Frodnonag on OWS & Sorely Needed Change

What follows is another part of Frodnonag's comment, posted with his permission. For the first part, spotlighting "The American Dream" see yesterday's post. Here the writer looks at the current state of affairs in the USA, and the Occupy Wall Street movement.



Comment was dated Oct 19 2011 - 9:22pm at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/19-6

"I want to be as positive as possible, and I do wish the (Occupy Wall Street) movement success, but also know that Wall Street and the NYC authorities are counting on the weather to put a stop to the demonstration, and it probably will. The people now on the street will be able to find warm shelter when winter comes; most likely, every single one of them. When things get so bad economically that people are forced to live out in the cold, that is when people will stay out in the cold, and not before.

The big players of banks and of Wall Street, and the government authorities, are being indulgent with the protesters, for the most part, because that is the easist path for them to take, and costs them nothing. It is not a concession, nor charity, nor brotherly understanding, but just more self-interest.

Same with the chimera that we want to believe is the media finally starting seeing things the 99% way. Nope. Maybe a little. But it's shallow, not deep, and its sincerity is questionable.

The method being used on us as American citizens these days is insulting and degrading, but sadly, it is also pretty effective; it is not too different from the methods used to calm a child before bedtime. "Take your medicine, say your prayers, have your warm milk, and enjoy your bedtime story time...."

"Hush now, child, and listen.....close your eyes. Once upon a time, there was a very handsome and wealthy king. But he was also a very sad King......" And then comes "the nod": drifting off- (while wishing we could help that poor sad wealthy king, for some reason)- one more time, like every time, "We the People" slip off to that ephemeral and unclutchable "American Dream"-land one more time; and everyone feels sort of proud of themselves for no good reason, and basks in it, but the net result is that it's all just warm air: nothing worth doing really gets done for the 99%.

We are people who are sometimes trusting to a fault and other times paranoid of those who would benefit us all. We are a people, it seems to me, inclined to thank someone who stabs us with a 12" knife, and then claims salvage rights on our bodies and selves after pulling the blade out 6". If We the People were high school chicks, and the government was the football team guys, I have no doubt we would be called easy. (or much worse). Sad but true.

It's good to trust. Unforunately, being trusting has its drawbacks when untrustworthy people are around. And without a doubt, Americans have been trusting the wrong people for far too long.

So it seems to me that the strategy from the "powers that be" is one of humoring the protest, and convincing the the protesters that their positions are being taken somewhat seriously, all without any real, meaningful, actual concessions from the 1%.

We live in a bread and circuses society as surely as the ancient Romans did, and of course govenment calculates to a fine point the tolerance of the people, and generally judges it quite well, and controls it via the modern-day versions of tried-and-true bread and circus methods.

As long as Americans have television, gasoline, alcohol, access to guns and ammo, fast food, and professional and college sports, and texting, (not necessarily in that order ) there will be no revolution but a very slow one.

Maybe that is, in the long run, the best way, compared to a revolution of more brisance, such as the French or American or Russian revolutions, all of which were extremely violent.

Maybe slow evolution, with infinitesimal concessions and changes made so slowly they seem to be in geologic time, is best overall. Or maybe not. I don't know. The down side is that the famous "fierce urgency of now"- which someone spoke about some time or other - gets lost in such slow social changes.

It seems that the hard truth about this country is that "the fierce urgency of now" only applies to war-making, or assassination, or executing some poor convict, or facilitating emergency bailouts and automatic forgiveness of crimes, within a morally bankrupt "old boy" buddy system.

And in the U.S. anymore, more and more it seems that you are either in the In Crowd, or you are not. Migration from poverty to relative wealth becomes more difficult with each passing year as the classes become more rigidly stratified. This is something which we are accustomed to think of as very "anti-American", strangely enough, but it isn't a new phenomenon.It may seem "anti-American" - this stratification, that is. You could just as well say that it's as American as apple pie, and that would be just as true. However, my "feeling" about it is that it seems to be happening at an accelerating rate.

