Memoir-writing as cultural challenge

by Margaret Swedish

Getting back to work later today on the more-than-memoir I'm writing, chapter six, a bit of a crescendo in the narrative of the book, unlocking the secrets and shame that impacted my parents' generation, and therefore we baby-boomers, in ways that did not serve us well. It's a 'way of being' passed down from ancestors, those who left so much misery, want, and suffering behind to come to America to become something other than who they were back in the old country. And many of them suffered a whole lot when they came here - degrading work and poverty, hallmarks of early immigrant life.

Croatian ancestors

They brought with them strong identity-based cultures that became the roots of strong identity-based neighborhoods, politics, nationalism, religion, and more. But they also buried a whole lot of the suffering, shame, humiliations, exploitation, and fear that shaped them and the lives they created here. That repression left marks on their behaviors and values, on the choices they made, and, whether we descendents like it or not, that impacted who we turned out to be, the choices we, too, have made.

The tearing of our fragile social fabric

Hi again - I know, it's been a while. I'm trying to figure out what to do with this blog, but so many outrageous things are going on, it's hard not to vent here. If you get something out of these posts, maybe you could share the link with friends and invite them to visit, and then we'll see.  For now, I will try to post a couple times a week.

What inspired me to break the silence was today's JS headline: "Bus system may cut routes, fares." If you have read it, then you have a sense of the breadth of the cuts coming for public transportation around here. Walker's 10% cut in state support for transit translates into a $6.8 million loss for the Milwaukee County Transit System - per year!

The guy hated county government when he was our woeful executive, and he hates public services for the non-wealthy, as proven in his budget repair bill and his biennium budget. He also seems to hate anything that gets people out of their individual cars to save on energy, environmentally unfriendly and costly road-building, air pollution, and congestion.

But of course the worst thing is that buses are the main way the not-so-wealthy folks get around - like to jobs or schools. But if you are in the company of the Ayn Rand crowd (like Paul Ryan who makes his staff read her vacuous baloney), the descendents of John Birchers (the Koch brothers certainly come to mind), and the corporate bosses who donate to your campaigns and put mediocre thinkers and ideologues into public office, I guess services for those poor dumb masses is just not your priority.

Really, friends, it feels that bad. I can't write that in a serious journal, but I can write it here - because in my heart of hearts, that is what I think is really going on.

My heart sank reading of the mob attack in the Riverwest neighborhood the night of the fireworks (Flynn's comments being distinctly unhelpful). It is so easy to blame the thugs who sent several people to hospitals to get stitches, but if we don't understand what creates that kind of behavior, especially the disdain in which the attackers appeared to hold those they were attacking, if we don't address what is really tearing our social fabric apart, what it means when people like Walker, the Fitzgeralds, and people like Vos or Darling inflict - with an arrogant attitude, mind you - more suffering and marginalization, more hardship, on populations already reeling from stresses both historic and new (esp. since the 2008 criminally caused financial meltdown), then we can look forward to more signs that that social fabric is indeed unraveling.

Poverty and racism cannot be overcome with more poverty and racism.  Really, it's true.

A lot of attention is focused right now on recalls, and that's a fine thing. But let's not leave for later the urgent need to address the attitudes and values that are at the root of these vast inequities, examining them within ourselves and our families, and overcoming them in all our social interactions, in our communities, churches, as a counter-witness to those who believe affluence and privilege, or the power of political offices, or - let's just say it out loud - their white skins, give them a right to enhance their privilege further at the expense of those they do not see as equals and for whom they feel no connection, no responsibility - as if their wealth and privilege is not a direct result of long and deeply-rooted attitudes and injustice.

It's just gotta be said out loud. These people are implementing policies that are going to bring out the worst in us. We have to counter with a commitment to the best in us, an overwhelming assertion of the best in us.

