Allison Kilkenny: David Brooks and the centuries of magical thinking

David Brooks and the centuries of magical thinking
by Allison Kilkenny
Unreported

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Now, he argues that we are the middle of a “jobless recovery,” whatever that means. At first, I assumed he was talking about the people who wrecked the economy receiving fat bonuses, while the starving masses squirrel away food stamps. You know, “the right people” are recovering – prospering, even – while the undesirables suffocate under a mountain of debt and disease. After all, there’s not enough money for universal health care, but there’s enough cash to supply two ongoing military occupations.

Or perhaps Bobo was referring to America’s two tier justice system where the underclass forever toil and barely scrape by, occasionally bearing the full brunt of the courts, which imprison and enslave the working class for petty theft and drug-dealing, while the CEO of a company that dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, along with poisonous chemical dispersants, gets to go yachting with his buddies.

Alas, Bobo appears to be talking about magical thinking. He writes, “After decades of affluence, the U.S. has drifted away from the hardheaded practical mentality that built the nation’s wealth in the first place.” In his revised history of the United States, sometime around 1800, the economy simply “took off.” Like a miracle.

Actually, the country’s wealth came from slave labor. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, and the invention revolutionized the cotton industry. Suddenly, the industry could produce fifty times as much cotton as it could previously, but they needed people to run the gins. Hence, the need for a whole lot of slaves, the actual human beings responsible for the labor and influx of sweet, sweet cash.

The 1800s were also the time of the robber barons, a disparaging term applied to the individuals who dominated industries and amassed lavish fortunes utilizing anti-competitive practices. Railroad tycoons like Jay Gould and Russell Sage were famous for preying on average citizens in order to extort their savings in shady speculations, not unlike the considerably more complex housing bubble deals that wrecked the economy this time around. (Railroads were also built using slave labor, and did not simply “take off”).

So let’s be clear: The reason the economy “took off” in the 1800s was because of slave labor, and it only really “took off” for the right players, like robber barons, who lied, cheated, swindled, bullied, and intimidated in order to hoard the wealth.

It’s true that poorer farmers were able to move to more fertile land in the Midwest during this time, but only because of government-created national roads and waterways like the Cumberland Pike and Erie Canal – the very kind of big gumbent projects Conservatives are currently fighting tooth and nail not to build right now.

Bobo addresses none of this, and instead declares that the nation’s brilliant minds have gone Galt (!!!)

America’s brightest minds have been abandoning industry and technical enterprise in favor of more prestigious but less productive fields like law, finance, consulting and nonprofit activism.
I always knew the decline of America could somehow be pegged on nonprofit activism. I just couldn’t clearly see the path. But now I do. Thank you, David.

Apparently, “less productive” doesn’t entail the personal wealth of the Galts themselves. Lawyers and Wall Street tycoons make a shitload of money, though I agree that their fields don’t generate mass wealth. However, that’s really more a problem of regulation – another bête noire of Conservatives. It’s not enough to hope and pray that a few good egg Harvard grads go up to Alaska to pioneer that small manufacturing company in Akron Brooks created out of thin air. Even if they go do that nobel thing, their classmates won’t. They’ll go work at Goldman Sachs, and continue America’s rich tradition of pirate-like thieving. For that reason, the financial industry still needs to be strongly (sorry, Republicans) regulated.

Bobo claims Americans’ crushing debt on their desire to emulate the Huxtables rather than the Kramdens. The truth is, wages have been stagnant in the U.S. for thirty years, and the industrial sector has been completely gutted as corporations ship their operations oversees to exploit slave labor. Health care costs have gone soaring, and many people are just one illness away from bankruptcy. Americans have literally been surviving on cheap credit, which also appears to be at an end now that the housing market melted down and student credit seems like it will be the next bubble to burst.

Yet, corporations’ most elite players are thriving. That’s not because of their ingenuity or brilliance, but rather because of nepotism, inheritance, and a keen ability to exploit slave labor.

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Allison Kilkenny: It’s not racism when we say and do racist things

It’s not racism when we say and do racist things
by Allison Kilkenny
Unreported

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The defacto leadership of the Republican Party has been – for many months now – the extreme right fringe. The RNC has done nothing to control the violent, racist rhetoric sputtering from its base. In fact, GOP leaders have been completely silent while media personalities – the unceremonious leaders of the party – like Rush and Beck continue their rich tradition of being disgusting racists.

Then, when racism erupted during the Park 51 controversy, Republican politicians clutched their fans and pretended to act appalled. As though there could have been any other possible outcome after months of Republicans encouraging the most fearful, primal responses from their frenzied mob.

