As we head into a presidential election year,  Dante Alighieri’s famous inscription on the Gate of Hell seems appropriate.   Once again, Frank Luntz –Republican pollster, strategist, consultant, and cunning linguist – is setting forth the rhetorical recommendations that will be used in shaping the talking points used by Republican candidates all across the nation, from those seeking the Presidency, to those seeking seats in the House or the Senate, to those seeking seats in state legislatures and even city councils.  Dante’s epic poem comes to mind because operators like Luntz have always been with us, even in the 14th century, where they were just as reviled as they are now.

It was Luntz who famously dubbed the inheritance tax the “Death Tax.” This phrase, which makes the government appear so petty that it would take the money of dead people was adopted by virtually all Republicans and used to secure the votes of millions of Americans who will never have to pay such a tax.  It did, however, make it more difficult for the government to provide services that benefit all of those very same Americans.

All of the current Republican presidential candidates are promising to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka “Obamacare.” It does not matter that Presidents, by themselves, have no authority to repeal anything, this idea is very popular among the Republican base because they have been taught to believe that the healthcare act was a “government takeover.”  It was nothing of the sort, but Luntz recommended that phrase to be used by Republican politicians, which they all dutifully did. 

In what has to be one of the most brazen assertions of rhetorical criticism, Luntz has even redefined the term “Orwellian“:

To be “Orwellian” is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening… and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever.

Luntz is at it again.  He is wisely advising Republican politicians not to criticize the Occupy Wall Street protesters but to simply appease them by saying “I get it, I understand your frustration.”  Entrepreneurs are now to be referred to as “Job Creators,” even though they’ve been uncreating jobs for the last ten years.  “Capitalism,” which is understandably being questioned, should now be called “economic freedom,” even though its current formulation for the 99 percent is “indentured servitude.”  According to Luntz, “Government Spending,” should now be referred to as “Government Waste,” paved roads, education for our children, safe neighborhoods, and healthcare for the poor and elderly be damned. 

Dante knew exactly where in Hell Luntz belongs.  Of his nine circles of ever-increasing depravity, Dante places those who knowingly commit fraud in the next to last circle.  Among them are corrupt politicians and those who advise them.  According to Dante, the only thing worse than fraud is treachery, which is assigned to the ninth circle.  Among the several characters in the ninth circle are Cain (not Herman Cain – he’s appears to be guilty of lust, which places him in the only slightly bad second circle) and Judas Iscariot. Cain, who is famous for killing his brother Abel, committing humanity’s first murder, and lying about it.

We all know what Judas did.

So, the best that can be said about Frank Luntz is that although he’s bad, he’s not quite as bad as Cain or Judas.  I wonder how he might spin that.

See larger image Dante's Inferno (The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell) (Paperback) By (author) Dante Alighieri List Price: $12.95 USD New From: $12.95 In Stock Used from: $14.09 In Stock

See larger image A Collection of Essays (Paperback) By (author) George Orwell List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $4.98 In Stock Used from: $2.24 In Stock

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

My corporations employ scores of people. They depend on me to do what I do so they can make a nice salary. If Barack Obama begins taxing me more than 50 percent, which is very possible, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to do this. I like my job, but there comes a point when taxation becomes oppressive. Is the country really entitled to half a person’s income?

This threat came after an earlier claim that he has “more power than anybody but the President.” Rush, are you listening?

Oh, what will we do without this narcissist buffoon polluting the airwaves as well as the minds of unemployed “low information” voters?  As for his scores of employees, they will surely miss working for such a kind and benevolent boss:

The idea that raising tax rates on the rich and privileged will cause some kind of Randian strike is laughable.  No matter what the top marginal rate is, I’m sure they will manage to get by, as they always have.  Income and wealth inequality, to one degree or another, has always existed in every society, no matter what economic system is in place.  Total utopian equality is a just as imaginary as Ayn Rand’s lunatic visions.  Money has an attraction to itself that causes it to accumulate in pools and become concentrated.  It’s a natural force that has been described by economists for centuries.  The purpose of civilization is to temper a natural force, that can never be overcome.

