard Dawkins has famously observed, "Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god - from Ra to Shiva - in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in."

There is no need or much value in efforts to convince the faithful that "feel good" beliefs about an afterlife are almost surely illusory and certainly without any factual validity. Such attempts are low-return investments of time and energy. However, when otherwise sensible people talk about being impressed upon first encounters with a religion, it seems that the responsible thing is to suggest that there is more to be considered than that which met the eye on first encounter.

What do you think? Comments welcomed.

The Tea Bagger Conspiracy: When Tea Baggers Head Fake and Act Like Real, Responsible Conservatives

They warned us. They told us they were going to do it! Now the Tea Party leads the charge to bring to fruition the dreams of Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist, GOP Super Thugs who advocate rubbing out social programs for the people. Respectively, each Neocon wanted to see Social Security, Medicare and other government programs for the common American to wither on the vine and to drown in the bath tub. And their ship had come in after they beat the shit out of the Democrats last November, winning a House majority.

The GOP, fueled by the Tea Baggers to cut government spending, appears to be on course in starving the beast (as Newt calls it) in order to bring social spending programs nearer the Neocon firing squad. The beast, is a total of all government spending programs that benefit the poor, the working class, the average American. You know, Welfare, Medicare, the School Lunch Programs, SCHIPS (health insurance for poorer kids), and Social Security, the billions of dollars that the US government spends on average Americans, not on Big Oil subsidies or No-Bidder contract corporate cronies like Halliburton.

Neocons and Tea Baggers (if there is a significant difference) are determined to starve the beast into non-existence. This means they want to kill Social Security, Medicare, Pell Grants, etc., you know, all the things that do not put extra bucks into their military industrial complex deep pockets, but into the pockets of what I am sure they consider to be riff raff Americans, the working stiffs who are trying to make ends meet and maybe send a kid or two to college so they might have a better life.

The method these (Un) Conservatives use is quite ingenious. First you Goebbelsize the Democrats into the party that is made up of the Big-Spenders. You get the Republican Party Members to spend billions of dollars on lobby ads, repetition ads that Democrats are the party of High Taxes and Big Spending. To make it catchy and memorable, you just call them: Tax and Spend Democrats. That phrase sticks well. 

Remember how Bob Perry, the Texas builder funded a 527 group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth where his $4.45 Million dollar contribution helped demonize John Kerry in the 2004 Election? The money transformed Kerry, a combat veteran who put himself in harm’s way by volunteering for Rivereine Operations in Viet Nam, into someone who was perceived to be dishonorable. Kerry received the Silver Star for valor, but George W. Bush took a second term as president. The Boston Globe had the goods on Bush. Instead of submitting to the draft as did all other American males over 18, Bush got a cushy Texas Air Guard assignment as the Viet Nam War raged. There was no possibility that Bush would ever see combat. The LA Times showed how Bush got the assignment from Poppy Bush’s connections in high places. And how Bush went AWOL while missing several Reserve meetings, never reporting for military service in Alabama as ordered, and getting out of his 5-year military service contract early. Money and influence can do wonders in re-writing history. And in spreading (Non) truths. Sigh.

This same Bob Perry gave Karl Rove another $7 million to add to a group organized to help defeat Democrats in the 2010 Congressional Election last November 2. The overwhelming landslide where the Republicans stole the House from the Democrats could have been due to the 527 Group that grew from Perry’s small contribution to Karl Rove that grew into $55 Million dollars by the time the election year got underway.  How to Buy Congressmen With Ease

Later on, Perry got a black eye when a court awarded a couple $51 million dollars for a home Perry built. The court ruled that it was fraud. Maybe God does exist after all, but the couple will probably never see a penny of it while Perry drags it out for the meanness of it all. 

Perry is but one Billionaire that hates social programs for the poor and fair wage and good jobs for the working man. He and Newt Gingrich are probably buddies that pause once a year to sip cocktails at the downtown Petroleum Club in Houston with Karl Rove as they plan their attack on unsuspecting Americans everywhere.

The rape and pillage of government programs has just begun.

