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Sliding
Doors, Shifting Perceptions and Transcendent Vision
www.EarthManifesto.com Dr.
Tiffany B. Twain
November 1, 2008
The
primary purpose of the Earth Manifesto
is to present good ideas in a compelling light, with the hope that these
writings will give powerful impetus to positive initiatives for our society
like those summarized in the Progressive
Agenda for a More Sane Humanity and One
Dozen Big Initiatives to Positively Transform Our Societies.
Our
leaders careen from one crisis to another, failing to honestly address
underlying problems. Instead of doing
this, they should adopt a far-sighted strategic master plan that is fair-minded
and has the objective of being sustainable.
The goal of our national economic policies should be to create a sound
and stable system that protects people against monetary instability and abuses
of power. It should protect consumers
against deceptive advertising and dangerous or toxic products; it should protect investors against fraud,
deceitful accounting, and banking excesses;
and it should give greater emphasis to good citizen objectives like Golden
Rule protections under the law, a fair shake for workers, reasonable healthcare
for all, a well-managed government, guaranteed civil liberties, peaceful
coexistence with others, a healthy environment, and protected public lands and
parks and open spaces.
We
must mediate between the many competing interests in our societies, and
maintain our focus on creating a just society that balances short-term-oriented
impulses with our greater responsibilities to the common good and future
generations. We need win-win solutions
to problems. We should avoid expedient
band-aid solutions that create lose-lose outcomes and economic injustices and
systemic weaknesses and longer-run hazards.
Sliding Doors
A 1998 film, Sliding
Doors, had a provocative and imagination-stimulating premise: due to some curious wrinkle in circumstance,
two simultaneous contrasting alternate futures were set in motion for a young
gal named Helen (played by Gwyneth Paltrow).
Each of these two scenarios played out into a different train of events
that move forward in tandem for the rest of the film. In one scenario, infidelity by Helen’s boyfriend is exposed. This revelation caused a crisis, a separation,
a catharsis, a revaluation, and a necessary personal growth to adapt to the
altered interpersonal reality. In the
other scenario, the deception was not detected and remained hidden, so the
course of events that transpired continued along its prior course, deepening
the dishonesty in her intertwined involvement and making it more dysfunctional
and perverse.
In reality, of course, only one course of events
transpires. We can imagine how
different the trajectories of our societies might be if, for instance, a
presidential election gave us one party instead of another. A world led by a Barack Obama Administration
would be markedly different that one led by a John McCain Administration. Imagine how different our society would have
been if the Republicans, who lost the popular vote in the year 2000, had NOT
managed, by hook or by crook --- and with the assistance of a partisan Supreme
Court --- to get a plurality of votes in the Electoral College. Al Gore would have been President, not
George Bush. Democrats, not Gilded Age-embracing
Republicans would have been in charge of managing the economy and our foreign
policy. One can only speculate at the
alternative probable scenarios, but the likelihood is that our world would be
very different --- and probably much more stable and secure.
Today we are at another high-contrast Sliding Door moment. The choice of John McCain would continue
Gilded Age regressive tax policies, the middle class crunch, severe healthcare
inequities, aggressive war policies, and the embarrassment of our nation on the
international stage. The choice of
Barack Obama would be far more likely to create a fairer society and one that
deals more rationally, calmly, honorably and intelligently with international
affairs. In a thousand different ways,
a dramatic change of direction is what we need. We simply cannot afford to continue to gamble that right-wing
ideologies and militarism and inegalitarianism and environmental despoliation
and evangelical dishonesty are our best path forward.
Imagine how different the future would be under an
Obama/Biden Administration compared with a McCain/Palin Administration. With Barack Obama, we could begin to heal our
deeply dysfunctional relationship with other nations of the world by honestly
and boldly refuting the Bush Doctrine of preemptive aggression in warfare and
policies that allow CIA torture. Some
80% of people abroad say that they favor Obama over McCain. Eighty percent! Barack Obama will make taxation more progressive by increasing
taxes on the wealthiest 5% and decreasing taxes on the other 95%. John McCain, on the other hand, sticks with
his proposal to continue the Bush policies of giving even more tax breaks to
rich people.
