Our science and our technology have posed us a profound question. Will we learn to use these tools with wisdom and foresight before it’s too late? Will we see our species safely through this difficult passage so that our children and grandchildren will continue the great journey of discovery still deeper into the mysteries of the Cosmos? That same rocket and nuclear and computer technology that sends our ships past the farthest known planet can also be used to destroy our global civilization. Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, “I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It’s up to you.” (Carl Sagan, Cosmos TV Series)

A US Air Force unmanned spacecraft blasted off on Thursday from Florida, amid a veil of secrecy aboutM its military mission. The robotic space plane, or X-37B, lifted off from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas V rocket at 7:52 pm local time (2352 GMT), according video released by the military. “The launch is a go,” Air Force Major Angie Blair told AFP. Resembling a miniature space shuttle, the plane ims 8.9 meters (29 feet) long and has a wing-span of 4.5 meters. The reusable space vehicle has been years in the making and the military has offered only vague explanations as to its purpose or role in the American military’s arsenal. Space Daily, April 22, 2010

What else do they need? (Fidel Castro, Granma, April 26, 2010)

In his many writings, Carl Sagan at one time pondered that perhaps the Apollo moon landing program was really disguised military spending, the purpose of which was to perfect the ability to deliver nuclear weapons across continents via ICBM’s. The moon landing produced little of value for humans beyond enthusiasm for the future of the species, not to be discounted. It was unceremoniously dumped with no follow-up. But the limits on our ability to explore space are daunting and unrealistic. Perhaps … just perhaps there might one day be a human on Mars, but … why? Can’t go any further.

Over the years since I read (or heard – I had a cassette version of Pale Blue Dot at one time) Sagan’s words, I have suspected that the Space Shuttle program was also just another military program, and that militarization of space, even while being negotiated in treaties and debated, was going on, hidden in plain sight. What was the value of the on-board experiments in a weightless environment? Cost-benefit analysis anyone? (I concede that fixing the Hubble was a worthy doing. I am glad we had the ability to do that.)

The U.S. has now developed a new “super-bomb,” a non-nuclear device that yields as much destruction. So powerful are these bombs that the Russians insisted in the Start 2 treaty negotiations that the U.S. dismantle one nuclear warhead for every super-bomb deployed. The problem, as always, is delivery – how quickly can we unleash this monster on some perceived enemy? The goal is one hour.

Has the Space Shuttle program solved that problem? Is that why all of the classified activity aboard? Is the X-37B mini-shuttle part fo the solution? Is that the purpose of its nine-month missions? Just as we used moon-landing technology to perfect Werner von Braun’s dream, have we used Shuttle technology to militarize space? If so, the world is now a much more dangerous place than ever before. While the Bush Administration offered assurances, no doubt echoed by Obama, that China and Russia will be given advance notice before launching of a non-nuclear device … how can they know?

The X-37B is a military weapon, and the announced goal of the military is “PGS,” or Prompt Global Strike. We are closer now than ever to that dream.

Maybe the purpose of the Apollo program was to build a safe moon-haven for America military officials in the post-apocalyptic world. Now that would make sense. But our unyielding drive to dominate the planet is a greater danger to the planet than posed by any other activity in human history.

We have two communities here in Colorado on opposite sides of the narrow American political spectrum – one affectionately referred to as “The Peoples Republic” of Boulder, and the other Colorado Springs, kind of local gubbmint-is-evil Somalia.

The Denver Post calls Boulder “the most self-satisfied community in America,” and it does have a lot to teach us. Back in the 1960’s, residents of that city saw the future as Denver swallowed up surrounding communities, now only distinguished by freeway signs – Lakewood, Aurora, Superior, Littleton are now part of Denver proper. Boulder government convinced the public to issue bonds for the purpose of buying up surrounding countryside, not to develop, but to leave in its natural state. The result over the succeeding decades was a green zone around the city, with Boulder an island.