In an earlier post I tried describe the social contract that we have with one another and the responsibilities of the more fortunate among us.  Harvard Law Professor candidate for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate Elizabeth Warren, who is far more articulate than I am sums, it up perfectly:

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

As powerful and clear these words are as text on a screen, the passion and conviction with which she said them is worth seeing and hearing:

My friends at Critical Pages offer a more analytical discussion, as always accompanied by a carefully selected piece of fine art, in their article “Class Warfare, Anybody?”

Recommended:

See larger image Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality That Limits Our Lives (Hardcover) By (author) Sam Pizzigati List Price: $34.95 USD New From: $56.75 In Stock Used from: $9.93 In Stock

See larger image The Affluent Society (Paperback) By (author) John Kenneth Galbraith List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $7.83 In Stock Used from: $4.42 In Stock

See larger image The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Paperback) By (author) John Maynard Keynes List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $5.83 In Stock Used from: $5.85 In Stock

© 2011 – 2012, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

I’ll be back in the more comforting world of literature in a few days with a post about F. Scott Fitzgerald, who also had a few things to say about the American Dream.

See larger image George Carlin - Life Is Worth Losing (DVD) Director: Rocco Urbisci Starring: George Carlin Rating: NR (Not Rated) List Price: $19.98 USD New From: $13.57 In Stock Used from: $8.26 In Stock Release date February 27, 2007.

See larger image Last Words (Paperback) By (author) George Carlin List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $3.13 In Stock Used from: $2.01 In Stock

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

Once again, John Gardner’s fictive dream, as articulated by novelist Ian McEwan.  No one does psychological realism better than McEwan.  There is no other art form that can envelop us so completely and embed emotions within us so deeply.  We don’t read great books, we experience them.

See larger image Atonement: A Novel (Paperback) By (author) Ian McEwan List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $5.00 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date February 25, 2003.

See larger image On Chesil Beach (Paperback) By (author) Ian McEwan List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $3.17 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date June 10, 2008.

See larger image Saturday (Paperback) By (author) Ian McEwan List Price: $15.95 USD New From: $5.37 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date April 11, 2006.

See larger image The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers (Paperback) By (author) John Gardner List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $5.99 In Stock Used from: $2.53 In Stock Release date June 4, 1991.

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

It’s an admittedly extreme reaction, but it’s been a lifetime in the making.  This morning, a friend sent me a YouTube link to Mario Cuomo’s keynote address from the 1984 Democratic National Convention.  The speech is both remarkable and disappointing because it not only speaks for its own time, it speaks for today, perhaps even more loudly.  Governor Cuomo’s addressed all of his remarks to the then current president, Republican Ronald Reagan.  Ironically, this speech resonates even more deeply with our current Democratic President.

The text:

Thank you very much.

On behalf of the great Empire State and the whole family of New York, let me thank you for the great privilege of being able to address this convention. Please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry and the temptation to deal in nice but vague rhetoric. Let me instead use this valuable opportunity to deal immediately with the questions that should determine this election and that we all know are vital to the American people.

Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families, and their futures. The President said that he didn’t understand that fear. He said, “Why, this country is a shining city on a hill.” And the President is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.

But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city’s splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there’s another city; there’s another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can’t pay their mortgages, and most young people can’t afford one; where students can’t afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.

In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can’t find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn’t show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don’t see, in the places that you don’t visit in your shining city.

In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation — Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a “Tale of Two Cities” than it is just a “Shining City on a Hill.”

Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places; maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds; maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe — Maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn’t afford to use.

Maybe — Maybe, Mr. President. But I’m afraid not. Because the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that this is how we were warned it would be. President Reagan told us from the very beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. “Government can’t do everything,” we were told, so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.

You know, the Republicans called it “trickle-down” when Hoover tried it. Now they call it “supply side.” But it’s the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded, for the people who are locked out, all they can do is stare from a distance at that city’s glimmering towers.

It’s an old story. It’s as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans — The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. “The strong” — “The strong,” they tell us, “will inherit the land.”

We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees — wagon train after wagon train — to new frontiers of education, housing, peace; the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family; lifting them up into the wagon on the way; blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native Americans — all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America. For nearly 50 years we carried them all to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence. And remember this, some of us in this room today are here only because this nation had that kind of confidence. And it would be wrong to forget that.

So, here we are at this convention to remind ourselves where we come from and to claim the future for ourselves and for our children. Today our great Democratic Party, which has saved this nation from depression, from fascism, from racism, from corruption, is called upon to do it again — this time to save the nation from confusion and division, from the threat of eventual fiscal disaster, and most of all from the fear of a nuclear holocaust.

