The Two Minutes Hate: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

I can haz love?

George Orwell's concept of the Two Minutes Hate is something that has stuck with me since first reading the book as a child. It's a sensory assault that aims at brainwashing the citizens of Orwell's nightmare world and at providing an outlet for their hidden emotions. Wikipedia also informs me that brief artillery barrages in WWI were called "hates". The sense is one of an assault on the viewer in which emotions overtake reason. Those emotions are, Orwell seems to indicate, an easy target for the state's mechanisms of control. The hate is directed at enemies of The Party and performed ritually each day.

A flip side of the Two Minutes Hate is the adoration of Big Brother. He is the hero of Oceania and the only acceptable object of love in their society. His perfection and leadership mush be acknowledged by all members of the society.

I couldn't initially find many analogous rituals and "hates" in the United States. While there are many personal, social, and religious rituals practiced in our county, there are no major governmental rituals. Independence Day might be a national holiday but it barely holds a candle to Orwell's "Hate Week". It also lacks the central planning and propagandizing of Orwell's totalitarian government. America also lacks the adoration part of Orwell's vision. Regardless of what some on the right may want you to believe, Obama does not come close to the do-no-wrong, demagogic nature of Big Brother.

However, I did notice some disturbing trends in the way our political leaders behave:

Clinton is laughing about the death of Moammar Gaddafi while riffing on the famous Caesar quote veni, vidi, vici. I'm not apologizing for Gaddafi. He was a bad man and committed terrible injustices on his people. But let's not forget that the past decade saw a blossoming of America's relationship with the late Libyan dictator. Indeed, after ending his weapons program in 2003 and turning over all his materials to the international community, Gaddafi was supported by the US. That's right, America supported the terrible dictator whose death Hillary Clinton laughs about. We came, we saw we, we negotiated, we financially supported, his people revolted, we turned on him, we bombed him, and his own people killed him. I don't know how to say that in Latin - sorry. In case you had any doubts, here's "Qaddafi: From Private Ally to Public Enemy". 

I heard he had a creepy shrine to Condi in his house.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-november-1-2011/condoleezza-rice-pt--1

Of course, that's standard operating procedure for America's treatment of foreign leaders and dictators. We court them for a while. Help them oppress their peoples and personally enrich themselves, and then we turn on them when the time is right. What more closely parallels Orwell's world is they way in which these leaders are depicted. Take it away Gelnn Greenwald:

That’s how dictators and other assorted miscreants with whom the U.S. was tightly allied for years or even decades are overnight converted into The Root of All Evil, The Supreme Villain who Must be Vanquished (Saddam, Osamabin Laden, Gadaffi, Mubarak).  Americans who were perfectly content to have their government in bed with these individuals suddenly stand up and demand, on cue, that no expense be spared to eradicate them.  Often, the demonization campaign contains some truth — the nation’s long-time-friends-converted-overnight-into-Enemies really have committed atrocious acts or, as a new innovation of Nixonian tactics aimed at Daniel Ellsberg, evenharbored some creepy porn (!) — but the ritual of collective hatred renders any facts a mere accident.  Once everyone’s contempt is successfully directed toward the Chosen Enemy, it matters little what they actually did or did not do: such a profound menace are they to all that is Good that exaggerations or even lies about their bad acts are ennobled, in service of a Good Cause; conversely, to question the demonization or object to what is done to them is, by definition, to side with Evil.

Glenn goes on to identify the ways the same approach is applied to anybody the government wishes to label as the "New Enemy". This reminds me of the tendency of hawkish commentators to insist that 9/11 was purely the result of fanatics and crazies who "hate us for our freedoms" - as if it would have happened regardless of any external circumstances. The categorization of people and causes as "Good" and "Evil" prevents any deeper analysis of the issues. Even asking whether or not America's policies toward the middle east share some of the blame will get you scolded by neocons and clash-of-civilizations crusaders - as Paul Krugman learned after posting this to his blog on 9/11.

But America loves to celebrate these deaths as a kind of victory over something and our leaders embrace it either because they themselves have bought into it or because they know how much they stand to gain. We don't want a complicated worldview because we don't want to see the kinds of actions we're really perpetrating on the world stage and against our own citizens. We prefer instead to think of all of our enemies as Simply Evil.

The past two months have seen this method turned against the average American. Fox News, admittedly and easy target, leads the way in setting up the single narrative:

Not to be outdone, Citi corp. Fiance, and new CNN pundit Erin Burnett (watch at about 3:30min) also layers on some condescension (oh, and she's wrong about the whole "Bailouts were profitable" thing). More than a month later, these jibes and jokes seem hopelessly naive. What's worse is the cognitive dissonance: OWS is both a disorganized collection of lazy hippies and a major threat to public safety and national well being.

This need by people in power to categorize their enemies is very Orwellian. They need to be able to direct the public against whatever is deemed "bad". This way they can maintain the illusion that they are always morally justified in their actions. Much like my last post, I am disturbed by these trends and how they are increasingly applied to Americans. Without all the other mechanisms of oppression in an Orwellian society, these broad generalizations seem to collapse under opposing evidence. Right now, America isn't there but I can unfortunately envision a future where, given current trends, people will engage in ritualistic "hates". They will be easily swayed by merely labeling a person or group rather than actual analysis of ideas. Then again, maybe we're closer than I think.

