More Than One Million Job Cuts in 2004
It remains to be seen whether or not the neo-conservative architects of the ruling party's economic policies will see more than a million jobs cut last year as proof of the success of both their theory and its implementation.
In other news, stocks continued to give ground today, with the major indices falling on broad-based selling, particularly in the last hour of trading when the bears came out of their caves to flog a small and tentative stock rally. The broad NASDAQ lost more than three-quarters of a percent. Treasuries prices generally eased slightly, nudging yields up a small fraction, continuing the trend of rising interest rates economy-wide that will take a toll on business activity and consumer spending as the year progresses.
Published 1/05/2005 09:59:41 PM
<< 23 Comments Total
Bush probably thinks losing one million net jobs is progress. If he saw your graph, he'd just brush it off, saying he can make the numbers say something else.
The area in which I live just lost a major pottery place, the basket making factory keeps laying off people by the hundreds; for crying out loud, even the charities are asking for help so they don't close down. The new jobs to replace the jobs lost? Fast food joints and another Walmart. Oh, and there is the whorehouse on a major street to draw in business (in a conservative town, no less).
Progress? I don't think so.
In a sadistic way, I think Bush and company want to see how far we can go before we crack, and then count on people crawling on their hands and knees just begging for mercy, accepting whatever food he has at whatever the cost.
Nope. Not me. No sir. I'm hanging onto my soul. That's not his for the taking.
wiseguy
Good evening, Wise Guy.
There is precedent in literature for the scenario you describe of people being starved so that they come begging to those who brought them their ills in the first place. Have you ever read any of the works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski?
In fact, his life paralleled that awful course. He was sentenced to death by the Czarist regime of the time for his involvement in a group of socialist utopian intellectuals. Supposedly, his sentence was commuted to hard labor at a Siberian prison as he was standing in front of the firing squad. By the time he had emerged from his harsh punishment (four year of imprisonment, followed by almost five more as a garrisoned soldier in Siberia), he had become both a devout adherent to the Russian Orthodox Church and to the Czarist political structure!
The employment picture you describe in your city is being experienced all across America. It is a grim story that has spread like an unstoppable cancer, and it has metastized into a mindset among so many people that this is just the way things are, the way the must be, and the way they'll always be. People seem to forget that it wasn't always like this; but more importantly, people do not understand that they don't have to suffer this kind of sacrifice as some kind of personal and social atonement.
The grassroots of the Democratic Party did everything within its power to mobilize voters to throw these radicals out of Washington, but it was all for naught. The prospects for ever getting that kind of effort again are nonexistent, considering what it all came to in the last Presidential Election. We have truly entered a new social/political era in this nation, an era where the truth doesn't change outcomes; in fact, the truth doesn't even matter, right now.
Nevertheless, The Dark Wraith Forums will continue because somehow, someday, the truth will matter, once again.
The Dark Wraith blogs onward into the futile night.
Seems to me I may have read a passage or two from Dostoevsky's writings; two brothers have an argument about the necessity of the Inquisition. No, wait, actually it was more of an argument of the necessity of free will.
In this particular case the brothers argue either for or against the premise that the Church is the only standard bearer and mere peons do not have to have any standards--they just shut up, eat, and be merry. Supposedly, if the people are smiling ear to ear, then all is well, and that is vindication enough. If they aren't smiling, they are thrown bread until they are. Bribe bread, if you ask me.
Speaking of churches, if memory serves me, something awful happened in the 80s. What happened? Did megachurches take off or something? Wasn't that about the time the school system started falling apart as well? I had enough old school teachers to know that the days in which I lived were not representative of the days that used to be. Of course, Reagan happened. But what else? Refresh my memory. All this happened within an extremely short amount of time. I grew up with that annoying "changing" this and "changing" that. What happened? I don't mean just "computers." I mean, really, what happened behind the scenes that introduced an ungodly obsession with "change"?
wiseguy
During the 80's there was a bit of a paradigm shift rightward. Carter's presidency was the end of an era that started with FDR. Reagan's reelection was a repudiation of the tail end of the old paradigm, particularly since his opponent, Fritz Mondale, was a classic liberal from the old paradigm.