That’s not going to be easy. Mo Udall is exactly right — it won’t be easy. And in order to succeed, we must answer our opponent’s polished and appealing rhetoric with a more telling reasonableness and rationality.

We must win this case on the merits. We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we’ll do it not so much with speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound; not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that will bring people to their senses. We must make — We must make the American people hear our “Tale of Two Cities.” We must convince them that we don’t have to settle for two cities, that we can have one city, indivisible, shining for all of its people.

Now, we will have no chance to do that if what comes out of this convention is a babel of arguing voices. If that’s what’s heard throughout the campaign, dissident sounds from all sides, we will have no chance to tell our message. To succeed we will have to surrender some small parts of our individual interests, to build a platform that we can all stand on, at once, and comfortably — proudly singing out. We need — We need a platform we can all agree to so that we can sing out the truth for the nation to hear, in chorus, its logic so clear and commanding that no slick Madison Avenue commercial, no amount of geniality, no martial music will be able to muffle the sound of the truth.

And we Democrats must unite. We Democrats must unite so that the entire nation can unite, because surely the Republicans won’t bring this country together. Their policies divide the nation into the lucky and the left-out, into the royalty and the rabble. The Republicans are willing to treat that division as victory. They would cut this nation in half, into those temporarily better off and those worse off than before, and they would call that division recovery.

Now, we should not — we should not be embarrassed or dismayed or chagrined if the process of unifying is difficult, even wrenching at times. Remember that, unlike any other Party, we embrace men and women of every color, every creed, every orientation, every economic class. In our family are gathered everyone from the abject poor of Essex County in New York, to the enlightened affluent of the gold coasts at both ends of the nation. And in between is the heart of our constituency — the middle class, the people not rich enough to be worry-free, but not poor enough to be on welfare; the middle class — those people who work for a living because they have to, not because some psychiatrist told them it was a convenient way to fill the interval between birth and eternity. White collar and blue collar. Young professionals. Men and women in small business desperate for the capital and contracts that they need to prove their worth.

We speak for the minorities who have not yet entered the mainstream. We speak for ethnics who want to add their culture to the magnificent mosaic that is America. We speak — We speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule “thou shalt not sin against equality,” a rule so simple –

I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but I will. It’s a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters: E.R.A.

We speak — We speak for young people demanding an education and a future. We speak for senior citizens. We speak for senior citizens who are terrorized by the idea that their only security, their Social Security, is being threatened. We speak for millions of reasoning people fighting to preserve our environment from greed and from stupidity. And we speak for reasonable people who are fighting to preserve our very existence from a macho intransigence that refuses to make intelligent attempts to discuss the possibility of nuclear holocaust with our enemy. They refuse. They refuse, because they believe we can pile missiles so high that they will pierce the clouds and the sight of them will frighten our enemies into submission.

Now we’re proud of this diversity as Democrats. We’re grateful for it. We don’t have to manufacture it the way the Republicans will next month in Dallas, by propping up mannequin delegates on the convention floor. But we, while we’re proud of this diversity, we pay a price for it. The different people that we represent have different points of view. And sometimes they compete and even debate, and even argue. That’s what our primaries were all about. But now the primaries are over and it is time, when we pick our candidates and our platform here, to lock arms and move into this campaign together.

If you need any more inspiration to put some small part of your own difference aside to create this consensus, then all you need to do is to reflect on what the Republican policy of divide and cajole has done to this land since 1980. Now the President has asked the American people to judge him on whether or not he’s fulfilled the promises he made four years ago. I believe, as Democrats, we ought to accept that challenge. And just for a moment let us consider what he has said and what he’s done.

Inflation — Inflation is down since 1980, but not because of the supply-side miracle promised to us by the President. Inflation was reduced the old-fashioned way: with a recession, the worst since 1932. Now how did we — We could have brought inflation down that way. How did he do it? 55,000 bankruptcies; two years of massive unemployment; 200,000 farmers and ranchers forced off the land; more homeless — more homeless than at any time since the Great Depression in 1932; more hungry, in this world of enormous affluence, the United States of America, more hungry; more poor, most of them women. And — And he paid one other thing, a nearly 200 billion dollar deficit threatening our future.

