Climate change, hot air and God

I rather enjoyed President Obama's inaugural speech yesterday - a masterpiece of liberal rhetoric designed to tickle the political G-spots of American bourgeois lefties from start to finish. I can confidently predict that it will all be downhill from here, of course. Yes, Barack wants to be nice to women, gays, ethnic minorities etc – and I'm all in favour. But being a proper lefty, I was listening out for what we Marxists call the 'structure'. Culture wars are part of the 'superstructure': the social characteristics that stem from a society's economic structure. Did we hear anything about replacing the failed capitalist system? Absolutely not. The point of all this identity politics stuff is that however welcome it is, it distracts from economic inequality and destruction, and it doesn't challenge capitalism iin the slightest. You only have to look at the Stonewall guide to 'good' employers, or take a walk down Canal Street to realise that capitalism loves liberation: whole new markets are opened up, appropriated, co-opted and tamed.

We also didn't hear anything about the United States's ongoing and illegal war against Afghan wedding parties, Pakistani teenagers and anyone else hit by a drone strike authorised personally by the President and executed by some gum-chewing schmuck operating a PS3 controller in Rat's Ass, Arizona. In case you missed it, the US has decided that any male of combat age in a strike zone can be assumed to be an enemy combatant – which means that you don't have to declare any civilian casualties whenever you drop a drone. If your village is a 'strike zone' (don't expect a postcard letting you know), then you're automatically a militant.  Which strikes me as utterly immoral as well as illegal. But then the US is bombing Pakistan, with which it isn't at war, so we shouldn't expect too much.

Supposed liberal Presidents (and Prime Ministers) like nothing more than to drop high explosives on distant brown people. It reassures wavering voters that they're Tough: Tough on Terror, Tough on National Defence, Tough on Complicated Arguments About Why We Might Want To Think Twice Before Bombing Another Poor Country. They want to belong, surrounded as they are by chaps in uniform and other persuasive chaps from Acronymic Agencies (MI5, CIA etc) who promise them induction into their Hermeneutic Secrets. You're nobody until (as the UK PM has to do on his/her first day) you've sat down and written out fresh instructions to nuclear submarine commanders.

But the bit that caught my attention was Obama's reference to climate change. Obviously he's contradicting a large section of his electorate and an even larger section of the political class by stating that climate change exists. Good for him. But the way he framed it was really interesting. He said this:

"We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations," "That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That's what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared," Obama said.

Interesting. It hints at a US equivalent of the Big Society, except with meaning because so many Americans are practising religious types that it's conceivable that an appeal to them on religious grounds - making an 'end run' around the vested interests of politicians and lobbyists - might work. Certainly here in the UK the mainstream churches accept climate science as accurate and at least don't oppose mitigation action. There are even some modest attempts to promote ecological health on C of E land, like the Caring for God's Acre network.

But I'm not convinced that Obama's call for faith-based environmentalism works. The religious debate about how to see the environment is split between those who think God gave the care of the planet into our hands ('wise stewardship'), and those who say he gave the use of it to us. 'Go forth and multiply', he allegedly said: not a warning against over-enthusiastic multiplying and the consequent draining of resources.

There are plenty of Godly types who see the bit about 'dominion' over the earth and endorsement of whatever foul things we do to the planet. You only have to look at Robinson Crusoe, a seminal book in the development of Protestant Capitalism to see how rape and pillage becomes a religious duty. In it, Robinson is marooned on a desert island (the earth) and carefully records in his diary (Protestants were encouraged to examine their spiritual development in diaries) what he's got and what he does with it. Everything on the island is at his disposal – including Man Friday who lacking the grace of Christianity, is fair game, just another resource. The theory is that if you don't use what's lying around – oil, mercury, coltan, blood diamonds – you're wasting the resources God put there for your use. If you get stressy about the damage done by use or overuse of these resources, you Lack Faith. God won't let us all perish: he'll turn up to save us from ourselves. Again. (This only works if you believe in the New Testament nice God: Old Testament Angry God seemed to quite enjoy a bit of nationwide Smiting).

And if that's not dumb enough, there are the Christians who accept that climate change is destroying the world, and think it's a sin to interfere. You'll find quite a lot of them in the United States's odder denominations. Rapture-ready churches aren't exactly new, there were plenty around in Medieval Europe and later, but they're only a major force in the US. They hold that the End Times are imminent. Destructive climate change is one of the ways in which this world will end, they say. It's God's plan. If you reduce CO2, or plant trees, or drive a Prius, you are Working For Satan by opposing God's plan (apparently Star Trek IV is particularly guilty for promoting 'environmental Pantheism').