Evolution, not revolution, may be best, and probably is - I really can't say I know a thing about it, to be honest. But with snail-slow evolutionary change of economic or political systems, in the interim before effective changes that really help people are actually enacted, many, many people suffer or die - unnecessarily, it seems - because of long delays, caused only by politics and prejudice, in accomplishing any improvements towards more equitable distribution of resources among the people, or other beneficial social change.

So while the nation dithers and argues and fumes impotently and works against itself, more harm is done. A more ideal situation would be that things are changed "as needed", if not before, with the kind of fervor and dispatch the U.S. showed when on the march to war.

When things don't change, it is sometimes because they can't be changed. But the issues of the Wall Street protest movement are all issues that could be changed, and with alacrity, too, if the will to do so was present among the people who have the capability to make the changes - that is, people in high corporate, financial, and government perches.

The will to do so is almost entirely lacking - partly because there have been few, if any, consequences upon the 1% for their excesses, crimes, deceits, thefts, etc.; they have bought and bullied and worked hard to make themselves almost above the law, and those who might prosecute them are of the same level of social/financial class. And so, it is a "you scratch my back and I will scratch yours" situation, or an example of a kind of brotherhood, of intrafraternal love, and, My Dear 99%, this brotherhood is much stronger than any charitable feelings towards any of us out here in the land of the Great Unwashed. We who with our pennies here, and our taxes there, and our penalties here, and our interest payments there, have financed their very rise to wealth, are really not appreciated by them at all, except insofar as we continue to enrich them.

Because the wealth was built upon our backs - we the people who actually work and produce, I mean - it seems to me that without enough low-level backs to hold up the rich people's pyramid, it would start to crumble and collapse.

One key is to start to control our own consumer desires, because all corporations play us for suckers and know just how to make things that people will sell their first-born AND their beloved Grandma to possess.

We are a gadget-happy bunch of trade rats, and shiny things that blink are our undoing these days. As a people we have become a cyber-herd of remote-controlled minds, controlled by mass media input from outlets which are highly selective about their choices of information to give to us.

And of what is given to us, a large proportion is literally calculated to produce an effect, often an emotional effect, followed by action - usually spending, but not always - because when it comes down to it, Americans are not all that different from Pavlov's rats, and will salivate on cue, and so forth, and this has all been worked out quite extensively by the advertising industry as well as by government agencies, I think.

When I think of the Wall Street protest movement I can't help but think of the Bonus Army of World War 1 veterans, and how they were an even more peaceful and respectful bunch than we have in the New York gathering today.

But eventually, when they would not decamp, MacArthur and soldies were sent into the camps to clear them out by force if necessary, and that is when it got a bit rough. The result was refusal of the promised, legally obligatatory bonus the veterans were demanding (until some time later) and also expulsion by force.

Had there been more resistance there would have been more violence. The federal government is not in the habit of backing down to citizen protests - it takes a lot of pressure for a long time, and even then, citizen protests are not so effective if there is no real effect upon the people being protested against.

I know that things always need to change for the better, and that most if not all of us feel that changes are slower than they should be or need to be, and that it is mainly just stubbornness and greed and so forth that prevents effective change. I also know that when there is a national will to do something, Americans can get stuff done in a way my old friend Doreice calls "going at it like killin' snakes".
So the problem is maybe largely: 1. the lack of will among the rich combined with 2. the lack of real desperation, yet, among most of the 99%.

I mean, from my limited perspective, it seems that way. I realize it is much much bigger subject than any little essay I might write about it.

It may be we are still a long way from a critical mass of discontent. It would be nice to have good changes made because we all want to, rather than hang on like stubborn children until none of us has any choice left about changing because it becomes a life or death situation.

But knowing humans, I expect that is how it will go. We are not stupid, but fall for tricks very easily, and fall for the same flim-flams again and again, generation after generation.

I think the education system could do something about it, but it too is subject to the big national hypnosis and delusion within which the U.S.A. and so may of its people are lost.

