Current Invective

Don’t Say, “Tax the Rich”

Three little words that can’t be uttered,
Shouted out or even muttered:
You may gripe and you may bitch,
But better not say, “Tax the Rich.”
Neojournalists’ Style Book

It’s so simple. Tax the rich. For the people, it’s win-win-win. They get money for their government. They take back political power by reducing the power of the current owners. And they get a bit of justice, removing, in the process, some of the incentives for misconduct that now tempt and corrupt rich people at every turn.

It’s so logical. Short of money? Get it from those that have it. Ordinary people, despite their TV-induced stupor, are beginning to catch on that they have been subisidizing their betters. Also that they outnumber them a thousand to one. Not a lot of dots to connect here, even on a normal dose of prozac or cannabis.

And it’s so practical. You don’t have to amend the Constitution or appoint a new Supreme Court. You just have to elect people who are willing to make a few laws, laws that would be so popular that people would almost certainly be willing to make adjustments to see them succeed. Many of the changes would simply restore laws that worked well for us in the past.

You wouldn’t know any of this from the mass media. They hardly ever say the words, much less argue the case for taxing the rich. Google it. You find almost nothing. Public opinion polls show big majorities believing the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, but the findings are ignored by the media. The neojournalists of NPR and the rest will talk about “anti-austerity” in Greece and Germany and hard times in California, but they can’t talk about taxing the rich, which is the real unifying issue among most people worldwide. What occupy wall street and the tea party have in common is resentment and bitterness over the obscene wealth of a few.

The rich think we don’t know how much they have, and they may be right about that. It’s true they got it all from us, and we do pay them for just about everything we need and do. But they get huge sums from government, which they own, in the form of subsidies, contracts, and financing arrangements. No one knows exactly how many of our dollars pass directly from government to rich people and the businesses they own, but it’s a big portion of what we spend as a nation.

Before Reagan, rich people (including Reagan) used to pay most of their income–90 percent in the top bracket–in taxes. Every once in awhile, you’d hear somebody complain about it, usually jokingly, but high-earning stars like Mickey Mantle (and Reagan) didn’t play any less well because of the tax bite, and there seemed to be jobs for everybody in those days.

And so history seems to tell us that when we taxed the rich, it was good for the country. Please drop me a line if you hear anybody else say this, because I’m listening and I’m not hearing it, except the occasional stifled squeak that slips out of a reporter or analyst by accident. Even the very modest tax on the rich that’s under consideration in California, so tiny as to be insignificant, is hardly discussed in the national media.

Think of what might happen if we demanded in this election year, from every candidate regardless of party, a promise to support taxation of the rich. We might debate how much to take and what to do with the proceeds, but the commitment to tax the rich could be a matter of consensus.

Some say we would raise enough by taxing the rich to keep payments current on our debt and restore many of the services we’ve eliminated over the last thirty years or so. We could solve the SuperPac problem. There simply wouldn’t be as much money available to rich people for bribery and political manipulation. And imagine a world in which retribution is exacted from the living, breathing people (not corporations) who stole our banking system, who lost two wars over resources they wanted to control, who pollute without limit, who degrade our culture for profit and who enslave us with oppressive debt and mass unemployment.

Some of the proceeds might go for public works or relief of stressed homeowners and renters. Universal Medicare would certainly be adopted. The only thing that’s stopped it so far is the influence of the insurance industry, owned mainly by rich people. That influence would be reduced by a corresponding reduction in the size of their bankroll.
Responsible legislators might adopt the approach of Robin and his Merry Men, redistributing the surplus assets of the rich among the needy or maybe simply on a per capita basis. What might happen if the stock of General Electric were confiscated by government and redistributed to the general public?

There is only one argument against taxing the rich and that’s the argument of the rich. It’s not so much an argument as blackmail. “If you tax us,” they promise, “we will withdraw all financing, and your economy will fail.” They press their point with rewards for those who make the tax rules, and they get richer as the rest of us pay. In fact, the world won’t stand still if we tax the rich. It will become a better place.

Charles Manson claimed he was acting for the good of humanity when he unleashed his young killers on innocents.  He told his followers they were touching off a revolution that would make the world a better place for them, and that the sacrifice of a few worthless lives was justified in view of the objective.  It’s the same reason Obama uses to justify mass murder, and the same tactic, too.  He’s got us killing worthless people to keep our system functioning.  Like Manson’s “family” members, Obama’s mouthpieces, officials like John Brennan, brag about his commitment as an assassin.

