It is possible that George W. has never grown up, and the same may be true for half of us in America. This, indeed, is the greatest obstacle to the Democrats winning the election in 2004. We have to recognize the possibility of two entirely different kinds of presidential campaigns. At the time of this writing, George W. Bush’s popularity has begun to decline. If that continues, the Democrats can win by running against the economy.
If, however, unemployment diminishes and the stock market shows signs of new life, if our situation in Iraq looks less like a quagmire and the road map to peace between Israel and the Palestinians has not fallen apart, then Bush’s personal popularity can rise again. At that time it will behoove the Democrats to try to win every serious voter. No longer can we address ourselves to our own side only, no, we will be obliged to look for open-minded Republicans as well. There are a number of serious conservatives who have been appalled by a leader who speaks like an android and plays Russian roulette with our economy and foreign affairs. In a close election the Democrats have to pick up a significant number of conservative and independent voters, and that is possible provided—and this proviso is the crux of the matter—we are able to demonstrate that the spiritual values in our politics go deeper than the Republicans’.
Given the size of the endless and complex debates between and within the two parties concerning the multitudinous problems of labor, farming and foreign trade, this memo will restrict itself to the following subjects: Bush’s Virtual Reality, the Corporate Economy, advertising and education—the last two closely affect each other—then the trinity of oil, plastics, and the ecosystem, followed by such social issues as prison, abortion and gay liberation, welfare and the safety net, after which we can take a look at foreign policy, homeland security, and terrorism.
These topics, given their complexity, can hardly be satisfied by a memo, but one or two suggestions may prove of future interest provided we win the election in 2004.
A New American Belief System: Virtual Reality
So why did Bush and company go to war? The probable answer is that an escape was needed from our problems at home. Joblessness gave no sign of going away, and corporate greed had been caught mooning its corrupt buttocks onto every front page. The CIA had become much too recognizable as an immense intelligence apparatus whose case officers did not speak Arabic, and the stock market was offering signs that it might gurgle down to the bottom of the bowl. An easy war looked then to be George W. Bush’s best solution. What he needed and what he got was a media jamboree that provided our sweet dose of patriotic ecstasy. Bush would give us The Twin Towers, Part Two—America’s Revenge. We had all seen Part One—the audacity of the terrorists, the monumental viciousness of the attempt, and its exceptional filmic success—who will ever forget the collapse of those monoliths? The TV viewer had been overpowered by the kind of horror that belongs to dreams. One was witnessing what seemed a video game on a cosmic scale. Worse! The exploitation film had finally come alive! Two gleaming corporate castles disintegrated before our eyes. Two airplanes did it. David had struck Goliath, and David was on the wrong side. The event had gone right into the nervous system of America, but Bush now had his mighty mission, and he knew the game that would handle it—Virtual Reality.
Virtual Reality is built on whatever parameters have been laid into it. The predesigned situations plus the responses permitted within the limits of the game—steering a car on a video screen, for example—measure your success or failure. Virtual Reality is then a closed system, a facsimile of life. You have fewer choices, and the choices have been laid out for you in advance.
In life we encounter not only parameters but chaos. Closed systems forbid unexpected patterns, confusion, and all that seems meaningless. They declare what the nature of reality can be. In that sense Communism was Virtual Reality and religious fundamentalism is still another spiritual settlement within a totally structured system. Obviously, if you live in such a matrix, it helps if you believe the parameters were established by a higher authority.
Ergo, Bush’s decision to invade Iraq came from the Lord. Virtual Reality decided which conclusions we would obtain before we went in. We had all the scenarios in hand. We were prepared for everything but chaos.
Given our human distaste for chaos, Virtual Reality is the choice of every ethical system that looks for no difficult questions, especially if they lead to even livelier and more difficult questions. The emphasis is always to go back to the answer you had before you started.
So Bush laid out the parameters. There was a hideous country out there led by an evil madman. This monster possessed huge weapons of mass destruction. But we Americans, a brave and militant band of angels, were ready to battle our way up to the heavens. That was our duty. Safeguard our land and all other deserving lands from such evil.
Stocked with new heroes and new dragons, Bush was quick to sense that his presentation would be lapped up by half the nation—all those good Americans who were longing for the pleasure of being able to cheer for America again. He turned churchgoing into high drama. September 11 had transmogrified him from a yahoo out of Yale to an awesome angel. We were in a war against evil. A spiritual adventure, full of slam-bang.
Truth, it may have been Bush’s political genius to recognize that the U.S. public would rather live with Virtual Reality than reality. For the latter, out there on the sweaty hoof, bristled with questions, and there were no quick answers. Whereas Virtual Reality gave you American Good versus Satanic Evil—boss entertainment!—evil was now easy to recognize. Everything from Islamic terrorists to hincty Frenchmen. Freedom Fries! Be it said that TV advertising, with its investiture into the nerves and sinews of our American senses, had long been delivering Virtual Reality into our lives—all those decades of sensuous promises in the commercials.