It’s an odd city, as every action as an equal and opposite reaction. Indeed it is surrounded by hiking trails and is not part of Denver. Within this enclave is a privileged community with beautiful parks, well-kept streets and thousands of storefronts (and no Wal-Mart). Each morning there is a huge flow of traffic, not to Denver, but into Boulder from the outlying communities. People of ordinary income, unless they have been residents for decades and own their properties, cannot afford to live there. Sixties-style ranch-style homes go for $300,000 plus, and newer developments are usually townhouses with maximization of very little space- maybe a thousand square feet with a storage unit somewhere out-of-town.

The city is the home of the University of Colorado, with 30,000 plus students, and so is heavily dependent on that facility for economic well being. The student population lends to the liberal atmosphere – it’s a fun town, with breweries, brew-pubs, pizza joints, ritzy malls and theaters and restaurants to satisfy every taste. But it is not utopia – you have to be wealthy, or a student, to really take it in.

Here is a link from today’s Denver Post on our neighbor to the south:

Colorado Springs is also heavily dependent on government institutions for its well-being. Fully one-third of its jobs are government-related, with the Air Force Academy the

primary reason for the town’s existence. A majority of the population have bought into the Randian taxation-is-evil mantra, and so have cut, cut cut in recent years. There is a non-ending debate about the inefficiency of government services. Public officials there ought to be up for sainthood, as they operate within the hubris of idiocy. Nothing they do will satisfy the residents that they are not worthless leaches.

Colorado Springs now turns off most of its street lights at night, and the sod on its park will deteriorate in the coming months because they cannot afford to water it. Museums and swimming pools have been shut down, buses do not run on evenings and weekends. The city no longer fills its pot holes and does no paving, hoping the state wills step in and take care of busier streets. Police and fire have been drastically cut.

Imagine a woman waiting for a bus on a dark street on the way to work some evening, with a car of thugs harassing her … neither the bus or police will show up.

The idea is that the vaunted private sector will step in and fill these gaps. It hasn’t, of course, and won’t. Government services are such because they do not offer opportunity for private profit – high volume low revenue services are the job of government. The private sector isn’t very good at those things.

Here’s the ultimate in hubris:

Community business leaders have jumped into the budget debate, some questioning city spending on what they see as “Ferrari”-level benefits for employees and high salaries in middle management. Broadmoor luxury resort chief executive Steve Bartolin wrote an open letter asking why the city spends $89,000 per employee, when his enterprise has a similar number of workers and spends only $24,000 on each.

That pretty well sums it up. (Street lights leading to the Broadmoor, of course, are on every night.)

The U.S. government is running massive deficits in its general fund, which includes interest on the debt, the military and its many wars and weapons programs, government infrastructure and some social welfare programs. This deficit could be alleviated by increases taxes in those areas where taxes have been cut, and economic upturn. To allow it to bleed is irresponsible in the extreme, but the leadership of the two political parties are controlled by the sectors whose taxes need to be increased, and so are incapable of action.

So we get distraction instead. According the latest Trustees’ Report on Medicare and Social Security, those two programs have surpluses that might run out in thirteen years (Medicare) or twenty-five years (Social Security). (By the way, when the Social Security Trust Fund expires, as it was designed to do, Social Security will still be able to pay pensions. It will simply not have a surplus to draw on.) New forecasts say that slower than expected economic growth shortens the projected life span of these programs.

Forecasts are a planning tool, but should never be thought of as reliable beyond one year, and so should be revisited often and used only for near-term planning. Those who predict crises beyond five years should be treated as we do Christianity – publicly observed but otherwise not taken seriously. No one knows what our state of affairs will be next year, much less in 2036. The law requires the Trustees to keep an eye out for future trends regarding the two programs, but doomsday predictions are mere political rhetoric used to advance political agendas.

Rep. Paul Ryan has put forward a plan to move senior citizens from Medicare to private insurers, supplying them with vouchers. This is lunacy, as the private insurance system is hardly affordable for healthy people, much less seniors who consume most of our health care dollars. (If private insurers were a positive social value, the government would not have had to step in the 1960’s to form Medicare.) We spend our working years fighting with these leaches, and they refuse to deal with any of us who are aged, possibly having a medical condition that might threaten profitability, or too poor to afford their premiums. The private insurance system simply does not work, as it is in conflict with itself: It cannot both feed investors and perform the social function of providing reasonably priced health care to all citizens. It needs to be scrapped. It is hugely inefficient.

