Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 78
March 21, 2011
Why People Are Angry # 1
Back in the day, people used to talk about "the revolution of rising expectations." The idea was, people all over the world no longer accepted their lives. They wanted something better. Like Oliver Twist, they wanted more.
In the US, men expected to work at a job that was relatively secure. There might well be a pension. Their pay would be adequate and would rise over time, due to merit raises or union contracts. They'd own a house and one or two cars, maybe a cabin up north and a boat. At least they'd be able to afford vacations. They would be able to put money away for retirement and to help their kids though college. Their children would have better lives.
Not everyone had this life. There were always poor people and hard luck stories. But a lot of people did modestly well, working class well.
This began to change during the Reagan years. The Republicans called this era "morning in America." I called it "the counter-revolution of falling expectations." Over the past 30 years we have watched the lives of the middle class and working class erode. Pay has not risen. Jobs are no longer secure. Colleges have become seriously expensive compared to the 1960s, when a New York kid could get a tuition-free undergrad education at CCNY, and when I was spending $150 a quarter to go to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. So helping the kids get ahead is harder, and their better lives are a lot less certain.
Everyone knows what a can of worms American health care has become.
In the US, men expected to work at a job that was relatively secure. There might well be a pension. Their pay would be adequate and would rise over time, due to merit raises or union contracts. They'd own a house and one or two cars, maybe a cabin up north and a boat. At least they'd be able to afford vacations. They would be able to put money away for retirement and to help their kids though college. Their children would have better lives.
Not everyone had this life. There were always poor people and hard luck stories. But a lot of people did modestly well, working class well.
This began to change during the Reagan years. The Republicans called this era "morning in America." I called it "the counter-revolution of falling expectations." Over the past 30 years we have watched the lives of the middle class and working class erode. Pay has not risen. Jobs are no longer secure. Colleges have become seriously expensive compared to the 1960s, when a New York kid could get a tuition-free undergrad education at CCNY, and when I was spending $150 a quarter to go to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. So helping the kids get ahead is harder, and their better lives are a lot less certain.
Everyone knows what a can of worms American health care has become.
Why People Are Angry # 2
So the problem was, how could working people maintain their life style, when wages were not going up? At first, women went to work. This was not simply feminism. This was need. When this turned out to be inadequate, American families turned to debt, running up their credit cards and taking out second mortgages on their houses. This last was possible because of the housing bubble: real estate values kept going up, and the money in houses could be tapped.
Then the economy crashed, and the housing bubble popped. Housing was the main wealth that most Americans had. It was their retirement savings and whatever extra money they might need. Gone. At this point, many people have mortgages that are underwater and mortgage payments they cannot afford. Instead of having a retirement fund, they have debt. If their kids graduate from college, they likely to be burdened by debt and facing a truly lousy job market. As for Mom and Dad... almost 20% of American workers are unemployed or underemployed. It is especially difficult for older workers to find new jobs.
The American Dream was always modest: a steady job, decent pay, a house and car, vacations, a decent retirement, education for the kids. This wasn't a lot to ask in the richest country on Earth. Now this moderate future is gone, and Americans are looking at uncertainty, low wages, bills they cannot pay.
Why am I writing about something everyone knows? Because I'm trying to understand why people are so angry. They are right to be angry, but too many are angry at women, nonwhites, nonChristians, everyone except the rich, mostly white and mostly Christian men who are profiting from this system.
Then the economy crashed, and the housing bubble popped. Housing was the main wealth that most Americans had. It was their retirement savings and whatever extra money they might need. Gone. At this point, many people have mortgages that are underwater and mortgage payments they cannot afford. Instead of having a retirement fund, they have debt. If their kids graduate from college, they likely to be burdened by debt and facing a truly lousy job market. As for Mom and Dad... almost 20% of American workers are unemployed or underemployed. It is especially difficult for older workers to find new jobs.
The American Dream was always modest: a steady job, decent pay, a house and car, vacations, a decent retirement, education for the kids. This wasn't a lot to ask in the richest country on Earth. Now this moderate future is gone, and Americans are looking at uncertainty, low wages, bills they cannot pay.
Why am I writing about something everyone knows? Because I'm trying to understand why people are so angry. They are right to be angry, but too many are angry at women, nonwhites, nonChristians, everyone except the rich, mostly white and mostly Christian men who are profiting from this system.
Why People Are Angry # 3
I suppose this is like the 1920s, which were a hard time for working people, farmers and the lower middle class. Meridell Le Sueur told me once that the Great Depression was a middle class experience. Working people were already hard up before the crash. For them the 1930s were more of the same. One of their reactions was to swing right. The Klu Klux Klan flourished. Per Wikipedia:
What is needed -- always needed -- is an analysis that points out that other working people and middle class people are not the problem. The rich are the problem, and a system that allows siphons wealth to the top of society and destroys the lives of ordinary people. But right now, looking at the Tea Party, I see people obsessed with sex and abortion, independent women, immigrants, gay marriage, Muslims... Under the surface is racism and antisemitism, which bubbles up and then is denied.