The Welfare of the Rich
A Swedish multimillionaire, talking to his American guest, could not keep from complaining how steep were his taxes. Yet, by the end of the evening, warmed, perhaps, by his own good liquor, he reversed course and said, “Do you know, there is one good thing about all these taxes. I am able, at least, to go to bed and know that nobody in Sweden is tossing all night on an empty stomach. I can say that much for our safety net, I do sleep better.”
Perhaps the time has come for Americans to stop worrying about the welfare of the rich. For the last two decades, the assumption has grown more powerful each year that unless the very well-to-do are encouraged to become wealthier, our economy will falter. Well, we have allowed them to get wealthier and wealthier and then even wealthier, and the economy is faltering. Apparently, the economic lust of the 1990s has unbalanced the springs. Might it not be unnatural, even a little peculiar, to concern ourselves so much about the needs of the rich? The rich, as Scott Fitzgerald tried to suggest to Ernest Hemingway, are not like you and me. They are not. They know how to make money. They do not need incentives. Making money is not only their gift but their vital need. That is their vision of a spiritual reward. Not only is their measure of self attached directly to the volume of their gains, but the majority of them know how to stay rich. They are highly qualified to take care of themselves in any society, be it socialist, fascist, banana republic, or chaotic. Whether they live in a corporate economy relatively free of government or with a larger government presence, they will prosper. They can withstand an American safety net. And they may even sleep better.
In the half century since World War II, Americans have seen the Corporation become more and more powerful, usually with the aid of the government. Under Clinton—to name one Democratic sin—there were unconscionable periods of Corporate Welfare. They took place even as we were stripping welfare from the poor. It was outrageous. By the end of the 1990s, it was out of control. An all-out competition began among top executives to see who could become the Champion of the Golden Parachute. The 1990s became a study in edema-of-the-ego among once-responsible CEOs. We have yet to measure the size of that damage to our economy.
 
; Capitalism works best when there is true competitive pride in the quality of one’s product. But marketing has now stepped in. The impulse to put your acumen, your daring, your prudence, and your energy into making something better than it was before has given way to a lower desire. It has become more rewarding to market successfully a sleazy piece of goods. More skill is required at manipulating the public.
A basic choice has to be made. Are we Democrats ready to attack the Corporate Economy we all helped to create? It is open to attack for its marketing practices and its egregious profit taking. There is, by now, no real alternative to taxing the rich and ending the tax cuts. If we do not call on new imposts, we will not be able to create a health system for all, plus a safety net. So we have to reinvigorate the argument that a well-funded active government is not creeping socialism. Rather, the return of government as a major partner in our economic existence could bring some quietus to the greed, overmarketing, and slovenliness of the Corporate Economy. Through emphasizing taxation of the vices and indulgences of corporate business, we will also be able to claim that we are improving its capacity to make a profit. Indeed, this claim might have the added advantage of being true. Something in most of us, including the profiteers, is violated when the gap between rich and poor yawns before us. There is no way to justify the right of any executive to make five hundred times more than his lowest-paid worker. That kind of inequity belonged to the Pharaohs. It could be debated whether a decent ratio is ten to one, or fifty to one, but a disproportion of five hundred to one pokes rudely into a spiritual core most of us still possess. It is time to say again: Let’s tax the rich. Let’s tax their incomes, their dividends, their offshore investments, their perks, their concealed expenses, their padded accounts, their promotional squanderings, their limousines, their boats, their airplanes, their entertainments, their death tax, yes, even their advertising.
Maybe it is time to recognize that there is a sculptor’s art to taxation. The body of national production can be worked into better shape by judicious choices once the government becomes again a serious partner in the economy. Once again, let us not be paralyzed by the fear of being called socialist. We are not. Historically, we Democrats have been for small business, the family farm, the honest labor union, whereas capitalism, if allowed to become too free of the restraints of government, becomes Corporate Capitalism, plus agribusiness, plus corrupt unions, plus—not least—a manic stock market. Capitalism is unhealthy when most of the money is made from other money.
To restore the promise of American democracy, we would do well to search for the viability of small business, the return of the family farm, and the cleaner labor union. During the presidential campaign, we can do no more than hint at such claims. But is it too much to hope that we Democrats will come up with a candidate who will have the personal integrity to convince both liberals and some conservatives that, while they will not find support for each and every one of their favorite political desires, they will still have the satisfaction of working toward a less lunatic America? If even one-tenth of the Republican vote were to move over to the Democrats, victory could be assured. The question opens: What could such a candidate offer to both sides that might excite them enough to pass over their parochial demands?
The devil has to be in the details. Tax write-offs, tax rebates, tax moratoria have been used repeatedly to enrich corporations, but our real need is to restrict tax relief to those enterprises that benefit the whole economy rather than a privileged corner of it. In a time of worrisome joblessness, why not reduce taxes for all businesses in direct proportion to the number of new jobs they create? Indeed, the obverse can also be effective. Any business that chooses to pare its working force to take in immediate profit could give up a proportion of the new and extra income in added taxes. If it will be argued that such an emphasis on sophisticated taxation will be steering the federal government’s nose into every business, the answer is that American capitalism brought this upon itself. As a system, it works considerably better than Communism, but it has its own built-in vices. The free market is not an economic miracle. If Communism failed ultimately because the degree of selflessness demanded of human beings was not enough to counteract the self-enriching urges of the human ego, so capitalism in its turn has demonstrated that greed is no magic elixir, but, to the contrary, greed is greed, and can drive its acolytes into economic hysteria. There is a human balance between self-interest and selflessness. It is not only possible, but likely, that a powerful desire is developing in America to become more honest about ourselves and less overheated in our patriotism. For what is excessive patriotism but unadmitted dread that all too much is wrong?