The Gilded Age and the Ultimately Anti-Egalitarian
Expression of Greed
“If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you
invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time.”
--- Mark Twain
Mark Twain satirized greed and political
corruption in his 1873 book entitled The
Gilded Age, A Tale of Today. He
coined the term ‘Gilded Age’ to describe the meretricious and extremely unfair
post-Civil War period during which industrialists and the upper class and
“robber barons” and financial manipulators gained enormous wealth and expressed
their great fortune in opulent self-indulgent consumerism. The Gilded Age suffered a serious setback
with the Panic of 1893 and an accompanying severe economic depression. This crisis set in motion the reforms of the
Progressive Era, when corporate conglomerate monopolies (called “trusts” at the
time) were ‘busted’ and initial efforts were made to break up extreme economic
concentrations of wealth and power.
Labor unions came into being at the time to protect workers from long
working hours and hazardous working conditions and a variety of pathetic
abuses, and American race relations descended to a nadir.
The upshot of the abuses of the era was that
Theodore Roosevelt became President as a reformer
who sought to move the dominant Republican Party of the times away from being
the representative of corrupt industrial bosses and into the camp of a Progressive
movement. He promised a “Square Deal”
to provide a fair shake to the average person, and he promoted resource
conservation. He was the first U.S.
President to call for universal health care and national health insurance. Decades later, with the onset of
the Great Depression, economic collapse and massive labor and social unrest finally
forced the country's political elite to accept truly far-reaching actions in a
New Deal to reduce the growing concentration of income and wealth and the
concomitant economic insecurity of the majority. As a consequence of the reforms enacted, a period of prosperity
for the middle class began that was highly beneficial to society as a whole,
until the rich and powerful once again seized control with the election of
wily, charismatic Ronald Reagan.
Today, our neo-Gilded Age is crashing down in the
economic crisis of 2008. History shows
us that NOW is the time to find ways to make the next up-leg of our existence a
new Square Deal, a truer Golden Age of fairness of opportunity and lesser
disparities of wealth. This new era
must be characterized by taxation that is more progressive, tighter control of
speculative excesses, universal healthcare and a fairer balance between the
prerogatives of capital and labor. And
we must once again denounce imperialism and overseas expansionism and
debt-financed aggressive militarism.
Stark inequalities and
inequities in societies make them less stable and secure, so greater oppression
is required to keep them in force. A
democracy ultimately is better for all than a plutocracy where the few
get most of the wealth. It
is the death knell of democracy to allow ever-increasing concentrations of
wealth and power in the hands of the few. When Mark Twain decried
rapid increases in economic inequality that characterized the Gilded Age, he
called them the "great barbeque”. We
must stop figuratively barbecuing people, and drive a harder bargain with the
rich!
The Most Progressive of
Ideas on Taxation
Billionaire Warren Buffett
testified before the Senate Finance Committee on November 14, 2007 in defense
of the federal estate tax, the nation's tax on inherited wealth. He invoked the historical roots of the
estate tax, which was established in 1916 to put a brake on anti-democratic
concentrations of wealth and power.
"Dynastic wealth, the enemy of meritocracy, is on the rise,"
Buffett told the panel. "Equality
of opportunity has been on the decline.
A progressive and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement
of a democracy toward plutocracy."
"Tax-law changes,” he said “have benefited this super-rich group,
including me, in a huge way. During
that time the average American went exactly nowhere on the economic scale: he's been on a treadmill while the super-rich
have been on a spaceship."
In response, Republican
Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, asserted that the "death tax" was
"fundamentally wrong."
Buffett responded that use of the phase "death tax" itself was
"intellectually dishonest" and "clever, Orwellian, and dead
wrong." The Estate Tax is, after
all, not a tax on an unwitting dead person, but a tax on the inheritance of
rich kids.