This is a good point to stop. We're entering into the category of the next post: doublethink.

I hope you are enjoying the series of posts. I always feel like they're a bit of an incoherent rant but that's part of the reason I keep a blog - to better know what I think. As usual, I encourage comments and criticism.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

State control of your daily life: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Sorry for the long delay between posts. Life has a way of getting in the way. Three completely insane weeks at school, coming down with a bad cold, and the release of Skyrim taking time to focus on hand-eye coordination all took their toll.

In my last post I looked at our government's massive surveillance apparatus and wondered whether that made America resemble an Orwellian State. While the capability for complete obliteration of privacy exists, there's not enough transparency in our government to tell how such capabilities are being used. This violates a key aspect of Orwellian surveillance - knowledge of the surveillance creates complicity through paranoia.

Today I turn my attention to mechanisms of state control over our daily life. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell creates a society where even the daily activities of individuals are regimented and dictated by the state. Initially, America seems to be free from all such control - we can move about the country freely. We have choices in where to work and how to spend our money. We form relationships voluntarily. I am tempted to make connections to public schooling and the oath of fealty we force all children to swear each day but it is a weak form of control at best.

I think we need to look at some larger trends in order to see how the country is changing and how individuals are losing influence over their own lives.

The first big trend is Occupy Wall Street - or, more accurately, the coordinated response against OWS. I posted a few videos at the end of October about the Rough Treatment of Occupy Protesters. It was those videos which motivated me to write this series of posts. I'd like to point out something I wrote:

The move to crush the protests is on. Atlanta just evicted hundreds from Woodruff park and arrested around 50 protesters. Police forces nationwide are trying to deny any living space to the protesters in the hope that they will fade away this winter.

That now appears to be exactly what has happened. In every major center of protest, the police cleared the tents and living spaces. They've denied them shelter so that the protesters have a much harder time occupying. What I didn't expect was the hand of the federal government in crushing the protests. It now appears that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI coordinated these raids with local law enforcement:

Rick Ellis of the Minneapolis edition of Examiner.com has this, based on a “background conversation” he had with a Justice Department official on Monday night:

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict “Occupy” protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night’s move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

[...]

According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

Corroborated by this AP story. We've also seen attacks on student protesters at Berkeley and police using military weapons and armor when clearing a protest near UNC Chapel Hill:

This is just like Modern Warfare 3 but you're shooting
poor people with rubber bullets instead of Russians with real ones.

Spurred on by Federal guidance, police departments around the country made a show of force. They brought out armored vehicles, and used LRAD sound cannons against protesters who were singing the national anthem. In Oregon, Federal Protective Services was actively assisting police in eviction and detention of protesters in Schrunk Plaza. The FPS is part of the Department of Homeland Security, by the way.

These tactics were employed along with a media blackout designed to hide any police abuses like those that have been floating around You Tube and nightly news broadcasts since the protests began. All reporters were kept out of the area near Zuccotti Park - except of course the New York Times which was embedded with DHS NYPD for two weeks while they trained to demolish the encampment. Compare this New York Times article to the video below from Mother Jones:

Despite all their efforts, videos of the NYPD raid and police actions in other cities continue to make their way on to the internet. (Wow, You Tube assigns commercials to videos that reach a certain amount of views - the commercial I just saw was for Monsanto. Ugh.)

Thankfully, the internet allows for free exchange of information and ideas. Thankfully it allows people all over the world to expose and resist such thuggery by police and governments. Much of the material I've linked so far has been from the You Tube or Twitter accounts of people involved in or covering the OWS movement. Even when the media are ordered out, we still gain first person accounts of the events.

Yeah. About that:

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.


Congress is considering a bill written for and designed by the entertainment and telecommunications industries which will grant unprecedented censorship powers to both the government and to those corporations. I've already documented that these companies have a long history of cooperation with our intelligence agencies (like the Department of Homeland Security). All that's required is an accusation by any company and the government gains the authority to shut down an entire domain (for example, www.youtube.com is a domain). While the spirit of the bill is to prevent piracy, it creates the legal standing needed to actively censor social media, video sites, and even news outlets during critical events. Sure, a judge may toss out the law some time down the road but it will be years before such a case is fully litigated (probably all the way to SCOTUS).

Pictures like this will be subject to censorship:

That lady is pregnant.
http://today.seattletimes.com/2011/11/police-arrest-4-occupy-seattle-marchers

It also means I can't make and post videos like this:

What does this mean as part of the Orwellian State analysis? Well, I'd say that coordinated coercive actions by the government designed to quash free speech and destroy dissent are hallmarks of an Orwellian State. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the thought police also created false scenarios to detect those who had wavering or weak commitment to the state. Winston was tricked by a member of the Inner Party into believing he was joining an underground group which resists the state. In the end, he is exposed and learns the entrapment was a strategy frequently used to preempt open dissent. America doesn't do anything like that, right?

