By: Paul S. Marchand
An unwed mother.
Situationally homeless.
Pregnant.
Traveling with a partner who is not the father of her unborn child.
Not the sort of thing we would expect from “respectable” people.
Indeed, many, hearing such a word-picture, might well be inspired to angry, fulminating discourse on the ills of our 21st-century American society.
Of course, the word-picture in question actually comes from the narrative set forth in Luke’s Gospel of the birth of our Savior in a manger in Bethlehem more than 2000 years ago.
Across generations and centuries, the Lucan infancy narrative, encapsulating both the paradoxical power of powerlessness and the human compunction we feel in the presence of the smallest and weakest among us, has been at the heart of the Christmas story.
For at its core, the Christmas story is about more than giftgiving or liturgies or Christmas trees or official proclamations or Christmas cards (with or without First Dog, pace Sarah Palin). It is about proclaiming a radical view of human and social justice over against a dispensation that still, after 20 centuries, organizes the world very much without reference to the teachings the infant in Bethlehem sought to impart to us, a dispensation that still reflexively takes the side of Dives over Lazarus --the one percent over the 99 percent.
Some years ago, an Episcopal priest of my acquaintance inveighed against the common cliché of “putting the Christ back in Christmas.” Instead, he suggested we should perhaps seek to put the Mass back in Christmas. By sharing the gifts of human companionship, human compunction, and human charity, and by breaking bread together --- both at home and in the context of the Eucharist --- this priest suggested we could do more to share the spirit of Christmas than if we had had all the tangible things in the world wrapped in paper under the tree.
For as much as the birth of a child focuses the thoughts of that child’s family toward what must be done to create a better future, so too does the infancy narrative which lies at the heart of our Christmas story call us to examine our consciences and our conduct, and to focus our thoughts on building a better future for our communities, for our country, and for the world. The greatest gift of Christmas, therefore, may not be what lies under the Christmas tree. The greatest gift of Christmas may be the opportunity it gives to us to renew a commitment to the kind of social justice the Infant in the manger came into this world to proclaim:
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.” Isa. 61:1-2
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, Who shall be called the Prince of Peace.
Merry Christmas.
-xxx
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. He is a member of the Riverside County Workforce Investment Board. The views expressed herein are his own.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
THE LONG GOODBYE TO THOSE WHO SAVED THE WORLD
By: Paul S. Marchand
Patsy’s Bar, the Bronx.
That’s where my dad remembers being on the afternoon of December 7, 1941. Eight years old, munching on pizza, and sipping an illegal beer.
Seventy years have passed since the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor. An anniversary that falls on some multiple of ten years always seems to call forth more discussion and reminiscence than an "off year" anniversary. So it is now, in 2011, when 70 years have passed to the day since my dad and the others at Patsy’s Bar heard the news.
The number of those who remember that day --- to say nothing of those who were of military age at the time --- ineluctably grows smaller with each passing year and each passing decade. Seven years ago, writing on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, I noted that the "Greatest Generation" which had stormed ashore on the continent of Europe on June 6, 1944, was passing rapidly into eternity, and as their numbers diminished, World War II was also passing out of living memory; the long goodbye continues.
Seven years later, the number of World War II veterans has diminished even further; those for whom Pearl Harbor is still living memory are most likely to have experienced December 7, 1941 as children, like my eight year old dad in Patsy’s Bar.
While it will probably be at least another couple of decades before the last living American World War II veteran dies, (our last living World War I veteran passed away only recently) the days when there were World War II veterans in every neighborhood and on every block are long gone. A few days ago, the Desert Sun reported that the local chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors organization was folding; there were no longer enough living Pearl Harbor survivors in the Coachella Valley to be able to sustain their organization. By 2015, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the number of living veterans of that conflict will be close to the vanishing point.
As our collective living memory essentially ceases to be that of the men and women who served and fought during World War II, it shifts to be that of those who were children during what Winston Churchill called those "stern days." I think of my eight year old dad in Patsy’s Bar at the beginning, and I think of my six year old mom, living in El Paso and witnessing the bright flash of the first atomic test up near Alamogordo just three and a half years later in the summer of 1945.