I voted for Reagan, believing he represented the better choice, but I was worried about fiscal sanity, as I still am, and I had been born into an era of Congressional Democratic hegemony in which deficits were routinely treated as the most minor of irrelevancies. DW can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that mindset (along with the expansionary monetary policy it relied on) was probably the largest single contributor to the economic suffering of the 70's & early 80's, and Reagan seemed the best antidote to that. Certainly I had no reason that I could see to think Mondale & a Democratic Congress were going to do anything about debt.
I find it beyond ironic that we now have a Republican Congress with a Republican president and the spending (in terms of "Big Government") is the most profligate since Johnson, beyond which there is precious prosperity (except among a plutocracy) to validate any of it!!!
When did we decide the Haitian model was the way to go???
- oddjob
(That should have said, "...precious little prosperity....")
- oddjob
The 80's culture seemed to me more commercial than the decades preceding it. It also celebrated self in a commercial way that hadn't been typical of America since probably the 20's. Two popular novels observing and criticizing all that were The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe and Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. To me it seems the times since then have more in common with the 80's than anything of the decades prior (possible exception of the McCarthy era if things continue in the right way), and I still think the comparison to the 20's, and now even more so to the 1890's, may provide the best understanding.
I only hope the progressive impetus of the early 1900's reasserts itself somehow.
I wanted fiscal sanity, not a resurrection of the Gilded Age.
Oh, and that stuff about constant change? The 80's were when personal computers were first widely available. I would imagine their appearance had a lot to do with what wiseguy noticed. The speed at which they evolve is mindboggling.
- oddjob
Good morning, Wise Guy.
Among the many books that Dostoevski wrote, my favorite is The Brothers Karamazov, a wide-ranging intellectual and spiritual dialogue framed within an arc in the lives of two somewhat randy fellows. In our time and place, now, we avoid like the Plague meaningful discussions about what is behind the stories in our religions and what relationship we have to things mystical. It cannot be denied that part of this arises from a culture among our kind that the intellectual life—the scientific life, if you will—precludes mystical spirituality. That having been said, the aversion to speaking of life beyond mere life has come about in our time largely because of the frame in which certain religious groups and individuals have trapped the individual's narrative of faith in the context of reason: the intellectual is disallowed grace in this age ruled by those who simply will not pray in their closets.
In this context, change becomes more than the appearance of new things in our lives. If that were all we had to accommodate, we could adapt so easily. But now, change pulls us inexorably from a stable context in which we can form, verify, and retain purpose. For only so long can we wait at the dock for the ship that set sail so long ago with the world we once knew.
The 20th Century was awful in this way. It wrenched the world over and over again. The effects of change were shameless in their expressions. In his works Nighthawks and The Automat, the painter Edward Hopper captured modernity imposing a black landscape of alienation just behind and around the curtain of bright lights upon which we have come to rely for dispelling the darkness of a frightful world we left behind.
And here we are, in the 21st Century, still running away from those ages of darkness, running headlong into them.
As I said once before here, when I was young I just couldn't wait for the future; but now that I've seen it, I wish so much that it had never arrived. And I wish even more that it would come no more.
But it will come, and the curtain of blackness behind and around us will creep ever closer, even as the lights of the modern world become ever brighter for us.
The Dark Wraith moves on.
Not quite on topic, but close enough: libertarian magazine The Economist laments American society's drift back towards the Gilded Age during the last two decades. You gotta know there's a problem when The Economist laments the lack of progressivism in society!
(Saw the link on Andrew Sullivan's website.)
- oddjob
Good afternoon, OddJob. I do want to touch on a couple of issues you brought up concerning several previous eras in American political/economic history, but I shall save that for a bit later.
I must note at this juncture, though, that The Economist magazine lamenting the return to a Gilded Age is rather telling. I wonder if any of the more Libertarian of the intellectual forces at that magazine are noting how some of the apparently quasi-Libertarian policies that have been implemented by the neo-conservatives have worked hand-in-glove with, and in some cases been used as justification for, far more imperialistic ends.
A case in point is the way the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq set in stone a system of laws and regulations that have Libertarian features laced into them; but all of this was done for no other reason than to advance a virtually mercantilistic foreign policy to the end of activist domestic business policy.
I should not be too hard on the Libertarian theoreticians on this point, I suppose: many political and economic models have been hijacked to ends other than those of the original creators. In his later years, Karl Marx was alleged to have distanced himself from the way his model of communism was being implemented by muttering something to the effect that he was not a "Marxist."
It is enough for me that theoreticians occasionally find out something truly annoying about how the world works:
The worst thing that can happen is not that your theories are proved wrong; instead, the worst thing that can happen is that they are proved right by people you don't like.