Now, we must make the American people understand this deficit because they don’t. The President’s deficit is a direct and dramatic repudiation of his promise in 1980 to balance the budget by 1983. How large is it? The deficit is the largest in the history of the universe. It — President Carter’s last budget had a deficit less than one-third of this deficit. It is a deficit that, according to the President’s own fiscal adviser, may grow to as much 300 billion dollars a year for “as far as the eye can see.” And, ladies and gentlemen, it is a debt so large — that is almost one-half of the money we collect from the personal income tax each year goes just to pay the interest. It is a mortgage on our children’s future that can be paid only in pain and that could bring this nation to its knees.

Now don’t take my word for it — I’m a Democrat. Ask the Republican investment bankers on Wall Street what they think the chances of this recovery being permanent are. You see, if they’re not too embarrassed to tell you the truth, they’ll say that they’re appalled and frightened by the President’s deficit. Ask them what they think of our economy, now that it’s been driven by the distorted value of the dollar back to its colonial condition. Now we’re exporting agricultural products and importing manufactured ones. Ask those Republican investment bankers what they expect the rate of interest to be a year from now. And ask them — if they dare tell you the truth — you’ll learn from them, what they predict for the inflation rate a year from now, because of the deficit.

Now, how important is this question of the deficit. Think about it practically: What chance would the Republican candidate have had in 1980 if he had told the American people that he intended to pay for his so-called economic recovery with bankruptcies, unemployment, more homeless, more hungry, and the largest government debt known to humankind? If he had told the voters in 1980 that truth, would American voters have signed the loan certificate for him on Election Day? Of course not! That was an election won under false pretenses. It was won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. And that’s the kind of recovery we have now as well.

But what about foreign policy? They said that they would make us and the whole world safer. They say they have. By creating the largest defense budget in history, one that even they now admit is excessive — by escalating to a frenzy the nuclear arms race; by incendiary rhetoric; by refusing to discuss peace with our enemies; by the loss of 279 young Americans in Lebanon in pursuit of a plan and a policy that no one can find or describe.

We give money to Latin American governments that murder nuns, and then we lie about it. We have been less than zealous in support of our only real friend — it seems to me, in the Middle East — the one democracy there, our flesh and blood ally, the state of Israel. Our — Our policy — Our foreign policy drifts with no real direction, other than an hysterical commitment to an arms race that leads nowhere — if we’re lucky. And if we’re not, it could lead us into bankruptcy or war.

Of course we must have a strong defense! Of course Democrats are for a strong defense. Of course Democrats believe that there are times that we must stand and fight. And we have. Thousands of us have paid for freedom with our lives. But always — when this country has been at its best — our purposes were clear. Now they’re not. Now our allies are as confused as our enemies. Now we have no real commitment to our friends or to our ideals — not to human rights, not to the refuseniks, not to Sakharov, not to Bishop Tutu and the others struggling for freedom in South Africa.

We — We have in the last few years spent more than we can afford. We have pounded our chests and made bold speeches. But we lost 279 young Americans in Lebanon and we live behind sand bags in Washington. How can anyone say that we are safer, stronger, or better?

That — That is the Republican record. That its disastrous quality is not more fully understood by the American people I can only attribute to the President’s amiability and the failure by some to separate the salesman from the product.

And, now — now — now it’s up to us. Now it’s up to you and to me to make the case to America. And to remind Americans that if they are not happy with all that the President has done so far, they should consider how much worse it will be if he is left to his radical proclivities for another four years unrestrained. Unrestrained.

Now, if — if July — if July brings back Ann Gorsuch Burford — what can we expect of December? Where would — Where would another four years take us? Where would four years more take us? How much larger will the deficit be? How much deeper the cuts in programs for the struggling middle class and the poor to limit that deficit? How high will the interest rates be? How much more acid rain killing our forests and fouling our lakes?

And, ladies and gentlemen, please think of this — the nation must think of this: What kind of Supreme Court will we have?

Please. [beckons audience to settle down]

We — We must ask ourselves what kind of court and country will be fashioned by the man who believes in having government mandate people’s religion and morality; the man who believes that trees pollute the environment; the man that believes that — that the laws against discrimination against people go too far; a man who threatens Social Security and Medicaid and help for the disabled. How high will we pile the missiles? How much deeper will the gulf be between us and our enemies? And, ladies and gentlemen, will four years more make meaner the spirit of the American people? This election will measure the record of the past four years. But more than that, it will answer the question of what kind of people we want to be.