Wrong. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies routinely use surveillance to identify immigrants and Americans who they consider at risk for radicalization. Then, the FBI contacts these individuals (who have never previously taken any actions) and proceeds to radicalize them. Then, they design a plot to do something terrible, like blow up a Christmas tree, and ask the newly state-radicalized "terrorist suspect" to participate. At the last moment, they make the big reveal: Surprise! We were the FBI all along. Enjoy your water-boarding in Cuba you Christmas hating terrorist mother fucker!

How many times has this happened? We don't know. But there have been some high profile cases that the Justice Department and FBI have paraded around in front of the media to show us how good of a job they're doing at defeating the plots they themselves create. 

Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success.  In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro.  And now, the FBI has yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” model airplanes carrying explosives.

And we can't forget the super super dangerous used car salesman who was plotting to act as a liaison between the Iranians and the Zetas drug cartel  in order to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador the US.

This scenario sounds almost exactly like something out of an Orwellian nightmare. Does the state control our daily lives? No. Day to day decision making is still relatively autonomous. But our free speech is under attack. Our access to publicly available information is decreasing. Our ability to peaceably assemble and share those experiences is eroding at the behest of private industry. Worse still, our domestic intelligence services use entrapment and trickery to create criminals out of individuals who exist on the margins of society - individuals who are America citizens, who are guaranteed rights under the constitution, and who have done nothing wrong until the FBI makes them do it. These people are locked away under emergency powers granted in the Patriot Act and never heard from again.

If someone approaches you after reading this post and offers you a chance to fight back against the government, say no. Chances are they work for the government.

As I clicked the "Preview" button for this post, a grey bar appeared at the top of my Chrome browser. It informed me that Blogger would like to know my physical location. I clicked "Deny".  Maybe I was wrong about that whole complicity through paranoia thing.

Tomorrow I'll post my next discussion - The Two Minutes Hate: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

Invasion of privacy: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

Surveillance is a key aspect of the Orwellian State. Winston's flat is monitored through his television (which actually was an early fear - people used to place tablecloths and blankets over their TVs so others couldn't see them through the TV). He is constantly fearful that a hidden microphone is listening on him - even when he goes into the countryside. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the purpose of the surveillance is not just to ferret out opponents of the state. The threat of constant surveillance is s mechanism of control. Winston and others are so worried that they must constantly questions their own appearance, actions, and words. Even an unconscious uttering could be grounds for detention if the surveillance systems overheard. Worse still, people were encouraged to spy on each other. 

I've already tipped my hand a bit as to that final part - the Dpt. of Homeland Security does have a public awareness campaign which seem to encourage some snooping. Remember citizen, If you See Something, Say Something. The focus, however, is not on actions against the state. DHS is encouraging you to stay aware and report potential terrorist activities. 

Terrorism is the crux of many of  the changes we've seen in America. We live in constant fear of another attack and have to take precautions against it. Or so the argument goes. I find the security vs liberty choice to be a false dichotomy. Following the attacks, a number of powers were granted to the presidency which it did not previously have and systems of surveillance were stepped up.

However, complex systems of electronic intelligence gathering were in place long before the 9/11 attacks. A multi-national electronic eavesdropping initiative called ECHELON has been in place since the 1960s. It's original goal was gathering data on the Soviet Union by listening in on electronic communications. Prior to the advent of fiber optic cables, all long distance communications were over the electromagnetic frequencies (radio, microwave, etc.). If you had sensitive enough equipment, you could listen in on even the faintest signals from thousands of miles away or, from a few hundred yards, you could detect the electronic impluses made by a computer keyboard - that is, you could read what someone is typing while they typed. The US and her Allies set up listening posts in the UK, Canada, Japan, and Australia - the largest of which is located in Yorkshire. Next time you visit a pub in Harrogate, say hello to all the American contractors who are "consultants" but can't tell you anything more. They're the folks listening to your phone calls.

The downfall of the Soviet Union didn't see the end of these electronic surveillance programs. Indeed, the biggest threat to their continued existence came from the advent of fiber optic cabling. Fiber optics uses light to transmit a signal. Light produces no electromagnetic signature and can't be intercepted without having direct access to the cables themselves. This is exceedingly difficult - not that we haven't tired.

Not an entrance to Narnia.
The NSA's "secret room" in AT&T's San Fransisco network routing  office.
How do I know it's an official government installation?
It's wheelchair accessible, as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

What our intelligence service realized was, the easiest way to gain access to these new fiber optic cables circling the globe was to require the companies who used them to provide access. Telephone companies had been a part of this loop since the 1950s but another innovation required more direct action: the internet. Since 1997, the FBI and NSA have had software and hardware installed at the routing stations of major telecommunications corporations. The purpose is twofold - 1. Data aggregation. The FBI (and later NSA) store a record of billions of phone calls made by people throughout the world, including those of US citizens. The NSA Call Database (misleading because it now records all forms of communication passing through telecommunication networks) is believed to be the largest database in the world. 2. Allow for direct surveillance when necessary. 

To put that in perspective, all the major internet service providers, telecommunications companies, and cellular carriers are required to give intelligence agencies unfettered access to your phone calls, texts, emails, blog posts, Skype, Facebook, and pretty much everything else you do electronically. A record has been kept. Profiles have been created. These surveillance methods have been brought before court for a violation of the 4th amendment. However, the case died in the US Circuit Court of appeals because Congress retroactively legalized domestic electronic surveillance.