First off let us establish some math to give us a starting point. Who says that Democrats are the Big Spenders in government? Only the opposition, the GOP, the Tea Baggers say that, big deal. But then during the past few years that saw the GOP fall from Grace, they did have to come up with a new gimmick, the Tea Party Movement. Tea Baggers all of a sudden expressed outrage at the Big-Spending Democrats and how they had bankrupted America. After 8 years of Bush, Republicans had become so hated and despised, a new angle was needed. The same old selfish Neocons had to rename the Republican party the way a defunct bankrupted widget manufacturer must do if the old widgets produced cancer.

Enter the Koch Bros. of Wichita, the largest privately-owned company in the world. The Koch’s were in oil and construction way back when Stalin gained control of Russia back in the 1920s. The Koch family, oilmen, engineers, and chemists, were big back then, too, as they conducted business and services all over America in the oilfields back here at home. They used (or misused) a patent that was owned by another company, and they were fined and prohibited from using the other company’s patent here in America. But Stalin didn’t care if the Koch’s violated the patent. Neither did the Koch’s, and they did. Stalin needed to build up the infrastructure in all the major Russian cities. The Koch’s serviced Stalin’s needs for years and the rest (including the accumulation of billions of dollars) is history. Well those same hard assets have grown enormously, and recently, some of the Koch Brothers from Wichita decided to put a new spin on an old party. They funded the Tea Party. All the Pennsylvania protestors at Glenn Beck’s Washington D.C. organized rally were bussed down, fed and housed for the duration and told to cheer for the Tea Party rally to see to it that American politicians stopped spending our tax dollars for Democratic earmarks. Then the Koch’s paid the way for hundreds of Tea Bagger Americans to attend the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville where Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker. Of course they were well cued to cheer her on. The entrance fee was $500 per head. The Koch’s paid that fee, too. Some grass roots movement the Tea Party, don’t you think?

Here’s a scoop for the GOP and the Tea Baggers:

Our National Debt stands at:

$14 Trillion Dollars.

So how did it get so large? Was it because the Big-Spending Democrats borrowed all those trillions to pay for Welfare and other social programs for the poor? 

No.

In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan stumped for and had a willing Congress to allow him to borrow and spend Trillions of dollars to bring the Evil Empire, Russia (as he called the country then) to its knees. This happened not even in wartime, but no matter. So what did Reagan borrow and spend during his 8 years as president to accomplish that feat?

3 Trillion Dollars. $3,000,000,000,000.00

President George W. Bush went against British Intelligence, US Intelligence (the CIA warned Bush not to say Iraq had tried to buy Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger, but Bush said it anyway), and attacked Iraq. He justified it because Iraq, he said, had nukyular weapons pointed at us and dag nab it, he did not want the “smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Of course we all know now that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs. It was all Baloney. Bush lied. So how much did Bush borrow and spend during his 8 years as president?

4 Trillion Dollars. $4,000,000,000,000.00

So how much did these two REPUBLICAN presidents add to our National Debt (without counting 8 years of Compounded Annual Interest on the money borrowed)?

7 Trillion Dollars. $7,000,000,000,000.00

When you subtract these two REPUBLICAN presidents’ additions to our National Debt and ongoing back-crushing interest and the deficit, from the our National Debt of $14 Trillion what do you get?

7 Trillion Dollars. $7,000,000,000,000.00

Fine. Now let us make some observations.

If the Democrats are truly Big-Spending Democrats (as accused), then how come ALL the Democrats AND Republicans who have sat in the Oval Office since the birth of our nation, have not spent as much as these two REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS AND THEIR WILLING CONGRESSES DURING THEIR SHORT TERMS IN OFFICE? (Anybody hear that pin drop?)

Two Republican Presidents, each with 8 years in office= $7 Trillion Dollars added to the National Debt by 2010.

ALL of the rest of the US Presidents since George Washington first took the oath of office on April 30, 1789 over a period of 221 YEARS!!!!!!! = $7 Trillion Dollars of the National Debt in 2010. Yet Reagan and Bush, all by themselves, and with a willing Congress, spent as much as ALL the other presidents in the history of America.

Will the real Big Spenders please stand up? 