My own generation, the Baby Boomers, was the first to have no direct recall of the Second World War, but we did grow up in communities in which the presence of World War II veterans was still the rule, not the exception. Growing up at the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles was to grow up in a place full of veterans --- some still in their vigorous late 40s and early 50s --- who had served in the armed forces not only of the United States and our allies, but even of the Axis as well.
The millennial generation --- those born in the 90s and just coming-of-age now --- and those born in this century, are even further removed from World War II than were we Boomers. For them, the memory of the Second World War can be as distant and sepia-toned as that of the Civil War. The world my millennial cousins inhabit is one in which the barriers and dispensations my generation took for granted simply do not exist.
How does one explain the postwar partition of Germany to someone who was a toddler, or not even living, when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany once again became one?
How does one explain to a young cousin jetting off to Bratislava that not too long ago the Czech Republic and Slovakia were once part of the unified country called Czechoslovakia?
How does one explain that the country known for quality automobiles, consumer electronics, Pokémon, manga, and animé was once feared and hated on account of the "sneak attack" against Pearl Harbor?
How does one explain that the totalitarian communist state which was, in turn, our World War II ally and our Cold War adversary has since turned into a capitalistic, kleptocratic, frenemy?
Seventy years on, how does one explain the sense of disquiet that comes over so many of us on this 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor that perhaps we took more for granted than we should have done those World War II veterans in our midst ---the ones who saved the world--- even if many of them would have been embarrassed to be so lauded?
For, in the end, that is exactly what they did.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City. His dad was in Patsy’s Bar on Pearl Harbor Day, and his grandfather served in World War II. The views expressed herein are his own.
Patsy’s Bar, the Bronx.
That’s where my dad remembers being on the afternoon of December 7, 1941. Eight years old, munching on pizza, and sipping an illegal beer.
Seventy years have passed since the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor. An anniversary that falls on some multiple of ten years always seems to call forth more discussion and reminiscence than an "off year" anniversary. So it is now, in 2011, when 70 years have passed to the day since my dad and the others at Patsy’s Bar heard the news.
The number of those who remember that day --- to say nothing of those who were of military age at the time --- ineluctably grows smaller with each passing year and each passing decade. Seven years ago, writing on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, I noted that the "Greatest Generation" which had stormed ashore on the continent of Europe on June 6, 1944, was passing rapidly into eternity, and as their numbers diminished, World War II was also passing out of living memory; the long goodbye continues.
Seven years later, the number of World War II veterans has diminished even further; those for whom Pearl Harbor is still living memory are most likely to have experienced December 7, 1941 as children, like my eight year old dad in Patsy’s Bar.
While it will probably be at least another couple of decades before the last living American World War II veteran dies, (our last living World War I veteran passed away only recently) the days when there were World War II veterans in every neighborhood and on every block are long gone. A few days ago, the Desert Sun reported that the local chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors organization was folding; there were no longer enough living Pearl Harbor survivors in the Coachella Valley to be able to sustain their organization. By 2015, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the number of living veterans of that conflict will be close to the vanishing point.
As our collective living memory essentially ceases to be that of the men and women who served and fought during World War II, it shifts to be that of those who were children during what Winston Churchill called those "stern days." I think of my eight year old dad in Patsy’s Bar at the beginning, and I think of my six year old mom, living in El Paso and witnessing the bright flash of the first atomic test up near Alamogordo just three and a half years later in the summer of 1945.
My own generation, the Baby Boomers, was the first to have no direct recall of the Second World War, but we did grow up in communities in which the presence of World War II veterans was still the rule, not the exception. Growing up at the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles was to grow up in a place full of veterans --- some still in their vigorous late 40s and early 50s --- who had served in the armed forces not only of the United States and our allies, but even of the Axis as well.
