The Year Democracy Died in America

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

–Alex Carey, “Taking the Risk out of Democracy:  Propaganda in the U.S. and Australia”

The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will go down in history as the decision which killed the possibility of real democracy in the United States.  Assuming, of course, that at some future date, it is still possible to write history books, rather than tomes of propaganda supporting the corporatist-statist idolatry which will be left, should a cultural and social revolt fail to materialize, and soon.

Basically, the Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that electioneering communications may be paid for by corporate entities without any oversight whatsoever.  Conservatives claim that this is an evenhanded application of existing law, and that labor unions are also allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money, so what’s the big deal?

The big deal, of course, is that a) corporate entities – including labor unions – are not people, and ought not be granted personal rights, such as free speech; b) corporate entities are uniquely capable of cooption by unknown and unknowable economic and social forces, including forces outside this country, and with ill-intent for our Constitution and its associated freedoms,  and c) unlimited access to electioneering media means that only the very rich will be able to afford to influence election outcomes.

“That’s just class warfare!” cry the conservatives, conveniently sidestepping the first two objections through a sleight-of-hand whose demogoguery is just a harbinger of things to come.

Hmmm…..  One class cleanly and neatly defines itself into permanent political power… and its opponents are guilty of class warfare?

Let there be no delusions of corporatist “good intentions”.  The entirety of the political debate, under Citizens United, will now be framed by institutions with no motivation whatsoever other than corporate profits.  What does this mean?

• Weakened enforcement of the Clean Air Act.  Smog, air pollution, sudden infant death syndrome, and lung cancer?  Deal with it – government intervention to prevent air pollution “Creates deficits and costs American jobs!”  That’s the new conventional wisdom, as bought and paid for by the Coal Powered Electrical Plants of America.
• Weakened enforcement of the Clean Water Act.  Infertility, diabetes, metabolic disorder, liver diseases and hepatic disorders?  Deal with it – government enforcement of limitations on pesticide and herbicide runoff “Creates deficits and costs American jobs!”  That’s the new conventional wisdom, as bought and paid for by Archer-Daniels-Midland, Monsanto, and Dow Chemical.
• No action whatsoever on climate change.  Famine, water shortages, third world hunger, disease?  Deal with it – “Global warming is a myth.”  That’s the new conventional wisdom, as bought and paid for by Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, Sonic Automotive, and a host of others.
• Infant mortality?  Inner city crime?  Lower standard of living – especially for marginal populations such as migrant workers, children of single mothers or from broken homes, or from historically impoverished communities?  The solution to all these problems is tax cuts for the wealthy.  That’s the new conventional wisdom as bought and paid for by AIG, CitiCorp, Goldman Sachs, and a host of others.

The ability to manipulate public opinion on the part of a small corporatocracy – less than one tenth of 1% of the American public is part of the influential decision-making class responsible for the management of publicly held corporations – ought not to be underestimated.  As Noam Chomsky pointed out in “Manufacturing Consent:  The Political Economy of the Mass Media”, the filter of corporate ownership of the media is virtually impossible to overcome.

ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN really are biased, just as the right-wing zealots of Fox News would have you believe.  But they are not biased in favor of Liberalism.  They are biased in favor of Disney, General Electric, and God-only-knows what other corporate entities.  They are biased in favor of profits and in favor of stable advertising revenue.  They are no more interested in genuine investigative journalism than they are in taking vows of celibacy and poverty.  They are not “news” organizations, they are “sales” organizations.

Even “oppositional” media is typically vulnerable to cooption by corporate sponsorship.  One of our personal favorite bloggers is Nate Silver, whose fivethirtyeight.com often comprises a lonely objective outlet of political reporting; however, Mr. Silver’s pet project has been subsumed by the New York Times in the past few months; thus far, there have been no obvious or evident changes in the way the site operates… but the very nature of corporate sponsorship means it is inevitable that eventually some form of substantive lack will appear in fivethirtyeight.com (or rather, not appear), which will be a direct result of being a subset of corporate culture.

There are some limited reasons for optimism, in spite of the overwhelming strength of the forces arrayed for self-interested exploitation of everything and everyone.  There is very little reason to believe that anything will be accomplished in the federal government for the foreseeable future, of course.  Democrats had fairly overwhelming control of the legislative and executive branches for the past two years, and only managed to worsen the corporate stranglehold on government.  Republicans are about to wrest at least one house of the legislature from the Democrats, and not only do Republicans not have a solution to this problem, they actively seek to make the problem worse.  Tea Party slogans about “taking back our country” are rife with Orwellian irony, as the “typical American” who purportedly comprises the Tea Party will have less, not more, power in a Tea Party political universe.

