Tag Archives: Capitalism.

A Milagro Bagpipe War?

03 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by in Movies, Politics

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

mv5bmjizmje3mdcwm15bml5banbnxkftztcwmjk0mjg4ng-_v1_sy1000_cr007071000_al_John Nichols, the author of Milagro Beanfield War once gave the keynote speech at a conference I attended in Colorado. If I recall correctly the name of his presentation was; “Everything I know about the West I Learned in New York.”

…something like that.

Anyway, the point of the speech was that the sort of problems he wrote about in work like Milagro Beanfield War simply weren’t really unique to the western states. They were much the  same as they were anywhere else. Big money can be a terrible danger to small communities. That is as true of an inner city neighborhood facing gentrification as it is a small town in northern New Mexico facing a major development project.

I thought about this last night as I watched You’ve Been Trumped (2011), the story of Donald Trump’s efforts to develop a golf course in the community of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Conflict between Trump and his team, on the one hand, and a small group of locals who want to hold onto their own homes and their own community provide the central theme of the film. At least one Youtube channel describes this film as a David and Goliath story, which seems fair enough to me. Perhaps, that’s Milagro Beanfield War was too, a David and Goliath Story. The same could be said of Local Hero (a film referenced in You’ve Been Trumped). We could certainly find other such stories if we looked, but whats most striking about this one is that it’s real. Watching the movie, I couldn’t help thinking it was as if someone had taken Nichols book and reworked into a movie script based in Scotland. That someone would have to be Donald Trump himself. It’s almost as if he took that former story of a heartless developer stomping all over a local community and said; “Yep! That villain is what I want to be.” The rest of the plot seems to flow smoothly from there.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not the most balanced documentary I’ve ever seen. If there are arguments in favor of Trump’s development, this film makes little effort to present them. The story-line focuses squarely on the conflicts with those living near Trump’s development project.I do wonder just how representative those individuals may be, and just what the overall balance of support and opposition to Trump may have been in the local community. The movie leaves a definite impression  regarding such matters, but it doesn’t answer them squarely. That said, what this film does show is damning enough in its own terms. Within the narrow scope of Trump’s relationship to those resisting his project, the film reveals enough to condemn the man. Whatever might be said in favor of Trump’s development, the actions covered in this film are truly abysmal in their own right.

It’s fascinating to see how much of the ugliness we’ve seen from this man during his presidential campaign appears in this film from 2011. His abusiveness is on full display as Trump repeatedly describes one hold out (Michael Forbes) as a filthy man living a disgusting life amidst his own trash. His penchant for simply telling the most convenient story regardless of the facts at hand can easily be seen as Trump brags about his wonderful contributions to the environment by stabilizing local dunes even as the film repeatedly shows construction tearing up the land, diverting waterways, and disrupting the natural cycles of the local ecosystem. It’s also present in Trump’s claims to be serving the people of Scotland even as he wages a heavy-handed campaign of harassment against those Scots interfering with his plans for a business clearly aimed at tourists. And of course his easy dismissal of journalism can be seen in his demands for questions from ‘real journalists’ at a press conference, effectively dismissing those who might not support his business. We here in America have seen all this time and again over the last year. The people of Aberdeen had already seen plenty of it by 2011.

Of course others have seen similar treatment in countless places where Donald Trump has done business. This is just one of many instances in which one of Donald Trump’s grand schemes for development fell like a boot-stomp of a local community.

…which brings me to another interesting feature of this film. It helps to illustrate some of the foibles of popular right wing theories about the power-relations between government and big business. As with other populist candidates, much of Donald Trump’s appeal seems to be rooted popular resentment about elites. How such resentment could lead to support for a man who so clearly asserts aristocratic privilege over the mere peasantry is something of a mystery to me. Still, he does draw a great deal of his appeal from messages systematically distorting  the modern political economy all across the media. At least a portion of this can be seen in the movie.

Let us start with libertarianism! This school of thought generally counsels us to avoid government entanglement with business, and with people’s personal lives. In principle this applies to any number of things, but in practice, the message is more likely to carry the day when the issues at stake are progressive taxation, welfare programs, or any number of government regulations tying the hands of big business. It’s a school of thought that consistently tells us we should not look to government to resolve questions of economic inequality. Central to the force of this message is a vision of equity in which government officials treat all people with equal regard and government programs afford equal rights to all of us. You’ve Been Trumped presents us with countless situations in which the Trump organization uses  official power to defeat the mere peasants who stand in his plans. Those people suffer loss of electricity, water, and destruction of their property, to say nothing of a deliberate effort to block their view of the sea for the sake of doing just that. At each stage in this process officials are slow to listen to complains or respond to requests for assistance and quick to enforce rights claimed by Trump. It might be that particular disputes can be sorted out in the courts, but Trump’s organization clearly has the upper hand at stage in this process. The notion that this system is consistent with any formal sense of fairness is at best a laughable proposition.