Will Obama's sneaky attempt to get the god-botherers onside work? That depends on the strength and effort the God's Acre Christians put in, the opposition of the Rapturists and of course political will. My guess is that it won't. When the Americans stop thinking that the answer to climate change is to turn up the air conditioning, then something will happen. And that means basically never.

'All Grown Up': the politics edition

A while back, I joked on Twitter that the Daily Mail's paedophilic tendencies (look out for 'all grown up', which means 'everybody look at this child's breasts') meant that its coverage of Obama's election victory would major on lubricious references to his underage daughters' appearances. LULZ all round from my Twitter massive (currently 1001 strong).

In an idle moment, I decided to test my thesis.

Mommy's girl grown up: How Malia Obama has blossomed from an awkward teen to America's next  icon as she follows in the First Lady's footsteps

Oh dear. I won't reproduce the images partly because that's how the Mail fills its pages, and because I know my readers aren't the type to leer over little girls.

Looking every bit as poised and elegant as her mother, the long-limbed first daughter has taken the awkward out of adolescence with ease.

That's right. Mommy's legal. And Malia looks just like her. So it's OK to lick your screen in a frenzy of lust. Get a load of those legs!

the 14-year-old blossoming from the President's wide-eyed 'baby' into a self-assured young woman

Oh yeah. You know what they're saying. 'Blossoming'. She's open for business, ladies and gentlemen.

'The torch has been passed,' said the designer Gregory Parkinson, who sent out a press release after a recent sighting of the White House's resident teenager

'I have every right to alert the nation to the sexual development of a 14 year-old girl' said paedophile-enabling attention-seeker Gregory Parkinson as though he had any connection to the total stranger at all, 'and rags like the Daily Mail will lap it up'.

Lucky magazine's executive fashion director, Alexis Bryan Morgan, told USA Today: 'I'm hard pressed to think of anyone, period, who had such great style potential at 14.

'It's any hack's right to comment on the physique of a teenage girl whose father is politically important' said Alexis Bryan Morgan. 'Mindless speculation and ludicrous statements about a child's 'style potential' is what modern journalism is all about. Come round to my house: I've a child even younger and you're welcome to write what you want. Oil up, gents!'

In case your excitement is waning, back to the body:

she embraces her lean figure
'She's smart in that she seems to be aware so many eyes are on her

Wonder how that came about?

Since turning 14 on Independence Day, she has slowly started to tick off some age-appropriate milestones - like her first mobile phone

Ah yes. The 'milestones' are coming. And we know there's one particular milestone the Mail has in mind. Like the Sun's countdown to Charlotte Church's age of consent. Though from the text, the legal niceties don't seem so important to the paper or its writers.

In fact, it seems the only person struggling with Malia's coming-of-age is the President himself

In another piece about how the Obamas try to keep their children out of the public eye (illustrated with dozens more photos), the old grump is quoted as saying:

'I'm very keen on protecting her privacy'.

What an old fuddy-duddy he must be, getting all huffy when popular newspapers invite readers to linger over the 'long-limbed' child. After all, we all know that any adolescent's psychological health is aided by being leched over in the press. 

I wonder how all this (and the dozens of accompanying photographs) fit the PCC code section 6 clause V:

Editors must not use the fame, notoriety or position of a parent or guardian as sole justification for publishing details of a child’s private life.

On other pages: 'Outrage as more celebrity paedos outed'.

Obligatory election commentary

Excellent photo by Justin Sullivan

OK. My all-purpose Reckon on the election.

Overall result: generally good. Obama's electoral college numbers higher than I predicted, even though I erred on the side of optimism. I was surprised Wisconsin went Democrat - Republican V-P candidate Ryan is from there, and Scott Walker survived a recall vote after he smashed the unions, so I thought it would trend rightwards.

Also pleased that the various rape-friendly republicans (Akin, Mourdock etc) lost, and that more women, a lesbian and an Asian-American were elected. Bernie Sanders, who sometimes calls himself a socialist, won by 71% to 25% in Vermont. The Senate is up to 19 women… of 100 seats. Not exactly a revolution. Sadly Michele Bachmann, who claimed the Founding Fathers abolished slavery (clue: they all owned slaves) amongst other idiocies, was re-elected by 3000 votes.