Part of the problem is -- the world is changing, society is changing. The country is turning from white to brown, and the old white certainties are going away. Two futures lie ahead of the tea partiers: one is a social future different from the way America was in their dim memories (or fantasies) of the 1950s; the other is an economic future of falling expectations and contracting hope. The combination is pretty awful.
I'm not sure how to handle the first future, except to say different is not bad. Most the issues that make the teabaggers crazy don't bother many, prehaps most Americans.
The second future is a lie and needs to be exposed. Yes, there are terrible problems: diminishing resources, environmental degradation, climate change. But the world has fantastic resources. If the US has the resources to bail out much of the world's financial system and save gigantic, crooked banks from ruin, if it has the resources to fight wars with five different countries at once, then we ought to have the resources to create a better world. As the old union song Solidarity Forever says, "We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old." It's all a question of who has the money and the power and how they is used.
But how do we get this message across?
A significant characteristic of the second Klan (after World War One) was that it was an organization based in urban areas, reflecting the major shifts of population to cities in both the North and the South. In Michigan, for instance, 40,000 members lived in Detroit, where they made up more than half of the state's membership. Most Klansmen were lower- to middle-class whites who were trying to protect their jobs and housing from the waves of newcomers to the industrial cities: immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, who tended to be Catholic and Jewish in numbers higher than earlier groups of immigrants; and black and white migrants from the South. As new populations poured into cities, rapidly changing neighborhoods created social tensions. Because of the rapid pace of population growth in industrializing cities such as Detroit and Chicago, the Klan grew rapidly in the U.S. Midwest. The Klan also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston.
What is needed -- always needed -- is an analysis that points out that other working people and middle class people are not the problem. The rich are the problem, and a system that allows siphons wealth to the top of society and destroys the lives of ordinary people. But right now, looking at the Tea Party, I see people obsessed with sex and abortion, independent women, immigrants, gay marriage, Muslims... Under the surface is racism and antisemitism, which bubbles up and then is denied.
Part of the problem is -- the world is changing, society is changing. The country is turning from white to brown, and the old white certainties are going away. Two futures lie ahead of the tea partiers: one is a social future different from the way America was in their dim memories (or fantasies) of the 1950s; the other is an economic future of falling expectations and contracting hope. The combination is pretty awful.
I'm not sure how to handle the first future, except to say different is not bad. Most the issues that make the teabaggers crazy don't bother many, prehaps most Americans.
The second future is a lie and needs to be exposed. Yes, there are terrible problems: diminishing resources, environmental degradation, climate change. But the world has fantastic resources. If the US has the resources to bail out much of the world's financial system and save gigantic, crooked banks from ruin, if it has the resources to fight wars with five different countries at once, then we ought to have the resources to create a better world. As the old union song Solidarity Forever says, "We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old." It's all a question of who has the money and the power and how they is used.
But how do we get this message across?
Not Having A Car
I don't drive, as I mentioned before. Patrick does, and he owns a lovely little Saturn with 180,000 miles on it. When we do errands together, we take the car. When I do errands by myself, I walk or take a bus.
I did that today. I ended walking through the skyway system hauling a bag of groceries and a bag full of a manuscript I'd had copied. Most of the time, it's poor people who haul bags around, since they don't have cars. Granted, downtown workers can have bags to carry on the way to their cars, shopping from Macy's, work they are taking home... Still, I felt dorky and poor carrying so much.
In this society, not driving means you are poor, in some way disabled or odd. When I was young, I was less aware of this, since there are a fair number of young people who bike or take the bus. But now -- at my age -- I am aware that I look poor or disabled or odd.
I did that today. I ended walking through the skyway system hauling a bag of groceries and a bag full of a manuscript I'd had copied. Most of the time, it's poor people who haul bags around, since they don't have cars. Granted, downtown workers can have bags to carry on the way to their cars, shopping from Macy's, work they are taking home... Still, I felt dorky and poor carrying so much.
In this society, not driving means you are poor, in some way disabled or odd. When I was young, I was less aware of this, since there are a fair number of young people who bike or take the bus. But now -- at my age -- I am aware that I look poor or disabled or odd.
March 20, 2011
Change # 2
I forgot the obvious example of my discomfort with technology. I have never had a driver's license. I learned to drive (sort of) when I was 21, then never got my learner's permit.
Why? I think some strange form of timidity. I should have learned. Knowing how and having a license does not mean you have to drive. Though when one my bosses asked me why I didn't drive many years ago, I said, "Because if I did, I would end by buying a car."