Libertarians might object that they too wouldn’t support Trump’s use of municipal authorities to abuse local enemies, assuming of course that the abuses shown in this film stand up to critical scrutiny, but that hardly addresses the problem. What this film shows is the leverage that monied interests do get over every level of government authority in existence. It isn’t enough to moralize the issue, to stand on the sidelines and shout; “Hey stop, don’t do that.” The point is that this is exactly what happens when we allow substantial disparities in the distribution of economic resources. Those with more at their disposal WILL use those resources to skew government authority (something Donald Trump appears to have done throughout his long career as a public menace). Despite this fact, libertarian narratives continue to focus on the problems of aid to the poor. They offer no solution whatsoever to the sorts of problems shown in this film, but libertarians continually present themselves as underdogs hard at work fighting against ‘statist’ power. In practice that fight is virtually always a fight to take away what little help and what little protections those in need may have.When an actual aristocrat takes it upon himself to destroy the life of a man he deems to filthy to accord even the most minimal respect, libertarians are simply silent on the matter.

Anti-globalists provide one of the more consistent sources of support for Donald Trump in this election campaign. Alex Jones of Info Wars would have to be counted among his most visible supporters.  He and his own fans often speak of Trump’s detractors as globalists, thus framing the whole election in terms of support for, or opposition globalism. Trump’s support for Brexit, combined with promise to build a wall on the southern U.S. border would seem to have earned him a great deal of points with this crowd. But of course this only counts if you have a really myopic view of globalism. It is one thing to stop people at your borders, which is what Trump is happy to offer the anti-globalist crowd, but of course money and power can easily flow right over those same borders. Yes, Trump has also declared his opposition to a number of international trade deals, but this is a man who has also taken advantage of opportunities on the other side of the border throughout his career. Simply put, big money doesn’t need a special trade deal to take advantage of foreign workers and foreign markets, and this movie illustrates that very clearly. It is Donald Trump’s wealth that enables him to go to a foreign country and simply have his way with a small local community. Nothing in Trump’s political agenda suggest that he intends to stop such things, and a good deal suggests that he intends to continue them.

Trump is happy to control borders, precisely because restricting the movement of workers is critical to optimizing profits under global market conditions. A world in which cheep labor can be found to the left and rich buyers are over to the right is not a bad deal for people like Donald Trump. In this respect, he is the perfect candidate for the anti-globalists. He will make a show of national boundaries, one they can be proud of, but he will never actually challenge the power relations at stake in the global economy. Neither Donald Trump nor Alex Jones really want to see anything truly revolutionary happen there. That might disrupt Jones’ sale of dietary supplements or keep Donald from demolishing coastal communities for his jet-set customers.

In the end, I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that Donald Trump could run as a populist candidate. He isn’t the first pampered elitist to pose as the hope of the common man. Still, he does seem to be one of the most clueless, and it does scare me that he could easily become our President. I’m not a fan of Hillary either, to be honest, but I worry that the whole nation may soon hand the keys to a problem child with a history of wrecking most everything he touches. More than that, his candidacy helps to illustrate precisely why the underdog themes of those on the right always ring so hollow for me. Time and again, they consistently seem David for Goliath, or perhaps the David of later years, the one who steals another man’s wife at the height of his own wealth and power for the David of David and Goliath, the one who actually does face down a more powerful opponent. Time and again, the right wing plays the underdog to government power, all the while ignoring real questions about who is really putting one over on whom. It’s a bad habit that some have fallen into. It’s a habit that may soon cost us all.

Just ask the people of Aberdeenshire.

 

Paul Newman IS Homo Economicus: A Spoiler-Filled Review of Hud.

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Movies, Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

51YVV4PKWJLSo, I finally got around to watching Hud for the first time. It was about a month or so back that I popped a copy into the disk player. I didn’t know what to expect really, but I’d heard it described as one of Paul Newman’s rebellious best. So, I sat back and prepared to watch him take on the world for the umpteenth time in my viewing history. He does of course, just as expected.