We Democrats still have a dream. We still believe in this nation’s future. And this is our answer to the question. This is our credo:

We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.

We believe in a government that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn’t distort or promise to do things that we know we can’t do.

We believe in a government strong enough to use words like “love” and “compassion” and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.

We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

We — Our — Our government — Our government should be able to rise to the level where it can fill the gaps that are left by chance or by a wisdom we don’t fully understand. We would rather have laws written by the patron of this great city, the man called the “world’s most sincere Democrat,” St. Francis of Assisi, than laws written by Darwin.

We believe — We believe as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in the world’s history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute. And we proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.

We believe in firm — We believe in firm but fair law and order.

We believe proudly in the union movement.

We believe in a — We believe — We believe in privacy for people, openness by government.

We believe in civil rights, and we believe in human rights.

We believe in a single — We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another’s pain, sharing one another’s blessings — reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation.

We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child — that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.

Now for 50 years — for 50 years we Democrats created a better future for our children, using traditional Democratic principles as a fixed beacon, giving us direction and purpose, but constantly innovating, adapting to new realities: Roosevelt’s alphabet programs; Truman’s NATO and the GI Bill of Rights; Kennedy’s intelligent tax incentives and the Alliance for Progress;Johnson’s civil rights; Carter’s human rights and the nearly miraculous Camp David Peace Accord.

Democrats did it — Democrats did it and Democrats can do it again. We can build a future that deals with our deficit. Remember this, that 50 years of progress under our principles never cost us what the last four years of stagnation have. And we can deal with the deficit intelligently, by shared sacrifice, with all parts of the nation’s family contributing, building partnerships with the private sector, providing a sound defense without depriving ourselves of what we need to feed our children and care for our people. We can have a future that provides for all the young of the present, by marrying common sense and compassion.

We know we can, because we did it for nearly 50 years before 1980. And we can do it again, if we do not forget — if we do not forget that this entire nation has profited by these progressive principles; that they helped lift up generations to the middle class and higher; that they gave us a chance to work, to go to college, to raise a family, to own a house, to be secure in our old age and, before that, to reach heights that our own parents would not have dared dream of.

That struggle to live with dignity is the real story of the shining city. And it’s a story, ladies and gentlemen, that I didn’t read in a book, or learn in a classroom. I saw it and lived it, like many of you. I watched a small man with thick calluses on both his hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example. I learned about our kind of democracy from my father. And I learned about our obligation to each other from him and from my mother. They asked only for a chance to work and to make the world better for their children, and they — they asked to be protected in those moments when they would not be able to protect themselves. This nation and this nation’s government did that for them.

And that they were able to build a family and live in dignity and see one of their children go from behind their little grocery store in South Jamaica on the other side of the tracks where he was born, to occupy the highest seat, in the greatest State, in the greatest nation, in the only world we would know, is an ineffably beautiful tribute to the democratic process.

And — And ladies and gentlemen, on January 20, 1985, it will happen again — only on a much, much grander scale. We will have a new President of the United States, a Democrat born not to the blood of kings but to the blood of pioneers and immigrants. And we will have America’s first woman Vice President, the child of immigrants, and she — she — she will open with one magnificent stroke, a whole new frontier for the United States.

Now, it will happen. It will happen if we make it happen; if you and I make it happen. And I ask you now, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, for the good of all of us, for the love of this great nation, for the family of America, for the love of God: Please, make this nation remember how futures are built.

Thank you and God bless you.

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

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Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Three stories about two neighbors who meet as young children and grow up together on Long Island during the late 60′s and early 70′s. The comforting and loving world they live in changes around them as their families fracture, society descends into chaos, and a war rages on. In the aftermath, they left on a wrecked, smoking landscape, searching for a new way to live when all of the sign have been burned down.

