Mind of an Outlaw (78 page)

IN DECEMBER 2000
, George W. Bush became president by dint of a Supreme Court decision warped shamelessly in his direction. He may have lost the popular vote, but he won the game. In compensation for a limited intellectual spirit, he now placed his reliance on big-money advisers who were used to playing with high stakes.

Tax cuts for the rich characterized the first eight months of his administration. In that period he also took more vacations than any U.S. president before him. Chalk it up to the callow distress of encountering his massive ignorance of the new job. In the wake of 9/11, however, came an unmitigated run of White House mendacity calculated to carry us into war. If our Democratic candidate could ever be fortunate enough to run exclusively against George W.’s misdeeds, there is small chance he would fail to win. In the last century no Republican president, not George W.’s father, nor Reagan, Nixon, Hoover, Coolidge—we can go all the way back to Taft, Teddy Roosevelt, and McKinley—had put together such an enrich-the-rich set of political actions. Nonetheless, we Democrats face a near to insurmountable irony. George W. is a popular, even a populist, president. All too many of the public love him,
love him still. We have to overtake a war president with an immense campaign chest who manages to keep ahead of the skunk trail of an abominable record.

We have, for example, suffered the highest number of private bankruptcies in any twelve-month period of our history, in company with the highest number of home foreclosures in the past thirty years. Even as two million Americans were losing their jobs, unemployment benefits were not extended. We have the largest budget deficit in U.S. history, a projected half a billion dollars coming up. Half of the nation is outraged over the lies that embedded us in Iraq.

For those whose pride in America runs deep, this sense of alienation from our country is full of woe, sharp as a divorce. The United States now feels like two nations, and Iraq is there to remind us daily of our surrealistic hubris. Boorish arrogance carried the day. Confident we could bring American-style democracy to the Middle East, we proceeded to ignore an entrenched establishment of mullahs who see American democracy as the literal embodiment of Satan.

It is possible that George W. has never grown up, and the same may be true for half of us in America. This, indeed, is the greatest obstacle to the Democrats winning the election in 2004. We have to recognize the possibility of two entirely different kinds of presidential campaigns. At the time of this writing, George W. Bush’s popularity has begun to decline. If that continues, the Democrats can win by running against the economy.

If, however, unemployment diminishes and the stock market shows signs of new life, if our situation in Iraq looks less like a quagmire and the road map to peace between Israel and the Palestinians has not fallen apart, then Bush’s personal popularity can rise again. At that time it will behoove the Democrats to try to win every serious voter. No longer can we address ourselves to our own side only, no, we will be obliged to look for open-minded Republicans as well. There are a number of serious conservatives who have been appalled by a leader who speaks like an android and plays Russian roulette with our economy and foreign affairs. In a close election the Democrats have to pick up a significant
number of conservative and independent voters, and that is possible provided—and this proviso is the crux of the matter—we are able to demonstrate that the spiritual values in our politics go deeper than the Republicans’.

Given the size of the endless and complex debates between and within the two parties concerning the multitudinous problems of labor, farming and foreign trade, this memo will restrict itself to the following subjects: Bush’s Virtual Reality, the Corporate Economy, advertising and education—the last two closely affect each other—then the trinity of oil, plastics, and the ecosystem, followed by such social issues as prison, abortion and gay liberation, welfare and the safety net, after which we can take a look at foreign policy, homeland security, and terrorism.

These topics, given their complexity, can hardly be satisfied by a memo, but one or two suggestions may prove of future interest provided we win the election in 2004.

So why did Bush and company go to war? The probable answer is that an escape was needed from our problems at home. Joblessness gave no sign of going away, and corporate greed had been caught mooning its corrupt buttocks onto every front page. The CIA had become much too recognizable as an immense intelligence apparatus whose case officers did not speak Arabic, and the stock market was offering signs that it might gurgle down to the bottom of the bowl. An easy war looked then to be George W. Bush’s best solution. What he needed and what he got was a media jamboree that provided our sweet dose of patriotic ecstasy. Bush would give us
The Twin Towers, Part Two—America’s Revenge
. We had all seen Part One—the audacity of the terrorists, the monumental viciousness of the attempt, and its exceptional filmic success—who will ever forget the collapse of those monoliths? The TV viewer had been overpowered by the kind of horror that belongs to dreams. One was witnessing what seemed a video game on a cosmic scale. Worse! The exploitation film
had finally come alive! Two gleaming corporate castles disintegrated before our eyes. Two airplanes did it. David had struck Goliath, and David was on the wrong side. The event had gone right into the nervous system of America, but Bush now had his mighty mission, and he knew the game that would handle it—Virtual Reality.

Virtual Reality is built on whatever parameters have been laid into it. The predesigned situations plus the responses permitted within the limits of the game—steering a car on a video screen, for example—measure your success or failure. Virtual Reality is then a closed system, a facsimile of life. You have fewer choices, and the choices have been laid out for you in advance.

In life we encounter not only parameters but chaos. Closed systems forbid unexpected patterns, confusion, and all that seems meaningless. They declare what the nature of reality can be. In that sense Communism was Virtual Reality and religious fundamentalism is still another spiritual settlement within a totally structured system. Obviously, if you live in such a matrix, it helps if you believe the parameters were established by a higher authority.

Ergo, Bush’s decision to invade Iraq came from the Lord. Virtual Reality decided which conclusions we would obtain before we went in. We had all the scenarios in hand. We were prepared for everything but chaos.