Education Reform: Kill the Noise, Cut the Glare
While it is sometimes remarked that the poor performance of children in public schools is linked to watching TV for several hours a day, another factor, more invidious, is not mentioned: the constant insertion of commercials into TV programs. There used to be a time in childhood when one could develop one’s power of concentration (which may be the most vital element in the ability to learn) by following a sustained narrative, by reading, for example. Now a commercial interrupts nearly all TV presentations every seven to twelve minutes. The majority of our children have lost any expectation that concentration will not be broken into.
Our plank on education will, of course, parade forth the predictable nostrums—new schools, smaller classes, higher salaries for teachers. We can attack George W. Bush’s program, No Child Left Behind, which shows no signs of working. Whatever programs we offer are bound to do less harm than No Child Left Behind, but the basic problem—TV commercials—will remain. It would probably do more good if a portion of the proposed funds for public school education could replace fluorescent lighting in just about every classroom with old-fashioned light-bulbs. The unadmitted truth is that every human alive loses personal appeal under the flat illumination of a fluorescent tube. Children can hardly feel as ready to learn when everyone around them, including their teacher, is a hint ghastly in skin tone.
We are, of course, not ready to tell the electorate that TV advertising has become an albatross upon the American spirit with its instruments of persuasion—noise, disjunction, mendacity and manipulation. Is it possible, given the federal government’s soon ravenous need for new kinds of funds, to consider a special tax on advertising? Since the radical right will at once be screaming that this is an attack on free speech, we could term it removal of a business deduction, a penalty for those advertising expenses that go beyond standard industry practice. However phrased, there is no reason for a healthy economy to need to encourage hyped-up marketing for shoddy products. One example we do not dare suggest, not as yet, is to take a good look at the heavy competition in marketeering among the fast-food chains. Very much alike are all of them, and they serve the same social purpose—inexpensive meals quickly available. If they could be encouraged to cease advertising against one another, our children might be spared untold hours of inroads on their attention (plus the accompanying inclination to grab a snack and get a little more obese). Besides, the money saved by the chains, given restrained merchandising, could go into the real risk of competition. Let it depend on the improved quality of their wares!
To War on All Garbage That Does Not Rot
If we are to appeal to conservatives and environmentalists alike, we could suggest that we are in need of an enlarged Food and Drug Administration to explore the long-term effects of nonbiodegradables on public health. Plastic, after all, derives from what was once the waste products of oil. It might even be fair to say that plastic is the excrement of oil, but that would be an abuse of language. Organic excrement can nourish the earth, whereas plastics do not decompose for thousands of years if at all and never revitalize one acre of soil. Meanwhile, our children are raised from infancy with toys composed of synthetic materials in constant contact with their fingertips and their lips. What does that do to them? Such research is, of course, a long way down the roa
d, but our plank could address the ecological problems that plastic refuse presents to the environment. Why not suggest higher rates of taxation on throwaway items that inundate our town and city dumps, there never to decompose?
Of course, the depredations that oil brings to the environment may be the leading problem our civilization faces in the century ahead and therefore is larger than our present readiness to recognize problems that do not have ready solutions. If all too many Americans don’t like any question that takes longer than ten seconds to answer, it can be replied that we now have the president we deserve.
Let’s Pay for Our Vices—but Don’t Put All of Them in Cells
Prisons! The problem owes half its weight to drug laws of the early 1970s that criminalized marijuana possession. The fear then was that America would become a nation of young druggies. We didn’t. We became instead a land of air, soil, and river pollution. (The anal emissions of warehoused pigs took over our prairie.) Meanwhile, our prisons were overstuffed with young convicts. Since America is hardly ready to legalize drugs (and empty those prisons by half), there are some unhappy figures to deal with.
In 2003 our inmate population set a record—2,166,260. We have the ratio of incarceration you would expect from Third World tyrannies. Our penitentiaries are loaded with drug offenders serving long sentences for minor infractions.
Can we dare propose that the nation, given the financial relief it would afford, begin to release a good number of minor offenders? A pilot program to explore the question is feasible, even for a convention plank. Some inmates might be released for drug treatment. Marijuana smokers, and petty dealers, could, for example, be given parole on the premise that they would pay a fine if caught continuing their habit or their trade; if they did not have the funds to meet the penalty, they would be required to perform community service for modest pay until the debt is satisfied. To counter the objection that government moneys were being disbursed to excuse a vice, it could be pointed out that we invariably pay for such easy vices as cigarettes and whiskey. Do they or do they not kill more people than marijuana?