And will somebody with brains in the Tea Party please explain to me and the rest of America just why you are huffing about taxes now when you could have had a ball protesting your outrage at the borrowing and spending of just two presidents alone, Reagan and George W. Bush? Just who are you Tea Baggers who bitch about taxes now in 2010 when spendthrift presidents Reagan and George W. Bush have deliberately added 7 Trillion Dollars in National Debt during the 16 combined years they served in the White House? You talk and grouse about not loading your kids and grandkids down with the burdensome debt Big-Spending Democrats have brought upon us all. Egad, can’t you add?

You should be ashamed. If you were intelligent enough to do the simple math I would have to thrash you all even more. And for not checking out your sponsors and what their motives just might be: you know, the Koch’s, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Bob Perry, you know the crowd that worships stealing the big money from our government, the no-bid contracts like Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, and letting yourselves become complete saps in believing that the Tea Party is Real. It’s NOT and neither are you. The aforementioned group of thugs works your wooden hinged jaws with a puppet string.

President Obama and the DLC – A Retrospective

Column No. 232

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Many of us on the Left, whether that’s the Democratic Party Left or the Real Left, are becoming increasingly disturbed, upset, concerned, what-have-you, with the behavior of President in office. We are surely concerned with his Afghanistan policy which is distinguishable from that of Bush-Cheney only in that he is sending more troops. We are concerned with his lack of leadership on the central elements of health policy reform, such as providing for a true public option with teeth, protecting the freedom of religious belief (otherwise known protecting belief as to when life begins and thus abortion rights),  and real regulation of the private, for-profit insurance companies. We are concerned with his giving way to the respective Right-wings on Israel-Palestine and Honduras. We are concerned with the virtual inaction on the sanctifiers of torture. And so on and so forth.

Obama came into office promising to be a different kind of President. Many of us (including myself, I must admit) thought that he would be a different kind of Democratic President, in comparison with Carter and Clinton, although certain of our compatriots were not so easily taken in. To them I must give credit. But there were straws in the wind. I even noted some of them myself. But like so many others, I got caught up in the rhetoric. In this column I am going to undertake a brief review of some of my earlier indeed cautionary thoughts (to which I should have paid more attention myself, as it has turned out). Which brings us to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC is the right-wing organization that has dominated Democratic Party politics and policies since it was founded in the 1980s by the likes of Bill Clinton and Richard Gephardt, joined in the 1990s by the likes of Joe Lieberman. One of its prominent political positions was that in order to win elections Democrats had to look as much like Republicans as possible. This reversed the long-held mantra of Harry Truman that if someone wants to vote for a Republican they will vote for him (or her) not for a Democrat trying to look like one. 

The DLC was the engine behind the “free trade” push of the Clinton Administration, which did nothing but accelerate the export of capital and the jobs that go with it that began under Reagan. The DLC strongly supported Clinton’s “welfare deform” act as well as his repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagal Act that kept separate investment and commercial banking. The latter drive was spearheaded by Obama’s principal economic policy-person, Larry Summers. There were many factors which lead to the Crash of 2008, otherwise known as the Failure of Finance Capitalism. But if one wanted to pick one among many as the most important cause, it was that repeal. Currently, the DLC still clings to the Right. On its website you can find its policy paper on health care reform which says in essence forget about the public option, what we really need is health insurance regulation and “exchanges.” You can find a 2005 paper by Will Marshall calling for “victory” in Iraq. And you can even find a continued devotion to “free trade,” as if enough US manufacturing jobs had not already been sent abroad in search of higher profits.

Back in December of 2007 (in my TPJ column 172) I had this to say in part about Obama and the DLC:

“As they have done in the past, the center-right Democratic Leadership Council is this time around running what in Standard-Breed (trotters and pacers) horse racing terminology is known as an ‘entry.’ In these races, one owner can enter two horses and bettors can bet on the ‘entry,’ so that if either one wins, places, or shows, the bettor collects. In 2004 their entry was John Edwards and Richard Gephardt. . . . This time the DLC has an entry as well, but Edwards ain’t part of it. . . . The DLC entry is ---- yes, indeed, Clinton and Obama. They don’t like each other much, and each does indeed want to be President. But their central philosophy is much the same and many of their policies are rather similar too. The philosophy is better articulated by Obama. But functionally, even though her rhetoric may be a bit harsher, Clinton is woven from the same fabric.  And so, Obama talks about the ‘politics of hope,’ about ‘bringing the country together,’ about ‘crossing the partisan divide,’ as if Ronald Brownstein, author of the mis-named ‘The Second Civil War’ were correct and that the problems facing our nation today are the result of a ‘partisanship’ that both parties are responsible for.” 