The Dark Wraith has intoned.
The worst thing that can happen is not that your theories are proved wrong; instead, the worst thing that can happen is that they are proved right by people you don't like.
LOL! How true! A corollary to the law of unintended consequences?
BTW, I love Nighthawks! That's got to be one of my favorite paintings; so simultaneously intimate, nourishing (emotionally), warm, cold, impersonal, and desolate!
What a powerful realist he was and what an excellent illustration of your essay!
- oddjob
Dark Wraith, thank you for speaking to the lack of Mystical spirituality in everyday life. I've been very gifted to have found a group of friends here in Tennessee of all places to talk about the deep mysteries of life with and actually be understood and able to learn more with them. It's been truly fantastic because to me it is not what is on top of the events of life that gives them meaning but what is under them. It is the process of their creation and the context of them in relation to our whole lives that gives them meaning. Because with context events are just events. Life is to me after all about the making of meaning and the making of choices.
I have written to my friends almost volumiously about this in the past few years. I love to share my writings to if anyone wants some give me a yell. I'll post a small on here. As a sample.
------
Silence
The world becomes all quiet in a moment of revelation. I would say that sound is replaced by feeling. A feeling that for that moment everything makes sense until life happens again. The silence left in the wake of any such moment is a clear indication that something has gone and now there is room for something new to take its place. Every idea as it is expressed makes room for new ideas to come in and play. There is a seemingly infinite space for ideas but it is filled with things that we have stored there over the years.
When a moment of clarity occurs it shakes up the storage shed of our lives and knocks things off the shelf. I learn so much in cleaning up my own life; I am very often surprised that the shed is not much cleaner than it is. Sometimes it is fun to clean up the shed, and depending on the size of the mess, sometimes it is not that fun.
Silence in life is a rare pleasure. It speaks so much but talks so little.
----------
Have a great an enjoyable day.
-Gary A
Good afternoon, Gary.
I appreciate your contribution.
As time goes on, the visitors here will find more and more opportunities to speak broadly and openly about the place that is beyond and just behind the world that was once described as "the unquiet city of those who live only for themselves."
Some places are far better than others to speak without having to yell above the wild roar that has come to occasion our lives in these times. Even when we are among generally like-minded people, too often we can find ourselves being pulled along into a maelstrom that denies us reasoned words; and so we must seek a different place, one where we can be free in that part of our minds where freedom is most precious.
The Dark Wraith Forums is, and always will be, that different place.
The Dark Wraith proceeds.
I have this puzzle in front of me, and every little bit gleaned from you all helps. Taking a brief glance at "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and "Bright Lights, Big City" I saw the conveying of life as one big social club, inundated with insecurities and deceptive reflections (mirrors in the one case, manufactured innocence in the other). I want to add my observation that many churches operate as glorified social clubs...
Right in front of our noses, hidden behind Christianity, one mastermind of the great deception that has plagued our nation --from the 80s-- and has influenced Reagan and Bush policy and resembles them in that he also speaks out of both sides of his mouth and preys on the trust of the people:
None other than Pat Robertson.
Frighteningly enough, Mr. Robinson has been referred to as a "dominionist" which is anything but spiritual in nature, although he does put up quite a front in quoting just enough scripture to keep would-be skeptics off his trail. Dominionists want to bring the entire world under submission by usurping power that doesn't belong to them under the guise of "saving the world for Jesus." Worse than unsuspecting literalists, they know exactly what they're doing and count on the sheeple to be so unlearned in everything political, economic, and religious that they will stop at nothing to achieve their dominion through religious manipulation.
Texas GOP reads much the same way.
wiseguy
Good afternoon, Wise Guy.
The term "dominionist" is a somewhat newer label applied to a type of individual who has been around for a long, long time.
In a scene in L'Étranger, author Albert Camus tells of a man facing severe punishment by a judge, who holds up a cross and demands that the man kneel before it. The judge was holding the cross in front of himself, the implication being that the judge was actually demanding that the man kneel before him, not the symbol of Christianity.
Religions are quite useful in that way. Jesus of Nazareth made some powerful enemies, particularly among the Sadducees, by dismissing their obsessive and altogether useless reliance upon ritual and formality in worship. What angered the Sadducees was not that Jesus had fallen from some grace, but rather that He was encouraging by example an eviceration of their entire base of power and authority: in the absence of a need for the complex and subtle rituals, what could possibly be the need for the sinecure of priests whose control over people's lives hinged upon understanding and enforcing those rituals?
