Cute as a Reset Button

Well, if giving a real barnburner of a speech is any measure, we sure got our money’s worth with President Obama’s first State of the Union message. The buzz leading up to it was that he was going to hit the reset button on his administration as a response to some of the reverses it has experienced in the last year. He did speak of “setbacks” for his administration, but is it simply enough to endearingly characterize the problems of the country? Obama did this very effectively during his campaign and yet managed to create an Everest of doubt in his sincerity even among his most fervid admirers. He has been the President for a year and for those who supported him his accomplishments appear few and far between.

Nonetheless, it is my impression that he renewed his lease on hope with this speech and gave some momentum to his administration leading up to the elections in November. That he is a consummate politician and wordsmith was further ratified by this performance. He called attention to the strength and the decency of the American people and accurately described the desperate plight of working America. A line such as “No one should go broke because they chose to go to college” was later followed by recognition that American business will be the ultimate engine of our recovery. There was meat thrown to tigers of all political stripes. Rousing applause and standing ovation came most often from the Democratic side of the audience and a stolid and studied indifference from the Republicans. As with all such presidential speeches, remarks were made of such a general and patriotic nature that ratifying applause was evident from all segments of the audience.

However, it was interesting to note that the Republicans could not be moved from their seats by President Obama’s acknowledgment that American people are strong and decent, maybe because that was placed in the context of their gallant response to the economic downturn. Everything is perspective and from mine, the Republican side of the chamber looked like a collection of 250 suits each with a sneer in its lapel. The sneerer-in-chief Eric Cantor, the House Republican Whip, was turned out in his best supercilious expression, with which, in fact, he may have been born. Thus, no special notice need be taken of it. In any case, Obama’s desire to continue to work bi-partisan magic or the Democrats’ general tendency to defer to their opposition may not succeed, especially with all the serious financial and social difficulties facing this nation.

We are a pragmatic people and want problems solved and business done. The structural problems built into our political system seem to work against finding solutions, particularly the need for super-majorities before legislation can be passed. I know of no other real democracy that hobbles itself in this way. A democratic republic should truly represent its people. Rural states have much more power than their numbers warrant and lobbyists have much more influence than honest government can abide. Of course, many parliamentary governments with numerous parties are equally hobbled; small parties often wield power much greater than their size because of their strategic situation.

It will be interesting to observe whether Obama is able to turn the current tide in his direction. He has not really departed from the standard narrative nor has his political behavior been startlingly new. Yet, he is characterized in outrageous terms bearing no relationship to any reality. The ambitions of the American global empire remain unamended. The Republicans did not even applaud when Obama called for companies to keep jobs in this country. The fortunes of their patrons ride on a much freer expression of capital, one in which the government in all the moves that it makes works to their financial benefit. People – didn’t you attend the corporate orientation meeting where it was all laid out? The business of America is business and the sooner you learn that the happier you’ll be, and if not there’s always Prozac.

The Age of Stupefaction

After Hurricane Katrina had created its toll of human misery, I was moved to write a short editorial comparing that devastation with the earthquake in Lisbon in 1755. What interested me was the reaction to that catastrophe of various Enlightenment intellectuals. Voltaire, in particular, like so many at the time, found it difficult to reconcile the existence of a benevolent deity with the suffering and death imposed on so many tens of thousands, the good and the wicked together. By contrast, the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, February 2, 2009, reported that Gerhard Wagner, later appointed Bishop of Linz by Pope Benedict XVI, had said that the hurricane was divine punishment for the permissive sexuality in New Orleans (he also characterized the Harry Potter books as “satanic”). So much for God’s dialogue with Abraham where He would have foregone the destruction of a city (Sodom in that case) if it had contained ten good men. Similar sentiments were expressed in this country. In fact, the widely followed Pastor John Hagee said, “All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that” [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06], reported in the Huffington Post, February 29, 2008.

Well, the incomprehensible level of suffering occasioned by the earthquake in Haiti has also caused a seismic increase in the level of schadenfreude that can be found around the world. Sadly again, some of it appears in this country. Pat Robertson, not wanting to leave any doubt that his comments about the world scene are inane and should be dismissed by any right thinking person, made remarks suggesting the Haitians, during their long and tragic history, had made a pact with the devil to rid the island of the French and thus were now paying the price. There is a short YouTube video wherein he says the same and actually paraphrases the response that the devil apparently gave the Haitians. There are times when it is hard to believe that there ever was an Age of Enlightenment which provided the inspiration for the American revolution.

This has always been a religious nation but at the same time it has always been a pragmatic nation. We are going through one of our periodic upheavals of religiously based superstition and ignorance which is causing and, in the short term, will continue to cause much mischief. It is my belief that the American people will not allow themselves to be drawn into a vortex of know-nothingism from which they cannot escape. It would be a great pity if we entered history on the wings of Enlightenment and left it on gusts of stupefaction.

Pontius Pilate Applies for Blue Cross

Luke 10: 30 In answer Jesus said, 'A man was once on his way down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of bandits; they stripped him, beat him and then made off, leaving him half dead. 31 Now a priest happened to be travelling down the same road, but when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 In the same way a Levite who came to the place saw him, and passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan traveller who came on him was moved with compassion when he saw him. 34 He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. He then lifted him onto his own mount and took him to an inn and looked after him. 35 Next day, he took out two denarii and handed them to the innkeeper and said, "Look after him, and on my way back I will make good any extra expense you have." 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbour to the man who fell into the bandits' hands?'

