Remembrance Week

Tags

carl marx, climate change, Donald Trump, election law, electoral college, federal reserve, leonard cohen, the future of america

 

 

If you are the Dealer

          I’m out of the game

• Leonard Cohen

 

‘Dealer’ is a common Cohen euphemism for ‘president’ or any kind of boss-man. Indeed, as far back as his poetry of the late-fifties, gambling appears as a metaphor for life itself, in which you are playing with the greatest dealer of all. The words and music of Leonard Cohen have been a staple of my life for fifty years, and his death was a harder blow than I’d ever anticipated it would be. My personal issues aside, what a diabolical week! Through the agency of my wife, I placed upon his Montreal doorstep this morning a box of chocolates and a long-stemmed rose. In his characteristically self-effacing way, Leonard would be amazed by the worldwide outpouring of love and grief. I can hear him saying, ‘It’s just the Lightforce of the Lord shining through me that they feel…’ Yes, indeed.

 

In retrospect, I was appalled by my attempt to put an optimistic spin on the election of Donald Trump. There is clearly little or nothing optimistic about a Trump presidency. I do not know enough about Constitutional Law to say whether or not a legal challenge to the election-result is viable. However, I do know that hardly any Americans can explain the phenomenon of Electoral College votes – which mean that the election goes to whoever wins over 270 such statewide votes, and not to whoever gains the most votes, as Hilary Clinton seems to have done last week. You elect electors and not candidates? It makes no sense. Like the private ownership of the Federal Reserve, it is one of those fundamentally inexplicable anomalies that breed theories of conspiracy, or at least of occluded double-dealing. It is a curious turn of events that has the Democrats questioning this election and not, as he’d suggested, Trump’s Republicans. The whole US system, with its usually ignored or down-played mid-terms, its Electoral College, and its general federal-state confusion has long been called into question. But I think it is democracy itself that needs to be questioned. One of its more modern pioneers, Rousseau, says, in his Social Contract, that it is a perfect system, yet one only suited to a perfect society of gods. He maintains that some peoples will never be able to handle democracy. The US seems to be one of these. The Socratic ideal, espoused in Plato’s Republic, theorizes a perfect rule by philosopher-kings, of which Piere Elliot Trudeau was once acclaimed by some as an example. But ancient Greece was hardly democratic – like the US, it was an oligarchy – and the Platonic republic suggests outlawing poets, writers, and perhaps artists of any kind. They’re a menace to societal tranquility.

I once wrote a piece – for Harper’s, I think – suggesting that a vote needed to be earned, and was not a right. There ought to be some kind of basic test before you could vote — state what the candidates’ platforms are about, for example. Nothing severe, but not multiple-choice either. Why would you vote, went the argument, if you do not know why you’re voting? The piece garnered great hostility – I was a fascist, mainly – yet I now wonder whence the hostility came. I’d assumed it was from the Left, but this recent election makes me think it may have been the Right. They do have more to gain from an ignorant electorate — those whose political views exist only as moronic slogans. There is of course also the great mystery of a proletariat consistently voting against its own best interests. Who has ever explained this, except by family tradition or amped-up media rhetoric? An earned vote would at least prevent millions from casting a self-destructive ballot. But those millions also comprise the most easily-swayed segments of society. Right-wing barkers and howlers have long accused universities in particular of being bastions of the Left. This has always struck me as a self-refuting allegation, inasmuch as it points to the most intelligent being drawn to liberal politics. It is natural that right-wing elites have always opposed state-subsidized further-ed for the needy. It is education alone that will change society for the better by ensuring a fully-informed vote. To this extent, America is still back where Europe was during the Industrial Revolution. And, in truth, no western nation will achieve democratic ideals until the system of private schools is abolished. I have lectured in such schools and can assure readers that their small classes and numerous other perquisites – not least of which are opportunities to socialize with others in elite strata of society – guarantee advantages way, way beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals. The very few exceptions – mainly, it seems, in venture capital or Silicon Valley – simply prove the rule. I have friends willing to pay for such offspring-benefits – and, no doubt, I would have too if the money had been there. But the playing-field must be levelled if we are to call ourselves a democracy. It is a simple fact that wealth ought not be hereditary – that merit alone must determine social status and its rewards.