Christianity has no monopoly on charlatans of the variety of which you speak, either in modern or more ancient times. And religion, 'though quite powerful in bringing people to their knees, is not the only means of doing so. Sheer fear is the best, oldest, and most effective; and we are all vulnerable to it—at least, in the short run, which is the only time frame needed to secure power.
As an example, who among us, on September 11, 2001, screamed at the top of his lungs, "What kind of incompetent imbecile would allow us to be attacked on our own continent, in multiple cities, and using our own airplanes, for God's sake!?"
No one asked, that day; and so, as each day after that melancholy day passed, the question rapidly and permanently became inappropriate—in fact, unacceptable—to ask.
The headline in a major British newspaper, on November 3, 2004, asked how more than 59 million people could be so "dumb" as to re-elect a man such as George W. Bush. The far more relevant question would have been, "How could more than 59 million people have been so afraid?"
And the answer, as troubling as it is, would have been thus: "The Republicans made them that way."
Darkness trumps light, as the night chases the day.
The Dark Wraith has spoken.
None of this contradicts any of DW's points, which I hadn't necessarily thought of & thank him for. I know a little about modern-day Christian dominionism, and I thought I'd share some of it, for it's sobering and I think we all ought to be aware of it, even if it sounds too bizarre to be worth bothering about.
Robertson is not the only one, by any means. A handfull of prominent Evangelical preachers share his devotion to this dogma. The most prominent would probably be Jerry Falwell, James Dobson (actually a psychologist, not a minister), Tim & Beverly LaHaye (he of the "Left Behind" novels and she of Concerned Women of America), and a somewhat less well known one, James Kennedy of Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
I don't recall the theology that well (& it's not actually that relevant unless one is interested in Christian theology), but dominionism mixes Christianity's beliefs in spiritual sanctification with the belief that ALL of the Bible is meant to be followed as closely as humanly possible. Thus, the Torah must be followed, to the letter if possible, not just the instructions laid down by Jesus in the Gospels.
If one reads the Bible thoroughly, one sooner or later will realize there is no mention - anywhere - of any sanctioning by God of the democratic freedoms we take for granted. Instead, the only form of government you will see that is truly sanctioned by God is the theocracy of the time of Joshua, just after Moses died and the people of Israel returned to the land of Canaan. A society (which according to the story really only existed for about one generation) in which God was king, ruling through His priests.
These folks know this - very well. They don't talk about it, but I can assure you that if they are given the opportunity they will try to create a theocracy and remove the republican democracy created by our heretic Founding Fathers. Christian dominionists view the undergirding philosophies of democracy as prideful, as an attempt by man to set himself up as a god. From their point of view, they are correct. We are taught that we inherited these ideas from pagan Greece & Rome.
The theocracy they envision wouldn't be a particularly enjoyable society for most of us to live in. For instance, adultery is a capital offense; stoning is the commanded execution. This is also true of unrepentant rebellion by a child towards his or her parents. Yup, a hell-raising teenager is guilty of a capital offense for which the verdict is death by stoning. (Oh yeah, there also would not be 30 or 15 year mortgages, for in the Torah debt could only last for seven years.)
- oddjob
As John Mitchell said of the Nixon Administration, pay attention to what they do, not what they say. They have been in a takeover mode for 25 years now. We are coming to the test, I think.
On a more encouraging note, I think ultimately they will fail, but the ride there may be bumpy.
I wanted to thank the bloggers here for some of the most engaging posts I've read anywhere online- I feel like I'm sitting in a graduate seminar! I did have a question for those familiar with the "dominionists"- Does anyone know offhand if that includes the World Harvest Church- they're pretty active here in Columbus, they run a "private school" for grades K to 12, and their followers go overboard to follow a "biblical livestyle". (Most are huge Bush supporters, naturally)
Another part behind the current Administration and its paragovernment agencies (The Christian Coalition, one example) is they wrap themselves in the shroud that Bush is the best priest for the job and will pave the way for the Second Coming.
The tricky part in this whole mess is the involvement with the State of Israel. This really yanks my chain, because Christians have their roots in Judaism. It's probably as hard for me to separate Jews from Israel as it is for other people to separate Americans from the United States. I think the administration counts on this confusion.