It’s hard to believe that either man has a following, but both have enjoyed enthusiastic support, Manson corrupting a fairly small number and Obama corrupting a nation.  Violence in the light of day, violence for public consumption, violence of the kind practiced by Obama’s minions and Manson’s is the ultimate means of social control.  More efficient than religion, more powerful than law, bloodshed frightens and inspires all at once.  The audience for violent entertainment is bigger than ever, and most people expect their police and military to resort to violence as a matter of routine.  Violence is now a cherished social institution.

To qualify for national office, a candidate must express his willingness to engage in aggressive warfare, unilaterally, on sound intelligence or rumor, anywhere in the world, with or without the consent of the people.  We give our government a license to commit mass murder and we expect our leaders to kill.  If polls are to be credited, most of my neighbors are in favor of assassination, even assassination by remote control.  Our president admits he engages in assassination that kills innocents along with the designated targets, and he is beloved by millions of ordinary people.  He would almost certainly lose his job if he suddenly discontinued his war policy or his assassination policy.

It could be fear or it could be prozac, but something is making us insensible to the utter venality of our conduct.  What if we’re brought to account for this? The UN could suddenly discover international law.  Our own children and grandchildren could realize what we’ve done and calculate the consequences our mischief must eventually produce for them. Given the future that seems to be unfolding, they may be feeling those consequences already.

On Grave Defilement Day 50 or 60 years from now, when Obama is a bitter memory, people will pay admission to piss on today’s leaders.  The tab for our wars, spills, waste, mismanagement and general corruption will have long since bankrupted our survivors, and the outlook will be as bleak as Dickens’ worst nightmare.  We can deduce this future from our present degraded state, manifest in our thirst for the blood of infidels as expressed in the election rhetoric of our leaders.  So low have we descended that there is no hope of redemption for us.  Our legacy will be suffering and disintegration.

Let’s parse: “I pledge allegiance . . .” When I pledge allegiance I promise to support my sovereign whatever he or it may do. You can look it up. If the commander of my government’s armed forces decides to send soldiers to kill babies in foreign countries, my allegiance obliges me to support him in that. All the famous totalitarian regimes from Rome to Yokohama had oaths of allegiance. As we take this pledge, we might reflect on the courageous and principled heroes who refused to vow fealty to murderous governments.

“to the flag of the United States of America . . .” I’m promising loyalty to a piece of rag? Or am I praying to a woven idol? The flag of the USA is ubiquitous these days. Schools plaster them everywhere for the children to ponder. Car lots attract customers with flags bigger than your house. People who want to ingratiate themselves with strangers wear them in their lapels. Most people seem to be tired of them. Children say the flag part of the pledge mechanically, just like specators at a ball game sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Nothing inspiring about it at all, and all this hand-over- heart stuff is obvious posturing.

“and to the republic for which it stands . . .” Finally, something substantial to advocate: a republic. Like China and North Korea? Like ancient Rome? Does our flag stand for a government that wields the power of the people through representative government, or does our government wield the power of wealth over the people by means of a sophisticated election industry? Our central government punishes advocacy and even charity. It runs a for-profit prison system that thrives on racism. It lies to us, and it spies on us, in a blatant exercise of repression that rivals the German Reich of the last century. We used to mock repressive governments that called themselves republics. Can’t do that anymore, because we have one.

“one nation . . .” You can go through the Constitution with a nit-comb, and you will find no reference to a “nation” but only to a “union.” It was meant to be a union of sovereign states, wielding only such powers as were explicitly delegated to it by the states. Lincoln’s brilliant rhetoric notwithstanding, the United States were a plurality, and a contentious one at that. If a nation consists of a unified people with values in common, this never was a nation before the Civil War, and it certainly hasn’t become one in the intervening years. The “values” we do hold in common seem to revolve around consumption and personal gratification, hardly the sort of principles around which to build a nation.

“under God . . .” Really? Because I say so? The government to which we pledge allegiance kills babies–not a huge number, the President insists–and we claim to be a nation under God?

“with liberty and justice for all.” If this were true, the last five presidents, including the one sitting now, would have been held accountable for the corruption of the tax system and the consequent corruption of finance and elections. With the full support of Congress, the five Reagans (Reagan I, Bush, Clinton, Bush II (Reagan IV) and Obama) used the tax system and government credit to redistribute wealth and power, enhancing and consolidating the holdings of a few rich people at the expense of the rest of us. We sense that this is unjust, and we experience it as a curtailment of our liberty, even as we mumble the final words of the pledge.

If you get a chance to talk with your children and grandchildren about our national prayer, it might be a good idea to let them know what they’re saying and doing when they take this solemn vow.