Giving power to reshape Medicaid to a guy who disdains Medicaid

The front page article says what is true, of course. Our rightist anti-poor legislature (you know, as Paul Ryan has said, giving people access to government assistance makes them indolent and lazy, something that echoes in our state legislature and the gov's office) has handed Walker the power to reshape Medicaid without the involvement of the legislature, not even hearings to probe the impacts of his changes.

This is the kind of government these people want. There is something abhorrent to me about rich and powerful people reshaping programs that serve the poorest and most vulnerable among us. The outcome is usually not so good - for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

Which is why so much this administration has in mind is gaining increasingly vocal concern and opposition from churches and other faith-based communities. From the article:

"We don't know exactly what will be coming down the pike," said Bob Jacobson, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families. "And we don't know how we can have a voice in those decisions when the Legislature has been taken out of the picture."

But that's the point, of course, to take the legislature, the bodies most representative of the people, out of the picture. It is yet another anti-democracy move on the part of our one-party state government - which is trying to remove access to its most controversial decisions from the people whom they most impact and hand them to our autocratic governor.

Walker does not like the messiness of democratic governance.  Ryan, Ron Johnson, and their ilk are the same - followers of Ayn Rand who believe in rule by the elite over the ignorant masses. What has happened to the old GOP is really quite sad. That was the party of the family in which I grew up, and while I left those tendencies behind long ago, I know the party of Ike and Goldwater and Nixon would look with disdain on the corporate rightist ideologues who now rule it.

This is a vent this morning, pure and simple. I wish it was also hyperbole. Sadly, it is not.

Ayn Rand, states rights, and Wisconsin politics

I just want to put a bit more context to what I wrote yesterday. While the struggle goes on over various specifics of the Walker regime's policies, and thousands begin to get focused on senate recall campaigns this summer, it is important for us to appreciate the context of this swift rightist turn in our state's politics.

While for many, the extremes of the Walker/Fitzgerald agenda has taken by surprise, what is going on here is part of a billionaire-funded, corporate right strategy underway for decades - since the civil rights era broadened voting rights, since a succession of federal governments broadened social programs and safety nets (very bipartisan, from FDR and LBJ to Eisenhower and Nixon, right up until it crashed into the rightist Reagan wall in the 80s), really heating up in 2008 when we had the temerity to elect an African-American president.

We have to keep insisting on this - many rightist billionaires and their minions do not think African-Americans equal to them, and additionally even those who do are happy to manipulate the nation's latent racism to get their people elected to office or sitting on state and federal courts. Things changed when Obama was elected - they changed a lot!

Billionaire funders through folks like the rightist true believer Karl Rove, with his enormously powerful Crossroads GPS funded by, you know, a handful of billionaires, are manipulating our political system beyond recognition in a very short time. Over the past couple of decades, corporate money has helped get people like Scott Walker or John Kasich (OH) elected into office not because of their smarts or because they represent a vast grassroots constituency, but by the power of their money, building campaign treasure troves, funding experts in messaging (you know, stuff like, "Wisconsin is open for business," or "we're broke," while you finance big tax giveaways to the corporate sector), buying controlling interests in cable news stations, investing enormous funds in TV and internet ads that pop into our attention spans on a daily basis.

And they have a philosophy of demonizing and bankrupting government, then steering newly freed up public funds to the corporate sector, as we have written repeatedly here. They scorn the 'masses' and think they should rule without the cumbersome workings of a democracy. They are states rights people bent on finally winning the Civil War 150 years after it began.

We have to know what motivates them, what they want, in order to know what we are up against. To understand Paul Ryan, and the lie he tells when he insists he cares about health care for the elderly, it is important to understand what motivates him, what philosophical beliefs shape his political career. If he says reading Ayn Rand inspired him to get into politics, and if he insists that all his staff read her stuff, then we best understand who she is and what she believes - and that should put a chill down the spines of all who care about the well-being of our families, communities, the state, and the nation.