Geller, Limbaugh, and Beck have successfully combined hatred of Muslims with hatred of the others (blacks, Latinos, feminists, gays – you know, the fake Americans). Without the presence of adult supervision, they have coaxed their listeners and viewers into accepting that Barack Obama is a creepy foreigner who is not to be trusted. It’s okay. You don’t hate him because he’s black. You hate him because you know he’s inauthentic. You’re just perceptive! And then one morning, we all woke up and found out one in five Americans think Obama is a Muslim.

Not only do they think he’s a Muslim, but apparently they’ve been harboring latent hostility toward Muslims since 9/11. The extreme right has lassoed that hatred into a movement to reject anyone and anything that isn’t white and Christian. At one of the Park 51 protests, two Egyptian Christian men were harassed by the mob. “Go home!” someone yelled. “Get out!” another chimed in. It didn’t matter that the men were Christian. They have dark skin, and so they are part of the others.

In another protest, Kenny, a union carpenter, who happens to be black, is screamed at as he walks through a Park 51 protest. The crowd has mistaken him for a Muslim because Kenny made the mistake of WWB (Walking While Black).

Defenders of the Park 51 protesters claim that not all of their members are racist. Of course not. In any bigoted movement, I’m sure you can find at least a handful of individuals who really believe what they’re doing will protect the motherland, and they don’t have anything personally against _____, but maybe if ______ just tried a little harder to assimilate, this wouldn’t be a problem at all. And then there are the people protesting ______ because their granddaddy hated _____, and their daddy hated ____, and now they’ve taken taken up the mantle of hating _____ because it’s something of a family tradition, but they would never hurt a _____, or anything, and to tell you the truth, they once worked a job with a _____, and he was a nice enough guy.

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Allison Kilkenny: White domestic terrorists slip off media’s radar

White domestic terrorists slip off media’s radar
by Allison Kilkenny
True/Slant

I guess bombs aren’t sexy enough to warrant national attention anymore. At least, not if the terrorists planting the bombs are white. Here are a couple stories that failed to attract significant coverage, and let me emphasize that these are just two examples I scooped up. One need only spend an afternoon exploring SPLC’s website to observe the surge in far right extremism, so undoubtedly, there are many similar examples.

A firearms and explosives expert suspected of involvement with two white supremacist brothers in the sending of a bomb to the office of a municipal diversity officer was sentenced to 6½ years in prison in Missouri on Tuesday.

Robert Joos Jr. is an anti-government crazy person, and also the pastor of a church of “apocalyptic Christians.” He was convicted in January for possessing firearms and explosives. He and his accomplices, twin brothers Dennis and Daniel Mahon, were indicted for delivering a bomb to diversity officer Don Logan, a black man, who needed extensive surgery for injuries to his hands and arms. Logan’s secretary also suffered injuries to her face and eyes.

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Allison Kilkenny: Detroit and Missouri -- a tale of two police raids

Detroit and Missouri: a tale of two police raids
by Allison Kilkenny
True/Slant

Aiyana Jones is the 7-year-old girl who was recently killed during a raid on her home. Allegedly, the police launched a flashbang grenade through the window of the apartment where Jones was sleeping, and the device set Jones on fire. Her grandmother, quite understandably, got into an altercation with the armed men who stormed into their home, and during the struggle, the police claim an officer’s gun discharged accidentally, killing Jones.

This official narrative is being disputed by the family’s attorney, who claims video footage shows the police fired into the home at least once after lobbing the grenade through a window – before grandma and the officer ever had their interaction.

This terrible tragedy follows an incident that received considerably more (especially on-line) media attention — a Missouri SWAT raid.

First, a disclaimer: I don’t write this as a way to cast blame. After all, I covered the Missouri incident extensively. The Missouri raid is something that should attract a significant amount of media coverage. And there are several important differences between the story that might explain why one incident went viral, while the other remains in danger of being buried by the Next Big Thing to come along.


Unlike Detroit, the Missouri raid was videotaped, forever capturing the terrible drama of the event, while Jones’s last, awful moments will only be memorialized in the testimony of cops and her family. Additionally, the Missouri raid demonstrated the overzealous, destructive police response to the unwinnable War on Drugs, which 40 years after its implementation, has cost over $1 trillion, failed to meet any of its goals, while “drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.” Most Americans believe the War on Drugs is failing, so video proof of the militaristic behavior of the police during drug raids reinforces widely held, negative views about drug criminalization. Simply: people like to watch what they already know.

The Detroit raid is much more complex, and reveals a more sinister reality. A little poor, black girl dying during a police raid in Detroit is considered as a somewhat normal event in America. It’s terrible, yes. It’s something that makes Americans tisk and shake their heads over, but many view Detroit as a kind of third world country in which terrible things happen. The ghetto is a poor, dilapidated place under constant siege by the police so as to keep the undesirables in order.

To reject the idea that the ghetto should be a bad place entails rethinking much larger American issues: race, class, poverty, wealth disparity, social hierarchy, the two-tier justice system. It’s much easier to accept that bad things happen in the ghetto and move on.

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