Letting it Hang Out

I have just witnessed a few things that have struck me as hubris. In this case, it’s the hubris of the moneyed class that enjoys a parasitic relationship with the corporate species.

Here’s an article (There Goes the Fig Leaf) by Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, noting that the VP of the American Petroleum Institute has announced a new initiative of direct campaign donations to candidates. The key line: "At the end of the day, our mission is trying to influence the policy debate." The fig leaf in question was the near-transparent fiction that campaign contributions were designed to influence voters, not the decisions of members of congress. It was supposed to be about promoting a particular candidate, not particular results. So much for that. The executives of API are now willing to advertise that they are engaged in deliberate, continual, strategic bribery.

The attack on unions in Wisconsin is another lost fig leaf. Governor Walker has been justifying his anti-union bill on the grounds that there is a 130 million dollar state budget deficit. This, directly after promoting and passing legislation giving corporations various tax breaks totaling 140 million dollars. Wisconsin municipalities also lose $700 million a year in special-interest property tax exemptions, money that has to be made up out of state funds. You do the math. Done?

Add to that the not-quite-secret surprise in the bill: A provision would allow the state to sell off its heating plants to private companies without competitive bidding or any of the usual oversight. The probable beneficiaries would be the Koch brothers, billionaire supporters of far-right causes and major donors to Governor Walker’s reelection campaign. Did Walker and his crew think that nobody would read through the bill? Or was it just that they didn’t care if somebody read that part?

Look back at my last post, which was a brief about ditching that 100 billion dollar spending cut in favor of actually enforcing tax laws on millionaires. Enforcing the law to get $100 billion, as opposed to cutting heating assistance and the like, is a no-brainer. The problem is that it would force those big campaign donors to obey the law.

The final straw is a petulant little act by House Republicans – the return of plastic tableware in the House cafeteria. When the Democrats were in control of the House they switched the disposable cups, plates, and other utensils to biodegradeable materials. Not a huge deal, but a nice gesture. The GOP, under Boehner, has changed the rules and gone back to Styrofoam and other plastics. Really? It is a miniature version of Reagan stripping a perfectly functional solar hot water system off the White House back in 1980 – a petty mix of spite and symbolism.

The key to success for the corporate conservatives is to distract the voting public from the structural changes they are making while selling them a bucketful of irrelevant emotional narrative. They also get a lot of mileage out of personal attacks. It works because humans are naturally focused on personalities, tribal membership, and emotional stories.

Now imagine a magician so contemptuous of his audience and so convinced of his own powers that he stops trying to distract them from his semi-hidden moves. Imagine that he goes so far as to narrate the truth of his tricks: “Now I’ll slide the coin down my sleeve, and presto, it seems as if it appeared out of nowhere. Now you applaud.” That is roughly where we are right now. The corporate conservatives are walking around with the fronts of their trousers open, saying “What are ya gonna do about it?”

My hope is that, as in ancient Greek drama, hubris is followed by nemesis. I have some small amount of hope, because deception is the conservative movement’s only real armor. Back in the time of the old Soviet Union, Soviet citizens all knew that the official line was a lie, but they kept quiet to avoid a train ride to Siberia. Our present system is much more sophisticated. We are allowed to debate vigorously in public – within corporate-defined boundaries, or else on subjects that don’t concern the economic powers. We have all the window dressing and symbolism appropriate to a functional democracy. However, if the general public gets corporate naughty bits waved in their faces too often they might actually notice that they’ve been distracted. Witness the uprising in Wisconsin. And hope that it spreads. And help it spread.