And Another Thing

Tax cuts. Ok, dear republican friends, colleagues: G.W. Bush explained to Matt Lauer on Monday evening that the tax cuts that he is so famously reviled for were necessary to prevent an economic disaster following the events of 9/11. Ok, fine, so let's give that bullshit idea the benefit of the doubt. Why then were they still necessary in, say, 2006, when the economy was roaring along and the Dow was climbing to previously unheard of heights? What argument could possibly have been made to keep them in place then? Oh, to maintain the status quo you say, my republican apologist friend. Things were good, so why mess with taxes? Fair enough. But then, WHY THE HELL WOULD WE EXTEND THE TAX CUTS NOW? You cannot have it both ways Mr. Boehner. If the tax cuts should be kept in place, because without them American businesses can't create jobs, then where are all the jobs that those tax cuts are creating? Not sure why I bother with these rants. Maybe Mr. Boehner googled something about dropping out of grad school and stumbled upon this blog. Maybe I just changed his mind. Or maybe I'll have another glass of wine and go to bed.

As for the professional world: feeling pretty good about the grad school decision. I pretty much woke up one day and...felt...fine. I seem to be dealing with the normal sequence of events following a bowing out of academia. Step 1: freak the fuck out. Step 2: contemplate ways to reenter the protective cocoon of grad school. Step 3: question entire identity. Step 4: send feelers out into the non-academic world to see if it really does exist. Step 5: decide to teach English abroad if nothing else works out. Step 6: freak the fuck out again. How long until opening day starts? Nothing assuages existential crises like the nasaly sweetness of Vin Scully. Time for Dodger baseball indeed.

This May Be...No Really This Time it Probably is...

Is it possible that this next decade will usher in the end of western capitalism? The more I think about it, the more this seems to be a real possibility. Here is what I mean. If the republican controlled House enacts its own chosen legislative agenda, or even if it succeeds in blocking and obfuscating everything the democrats try to do, the middle and working classes of this country will be absolutely crushed. Social services ruined, tax policy favoring the rich even more, etc. etc. etc. This will result in only a couple of possibilities. One, a massive revolt by the lower classes. We've seen this kind of thing before, but it has been awhile since it has been anything other than cultural. The 60s provided a kind of blueprint for a nation-wide movement, but it was vague, unfocused, and mostly concerned with moral and cultural evolution. We need to look back to the massive worker-centered protests of the late 19th century that were fueled by labor unrest related to periodic economic swan-dives that rocked the nation in 1873 and 1893. Think Haymarket square riots, Pullman riots. I'm talking bloody, fiery, angry mobs that were sick of being exploited by the power class. It could and probably should happen again. The second possibility is one that I certainly favor, and which seemed likely to happen anyway until last week's election debacle. A further shift to a Scandinavian-style political and economic environment. This has been the lefts' dream of course for decades now and in some important ways, Obama almost heralded the dawn of this promised age. His watered down health care legislation and his equally diluted plan to create jobs via government investment in green industry pointed the way down this pragmatically utopian path. But this path was blocked last week by a resurgence of idiotic republican voters; a blockage that seems to be only temporary. The republicans have no plan, other than continuing to swindle, hoodwink, and bamboozle ordinary Americans into voting for politicians who will continue to legislate in favor of Wall Street and big business by sidling up to conservative America's fear of abortion, gun control, and, well everything really. This lack of a plan has to backfire, right? I think so. I hope so. I imagine that even conservative America will begin to realize that they have been dependent on government's teat for decades, and that the "free market" really just means the rich preying upon the not rich. Which, hopefully, theoretically, will result in a leftward movement among the American electorate. This could all happen within a decade. And, whether or not this movement is a violent, furious shift, or a ballot-box renunciation of the republican death-machine, there is a good, good chance that American capitalism will have a decidedly socialist flavor as a result.


Still applying for publishing/editing jobs, with no bites yet. Second private school observation coming up next week. The slog continues...

Also: the following link is a great summary of why I decided not to attend grad school next year. Watch and learn.

http://www.leavingacademia.com/2010/10/i-want-to-be-a-college-professor/

Things Will Not Get Better (regardless of what Obama or Dan Savage says)

Thomas Jefferson, possibly the most revered "founding father" was as affluent and elite as they come. Jefferson was fluent in three languages, had an insatiable thirst for French wine, built a fabulous and fabulously expensive estate, and was as comfortable in a Parisian court as he was in Virginia. Jefferson would have, in fact, preferred that the newly emergent American political and social system he helped create hewed more closely to the French model. Much of the same could be said for Ben Franklin, right down to his francophilic tendencies. Alexander Hamilton was terrified that members of the lower class would have any say whatsoever in the government, and he favored a radically aggressive governmental handling of the economy--this from the United States' first Secretary of the Treasury.

These men would be truly saddened to see how their political experiment has borne itself out, but not in the ways that republicans and conservatives assume. Elitists to the bone, the founders of this nation greatly feared that they risked ceding too much control of the government to the uneducated and the incapable. They knew that the masses were quite easily swayed, that passions inflamed were passions uncontrolled, and that in a democracy passions could be just as devastating as foreign armies. The very notion of the representation that is at the heart of our political system reflects this concern. The "people" are in no way smart enough or knowledgeable enough to run a government: hence the need for representation. It was once assumed that citizens of the highest intellectual talent and possessing the greatest education were naturally superior officeholders. It is truly, truly shocking that this faith in intelligence has actually receded.

The sad truth that republicans now have enough obstructionist power to idiotically wrestle the economy into the next Great Depression is probably less important than the powerful truth that should be evident to progressives nationwide: The United States is doomed. This election was not about anger, it was about fear. Conservatives, by their very nature, are a fearful lot, and they lack both the vision and, quite ironically, the hindsight to recognize their folly. Their desire to return America to a WASPY 1950s heyday will ruin us. Americans, read your British history. There we will find the blueprints for an empire in decay, and, unfortunately, our future.

On a lighter note: I've received some very positive responses to my C.V. from private high schools in the area, and have scheduled several observation days and meetings with faculty. And, mark your calendars, I will deliver my third guest lecture at Berkeley City College on November 15th. The theme will be U.S. economic history in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Also: After a recent viewing of "First Contact" I have declared, definitively, that not only is Jean-Luc Picard officially superior to Kirk, but that Patrick Stewart is the greatest...actor...ever.