Notwithstanding the broad appeal of Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama and despite widespread acceptance of racial integration, racism continues to thrive.  Skin color may not mean as much to individual citizens as it used to, but in key social institutions like entertainment, law enforcement, advertising, education, and health care, skin color defines stark distinctions among human beings, with consequences–principally, violence and disunity–for the whole society.

Some people think that racism is personal: some of us, maybe most of us, just don’t like people of other colors.  If the predisposition to discriminate isn’t inborn, says this logic, it’s learned early, and it’s almost impossible to shed.  I’m not persuaded.  I think racism is mostly social and hardly personal at all.  I’ve known too many people who, once exposed to humans of all colors, outgrew their racism completely.  Some of them are still narrow-minded bigots, but skin color isn’t an issue with them.

Even as individual people of various colors got thrown in together and found communion, what didn’t happen was any sort of corresponding institutional change.  Educators, as part of a mass dumbing-down, kept academic expectations low for dark-skinned kids.  Police agencies continued to equate dark skin with suspicion of wrongdoing.  Commercial interests continued to exploit skin-color differences for profit.

A visible underclass is a windfall for our controllers, reminding us all of what’s in store if we don’t toe the mark inscribed by the authorities.  Those authorities can be expected to preserve stereotypes based on skin color as a convenient means of getting their compliance message across.  And some number of us can be expected to respond accordingly, regardless what the rest of us might think.

Since the elevation of Barack Obama, who is neither white nor black, I’ve argued that we should stop citing racism as an explanation for misconduct.  I’m confessing now that my arguments were, at best, premature, and maybe just plain wrong. A day will certainly come when various ethnic groups on this continent will be so completely integrated that people won’t be able to distinguish races, but that day isn’t here yet, and a battery of institutional forces is arrayed to postpone it.

George Zimmerman, who shot and killed a 17-year-old boy in Florida a few weeks ago, is a case in point.  He made a practice of patrolling the streets of his gated “community” in Sanford, armed with a pistol and a cell phone.  He was in frequent contact with the local police, more than once complaining about “suspicious” non-whites in the neighborhood.  Recordings of some of his 911 calls reveal that he used racial epithets to describe those he stalked.  The police let him continue his patrols until he finally killed one of his targets.  At this writing, a month after the shooting, he hasn’t been charged with any crime, and for all we know he’s back out on the streets with a full clip of ammunition.  Same with Sergeant Bales’ accomplices in Afghanistan, aggressive Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, and the cloistered assassins in American uniforms who launch missiles from remote-controlled aircraft, all deployed for mayhem against dark-skinned innocents.  That’s institutional racism.

The problem may be that light-skinned people will soon be outnumbered. Even without melanoma and interracial marriage, people of European stock aren’t reproducing at a rate sufficient to maintain their plurality, especially if all the other races are combined into one population.  Some “white” people don’t want to give up their numerical advantage, and so they resort to racism.  It’s not inborn in these folks, and it’s not even hatred.  It’s what Zimmerman would call–and did call–self-defense, and the Sanford, Florida, prosecuting attorney agreed with him.  Trayvon Martin, the child Zimmerman shot, was on his way home from the store when his innocent life came to an end.  To credit the Sanford authorities’ self-defense rationale, we must believe that the child’s mere presence in a white neighborhood made him a mortal threat to Zimmerman.  That’s racism.

People of all colors are lodging protests over the Sanford authorities’ failure to arrest Zimmerman. If we hadn’t been through a general dumbing-down in recent decades, there might be a mass movement to oppose stereotyping, profiling, incarceration, and discrimination based on skin color, even in the face of institutional pressure to preserve these longstanding injustices.  We can only hope that our social institutions will someday reflect the sensibilities of the people that maintain them.  Leaders will have to speak out in defiance for that to happen.  Don’t hold your breath.

I’m thinking of starting a torture and assassination (T&A) discussion group. Along with the central issue–the propriety or impropriety of T&A–we’ll talk about the tactics themselves: the purposes, processes and proper application of torture and assassination.

T&A is a growth industry, but it lacks consensus values and standards, and so it’s been left to us citizens to make sense of this new democratic institution. We get a glimpse of the confusion and arbitrariness that attends T&A from Attorney General Eric Holder, who finds such scant support in the laws for his government’s position on assassination that he has to resort to “necessity” instead. A T&A club could hold discussions every week for a year, just parsing and analyzing the government rationale as set forth by Holder, and a portion of every meeting should be dedicated to legal issues.