Reviews:

“These three separate stories about neighbors Johnny and Miriam growing up in the 1960s and 70s make for a moving and elegant novella. I very much enjoyed the directness and strength of the prose which has its own bleak beauty, and the push and pull of relationships and family was very well portrayed indeed. The ending is perfect too. Highly recommended.” *****

-Anne Brooke(Amazon)

“This collection has two lovely tales of growing up in Port Jefferson, New York, plus a remarkable story of complicated love — sexual and familial — amid scenes of poverty and emotional desolation. Bubbers has a fine, almost photographic sense of place and time, and a great talent at capturing the texture of life. The final story which gives its name to this collection, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” ranks with some of the best short fiction written today.” *****

Eugene Mirabelli(Amazon)

Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Smashwords Edition.

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Natural Selection

A corporate manager is on the verge losing it all. Office politics, a growing drinking problem, estrangement from his family, and a looming layoff are pushing him to the edge of a personal abyss.

I wrote about how this story came to be in “Into The Abyss.”

Natural Selection, Smashwords Edition.

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A Couple

Rob and Debbie are spending their last spring break in Florida. Graduation is looming and they face an uncertain future. Family expectations, peer pressure, and their own hearts are driving them apart. I wrote about this genre of story in my post Doomed Couples.

A Couple, Smashwords Edition.

Bonnifer

A short story about a married office worker struggling with temptation and desire while flirting with an older woman on a sultry summer evening in Greenwich Village.

Bonnifer, Smashwords Edition.

After the Fire: A Personal Essay

My memoir about a writing workshop and the teacher whose lessons on the art of fiction and the art of living continue to teach and inspire me, thirty years later. There’s some back-story about how this essay came to be written in my post eBook Week, Meta-Memoir.

After the Fire: A Personal Essay, Smashwords Edition.

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

Only 54,000 jobs were added in May — well below Wall Street’s expectations and the smallest number of jobs added in the past eight months — and the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest snapshot. For the labor market to simply keep up with population growth, experts say a bare minimum of 125,000 jobs must be added each month. In the two years since the Great Recession officially ended, economists say, there has been little labor market recovery.

Republicans, however, are doubling down on their strategy to make things even worse by insisting on massive spending cuts.  Nothing will stand in their way, not the beleaguered mid-west desperately in need of assistance after floods and tornadoes, not the full faith and credit of the United States.  Disaster relief and the debt ceiling are both being held hostage to their fiscal irresponsibility.  Their solution to either cut taxes or outlaw abortion. (I’ll save the second one for another time). Once again, we hear the same complete nonsense from Republicans that we’ve been hearing for generations.  Speaker of the House, and master of the non-sequitur, John Boehner said, “One look at the jobs report should be enough to show the White House, it’s time to get serious about cutting spending.”

Huh?

Tan Man also said, “We can’t raise taxes on the very people who create jobs,” repeating a Republican talking point that I’ve been hearing since the reign of Reagan, but it’s older than that.  Republicans have been repeating this nonsense since The Great Depression and before.  It’s their conventional wisdom, but it has no basis in reality and shows that Republicans, the supposed friends of business, know absolutely nothing about running a business and should be ignored.  Or even told, “Sit down and shut up.”

The engine of our economy, the engine of any economy, is consumption.  Nothing gets designed, nothing gets built, nothing gets sold unless there are consumers with money to spend.  That’s a fundamental law of nature.  It does not matter what economic system you have – socialism, communism, capitalism – all economic activity is consumer driven.  Jobs are not created because the owner of a business gets a tax cut and therefore has extra money to spend.  Any business owner or corporate manager who does that is completely incompetent.

In all my years as a manager, I have never had a boss come to me and say, “Hey Fred, I just got a tax cut.  Why don’t you help me spend it and hire a bunch of people we don’t need?”  There is one thing alone that drives hiring–increased demand, or anticipated increased demand, for whatever it is your company sells.  Period.

Given that the economy is consumption driven, the only thing that will cause companies to start hiring again is people buying stuff.  In order for people to buy stuff, they have to have jobs.  Cutting spending, throwing thousands of federal, state, and municipal workers out of work will only make the problem worse.  Spending needs to actually be increased, paid for by tax increases to the wealthiest, who have been doing just fine, thank you.

So Mr. Speaker, your cocktail-addled brain has it exactly backward.  We don’t have a spending problem. We do, however, have a revenue problem.

For another take on this subject, see “Whatever Happened to Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!” at Critical Pages.