Well, actually and amendment to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

The degree of surveillance has increased along side the rapid growth of our communicative ability. Smartphones that record our location are used by police to track suspects. Facial recognition software is being used to identify people in crowds  (okay, okay, it's not perfect; yet). Many cities are broadening their surveillance programs. Atlanta, for example, is purchasing a mobile surveillance tower to monitor crowds and record their activities. 

Coming to a Woodruff Park near you.

Other activities are also becoming the subject to police surveillance. Use too much electricity? That's a SWAT Team'n. What other possibility could there be?

Sometimes, high electricity use doesn't lead investigators to drugs. A federal investigation in the Powell area turned into a surprise for detectives.

"We thought it was a major grow operation ... but this guy had some kind of business involving computers," Marotta said. "I don't know how many computer servers we found in his home."

As if I needed another reason to move toward energy efficiency - now my Minecraft Server is going to make the police think I run a grow house.

The surveillance apparatus has been in existence for a generation. As new technologies emerge, our intelligence agencies become deeply embedded in the infrastructure. They gain a clearer picture of who we are, what our habits are, and how (and, increasingly, where) we spend out time. While there's no major evidence of this power being turned against the average American citizen, there's also little transparency. The truth is, we don't know how these intelligence gathering powers are being used. We do know, however, that there are questions as to how effective these changes have really been.



I want to end with an analysis of this video as it makes a good segue for my next post.

First, kudos to Chertoff for pointing out that we can't be protected from the tide of history. We hear all too often that the attacks were the result of "crazy fundamentalists" who "hate us for our freedom". I think that mantra obscures America's role in creating the necessary preconditions for terrorism in the middle east.

Second, the video focuses initially on tighter Airport Security and men with machine guns who protect us on the subway. I am reminded of a 1998 film called The Siege.  It imagines a NYC held hostage by the threat of terrorist attacks. It's themes include surveillance, torture, and using the military domestically (including the intelligence services who are, like the military, supposed to be limited to foreign actions (CIA, NSA, etc.)). What was shocking in 1998 was the presence of armed soldiers in our cities. A mere 4 years prior to 9/11, such a thing was the stuff of movies. Now, it's ordinary life.

Third, we catch a glimpse of the tangled regulatory structure that guides our surveillance programs. Different committees and offices oversee the various intelligence agencies. Local and national law enforcement can't communicate. We're collecting so much data that we can't sift through it adequately. Yet, we're trying to streamline the process - we want the police to have real time access to our "iPhones and Blackberries" without any clear evidence that having such capabilities makes us any safer. Our officials say we're much safer with these measures in place but the only terror plots we seem to foil are ones that our own intelligence agencies create.

But is this all Orwellian? It's hard to say. Without knowing more about the kinds of information gathered and the way it's being used, we can't say one way or the other. Perhaps that's the ultimate answer, though. In Orwell's novel, the public knew exactly how and why the surveillance was being conducted. That knowledge was a supplemental form of social control. Fear and paranoia kept people from acting out and organizing against the state. Right now, those conditions do not exist. We have only a partial version of Big Brother watching us.

My next post will focus on whether or not the state is taking measures to control out daily lives. I hope you find a lot to think about as this series continues and, as usual, I welcome commentary and criticism.

Is America a "Soft" Orwellian State?

In a previous post about the OWS protests I mentioned that I sometimes wonder if we are living in a "soft" Orwellian state. I've been thinking about his issue a bit recently - probably less than I should have been all along but I have many distractions. I enjoyed the feedback I received last spring from my series of posts on education and I think I'll conduct another set of posts devoted to the titular question: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

I should set out some parameters about what I think constitutes an Orwellian state and what might differentiate a 'Hard" and "Soft" Orwellian state. The adjective Orwellian invokes novelist George Orwell and his vision of a tyrannical distopian society ruled by the state. The best examples of such a state come from his novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. Orwell's other writings, especially his writing about British colonialism and the Spanish Civil War also lend a great deal of perspective on his worldview. Wikipedia is a good place to turn for a more detailed description of an Orwellian state:

The adjective Orwellian refers to these behaviours of The Party, especially when the Party is the State:

• Invasion of personal privacy, either directly physically or indirectly by surveillance.
• State control of its citizens' daily life, as in a "Big Brother" society.
• The adoration of state leaders and their Party.
• The encouragement of "doublethink", whereby the population must learn to embrace inconsistent concepts without dissent, e.g. giving up liberty for freedom. Similar terms used, are "doublespeak", and "newspeak"
• The revision of history in the favour of the State's interpretation of it.
• A (generally) dystopian future.
• The use of euphemism to describe an agency, program or other concept, especially when the name denotes the opposite of what is actually occurring. E.g. a department that wages war is called the "Ministry of Peace" or "Ministry of Defence".

 The "Hard" Orwellian state would feature all of these characteristics universally. More difficult to conceptualize is the "Soft" Orwellian state. I can see a few options:

1. A state which features some but not all of these characteristics.
2. A state which features all of these characteristics but does so imperfectly - they haven't achieved complete control, revision, etc.
3. A society which features all of these characteristics but in which the state is not the agent of oppression.