(On the last point, as I have said many times, both parties are NOT responsible for partisanship in Washington. For it is ultra-partisanship, as in “we don’t care what you propose, even if it is our policy (as in the current tax-rebate-centered so-called 2^nd stimulus package) we are going to be against it” that is at the center GOP electoral politics and has been ever since Gingrich took over the House. After all, the GOP can hardly run on their polices, the ones that created the mess we are presently in and cannot presently see the end of. Actually many of us would be oh-so-happy if the Democratic leadership could become even a bit more partisan in promoting what is best for our nation overall.) 

In the Summer of 2008 I ran two Commentaries over at BuzzFlash.com (July 2 and 8) entitled “No Obamallusions, I and II.” I noted that after he won the nomination, Obama seemed to be veering toward the Hillary Clinton positions on a number of issues and that he was drawing a number of Clintonistas into his campaign, like Madeleine Albright, protégés of Robert Rubin, and even the old right-wing Democratic warhorse Zbigniew Brzezinski.   But then last April on BuzzFlash.com (April 9, in fact) I revealed that I had been sucked in by Obama. In that column I wrote: “It is overwhelmingly obvious that I was totally wrong about Barack Obama. He is the most traditionally ‘Democratic’ President since the pre-Vietnam War Lyndon Johnson.”   Ooops!

There were several comments on that Commentary that took me apart on the above statement. Well, I have come to the conclusion that they were right then and I, agreeing with them back then, was right the first time around. At the beginning of his Administration Obama seemed to be or at least seemed to be becoming a “different kind of Democrat,” different that is from the Clinton-DLC type. But there are now too many DLC-type policies in place. He is not entirely consistent, of course. EPA has taken a major position on carbon dioxide as a green-house gas. Some good (and not-so-good) things are going on over at Interior. But there are the major foreign policies outlined above. And does it not seem that on Afghanistan the major presenters of Administration policy are Hillary Clinton, a prime DLCer and Bob Gates, who would be a DLCer were he not a Republican. Obama spoke about a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. But either he is speaking with a forked tongue or he is not in charge.

Then there is the back-down on going after our homegrown torturers and their enablers. In fact, the Administration has entered an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the Prince of the Torture-enablers, John Yoo. Yes, Administrations don’t like to be subject to civil law suits over decisions they have made. But Yoo’s policies enabled crimes against the US Constitution which, in Article VI classifies treaties, like the Geneva Conventions, as the Supreme Law of the Land. One of the monstrous ironies in this case is that during the Bush-Cheney years Attorney General Holder was a Board Member of the American Constitution Society. It is an organization primarily of attorneys (full disclosure: I am a non-attorney long-time member) that strongly opposed the torture policies, the military commissions, the suspension of habeas corpus in “terrorism” cases, and the uses to which Guantanamo was put.

Yes indeed, the DLC is back in the saddle or were never out of it. Unless Obama reverses course soon, he is going to face a serious challenge in the Democratic primaries in 2012, just as Carter did in 1980. Hopefully his opponent will not be someone as hobbled by personal conduct issues as Ted Kennedy was back then. Do I have someone in mind? Well, yes, but I ain’t saying who quite yet. If Obama does retain the nomination, then he will face a serious third-party candidate and I am not talking about Ralph Nader or someone from the Green Party. I am talking about someone who would be well-funded and would stand a chance of winning, just as Abraham Lincoln did in a three-way race in 1860. Of course taking that tack could pave the way for Sarah Palin who right now is the odds-on favorite for Republican nomination no matter how many lies she tells. But I believe that is a chance we have to take. Do I have someone in mind for that third-party nomination? Well, no. But he/she better be a grand candidate and better be able to raise lots of money. Otherwise one way or the other we will really be in for it, worse than we already are.

A Note on “Die Gedanken Sind Frei” and Modern Germany’s Disavowal of Nazism

Column No. 231

Two weeks ago my dear friend Dr. Don Ardell, otherwise known as “The Well Infidel,” published on these pages an essay on the German song “Die Gedanken Sind Frei” and the role that it played for the German intra-war anti-Nazi resistance movement known as The White Rose Society. 

