The Real Fake News

We’ve been led to believe that the reason America is so fucked-up is because there are so many crazy Americans nowadays. I pretty much agree with that, but what drove us crazy? Is it violent TV, movies and video games? No, there’s always been that kind of entertainment, in peaceful cultures and violent ones. Is it the growth of crazy Right-wing media like FOX News and many online outlets? Maybe, but what motivates people to consume that content and, more important, believe it?

One reason is Fake News, and not the kind that the MSM (Mainstream Media) like to howl about nowadays. The biggest Fake News story of this century so far isn’t “The Big Lie” that Trump actually won the 2020 election (although that is a big lie). It’s Iraq’s WMD’s. That story killed over a million people in Iraq. The Big Lie has only killed a few people so far.

If you take the MSM’s word for it, you may believe that Jan. 6 was the first time we’ve had an attempted coup in the US. The truth is that the 2000 presidential election was decided by a successful coup, but that one was carried out by the Supreme Court, so it doesn’t count. Also, the MSM’s paymasters were happy to endorse the anti-democratic anointing of George W. Bush, hence the absence of outrage in the press.

The MSM are constantly lying to us, about the nobility of our wars and the extent of their death tolls, about the virtues of Capitalism and those who command the heights of the economy. But those lies are considered acceptable, civil discourse. They justify the American Empire and Capitalism. Therefore, they are true, according to the Gatekeepers.

But, increasingly, fewer and fewer Americans are enjoying the bounty of American Empire and Capitalism. As a result, the official pronouncements of the MSM are ringing hollow to more and more people. It was fine for the CIA to go around overthrowing foreign governments in the mid-20^th Century. Americans were too well-taken-care-of to question those coups. Now that Americans are struggling, we’re more likely to doubt the nobility of their operations.

This decades-long drumbeat of deception has eroded faith in the press, government and other mainstream institutions. What we decide to believe instead of the Official Version depends on what’s available. Right-wing beliefs have a lot of money backing them up. The Elite tend to be Right-wing, so they support the spread of those ideas. The ideas also support the system that enriches the Elite, so the cycle functions as a positive feedback loop.

The thing about positive feedback loops is that, eventually, they break down, and that’s what we’re seeing right now. The only alternatives to the mainstream narrative that have found purchase in our political system are bat-shit crazy Right-wing conspiracy theories like QAnon. They may not directly threaten the Establishment, but they betray a growing ignorance and incompetence that threaten to bring down the Empire (and maybe even Capitalism with it).

It seems like the only Americans left who are ready and willing to maintain the Empire are either cynical grifters (a la Donald Trump) or fucking nutjobs (like his followers). The Democrats fall into a third category: Liberals who benefit from the System but whose ability to justify it is getting weaker by the day. (I’ll address that in the next essay.) This is not an auspicious sign for continued global hegemony. It’s more like a harbinger of doom.

The Powers That Be are left with a difficult choice: either hand the reins to the grifters and their minions, or let an anti-imperialist coalition take over. It’s basically the same choice the German elite faced in the early 1930’s, and an imperial elite will always pick the Right-wingers, no matter how evil and/or insane they may be. Our job is to make sure the choice is not left up to them.

We Need to Talk about Immigration and Jobs (and Free Trade): Just One More Time (for Now)

I forgot to include one part of this whole mess. The argument is often put forward that immigrants just do jobs that native-born Americans don’t want. I used to believe that, mainly because I didn’t wanna go pick fruit in a hot field all day. That sounds like a horrible fucking job.

Even if that argument were true (which it’s not), what does that say about us? We should just let immigrants do the dirty work because we think those jobs are beneath us? That’s pretty fucked-up (and elitist) in my (current) opinion, but it’s tempting for the reason I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Really, I think that has been deployed as an excuse for treating immigrant workers like shit. If those jobs are so shitty, why not make them better? There’s more than enough wealth to go around to pay everyone a living wage (and, actually, much better than that). You could even employ millions of people to lighten the load. (Do you think all those office jobs are “essential”? I think the pandemic put the kibosh on that Capitalist propaganda.)