So, here's some more reading for your reflection:

about the billionaires' class war against the rest of us, with reference to Ryan and Rand, from Robert Parry at Alternet, an excerpt:

The conflict is now over the Right’s determination to concentrate even more money and power in the hands of the rich by hobbling any government capability to protect the people’s general welfare.

If the Right wins, individual Americans will be left essentially defenseless in the face of unbridled corporate power...

Lately, Ryan has been trying to torture a connection between his philosophical beliefs and his Roman Catholic background. Whatever one thinks of the institution these days with all it scandals and such, it has a very progressive social teaching that contradicts much of what he proposes for the US budget. One ordained minister, Rev. Jennifer Butler, reflected on the Christian-Rand contradiction for Huffington Post. Read it here.

Finally, we are approaching the edge of the states' rights precipice in our federal Supreme Court. The NY Times wrote about this most serious threat to our democracy a few days ago, and, trust me, this really is a more significant news story than Palin's self-promoting, self-aggrandizing bus tour or Rep. Weiner's, um, Twitter problem. Seems Chief Justice Roberts is prepared to rule that states have sovereign authority and are not subject to federal law.

The principle at stake dates back to a 1908 case, Ex parte Young, in which the Supreme Court held that federal courts have a paramount role in stopping a state from violating federal law. Despite the 11th Amendment’s protection of a state from being sued in federal court, all state officials must comply with federal law, which the Constitution calls “the supreme Law of the Land.” 

Think for a moment about what it would mean to live in this country if states could decide not to abide by environmental laws, or civil rights laws, or labor laws, or child protection laws, and on and on, without danger of federal enforcement.

So while Palin and Weiner absorb hours and hour of the air waves, we are being denied crucial information on who is taking control of our politics and for what reason. If Roberts gets his way, we won't recognize this nation a few years down the road.

I think we ought to make Wisconsin an example of how citizens come together to reclaim a democratic culture - broad and inclusive - and a mission for government that has to do with the defense and promotion of the well-being of all its citizens, the common good, and the good of the commons.

Take from the poor to give to the rich

Some days the headlines prove my point: we are in an era when it has become okay to take from the poor to give to the rich, to take from the vulnerable and struggling and enrich corporations further, to use government as a tool to accelerate the growing gap between rich and poor.

And so today. I pick up my morning paper and see this headline: "Panel votes for corporate tax break," and the sub-head below it, "But GOP-run committee further cuts credits for working poor."

Our fearless governor keeps telling us the state is broke. It ain't broke. But in these days of tighter budgets caused by the financial collapse of 2008, money is being moved around, that's for sure. The corporate right, which pays for campaigns like Scott Walker's, has an opportunity right now to convince the public that the poor simply must suffer more because of budget problems. Meanwhile, corporations and their CEOs are making enormous profits and executive payouts while tax policy and government subsidies are being increased for the corporate sector.

The mantra is that we must create jobs. And people fall for it - or at least many do.

The story in the paper describes how Repubs voted yesterday to further cut taxes for corporations and investors while slashing tax credits for the working poor. Very moral, these guys.  But poor people aren't able to contribute much to political campaigns.

Earlier in May I was struck by this headline: "State may lose food assistance funding; Federal officials cite privatization efforts."  You see, in this case, Walker & Co. want to hand over more of the administration of the FoodShare program, including the process of deciding who gets the assistance, to the private sector. The feds are saying, um no, not with federal money. If you go as far as you want to go, you will not only lose federal money, you will have to pay us back.

The feds have seen the results in states that have taken such steps, and it ain't a pretty picture.

But it reveals priorities, doesn't it? See, the thing about government is this - while it is fine to use some public funds to give businesses needed boosts, emphasis on the word needed, it is not the role of government to be at the service of corporations, to be a servant of them, to give them whatever they want to make a profit. The role of government is to represent the concerns of all its citizens, to defend political and civil rights, to promote justice and the Constitution equally for all, and to protect the most vulnerable among us.

Government is not a business and should not be run like one. It is at the service of the people to help promote the dignity and well-being of its citizens, and to protect the common good and the good of the commons.