Arguably the third option is not actually an Orwellian state at all because every example Orwell writes about is a government which oppresses its people. This third option may be worth sussing out as I go forward with my posts. It may also be easy for me to prove that some very limited aspect of each feature does indeed exist. Looking at the above criteria, almost any state could be considered a Soft Orwellian state. That is not my goal and I don't want to end up congratulate myself for leaping only the lowest analytic hurdles. I encourage my readers to question my thought process and post challenges in the comments.

My plan for organizing my thoughts it to take the above features and post on them one at a time. The first post will be about Invasion of Privacy; the second about the state's control over daily life; the third about adoration of leaders, the fourth about doublethink, the fifth about revisionism, the sixth about euphemism, and my final post in the series will revisit the question: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

I will leave you with the following message from the Department of Homeland Security: If you see something, say something.

Rough treatment of the Occupy protesters.

Sometimes I wonder if we are living in a "soft" Orwellian state. I'll be writing more on those thoughts soon. Until then, here are some videos of how our nation treats those who oppose Wall St. Even Veterans of the war in Iraq aren't granted their right to free speech without paying a terrible cost.

Warning, language is not safe for work.

The move to crush the protests is on. Atlanta just evicted hundreds from Woodruff park and arrested around 50 protesters. Police forces nationwide are trying to deny any living space to the protesters in the hope that they will fade away this winter.

The Master Narrative and The Real Narrative

Simply reposting something I put on Google+. I felt like I needed a more permanent reference to it for future use. It's all commentary on a series of CBC documentaries about the financial crisis. Here's the link to the first video. (HT: The Big Picture)

And here's what I wrote:

Ok, watched all of it. I like that if told more of a global tale than many of the US-centered things linked previously.

I'd say its biggest weakness is its treatment of regulators. They pretty much universally portray the Treasury, SEC, and Fed. as reactionary and as people trying to do what they thought was right at the time. Any criticism is usually overshadowed by an argument about how unprecedented the situation was, how difficult it must have been to work with all the parties involved in negotiations, and how political leadership slowed the process. When direct blame is assigned, it goes to people who've already lost: Dick Fuld, Angelo Mozilo, James Cayne, Joseph Cassano, etc.

Therein lies my criticism of this and other documentaries. Most present not a "Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse" but the Official History of the Global Financial Collapse. This is the narrative fronted by the powers that be - by Wall St., Washington, London, and many other metonymic financial and political centers.

We get a history where it was a few bad decisions by a few greedy and/or well-meaning individuals that sank the system and ruined the world. We have a narrative that relies on characters. If only James Cayne hadn't been such a pot head, he could have saved Bear Stearns. If only Richard Fuld hadn't been such an asshole, he could have worked with Paulson and the other banks to save Lehman. If only AIG had watched Cassano more closely, they could have stopped him from making such bad decisions.

It's all an attempt to remove blame from the truest source, the financial system. Don't believe for a moment that AIG-FP and Cassano acted outside their authority while racking up counter-party debt. They were making billions of dollars for their company and AIG loved it. It was the appetite for risk, and therefore for leveraged debt, which undid all these companies. And they accepted it willingly. Indeed, the Financial Products division was created int he 80s to do exactly what it was doing in 2008 - to speculate wildly and make a ton of money.

Our show portrayed Fuld as someone unwilling to negotiate and that's why he wasn't invited to the "secret" banker's meeting. Never mind that all the other banks benefited greatly from Lehman's demise. Never mind that all the other banks had equally poor balance sheets and were (still are) equally insolvent. Never mind that mere days later they were bailed out for billions of dollars in terms Lehman would have been glad to accept. Those are unimportant facts because Dick is a dick.

Let me also add that the show made it seem like the banks were subjected to regulations as a result of the bailouts - one specific regulation mentioned was limits on CEO pay. Were there ever any limits placed on CEO pay? No. Remember that fiasco about AIG bonuses mere months after the bailout? The CBC doesn't. No regulation ever took place. No limits were ever placed on executive compensation. These men signed the deal so willingly not because they were scared (as the show claims) but because they were given blank checks by the treasury and the taxpayer. (And some secret stuff, outside of TARP, that we didn't even know about at the time: http://www.unelected.org/audit-of-the-federal-reserve-reveals-16-trillion-in-secret-bailouts)

This show and the many documentaries like it are presenting a half truth. They show us the crisis. They show us a partial list of easily dislikeable characters to place the blame on all while portraying the true culprits as helpless victims (poor Hank Paulson has dry-heaves while writing Goldman a check from the American tax-payer for $30 billion, he was so stressed that he could only talk to Christine Lagarde for 15 seconds! Wow, it must have been so hard...).

This is the crisis they want you to remember. This is the crisis that will be in our history books.

Don't believe it for a second. I think the key to understanding the crisis is the old Latin phrase, Cui bono; For whose good? Who benefits?

Rockabye baby...