Economic Inequality and Deception
In the past 25 years, economic inequality has rapidly increased,
thanks in large part to Ronald Reagan’s disingenuously inegalitarian and
regressive and anti-regulation policies that had such an insidious corruption-enabling
effect. So the need for reform has
grown glaringly obvious. Our neo-Gilded
Age is seeing forces arise that militate to put the brakes on the current
runaway process of rising inequality.
It appears that this era's power elite is going to be forced to accept a
fairer social compact, and to honestly address the hardships being borne by
blue collar workers, the poor and the middle class. We must return to the pre-Reagan policies that fostered
middle class values and fairness. And
we must be vigilant against the dangers that financial collapses create in a
heightened risk of widespread destitution and even political extremism.
People generally hate being cheated and
deceived. Yet for years our
right-leaning leadership has promised one thing and delivered another, whether
we like it or not. It seems to me to be
a kind of nefarious “Big Lie” political bait-and-switch scheme. Do they think we’re stupid? (Are we?!)
“You can fool some of
the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can
not fool all of the people all of the time.”
--- Abraham Lincoln
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t our leaders
promise populist fairness, but deliver greater inequality and less
broadly-shared prosperity? They talk
about a sound economy but then deregulate to stimulate irresponsible consumption
and economic bubbles and make boom-and-bust cycles worse. They talk about peace and national security,
but we end up with war and a less secure citizenry. They talk about limited government, yet it becomes bigger and
more intrusive. They talk about
balanced budgets, but they actually deliver the biggest deficits in world
history. They talk about adhering to
rules of law, but evade and break the laws themselves. They talk about wise uses of resources and
environmental protections and Healthy Forests and Clean Air, and then they implement
shortsighted corporate-friendly policies that waste resources, damage
ecosystems, and pollute the atmosphere.
They talk about free markets, but give giant corporations big subsidies
and give us more highly leveraged risks and government bailouts. They talk about leaving no child behind in
education, and then act to undermine public education and make it less
affordable. They talk about fixing the
drastic inequities of our health care system, but frankly the costs are
skyrocketing every year and “pre-existing conditions” exclusions make health
insurance increasingly unfair.
Fundamental Misunderstanding
In addition to this issue of rising inequality in
America, there is an even more basic problem.
The measures we use to determine economic well-being are distorted. Our economic
indicators not only measure our society, but they also help shape it and drive our
policy agendas. Therefore, when our
gauges of economic activity are misleading, we do not prioritize right and we
misallocate resources.
Measures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are used
to track how well the economy is doing.
When GDP grows, we call it good and we think that the economy is
healthy. Think about this on an
individual level. Are increases in
personal spending generally correlated to good things? Well, often they are not. We often spend money when we need to repair
a vehicle, or our houses, or some broken consumer item. We spend more when there is inflation in the
cost of food and gasoline. When we get
sick or injured, we pay doctors and hospitals and the cost of our healthcare
goes up. When people get divorced, they
pay big bucks to lawyers. On a societal
level, we spend a tremendous amount of money on wars, munitions, Homeland
Security, crime, prisons, pollution
clean-up, fraudulent misappropriations, wasted energy, resource depletion, the
“war on drugs”, and natural disasters.
Our GDP measures say this is growth, but these are not good
things for our quality of life.
Our
crude calculus adds things up like this, and calls it economic progress. When we spend more time on activities that
cost nothing, our measures essentially regard them as economic stagnation. If Americans spend more time going for walks
in nature, or reading, or socializing with neighbors, or meditating --- instead
of shopping --- our well-being would increase, but our GDP measures would judge
it negatively.
We would be wise to redefine
progress by utilizing more auspicious measures like proposed Genuine Progress
Indicators (GPI), which would gauge the actual health of economic activities
and truer elements of the quality of life.
These measures would take into account factors like household and
volunteer work, the conservation of the natural environment, greater fairness, fulfilling
work, healthy communities, leisure time, and more authentic connections to
others and to the natural world. This
change in focus would allow us to see a truer picture of our economy, and to
accordingly alter our activities and improve our priorities. The steps we take beyond our current methods
of measuring GDP must be ones that better comprehend human well-being and
social and environmental issues.