Medicare is indeed a looming problem, however. It is not its structure, but rather its reliance on the private sector, that creates that problem. Private health insurance has created a bureaucratic nightmare, with 31% of our medical expenditures required merely to decide who pays (more properly, who doesn’t) the bill. Single payer would fix the problem, of course, or at least heavy regulation of private insurers, outlawing their ability to profit off of basic medical care. But because free market economics is a religious, rather than rational belief system, those who preach it know no other answer and are bound to keep trotting it out to solve every problem.

Likewise, private pensions are weak sisters of government cousins. The notion of a “defined benefit,” which is the basis of Social Security, was discarded decades ago. The system was gradually converted to defined contribution – the 401K,s IRA’s and SIMPLE’s which are subject to annual fees that drain at least a quarter of their reserves over the long haul (Social Security: 3%.) Once a worker relies on his 401K for retirement, he is daily confronted with the possibility that it will be drained before he dies. “Security” does not exist in private pensions, whose funding is rarely secure for twenty-five years. Libertarians and Randians decry inter-generational transfer, but they have not a leg to stand on in offering secure alternatives. It may offend their senses, but they ought to do as most religious people do – worship on Sunday and live in the real world the rest of the week.

Ayn Rand died reliant on Social Security for income and Medicare to treat her lung cancer, both courtesy of her husband, Frank O’Connor, whom she openly disrespected. She ought to be buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Somalia, aka, Randistan. In the meantime, we should undertake a concerted effort to find the body of Tom Paine, and restore it to its proper place of honor.

I had a buddy in college who gave me shit about the fact that he had to borrow money and my dad paid a lot of my way. I told him that my job was to get good grades. In other words, don’t take my good fortune for granted. That’s my job. (Message from right-wing blogger on how he handles his personal privilege.)

The above is part of a much longer exchange I had with a right-wing blogger some time ago. I ask permission to use his name, and did not receive it. There is, within our exchange, fodder for a hundred posts, but the smugness and insularity of those particular words has hung with me. It’s quite disgusting.

First, let me expose the overall framework of right wing thinking. It goes like this: I am a wealth producer. Others consume wealth and feed off me. From this comes the natural extension, the notion of “going Galt.” They threaten to leave society, stop producing wealth, leaving all of the rabble to try and survive without them. In another part of our exchange, the right winger above mentioned that he always takes care of his employees before he pays himself, indicating that he even believes his employees to be beneficiaries of his charitable existence, rather than the opposite.

It is indeed a shame that so many of us elect to exchange our freedom and perhaps half of the wealth we produce in exchange for the illusion of security. That’s a side issue.

But at least this person concedes a privileged position. He acknowledges that not having to go into debt to get through college was a gift. He doesn’t talk about the other advantage granted to him, likely because he hasn’t a clue what it is like out there – he was an “insider” in the health care system, and so had access to quality care without the risk of enormous out-of-pocket expense. He has probably never been without the privilege of access to our health care system.

I concluded our exchange by offering up a small piece of wisdom, inaccessible to the right wing mind: We are all wealth producers. As a “left winger” I do not advocate confiscatory policies. I advocate paying back privilege. Imagine that all of our society was offered what he had – a high platform from which to embark on a career. Imagine that all of us could start out our lives with access to education and health care, and build from there. Imagine that so many of us were not chained to our desks by student loans and the need for health insurance, inaccessible to so many of us without employment by others.

That’s all that other industrial “democracies” do – I use quotes to separate us from the others, as we are the least democratic of the industrialized world. The knock on socialism is that it mandates that everyone cross the finish line at the same time. That’s nonsense – socialism merely allows everyone access to the starting gate, even without Daddy to pay the bills.

Sheesh. What hubris contaminates the right wing mind.

Dear President Obama:

Over the weekend you announced that you have the right to assassinate American citizens without “due process”, a quaint term. Kudos – it’s teabagging time!

I special request: Please kill Thomas Friedman and Bob Woodward. They are annoying and stupid.

