Shifting Balance of Power: Bloody Revolution and Union Strife

The last couple of weeks have been exhausting to say the least.  We’ve seen a wave of protest sweep the Arab world while Republican’s are making their final attack against Labor in the US. Here are some thoughts on the juicy goings on.

It all began with a quiet revolt in a sleep little country called Tunisia.  Not to discredit the 78 lives lost, but the world really paid little attention other than the passing mentions of “freedom” and “liberty” by the higher-ups.  But its larger implications where that it sent a message to their neighbors that they too could enact change…real change.  Egyptians who were already having labor protests (remember that sentiment for later) immediately went to the streets in protest of their stagnant and corrupt government of over 3 decades, and these protests got the international spotlight.  I bet Tunisians were all like “hey, we’re still here….”

Sixteen days of protests, some pro-Mubarak thuggery, and an Anderson Cooper beating later the Egyptians too had ousted their leadership in hopes of a brighter future.  But looking beyond all the glitzy protesting you learn the real dirty truth.  People were raped, murdered, and power vacuums are being filled by not so savory characters.   Egypt was able to get rid of Mubarak but in his place they now have an interim military government panel headed by the vice president Suleiman.  This guy was and still is a CIA goon, who spent the better part of his career leading the Egyptian intelligence department and has been tied to personally torturing people as part of CIA black site operations.  This guy will most likely win whatever election Egypt might have this year (as noted in recent wikileaked documents from the state department).  Careful what you wish for I suppose.  At least there’s a chance at reform and a better society.  But there are so many plot lines that have yet to unfurl, we’ll have to keep our eyes on Egypt for quite sometime before we know exactly what went down.

Now in Libya, the very brave people of that nation are taking their que and trying to bring about freedom in their nation.  However, this go isn’t so glitzy.  You won’t see Anderson Cooper in Tripoli any time soon.  Qaddafi has hunkered in and sent the military out killing protesters out right.   Reports have Libya calling for regional mercenaries to come and put down the protesters as well as employing aerial assaults against people in the streets.  Literally helicopters and jet planes are bombing demonstrators.  Gruesome images are spreading around the world and Qaddafi went on tv stating “I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired … when I do, everything will burn.”  No funny quips about this one, only prayers and the stark realization of what happens when you challenge power.

Meanwhile here at home, the Republicans have unveiled their final solution to the bastion of the middle class in Wisconsin, organized labor.  Back in November Scott Walker and the state republican caucus was elected with the brunt force of corporate support thanks to the landmark “Citizens United” decision.  They inherited a Wisconsin with a projected budget surplus given to them by the previous Democratic regime.  Promptly Walker and friends passed unsustainable tax cuts which will put the state in a projected budget deficit in the range of $6 billion over the next two years.  So whats the solution?  Deny public workers their right to collective bargaining and hand them a huge pay cut.

Crowds of over 35,000 Wisconsinites flooded downtown Madison and are currently protesting this most obvious of plans.  It’s not about the deficit that the state republicans will create (on purpose) it’s about destroying public employee unions, which is the last strong hold of organized labor.   The public workers of Wisconsin called Walkers bluff immediately and said they would accept the pay cuts but reserve their right to collective bargaining.   The republicans clearly don’t and are continuing to try to force the budget bill through with the provisions not allowing collective bargaining.  If that’s not blatant union busting then I don’t know what is.  More sinister yet, the next step for the republicans of Wisconsin is to begin selling off public energy utilities to private corporations.  This budget bill cannot pass.  Otherwise this same steam roll tactic will continue state after state until there’s nothing left.

Arabs are fighting and dieing for their democratic rights while Republicans in America are fighting to kill those same democratic rights.  Quite the busy few weeks in deed.

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A Positive Good?

One hundred seventy-four years and five days ago, one of the nation’s political leaders took the floor of the senate and made an emboldened argument for the preservation of the institution of slavery.  John C. Calhoun delivered an infamous speech that spoke to his constituents and colleges urging to abolish  abolition in order to save the Union from a bloody split.  “Abolition and the Union cannot coexist.”

Mr. Calhoun was right after all.  He called for his caucus to rally against northern abolitionist actions and to leave the institution of slavery as it were because “To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both.”  If this were not done, then the union was in jeopardy.  Which ultimately twenty-four years later the Civil War began.

His speech was made famous for a ridiculous statement that slavery was good for the slaves, but that grossly misses the point.  The point is that the argument by Calhoun was not about race, it was about class and particularly a ruling class.  He sums it up nicely here, “There is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The condition of society in the South exempts us from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict; and which explains why it is that the political condition of the slaveholding States has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North.”

Just think about what he’s saying here.  The only way to ensure a peaceful society, is to seed the political power and wealth with a ruling minority which benefits off the fruits of in this case, a majority labor class of slaves.  It would be a dangerous folly to write this off as just the arguments of a dying southern breed in antiquity.

This argument is in fact the basis for American Conservatism as it stands today.   I’m not talking about the Republican Party’s constituency who for the most part just vote on talking points shoveled in their face by talk radio and Fox News.  I’m talking about American Conservatism as its expressed itself over the last 40 odd years with the steady erosion of the middle class into a service labor cast ruled by a corporate oligarchy…..say that ten times fast.

Mr. Calhoun’s notion that the only way to avoid the inevitable clash between labor and capital is to subject the labor to a lowered status is at the heart of our political discourse today.  Sadly I have no faith in the majority of people making that connection to our current state of affairs.  But our ever-increasing corporatism, and the blind march towards free market principles in our political and social services/institutions is slowly cementing ourselves into a social situation liken to that of the  slave holding south.

Those that champion corporate rights, free market rhetoric, and laissez faire government do so on the belief that our society is best served by a wealthy ruling elite running the show.  Again, Mr. Calhoun stated it clearly “there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.”

This is exactly the goal of American Conservatism.  It is to subjugate the masses in order to provide for the wealthy minority.   This is why there is such a visceral response to democratic political leadership and the programs they present.  This is why universal health care and job growth programs are screamed down as “socialist government take over” or why domestic services and education programs are choked to inefficiency.  This is why we constantly hear that the government is corrupt and in capable of providing services to the public and that its best left in the hands of private corporations.

This is a dangerous period of transition in our nation’s history.  We are handing over the means of our liberty to a shrouded oligarchy which lies behind the veil of the corporation.   We do so happily drunk on the creature comforts that entertainment and technology gives us while quietly bread lines are getting longer all over this land.   Liberty is not as Mr. Calhoun and modern-day American Conservatism would have it.  Where a minority controls all the wealth and political power of the country while the rest of the population is there to serve them.   The United States of America must not be as Mr. Calhoun and modern-day American Conservatism would have it.

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