The question that Holder’s argument raises in my mind as a lawyer is how, in a republic, you and I can be prohibited from killing bad people in violation of the laws when our government has a license to do so. If ours is not a government of laws, then by what logic are we residents subject to obligatory legal strictures? If necessity is the standard, it’s no more pressing on government than on ordinary citizens. When bad people need to die, any of us must have as much right (or duty) to kill them as our president does. Obama and his predecessors have, with universal congressional approval, gone so far as to launch missiles on a carload or houseful of people in order to destroy just one of them, and the determination of our leaders must certainly empower all of us.

If there is a general right or duty of assassination, the next question is whom to kill (or “take out,” in the metaphoric vernacular of our bemused leaders and pundits). We haven’t been introduced to the standards our president applies in making such decisions, but there have been frequent expressions of approval among neojournalists, fiction-writers and subordinate government officials of T&A as a means of saving innocent lives. If sparing innocent lives is the primary criterion, our own leaders and opinion-mongers would have to occupy a good portion of the top of the list of candidates for T&A. Who hasn’t dreamed of locking Joe Lieberman in the trunk of his car for a couple of days, or flaying the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Hillary Clinton? If these people feared for their safety, many observers think the world might be a safer place. It’s certainly worth discussing, and I would dedicate a portion of every meeting to who belongs on the people’s list of candidates for assassination.

How-to issues are also worth talking about. One of the big obstacles to clear thinking on T&A is squeamishness. Assassins and torturers have a big advantage over critics of T&A in that they are numb to feelings of disgust and shame. Critics need to overcome this disadvantage, and frank discussions of means and methods might well serve as a desensitizing antidote to humane misgivings.

The plots and strategies would all be speculative, of course, and altogether fictitious, and the discussions would be for the sole purpose of moral prophylaxis. All discussions would be open–participants wouldn’t want to be mistaken for conspirators–and the proceedings on means and methods might even be published as an additional security measure. Of course, it’s possible that actual conspirators would adapt some of the tactics discussed at T&A gatherings, but it’s not the responsibility of the fiction-writer or movie-maker or propaganda-peddler to police the predilections of his audience; neither should T&A groups have to worry about such eventualities.

Without question, T&A chapters would be infiltrated, and infiltrators should be tolerated, if not invited. Keeping the intelligence agencies busy with fictitious plots might cut into some of their routine work sifting through the phone calls and emails of the general public. Every so often, a group could “out” an infiltrator, and these outings would help publicize the doings of the police state.

Could T&A groups be prosecuted for discussing crime? The First Amendment says they couldn’t, but don’t trust the laws. The Constitution of the United States is just a scrap of parchment, and our law enforcement authorities, so-called, consider the provisions for due process of law quaint and outdated and would gladly use the Bill of Rights for toilet paper if it were a little gentler on the butt. If innocent people can be kidnapped off the street and imprisoned by the US government without charge, odds are the members of a T&A discussion group could be herded into a paddy wagon and never heard from again.

So there’s a risk in forming a T&A discussion group. On the other hand, there’s the challenge of discussing T&A without getting busted, and I would expect chapters to compete with each other to find out how far they could go before the police showed up. Maybe I’m taking a risk asking this question, but would anybody like to join?

“The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this” said the U. S. Supreme Court in 1947: “(N)either a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.”

In fact, the United States government does prefer one religion over others, and that religion is Judaism. Our government is the source of billions of dollars in economic and military aid to the Jewish nation of Israel, a nation that accords preferential status to people of Jewish ancestry and maintains, on religious grounds, a permanent state of war with its non-Jewish neighbors.

The United States government also gives tacit approval to the Jewish nation’s arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons, at the same time as it condemns the state of Iran for developing nuclear capacities that could eventually produce a nuclear weapon. Today, the U. S. government tolerates threats of armed force against Iran by the Jewish state–adding its own threats of violence as an Israeli proxy–even as it tries to disengage from a war that killed and uprooted millions of Iraqis because of unfounded suspicions about that nation’s nuclear capacities and the potential threat it posed to the Jewish state. The U. S. government nods with approval at the murder by agents of the Jewish state of Iranian scientists, even as it entraps gullible Muslim Americans in phony plots and brands them terrorists.

Not only does our government give direct aid to the Jewish religion through the Jewish state, it persecutes people of Arabic extraction here and abroad, along with other Muslims, on behalf of the Jewish state. Members of Congress are lobbied incessantly by Jewish interest groups to adopt resolutions meant to punish and humiliate Arabs, Persians, and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups. Candidates for high office single out the Islamic religion for condemnation.

