Sunday, October 30, 2011

Conservatives and undoing of America

I started writing this right after the debt ceiling debacle, so the beginning of this post is somewhat outdated. Still I decided to keep everything as it was written. Enjoy (or not).

So, the historic stand-off around the debt ceiling is
over and the sides started tending to the wounded and burying their dead, all while asking a traditional question:"whose fault is that?" Predictably, neither side of the political spectrum is satisfied with the results, while reaction of the liberal wing of the democratic party shows that they have much more corpses to bury than the conservatives. Their attitude toward the deal ranges from complete disgust to attempts to dismiss it as "smoke and mirrors". One ought to enjoy the
irony as one realizes that a big chunk of a recent article in New Yorker
written by a very liberal John Cassidy can be easily attributed to Michele
Bauchman. Anyway, no matter what democrats or more radical elements of the Tea Party say, the conservatives did score a victory if not in terms of actual budget cuts but in terms of redefining the national discourse.

At the same time, this debate has once again highlighted significant weaknesses in conservative movement, which are being happily exploited by liberals all over. In addition to being portrayed as angry, racist, undereducated, if not outright stupid, rednecks, the Tea Party adherents are routinely described as ruthless carrying about nothing terrorists. No matter how baseless all these accusations are, a sober observer must recognize that conservatives did supply enough ammunition to liberals to use against them. I myself, being a student of classical liberalism of Haeyk's
type have a long list of grievances against contemporary conservative political
movement. Apparently, I am not alone in my dissatisfaction as according to a
recent article in Politico, "conservative intelligencia" is not happy with any of potential republican candidates.

So, let me lay down a few issues, which I believe are hurting anti-liberal anti-socialist political movement in this country.

Let me begin with the issue of religion. Americans are religious people, but it does not necessarily mean that the majority of them are ready to embrace the idea that a particular brand of Christianity is essential to American success as a nation. To me the idea of defining USA as a "Christian nation" seems to be not just ounterproductive politically, but more importantly, false intellectually. Religions in general emphasize collectivist approach to life, and are, therefore much closer to
socialist ideas than to individualistic capitalist worldview, which used to be
the cornerstone of American psyche, and which Tea Party conservatives apparently want to restore. Still, there is no doubt that religion played an important role in development of American society, and this creates an impression of a direct link between Christian believes of American settlers and success of American capitalism. This link, however, is illusory. The unique nature of American religious experience stems from its protestant roots. Protestantism with its ideas of personal God and detachment from central papal authority is the least collectivist of all religions, and is, therefore, most conducive to capitalism. Protestantism, therefore, can be considered an important factor in American success only in the sense, that it did not stay in the way of capitalism as, for instance, Catholicism would have. Thus, I see no reasons, ideological or political, why the movement to restore creative force of capitalist enterprise in US should drive away people whose relationship with
God is much more complicated than that prescribed by the standards of
conservative evangelism. Also using adherence for a particular set of religious
views significantly decreases the pool of potential anti-socialist candidates
this country is so much needed.

Another big disappointment is a significant anti-academic and more general anti-intellectual bias of the conservative movement. I understand and share conservative's displeasure with usurpation by liberals of intellectual discourse on nation's campuses and in Academia in general. Way too often what is being passed for intellectualism has very little in common with genuine intellectually honest discussion. It is indeed intolerable that liberal art education has become in many instances an instrument of ideologically driven indoctrination and brain washing. Just a few weeks ago, I listened on NPR an interview with an author of the book on race. The woman was extremely upset with biologists whose work on human genome project indicated that there exist genetically identifiable differences between races. Because this finding contradicted her ideological convictions that the idea of race was invented by whites in order to suppress the rest of the world, she declared genetics to be in service of pharmaceutical corporations. This was really painful to hear since it resembled too much of Soviet's rhetoric of late fortieth of the last century. For those who do not know - at that time Soviet genetics was destroyed for being "a Servant of capitalists" with many geneticists imprisoned or killed. Unfortunately, this is not just a single example of one misguided person. It reflects the trend in social "sciences” to subjugate academic discourse to ideologically predetermined positions.