Given our human distaste for chaos, Virtual Reality is the choice of every ethical system that looks for no difficult questions, especially if they lead to even livelier and more difficult questions. The emphasis is always to go back to the answer you had before you started.

So Bush laid out the parameters. There was a hideous country out there led by an evil madman. This monster possessed huge weapons of mass destruction. But we Americans, a brave and militant band of angels, were ready to battle our way up to the heavens. That was our duty. Safeguard our land and all other deserving lands from such evil.

Stocked with new heroes and new dragons, Bush was quick to sense that his presentation would be lapped up by half the
nation—all those good Americans who were longing for the pleasure of being able to cheer for America again. He turned churchgoing into high drama. September 11 had transmogrified him from a yahoo out of Yale to an awesome angel. We were in a war against evil. A spiritual adventure, full of slam-bang.

Truth, it may have been Bush’s political genius to recognize that the U.S. public would rather live with Virtual Reality than reality. For the latter, out there on the sweaty hoof, bristled with questions, and there were no quick answers. Whereas Virtual Reality gave you American Good versus Satanic Evil—boss entertainment!—evil was now easy to recognize. Everything from Islamic terrorists to hincty Frenchmen. Freedom Fries! Be it said that TV advertising, with its investiture into the nerves and sinews of our American senses, had long been delivering Virtual Reality into our lives—all those decades of sensuous promises in the commercials.

A Swedish multimillionaire, talking to his American guest, could not keep from complaining how steep were his taxes. Yet, by the end of the evening, warmed, perhaps, by his own good liquor, he reversed course and said, “Do you know, there is one good thing about all these taxes. I am able, at least, to go to bed and know that nobody in Sweden is tossing all night on an empty stomach. I can say that much for our safety net, I do sleep better.”

Perhaps the time has come for Americans to stop worrying about the welfare of the rich. For the last two decades, the assumption has grown more powerful each year that unless the very well-to-do are encouraged to become wealthier, our economy will falter. Well, we have allowed them to get wealthier and wealthier and then even wealthier, and the economy is faltering. Apparently, the economic lust of the 1990s has unbalanced the springs. Might it not be unnatural, even a little peculiar, to concern ourselves so much about the needs of the rich? The rich, as Scott Fitzgerald tried to suggest to Ernest Hemingway, are not
like you and me. They are not. They know how to make money. They do not need incentives. Making money is not only their gift but their vital need. That is their vision of a spiritual reward. Not only is their measure of self attached directly to the volume of their gains, but the majority of them know how to stay rich. They are highly qualified to take care of themselves in any society, be it socialist, fascist, banana republic, or chaotic. Whether they live in a corporate economy relatively free of government or with a larger government presence, they will prosper. They can withstand an American safety net. And they may even sleep better.

In the half century since World War II, Americans have seen the Corporation become more and more powerful, usually with the aid of the government. Under Clinton—to name one Democratic sin—there were unconscionable periods of Corporate Welfare. They took place even as we were stripping welfare from the poor. It was outrageous. By the end of the 1990s, it was out of control. An all-out competition began among top executives to see who could become the Champion of the Golden Parachute. The 1990s became a study in edema-of-the-ego among once-responsible CEOs. We have yet to measure the size of that damage to our economy.

Capitalism works best when there is true competitive pride in the quality of one’s product. But marketing has now stepped in. The impulse to put your acumen, your daring, your prudence, and your energy into making something better than it was before has given way to a lower desire. It has become more rewarding to market successfully a sleazy piece of goods. More skill is required at manipulating the public.

A basic choice has to be made. Are we Democrats ready to attack the Corporate Economy we all helped to create? It is open to attack for its marketing practices and its egregious profit taking. There is, by now, no real alternative to taxing the rich and ending the tax cuts. If we do not call on new imposts, we will not be able to create a health system for all, plus a safety net. So we have to reinvigorate the argument that a well-funded active government is not creeping socialism. Rather, the return of government as a major partner in our economic existence could bring
some quietus to the greed, overmarketing, and slovenliness of the Corporate Economy. Through emphasizing taxation of the vices and indulgences of corporate business, we will also be able to claim that we are improving its capacity to make a profit. Indeed, this claim might have the added advantage of being true. Something in most of us, including the profiteers, is violated when the gap between rich and poor yawns before us. There is no way to justify the right of any executive to make five hundred times more than his lowest-paid worker. That kind of inequity belonged to the Pharaohs. It could be debated whether a decent ratio is ten to one, or fifty to one, but a disproportion of five hundred to one pokes rudely into a spiritual core most of us still possess. It is time to say again: Let’s tax the rich. Let’s tax their incomes, their dividends, their offshore investments, their perks, their concealed expenses, their padded accounts, their promotional squanderings, their limousines, their boats, their airplanes, their entertainments, their death tax, yes, even their advertising.

Maybe it is time to recognize that there is a sculptor’s art to taxation. The body of national production can be worked into better shape by judicious choices once the government becomes again a serious partner in the economy. Once again, let us not be paralyzed by the fear of being called socialist. We are not. Historically, we Democrats have been for small business, the family farm, the honest labor union, whereas capitalism, if allowed to become too free of the restraints of government, becomes Corporate Capitalism, plus agribusiness, plus corrupt unions, plus—not least—a manic stock market. Capitalism is unhealthy when most of the money is made from other money.