Understanding the measurements of ‘ecological footprints’ would be an
excellent starting point for us to more honestly assess progress toward the
sustainable use of resources and the preservation of ecosystems so that they
can continue to provide us with valuable ecosystem services. Clearer ecological accounting, simply put,
is needed.
By adopting ideas like
this, we can give recognition to the deeper insights that are elaborated at
www.RedefiningProgress.org. Check it
out!
Shifting Perceptions
I salute the MSNBC political analyst Rachel
Maddow. Her new show The Rachel Maddow Show provides an
intelligent perspective of news headlines and the politics behind the
headlines. A Doctor of Philosophy from
Lincoln College at Oxford University, and a small town California girl made
good, Rachel Maddow has given television a much needed point of view to counter
the highly unfair and unbalanced corporate media outlets like Fox News. She and Keith Olbermann are speaking truth
to power --- a quality that is courageous and saliently needed in today’s
perplexing world of spin and deceit.
Too much television programming consists of yellow journalism and
sensationalism and sentimental stories and mindless entertainment and scandal. Such stories are unfortunately given
coverage that is as prominent as factual news and smart, important perspectives.
Also, a ‘shout-out’ to Sarah Palin, who has graced
our politics and our television screens with her attractive down-home
presence. You betcha! Too bad you are such a right-wing
conservative religious fundamentalist snake, Sarah, or more appropriately a
wily barracuda!
Think of how the rest of the world sees us. Our nation is a tarnished beacon of hope
that has allowed ideology and speculative fervor and greed to badly damage the economies
of the world. This has made billions of
people less secure, and it threatens the stability of many countries by
insidiously harming the vast majority of people on Earth. Alvaro Uribe, the staunch U.S. ally who is the
current President of Columbia, has blasted U.S. economic policies for
encouraging uncontrolled financial speculation. He compared us to cowboys jumping on a wild horse with no
reins. Nice going, guys!
Think of this.
We have allowed the inegalitarian, narrowly focused, hyper-aggressive,
divisive and evangelical Bush/Cheney regime to get elected TWICE by exploiting
public insecurities and fears of terrorists, and anger and prejudice and blind
belief and religion. Once in power, the
Administration has pretended they have been given a mandate for a right-wing
agenda that is clearly contrary to the greater good. They have loudly and insistently proclaimed the superior moral
value of privatized profit, as if it’s the veritable god of propriety ---
Mammon! Meanwhile, as these hubristic
“economic fundamentalist” ideologies have been staunchly promoted, at the same
time a disguised wrong-headed twin enthusiasm has been disingenuously
concealed: the willingness to allow
private entities to reprehensibly and irresponsibly foist costs and risks and
enormous amounts of debt upon society as a whole.
The basic cause of the economic calamity confronting
us is the collaboration between corporations and politicians who have gambled
that unbridled capitalism and hyper-costly aggressive militarism are the best
ways to ensure a safe and prosperous world.
As a consequence, we have stimulated risk-taking and radically leveraged
debt --- and we have simultaneously unleashed arrogant and reckless unilateral
American militarism and embraced preemptive war policies to control oil
resources in Iraq. Dishonest propaganda
and deceptive rationalizations have been used to fool the public into
supporting these actions. We have
essentially allowed our leaders to swagger like bullies and embark on a special-privilege
pandering domination gambit that is dangerous, unfair, unjust and unsustainably
shortsighted.
The
highest priority of big corporations and politicians is to gain power and use
it to advance narrow self-interested goals, no matter how detrimental this
turns out to be for the majority of Americans.
For this reason, we must act to mitigate the damage these gambits can
do. We must defend and improve our
great Constitutional system against the amoral and essentially anti-social
goals of big corporations, which after all have a strictly limited basic legal
purpose of maximizing profits and minimizing the liabilities of owners and management,
no matter how harmful this may turn out to be to the common good and higher
social values.