Personally, I think it was a good idea to help bring Jews back to Israel following the Holocaust. A lot of them didn't feel quite at home anywhere else after being displaced to other countries. However, it burns me to think that the United States may have had a vested interest in the whole matter. I think I better sign off for now lest I uproot the wheat along with the tares. Suffice it to say that heralding the Second Coming will be a recurring theme in the days to come, some patiently waiting and preparing hearts, others forcing it upon us and trying that patience.
wiseguy
Good evening, LindiBee.
From what I know of the World Harvest Church, its methods and beliefs indeed do fit the definition of the modern dominionism. That having been said, I had always been unconcerned about that particular group, considering as I did that, although their ways were strange to me, their ability to cause any damage was restricted to the small group that was affiliated with them. Their schools may or may not be guilty of corrupting the minds of children; but (and this is a very cold calculus) those children are not many, and some of them may even rebel against the ways of their parents, someday. Those who stay in the fold will still be productive citizens and will in all probability live in that low socio-economic echelon that ensures their lives will reach no further than the lives of any other working poor.
I am mindful now, however, that the World Harvest Church is a bit larger and more expansive than I had once thought it was. More troubling, though, is that there are so many thousands of small- and medium-sized churches and sects of a dominionist bent that the movement is far larger than it would appear by looking at any one group of them.
It is that "largeness of the many smalls" that could be the undoing of modern liberal democracy, not just in the United States, but in other countries, as well. And far worse is that these sects are sending missionaries throughout the world, creating converts wherever they go. Countering views just aren't out there in such numbers and with such zeal. That, in my judgment, presents as much of a danger as these dominionists' activities here in the United States.
And the worst part of all about it is that there is no real "solution," right now. The progressive movement is certainly not going to run around tearing up these Christians' material or spiritual worlds. That's just not the way liberals act, which is, of course, why the Republican radicals can win Presidential Elections in a world where they see cheating as okay, but their opponents cannot bring themselves to do the same thing at grand scale.
I wish I could share OddJob's optimism in believing that all of these grim forces will ultimately be beaten back. Unfortunately, I am far too much of a pessimist... perhaps even for my own mental well-being.
The Dark Wraith takes a couple of aspirin and lies down for a while.
LindiBee, thank you! and yes, World Harvest Church is definitely a dominion church. Rod Parsley's idea of a biblical lifestyle is he is God, his piano player is one who strikes a twilight zone chord in sync with key words in his message to rile up the audience, the choir is his, uh, I'm not going to say it; the men are to obey without question, the women are to obey the men without question, the children are to obey their fathers without question, and the single women are to obey Rod Parsley without question (in absence of other males in her life, you see).
Worshiping God distracts people. Take a sincere song directed toward God, then... in waltzes the pastor, knowing full well that that praise was just directed to God... and-- voila! now the people's hearts are vulnerable enough to be taken advantage of, as people generally cannot change gears that quickly, and I'm sure a great many pastors know this and take advantage of it.
Dirty tricks, I know. But, not to fear. There are still musicians in our midst that bow to no man and worship God only. And we do it right in front of those who think they are disallowing it! Hehehehehe. That's why I call myself
wiseguy
Thank you both for the info- yes, DW, I knew about the "missionary work" that these guys were doing, as I heard a follower talking about sending them to Afghanistan recently. This is what ticked me off- this "true believer" trailer-park denizen has no problem with us invading a ravaged country then leaving it in a state of near anarchy to go after a bigger prize, but we'll send them our bible-thumpers and all will be forgiven. (This woman didn't even know what a mosque was, although she was working with Middle Easterners and other internationals on a daily basis for years. The only thing separating some of these folks from total illiteracy is their need to get through the "Left Behind" series).
DW, you also bring up a point that has always troubled me- that it is the "true believers" who have no reservations with the indoctrination of others that have an advantage over the more circumspect Progressive crowd. It will however be interesting (in a perverse way) to see what comes of the attempts to foist their fundamentalist views around the world. It will inflame Muslims and verify their fears that we're out to "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" as Ann Coulter said. Will their efforts foster a greater radicalization of certain Islamic sects? Muslims have no "chapter of Revelations end-times" vision driving them like these people- will some sects develop one, or will an alternative vision come about, as often happens in the darkest of times? (Like the "Ghost Dancers" of the
Plains Indians at the end of the nineteenth century?)
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