WTO comes to Hong Kong by Ed-meister
I was deeply gratified this past weekend by the warm
reception given my maiden voyage as an OpEdNews journalist: "Obamaheads--like
Extreme Right--Are Useful Idiots for Corporatocracy." I suspect I merely
succeeded in saying forcefully what many progressives have been thinking: that
the meaningless, vicious, and highly publicized quarrels between Obama's
idolaters and his right-wingnut detractors--like the current idiotic feud over
Benghazi--simply provide cover for BOTH sides' criminal negligence in failing to
address the screamingly urgent problems of our nation and world.
I suspect I made a lucky, insightful hit (I hope my phrases become memes) in
skewering both sides as "useful idiots," and their pathetically silly mutual
snipings as "idiot wars." Pathetically silly, of course, until we consider the
developing tragedy--of epic Greek dimensions--their Monty-Pynthonesque trivial
spats bump off the front page. To discuss that tragedy is my purpose today.
Though my talk of "idiots" derived from the
fruitfulness of applying "useful idiots" to today's political context, the word
"idiots" in its solitary splendor has a special relevance to our Beltway and
statehouse world. To wit, scarcely any of our elected reps shows evidence of the
most cursory acquaintance with the many wonderful books and online analyses
diagnosing the DEEP maladies of our very troubled nation and globe. One would
think, for example, that after the forces of globalization and
financialization, under a lack of democratic governance, nearly tanked the world
economy, many pols (at least through their wonkish staffers) would have
digested the top-notch revisionist economics of Nobel laureates like Joseph
Stiglitz and Amartya Sen. Both, beyond their highbrow academic works, write
non-specialist books and articles for the general educated reader, and in combo
offer some of the most penetrating analysis of what went wrong--and continues to
go wrong--with the U.S. and world economy.
To cut straight to the chase and reveal the dirtiest
secret buried from sight by our "idiot wars," neither Democrats nor Republicans
are making the faintest effort to manage globalization. In fact, neither party
shows the faintest inkling globalization might NEED to be managed, and are
simply ceding all control of its unfolding to those who stand to profit
maximally from it, and the rest of us--and the climate and global environment be
damned. To put the matter bluntly, our pols have a bipartisan consensus to
abdicate governing--and above all, governing democratically--in matters that
concern the well-being of Americans most. And mark my words: their continued
abdication of governance--their failure to manage globalization--WILL beggar most
of us, it WILL destroy our global climate and environment, and it WILL spell
death for democracy and civil rights. In this context, it's hardly surprising
that Stiglitz was a warm supporter of Occupy Wall Street.
I draw the need to manage globalization as my
take-home lesson from Stiglitz, and the essential role of democratic governance
in a well-functioning modern economy as my take-home lesson from Sen. I doubt
either would have trouble with the other's "take-home lesson" (I'm personally
better acquainted with Stiglitz), as the two collaborated closely on a
commission organized by the French government to rethink the concept of GDP and
other measures of economic well-being. But it's Stiglitz who's strongly made
the point, in such books as "Making Globalization Work" and "The Price of
Inequality," that globalization (especially in its heavily financialized form)
is almost sure to be a race to the bottom under global wage pressure and an
environmental catastrophe UNLESS managed by truly democratic government. And
Sen, backed by considerable empirical data, makes the complementary,
reinforcing point that--contrary to the now-refuted dogmas of Milton Friedman
and his school--free markets alone do NOT make for free people; while relatively
free markets are, per Sen, a necessary condition of human well-being, they are
by no means a sufficient one, and strong democratic governance (uncorrupted by
Big Money) must be SEPARATELY provided for if markets are to work their reputed
magic.
So the Big Story, pushed from its proper, screaming
page-one headline, by the ignorant, power-elite-serving demented ravings of the
idiot wars, is that globalization is being left in the hands of economic wolves
who WILL devour us and the planet. And this news, not from some raving
long-haired radical, but from the careful empirical studies of two of the
world's most respected Nobel laureate economists. But notice just how much the
need to manage globalization was brought up in those more formal, politer
"idiot wars" known as the Obama-Romney debates.
We very clearly need a populist revolt against our
ruling idiots. And it should be equally clear that populists need not--and must
not--be idiots, but instead must be informed by the best expert thought of the
day. The True Blue Democrats grassroots progressive revolt aims to combine true
populism with real intellectual integrity. For it's the propagandist enemies of
the people who, in the striking image of W.H. Auden, now have "drivel gushing
from their lips." Check out True Blue Democrats at www.facebook.com/TrueBlueDemocratsAProgressiveRevolt .