In the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the United States government rounded up Arabs, even as it arranged for the destruction of critical evidence of involvement in the attack by the Jewish government of Israel. Since 1967, out of special concern for the Jewish state, the U. S. government has been engaged in a systematic cover-up of events surrounding the attack on the intelligence vessel U.S.S. Liberty, whose crew was nearly eradicated by fighter jets of the Jewish state of Israel.

At this moment, Muslims for 100 miles in every direction are under special surveillance by the New York Police Department. Police agents have infiltrated mosques and local Muslim groups. Federal agents have targeted Muslims for phony bomb plots in cities across the country. Hundreds of Muslims have sat in U.S. captivity since 2001 without charges, and thousands have been subjected to torture. No other religious groups are represented in any numbers among these prisoners.

Does anyone doubt that there would be no conflict between the United States and the Islamic faith but for the preservation of a Jewish (and altogether European) state on the eastern Mediterranean? Does anyone doubt that our military adventures in that region are prosecuted on behalf of the Jewish state? Are we not as a government promoting an establishment of religion when we hold prisoners without charges, administer torture, subvert the rule of law, and wage war to preserve the religious identity of a foreign nation?

Two years after the decision in Citizens United, the ruling is widely misrepresented and almost universally misunderstood. People who want to amend the Bill of Rights in response to the decision should read the opinion and the dissent. The law that the Supreme Court struck down would not have stemmed any of the corrupt practices seen so far in the 2012 contests, nor did it involve individual rights of any kind. People who were worried that this case would make corporations the dominant force in US politics have come a little late to the show. Constitution notwithstanding, we have cultivated a political landscape in which the rich and the commerce they control have long reigned sovereign, and the Citizens United decision didn’t change that.

The case involved a movie vilifying Hillary Clinton. The producers, a corporation, wanted to show it on cable TV during the 2008 election season, but federal law made it a felony for a corporation (or labor union) to spend money advocating the election or defeat of a candidate within a specified number of days preceding an election. The film couldn’t be shown until after the 2008 election–the government threatened criminal prosecutions if the film were aired–and so the producers sued the government. Five justices of the Supreme Court agreed with the film-makers and declared the law unconstitutional, overruling a 20-year-old precedent.

Advocates of “limits” on political expenditures have been grieving hysterically over this decision for two years. Democrats in Congress (whose main concern is the accumulation of money for re-election) have been deriding the ruling as an invitation to corruption, as if they weren’t already up to their necks in corporate money from financiers, insurance companies, and war profiteers of various descriptions. Studies show most of the members increased their personal wealth substantially while serving in Congress, and many of them have jobs waiting in the private sector the minute they leave office. Political correctness seems to demand that members defend their duly enacted laws, even illegal ones, but precious few would support a measure that actually curtailed the right of rich folks–corporate or individual–to influence public policy. Not that an act of Congress could reverse the court’s decision.

Here’s the problem: the Bill of Rights. It guarantees our right to be secure from certain kinds of intrusions on the part of the national government and it prohibits government from making laws that infringe on certain of these rights. We can say what we please, print what we please, associate with whomever we please, and enjoy our lives, liberties and properties subject to due process of law because of these ten changes to the original document.

The First Amendment begins, “Congress shall make no law” abridging freedom of speech or of the press. It doesn’t say anything about persons but applies across the board to churches, clubs, newspapers, television stations, book discussion groups and businesses, incorporated and unincorporated. The organized left, not including me, wants to amend the Constitution to limit or cut off the right of free speech for one of these categories.

Justice Kennedy, with whom I seldom agree, wrote the majority opinion and offered some hypothetical cases to illustrate the reach of the defective law and its capacity to curtail free speech. Under the law, Kennedy pointed out, the Sierra Club could be prosecuted for running an ad, within the crucial phase of 60 days before the general election, that exhorts the public to disapprove of a Congressman who favors logging in national forests. The National Rifle Association could be punished for publishing a book urging the public to vote for the challenger because the incumbent U. S. Senator supports a handgun ban. The American Civil Liberties Union could face criminal penalties for creating a Web site telling the public to vote for a Presidential candidate in light of that candidate’s defense of free speech. Don’t these look a bit like the sort of activities the First Amendment is designed to protect?

The decision did not, as so many observers seem to be saying, allow corporations to pour money into political campaign treasuries, and it continues to require that political messages like the Clinton film disclose the names of the sponsors. Corporations that want to give money directly to political candidates have always been able to do so through political action committees, and this ruling doesn’t change that. The much criticized activities of the “Super Pacs” in connection with the Republican presidential primaries wouldn’t have been affected in the slightest by the law if it were still in force. The bribery of public officials by the “haves” at the expense of the “have-nots” would have continued normally with or without the provision Kennedy struck down.