I had a very nice drive up through the Appalachian mountains last night. As I climbed the highest part of I-26, a bank of fog appeared and reduced my visibility to nearly nothing. After a few minutes of impenetrable whiteness, I realized that this was not fog but a cloud that I was driving through. Somewhere along the line I became aware of my descent and shifted to a lower gear, preventing myself from gaining too much speed in the low visibility of my cloud. Suddenly, I broke through the bottom of the cloud and ahead of me was a moon-lit valley hundreds of feet below. My low speed granted plenty of time to react and follow the road on its sharp right turn. Had I been traveling faster, you'd be finding pieces of my car in that valley for decades.

My continuing trip was uneventful and I had the time to think about my small brush with danger. There wasn't much to prevent me from driving right off that cliff. There wasn't anyone to catch me cradle-and-all.

For some reason, this immediately brought the economy and our nation's future to mind. There's no one to catch us anymore and we're only just beginning to figure that out. Across our society the social safety-nets of the previous generation are unwinding. Social security, medicare, welfare, food stamps, unemployment protection, healthcare, defined pensions, quality education, and career stability are all threatened.

We know Social Security will stop taking in as much as it gives out sometime in 2016 and that that shortfall will deplete its balances sometime between 2030 and 2040. We will have to consider options like means testing and raising the retirement age or face insolvency. I believe that action will eventually be taken to save Social Security but it will reduce the benefit provided by an already meager support. In the long run, neither you nor I can count on Social Security alone as a support in our old age.

The same goes with Medicare and whatever our Healthcare package ends up being. Those systems' costs will grow over time - especially because our national healthcare legislation does little to address the underlying factors causing increased healthcare costs. Benefits will decrease and costs will rise in order to meet the need of providing adequate healthcare. Since it has$24 trillion in unfunded liabilities through 2084, I'm guessing we'll have to cut quite a bit from out coverage.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program now has a record number of families drawing support.

August's jobs added was unchanged but somehow the number of people drawing on unemployment support decreased. That's because tens of thousands of people reached the legal limit of that unemployment insurance, 99 weeks.

There's no stopping us now!

So far, I've only listed government programs. But throughout the workforce we're also seeing a move away from systems of lifelong support. Barely any companies offer a defined pension anymore, they're too expensive. Instead, 401k plans tied to stock indexes and money market funds have wiped out billions of dollars of American wrokers' savings. Baby Boomers are supposed to be retiring in record numbers over the next decade but many can't afford to.

Additionally, the old model of career-based employment has vanished. A person used to get a job with a firm and work there for life. Their path would take them up to a management position and they could depend on a stable income through most of their lives. Such stability breeds good economic decision making. Big purchases (house, car) and important long term savings (retirement, college for kids) and valuable self sustained safety-nets (emergency savings for medical or other emergencies) and long term goods like insurance all vanish when a person can't tell you how much money she's going to make this year or next.

How do you plan for the future when you may have a brand new career, with a brand new salary, and completely different benefits every 2-5 years? How can you remain valuable in a workforce when staying employed constantly demands new training and improving skills?

Bill's a copy editor but he doesn't know Ruby. Let's get him!

The economist recently ran a special report on jobs. Their take is mostly positive but let me quote a section from one of the articles:

Even in tough times there are jobs to be had, but applicants have to work far harder to get an employer’s attention, says Mr Bolles. The main thing is to give them hope and teach them the latest techniques for looking for work, of which he lists no fewer than 18. They need to market themselves better and consider a broader range of employers than they might have thought of. 

The growing need for workers to keep upgrading and adapting their skills is one of the themes of a new book, “The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here”, by Lynda Gratton of the London Business School. She argues that the pace of change will be so rapid that people may have to acquire a new expertise every few years if they want to be part of the lucrative market for scarce talent. She calls this process “serial mastery” and notes that the current educational system in most countries, from kindergarten through university, does a poor job of equipping people for continuous learning.

Does this sound like the kind of life you want? It appears to be a working world where you constantly have to spend your free time marketing yourself on LinkedIn or going to a local community college to earn a certificate in the newest corporate fad. The Economist take a very positive tone but I see what looks like employment hell. We're moving to a system where employers have broken employee rights and now they can make exorbitant demands of their workers. I see a system in which people are going to be living in constant fear of being fired if they don't prove how they bring extra value to the company. On one hand this is what business is all about but I can see where helping the company succeed no longer benefits the employees at all.

Nine dollars an hour and I get to eat lunch? I accept.

I can see a system where lives revolve entirely around work because people depend so much on the scraps their companies will throw them. Without the institutions our grandparents built, people will be dependent on whoever pays them. Forget pursuit of happiness, we'll be pursuing a meal ticket.

Re: The limits of technology.

Ryan has written an interesting article over at Silicon Bayou News entitled, "The Limits of Tech".  It prompted two major responses in my mind and the commentary quickly grew longer than a Google+ comment should be.