Don’s essay celebrates the song, the White Rose Society, and its young leadership, among whom were Sophie Scholl and her brothers, the “Geschwistern Scholl.” I sent a comment to Don on his essay, which originally appeared in his weekly “Ardell Wellness Report.” I am sharing a significantly expanded version of that comment with you here. In discussing the historical significance of The White Rose Society, I noted that unlike many other countries that were combatants or otherwise participants in World War II, Modern Germany has both recognized its responsibilities for the indescribable horrors that the Nazis turned loose upon the world and completely turned its back on the political ideology that created them.  I have had several personal experiences that attest to this reality. 

First, I was privileged to attend the 1999 Frankfurt Buch Messe (book fair) as a guest of my academic publisher, Ursula Springer. She is a German who emigrated to the United States after World War II. Here she met and married Bernhard Springer, one of the sons of the Jewish owner of the large German Publishing Company, Springer Verlag. When the Nazis stole the company in 1938, Bernhard managed to make his escape to the Untied States. After the war he remained here and eventually established the Springer Publishing Co. Upon his death in 1971, Ursula inherited the company. I was lucky enough to become one of her author/editors, first for a book entitled “Health Care Delivery in the United States.” Published in 1977 it was the first textbook of its kind. Ursula had taken a flier on me and the equally youthful team that I had put together, and the book became a success, both for us and for Springer. The invitation to join her at the Buch Messe was a result of that success. 

I had several experiences at Frankfurt which were highly instructive about the nature of modern Germany.  That year the Buch Messe celebrated the most important books of the 20th century (that's important, not greatest).  For 1926 it was Hitler's Mein Kampf.  On the cover of the original was the Nazi version of the swastika (that is the Hackenkreutz, the Crooked Cross, the reverse of the original symbol that goes back millennia appearing in art as diverse as that of Native Americans and Hindus).  While the book could be displayed at the Buch Messe, its original cover could not be.  Germany has a law that forbids the display of Nazi symbols. 

At the event by simultaneous translation I heard a speech by the then Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer of the Green Party.  Each year at the Fair there is a designated “guest country.” It is given its own pavilion with all kinds of special displays and presentation. That year the Guest Country was Poland. The first third of Herr Fischer’s speech was devoted to welcoming Poland as the "Guest Country" and celebrating the century’s long cultural connections between the two countries, going back to the Middle Ages.  The middle third took a different, and for me (and for many other listeners from outside Germany too I am sure) a totally unexpected turn. It was devoted to an impassioned apology for the Nazi invasion of Poland and the subsequent WW II. In the speech Minister Fischer stated that modern Germany, while recognizing the responsibility of the German nation as a whole for the Nazi period, regards it, as well as Nazism, as a totally unacceptable anomaly of German history. 

I should note that I may have mis-heard or now mis-remember the use of the word “anomaly” by Minister Fischer. The fact is that in terms of German history, Nazism did not, like Athena, spring full-grown from the brow of Zeus (or in the German case, Wotan). With a credit to my good friend Michael Faulkner a political scientist/historian of modern Europe with a specialty in Germany from 1919, who writes the “Letter from the UK” for TPJmagazine, it should be noted that: 1. The seeds of Nazism go back into the 19th century. First planting their poisonous roots in the early 19th century, the elements of aggressive chauvinism, racism and anti-Semitism were very evident by the late 1800s. 2. Nazism represented the most extreme and aggressive aspect of modern German imperialism that can be dated from the 1870s. 3. Nazism can only be properly understood against the background of the defeat of German imperialism's first bid to become a major world power (in World War I) and a subsequent failed socialist revolution (1918-19) that terrified the capitalist ruling class in Germany. With the subsequent failure to provide a stable bourgeois democratic government under the Weimar Constitution, Nazism essentially was the German form of a triumph of monopoly capitalism over what was a totally divided working class movement. This was done both to secure their profits and to enable a second attempt at becoming a major imperialist power (in World War II).