The Foundations of Good Government
Our Founding Fathers built one of the strongest
foundations for good government in the history of the world. Today we have allowed knaves and gamblers
and scoundrels and fools to turn the civilization that we are building on this
great foundation into a fragile house of cards. We have even allowed these schemers to drill into the foundation
by undermining the principles of fairness, the liberties of the Bill of Rights,
and the Constitutional balance of powers that made this foundation so strong. This is simply wrong. Ethically, morally and socially wrong!
Rollercoaster Economics – Making Policies to
Please Speculators
The
underlying causes of the economic train wreck that we are suffering are
extensively analyzed in Earth Manifesto essays like The Bailout Blues and Gut Check Soul Revue and Reporting Live from the Ground Zero Bleacher Seats. I highly recommend that readers check
them out! Here is a creative and
humorous Internet cartoon that is relevant:
“The government today
announced that it is changing its national symbol to a CONDOM because it more
accurately reflects the government’s political stance. A condom allows for inflation, halts
production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives
you a sense of security while you’re actually being screwed. Damn, it just doesn’t get more accurate than
that!”
---
Internet Image Ha!
Crisis
in Dealings and Perspective
Uncertainty
and confusion reign today as this severe economic crisis unfolds. Illusions crumble and failing ideologies are
exposed in the face of deeper realities.
Images slip into my mind of the Captain of the Titanic, who veritably
threw caution to the wind and ordered “full speed ahead” in treacherous
waters. Boo-hiss! for the Captain’s poor
judgment and reckless ambition and dangerous risk-taking with the lives of
others.
The
Zoology of Desire
“Instincts and passion are magnificent as driving
forces, but dangerous as guides.”
--- Baruch Spinoza, 1632 – 1677 A.D.
Michael
Pollan wrote a great book entitled The
Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World. In this book, Pollan provides a clever,
creative and insightful perspective of the world: he views it from the point of view of a number of plant
species. Imagine that: he looked at the world from the point of
view of plants! He used this intriguing
way of seeing things to explore how four types of plants --- tulips and apple
trees and marijuana and potatoes --- took advantage of human desires for
beauty, sweetness, transcendent consciousness, and nutrition to help them
propagate far beyond their traditional ranges.
Pollan’s perceptive perspective provides a provocative way of exploring
the fascinating natural world and our human interrelationships with it. Read this entertaining book!
Using
a similar creative perspective, let’s look at the world from the point of view
of animals. We are big-brained animals,
so let’s consult with naturalists and scientists who are human animals that are
particularly adept at looking at the world clearly and with some degree of
scientific objectivity. We see that
there is a zoology of desire that propels all species toward biological goals
of reproductive success and survival.
Sociobiologists and psychologists recognize that there are profound
underpinnings of human behavior, and that many aspects of human nature tend to
be inherited and are distinctly difficult to change. But these thinkers also point out that human behaviors are easy
to change. Incentives and disincentives,
for instance, are quite effective in changing the choices people make. By understanding our natural propensities as
well as our motivations and behaviors, we can design our economic systems so
that people do socially beneficial things as a matter of course, instead of doing
socially and environmentally harmful things.
With good design, people are motivated to do the right thing
automatically, because of their natural self-interest, and not as a matter of
virtue, altruism, or moral conviction.
Retrograde Notions
The planet Mercury moved
in an apparent retrograde motion from September 24 through October 15, 2008. Thank God we got through that ---
barely! The Dow Jones Average fell by a
rattling 20% during this period.
Believers in astrology say that when Mercury goes retrograde,
miscommunications abound and it is a bad time to make financial deals
(bailouts?!) and that the terms of any such deals will need to be
renegotiated. I don’t personally
believe in astrology any more than I believe in the Rapture. But sure enough, the terms of the Bailout
have already been modified from what was approved. The first $250 billion is being sensibly committed to
capitalizing banks and taking equity stakes in them, rather than just buying up
bad mortgages for taxpayers to assume the probable large losses!
The human mind seems to be
particularly well-suited to ascribing credence to correlations between
coincidence and circumstance, don’t you think?
Mark Twain: “I reckon that
sometimes you can puzzle out the meaning of a mystery. It’s like coming through the fog into open
water and seeing everything bright and clear.” “It made me feel kind of lighthearted too, the way you get
when someone else’s happiness rubs off on you.”
