Thinking through to the other side

In the last several weeks I went through a mini-identity crisis. This was confirmed by my wife who called it just that. After spending most of my adult life riding bicycles and walking rather than owning a car, living in the urban rather than suburban, and listening to punk rock icons Husker Du, Minutemen, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers....a few weeks ago I asked myself if I was now a Republican.

This was worrisome because I live in Seattle, and also because I have over 20 years invested in friendships forged somewhat on the grounds of being countercultural freaks. Seattle is a liberal victor in the culture war, a city that started making tangible differentiation from the homogenized mall-ification of the USA back in the 1970's. As for me and my friend's atypical stylizations, if you know any of us you'll know what I mean. I'm surrounded, literally, in a counterculture that consciously chose to leave Reagan's America, totally and forever.

If I was to embrace significant portions of Reagan's ideology, I would have no friends.

Then somethings happened: In a quest to save money, I stopped renting a Zipcar on Saturdays for the weekly grocery run to Fred Meyer. I've decided to haul even the big stuff the 2.4 mile roundtrip in a little $20 cart or in the cargo hold of my son's jogging stroller. This kind of self-propelled austerity doesn't fit the with the Republican lifestyle. The other was the death of Jesse Helms, and the Republicans and mainstream media positively framing his life. I danced irreverently on Helm's grave here. Other small incidents were the content of emails from conservative magazine Human Events. One email they sent out had Fred Thompson rallying the Republican zombies to continue supporting small government and little/no taxes by voting Republican. What kind of crack does one have be on to think the Republicans save us money and make us free from government regulations? The Bush regime handed out tax money to defense and police industry's like crazy, and notoriously in ways that don't solve real security problems. I don't join political parties that tell stories exactly opposite of how things are really happening.

Then a magazine article appeared before me, and I began to see the big picture of me, my political direction, and where I fit in it the world of ideas.

The magazine is Salon, and the news feature is Apocalypse Now by Mike Davis. After this point my personal journal morphs into a step-by-step critique of the Salon's Apocalypse Now, I'm changing the webpage format to black letters and white background for visual demarcation.

The article explicitly and implicitly accepts that the Earth is going through a dramatic climate change. I totally agree, and have for at least since 1990. On this logical level, the liberals/left/Democrats have typically affirmed there is a dramatic climate change, and it is man made. The Republicans, along with sister organization Right Wing Protestants, have tried every tactic of rhetorical denial of climate change. This summer I've made a daily announcement to my wife that tornadoes have killed some people in the red state midwest. Sometimes ignorance kills. The article tries to claim the oil dollars going to build skyscrapers in Dubai are a denial that our oil dollars are investing in alternative energy. I sense disinformation from Salon. It should be no surprise the oil sources are taking their income and investing more locally and within their cultural sphere. No one should expect anything else. A more precise question Salon could have asked is how much of US oil expenditures are going to US based companies, and if these companies are diverting this income towards alternative energy development. Salon didn't, and chose to make vacuous rhetorical points with anti-wealth readers by vilifying Dubia 's mega-capitalism. The article believes the rightful distribution of wealth should be communistic. Look at this paragraph and the carte blanche ownership of oil wealth Salon gives the "poor": "This super-charged Gulf boom, which celebrity architect Rem Koolhaas claims is "reconfiguring the world," has led Dubai developers to proclaim the advent of a "supreme lifestyle" represented by seven-star hotels, private islands, and J-class yachts. Not surprisingly, then, the United Arab Emirates and its neighbors have the biggest per capita ecological footprints on the planet. Meanwhile, the rightful owners of Arab oil wealth, the masses crammed into the angry tenements of Baghdad, Cairo, Amman, and Khartoum, have little more to show for it than a trickle-down of oil-field jobs and Saudi-subsidized madrassas. While guests enjoy the $5,000 per night rooms in Burj Al-Arab, Dubai's celebrated sail-shaped hotel, working-class Cairenes riot in the streets over the unaffordable price of bread." Here is my stance: the people born in a country do not inherent the wealth coincidently generated in it. Birth does not grant any resources. The masses are a meaningless glom, and worthless when discussed within a meritocratic space. The windfall profits of oil, computer, informational, or any other industry should never be given to people just because they were born. Birth is a biological event, not an economic qualification. Apocalypse Now states more of it system of justice: "The North's Ecological Debt The real question is this: Will rich counties ever mobilize the political will... to help poorer countries adapt...Will the electorates of the wealthy nations shed their current bigotry and walled borders to admit refugees from predicted epicenters of drought and desertification like the Maghreb, Mexico, Ethiopia, and Pakistan? Will Americans... be willing to tax themselves to help relocate the millions likely to be flooded out of densely settled, mega-delta regions like Bangladesh?" The phrase "The North's Ecological Debt" is a moral landscape I do not inhabit. If my culture's adaptions and empowerments have destroyed others, then it shouldn't be such a surprise tomorrow when we do it again. If I become captive to a political fascism that involuntarily diverts my tax dollars to the equatorial poor based on industrialized guilt, I care enough to stop that enterprise by any means possible. Why? Its not that I want more wealth at the expense of others, it is forcing a religion on me, imposing on me a certain valuation of life and specific cultures. It is an instance of fascism, the worst kind: self-righteous in its assumed benevolence.

So here I am at the end of this ridiculously long post screaming about anti-industrial leftist fascists. Am I semiotically pushed back in the corner of Republican? No. Of late I'm realizing I'm being semiotically pushed into appreciating the old American ideas of freedom and independence. They were not abstractions protected for their own sakes, rather these ideals were protected because they were the environment for innovation, enterprise, and industriousness in the individual (not just the corporation). To me, the civil rights movement was originally about allowing non-whites access to that same freedom and independence, so they could become wealthier or happier through successful business or professional acumen. After the initial gains for civil rights in the 1960's, white leftists have messed it up for everyone, embedding their anti-merit valuations of life into civic dialogue at every turn, disabling the road to prosperity or happiness for anyone not already wealthy. Centrists supporting the old values of personal industriousness shouldn't allow themselves to be pushed into the Grand Old Party of Low Levels of Competent Industriousness But High Levels of Spin, rather maintain stake in their plebian interests by reasserting meritocracy into the central assumption of civic dialogue .

There. Thats me.