Uncomfortable Questions, Depressing Answers

In a recent INforefront post, James Madison asked some uncomfortable questions about the role class distinctions play in (theoretically classless) America.

Does the Land of the Free have class distinctions? Are such distinctions inevitable? Defensible?

American notions of class aren’t grounded in lineage and tradition—at least, not to the extent they are elsewhere. Class in America gets confused with concepts of meritocracy and echoes of Calvinism, the belief that earthly success was a sign of God’s favor and one’s  “chosen-ness.”

The conviction that material wealth was evidence of moral merit was accompanied by the conclusion that poverty must signal moral defect. Over the years, these doctrinal roots of our belief in the comparative worth of rich and poor was lost, subsumed into a secular, class-based proposition: poor folks are lazy “takers” who lack “middle-class values.”

In a culture that celebrates (fast-disappearing) meritocracy and social mobility, it’s easy to conclude that poverty is a result of class-based attitudes and characteristics. And of course, if you’re privileged, it’s satisfying to attribute your good fortune to individual merit rather than the fact you were born (with the “right” race, religion, gender and sexual orientation) into a family with the wherewithal to feed, clothe, educate and endow you.

These attitudes foster policies that favor the fortunate, diminish the middle class, and make social mobility virtually impossible for the working poor.

There will always be winners and losers. There will always be some people who work harder than others, who are smarter or more entrepreneurial and deserve to do better. But a society that confuses individual worth with money and social status is a class-based society.

Right now, unfortunately, that describes America.

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Words Fail….Again

NOTE: HAVING INTERNET PROBLEMS. HERE’S TOMORROW’S BLOG. IF YOU DON’T HEAR FROM ME FOR A DAY OR SO, I’M WORKING ON MY ACCESS….

This post from DailyKos mirrors two others I’ve seen, reporting the response of several Texans (!) to the use of a term derived from Arabic to describe a dust storm.

  • Hateful hubbub arises over haboob. The word, from the Arabic for “strong wind,” and, in particular, a dust storm in North Africa or the Arabian peninsula, has been used by meteorologists to describe such storms in the United States since the 1950s. But after KCBD News Channel 11 in Lubbock, Texas, posted a photo on its Facebook page with the caption “Haboob headed toward Lubbock,” some Texans went crazy:

“Since when do we need to apply a Muslim vocabulary to a good ole AMERICAN dirt storm?? …I take great offense to such terminology! GO BACK TO CALLING THEM DIRT STORMS!!”

“It’s called a dust storm..Texas is not a rag head country.”

“Never had a haboob until we got that Muslim boob for POTUS.” […]

America is doomed.

If this were an isolated instance, or even limited to Texas, it would be embarrassing, but this sort of assholery is everywhere. Including Congress.

It’s bad enough that people are this ignorant and bigoted; that they feel compelled to publicly express that ignorance and bigotry is really more than I can take.

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I Yield My Space

Paul Krugman’s column on The Dog Whistle deserves to be read by anyone and everyone who professes bafflement over today’s incoherent politics.

The only thing he omits is a discussion of the degree to which anti-Obama fervor is motivated by the color of this President’s skin. But then, that phenomenon is hard to miss for anyone who isn’t willfully ignoring it.

I can’t add anything to Krugman’s dead-on analysis. Go read it.

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While Partisans Fiddle…

Congressional Republicans and Democrats continue to do battle over taxes, with most Democrats advocating a moderate hike in the rates paid by those making over 250,000/year, and the GOP insisting that a raise in (historically low) rates amounts to “class warfare.”

It’s a classic conflict between irreconcilable worldviews: rightwing Republicans label taxation for anything other than military spending and corporate welfare as socialism;  the more radical see taxation as theft. Democrats respond that taxes are the dues we pay for civilization.

Meanwhile, we have stalemate.

I wonder if the antagonists might be able to “cut the baby,” Solomon-like, by agreeing to pursue corporations actively evading their civic responsibilities.

The largest American multinational companies parked an additional $206 billion of profits in offshore accounts last year, according to Bloomberg, bringing the total amount of profits stashed where U.S. tax officials can’t touch them up to about two trillion dollars.

 The 307 companies that Bloomberg examined now hold a combined $1.95 trillion offshore, allowing them to avoid paying U.S. taxes on those earnings. The majority of the total is concentrated in just a few corporate hands. The largest 22 of those companies hold more offshore than the other 285 combined.

 Surely, even the purveyors of  “makers and takers” rhetoric can see how wrong this is. After all, the corporations playing these games are shifting the tax burden to those who aren’t able to do so.

Talk about theft.

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Here We Go Again

According to the Indianapolis Star,

 Four legislators, including Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, chairman of the Education Committee, say “serious questions have been raised about whether academic freedom, free speech and religious liberty have been respected by BSU in its treatment of professor Hedin, its subsequent establishment of a speech code restricting faculty speech on intelligent design, and its cancellation of professor Hedin’s … class,” the lawmakers said in a letter to Gora.

For those with cloudy memories, the roots of this particular “inquiry” are described here.

Why, exactly, do Hoosier voters are continue to elect people who do not understand the difference between science and religion, the operation of the First Amendment’s religion clauses or the difference between Free Speech and government speech?

Let me spell this out—not that Senator Kruse or his theocratic cohorts will listen.

Academic freedom insulates the academy from the Senator’s own efforts to dictate the content of courses taught by the University. It does not protect a professor who is teaching discredited or inappropriate materials— I don’t have “academic freedom” to teach flower arranging in my Law and Policy classes; a historian does not have “academic freedom” to insist that the Holocaust didn’t occur; and a professor of science does not have “academic freedom” to substitute creationism for science.

Freedom of speech and religious liberty allow Senator Kruse to believe and promote any cockamamie thing he wants. It does not give him—and it most definitely does not give the legislature, which is government—the right to demand (overtly or covertly) that a public university give equal time in science class to an unscientific religious belief.

Can creationism be taught? Sure—in a class on comparative religion, or in a history of science class, or as part of a political science class’s exploration of the ongoing tension between religious orthodoxy and science.

Senator Kruse and his cohorts do raise a question that Hoosier voters should take seriously: When will the General Assembly stop spending so much time on religiously-motivated efforts to marginalize gays, keep women second-class and pregnant, control what Hoosiers drink and when, and teach religious dogma in our public schools? When will they start paying attention to the economy, the quality of life in our state, and the other genuine problems we elected them to address?

I don’t know about you, but I’m not holding my breath.

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