The mission of The Nation

For consistently high quality commentary on national issues, I read The Nation. In the January 24, 2011 issue, Editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel examines the magazine's mission.

We've helped build a society that is more socially tolerant than it was a quarter century ago, but when it comes to public policy, economic outcomes and control of government, the story is different. The broad movement of American politics in recent decades has been toward greater inequality, the discrediting of public institutions in a near idolatry of private markets at the expense of corporate accountability. I believe this is a pivotal moment for The Nation. Launched in the days after the Civil War, in July 1865, this magazine is one of the few long-standing media institutions that have worked to bring about lasting social and political change. In the time ahead we will need to rededicate ourselves to our mission by confronting and countering misinformation, bigotry and greed with tough, intelligent and principled journalism while sewing new and alternative-often heretical-ideas.… In some ways, this work will necessarily be defensive or oppositional.… The late Studs Terkel, a true friend of The Nation, believed that hope was not simply optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good and worth working for.

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The Rich

In the February 2011 edition of Harper's Magazine (in an article titled "Easy Chair: Servile Disobedience"), Thomas Frank offers a sharp challenge for The Rich. Now he's not talking about all those who are rich. I assume he's focusing on The Rich who proudly own and control Congress. There's something different about those rich people…

One 2009 study in Psychological Science found that, in conversations with strangers, higher-status people tend to do more doodling and fidgeting and also to use fewer "engagement cues"-looking at the other person, laughing, and nodding their heads. A 2010 paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that "lower-class individuals" turned out to be better performers on measures of such a "prosocial" virtues as generosity, charity, and helpfulness. A third study found that those of higher status were noticeably worse in assessing the emotions of others or figuring out what facial expressions meant. All of which is to say, The Rich are different from you and me. They are ruder and less generous. They don't get what others are thinking. And apparently they don't really care. If you stop and think about it for a second, you understand that all of this makes sense. People don't craft poisoned collateralized debt obligations by calling on what they learned in Sunday school.… [T]he billionaires with the strongest sense of class solidarity have another plan for the disposable income: activating their lobbyists in Washington, building grassroots movements to march on their behalf, and using their media properties to run experiments on human credulity. Even their giving is a form of taking. For example, Charles Koch, of Wichita oil fame, recently circulated to his "network of business and philanthropic leaders" an invitation to a meeting at which-if their last meeting's agenda is any indication-they will discuss strategies for beating back environmentalism and the "threat" of financial regulation. This is a kind of philanthropy that pays dividends.… Americans are born to serve and assist the wealthy; it is our inalienable duty.… We cater to the wealthy in our work lives and we glorify them in our leisure.… We take up collections for the public schools because we feel the fortunes of the rich ought to go unencumbered by that burden.
Frank's article should be read out loud, word by word to be fully appreciated. It paints a somber picture of America's class struggle, but the first step toward change is forcing one to open one's eyes. I only hope that we are in the midst of a mere class struggle and not at the end of a great experiment that culminated with Citizen's United. I can just imagine many wealthy politically active people protesting, "The fact that I am rich didn't make anyone else poor." That argument still works for me for those people who are not showering Washington DC with big money in return for special privileges that siphon off my tax dollars and impinge on my civil rights. Who can any longer contest with a serious face that The Rich, including big corporate interests (telecoms, health insurers, military contractors and bankers), can get whatever they want from Congress. Where is this lesson in grade school government textbooks?

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More quotes

Here are some more of my favorite quotes. I gather these from many sources. I am very much a gatherer, almost a plagiarizer, except that I admit that I gather them: "Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex." -Roger Ebert "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." -Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky ‎"A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies." -Martin Luther King "I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." —Wilson Mizner "The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too." -Oscar Levant (1906 - 1972) "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats (Poet, 1865-1939). ‎"Obama isn't a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare. You're thinking of Jesus." - John Fugelsang. "Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." – Unknown "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand," he tells his children. "It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do." - Atticus Finch, in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge." —Daniel J. Boorstin "Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment." —Barry LePatner "When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion." —Abraham Lincoln "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." —Winston Churchill "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur." (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.) —Unknown Author

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Hottest year on record

From IPS:

The year 2010 was the hottest ever measured since the beginning of the recordings, 130 years ago," Anders Levermann, professor of climate system dynamics at the Physics Institute of the Potsdam University told IPS.
Over at Common Dreams, Sandy LeonVest despairs that this monumental finding doesn't even make a blip in the national news. Nor is there any national concern about this:
The Energy Information Administration (EIA), in its annual projections for 2011, announced that it still expects fossil fuels to supply over three quarters of US energy consumption in 2035. The share of fossil fuels is expected to decline by only 5 percentage points -- from 83 percent in 2009 to 78 percent in 2035.
I can't get rid of that thought in my head - - that we will get what we deserve. It's just the natural order of things.

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