Obama's weak version of healthcare survives, and he'll probably get to pick one or two Supreme Court judges. In a constitutionally-based political economy, this is in some ways as important as winning an election.

And now for the backlash: I'm getting mine in early.

Keeping Romney out was probably a good thing: he's a naked hyper-capitalist who would have tried to strip government down to total military dominance of the globe and little else. But that's about it. Obama is a symbolic candidate - in terms of identity politics, he makes the US look progressive. Perhaps some black kids will be inspired to follow a political path. But in political terms, he's a no-change conservative. He wants more black, gay, poor and female faces in the corridors of power, which is a good thing. But he wants this wider pool of people to carry on doing the same things, principally maintain a capitalist model which has manifestly failed the world's citizens (and not simply over the past 5 years), he wants to ignore the looming disaster of climate change, and he wants the American Hegemon to extend its global domination. Poor people around the world will continue to be paid less for making more consumer good for people like us. Pakistani weddings will still be illegally bombed by drones. Bond markets and hedge funds will continue to avoid tax, subvert sound economics and be bailed out by taxpayers. Americans will continue to drive gas-guzzlers, suck in oil-shale, run the A/C and shoot each other in massive numbers. Israel will continue to run open-air concentration camps for Palestinians.

Still, we'll all feel better knowing that presiding over all this is someone young and cool. I'm genuinely pleased that nasty old racists like Bill O'Reilly, homophobes and rape apologists are pissed off. But when we all go home, the US and hence the world will still be run by and for a tiny clique of obscenely rich people for their own benefit. Some of them may not fit the WASP demographic, but they're still quite literally in a class of their own.

Another of my favourite moments from the campaign. A real Freudian slip

Meanwhile in America…

Your Republican candidates:
1. Mitt Romney - billionaire who claims the Republicans are about looking after the 'little guy'. Believes that Americans (but not the native ones or the black ones) are the lost tribe of Israel and that God gave them some new commandments on solid gold slabs which were carelessly misplaced. He also believes in converting your dead ancestors, which is how it came about that the Jewish and other victims of the Holocaust are now officially all Mormons.


He's the man in the middle:

Caption competition: 'these are much easier to carry round than gold tablets'? Or 'Wow, I didn't know these came in lower than $500 bills. How cute'. 

2. Rick Perry. Governor of Texas and very much in the GWB mould (i.e. vicious and dumb and not averse to the N-word): he's already accused the chairman of the Federal Reserve of treason and applied Biblical wisdom to the recession and the BP oil spill:

"I think in America from time to time we have to go through some difficult times — and I think we’re going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles of you know, you don't spend all the money. You work hard for those six years and you put up that seventh year in the warehouse to take you through the hard times. And not spending all of our money. Not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks because at the end of the day, it's slavery. We become slaves to government." 

3. Hermann Cain: sex pest, pizza shill, possibly corrupt, madman. 

'It will be a twenty foot wall, barbed wire, electrified on the top, and on this side of the fence, I'll have that moat that President Obama talked about. And I would put those alligators in that moat!" - Cain on his illegal immigration plan.'

He did this as a presidential ad (warning: it will sicken you):





4. Michele Bachmann: 

 ''Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.''

“But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”

Er… no, they were slave owners. 

'[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said she has even said she is trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that 2,000 years ago.''

''And what a bizarre time we're in, when a judge will say to little children that you can't say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it.''

''Normalization (of gayness) through desensitization. Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of 'The Lion King' for instance, and a teacher might say, 'Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?' The message is: I'm better at what I do, because I'm gay.''

''I don't know where they're going to get all this money because we're running out of rich people in this country.''

''I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.''

“The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. Its all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.”

Under normal circumstances, you'd assume that Obama would have to be caught in bed, with a goat, wiping his bottom on the Bible before he lost this election. Now, I'm not too sure… Still, it'll be amusing until one of these loons decides to nuke Eurabia (that's what they call Europe now because we're all living under the Muslim yoke. Apparently.  

Americans!

This woman is supposedly a serious politician in the US (via Doonesbury):

"He personally told Muslims he is a Muslim. Read his lips."

-- RNC committeewoman Kim Lehman tweeting about Obama

"[In his Cairo speech] it didn't appear to me he said Christianity was part of his religion."