This, however, does not mean that conservative politicians must reject the very idea of academic discourse and alienate people in Academia who can be their natural allies. Plenty of faculty, especially in natural sciences and economics, support ideas of free market capitalism but are being driven away from conservative politics because of it real or perceived anti-intellectualism mixed with religiosity. This is not to say that conservative politicians and commentators are somehow intellectually inferior to their liberal counterparts. They are definitely not. But after listening to different conservative talks show hosts including celebrated and brilliant Rush
Limbaugh, I got an uneasy impression that they do not trust intellectual abilities of their listeners and dumb down their programs to cater to the level of intellectually lazy.

This lack of intellectual rigor is responsible for conservatives routinely losing the propaganda game to the liberals even on purely economic front, where conservatives are supposed to be at home. For instance, liberals are talking about Keynesian economics as though it is as established as the law of gravity. Anyone rejecting this notion is being branded as a lunatic. They make it look like the entire economics profession agrees about Keynes and his orthodoxy. This is not so, but I am yet to see a serious substantial discussion by conservative politicians and commentators of why Keynesian prescriptions rarely work in real life. I am sure that there are plenty of conservative bloggers and websites doing this, but the main stream conservative media and conservative political events definetely avoid getting involved in serious discussions of this topic. The same is true with regard to discussions of the role of government, social safety net, regulations: virtually
all aspects of public discourse. It seems that conservatives still live in the glory days of the end of the cold war, when socialism as idea seemed to be buried under the remnants of Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. They failed to realize that socialist ideals are very attractive for the public, and that these days socialism is associated not with horrors of Gulag but with free medicine and education of Denmark and Netherlands. Refusal to recognize achievements of European countries in creating social safety net for their public opens conservatives to charges of being deological dogmatists not able to reconcile their views with real world. More importantly, it prevents them from defending conservative economic views by providing detailed analysis of the European situation. It is not sufficient now to just label something as socialist or “big government” to have it dismissed as unacceptable. It is also not sufficient to simply point out to the Europe debt problems and dismiss the entire European experience as failed experiment. They actually have to do the hard work of explaining why they think that Hayek’s approach to economics is better than the one advocated by Keynesians. This is not an easy task as they have to overcome people’s tendency to get addicted to governmental handouts and act against what they may perceive as their self-interest. Liberal in this situation has a much easier task as it is not that difficult to convince people that it is a good thing to take money from those who have them and give it to them. And it is much more difficult to explain why such a policy would be disastrous first of all for those whom it is intended to help. However, if the leaders of conservative movements would not start doing it immediately, they will participate in undoing of this country. It might happen that Ayn Rand was correct once again, when she said that conservatives and not liberals would eventually destroy America.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Carnival on the Wall Street

I decided to present my response to Nathan's thoughts on the meaning of OWS protests as a separate post. Due to time restrains I would not be able to offer as well written exposition as those of Nathan's and Vladimir Davidenko's, thus I will limit myself to expressing a few poorly connected thoughts.

Let me begin my iterating once again that Vladimir's description of OWP (see link in Nathan's post to his piece written in Russian) as a carnival is amusingly exact. Indeed, masked people with painted faces and bodies demonstrating behavior, which would not normally be considered socially acceptable, ritualization of the process (drums, human "microphone", all have standard characteristics of purely ritualistic actions), and finally the activity, in which process is everything and goal is nothing.


While the view of the OWS protests as a carnival-like action is quite deep and insightful, the protest has also a different side to it. I would describe this other side as a raucous high school party that completely got out of hand in the absence of any meaningful adult supervision. Some adults neglected to pay attention to this party for way too long, while other adults played the role of the cheerleaders and encouraged this raucousness. As a result, the kids imagined that they actually have something smart to say, something that only they can see or have audacity to express. They started "making history". In reality, from what I have seen and heard, none of them have ever done anything productive in their lives, and I doubt that they are capable of it. This carnival will be over once adults wake up from lethargy and tell the kids that sleepover is over and everybody has to go home.