More from the inventor of “Conventional Wisdom:

See larger image The Affluent Society (Paperback) By (author) John Kenneth Galbraith List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $7.83 In Stock Used from: $4.42 In Stock

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

On an early summer afternoon in the tiny village of  North Dormer, Charity Royall sees from the distance a handsome young man, his manner and his clothing indicating that he is a wealthy city person.  Later, he stops in at the library that Charity unenthusiastically manages, in search of books about the local architecture and introduces himself as Lucius Harney.  Although his reason for visiting the library is entirely proper, and he has no motive for seducing or even flirty with the librarian, he is momentarily and involuntarily flustered by her beauty.  There is no flirtation at all in this meeting, but Charity notices Harney’s brief reaction and in the hours and days after that she repeatedly reflects on that moment even as her own obsession with Harney grows.

As the story unfolds we gradually learn more about Charity’s background.  She is the ward of Lawyer Royall, a prominent member of the community of North Dormer.  This is a somewhat dubious distinction considering how humble the village is; the only church in town lacks a fulltime minister and has services only every other Sunday. Its backwardness is revealed somewhat comically in Charity’s thoughts.

Charity was born into abject poverty in a place referred to as “The Mountain.”  Her destitute mother gave her up to Royall after her father had been convicted of manslaughter.  All that Charity can remember of her earlier life are fleeting images and she knows neither of her parents names.

As a work of naturalism, the behavior of all the characters in this story is driven by innate desires of which they are not entirely aware that conflict with the constraints and expectations of society.  Free will, if it exists at all, is exercised by negotiating in the path between conforming to the requirements of civilization (the nearby city of Nettleton) and giving in to primitive passion (“The Mountain”).  North Dormer, like Charity, exists somewhere between these two.  We see these internal conflicts play out not only in Charity but also in the two other main characters: Royall and Harney.

Wharton is one of the great literary stylists of naturalism (unlike, say, Theodore Dreiser), and of American Literature in general.  In Summer, her rendering of the landscape and season evokes the moods and desires of the characters.  The effect is poetic and, at times, intoxicating:

There had never been such a June in Eagle County.  Usually it was a month of moods, with abrupt alternations of belated frost and mid-summer heat; this year, day followed day in a sequence of temperate beauty.  Every morning a breeze blew steadily from the hills.  Toward noon it built up great canopies of white cloud the threw a cool shadow over fields and woods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again, and the western light rained its unobstructed brightness on the valley.

On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridge above a sunlit hollow, her face pressed to the earth and the warm currents of the grass running through her.  Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch laid its frail white flowers and blue-green leaves against the sky.  Just beyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurled between the beaded shoots of grass, and a small yellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck of sunshine.  This was all she saw, but she felt, above her and about her, the strong growth of the beeches clothing the ridge, the rounding of pale green cones on countless spruce-branches, the push of myriads of sweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slope below the wood, and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet and yellow flags in the pasture beyond.  All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance.  Every leaf and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalations to the pervading sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breath of some huge sun-warmed animal.  (Chapter V)

Wharton was born into incredible wealth and most of her work focused on the rites and rituals of New York Society.  She moved comfortably and at ease in those circles, yet her work reveals a discerning and critical eye for passions and desires that beneath polite and tasteful manners.  The two works that are set in humble rural settings, Summer and Ethan Frome, take place in western Massachusetts.  She lived there, in Lennox, for some years in a magnificent house that she had built, but by the time she wrote Summer, she had been living in France for some years .  The landscape and its less affluent people had made an impression on her.  There are elements of harshness in her portrayals of them, but never is there any condescension in tone and it is clear that she had great affection for the land and its inhabitants.

For more articles in this series, see “The Art of the Novella.”

Books Referenced:

See larger image Summer (Paperback) By (author) Edith Wharton List Price: $5.99 USD New From: $4.19 In Stock Used from: $48.80 In Stock

See larger image Ethan Frome (Penguin Classics) (Paperback) By (author) Edith Wharton List Price: $8.00 USD New From: $3.55 In Stock Used from: $2.44 In Stock Release date October 25, 2005.

See larger image The Age of Innocence (Paperback) By (author) Edith Wharton List Price: $8.98 USD New From: $7.00 In Stock Used from: $1.88 In Stock

See larger image The House of Mirth (Signet Classics) (Mass Market Paperback) By (author) Edith Wharton List Price: $4.95 USD New From: $2.00 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date May 3, 2005.