Right now, these libertarian, Ayn Rand, types of very, very rich people (like the Koch brothers, Paul Ryan, or Rand Paul) who control the Repub party, especially in this state, are trying to force on us a very different idea of government - as an instrument for a survival of the fittest kind of economics. They do not see government as a service and look with scorn on those who need government services to get by in hard times.

Paul Ryan speaks often of people who don't want to work and how government programs promote laziness and indolence - and I wonder if he gets at all what it's like to be poor, and, in this city with deep-seated racism still at work, to be African-American, trying to survive these bad times, raise your kids, find a job in this time of high unemployment and lingering discrimination.

But it doesn't matter if he gets it, because he is a follower of Ayn Rand and the poor are just the social detritus, those left behind while the superior among us go off and run businesses and get wealthy, rising to the top, deserving because of their superiority. They want to rule the world.

This lack of compassion runs through many of these policies and, if we follow this path, our future will be grim indeed. As long as there is more emotion around concealed carry than programs that support poor communities and families trying to feed their kids or find a job, we are a morally and ethically impoverished, compromised society.  As long as we see struggling people, poor people, as other-than-us and deserving of their lot, instead of our sisters and brothers whose fate we share, we are on a road to moral bankruptcy as a society.

One more thing to share, this very good essay by NY Times Editorial Observer Eduardo Porter, A Budget Without Core Purposes, Taxation Without Compassion. He says it. He really lays it bare.

The budgetary policy of the United States has been the least generous in the industrial world for a very long time.

And that ought to make us embarrassed and very ashamed. I urge you to read the rest.

Oh good, now comes the Wild West to a neighborhood near you!

Really, Wisconsin Repubs are nothing if not nervy.  While trampling the rights of citizens to vote, to decent wages and benefits, to a good education for our kids, to public transportation, to natural beauty and healthy air, water, and food, to collective bargaining, and more - they are about to unleash the gun whirlwind, a concealed carry law that, in the form promoted by real gun crazies, Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz) and Pam Galloway (R-Wausau), would allow people to obtain guns with no mandated training in how to use the bloody things, and potentially without having to obtain permits.

Good thinking!  We sure wouldn't want to know who exactly is carrying these guns, or whether or not they have the basic competency we insist on for things like driving a car!

Some rights matter more to these Repubs than others.  How much N.R.A. support did these people get back when they were running for office? [This site is sick and very disturbing.]  This website states flatly that the National Rifle Association wrote this bill, another sign of outside groups writing legislation for us. I will search for another source for this info.

Well, why not? As life gets harder and harder in this state, in the philosophical universe of Ayn Rand where some of our politicians live (Ron Johnson being among them), the superior and the powerful get to look out for their own interests and the rest of us and the common good be damned!  Those concerns are only for the weak.  I wait for more scared people falling into insecurity, more anti-immigrant or racist fearmongers, to put themselves in the class of the superior, go into a gun and ammo store, and come out loaded for bear.

The O.K. Corral come to Wisconsin, to our beautiful Wisconsin.

As the JS article notes, hunters must show competence with their weapons. We do have in this state a hunter culture, even a gun culture, but in the case of hunters, with some care and consideration for the power of these weapons and the damage they can do. We saw what handguns can do in a shopping mall in Tucson last January. We saw what lax rules and regulations about handguns can do.

I am particularly entertained by the comments of gun-fan Galloway: "People who carry concealed as private citizens are responsible people." Ha ha! that's a good one!  Only very responsible people buy guns with the intention of concealing them.  Right!

This is what the Repubs want to bring to our state.  I don't want it.  Let them know you don't want this either.

Winning an election is not the same thing as conquering the world

Let's be clear about what happened last night, what it indicates about who is in charge of the governor's house and the state legislature right now, not to mention the Senator elected last November to replace Russ Feingold.