The only reason this doesn’t happen is not because it would lead to a supposedly communist dystopia. It’s because the rich don’t want to give up the smallest crumb of their wealth and power. If corporations didn’t have (esp. undocumented) immigrants to employ, they would have to pay higher wages and treat their workers better. And they don’t wanna do that.

Look at the economy right now. Corporations are raking in profits they haven’t seen since the 1950’s, and they still want the Fed to raise interest rates to crash the economy just to “discipline” workers, i.e., create a recession so we’ll take whatever shitty wages and working conditions the law allows them to offer (and some it technically doesn’t).

The Rich will take whatever they can get away with, including undocumented immigrants and H-1B visas for documented immigrants. This is partly due to their own greed but also due to the legal imperative we’ve imposed on corporations to maximize profits to the exclusion of all other concerns. We have to respond by disciplining the Market to recognize priorities more important than profit.

We Need to Talk About Immigration and Jobs (and Free Trade): Part 2

Now we’re really in the weeds, the rough waters, the rapids, Whitewater. But that’s because we’re getting to the heart of our economy, and that’s an ugly sight. That’s something the Powers That Be don’t want us looking at, because it’s horrible and, if you knew the truth about it, you’d probably have a lot of trouble going to work to keep the System chugging along.

So, where were we? Oh yes, I was talking about how working-class folks hate competing with immigrants for jobs. It’s been easy for middle-class people to look down their noses at the Joe Six-packs who’ve long made this complaint. This is because middle-class folks haven’t had to compete with immigrants for jobs. Once I got a taste of that competition, my Liberal values quickly abandoned me, as I detailed in a previous essay.

It's not a pleasant issue to wade into because, like turning over a rock, you tend to find some gross shit underneath. You’ll find racism and xenophobia in spades. That’s why people on the Left shy away from this problem. But it has to be confronted and dealt with, because it’s at the root of our political crisis. Nor do I think the grossness of it is an accident or coincidence. That helps keep it out of the spotlight.

It may be hard to believe for younger generations, but blue-collar jobs in the US used to pay really well, offer great benefits and had great job security. You have to go back about 50 years to find this time in history, but it was a given for many Americans that they could go straight from high school to a factory job and spend their entire working life there. It’s not a fantasy or an ahistorical re-imagining of the past (like many other MAGA claims). It was a reality for tens of millions of Americans.

That’s why so many White people are pissed-off these days. Even though most of them can usually make ends meet, they’ve fallen a long way from where they and their ancestors used to be. Their communities have also disintegrated, leaving many of them lonely and desperate for help when they hit a rough patch.

Now imagine the anger they feel when they see immigrants doing jobs that used to be done by them. When I see Latin American roofers, I’m impressed by their work ethic. But, if you’re working-class, you might have a different reaction. You might resent their work ethic for lowering the bar for your own pay, benefits, job security, working conditions, etc. Those blue-collar jobs pay much less now, and whom do the Joe Six-Packs blame for that? Obviously, the employers, but they can’t discipline corporations via politics, because both parties are in thrall to Big Business. So they direct their anger at the only convenient targets: the immigrants.

If the immigrants weren’t there, companies would have to employ native-born people, or so the thinking goes. At one of my old jobs, they brought in people from India to do work that Americans could’ve easily done, simultaneously undermining and reinforcing the hypothesis in the previous sentence. It just goes to show how far companies will go to hire immigrants. Of course, they’re only able to do that because the government lets them, issuing visas for the workers. Even though the Market demands that employers seek out the cheapest labor, this boils down to government policy (as all economic issues do).

The Hormel factory in Austin is a perfect case study. A strike by the workers in 1985-86 led to many of them being replaced by immigrants who were paid less. Before that, the jobs had been well-paying with great benefits and security. Now, they’re not. The unions were broken, and many workers were replaced with immigrants. The immigrants are pawns in this game, but they take the brunt of the abuse because they’re the most vulnerable and the consequences for attacking them are the least.

Is the employment of immigrants in the US the cause of the working class’s impoverishment? No, it’s just a symptom. The American Empire’s internal and external proletariats are being pitted against each other, while my people, the American middle class, have reaped the benefits in cheaper goods and services. But, unless we restore the strength of organized labor and enact more protectionist economic policies, the Market will come for our jobs and wealth next.