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

These two disasters do have several things in common.  First, both occur in industries that have terrible reputations for corruption, dangerous cost-cutting, cover-ups, lax regulatory enforcement.  In the case of the BP oil spill, the criminal negligence of BP and its sub-contractors along with both the corruption and incompetence of the government agencies charged with protecting the public and the environment directly led to deaths of the oil-rig workers and the destruction of the environment.  It remains to be seen whether there was any malfeasance on the part of TEPCO and the Japanese government that led to the current crisis.  As is now being reported, however, both the Japanese government and TEPCO have a history of scandals and cover-ups.  When our own Nuclear Regulatory Commission accuses its Japanese counterpart of having a too-cozy relationship with an industry they license and regulate, you know it’s bad.

The other thing they have in common is that no matter how each crisis was initiated, natural causes or human malfeasance, they each resulted in impromptu and frantic research project to avert, or at least minimize the scope of the disaster.  We are a week into this current crisis and we still have no idea what the end looks like and every day the possible outcomes put forth by experts become bleaker and bleaker.  Brave, doomed workers at the site continue to improvise, but despite their efforts the situation continues to go from bad to worse.  The entire worldwide nuclear industry is navigating in uncharted territory.  Hindsight may tell us that the possibility of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami was something that should have been considered, but beyond that, nobody seems to have asked the question, “What do we do if the primary and backup cooling systems fail?” or, “What will happen if the primary and backup cooling systems fail?”  We are now in a situation where an entirely new way to cool down a reactor core must be invented.  Immediately.

Imagine that famous scene in the Apollo 13 where a team of engineers improvise a jerry-rigged solution to replace the carbon dioxide scrubbers on the broken spaceship, only instead of three volunteer lives at stake, it’s tens of thousands who didn’t volunteer for anything.

During the BP oil spill, engineers needed to figure out how to plug up a gushing oil well a mile beneath the surface of the ocean.  It had never been done before.  It wasn’t as if there was a shelf one could go to and grab a deep sea oil gusher cap, it had to be designed and manufactured to order while the crisis, along with the oil plume, was in full bloom.   The first cap didn’t work, so another one was designed and built.  At any point during the crisis, no one was sure anything they did was going to work.

That sounds a lot like what’s now going on in Japan.

In both of these two disasters, no matter what the initial cause, there was a failure (or an unwillingness) at the very beginning to imagine a worse-case scenario and what its solution might be.  And so, what we like to believe is a “routine” operation – drilling for oil or running a power plant – becomes a high-risk engineering research project.

In the case of Japan, there are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives at risk, and land that could be rendered poisonous for decades.  In any human endeavor, there is a risk-benefit analysis to be done; nothing can ever be totally risk free.  The unusual set of circumstances that led to this crisis were certainly low in probability, but the risk of a failure that jeopardizes so many people (and future Japanese generations) and requires a solution that lives beyond our current understanding and ability to manage that is too great to ignore.

Our current technological civilization is driven by energy and the demand for it continues to grow.  Fossil fuels are a finite resource – we are consuming them much faster than the earth creates them – and our continued use of them threatens our habitat.  Unless we want our legacy to be nothing more than a larger version of those mysterious statues on Easter Island, left behind by a society that  both destroyed its environment and depleted its supply of energy through deforestation (see the book reference below), we need to find a clean renewable sources of energy.

It may very well be that nuclear energy is the short term stop-gap solution as the world’s oil reserves become depleted and the environmental impact of burning oil becomes untenable.  If that’s the case, then we’ve got face some music.  First, we must get serious about developing alternative technologies.  Second, we must efficiently use what we have.  That means modern, efficient power grids and yes, saying goodbye to 100 watt incandescent light-bulbs.

Finally, we must recognize when we are pushing the envelope.  The 104 nuclear power plants in The United States, are not ordinary, everyday operations employing known fully understood technologies like steel mills, sewage treatment plants, or bus stations.  Like deep sea oil rigs and spaceships, they are high risk experiments.  If we are going to use them at all, we need to manage them as high risk experiments, no matter what the cost.  The cost of failure is simply too high to ask anyone to bear.

Chernobyl Baby’ Explains Life In A Fallout Zone

See larger image Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition (Paperback) By (author) Jared Diamond List Price: $18.00 USD New From: $11.07 In Stock Used from: $7.02 In Stock Release date January 4, 2011.

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.