The millennial generation --- those born in the 90s and just coming-of-age now --- and those born in this century, are even further removed from World War II than were we Boomers. For them, the memory of the Second World War can be as distant and sepia-toned as that of the Civil War. The world my millennial cousins inhabit is one in which the barriers and dispensations my generation took for granted simply do not exist.
How does one explain the postwar partition of Germany to someone who was a toddler, or not even living, when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany once again became one?
How does one explain to a young cousin jetting off to Bratislava that not too long ago the Czech Republic and Slovakia were once part of the unified country called Czechoslovakia?
How does one explain that the country known for quality automobiles, consumer electronics, Pokémon, manga, and animé was once feared and hated on account of the "sneak attack" against Pearl Harbor?
How does one explain that the totalitarian communist state which was, in turn, our World War II ally and our Cold War adversary has since turned into a capitalistic, kleptocratic, frenemy?
Seventy years on, how does one explain the sense of disquiet that comes over so many of us on this 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor that perhaps we took more for granted than we should have done those World War II veterans in our midst ---the ones who saved the world--- even if many of them would have been embarrassed to be so lauded?
For, in the end, that is exactly what they did.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City. His dad was in Patsy’s Bar on Pearl Harbor Day, and his grandfather served in World War II. The views expressed herein are his own.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
FOR THE OCCUPIERS, FOR THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT, FOR THOSE WHO HAVE FOUND THEIR VOICES AND CRY FOR JUSTICE, GIVE THANKS.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Every Thanksgiving, we find ourselves called upon to think about what we are thankful for.
This year, I find myself thankful for the Occupy Wall Street Movement and for the increasing social and political awareness of the Ninety-nine Percenters who have, perhaps without even knowing it, found themselves living a kind of reality first prefigured in the late Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for the 1976 movie Network.
In one of the most famous scenes in that film, the protagonist, the angry newscaster Howard Beale, loses it, famously exhorting his viewers to “get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
In our own time, we have seen life imitate art, as countless middle and working-class Americans, tired of being ripped off in the interests of the wealthiest one percent among us, have dared to say “we’re as mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this anymore!”
I’m thankful that, after eight bitter winters of George W. Bush, when middle and working-class Americans felt there was no one to listen to their cries and lamentations against their spoliation on behalf of the “haves and the have-mores” --- the richest one percent in the land, my brothers and sisters of the Ninety-nine Percent have finally found their voice, and have dared to speak truth to those who have unjustly enriched themselves upon the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of those who seek nothing more than basic fairness for themselves and for their posterity.
I’m thankful that, paradoxically, we have an administration in office which we, the people, believe will listen when we say that it is not right that the playing field should be tilted so powerfully against the Ninety-nine Percent of Americans upon whom the prosperity of this country, and in large measure, the world, depends. That we are frustrated with its slowness to act on our behalf is a sign that we believe it capable of better things than its predecessor. Now it is incumbent on that administration to listen, and listen well, to our voices.
I’m thankful that a critical mass is taking shape which dares to say that it is not right that America in the 21st century should resemble France in the 18th; a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal deserves better than to be governed in the interests of a narrow class which bears a distinct and unsavory resemblance to the worst of the French nobility of the ancien régime.
I’m thankful for a movement that looks like America, a movement composed of all sorts and conditions of human beings; of young and old; of tall and small; of rich and poor; of professionals, the fully employed, the underemployed, and the unemployed; of straight and queer; of PhD’s and high school dropouts, of veterans, vagabonds, and vegans; of people of every faith and no faith at all.
I’m thankful for a movement that is not afraid of civil disobedience; I am grateful for a movement that is not afraid to sit peaceably amid clouds of pepper spray; I am grateful for movement that dares to say “these are our streets; we will occupy them. These are our parks; we will occupy them. This our tundra; we will occupy it. This is our country; we will occupy it.”
I’m thankful that we are reclaiming our noble revolutionary heritage, that we are having once again a conversation about liberty, about fairness, and about fundamental decency.