As we have seen most clearly with Trump – yet it preceded him – further education, with its fancy big words, and its theorized scorn for the working man, is in fact undesirable, and even a social ill. It is what those of us who questioned Marx and Trotsky referred to fearfully as ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat’ – the idea of government by the under-educated for the uneducated. Of course, it would in fact be manipulation of the uneducated by the well-educated posing as blue-collar oafs. Marx saw the workers rising like Lazarus, yet he did not envisage this happening without universal education. He also saw the fiest revolution happening in relatively well-educated England, not serf-owning Russia. The Russian proletariat were only roused by leaders posing as fellow-workers. One thinks of that malevolent goblin Lenin in his worker’s cap, and of Mao in his custom-tailored Mao-jacket, which from a great distance resembled attire of the dispossessed hundreds of millions.

Trump doesn’t wear tacky Mafia-suits from his own line, nor one of his own frightening collection of cheap, sweatshop-made silk Trump Neckties. It is admittedly true that he has managed to find an expensive tailor to dress him with equal vulgarity. Yet one must assume that, with his pricey hair-weave or toupee, he closely resembles the self-image many a laid-off coal worker or dirt-poor farm labourer has of their lottery-winning selves. Trump has always been a vulgarian – whose excesses were only matched by his first wife – so I am not suggesting demonic cunning going back decades. His awful TV show probably showed us the real public man. His problem now is different, though. As my friend, Richard Sparks observed, he’s narcissistic, self-promotional, venal, greedy, power-hungry, and he needs to be loved – all of these being excellent qualities for a politician. The need to be loved by all, however, may be what saves us. We are now hearing a more reticent Trump – liked Obama, loved the concern and patriotism of anti-Trump demonstrators – so we can imagine a Trump already looking towards his historical record as another Lincoln, a healer of divisions, a political Titan. He will not enjoy being president – no one ever has – so all the job will hold for him is the explosive bloating of his baggy brand to interstellar dimensions. Resigned to being a minor footnote in financial history, he now faces the possibility of bestriding the known world like a Colossus, an American Caesar, a Yankee Frederick the Great,  or a Brooklyn Napoleon (minus Waterloo). We can only hope that the compromising minutiae of the job turn him to these greener pastures: Uncle Trump’s fireside chats-of-the-Union.

Trump’s victory aside, has there been anything more despicable than the Republicans who scorned him when the chips looked to be down now trying to crawl up his arse for positions and preferment? That shameless pawn of vested interests and extravagantly unprincipled Beltway whore, House Speaker Paul Ryan, taking Trump up to the Capitol’s mount to show him all the kingdoms of the world – truly sickening! And he’s just one of a disgusting troupe of hypocritical bum-lickers. One hopes Trump won’t forget so quickly the league of back-stabbers. Yet when you hear of such hoary old Nazi reptiles as Newt Gingrich and Rudolfo Giuliani – surely long since cast into the Lake of Fire? – you cannot help but think of replacing the Statue of Liberty’s slogan thus: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here… No wonder California wants to leave the Union.

 

As I’ve said, all US refugees welcome up here in the Laurentians. It’s inexpensive, and we ought to survive the Global Warming apocalypse longer than most – not hat having the last laugh will be very consoling.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

The Solution to Global Warming

Tags

climate change, global warming

[The Sai Baba narrative will continue in next blog].

Having listened to his masterly  Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and not having that much choice in the Blind Society’s digital library, I thought I would try Paul Kennedy’s Preparing for the 21^st Century, written over 20 years ago. Not only is he uncannily percipient regarding the problems we are now facing, his chapter on climate change is the best and most thorough discussion of the topic I have ever come across. Furthermore, his bibliography reveals serious warnings in scientific journals dating back to the mid-1980s [even National Geographic magazine ran a very comprehensive article in 1993], meaning that governments have ignored for over 30 years the worst problem faced by this planet since the end of the last Ice Age. Kennedy acknowledges the counter-arguments, also noting that they come mainly from scientific sceptics out of their field, or from economists innately opposed to the measures necessary for reducing carbon emissions. He states, unequivocally, that global warming is a transnational issue, affecting us all.