Nevertheless, there are means to lessen the stranglehold of corporatism, and those means lay squarely in the provence of creative individuals – corporations may emulate, but may never fully coopt the creativity of human beings.  Keeping truth alive in the public conversation, even when it may not be heard by everyone over the din of propaganda, will eventually lead to acceptance – too late, in some cases, to be sure, but it will eventually be heard.  In the case of global warming, for example, the State of Texas will have to accept, in spite of the oil industry’s opposition, that in 2035, with higher temperatures and not enough water for businesses or residences, let alone agricultural users, maybe, just maybe, there was something to all those scientists’ warnings way back when…

Corporate ownership of media ought not be confused with the notion of corporate control of media – the pervasiveness of internet usage, as an example, means that even where corporations coopt outlets which were once free, such as youtube.com, or nominally independent sites, such as drudgereport.com (on the right) or dailykos.com (on the left), there will be someone somewhere who catches them in the middle of their shenanigans, and the truth will out. 

The number of times FoxNews.com has posted an embarrassingly revelatory bit of propaganda, only to have it taken down minutes later, and yet have the damage done by some clever blogger somewhere with MWSnap and a free minute or two to post the evidence, is now beyond count.  Pervasiveness of a medium may overwhelm the perverseness of that medium.  There is just too much interactive media out there for even the most diligent censor to excise it all.

The danger is that it is fairly easy to drown out a single voice.  It doesn’t take a secret police force to silence a voice of reason – another of Chomsky’s favorite sayings is that “propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”  The ability of corporatist media to generate a mob slobbering and salivating with the bloviations of a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh can only be countered by the creation of an equal and opposite mob of bespectacled intellectuals, dripping with witticisms and understanding, and maybe the sweat of their brows, particularly if they have been gardening, and harvesting, and gossiping with their fellow farmers’ market attendees.

We would much prefer to be members of a community whose convictions are formed over tea, or barbecue, or mutual fence repairs.  That may not be the vision of Justices Roberts, and Scalia, and Thomas, but we can’t help but feel contempt for them as being modern day incarnations of Justice Taney.  Only, instead of sending Dred Scott back to slavery, Roberts et al. have opted to have their judicial robes sized for corporate logos.

One logo they will not be wearing is that of Big Myrtle’s Tea Shoppe and Egg Emporium.

Happy farming!

Onward Through the Fog (or, hopefully, lack thereof...)

As a preliminary step to putting solar panels on our house, we have received an energy audit from the City of College Station.  The city has a wonderful program whereby they pay a considerable portion of the cost of installing solar panels and the necessary equipment to connect the photovoltaic system to the current electrical grid.  Naturally, to guarantee that this investment is properly assured of success, they want to confirm we are not wasting energy anywhere else in the house.

We expected a huge laundry list of things we would have to change; in fact, we don’t expect to go solar until next year at this time at the earliest.  We wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to fix not only the ‘low hanging fruit’ (things like weatherstripping, etc., which we have been slowly but surely handling on a weekly basis), but also any major structural problems.

We were pleasantly surprised by how short this list of necessary fixes really is.

Our air-conditioner, perhaps the most important piece of equipment in a Texas home, is in good shape.  We need to repair the ceiling of the A/C closet, because it is basically open air to the attic, which the inspector estimated is costing us roughly 150 kilowatts a month.  That’s the sum total of major repairs necessary, though.  Everything else falls under the category of tweaks.

Some of the more interesting suggestions:

• Heat the chicken coop in winter with a passive solar water heater.  This actually could be part of our rainwater collection system, although we are going to have to think long and hard about how to make this work correctly.  Basically,  the principle would be to place a large black water tank alongside the chicken coop; the sun will warm the water (even in the middle of February), and this in turn will keep the coop warm.
• Solid barriers for walls of the chicken coop.  This is actually something we were thinking about for summer cooling, as well – we are thinking along the lines of some kind of open-and-close contraption like the lean-to closing of a roadside kiosk, where we could provide additional shade for the ladies in summer, and perhaps make the coop more critter-proof at night.
• Digital monitor for the Air Conditioner.  At a cost of roughly $25, the estimated savings are significant, because we have a less-than-reliable analog monitor at present.
• A new grape arbor for the western exposure.  We actually intended to do this already, but our intrepid inspector assured us that there will be a significant energy savings from having vines (like our trusty muscadines!) soak up the sun’s energy before it ever reaches the house.  In winter, the deciduous vines will actually allow sunlight through, so there will not be any problem in terms of extra heating costs – it’s an all-season arrangement!