The court took passing notice of the obvious fact that the speech of an aggregate of people will always be louder than the speech of an individual. When a corporation (or any other association) speaks over an individual, the individual’s right to speak is curtailed. It’s an infirmity (or a strength) of our constitution, and it requires us to band together to be heard, as is our right. We also have the right to teach ourselves and our children how to resist political advertising (along with other forms of mind-control), something we’ve never even tried to do. There’s nothing to keep us from putting a tax on big advertising expenditures, commercial and political, a levy that could well change our quality of life for the better. Of course, we should demand restoration of the 90% marginal income tax rate that served us so well in the past, so the rich won’t have so much to spend on bribery. Let’s also consider a one-time property tax on obscene wealth, and let’s remember that a corporation is just an association of people. We might want to put the responsibility for corporate misconduct where it belongs: on living, breathing, culpable human beings.

Some legal observers argue that we need to amend our constitution if we want to rein in the corporate state and reverse the effect of this decision (if there really has been one). They make a strong moral argument that constitutional freedoms should be reserved for those who bear legal and moral responsibility for their acts and obligations–the people–and cut off for those that accumulate vast treasuries to exploit and oppress without personal accountability. This is dangerous logic, however: cutting off First Amendment rights is fraught with risk. Why not a law that provides for capital punishment of irresponsible conduct in interstate or international commerce (corporate or not), requiring the confiscation or dissolution and liquidation of organizations whose misdeeds cause widespread human suffering? There’s no constitutional impediment to such a law, and we wouldn’t have to mess with the Bill of Rights.

It’s pretty clear by now that Iran needs either its own atomic bomb or the protection of another nuclear-armed nation to defend itself from Israel and its surrogate the United States of America. Statements coming from the two countries justify an inference that both are prepared to launch a nuclear first strike on Iran. Obama claims he is “not taking any options off the table,” and his boss Netanyahu has been even more aggressive in his rhetoric.

Any responsible person advising the Iranian government would recommend a deterrent. What we call “international law” provides no deterrent, and neither do morals or ethics. Religious fanaticism of the sort practiced by Judeochristians, now ruling Israel and the US, doesn’t recognize laws or moral strictures. Nothing short of a nuclear warhead can be assured of restraining these two rogue governments, which have proved their capacity for mass murder again and again.

Fortunately, the people of both countries are consummate cowards and not equal to a threat of nuclear retaliation. Perhaps Russia, which has a border with Iran, will pledge its deterrent. Or maybe China. But if no nation will rise in Iran’s defense, it will have to provide its own deterrent. Withholding the oil won’t do it.

That the people of the United States don’t care to get into another war–and don’t seem to care about much of anything else either–is of no consequence. In the 21st Century, as in the 20th, war is a pursuit of national leaders. The only role of the people is to supply the bodies. Wave a flag in front of us, and we Americans can be relied on to sacrifice other people’s kids to the cause of Israel and Exxon. “Thank you for your service,” we say, by way of apology.

Don’t look for a debate about any of this on the evening news. Gossip and shopping hints are the only welcome fare for most news-consumers, and customer satisfaction is the name of the game among neojournalists. Debating war and peace is boring and makes people change the channel. Instead of NBC’s Viagra ads they might tune in ABC’s Celebrex promotions.

If Americans were forced to attend to current events, they might put themselves in the place of Iranians. Imagine being threatened continually with violence from above. “Do Christians and Jews attack without warning?,” your kids might ask. “What kind of religions are these that allow the faithful to make such threats? Should we trust them not to kill us, or should we build weapons to scare them off?” Should they?

Nearly 50 years after my last exposure to a schoolroom, I’m a substitute teacher in a suburban school system in central Connecticut, and I’m less confident than ever of educators’ ability to bring the children to a reasonable level of competence in any area. I’ve had first-graders, second-graders and middle- and high-school students, and, in the course of a few short weeks, I’ve noted a deficient curriculum, a low standard of citizenship, inadequate textbooks and study materials, and a variety of time- and resource-wasting practices.

It’s not the fault of the personnel: they are willing and able; it’s the obstacles that are placed in their way. Education has been transformed into an industry, disabling it as a social institution with strict values and standards. I compare what today’s children are getting with what I got, and I worry that most of them won’t be able to express a coherent thought or do simple arithmetic. If the staff felt free to discuss the system they work in, most would probably agree that it is ineffective, as the latest statistics on educational progress in Connecticut suggest.