What I didn’t expect was that this time I’d be rooting for the world.

We meet Hud as he emerges from the house of a married woman, angry to have been interrupted by his nephew, and not the least bit remorseful about where he spent the night, not even when her husband arrives before Hud and his nephew can quit the scene. Not to worry though, Hud lays the blame on his nephew and they hightail it out of there. It’s a pretty damned low move, but just the sort one might expect from a devil-may-care young character Newman has played before. Still unwise to the story that would unfold before me, I sat back waiting to see what Hud would do to make us forgive him in the end. To be sure, this character had the usual mixture of charm and recklessness you might expect from such a role. I couldn’t wait to see where the plot would take him.

Make no mistake, however, this is not a film about redemption, reform, or freedom from convention. Quite the contrary.

So what is the story here?

Hud stands to inherit a ranch from his father, but a likely outbreak of hoof&mouth disease creates a dilemma for the family and their ranch-hands. Hud wants to sell the cattle before the veterinarian can diagnose it. His father (Homer) won’t hear of it. It isn’t simply that the two men disagree; they genuinely don’t like each other and their conflict over the cattle considerably widens the rift between them. Hud believes his father’s distrust to be the result of an accident resulting in the death of his brother (Homer’s other son). Hud had been driving, and yes, liquor had been involved. But Hud’s father tells us that wasn’t the source of the problem. Something about Hud had always bothered him, something about the way Hud treated others. Hud’s response to this new crisis served only to make Homer that much more uncomfortable with his remaining son, and with the prospects of his own legacy, the ranch.

As Hud takes ever greater liberties with those around him, I couldn’t help but side with his father. In time, all the more decent characters will leave Hud. His father dies’ a prospective love interest leaves town (for damned good reason!); the ranch workers are let go because there is nothing for them to do; and finally Hud’s nephew abandons him in the final scenes. I couldn’t help but cheer for each of them that got away, and in the final scene, as Hud slams the doorway of the ranch-house leaving us outside, I couldn’t help but feel a trace of relief to finally get away from him myself.

It was an awesome performance.

This is a film about conflicting values. Hud sees his many years working on the ranch as an investment, and he expects a return on that invest in the form of an economically viable property. The outbreak of disease now threatens that return, and his father’s moral scruples aren’t helping much in his view.

Over the course of the film it becomes ever more clear just how little Hud sees in that ranch besides the money it may one day provide him. His failure to find any meaning in the work he does for the ranch itself is matched by his failure to connect with those around him. Hud has his moments of course. Here and there, we could almost hope to think him human, but this character was made to disappoint us at every turn. It’s only fitting that he should end up with the ranch and nothing else. no cattle, no family, no friends, nothing living around him. There is little doubt that he will somehow make the ranch work, and still less that he will do so utter alone. In the end, that is the choice Hud has made, and he seems quite content with the results.

I can’t help but see in Hud a perfect avatar of homo economicus as libertarians seem to understand him, a perfectly functioning rational agent out to maximize his pleasures and minimize his pains. He sees in work nothing but the exchange value of his products and in other people only the chance to cash in those values for direct personal pleasure. The bottom line in his thought is pure profit, nothing more.

And so, he’s a villain, so what? Who today could possibly oppose such an approach to a business venture? Who but a communist? …or worse, a liberal!

…or Hud’s father, a cultural conservative in his own right. Hud’s father, Homer, isn’t looking to redistribute wealth, but he understands the value of work itself, something not entirely reducible to the dollar value of its products. Homer understands that in working men also produce themselves and their communities, and that this has a value, one that cannot be reduced to profits. The issue becomes most clear when someone raises the prospect of drilling for oil. We’ll let Homer speak for himself:

Hud Bannon: My daddy thinks oil is something you stick in your salad dressing.

Homer Bannon: If there’s oil down there, you can get it sucked up after I’m under there with it. There’ll be no holes punched in this land while I’m here. They ain’t gonna come in and grade no roads so the wind can blow me away. What’s oil to me? What can I do with a bunch of oil wells? I can’t ride out every day and prowl amongst ’em like I can my cattle. I can’t breed ’em or tend ’em or rope ’em or chase ’em or nothing. I can’t feel a smidgen of pride in ’em ’cause they ain’t none of my doing.

Hud Bannon: There’s money in it.

Homer Bannon: I don’t want that kind of money. I want mine to come from something that keeps a man doing for himself.