We Need to Talk about Immigration and Jobs (and Free Trade)

PROLOGUE

Now that we’ve gotten through the midterms with the Republic still intact, I think it’s safe to return to my regularly scheduled blog, already in progress. Seriously though, I wasn’t sure if the Union would survive this week. I probably shouldn’t count my chickens just yet. There are still several undecided elections and a runoff to go in Georgia. But the MAGA chuds don’t seem interested in attempting a coup for the GOP in toto like they did for Trump.

We seem to have fallen victim to that ancient Chinese curse (which is neither Chinese nor ancient): May you live in interesting times. But all the drama infecting our lives revolves around the simple fact that our politics no longer addresses fundamental, kitchen-sink issues. The Powers That Be refuse to allow the economic reforms needed, and Everyday People lack the political consciousness and community cohesion to overturn the elites’ programs.

What we need is more money and benefits for workers. But, rather than meet that simple, easy demand, the Ruling Class gives us (by way of the Mainstream Media) boogeymen to distract us and fill us with mind-controlling fear. It was most transparent in the midterm elections’ home stretch. The Republican ads were replete with this fear-mongering. The Democratic ads also fear-mongered, but at least their warnings were legitimate. The Dems have no intention of defunding the police, turning your kids trans or teaching them Critical Race Theory (not that Republicans even know what that is). Meanwhile, the GOP has shown every intention of banning (and criminalizing) abortion when- and wherever possible.

The mystification of US politics has given the rich wealth beyond the dreams of avarice (and corporate profits they haven’t seen since the 1950’s). It has also given the Military-Industrial Complex virtual carte blanche on “defense” spending and overseas operations. But you can always have too much of a good thing, and I think the Establishment has sown the seeds of its own destruction.

Now we have come to a pretty pass. The Elites’ blocking of even minor economic reforms has given an opening to the Far Right, the only fringe political group the Elites will allow in the MSM (and sometimes actively support). A radical bloc is taking over the GOP, with the support of the party’s base, and their agenda is noxious to most of the country, even to the Democrats who, up until now, have been willing to drift Right along with the Republicans. This is causing a national schism so great that I don’t think our current political system can mend it. I think the dissolution of the Union is almost inevitable at this point.

You can bet your sweet bippy that this is the opposite of what the Establishment wants. It wants to keep a lid on all that fear and anger, directing it against useful targets (e.g., immigrants, racial minorities, the poor) when necessary, but still keeping it at a low simmer. Stupidly though, they keep turning up the temperature without letting us vent. Now we’re boiling over.

By indulging their greed, the Elites have broken the Bipartisan Consensus. They had a nice thing going for almost 250 years now: an empire with an internal proletariat that was willing to accept scraps as long as those scraps were big enough to keep them well-fed. But the Powers That Be couldn’t leave well enough alone. They just had to keep expanding their slice of the American Pie, no matter how desperate it made the rest of us.

Now that even the petit bourgeoisie is losing patience with the status quo, the game is up. Economic insecurity and thwarted political energy have reached such levels that mystified expressions of discontent like Donald Trump and QAnon are replacing actual political movements. But, hey, why not indulge in fantasy when no political movement able to materially improve your life seems possible?

The rest of this essay is devoted to one of those kitchen-sink issues that, if addressed, could help us out of our current mess. But, like I wrote in the previous essay, I’m not interested in saving the empire. I just wanna minimize the damage that could result from its breakup.

PART 1

I set myself quite the task in my last essay: saving America, or, more accurately, keeping the whole country from exploding in an orgy of the violence and the death and the blood and the hey-now. (That last part should be read in the voice of Dr. Frink from The Simpsons.) At first, I thought I could tackle the whole subject in one essay. But the more I wrote, the more I realized it was too big a topic. So I’m gonna try and break it up into more manageable portions.