-- Lehman, explaining her tweet

"I'm a Christian."

-- Obama, in the speech she refers to.

Oh dear. That country does seem to be becoming a very intolerant, shrill and reactionary place. What happened to debating the issues?  

Plashing Vole reaches the White House

Typically, the state of US (and British) media is so degenerate that they'd rather talk about me than discuss Obama's successful re-regulation of the banksters.



I was merely passing through, on my way to share a fat cigar with Bill. I had no intention of stealing the President's limelight.

Sometimes I feel the need for a killing spree

The Guardian points out that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged has rocketed to the top of the bestseller charts in this recessionary time. I'm not surprised: a lot of evil, greedy, fascistic, selfish people crawl out from under their rocks (Rand described altruism as 'evil'). What's really annoying is that the people buying this insane (and awful) novel is that they're the ones who've caused the current disaster.

Atlas Shrugged is about the collapse of America which follows the withdrawal of capitalists from American society, into a compound. Eventually the rest of the country ('parasites') have to beg them to save the nation.

Quite frankly, I'd like the capitalists to hole up in a compound. We could call it, er, um, a PRISON. Then the rest of us could look after each other and clear up the mess. The real-life capitalists are upset that Obama wants to help ordinary Americans. Haven't they noticed that a) greedy selfish capitalists caused this mess and b) that they've been helped first: untold billions to bail out banks and failed industries?

Most haven't noticed this glaring error. Rick Santelli's rant on CNBC summed up Randian philosophy perfectly. He's a former derivatives salesman turned 'journalist'. Asked for his opinion, he streamed forth this garbage from the trading floor, exhorting the traders (all working for bankrupt, taxpayer-saved organisations) to boo the 'losers' who saved them, and need help with their mortgages. The telling moment is towards the end when he describes the traders as a representative cross-section of America - despite them all being white, middle-aged men.

According to the Guardian, Republican Congressmen like John Campbell are giving out copies of the book because we're living in the early stages of the Atlas Shrugged situation. Not exactly: a combination of capitalist greed and capitalist selfishness has caused this. The central conundrum is this: efficient Randy capitalism demands selfishness - which damages the economy but enriches the individual. I don't think that co-operative capitalism would help, but the individualist version guarantees that it destroys itself. There's no motivation for keeping the system running smoothly. We need the effective capitalists to withdraw their efforts - then we can go about creating a society which believes in community rather than get-rich-quick, beggar-thy-neighbour greed. Very depressingly, one of my sisters had a copy of Atlas Shrugged. I realised then that there was an unbridgeable philosophical gap between us that made further serious symbolic pointless.

Rather than us begging the 'achievers' to save us, they've begged us to save them - and then stabbed us in the back when we've done so. No gallows are high enough for these bastards.

Yet more books

I'm feeling seriously rough today - swimming didn't help - and I've got a big pile of marking to do. Or rather, I should have, but 18 essays are mysteriously missing in the bureaucracy. Brilliant.

I got another book in the post today - Chrétien de Troyes's Arthurian Romances. Unfortunately, I discover that it's a rather archaic 1914 translation and that I already have this copy. The up side is that the new copy is a rather pretty hardback. I'm also reading Team of Rivals by Doris Stearns Goodwin, who got into trouble for plagiarism in her The Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds a few years back. The new book is astonishing - tracing the parallel careers of Lincoln and the rivals he integrated into his cabinet. It's astonishing partly because Lincoln's rivals (Chase, Bates, Salmon) were brilliant, committed, serious - how times change - and because Lincoln's elevation from desperate squalor to President was aided by luck so many times. According to my copy, Obama used it as a template for his cabinet.

I've a reader in Hawaii

Obama? Is that you? Stick around for some useful advice! Welcome too to those faithful readers in Sweden, Italy, Harvard, Canada, Trumbauersville (no, really).

Obamania… yn Cymraeg

Ie - gallwn ni! (Or 'Yes, We Can', in Welsh).

Slight return

Cynical Ben has pointed out in the comments to the previous entry that I was overly negative about Obama's speech, which you can read here, and that Obama stressed the importance of science, mentioned atheists and critiqued the oil companies. OK, you're right. I'm grumpy from marking, but then again - these things wouldn't be remarkable in a lot of countries. Why we don't subcontract our governance to Norway, I can't fathom. I will say that Obama is a brilliant speaker. He's an intelligent man, has a powerful voice and seems to be determined to stamp his authority on events. Just what America needs at this point. The KKK must be furious - an African-American and a Catholic in charge. I hope there's a Jew and a Muslim near the top too!