So, I watch this film and I see in Homer a vision of generations that seem well past in the present day political landscape, generations who say capitalism as it is practiced to day as a threat their own way of life, a force that would destroy the conditions under which they would work and earn a living. It has been far too easy for far too long to assume that the opponents of capitalism have always been communists. What too many people seem to miss is that moment in history when the juggernaut of modern corporatism first threatens to take away the livelihood of those content with free markets, a moment in history when some at least might have known the difference.

Irony of ironies!

It seems many of the film’s viewers didn’t see the difference themselves. Apparently, in 1963. Apparently, a good portion of the American audience saw Hud just as I had expected to. They loved him. they saw in Hud precisely the rebellious hero that i had hoped to, and not the merciless villain I felt the film had actually shown me. Film critic Pauline Kael even went so far as to argue that the audience was wiser than the film-makers insofar as they rejected its critique of capitalism and celebrated the villain as if he were a hero. That’s one way to look at it. Another would be to take that as a measure of just how much modern America and its sensibilities had in 1963 already been shaped by men such as Hud.

Irritation Meditation Number Whatever: I Love the Smell of New Propaganda in the Morning!

02 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Irritation Meditation, Politics

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

tumblr_msikmn9yWU1saikk3o1_500So, here I am surfing along the wifi challenged net of my lovely hotel room and what do I find in between 404 notices? Well it appears to be the latest talking point from the right wing echo chamber; a snappy little infographic promoting the virtues of a national day devoted to the celebration of Capital!

It seems that labor and capital both need each other, at least according to this catchy little visual. So, in the interests of fairness, we really ought to have a national Capital Day, at least if we are going to have a national Labor Day. And if we can’t have that, well then we should at least celebrate them together.

I mean it’s only fair!

I found this on Tumblr, a account for The Bill of Rights Institute, … so, Koch Brothers, yep! The visual has the stamp of FEE on it, which leads us easily enough to the Foundation for Economic Education, an unsurprisingly Libertarian bastion of economic chatter, and once there it doesn’t take long to find a whole article (penned by none other than the President of the foundation, Lawrence Reed)  touting this movement to counter-balance the celebration of labor with that of capital.

Now to be fair, Lawrence does tell us he will be celebrating Labor Day. Apparently, that’s okay, just as long as we don’t dip into any lefty labor union kinda thinking. Good workers know their place, and their place is working for capital! …without complaints and collective bargaining power. And of course Reed does want to reassure us that he is NOT engaging in class warfare, no. He loves labor. Hell, workers too can become capitalists if they save and invest.

I wonder what Reed thinks the average worker has to invest in today’s climate?

Apparently, we aren’t supposed to think of capital as something deployed only by bankers, because of course workers COULD invest in stock themselves. And in the classic tone-deaf stylings that have become the hallmark of libertarian thought, that little bit of formal equivalence is supposed to help us forget the massive difference between the economic power of the investing classes and those who might have a chunk of their fragile retirement fund riding on the fate of a corporation or two.

I could wonder a lot of things about the fairy-tale land of free market fundamentalism this preacher sells from his think-tank pulpit, but for the present it is enough to meditate on the vision of fairness he has in mind here. It is somehow unfair, he and the folks at FEE seem to be suggesting, that Americans should think about labor and not give a happy nod to capital as well. I wonder where that sense of fairness can be found when paychecks are measured against dividends, personal bankruptcies to corporate bailouts, and second homes to rental properties? I wonder where that sense of fairness is when people like Donald Trump talk about building this or that casino with hardly a nod to those who actually did the dirty work? I wonder where that emphasis on interdependence can be found when folks talk about ‘job creators’ as though they were the unmoved movers of the economic world? And I wonder where all this painfully important need for balanced credit falls when we measure the access of workers to the ear of public officials against that of capitalists? Today, it seems we must be reminded that workers and capitalists work hand-in-hand; on most days that same vision of cooperation is deemed to mean every-man-for-himself, and shame on those who fall short at the end of the month.

No doubt the fine folks at FEE will protest (as Libertarians often do) that they are against sundry special treatments for big business as well. And I suppose, one can indeed imagine a world in which the libertarian scheme of things offers a fair chance to everyone and a better more efficient economy for all. That world is every bit as real as the communist state. In the world we live in though, Libertarian intervention always seems so much more focused on the denial of benefits to the lower classes. Bail out a corporation and they will tell you that sucks and things are not supposed to work that way. Offer health care to the working poor and they will burn the country down around our ears if that’s what it takes to stop you.