This is a takeover of our state government by people who do not believe in democracy of, by, and for the people.  They are people who believe in the superiority of corporate executives, of billionaire-power brokers, who believe that the money empires they control ought to make laws, decide the fate of the nation, render organized expressions of workers and the poor mute or ineffective, and when opposed, simply run over us.

Senator Ron Johnson is famously a fan of Ayn Rand* whose philosophy is about exactly that, and how the elite power-brokers ought to run the world, that the masses are not smart enough to have a valid say in how business or government is run, that the elite rise to the top and ought to rule the world. Even our state and federal courts are being reshaped to reflect this view.

Just one example, Antonin Scalia, the most conservative and ideologically rigid Supreme Court justice, is highly suspicious of popular democracy. Meanwhile, he has also been wined and dined by billionaires like the Koch brothers, and you see how all this points to a particular nexus of folks around a common theme of rule by the elites.

Now throw into this corporate and cultural ideology of elitism the vasts amount of money at their disposal to control the media message, to form mystery 'interest groups' that can buy endless ads to shape a message, the creation of Fox News as a fully owned and operated tool for the dissemination of false and misleading information, yes, but mostly to stoke the flames of the racism and resentment that remain hidden deep within the heart of this political culture, then add the Supreme Court decisions that allow corporate money to flow into our political campaigns, that give corporations 'rights to personhood' under the Constitution - when you put all this together, you begin to see the larger picture here and what is really at stake in Wisconsin's political moment.

Then add this to the mix: the combination of all this corporate money wedded to a right-wing religiosity that, though calling itself Christian, bears no resemblance to the gospel of the Beatitudes, woe to you rich, Matthew 25, the story of the rich young man, or of Dives and Lazarus, much less sacrifice for the sake of others, and you have a scary grandiosity that believes what we just saw in Madison last night is the will of God, and, me, Scott Walker, the man doing this, God's wonderful instrument.

The Koch brothers and Karl Rove don't care about God or the gospel or religious belief, but they are perfectly happy to use folks who have these beliefs in the service of their cause. And that may be one of the sadder aspects of the deterioration of the nation's political discourse over the past 30 years.

Add all this together and you have a very scary era in U.S. politics. Thanks to The Progressive magazine, we now know the religious zeal that inspires our crash-and-burn governor, Scott Walker. When folks are motivated by religious zeal, feeding a sense of their own grandiose role as servant of God, look out - what happens will not be pretty. No room for compassion, compromise, or even thoughtfulness.  Lives are being tossed around, shaken up, damaged, all in the name of God, and the corporate powers smile at it all because it also means that more money will flow out of public schools to private, from the impoverished city to the affluent suburbs, from mass transit to roads and individual cars, from saving our precious natural resources to giving them away for profit, from government as service to privatization of government services also for profit.

When the Koch brothers and Karl Rove win an election, they don't believe they have won the opportunity to serve the people in the way they think will do this best. They believe they have conquered. The victory is not about service, it is about smug conquest over those they perceive as enemies, as if we are all the target of their need to get back at someone for their own deep wounds and resentments, some unhealed deep grievances of their own life stories.

A prayer from the streets

And so I strive for compassion even now because I also know we are charged not to hate our enemies, to pray for our persecutors. In this case, we need to do that in the streets, in the offices of our legislators and in the Capitol rotunda, in the recall campaigns, and in our faith communities and neighborhoods. Part of this 'prayer' is our voices raised against the injustices being perpetrated in our state and bearing witness to a different kind of society than the one these folks have in mind.

We have seen what that other society might look like in the throngs in the streets and the state Capitol in Madison these past three weeks. We've seen it in the free food, the pizzas ordered from around the world, the angry but respectful crowds, the solidarity among workers and students of all kinds, in the diversity represented there.

This is a long post. Needed to vent this on this inglorious morning in my state. Come join us in the streets of Madison on Saturday.

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*From a paper by Ayn Rand:

"Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."

I don't want to live in a world run by people who believe this.

Photos: Margaret Swedish