Sincerely,
Mark Tokarski
Morrison, CO

PS: No torture please, even though that is your right too. Don’t do them them what they have done to us. Just kill them. Thanks.

The contradictions, duplicity and hypocrisy of this incident are delicious. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the Tea Party, as they are just a manifestation of the larger powers at work behind the scenes in our country. Such stupid people as I have seen at the rallies are not capable of large organizational projects, long-term vision or policy expertise. They are just rubes with good reason to be upset, but not really understanding what those good reasons are. They don’t know where to direct anger, and so, like attack dogs, go where the master points. I sympathize with them, but honestly, in a country as stupid as this, there’s nothing more to be done than to sympathize. It is the other end of the leash we need to focus on.

Nonetheless, here’s a story that needs wider exposure. Nichole Sandler is a radio host, which on the left wing is one step removed from food stamps. She went to a town hall meeting in Broward County, Florida, sponsored by Congressman Allen West, a Tea Party beneficiary. West’s town hall was done in the standard PR format to give the illusion of an open public gathering. Questions were to be submitted in writing, and his staff selected those that he would answer. This leaves them free to discard tough questions and even to make up softballs for the jackass to answer.

Sandler was having none of it. When he stood there talking about how he is going to save Medicare by destroying it, she stood up and challenged him. A security guard pointed her out to local police, who sought to forcibly remove her from the room. She is heard saying things like “get your hands off me” to them. She was put in a police cruiser, held in solitary, and when challenging one of her captors to please let her go, was maced. Not a little bit – heavily. The Broward County police obviously had a power boner.

The charge against her? Trespassing. Attending a public event in a public auditorium sponsored by an elected official was trespassing. They did not charge her with speaking up, as that would imply that she had no right to speak. After being arrested for trespassing, they claim that she was a bad girl, justifying the imprisonment, isolation and macing. Maybe it’s all proper, but certainly it ain’t right.

That’s all well internalized here on this end. I understand this country better than most folks. I remember Ralph Nader being arrested when he tried to attend the Gore/Bush “debates,” another controlled forum where dissent is not allowed. He had a ticket, was not barging in. He was Nader, that’s all, so they arrested him. What is so deliciously funny about all of this is all of those Tea Party numchucks who were bussed to town hall meetings during the health care “debate,” how they were loud, obnoxious, disruptive; how the floor was open for unrehearsed questions … how they rode their buses home fully self-satisfied. No arrests that I recall.

What a country.

I wrote yesterday about the insignificance of replacing Democratic Senator Jon Tester of Montana with his Republican challenger, Congressman Dennis Rehberg. This brought to mind one of the weapons that people in office use to keep their base in line: The voting record.

Here are the last ten recorded votes in the current Senate without regard to issue or party: 81-19, 42-58, 47-53, 96-0, 64-36, 57-43, 100-0, 50-50, 12-88, 7-93. In those ten votes there was one where the vote of one Senator could have changed the outcome. That vote was on Amendment No. 183, which would prohibit the EPA from doing anything related to climate change. The 50-50 vote means it failed. Important? Yes. Tester’s vote? To reject the amendment. One Republican joined with the Democrats in rejecting the amendment, and four Democrats joined the Republicans to favor passage.

Now, suppose that Dennis Rehberg held Jon Tester’s seat – it indeed appears that the final vote would have changed the outcome. But we don’t know that. Prior to a close vote being taken, is is usually known how it will come out. Prior to that, a practice known as “vote trading” takes place. Republicans were mostly obligated to support that amendment, as their base requires it, and the Republican base tends to remember stuff. But are all 50 of Republicans unreasonable? Not likely. Democrats, on the other hand, are not obligated to oppose the amendment, as their base doesn’t hold them to ideology. So four of them jumped ship.

Even so, it appears we have a victory. I won’t deny that.

However, it could be that in the vote trading scheme, one Republican (Collins, Maine) agreed to take the Democratic side to defeat the amendment, and both sides were agreeable to that. That is a win-win – everyone pleases the base, and the vote tallying agencies will ‘score’ the vote for use in coming election campaigns. In the meantime, the issue dies.