I think private cars are an insane way to move people around in an urban area. I think they have done huge damage to American society and to the environment. Instead of compact cities, we have enormous suburbs sprawling out and out over what used to be farmland and marshland and woods. (That's what the suburbs replace in Minnesota.)
Kids below driving age are trapped like rats in cages. So are elderly people, no longer able to drive.
City neighborhoods and inner ring suburbs here have (mostly) small houses and yards which are obviously being used -- with outdoor grills and play sets and gardens. People clearly spend time outside and probably know their neighbors. I certainly knew my neighbors when I owned a small house in a Minneapolis neighborhood. The outer ring suburbs have huge houses and yards with nothing in them. It looks as if the inhabitants come home, go inside and have no idea who their neighbors are. If you look at a Minnesota voting map, the suburbs are a red ring around the blue core cities. These are people who have never learned about community.
None the less, I should have learned to drive.
Why? I think some strange form of timidity. I should have learned. Knowing how and having a license does not mean you have to drive. Though when one my bosses asked me why I didn't drive many years ago, I said, "Because if I did, I would end by buying a car."
I think private cars are an insane way to move people around in an urban area. I think they have done huge damage to American society and to the environment. Instead of compact cities, we have enormous suburbs sprawling out and out over what used to be farmland and marshland and woods. (That's what the suburbs replace in Minnesota.)
Kids below driving age are trapped like rats in cages. So are elderly people, no longer able to drive.
City neighborhoods and inner ring suburbs here have (mostly) small houses and yards which are obviously being used -- with outdoor grills and play sets and gardens. People clearly spend time outside and probably know their neighbors. I certainly knew my neighbors when I owned a small house in a Minneapolis neighborhood. The outer ring suburbs have huge houses and yards with nothing in them. It looks as if the inhabitants come home, go inside and have no idea who their neighbors are. If you look at a Minnesota voting map, the suburbs are a red ring around the blue core cities. These are people who have never learned about community.
None the less, I should have learned to drive.
Change
I have been posting on facebook, rather than here. But now I have something to say that will take more than 420 words...
I am intimidated by change and New Things. (Why do I write science fiction? I love science fiction. I have always read it. I always wanted to write it.) In any case, I have an ancient cell phone, which I almost never carry. I am refusing to learn about twitter, even though it's very popular, and the way we are hearing about the revolutions in the Middle East. I am also refusing to learn about livejournal, linkedin, you name it. I do have a nook, which I got as a present, and I am using it, partly because it's the kind of technology that I write out.
However, I am not intimidated by new ideas or by social change, though some social change makes me angry: the tea party Republicans, attacks on funding for the poor, attacks on choice for women, re-emerging open racism, Isamophobia. This is not change for the better.
Many right wing Americans have no trouble with new gadgets. Horrible Republican congresspeople cheerfully tweet. They are perfectly happy with the goodies produced by modern technology.
But they hate the science underlying the technology, and they hate the social changes produced by technology. (I subscribe the ideas put forth in The German Ideology: social change is produced by changes in the ways people organize themselves to make a living, and changes in production are based on technological change.)
To me, it's crazy to think that technology exists in a void, independent of science and society. I figure, if you like the goodies produced by the information revolution, then you need to come to terms with the information being transmitted and the ways that information is changing people's lives.
If you like modern medicine, then you need to come to terms with the choices it makes possible and the decisions it requires.
I have little trouble with the Amish, who have decided that modern technology threatens their community and are very careful about using any modern technology. I also like the fact that the Amish do not try to change the larger society.
Anyway, I find it interesting that I do not jump to use high tech goodies, but I love new science, and I like progressive (as opposed to regressive) change. Forward into the future!
I am intimidated by change and New Things. (Why do I write science fiction? I love science fiction. I have always read it. I always wanted to write it.) In any case, I have an ancient cell phone, which I almost never carry. I am refusing to learn about twitter, even though it's very popular, and the way we are hearing about the revolutions in the Middle East. I am also refusing to learn about livejournal, linkedin, you name it. I do have a nook, which I got as a present, and I am using it, partly because it's the kind of technology that I write out.
However, I am not intimidated by new ideas or by social change, though some social change makes me angry: the tea party Republicans, attacks on funding for the poor, attacks on choice for women, re-emerging open racism, Isamophobia. This is not change for the better.
Many right wing Americans have no trouble with new gadgets. Horrible Republican congresspeople cheerfully tweet. They are perfectly happy with the goodies produced by modern technology.
But they hate the science underlying the technology, and they hate the social changes produced by technology. (I subscribe the ideas put forth in The German Ideology: social change is produced by changes in the ways people organize themselves to make a living, and changes in production are based on technological change.)