Also, as a populace we have been kept from unifying by the divide and conquer effect from 9/11 and the wars, which have caused lots of internal strife that keeps us from effectively banding together as a people to confront the vastly outnumbered ones who we allow to oppress us by allowing them to manipulate our desires, and effectively hold us hostage because of our own individual wants and cravings and dependencies.

I know that good changes could be made more quickly, were there the national will to do so; and I believe that the problem to examine is right there.

That is, perhaps we need to seriously ask the question of what our national will is, why it is so fragmented and riven by internal conflict more than it really should be, why Americans seem to be either angry, half-asleep, in denial, or Pollyannas; what role the huge surge in psychiatric prescription drug use has had on the national will; and finally, the real long-term effect of 9/11, after the yee-haw go get 'em phase I mean - and the effect of the bogus official explanation of it, and of the evil wars it enabled, which have plagued us and the world since then."

Insightful Views of Frodnonag on The American Dream

I often find myself in awe of the writing, perspicacity and insight of some commenters on the few news sites I frequent. The articles are usually good - and they ought to be, written as they are by professionals or academics. However, some comments can occasionally outshine the articles. Maybe these too are written by (retired or resting) journalists or academics, it's hard to say, being signed only by screen-name. Here's one such comment which impressed me - it's more of an essay really, written by one "Frodnonag". The very long comment is a two-parter, and appeared beneath the article linked below. I asked the commenter if he/she would allow me to use it on my blog...... He/she responded with:

Sure, glad to, it's a compliment.

Let me note that I'm not a historian- just a reader and observer of life in the U.S. for the past 60 years- and that everything I write is my opinion and that's all it is. Whether or not it carries any weight with facts or any other way is up to the reader, because I do not mean to say I have any real answers.
Frodnonag

Part one interested me especially. I'm always keen to read views of "how we got here" by someone who has actually lived through a lot of the journey. This essay provides a personal view on the background of that mythical yet fascinating concept: "The American Dream". The second part of the comment/essay, relating to the Occupy Wall Street movement, and related issues, will follow, tomorrow:



COMMENT (Part 1)
Posted by Frodnonag
Oct 19 2011 - 10:43pm, at
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/19-6

Frodnonag commenting and expanding upon points arising from an article by Richard Gwyn: OWS ‘Angry Mob’ Suddenly Respectable

I see this American Dream in more than one way. On the coarsest level it is just a dream of an infinitely big pie divided up among into ever-enlarging slices for an ever-expanding number of never-satisfied individuals, a.k.a. consumers, or resource hogs. No one thinks that just because a pasture will support a cow it will automatically also support two or three or twenty cows, but here in the U.S. our "American Dream" tries to convince us of something very much like that. Clearly some of this originates from religious convictions during early settlement and the social meme of "manifest destiny" which I have always regarded as just a high-faluting and throughly dishonest variation on "I wants it... it's mine... I found it... nassty Hobbits want to take it from me. My Preciousss..." mentality of total entitlement and individualistic anti-social behavior over cooperative social behavior.

In fact, the frontier was first broached and settled by the outcasts, the weirdos, the rejects, the predators, the soldiers of fortune, and the slave masters, and less so by the saints and philosphers and educators- at first- since the demands of the New World made it mandatory that the early settlers have the ability to survive first of all, and if that worked out, as soon as possible there would be churches and then schools.

However, most early American pioneers must have had precious little time for the things most of us spend our days doing nowadays. Dawn to dark-thirty of hard work was the rule. And part of the American Dream, before it was even named, was the plan to work hard enough so that one day in the future one could sit back and watch other people work and rake in the wealth for you - that too is the American Dream: wealth through managing and/or exploiting unfairly the labor of others. It is a necessary system, I think, to have that; specialization, and division of labor and skills, that is - but has always been so prone to abuse by management/owners over workers.

Many years ago as a kid I had a recurring dream of some unknown but very real spot out in the West or western Midwest - for some reason I thought it was perhaps in Nebraska, for it was prairie/high plains/ big country without mountains, but not flat either, and someplace I had never been or seen, yet in these several dreams over the course of two or three yeares, I visited the place several times, and I always wondered if it existed.