A few things:
1) Technology still requires hardware. That hardware isn't put together by oompa loompas - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/28/world-s-hidden-slave-trade-includes-forced-labor-in-u-s-military-contracting.html

http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/03/scary-truth-about-your-iphone

2) The digital divide is something I have some experience with through teaching - imagine my surprise as a new student teacher in 2009 when I found out none of my students used Facebook. Here I am trying to make the stupid Greek pantheon relevant by letting my students create Facebook profiles and ongoing status updates for deities and they had to ask me what a Facebook profile looked like. It's a big deal that whole swaths of people are being excluded from the major "successes" of the information age: 

The Internet - yes, I had and have students without internet access at home. Stop and think about how much of your social interaction, leisure, intellectual development/debate, and sexual stimulation comes from the internet. Seriously - when was the last time you had a "You Tube" party? Even by accident. Hey did you see this? Oh how about that video? This one is awesome? There's a large portion of our population that you'd have trouble communicating with because they have no freaking clue what you're even talking about. Example sentences (via Lifehacker) that are all but unreadable without being part of the internet culture:

"How to set up a file syncing Dropbox clone you control."

"If you didn't already get in on the US launch of Spotify, the dominant freemium music streaming service in Europe, head over here and get an account."
"Visual.ly is an infographics hub with tools to create your own."

Personal Computers - it might sound odd and the PC is frequently considered "on the way out" but many of my students have no computer skills whatsoever: can't search, can't manage files on a hard drive, can't use MS Office, can't use a computer. They're not getting any job outside the fast food industry without those skills.

Smart Phones - this is where all the action is for the computer industry. I've observed Smart Phone usage as a major social currency in high school students (the senior class gift was an Android and Iphone app written by the AP programming class). Guess who is left out? Guess what happens to them when their employers and college (even high school to some extent) sees Smart Phone usage as the norm?

As we begin to integrate technology into our social interaction, education, and workplace we need to be aware of the kinds of expectations we're creating. We expect our peers to be able to share viral videos with us (indeed, we want to see them right now - Get out your phone and show me!) because that's the new water-cooler talk. Don't just tell me about the game last night; I need a highlight reel. People who can't do that are going to drift toward the outside of any social group. Using technology in certain forms is a social currency, it's signaling "one of us" or "you're like me" to everybody else in on the club. 

Right now these expectations are set by the same people that have set expectations forever - the wealthy, the educated, the elite. Right now, our technology is clustered (like so many other things) at the top of the pyramid and as long as access to technology is tied to income the digital divide will continue to deepen. 

The technological revolution of the next decade is going to be bringing the rest of our county (or world) into the fold. Whoever figures out how to get the Lower 9th or College Park or Indonesia into the technological mainstream is really going to change some lives. 

Just because today was so momentus

For an idea of what's not in this chart but should be, read my previous post on money market exposure to European bank debt.

Things are moving quickly in the world of finance. Italy just now became recognized at a major source of risk in the EU and is the world's 3rd largest bond market. Dominoes.... 

Dereliction of Duty

Or Why I'm going to end up broke, unhappy, and alone.


I should start off by saying I believe in the concept of Duty. I can see that there are flavors of duty. The state may, by the authority we give it, create certain duties for its citizens - military service, jury duty, literal duties through taxation. I'm not concerned with those right now. I am more concerned with individual duties - a duty that I give myself or that I feel is a natural duty or, perhaps, one that is a kind of special situation which creates a duty. I can't really noodle it out so I'll put it to pen and see if that clarifies things. Most of these thoughts center around my chosen career and how I think it is the morally right choice for me. I'll probably relate much of what I write back to my decision to teach and the sense of obligation I feel toward becoming a teacher.

On the subject of duties, I think that my teaching is one of those special obligations. I can't really call it a natural duty because my understanding of a natural duty would give everyone sufficiently similar to myself a duty to become a teacher (or some similar servant of the public). I don't think that's the case. A natural duty would be one which everyone ought obey regardless of the individuals or their external circumstances. I've seen this duty constructed and the duty to warn a stranger that her drink is poisoned. You know nothing of the person other than that she is about to die unless you act. This is a bit weird, though, because your proximity to her and knowledge of the poison give you some ability to act but do not create the moral obligation to act. I see the common humanity between you and she as the only obligating force - the proximity and knowledge are simply constructed for the use of the example. Anyone in that situation should act the same way and warn the patron of her poisoned drink. Another formulation would be that we have a duty to help other people when we can act at very little cost to ourselves. The justification for this can vary - it makes the world a better place, the golden rule, whatever. Most of these rely on some kind of equivalence between yourself and the other person: you're both moral agents, you're both human, you're both drunks in a bar. The recognition of that commonality means you'd expect the same treatment if she knew of poison in your drink.

Being a teacher is not a natural duty. The profession of teaching is not something done without incurring significant costs. Similarly, I think the particular facets of my life make teaching a duty for me but not for every other person. That's why I think it is some sort of special obligation. Another difference from the natural duty is that I find myself obligated to a specific subset of people (unlike the above example where I'm obligated to everyone I might find about to drink poison). I don't want to become a teacher at a private school. I don't want to teach children in Africa. That's not to say that private school students or Africans are any less deserving of a good teacher. I simply don't find myself with a duty toward them. I guess this is a very subjective way to look at duty but that's why I don't think teaching is a natural duty. Teaching requires cost. We simply can't accomplish all those things (teach publicly, privately, and in Africa) because the costs are too high. (I should note that I'm defining costs broadly and not limiting it to money).