We are now so accustomed to the nation state that we tend to forget it only came into being a millennium ago, with the advent of Spain, France, and England consolidating central rule over a mosaic of minor kingdoms, dukedoms, and duchies. Indeed it was the Hapsburg Empire which first established actual frontiers for the territories it claimed to own.  Like Charlemagne before him, Napoleon dreamed of a united Europe, with vassal kingdoms ruled by an Emperor in Paris. Had anyone studied the problems he faced, the current disaster of a European Union would have been aborted.

One of global warming’s main features is that it will afflict the poorer countries far more than the richer ones. It is also natural for countries like India and China, still in the throes of their industrial revolutions, to object when complained about by nations which did what they are currently doing over a century ago. Each country has its own atmospheric emission problems, and some have to feed a billion people with rice that will not grow if the average temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius. If sea levels rise, as they are doing, 8 million people in both Egypt and Bangladesh will become refugees. Others, like inhabitants of the Maldive Islands, will lose their homelands entirely. These are all people who cannot afford the protective measures developed nations can, but their problems will be ours too. With 5% of the world’s population, the US uses 15 times as much energy as, say, Brazil, which objects to being told to cease cutting down rain forest by a country that destroyed two thirds of its forests over the past 300 years. Indeed, while every country has its specific responsibilities, the US is by far the most profligate in having all the problems, from excessive car emissions to heavy industrial pollution. But business always trumps common sense there, so it is little wonder that developing nations resent being told to halt development by the world’s worst polluter and most powerful state.

Developed nations may suffer less, but they will suffer. Venice and other coastal cities will probably vanish; and places like Holland and the lower Rhine lands will experience devastating troubles. Just building a sea wall to protect America’s Barrier Islands would cost over 100 billion dollars; and flooding would remove some 20 thousand square miles of US land. Much of the south would become desert, no crops able to grow in, for instance, Oklahoma. Northern countries, like Canada or Norway, might actually benefit from extra warmth. Where I live, in  the mountains of Quebec, would be able to become an agricultural haven – except the constant fall of pine needles has made the soil too acidic for much to grow. There are many imponderables. For example, no one is sure if additional heat would attract menacing insects up from the tropics, or whether crops grown in dramatically altered soil would kill them. What is known is that trees absorb carbon dioxide, and by clear-cutting them, not to mention burning them, we are increasing the greenhouse effect tremendously. In fact, all of the effects Kennedy predicted over 20 years ago – freak weather, rising sea levels, melting glaciers etc – have already occurred. Indeed, it may well be too late to reverse something that will be as catastrophic as the Deluge. When transnational governments hold a conference you know the issue is serious. But the measures discussed or agreed upon are pathetically insufficient. We need to cease carbon and other gas emissions entirely, no matter how it affects the economy – which won’t be very important if the planet heats up another three degrees. We also need to fund the poorer countries in developing green energy sources, like photovoltaic devices. Instead of buying increasingly expensive weapons – a trillion dollars for the latest fighter jet…each – we ought to spend this preposterous fortune on developing renewable energy sources. To achieve this will require a multi-national body committed to the task and powerful enough to pass binding international laws impervious to national governments and their self-interested objections. It would, I suppose, be a step towards world-government, which, when saving us all from possible extinction is at stake, seems to be a rational move. The pitiful ideas, like cap and trade, might have helped 30 years ago, but they will do nothing now, except keep industries afloat. The boat is sinking, however, and our only hope is to build life-rafts.

This earth was once a closed, self-sustaining system, which our population’s sudden expansion – from around a billion to seven billion in a mere century – along with its needs and demands has damaged, perhaps irreparably. Attempting to repair this damage and save the only home we have ought to be the sole concern of every government, since there may well be nothing to govern within 50 years.