In 1994 the League of Conservation Voters released its voting score on Montana Senator Max Baucus, and he scored 80% “favorable” to the environmental community. A closer look revealed that three (going on memory here) of the votes were about changing the designation of the the Joshua Tree National Monument into a national park and expanding the old wilderness. Two of those votes were procedural. Important? Yes. But the votes were all lopsided. Baucus could vote for or against the issue without changing the outcome. It did not affect his home state. It was not a true test of his environmental credentials.

Did LCV shill for Baucus? I suspected so at the time. A better test of Baucus’s wilderness creds was his behavior regarding Montana wilderness. He opposed expansion of designated wilderness throughout his tenure in office. Whenever the issue would arise, Baucus would trot out a “rocks and ice” bill designed to thwart attempts to protect heavily forested areas from development. That’s behavior that has consequences. The LCV scorecard does not reflect it.

It is hard to know the mind of a Senator, and voting records are of little use. More important is the behavior behind the scenes, and we don’t get much reporting on that. Our impression of the worth of a legislator is based solely on the record of votes and the “scorecards” put out by interest groups, and public utterances. Those votes can be tailored as necessary to please the base. Public words of politicians are designed for impact, and carry no substance. Notice that 7 of 10 votes above were lopsided, and two were far enough apart to allow the luxury of switching a vote here and there without affecting outcome. On the one that was close, we may or may not have pegged Senator Tester. He may indeed be the right guy in the right place. But it is far from certain.

There’s a great swill of controversy now about having Rehberg in office instead of Tester. Democrats are, frankly, scared out of their panties of Rehberg. They needn’t be. Part of the beauty of our two-party system is the ability of politicians to focus their base on the other party as they do their business. The only way to have an impact on the system and the outcome of votes is to pressure the person in office. Democrats, who perpetually swear to support their party no matter the behavior of the office holders, do not offer meaningful pressure. They are the problem.

One of the frustrations of watching Democrats in action is the frustration of watching Democrats thinking they are in action. But it doesn’t hurt to step back and take the long view. Democrats are, after all, just people, subject to illusion and delusion. I too am a people with my own set of I&D’s that are hard to even identify much less root out. So I will do what I do best – identify the failings of others.

My focus is Montana Democrats, but it is no different in Colorado. This is about Senator Jon Tester, but Colorado Democrats recently elected or re-elected Senator Michael Bennet, Congressman Jared Polis, and Governor John Hickenlooper, all of them corporate whores, just like Tester. But Colorado blogs are not active in the manner of Montana’s, or I have not come across them yet, so I focus my attention on my life-long home state, Montana.

I doubt that Tester is going to survive the next election, as his opponent, Congressman Dennis Rehberg, will be as well-funded even in spite of Tester’s continuing whoring. Rehberg is also, in my view, more representative of Montana’s self-image – cowboy go-it-alone independent thinkers, all an illusion, of course. Also, Tester’s need to appeal to his base will be a detriment as he at the same time seeks to appeal to the right wing.

Keep in mind that each man either supports or is forced to support the same agenda, so that we are really only talking about perceptions.

Tester insulted a significant percentage of his base when he called people who opposed his “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act” as “extremist.” But that is not unusual – Democrats in office are usually free to spit on all or part of their base, since they do not fear a backlash. But that particular comment might hurt him in the end, as the ones he insulted are smart and dedicated, and so will not pull his lever if they see that doing so makes no discernible difference.

The Democratic base is less attune to environmental issues, and frankly less attune in general. They are rallying around Tester now, and claiming that those who are not going to pull his lever are purists, selfish, and unable to see the big picture, or even to compromise.

Are they right? No. Not even close. The ones I know who are opposing Tester are not only able to see big, but are also willing to compromise when compromise is needed to achieve a larger goal. (“Compromise,” as the term is used by Democrats, entails giving up objectives before entering negotiations.) “Selfish”? That’s a personal trait that has no place in politics. “Purists”? Maybe. I prefer to use the term “dedicated.” They are not mealy about what they want and fight hard. That by itself separates them from regular Democrats, who do not understand dedication to an idea over a man.