So what are the specific ways in which I am duty bound to become a teacher? Some of these reasons rest with me and some with the population I want to serve. The population is easy to tackle and my justification looks similar to the one used in the bar patron example. Children are human beings and are (or will become) moral agents capable of making rational decisions. I am a moral agent capable of making rational decisions. These qualities (as well as others: shared natural rights, shared political rights, shared community and/or citizenship) imply that we are sufficiently similar and therefore deserve similar treatment under the law, by society, whatever.

But our treatment is not always similar. In fact, due to the circumstances of my life, your treatment is far more likely to be worse than mine. Your quality of life will be lower. The state will not always seek to provide you adequate protection under the law. To put it simply, inequality exists in areas where there should not be inequality. The two specific areas I frequently identify are equality of legal protection and equality of opportunity. My natural duty in this situation might be to vote in a way which I think will improve things for you.  Maybe my natural duty is to give to charity or work in a soup kitchen. These are activities with low costs that make a difference. I feel obligated beyond that. This is where the qualities of my life create a special duty to teach. Here's the list that I think contribute:

• Born rich
• Born into a family that vales learning and thinking
• Born into a family intent on providing good schooling
• Born into a family that, despite itself, taught me to care about other people
• Going to schools with good teachers who cared about me
• Developing my own tendency to value learning
• Learning to like reading and writing
• Learning to leverage those into good grades and college admission
• Learning to love people and the art they produce
• Learning that people can learn from art
• Learning that learning creates certain kinds of equality

There are undoubtedly more things about me and my life which can be added to the list but hopefully you get the idea. The biggest points are the first four. I did not choose my family. I did not have any influence on how they raised me or on what they decided to teach me to value (we've all heard of Libertarian Dad getting his kids to bully their way to the top of the playground). These are the choices made for me that helped make me the person I am today. These are the choices which shaped my talents and proclivities but were not my choice. I think that's important because I'm trying to get at the difference between me and most people in America. That difference is, basically, random. Or at least it isn't my fault and I didn't make it that way. If we add to that my developed knowledge and proclivity for Language and Literature, we have a clear set of advantages in a certain area. I can be the most successful when dealing with language or literature. We live in a society where language and clear communication are often signals for competency and intelligence. This is not always true but lacking the ability to communicate in the preferred form (White American English) will keep people out of most professions. This is only one reason but I think it is the one most closely related to equality of protection and equality of opportunity.

So, I am obligated to help people without the same advantages I had and the best way I can help people is to teach them about language and literature. I think it is a good area to focus on not just because I'm competent there but also because they will benefit the most from improving their competence in that area. You need clear communication skills to know your rights, to hire a lawyer, to sign contacts, to enter into all sorts of legal agreements without being taken advantage of. You need clear communication skills to earn a respectable paycheck, to continue your own learning, to help others learn, to enjoy art and life in a country where English is the common tongue.

If my competencies (and advantages) were elsewhere then I'd have a different special duty. If I were good at math, maybe I'd be a math teacher. If I were analytically gifted, maybe I'd work academically and add to the gross weight of human knowledge. Who knows? I'm not any of those things.

That special duty also means I take on a larger cost - increased time, money, effort, patience, etc. Teaching requires more of a commitment than voting or weekend charity work. I've certainly borne much cost and haven't yet had the opportunity to be a real teacher. The closest I've come in 2 years is teaching summer school for a month. I've applied to more than a hundred teaching positions. I've interviewed 3 times. I've worked in schools since 2008 as a substitute teacher, a student teacher, and a paraprofessional. I've earned far, far less than I would have as a teacher. I've commuted 4 hours a day for 5 months straight with gas near $4.00/gal. I've taken out loans to go to grad school and earned a Master's Degree. I've spent thousands of dollars on classroom supplies and certification exams and fingerprinting/background check fees.

The question is no longer "How do I help society?" but "How much more do I have to give before I'm allowed to help society?"

I take my moral obligations very seriously. Indeed, I pretty much define myself by my duties and I am very hard on myself for not doing anything to benefit the society I live in. Even though I know that the state of the educational job market is not my fault, I still think I'm useless without a classroom. I can't leverage my advantages. I can't improves anyone's chances. I can't do much of anything right now. So I sit and I read and I learn but what good is that if it only helps myself? How do I satisfy my duty by enriching myself  (mentally, at least)?

I have two choices (maybe more but only two present themselves right now):
1. Continue to strive to uphold my obligations. Keep working in schools even if I have to go back to being a substitute. Keep applying even though I don't have much of a chance at finding a job. This is the part where I give myself over to my duty and live mostly to satisfy it. That's mostly where I see myself now. It's also the path that seems like it's leading me toward being broke, unhappy, and alone. It appears Sisyphean and creates a lot of temporary states of deep depression.

2. Abandon my duty and seek to stabilize my life. Find any job that pays well enough to support me (prospects are dim) and make decisions which are self centered (not necessarily in a bad way).

I don't know if I could live with myself if I went with option 2. I don't value myself enough to seek things only for my own benefit. I don't see the point: I'm impermanent after all. Maybe I try to go back into education at a later, saner, date. That's the only way I can envision going the second route. I know myself well enough to know that abandoning my duty long term would dramatically reduce my psychological quality of life. I would feel guilty forever.

That's where I'm at. Thanks for reading if you got this far.