Today, instead of drilling in arithmetic, they play number games and count out poker chips in groups of four or five kids. They draw pictures of items to add instead of memorizing the facts. One first-grade I taught spent fifteen minutes learning from a video that the elements of a number sentence are addends, a lesson they promptly forgot. They could have been drilling. When I ask a first-grader how many are one and four, the kid shouldn’t have to count that out on his fingers. A seventh-grader asked me for help with a simple long division problem. She used a calculator to do the math. She got the answer to six decimal places. I don’t think she could have done the long division on her own, and I doubt that she has her division and subtraction facts conveniently available.

The textbooks are an embarassment. Printed on glossy paper with an abundance of color illustrations, they are big and heavy. Every page is an arrangement of gimmicks, with varied typefaces in colored boxes, random “lessons,” bulleted lists, and other distractions. I’ve used texts for high school literature, geometry, senior math, business law and business math, and middle school social studies, “language arts,” French, and Spanish, and most of them are too big, too profusely illustrated, illogically organized, and poorly edited. I try in vain to find the point among all the colorful circles and arrows that adorn each page, features that might strike adult book- buyers as “fun” but that are useless and even confusing to the students. The kids’ rucksacks are strained to bursting by these monstrosities, and their little backs bend under the burden. Take a look at your kids’ or grandkids’ schoolbooks sometime and see whether you would be able to extract knowledge from them.

I’d like to know who came up with the idea that learning is supposed to be fun. Learning to water ski might be fun, but learning to form letters and learning to add numbers is work. We drilled and drilled in the primary grades. Flashcards with addition and subtraction facts were a staple, and there was board work for every kid. We read aloud in small groups and recited at our desks as a class, mostly stuff we’d memorized in unison. I’ve heard people criticize rote learning, but it worked. It may really be the only method that works every time. It’s boring, like much of the work that’s required to keep society functioning, but kids have to learn to deal with drudgery, don’t they?

Much of the instruction is by way of photocopied exercises. From my school days, I remember assignments written out on the blackboard that I had to copy onto the sheet of paper they gave me for written work. Today you might get three sheets of paper with printed material and spaces for answers, usually more space than text, with the imprint of the exercise’s publisher at the bottom and one side blank. Educational “packages” consisting of matched books, videos, and canned assignments for photocopying are common. Some of the books are meant to be written in, and these get discarded after one year’s use. The paper budget has to be crushing, with teachers consuming hundreds of pages every week. The exercises themselves are often of no educational value and far removed from any sort of reinforcing drill on an accompanying lesson, a defect even the kids notice.

Some kids like to work, but you can dull their motivation by not requiring much of them. If the expectation is low and there are rewards for minimal performance, you will tend to get minimal performance. There’s no profit in being outstanding, especially when nobody is allowed that status. There are banners hung in the gymnasium celebrating individual athletic accomplishment, but no conspicuous signs of academic distinction, either in primary school or secondary school. You have to guess who the scholars are. I have yet to see an honor roll posted in a homeroom. There seems to be a social elite and an athletic elite, but there’s no identifiable academic elite. Nothing takes the starch out of a gifted student like lack of recognition. Scholars were held up as models in my age group, and there was some competition for high academic status. I’m sure there’s a National Honor Society chapter at the high school where I fill in, but I haven’t seen any plaques or banners to indicate who’s in it.

I believe stifling competition for academic status is meant to stem the pressures of high achievement. I’d like to know whose idea that was, too. Elimination of the academic elite runs counter to values that have long been essential to education as a social institution. On the other hand, in the operation of education as an industry, an academic elite is an unnecessary complication, a source of resentment, pressure, feelings of inadequacy and diffuse customer dissatisfaction. An academic elite runs counter to the “you’re special” movement, which substitutes phony, commercial values for actual merit.

Customer satisfaction might also be the reason for no blackboard work. We used to line up at the blackboard and write things on it for correction by the teacher. I guess that turned out to be too stressful for the kids, having to do arithmetic or practice penmanship in front of everybody. Now they do it at their desks on paper, tons of paper. Only the teacher writes on the board, which is white and doesn’t take chalk but a chemical marking pen. The absence of board work is another example of lack of public recognition for high achievement.

In primary school, by the way, working at your desk means facing each other in groups of four or five. The least obedient kid leads the discussion in every group. Here, too, there’s no profit in conscientious effort. If a kid wants to work, there’s always somebody there to interfere, and the workers learn early that the interferers control the show. By seventh grade, most of the kids–and nearly all the boys–are firm in the conviction that school is no place for ambitious academic effort.