Anyone with unbiased attitude and some brains would see how ridiculous everything that is happening at this party is starting with their incoherent list of complaints and ending with their General Assembly meetings, which are the focal point of the whole action. Presumably, according to the interviews I heard, the process, by which this organ works, is the main goal of everything. They advocate for participatory rather than representative democracy, in which everything is decided by consensus.It invokes direct associations with socialist anarchism, as it was pointed out by one professor of economics at a reasonably respected University who worked for 40 (!) years developing economic model based on this idea. Should I spend more time on this, or it is clear that socialist anarchism can survive only in the make-believe world of stoned high school kids or their older reincarnations?

All this would be amusing if it were not so damaging to the country. The country has got some serious problems which require serious adult discussion. Attention paid to OWS folk actually distracts from this discussion substituting it with some childish games. Those politicians, who give credence to their "grievances" and call them legitimate and deserving serious consideration, are consciously engaged in dangerous populism to frame the discussion of the country's problems in terms most acceptable to them politically. This simply delays finding real solutions making situation much worse. All this agitation against banks, corporations and their CEOs does not offer any constructive solutions unless, of course, you think that destroying corporations as a form of business organization, imposing regulations on compensation structure of private businesses, and massive wealth redistribution via forceful expropriation, is the solution. As far as I know these are the only ideas consistent with the views exposed by majority of protesters.

And on the top of all this, the folk at this protest are simply disgusting, at least the most of them, and I despise them. They descended on my City, which I love, uninvited, as foreign occupiers, and desecrated it with their filth, and litter. They do not understand New York, they do not understand this country, they do not represent anyone whom I know, including you, Nathan. You, unlike them, studied and worked all your life and paid your bills, and did not ask anyone to forgive your debts.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

What to make of Occupy Wall Street?

Everyone is talking about the Occupy Wall Street protests and what they mean for American politics and culture, so it seemed to make sense that Lev and I should do the same.   Last week, at the invitation of my colleague Maxim Matusevich, I published a short piece on the Russian site "Balt-Info" with my impressions of the protests as of the end of September.  Here's the link.  And for anyone who doesn't read Russian, my original English text, which, I should note, is rather different from the Russian version, follows below.  But Lev suggested that some balance would be appropriate here and offered the following text by the blogger Vladimir Davidenko to provide a conservative counterpoint. 

Oct. 3, 2011

Not long ago, I found myself rather unexpectedly amidst the “occupiers” of Wall Street. My reasons for being there had nothing to do with politics, although their protests against the greed and impunity of the titans of American business arouse in me no small degree of sympathy.   But no, it was music that drew me to Zuccotti Park on a warm late September afternoon. 

That morning rumors starting to crop up on the internet that the group Radiohead, well known for their anti-corporate views as well as their innovative compositions, would be making a surprise appearance at the demonstration.   My daughter is a big fan of Radiohead, and I like their music too.  Our attempts to procure tickets for a rare concert appearance a few days earlier ended in disappointment.  So when we went to the protester’s web site and found a notice confirming that Radiohead would appear we had the same reaction – Let’s go!   We rushed down to the train station just in time to catch the commuter train into the city and were on our way. 

Less than an hour later, we were wandering around the encampment.   The park turned out to be fairly small—about half the size of a football field.  A huge orange metal sculpture stood at one end, trees poked out of holes in the brick pavement in the middle and at the other end a set of steps led to the street just around the corner from “ground zero” where the twin towers one stood.   One could imagine how in ordinary times employees of Wall Street banks and investment funds might come out here on their lunch breaks or relax in the park at the end of a long day.   But now the park was filled with a motley assemblage of young people—probably about a thousand—accompanied by the thunder of drums echoing off the walls of the surrounding skyscrapers.   It was clear right away that a concert was out of the question—there was no stage, no sound system, not even electricity—it seems we were victims of a hoax.   On the other hand we had the opportunity to observe this rather colorful scene.

For someone of my generation with faded childhood memories of the 1960s and 70s, the appearance of the protestors immediately evoked familiar associations—long haired youths, unwashed, bruised and beaten, shirtless, with beads and tattoos; girls in long skirts with pierced noses and multicolored hair; earnest, sincere faces—the usual style of American nonconformist youth.   One second glance, though, other types emerged from the crowd—veterans in camouflage, well dressed men in ties, elderly ladies.  Who were these people and what were they doing here?