To me, it's crazy to think that technology exists in a void, independent of science and society. I figure, if you like the goodies produced by the information revolution, then you need to come to terms with the information being transmitted and the ways that information is changing people's lives.
If you like modern medicine, then you need to come to terms with the choices it makes possible and the decisions it requires.
I have little trouble with the Amish, who have decided that modern technology threatens their community and are very careful about using any modern technology. I also like the fact that the Amish do not try to change the larger society.
Anyway, I find it interesting that I do not jump to use high tech goodies, but I love new science, and I like progressive (as opposed to regressive) change. Forward into the future!
March 13, 2011
NASA! Mars!
If you could stand on Mars, what would you see? The robotic Phoenix spacecraft that landed on Mars in 2008 recorded the above spectacular panorama. The above image is actually a digital combination of over 100 camera pointings and surveys fully 360 degrees around the busy robotic laboratory. Scrolling right will reveal the rest of the panoramic image. Visible in the image foreground are circular solar panels, various Phoenix instruments, rust colored rocks, a trench dug by Phoenix to probe Mars' chemical composition, a vast plateau of dirt and dirt-covered ice, and, far in the distance, the dust colored atmosphere of Mars. Phoenix landed in the far north of Mars and has used its sophisticated laboratory to search for signs that past life might have been possible. Soil analyses have confirmed the presence of ice and gave unexpected indications of perchlorate salts. Whether Martian life could have evolved around such perchlorates is an ongoing topic of research.
Naomi Klein on Democracy Now on Climate Denial
But something very different is going on on the right, and I think we need to understand what that is. Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don't believe it's an unreasonable fear. I think it is—it's unreasonable to believe that scientists are making up the science. They're not. It's not a hoax. But actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here's just a few examples what it would mean.
Well, it would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. So, this has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade. That would have to be reversed.
You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, "you broke it, you bought it," polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, which is also against their ideology.
You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy, which also breaks their worldview.
You would have to have a really strong United Nations, because individual countries can't do this alone. You absolutely have to have a strong international architecture.
So when you go through this, you see, it challenges everything that they believe in. So they're choosing to disbelieve it, because it's easier to deny the science than to say, "OK, I accept that my whole worldview is going to fall apart," that we have to have massive investments in public infrastructure, that we have to reverse free trade deals, that we have to have huge transfers of wealth from the North to the South. Imagine actually contending with that. It's a lot easier to deny it.
March 11, 2011
Update
I see I was complaining about feeling rundown a week ago. Then I got The Cold, a little after we discovered that Patrick did not have strep throat, but did have pneumonia. He just finished his course of antibiotics and is feeling a lot better.
I seem to have a knock-down, drag-out upper respiratory infection with coughing, sneezing, sinus headaches, plugged ears and exhaustion. It's getting enough better than I am starting to notice that I need to clean house and possibly want to write.
Because I've felt too rotten to do anything productive, I have been reading the news too much. Libya is discouraging right now. Wisconsin is also discouraging. I finally switched to reading about dinosaurs, because I love them and they calm me. They were huge and wonderful and existed for so long and now the ones that remain are birds.
I wrote a poem about them something like 25 years ago, after reading a Robert Bakker article in Scientific American:
I quote it to myself from time to time, because it cheers me up.
I seem to have a knock-down, drag-out upper respiratory infection with coughing, sneezing, sinus headaches, plugged ears and exhaustion. It's getting enough better than I am starting to notice that I need to clean house and possibly want to write.
Because I've felt too rotten to do anything productive, I have been reading the news too much. Libya is discouraging right now. Wisconsin is also discouraging. I finally switched to reading about dinosaurs, because I love them and they calm me. They were huge and wonderful and existed for so long and now the ones that remain are birds.
I wrote a poem about them something like 25 years ago, after reading a Robert Bakker article in Scientific American:
Little did I realize
that every summer breeze
brings the sound of dinosaurs
singing in the trees;
And in the cool of morning
when dew is barely dry,
the cousins of Triceratops
soar across the sky.
Triceratops is dead and gone,
which proves the worth of might.
Maybe we should put our trust
in music and in flight.
I quote it to myself from time to time, because it cheers me up.
March 8, 2011
NASA Photo of the Day
How thin are the rings of Saturn? Brightness measurements from different angles have shown Saturn's rings to be about one kilometer thick, making them many times thinner, in relative proportion, than a razor blade. This thinness sometimes appears in dramatic fashion during an image taken nearly along the ring plane. The robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn has now captured another shot that dramatically highlights the ring's thinness. The above image was taken in mid January in infrared and polarized light. Titan looms just over the thin rings, while dark ring shadows on Saturn show the Sun to be above the ring plane. Close inspection of the image will show the smaller moon Enceladus on the far right. Cassini, humanity's first mission to orbit Saturn, currently has operations planned until 2017.
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