Now I think that dream had something to do with the American Dream, which was a presence, almost palpable, to kids growing up in 1950's America, combined with a dream about the vanished, or vanishing, western frontier, the presence of which, especially throughout the first 300-400 years or so of North American settlement, up until the late 19th century, had a long and extremely profound psychological effect and is one of the main building blocks of anything we might call "American" about ourselves today.

The frontier, before the railroads in particular, and before telegraph and other forms of communication, was a place for seemingly infinite opportunities for fresh starts in life; or it was a refuge from the law or from enemies or from creditors, and until recent times remained in that role of refuge for many people, for all kinds of reasons.

As they used to say, a man could wear out four or five farms and still be young enough to go tear up a new piece of land and wear it out too. The sense of infinite and perennial resources they had then is understandable to anyone with an idea of the forest, fish, animal, and bird life on his continent - it was truly a cornucopia, and a land of plenty, in ways most of us today don't know. (Read Farley Mowat's "Sea of Slaughter" for a fascinating discussion of what happened to maritime resources early on due to European involvement in the New England and Maritimes and Banks regions - it's quite a shocking story, and a cautionary tale - or at least it should be.)

So the old belief in an ever available frontier with infinite resources of all kinds and always the chance for a second start, a new home, a move down the road - and the power of a man to make these decisions "for himself" - entirely, or at least mostly, on his own initiative.

It was capital - F Freedom to a much greater extent than was allowed in the Old Country.

That's the American Dream too, isn't it? Homesteading, or founding your own little Boonesborough even if it is just a shack on the edge of town with room for a couple of tomato plants - that's where it's at.

And for most Americans I think for a long time, hard work was the ticket to much success, although for many others, from the first days, it was not freedom but bondage, as the sturdy yeoman farmer, out of a George Caleb Bingham painting in my mind's eye, was relplaced by the mill hand and the sooty child picking slate from moving belts of coal and gazing at us in the future with holocaust eyes, as if to say, someone do something about this, for the love of God, please.

And yet, in many ways, we denied that plea and all the ones like it, and yet, the country did thrive and prosper, and grow like crazy, under robber baron management and slavery, for a long time, and because slavery and industrialization were both, on the whole, apparently creating societal improvements much more than societal harm, and were lucrative systems of exploiting various natural resources from furs to water power to timber to meat to minerals and so much more. Because of these factors, the harm being done to workers, to public health, and to the environment, were put under the rug, so to speak, as they still mostly are today, because they are a lot of trouble to deal with in a modern and enlightened scientific fashion. Therefore the state of denial is psychologically essential because a man has trouble when he knows that the thing he likes so much because it is good is also something which is slowly killing him, or his children, or his neighbors.

Better not to think about such things - and in the past, one could always move on down the valley or across the mountain, for the longest time.

The loss of that frontier changed the thing we like to call our American "character". As it was lost, we clung more and more to the mythical creations of the frontier, from the characters of Fenimore Cooper down to the ones of the TV westerns.

Now most westerns are supplanted by endless cop shows, most of them urban.
TV shows us how even in the past fifty to a hundred years we have become like more and more rats in a single cage. The Balkanization of the U.S.A.

In the city closest to me, due not to lack of space but the economic system, the poor people are crowded up and are shooting each other to death at a steady rate of several shootings per week, usually at least one daily, so as a war of attrition - of the people upon themselves - it may be worse than some of the stuff in the middle east, but "they gotsome crazy litle women there" so people keep on living there... that's the place I mean.

And I'm like "Dang, this is America? What th..?!?'" Like something Flaky Foont might come up with that he wants to go ask Mr. Natural about.

Goodnight. Obviously I am losing my mind once I mention Foont, that weirdo.... if I don't stop now I'll be telling a Fat Freddy's Cat story and that is to much to ask of such fine comments readers as yourselves.

Thank you, Frodnonag!

NOTE: For others, like me, who didn't recognise Flaky Foont or Mr. Natural or That Cat: the first two were cartoon characters of Robert Crumb; Fat Freddy's Cat was a creation of Gilbert Shelton.