Being a Democrat and supporting Tester is really the path of least resistance. It does not require attention to detail or dedication to ideas. But it is more than laziness – it is something far more common among us, lazy and energetic alike: Democrats suffer from the illusion of control.

Supporting their man through thick and thin, writing to thank him when he does something right, defending him when he is wrong – it is all part of the need to be in control of events. Indeed, those who will not pull his lever even if it means electing someone supposedly worse are told that they are fools for effectively putting Dennis Rehberg in office. That’s self-delusion – elections where differences between candidates are insignificant don’t much matter anyway. The principled ideas are still there, and those who fought for them against Tester will continue to fight for them against Rehberg. Success is never guaranteed, in fact, in our corporate oligarchy, success is usually a long shot. Those damned “extremists” do not suffer from the illusion of control, however, and so work hard for their idea no matter the candidate.

Voting itself is an illusion of control, and I have too often run to the polls to choose the lesser of evils. But I suffered from another illusion – that I could actually identify the lesser evil. Lately I’ve come to believe that the best office holder is the one that rallies the base. In Montana, from January of 2013 forward, that man will be Dennis Rehberg. He will do what Tester could not. He will rally the Democratic base, and Democrats and environmentalists and all the other Montana activists will again be united in their pursuits.

Do you believe in democratic governance? Ayn Rand didn’t. Her followers don’t. They are not unique in that regard, but I want to focus on them. Given that central fact, we might be able to predict that if they succeed in the electoral process, they will quickly set that process aside and rule according to their own dictates. Godwin be damned, didn’t Hitler behave that way?

OK, I apologize for that. It’s not an unwarranted comparison, but might serve to confuse the issue. Let’s focus on Scott Walker in Wisconsin – he’s doing everything in his power to institute “reforms” that are wildly unpopular and for which he never explicitly campaigned. That’s true to form for a follower of Rand – the opinions of the majority of people might be interesting, but are irrelevant. Randians might pander to majority opinion as they seek power but otherwise have no use for democratic processes.

Do I believe in democracy? Not really, I suppose. I don’t seek power, and think it important to be able to remove tyrants from office by peaceful means. But I don’t have any great respect for the intelligence of the average voter. C’mon now – says what is real! It’s a stupid country. Here in the U.S., and probably in other places too, we are seriously lacking in critical thinking capacity and are far too easily manipulated by propaganda.

So it appears that our choices are rule by tyrants, or rule by idiots. False dichotomy? I hope so. My thinking does not go much deeper on this subject, so I’ll defer to Bertrand Russell:

Democracy was invented as a device for reconciling government with liberty. It is clear that government is necessary if anything worthy to be called civilization is to exist, but all history shows that any set of men entrusted with power over another set will abuse their power if they can do so with impunity. Democracy is intended to make men’s tenure of power temporary and dependent upon popular approval. Insofar as it achieves this it prevents the worst abuses of power. (Unpopular Essays, 1959).

We are right to be horrified by Stalin’s ruthlessness, but we are wholly mistaken if we think that, given opportunity, we should be any better. It is only democracy that makes us better. While the English upper class had a monopoly of political power, it was just as bad as Stalin. Democracy is to be valued because it prevents such large-scale atrocities. This is its first and greatest merit.

Where there is no democracy, if any large section is discontented, it has no remedy except rebellion. Democracy gives a legal method of redressing grievances, and makes possible a respect for law which can hardly exist in an autocracy. (Fact and Fiction, 1961)

Democracy is desirable, not because the ordinary voter has any political wisdom, but because any section of mankind which has a monopoly of power is sure to invent theories designed to prove that the rest of mankind had better do without the good things of life. This is one of the least amiable traits of human nature, but history shows there is no adequate protection against it except the just distribution of political power throughout all classes and both sexes. (Mortals and Others, 1975)

Enough of that – Russell wrote so much that others were able to condense his writings by subject, and I only needed to refer to “democracy” in an index of his selected writings. I don’t want to pretend some great scholarship here. I only put up those words to show that our current environment is not new – nothing ever is. All of the right wing, the followers of Rand, the “Objectivists” and “Libertarians” and whatever else they call themselves, have done what Russell says they always do: They have set out to convince us that most of us are better off doing without the good things of life. Those things should be reserved for “them,” and part of the beauty of Rand was her ability to convince the most mediocre minds and limited achievers among us that they are deserving of the good things that the rest of us should not have.