Between these small changes and the institution of our rainwater collection system, we figure we have plenty to accomplish between now and next October (when we hope to go solar).  That’s not even taking into account the gardening, or the organizing of Pulletpalooza, or the rearing of two junior Myrtle Maintenance personell.  We’ll keep you posted.

Happy farming!

The Spice of Life

There are two related aphorisms by which we check our overexuberance from time to time.  First, ‘You can be a fundamentalist anything,’ a reminder that a tendency to extremism is possible regardless of what philosophy you espouse.  And second, ‘Just because something is indigenous does not necessarily mean it is healthy,’ a reminder that going for the novel and recreating the past ought not replace doing solid research and making appropriate choices.

We recently got very excited by the discovery of a series of books about “The Lost Crops of Africa”, not least because one of the first vegetables mentioned in volume 2 was Amaranth, which is one of the plants we are experimenting with this year.  “Lost Crops” goes on at great length in rather excitable prose about the benefits of Amaranth as a nutritious potherb, about how it grows in sun or shade, elevation or the plains, humid or arid climates, how easy it is to grow… by the time we were done reading the glowing evaluation of Amaranth, we were ready to sell the stuff door-to-door.

Then we read an equally glowing account of Marama, and the adrenaline came back to proportionally healthier levels; that stuff ain’t growin’ in our yard.  Sorry.  We are exceptionally happy for the Khoisan peoples of the Kalahari Desert that there is a plant like this to provide seeds and tubers with high protein and moisture content, but honestly, there is just no way we could possibly grow every exciting new thing to come along, especially when it isn’t being actively cultivated anywhere in the world.  Myrtle likes experimentation, but sometimes somebody somewhere has to be even-tempered enough to say “Whoa, Bessie!”

Ultimately, every gardener has to make some fairly basic choices regarding what to plant.  We like variety, and this is well represented on our “to do” board.  We have categories for “Planning”, “On Order”, “Germinating”, “In Production”, and “Dormant”, covering the gamut of things we’d like to plant but have not found sources for, things we have already purchased and will soon plant, things we have planted, things currently fruiting, and perennials and fruit which are currently out of season. 

We only have a half-acre lot, but even so, we are at 60 varieties and counting on the big board in all categories.  Part of this is by design – we wish to avoid the perils of mono-cropping at all costs, to the point of trying to not plant even two tomato plants of the same variety next to each other whenever possible, although that degree of pickiness may not be practicable on the macro level.

Part of this cornucopia of variety, however, is due purely to enthusiasm.  We see something new or different, and we want it.  Like everything else in life, this has its ups and downs.  The advantages to giving in to such impulses are obvious – if you are excited about a plant, you are more likely to be careful in tending it.  We just planted currants, for example, and even though they are just seedlings, they are getting far more attention than our native muscadine grapes receive.  Every advantage these out-of-region specialty plants can get, we intend to give.

The flip side, however, is serious and important.  Because excitement can lead to the procurement of plants which are unique, it often means getting plants which are not well adapted.  The aforementioned currants, in our case, are a dicey proposition.  They may do well because our yard represents a microclimate they would not encounter elsewhere in Texas – we have sufficient moisture available from collected rainwater to offset the drought which would shrivel them even fifty feet away from their new home, and plenty of shade to protect them from the noonday sun of August and September – but then again, they may do very poorly due to the undeniable fact that they are Zone 5 plants and we are Zone 8, verging on 9.

To counterbalance our enthusiasm, we remember some general principles learned from a lifetime of overcoming obstacles.  The first principle in avoiding catastrophe while doing something risky is to counterbalance your risk with something equally safe.  This is part of why we have so many fruit vines around the place, particularly the native Muscadines.  We couldn’t kill those off if we wanted to.  Between blackberries (which grow wild in the Brazos Valley on every fence bordering every borrow ditch) and wild grapes, we will always have success with something, even if our crazy new ideas don’t go over so well.

Then, too, there is the basic fact that old standby crops like tomatoes, peppers, cowpeas and broccoli all thrive in chicken poop compost.  We can afford to take a chance on a few harebrained schemes like currants, given that the success rate with the staples will remain fairly steady, so long as we are willing to muck out the chicken coop.

So, we won’t be planting all of the “Lost Crops of Africa”, nor will we plant every exotic from the Arctic Circle, nor every colorful plant we hear about from the Amazon basin, but we will occasionally take a stab at something out of the ordinary.  We tend to think of cayenne as the spice of life, but variety comes in a close second.

Happy farming!

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