Transcendent
Visions
Albert
Einstein was surely correct when he observed, “We can't solve problems by using
the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
The
past lapses into the future through the portals of the present. Make no mistake about it, the choices we
make today strongly influence what the future will be like for us, individually
and collectively. We bicker over small
stuff and our cherished beliefs; but in
doing so, we ignore the Big Picture.
Our leaders figuratively fiddle while Rome burns, in far too many
respects. We skirmish over culture
wars, and are distracted by divisive conflicts for supremacy of influence, but
we fail to see that, in the larger sense, we are all in this together. “United we stand, divided we fall.”
The
“elephant in the room” is that Big Issues confront us that are not being addressed. We must pay closer attention to them. These are not hot-button social issues; they are overarching economic, political and
ecological issues. Our leaders shrewdly
divide us to rule. They pit us against
each other over such things as God, guns, gays, immigrants, the flag and
reproductive rights. The book What’s the Matter with Kansas cogently
relates the pathetic details. Our
leaders do this to gain and maintain control and dominance, and NOT for any noble
purpose, contrary to their rhetoric and Big Lie deceptions. They seek
dominance, “my friends”, in order to impose an order that benefits them
personally and a very narrow subset of people who are their friends and
supporters. The vast majority are excluded
or harmed. These ‘leaders’ are shrewd
opportunists, damning us and our descendents merely in order to achieve their
small-minded advantages.
Here
is my transcendent vision. It’s
actually common sense! Breathe deep and
let go. Overcome the emotional
charges. Instead of being distracted by
red herrings and narrow-mindedness, let’s find ways to work together to limit
the high cost of wars abroad, reduce enormous budget deficits, invest in vital
undertakings, and address problems of social justice, homelessness and poverty. And let’s strive to staunch the rapid
depletion of resources and restructure our societies to mitigate the grave
impacts of environmental assaults.
John
McCain Is “Misoverestimated”
Enquiring minds want to
know: can the truth be stretched until
it dies of thinness? I recently read
the “Make-Believe Maverick” article about John McCain in the October 16, 2008
issue of Rolling Stone magazine. The article makes it clear that John McCain
is poorly suited to be our nation’s leader.
He is a false populist, having embraced regressive taxation that puts
the self-interest of wealthy Americans high above the well-being of the vast
majority. He has supported the harmful
policies of the Bush Administration more than 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time he has acted as a
maverick, bucking the Republican orthodoxy, but that is woefully inadequate to
qualify him as the best person to lead our nation into a fair, stable,
honorable, honest, peaceful and sustainable future.
John McCain is also ill-suited
to be the commander-in-chief of our armed forces. He has demonstrated a nasty hot temper on many occasions and he
is extremely hawkish and military-minded.
He has flip-flopped opportunistically and sacrificed principles for
power on numerous occasions. He has
been a glory seeking and hyper-ambitious guy for his entire adult life. In contrast to the heroic myth that his
campaign has crafted about him, his past has been characterized by heavy
drinking, womanizing, dishonorable conduct, dishonesty, self-aggrandizement,
poor performance and rude behavior.
McCain’s hot temper and
opportunistic ambition lead him to be erratic and prone to episodes of poor
judgment. He has been affiliated with
lobbyist-dominated corporatism and deregulation which have been primary causes
of the economic crisis that is now having such a devastating impact on people
worldwide. His role in the costly
Savings and Loan debacle of the late 1980’s was the epitome of dishonorable
opportunism. It is amazing that his political
career survived his involvement in the corrupt Keating Five group of U.S.
Senators in the S&L scandal.
Despite this blemish on his record, he has chosen fundamentalist
economic advisors like “mental recession” Phil Gramm who are stubbornly ideological,
myopic, shrewdly greedy and extremely insensitive to the common good.
McCain’s false caricature of
"Joe the Plummer" in the October 15, 2008 Presidential debate
demonstrates his desperate ambition and willingness to distort the truth in an
attempt to reverse his slide in the polls.