Judging by the content of their signs, which were displayed in abundance around the perimeter of the park, the protesters themselves didn’t seem to know what exactly they were protesting.   The slogans ranged from the strident (Eat the Rich!) to the naïve (I love everyone. Let’s figure this all out together!) to the downright bizarre (I am a goat.  Ignore me.  Go  Shopping).   When the first reports of the protests appeared it was easy to dismiss them as a bunch of latter day hippies and muddle headed leftists trying to get attention.   But over the past week or so, to the surprise of the participants themselves, the movement has caught fire.  Every day more articles and reports appear in the news and more people make their way, as I did, down to Zuccotti Park to see what all the excitement is about.
  
In part the success of the protesters may be due to pure persistence—if you stay in one place long enough and make enough noise (they make plenty!) someone is sure to notice.   On the other hand, the protesters had one of the best publicity agents anyone could possibly ask for—the New York City Police Department.   For the most part, the police have exercised restraint in their dealings with the occupiers. In part they have no choice.  The Park which the demonstrators have occupied is technically private property.  The owner was given permission to build a skyscraper next door on the condition that he create the park and keep it open to the public 24 hour a day.  Without permission of the owner, the police do not have the authority to clear the premises.   So the police stand around the edge making sure traffic isn’t blocked, but leave the park to the young people. 

There have been a few occasions, however, when the protesters have left the refuge of the park and the police have abandoned their restraint, inflicting excessive force, and applying questionable tactics including mass arrests.  Invariably videos showing police misconduct surface right away and go viral on the internet arousing a wave of sympathy and support.   After two or three such events, the protests had become national news and inspired analogous protests in cities throughout the country. 
But all police brutality in the world could not have helped the Wall Street protesters gain support if their message had not resonated with a set of widely held, if not always clearly articulated, beliefs about contemporary American life. 

Three points in particular come to mind.  The first is that something has gone terribly awry with our financial sector.   Instead of providing necessary services and investment opportunities for ordinary Americans, Wall Street has become a crazy game of smoke and mirrors conjuring unimaginable wealth out of thin air through arcane and opaque instruments with names like credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations.  

Of course, such games could not continue forever.  Eventually the whole thing came tumbling down in the crash of 2008, and giving rise to a second widely held belief--Wall Street walked away from the mess it made leaving ordinary Americans to suffer the consequences.  All throughout America people are losing their jobs, losing their homes, struggling to stay afloat under mountains of debt.  Meanwhile the great banks and investment firms have received generous government bail-outs and are back to making record profits at the expense of the very people who are suffering the most.    Huge banks are deemed “too big to fail” and given help at the tax payer’s expense while ordinary people are abandoned to their fate.   

As if this wasn’t enough, Wall Street is clamoring for Congress to remove the few regulations that still remain in place.  Hence a third key idea— American political life is controlled by large corporations and ordinary people no longer have a say.   Corporations spend millions of dollars on powerful lobbyists and campaign contributions without which no politician can even hope to be elected.   Naturally, after the elections, the corporations collect the political returns on their investment and although the politicians come and go, nothing really changes.  

In part this perception reflects the disillusionment that many people feel with Barack Obama who came into office promising change only to pack his cabinet with Wall Street insiders and give the banks everything they could ask for and more.   The banks, far from being grateful, responded by financing the Tea Party, setting the stage for the decisive victory of the extremist wing of the Republican party in the last congressional elections.    As a result, the activists feel that if any change is to occur it must come from outside the framework of the traditional political system.    This may be one reason for the lack of specific demands or goals on the part of the protesters.   Unlike the Tea Party, to whom they are often compared, the protesters show little interest in supporting political candidates, organizing referendums and otherwise participating in the give and take of American politics.   This may come later.  But for now they have already made a more profound contribution.  By drawing attention to the abuses of Wall Street and its impact on ordinary people, the protesters have given voice to a deep frustration felt throughout the country and opened a new framework for discussion and action.  No one knows how long the protesters will remain encamped in Zuccotti Park, but their message has already left its mark.