This will be the first part of my series on keeping the country from blowing up. It’s a good topic to tackle first, I think, because it’s one that most Americans seem unaware of. It also explains a lot of the material conditions that are driving us insane. This little bugaboo is trade policy, specifically “free trade agreements,” which have a suitably Orwellian name. These agreements are used to feed “the imperial wealth-pump,” a useful term cooked up by my favorite blogger, John Michael Greer, a.k.a. the Archdruid. (His Right-wing bias has become more apparent in recent years, so, if you read him, just keep that in mind.)

Free Trade sucks the wealth out of the imperial periphery, i.e. the Third World or Global South or whatever-you-wanna-call-it, and funnels it to the imperial core, i.e., the First World: the USA, Canada and Western Europe. Minerals like oil, gold and rare earths are mined with little regard for the environmental effects. Agricultural products are grown in ecologically destructive ways, turning what should be a sustainable or even regenerative industry into an extractive one. Sweatshops and factories are opened by First World-based companies (either directly or indirectly) that work the locals to death at slave wages.

These resources and products are then shipped off to be consumed by the First World. Of course, the spoils are not shared equally among the imperial citizens of the core. The elites get the lion’s share and the rest of us get the scraps from their table. But this is still enough to keep many of us in the US at a higher standard of living than the vast majority of the world. There’s even enough to keep most denizens of the First World satisfied, or at least content and/or atomized enough not to revolt. Perhaps most important, there’s also enough left over to enrich elites in the Third World, in order to bribe them to run the imperial wealth-pump on their end. They’re the overseers in this system.

The Third World is thus impoverished, driving many people to migrate to the First World. This is the part that is completely missing from our political discourse. Conservatives demonize and dehumanize migrants, while Liberals defend them, but they both miss the bigger picture: MIGRANTS DON’T WANT TO BE MIGRANTS. THEY DON’T WANT TO LEAVE THEIR HOMES. It’s not like they were dreaming of America. They weren’t singing that Neil Diamond song. They weren’t yearning for Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.” They don’t think this is the land of milk and honey. They aren’t fucking Fievel. (FYI: That’s a reference to the 1986 animated film An American Tail.)

We’re destroying their economies, wiping out their livelihoods and forcing them to come here. The First World is the only place left for them. They’re just following the wealth we stole from their countries. Of course, that doesn’t work so well for Global Capitalism. While Free Trade drops barriers to the movement of capital, it restricts the movement of people. The US-Mexico border wasn’t militarized until NAFTA took effect in 1994. This is necessary to achieve wage arbitrage, i.e., increasing profits by moving jobs to lower-wage countries.

I actually got to see the border walls in March of ‘94 while on a missionary trip to Tijuana during high school. (I went to a Catholic high school, but we didn’t do any proselytizing on this trip, thank god.) We visited the wall where it met the Pacific Ocean. There was graffiti that said, “Welcome to the new Berlin Wall.” We nodded in supposedly-knowing agreement, though I don’t think I understood the issues at that time. I don’t remember anyone mentioning NAFTA. Maybe they did and I just forgot. But it wasn’t until I was radicalized a decade later that I began to grasp the political economy of the border.

Instead of confronting our responsibility for the deprivation of the Third World, the discourse in the US takes a nationalist turn into the dumpster. Conservatives have a predictably racist and xenophobic angle on the problem. They think migrants come here because their countries suck because their cultures suck because the people suck.

Liberals take a nicer, but still misguided tack. They correctly point out that migrants are just trying to make a better life for themselves. But they completely ignore the fact that we destroyed their old lives. They acknowledge the historical legacy of colonialism in impoverishing the Third World but dismiss or remain conveniently ignorant of the role of the Global Economy in the Third World’s continuing destitution.

Worse, Libs disdain the anger of the working class at having to compete with migrants for jobs. These concerns are disparaged as racism and xenophobia (as in this episode of South Park). This keeps the issue off the table because very few people want to be thought of as racist or xenophobic. Therefore, the legitimate economic grievances of the working class are left to fester in the dark until they turn into real racism and xenophobia and Culture War bullshit. Because we’ve dismissed their justified concerns, now we have to deal with their insanity.

There’s more to say on this topic, but I’m gonna need some time to choose my words carefully because we’re heading into rough waters. Stay tuned!