The current disaster movie now being filmed in the halls of Congress is called “American Health Care Reform.” The ink on the various bills was not even dry when they were dragged into dark corridors and beaten into insensibility. The issues involved in reforming the provision of health care in this country are so complex and intersect with so many other areas that it is daunting to know where to begin. However, one of the most basic issues that must be settled before health care has any chance of being reformed is agreement on whether or not human beings owe each other a duty of care. If we say from the outset it’s every person for him or herself, then the health care debate becomes somewhat simplified. We ignore the needs of the poor, the weak, the old, the sick, the uneducated, the wounded and allow the logic of the present system to work itself out, letting the chips fall where they may.

Somehow that does not feel like the lesson of the good Samaritan. It is interesting that in this parable Jesus specifically uses the care of wounds as a measure of neighborliness. Some might reply that it does not mean that the government should have the responsibility for providing that care. As a sociologist, I would normally refrain from engaging in the use of religious argument, but let us suppose that Jesus is confronted with precisely this case. Is it to be imagined that his reply would be that government ought to stay out of the business of health care? Are we to suppose that the Samaritan would be any less praiseworthy if instead of providing assistance of himself he was instead a representative of the community at large? If Pontius Pilate decreed that henceforth all the medical needs of the community would be met, would that be cause for denunciation and alarm? Such a decree surely would be welcomed even if it did not exhaust the entire meaning of the parable. Compassionate human beings would still be responsible for those needs which escaped the notice of the authorities or for harms occurring in plain sight. Alternatively, one could easily imagine the complaints of the passersby who refused to give aid in the first place saying that they resented having to give their hard earned tax money for such a purpose.

Thousands of years have passed but the needs are still as great and their disregard is just as bitter. In the right hand column of this blog I have posted two parts of an interview with Slavoj Žižek, a controversial Slovenian sociologist and psychoanalyst. In the first part of the interview, he makes an interesting case that provision of health care should be treated like water or other public utilities. He willingly gives up the choices involved in treating health care like a business so he can devote himself to a truer freedom. If we are burdened with concern over how we can afford health care for ourselves, our children, our parents, then what is our freedom at the end of the day? There are powerful interests in this country and the world who benefit enormously by treating health care as if it were a giant haberdashery and not a matter of life and death. They have the resources to create the public relations necessary to stampede a credulous public into believing that its interests are best served by giving up the power to organize and control. It seems to me that the banks have been operating on the same set of principles that these health care interests are trying to keep in place. As Chico Marx once famously said, “Who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”

Howdy

And they said that irony was dead. For the past few years I have been playing with the handle "a simple country sociologist" because it expresses in a mildly sardonic fashion a self commentary and a judgment. I am about as “simple” and “country” as a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (a Black Forest cherry cake). But it might get a chuckle and a bit of attention. I am, however, a sociologist, and one that has taken upon himself the task of making the world more aware of what sociology has to offer. It is one of the more neglected social sciences, taking a rather cramped back seat to Anthropology or Economics. In fact, Economics, the “dismal science,” has become the celebrity du jour of the social sciences, sucking up almost all the face time in the media no matter how repetitive and worthless the message. Thus, I have begun a commercial venture (Within-USA, Inc.) with the purpose of spreading the sociological gospel among other good works.

However, it appears that in the United States, a valuable tradition has been allowed to wither and almost vanish from the socio-cultural scene. Those of us who had the good fortune to attend public high schools when actual content was taught can remember exposure to the great American intellectual tradition of good writing and pragmatic inquiry. Today, what passes for writing shames the hunter-gatherers who took the trouble to invent language. And inquiry! People no longer inquire; they start by concluding, and then inquire how they can work their way back to their conclusions. But as a devotee of the work of Jean Baudrillard, it is not seemly to become too much of a curmudgeon. This blog will allow me ample opportunity for that and there are more pressing matters which need discussion, health care reform, in particular, which will be the subject of my next post.

Before going any further, I should introduce myself. I was born in Brooklyn when the Dodgers still played in Ebbets Field and trolley cars rolled on Church Avenue. My family moved around a bit but most of my childhood was spent on Long Island. After obtaining a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, I went to law school for a year but decided that was a dark alley best avoided. My Ph.D. in sociology is from the University of California, San Francisco. For the past twenty years I have taught in the sociology department of Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. New York to California to Missouri.

Springfield is not a place I would have imagined myself spending time, but it has its charms. Its geographic centrality makes it a kind of microcosm of the country as a whole, or you would think so. However, there are elements in its composition that make it distinctly unlike the rest of the country. It is a small city of 160,000 which does not reflect the racial or ethnic diversity of the rest of America. It is a decidedly conservative place but nonetheless a lively progressive element manages to thrive as well. Right now it is bitterly cold, dangerously so, and we had an ice storm three years ago that required the presence of the National Guard in its aftermath. I have included some recent photos of Springfield. These are not typical scenes but they convey a sense of civilization as it has been planted on the great American prairie. I began as a highly urbanized individual who took for granted all the amenities of places like New York and San Francisco, but after all this time I have developed a respect and even an affection for this “Queen City of the Ozarks.”