Also, Ben, I was being sarcastic about the poem - it's hard to convey in text. It was painfully bad. I don't think ceremonial poetry ever works. 

Dick Cheney attended the ceremony in a wheelchair after doing his back in moving into his new house (surely cell?). This means of course that Bush was there as a lame duck and Cheney was his lame fuck.

My friend Jim Hiam was there - having wangled a ticket from a Senator who's a friend of his American family. Lucky guy. He must be freezing…

Inauguration blues

Obama's just finished his speech. Obviously it contained all the usual stuff about the greatest nation on earth, and all his brilliant trademarks, but what really struck me was the seriousness of tone. Quoting Washington's address from the darkest moments of the Independence War was stunning - he really does appear to feel that the US is endangered by the financial, moral and environmental challenges ahead. 

He promised, of course, to spread democracy around the globe. So did Blair and Bush. What they, and I suspect, Obama meant, is capitalism for all and democracy for the unimportant or annoying. Hamas are elected, and that didn't help. The Saudis and Burmese (and the North Koreans) compete for the title of worst government, but nobody's planning to ask them when the elections are. As long as the oil etc. keeps flowing, we won't ask any awkward questions. 

Aretha Franklin was embarrassingly awful, Yo-Yo Ma and Co. were tunefully bland, and the poet (missed her name) is rather good - applause from the crowd distinctly muted. 

What if?

At 11.30 a.m. (US time), Joe Biden takes the oath of office as vice-president. So at least Cheney's out of the way, but Bush is still President. So if Bush has a heart-attack (out of sheer Texan fury) before Obama is sworn in, does Biden become President? Does Biden have any authority as VP while Bush is still President or is it only activated when Obama's sworn-in at 12.00? What if Obama has a heart-attack (or gets shot) between Biden's oath and his own? Who's in charge?

The Reading List

According to the Guardian (though I can't find the link right now), Obama is preparing for office by reading Lincoln, but the journalist was rather slapdash and didn't specify whether this was a biography of the scourge of the natives (AL fought them in the Black Hawk War of 1832) of Gore Vidal's wonderful novel of the same name. I hope it's the latter - GV knows the White House inside and out, having been friends of sorts with the Kennedys and related to Al Gore. If anyone knows how to get Washington going, it's the grand old man of waspish letters. 

See him destroy David Dimbleby without effort on Election Night.

The Clintstones

So it's true. Hillary went to see Obama in Chicago to discuss a job - perhaps as Secretary of State. It might be a good move - foreign politicians like HRC a lot more than the average American (some don't like her for wanting a civilised national health service, some don't like her for not managing to found a civilised national health service). Additionally, spending four years trying to bring peace between Israel and Palestine will put her off aspiring to higher office for ever. John Kerry and Bill Richardson want the job too. Kerry speaks French, which in any other country would be seen as a positive attribute…

The honourable tradition of British tabloids

Most of the newspapers, as you'd expect, are running with the US elections on the front page, though the Express concentrates on the assassination risk, the party-poopers.

Other papers (Daily Star and Daily Sport) however, aren't so impressed. The headline of the Sport (sorry, can't get a bigger image) announces 'Barack and Corrie Rosie, An Apology' - and goes on to promise that there won't be any more political coverage (or much coverage at all).

State of the Nation

The election's over. Obama won. Or rather, the election isn't over but he's won the Presidency. What's important now is getting a 60 seat majority in the Senate so that filibustering can't delay legislation, and it's looking unlikely. However, at least having a few more senators (hopefully including Al Franken currently behind by 700 votes) means that the Democratic Party can now hound, harass, isolate and generally make life unpleasant for Joe Lieberman, traitor, turncoat, egotist and blackmailer.

I'd still like to have seen President Kucinich, even if he is slightly hippy, but Obama will do as long as there's a good leftwing ginger group in Congress (this seems to be the position of the CPUSA, which is good enough for me). Langston Hughes would approve.

US election stats

I follow the US election statistics on the Guardian's round-up page, but an article today suggests that if you really want to get into the electoral nitty-gritty, you should head to FiveThirtyEight.com where Nate Silver, who used to collate baseball statistics, is hard at work tracking every bit of polling data available.