Take one important aspect of our lives, access to health care: What do Rand and her minions tell us? It’s not a right. We don’t deserve it unless, and by their standards, we are worthy of it. The vast majority of us want access, and do not want to deal with the power brokers who have roped off the health care system and charge extortion and royalty for entrance. We have tried to change that by voting, but the ruling monopoly, which controls “both” of our outlets for democratic governance, the two parties, is denying us. They leave us but one choice – rebellion.

The United States is not a democratic republic. It is not a republican democracy. It’s a country ruled by a monopoly – we call them by names like “the wealthy”, “the oligarchy,” “the corporations,” and the “upper classes.” The intelligentsia are merely the “bought priesthood.” The economists, the think tanks, the financial class, are mere servants of wealth. The Randians, objectivists, libertarians – those who really believe that philosophy, are the useful idiots.

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. (Sinclair Lewis)

I had a nasty thought over the weekend, and cannot make it go away.

Once in a college history class in open discussion, I was so foolish as to say that ideas are not so important as actions. I doubted that Napoleon or Stalin gave a damn about the underlying ideology that led them to power. Having power was all they cared about.

I was quickly put in my place by both fellow students and professor. Of what importance was, say Karl Marx and his ideas? Marxism became a virus, and that virus opened the door for Stalin and Mao and Ceaușescu and others. And indeed the idea did not matter to those thugs, but it was their gateway to power. Marxism became a scourge, and it took 75 years and countless lives to break free of it. It also allowed the United States to sit atop a perch and claim its faux-capitalism to be the antidote. Now we see that the antidote is worse than the poison itself.

Right now in the state of Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder is using his new-found powers given him by a Tea Party legislature to shut down democratic governance in one lone Michigan town, Benton Harbor. He has appointed a local dictator. He can do it once or a hundred times. The law does not limit him. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker has the advantage over his opponents of not having to play by rules. He can freelance his way through his self-generated “crisis” to change state government to his liking. He does not seem to care about the rule of law, or even rules of fair play. He will do anything to win.

These are not “evil” men in the sense that they want to hurt people. But they are dangerous in the Machiavellian sense that they believe their ends so just that their means are acceptable. So too might Marx have approved of the events in Russia, not having the foresight to see how power corrupts ordinary people makes ordinary psychopaths into historical tyrants.

This disease, the idea that is the gateway to power for the Walkers and Snyders is not Marxism, but is equally dangerous. It is called Randiansim, Objectivism, Libertarianism, and is all done in the name of freedom. The spear-chuckers are true beleivers, and are so certain they are right that anything they do to advance their cause is justified. In so doing, they will open the door for a Stalin or Ceaușescu. Remember that the people behind the actors are not ideologues, but rather cold and calculating power-seekers. It is the bane of civilization, perhaps our ultimate undoing, that power cedes to those who want power. Our best leaders are those who do not want power for its own sake, and they don’t run.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a a poison, a disease that is working its way through our society. Like smoking, people inhale Rand when they are young, and the less thoughtful do not discard her as they mature. It takes a wise person to see that an ideology imposed on us by force, and this is what Walker and Snyder are doing, cannot give birth to freedom. Imagine behind Walker a Cheney, for instance, waiting in the wings, ready to take power and impose his will without the annoyance of legislatures and courts and voters. Every move by the extreme right these days in some way undermines democratic governance. It is no accident, and when the tyrant comes to power, we will have no tools left to unseat him.

That was the nasty thought I had this weekend – it took 75 years to dislodge the meme called Marxism, and might take that long to dislodge Randianism. And, at what cost?
_______________
PS: How, you might ask, do I know that Walker and Snyder are Randians? Fair question. Answer: I don’t know it. I just know it.

PPS: Just for chuckles read here how Rand accepted Social Security and Medicare as she died from lung cancer (believing the scare tactics about tobacco was government propaganda).