Two months into the school year, the primary school kids are split down the middle between the ones that learn to read and to add without much effort and the ones who must work hard to learn. They’re all together in mixed groups, and the ones who have to work command most of the attention. Their standard, relaxed to accommodate their needs, becomes the standard of the group. By seventh grade, there are two distinct strata of kids. The ones who find the work too easy and are bored by it and the majority, most of whom can’t pass standard reading and math tests.

Despite all my grieving, I enjoy this work. It’s actually a little easier if you don’t insist on learning. I have to admit that understressed kids are more congenial company than hard-driving toilers. I’m not the guy to introduce them to harsh discipline, and so I’m popular. I’m a little put out that they’re not learning much and don’t care to, but I’m no teacher. I’m only just beginning to learn how to get anything resembling compliance, much less respect. I’m sure I’ll be pursuing that quest for as long as I’m allowed to continue in this career.

I’m no teacher, but I am a learner. A reluctant one, like the kids I teach, and a successful one, a kid who overcame an aversion to hard work. I give my teachers the credit for this, but it really belongs to the educational institution that nurtured them and paid their meager wages. It was strict, it was demanding, and it was stressful for us tykes, but it produced universal literacy and revolutionary scientific and literary accomplishments. The school industry as it exists today–catering to the whims and politics of its many and varied customers–can’t produce such results and could bring us into a new dark age.

All this what-do-they-want gas issuing from the embedded mass media is meant to distract from the Occupy movement’s clear mandate: take from the rich. The stewardship of the owners has been a demonstrable failure for everyone but them, so let’s put an end to it. So compelling is the logic behind this demand that the media can’t bring themselves to articulate it.

 There may be some disagreement among protesters over how much to take and what to do with the proceeds, but all agree that the time has come to separate rich people from their assets.  Most seem to follow Robin Hood: take from the rich to give to the poor. Some would rather put the money into public works. Others would like to distribute the proceeds to stressed homeowners. Many would settle for universal Medicare, and a few want to take from the rich simply to decrease their influence over public policy.  Any way you parse it, the message is confiscation.

Rich people and their minions seem to be the only force in opposition to the huge majority on this issue, and it’s a rich irony that as they consolidate their holdings and their political power in fewer and fewer hands, they make themselves that much more vulnerable and confront an ever less resistable tide. They seem oblivious to the hazard they’ve created for themselves. You may have noticed, if you watch interviews with movie stars, sports figures, and other multimillionaire celebrities, that they’re never asked what they do with all the money they make or whether they really think they deserve it. That sort of discussion might veer toward the problem rich people would rather not face, much less talk about: the huge number of ordinary people with no prospect of material comfort and little assurance of economic security. If these masses ever turned their dissatisfaction on those who control all the capital, it would be a sad day for the rich.

It’s common knowledge that most of us have food to eat and a roof over our heads only so long as we agree to the demands of our “creditors.” Creditors. we understand, are people who have more money than they need, so much that they can transfer their surpluses to those of us who don’t have enough, with the expectation of getting their money back, plus some extra as payment for sharing their excess The greater the need for money, workers know, the more the creditors charge you for it. The needy end up paying extra for what they need, and the creditors end up with all that extra, along with the surplus they started with. It’s not difficult to imagine the feelings this sort of arrangement elicits in the participants. Combine a high level of discontent with the inevitable demographic consequences of this scheme–the larger and more desperate the population of debtors, the smaller and less secure must be the class of creditors–and critical mass could come any day.

Nobody is surprised that the media are allied with the rich in this clash of classes. Like all our social institutions–including government at every level–the mass media are controlled and largely owned by the rich, and the “values” they promote are altogether commercial. The inexpressible worry of rich people is that the rest of us will grasp that our numbers–growing by the hour, as security gives way to servitude in household after household–give us strength. The mass media have been delegated to keep that knowledge from us. It’s not working.

In spite of the stream of disinformation, Workers are beginning to understand that only a tiny fraction of rich people’s surplus money is put out to improve the lot of humanity, and nearly all is distributed for the purpose of increasing the creditors’ holdings. Ordinary people are not persuaded that this sort of commerce is good for them, and they’re beginning to recognize the deficiencies in the system. So far, their obligations to creditors have kept them from doing anything to change it, but the appeal of the Occupy movement tells us that there is consensus on one point: for the good of humanity, rich people must be divested of their wealth.