Returning to Minister Fischer’s speech, the latter third was devoted to an apology for the Holocaust, as impassioned as his apology for World War II.  Oh my. The speech just blew me away. Could one, I thought, just imagine a US Secretary of State making a similar speech about, say, slavery, or the atomic bombing of Japan, or the killing of 2,000,000 Vietnamese, to say nothing of the firebombing of Hamburg in July, 1943 that killed up to 100,000 civilians (more than were killed at Hiroshima), or the Dresden Raid of January, 1945, or etc.? No, I could not.

As for the second instructive experience concerning how modern Germany regards its past, in 2007 (following the 2007 International Triathlon Union Age-Group World Championships held in a totally rebuilt Hamburg as it happened) I had the chance to visit Berlin.  All over the city there are World War II memorials --- to both pre-war and intra-war resisters to Nazism.  One of the most impressive of those is right outside of the old Reichstag building. That is the one whose fire in February, 1993, just after Hitler’s ascension to be German Chancellor (Prime Minister), almost certainly set by Goering and his henchmen, gave Hitler the justification for establishing his dictatorship.  (9/11, intentionally set or not, anyone?)  There is not one memorial anywhere to the Wehrmacht and etc.  (Not that I was everywhere in Berlin, but I was with Mike Faulkner. He knows Berlin inside out. He fully supported that statement.) Compare that to the situation in the US South, where there are memorials to Confederate (that is traitors to the Constitution) "heroes" all over the place, especially on battlefield memorials celebrating Confederate States of America forces’ victories over the forces of Constitutionalism, otherwise known as the Union Army.

Then there is the massive Holocaust memorial in the center of the city.  A field of square columns, it appears from street, where you first see it, as a simple field of those squares. But then you can descend into the field, onto a floor of widely varying heights and all of a sudden you are in a maze. Without the signage pointing to the exits, one could easily get lost in it. A marvelous visual rendering of the Holocaust itself which, after all, was begun publicly as the innocuous sounding “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” and quickly became a maze of death. The memorial takes up several square blocks. It can never become inapparent. Then there is the Jewish Museum, also a massive, and most elegant, structure, celebrating German Jewish history going back to the Middle Ages.  It also covers the Holocaust, both directly and indirectly. There, among many other things of interest, I found an exhibit on the first female Rabbi ever.  Her name was Rachel Jonas.  She came from Breslau (Wroclaw in Polish), the same city that my great grandfather came from.  She was thus very possibly a relative.  She was murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz in 1942.  And I found out about this in Berlin.

Finally for this note, I would like to note how the Germans now refer to what outside of the country is called “Kristallnacht,” loosely translated into English as “The Night of the broken glass.” As the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says in part:

“On November 9–10, 1938, the Nazis staged vicious pogroms—state sanctioned, anti-Jewish riots—against the Jewish community of Germany. . . . Encouraged by the Nazi regime, the rioters burned or destroyed 267 synagogues, vandalized or looted 7,500 Jewish businesses, and killed at least 91 Jewish people. They also damaged many Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes as police and fire brigades stood aside.”

Indeed, since the Gestapo, the SS, and the SA (the Sturmabteilung, the Nazis’ private militia) took an active part in the events, one can say that the events were more than “encouraged” by the regime. Indeed too, “Kristallnacht” is the name that the Nazis gave to the events. However, in Germany now they are referred to as “the government pogrom of Nov., 1938,” placing the responsibility for the horror fully where it belongs.

I just wonder if in our country, if it succumbs to the very real threat of fascism that seems to be becoming more real every day (see my 1996 book published under the pseudonym "Jonathan Westminster," The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022) and then somehow recovers, will be able to come to terms with it as modern Germany has been able to come to terms with, and turn its back on, the most dreadful black mark on its history.  I also wonder just how many Geschwistern Scholl there will be, fighting back against Cheney and his Savagely Beckoning Le-vinitating O'RHannibaugh Republican Scream Machine, their competing political leadership from Palin on down (or up depending upon your perspective), and their hating, hateful acolytes, as they pull us down into a fascist pit that armed with nuclear weapons might even outdo that of the Nazis in the horrors it perpetrates upon mankind and the world. If the American fascist repression is not as successful as it was in Germany, if there are many more resisters than there were in Germany, and if Constitutional Democracy eventually returns to our beloved land without it having been totally destroyed, in one way or another, by the US fascists, still will that future truly United States be able to do what modern Germany has done in terms of turning its back on its past. I wonder.