And just as a small petty footnote in economic history, they may even find a way to begrudge working men and women a single day of acknowledgement.

Won’t Someone Please Think of the Children? …No Really!

29 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in General

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Sometimes you just get a wonderful glimpse into the priorities that guide people’s decisions. Take for example this campaign from One Million Moms. They want people to take action against this ad:

Now frankly, I can’t make up my mind whether or not the ad is post-modern brilliance, or a broccoli fart filtered through used bong water (though I am leaning a bit towards the latter), but the Million Moms are screaming bloody murder. They have posted the following diatribe against this travesty of marketing brilliance, …er, bullshit:

We are not sure of Skittles’ thought process behind their new ad, but if they are attempting to offend customers, they have succeeded. Skittles’ newest “Walrus” commercial includes a teen girl making out with a walrus. The two are on a sofa in an apartment kissing on the mouth when her shocked roommate walks in on them. Parents find this type of advertising inappropriate and unnecessary. Does Skittles’ have our children’s best interest in mind? Skittles candies are for all ages, but their target market is children.

Skittles Marketing Team may have thought this was humorous, but not only is it disgusting, it is taking lightly the act of bestiality. Let Skittles know their new ad is irresponsible.

What interests me most about this whole screed, is the rhetorical question. “Does Skittles’ have our children’s best interest in mind?”

I don’t suppose it has occurred to any of the One Million Moms that the purpose of the ad is to sell CANDY to their children.

And I’ll leave it at that.

***

Special thanks to Jessica Bluemke. It was her guest post on The Friendly Atheist where I first stumbled across this little gem of …something.

Great Movie Villains, Volume V: God Damn Us Every One!

19 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Movie Villainy, Movies

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Yeah, that’s right folks! I’m talking about Tiny Tim here. Don’t even pretend you don’t know what I am talking about! Or did you think maybe it was those damned spooks that brought about the downfall of a Ebenezer Scrooge?

No, I am telling you Scrooge wasn’t afraid of no ghost! Nor even three of them. He may have hesitated a bit with the first one, but I am telling you that stalwart icon of good business sense rose to the occasion. He faced those ghosts down like a true champion. Were it for their vainglorious efforts, I feel quite certain that Scrooge would have gone to his grave a good thrifty capitalist, just as he was at the beginning of this terrible tragedy.

And it is a tragedy, make no mistake about it. A Christmas Carol is a dark and terrible story about the downfall of fine American. Don’t even try to tell me that Scrooge was British! Just listen to the man! Asked to give to the poor, how does Scrooge reply?

“Are there no prisons? Are there no poor houses?”

American, Hell! If only Scrooge were still around, the Republican party would know just who to run against Obama. I’m telling you, Scrooge was a good American even if he was British. What this country would not give to have someone of his moral fortitude around today! But no, sadly the old man is dead. And not just dead. His spirit was broken long before he entered the grave. All on account of that sad-adorable little boy, Tiny Tim!

It’s enough to make you want to puke.

Scrooge was a man of principle. He was a man of industry. A man who understood what happens when you subsidize sloth by saving a life instead of letting the market work its magic. Scrooge was all these things, and above all he was a man of wit and reason. He handled life’s problems rationally, and all he asked of others was that they do the same.

And then along comes this poor boy with a treatable illness and just like liberals everywhere the damned ghosts go to work on your heart-strings. Oh look, Ebenezer, look at the poor sick child! Can’t you pay Cratchit a little more? Can’t you save little Tim, Ebenezer? You have so much money, surely you can save him! Oh look Ebenezer, if you don’t help him, poor little helpless Tim is gonna die.

And the little runt plays his heart perfectly, acting so sweet and innocent. The ghosts don’t show Scrooge a moment of Tim slacking off instead of doing his homework. Hell, they don’t even focus on the fact that he doesn’t have a job as every good working class kid his age should have had by that age. And they sure as Hell don’t show him sneaking an extra helping of mashed potatoes or pulling on his sister’s pig-tails. No, they only show him Tim at his most pure, most adorable, most pathetic.

Sad to say the old man cracked.

I know, we are supposed to say that his heart melted, that he found his inner goodness, or some such rotten sentiments. We are supposed to believe that this is a story of redemption, that Scrooge was a better man on account of the story of Tiny Tim. We are supposed to believe that Tiny Tim was the instrument by which Scrooge became a better person.

More than that, we are supposed to be inspired by this story. We are supposed to learn to care. It is supposed to warm our hearts and help all of us to become better people.

Bah Humbug!