He has been running a truth-distorting and negative smear campaign
against Barack Obama. He has made a bad
miscalculation in choosing Sarah Palin as a running mate. His choice of a woman whose social
conservatism is in many ways distinctly contrary to the best interests of women
was a pathetic and manipulative gamble.
We do not need another dissembling, naïve, power-abusing politician in
the White House after these long years of Bush/Cheney wrong-headedness and
incompetence. White males may
regard Sarah as a babe, "you betcha", but the choice of an
inexperienced woman as a running mate, and one who divisively panders to
right-wing extremists on hot-button wedge issues, is cynical. It is diametrically opposed to what we
need in a leader during these perilous times.
The choice we should make on November 4th
seems clear to me. Well-grounded hope
illuminates a set of brighter potentialities and a positive way forward. In contrast, alluring sirens of fearful and
supremacist and rapturous delusions lure us like a shimmering mirage that
scintillates a desperate man who is dying of thirst in the desert.
Another Elephant in the
Room --- How Much Does Racism Color Our Perceptions?
Pundits on TV talk about “the Bradley effect”, which is a
discrepancy between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in American
political campaigns when a white candidate and a non-white candidate run
against each other. Named for Tom Bradley, a black man who lost
the 1982 California governor’s race despite being ahead in voter polls, the
Bradley effect refers to an alleged tendency on the part of some voters to tell
pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, and
yet, on election day, vote for his or her white opponent.
Racial prejudice is still strong in America. Not only is there a deep reservoir of
outright bias and bigotry amongst some, but there is an extensive amount of
subtle racism. Think about this in a
revealing light. Imagine what the polls
would be right now if the record of the white guy candidate and the record of
the black guy candidate were SWITCHED.
In other words, think about this:
(1)
What if John McCain was a former president of the prestigious Harvard Law
Review, while Barack Obama finished 894 out of 899 people in his graduating
class? (2) What if McCain was an
eloquent and charismatic speaker, while Obama was known to publicly display a
serious anger management problem on many occasions? (3) What if Obama was the one who had military experience that
included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven airplanes? (4) What if Obama had difficulty reading
from a teleprompter, or did not even know how to use email or the
Internet? (5)
What if McCain
had only married once and Obama was a divorcee? (6) What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after
she had a severe and disfiguring car accident?
(7) What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair
while he was still married? (8) What if
Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but
also acquired them illegally? (9) What
if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution? (10) What if the Obama's had adopted a white
child? (11) What if Obama had famous
parents whose influence got him into privileged positions and bailed him out of
hot water on many occasions? (12) What
if Obama’s running mate had paraded five children across the stage, including a
three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
Subtle
racism covers up and rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one
candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color
difference. On Big Issues, there are
enormous differences between Barack Obama and John McCain. While Obama essentially stands for fairness
and more power for the working class and the middle class against the dominant
prerogatives of the upper class, McCain is a shrewd opportunist and a false populist who embraces regressive taxation and
puts the self-interest of rich Americans high above the well-being of the vast
majority. McCain has sacrificed
principles for power on numerous occasions, flip-flopping on the Bush tax cuts,
offshore drilling, the estate tax, the GI Bill, waterboarding, immigration
policy, storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, teaching intelligent design, and
fully funding the No Child Left Behind law.
“I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"
The
character Howard Beale, a network anchor in the great film Network (1976) says:
“I
don't want you to protest. I don't want
you to riot. I don't want you to write
to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression
and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.
All
I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human being,
goddammit! My life has value!"
So,
I want you to get up now. I want all of
you to get up out of your chairs. I
want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head
out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take
this anymore!!"
I personally don’t know about that. But one enormously important option lies
before us, and it is easy. Don’t just
get mad, get even! Reject the status
quo. Go to the polls on November 4th
and vote for a new Progressive Era. Mark
the box for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Then, once they are in office, we must work on them to make sure that
they honestly advance a fairer, more sustainable and more propitious agenda for
the future.
Thanks for reading!
Truly,
Dr. Tiffany B. Twain
Hannibal, Missouri
SaveTruffulaTrees@hotmail.com
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