If we are to be able to speak in good faith of America as a land of opportunity, we dare not allow ourselves the feckless luxury of an unsustainable social order in which those who have “arrived” are able to pull up behind them the ladder of social mobility and success upon which others rely to better themselves and their children.
I think it is safe to say that we of the Ninety-nine Percent do not resent the success of those who have made it, what we resent is the efforts of far too many in America’s one percent to prevent anyone else from making it, too.
So, on this Thanksgiving day, I give thanks to God Who in every generation calls forth prophets and witnesses. I also give thanks for those prophets and witnesses who in our own time are those voices crying in the wilderness on behalf of all who have been voiceless, abused, and ground down.
A single voice, crying in the wilderness, can change the world. By God’s good grace, we may dare to hope that many voices crying in cities and towns and villages all over this land, may yet change our world in our time for the better, for ourselves and for all who will come after us. Amen.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own.
Every Thanksgiving, we find ourselves called upon to think about what we are thankful for.
This year, I find myself thankful for the Occupy Wall Street Movement and for the increasing social and political awareness of the Ninety-nine Percenters who have, perhaps without even knowing it, found themselves living a kind of reality first prefigured in the late Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for the 1976 movie Network.
In one of the most famous scenes in that film, the protagonist, the angry newscaster Howard Beale, loses it, famously exhorting his viewers to “get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
In our own time, we have seen life imitate art, as countless middle and working-class Americans, tired of being ripped off in the interests of the wealthiest one percent among us, have dared to say “we’re as mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this anymore!”
I’m thankful that, after eight bitter winters of George W. Bush, when middle and working-class Americans felt there was no one to listen to their cries and lamentations against their spoliation on behalf of the “haves and the have-mores” --- the richest one percent in the land, my brothers and sisters of the Ninety-nine Percent have finally found their voice, and have dared to speak truth to those who have unjustly enriched themselves upon the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of those who seek nothing more than basic fairness for themselves and for their posterity.
I’m thankful that, paradoxically, we have an administration in office which we, the people, believe will listen when we say that it is not right that the playing field should be tilted so powerfully against the Ninety-nine Percent of Americans upon whom the prosperity of this country, and in large measure, the world, depends. That we are frustrated with its slowness to act on our behalf is a sign that we believe it capable of better things than its predecessor. Now it is incumbent on that administration to listen, and listen well, to our voices.
I’m thankful that a critical mass is taking shape which dares to say that it is not right that America in the 21st century should resemble France in the 18th; a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal deserves better than to be governed in the interests of a narrow class which bears a distinct and unsavory resemblance to the worst of the French nobility of the ancien régime.
I’m thankful for a movement that looks like America, a movement composed of all sorts and conditions of human beings; of young and old; of tall and small; of rich and poor; of professionals, the fully employed, the underemployed, and the unemployed; of straight and queer; of PhD’s and high school dropouts, of veterans, vagabonds, and vegans; of people of every faith and no faith at all.
I’m thankful for a movement that is not afraid of civil disobedience; I am grateful for a movement that is not afraid to sit peaceably amid clouds of pepper spray; I am grateful for movement that dares to say “these are our streets; we will occupy them. These are our parks; we will occupy them. This our tundra; we will occupy it. This is our country; we will occupy it.”
I’m thankful that we are reclaiming our noble revolutionary heritage, that we are having once again a conversation about liberty, about fairness, and about fundamental decency.
If we are to be able to speak in good faith of America as a land of opportunity, we dare not allow ourselves the feckless luxury of an unsustainable social order in which those who have “arrived” are able to pull up behind them the ladder of social mobility and success upon which others rely to better themselves and their children.
I think it is safe to say that we of the Ninety-nine Percent do not resent the success of those who have made it, what we resent is the efforts of far too many in America’s one percent to prevent anyone else from making it, too.
So, on this Thanksgiving day, I give thanks to God Who in every generation calls forth prophets and witnesses. I also give thanks for those prophets and witnesses who in our own time are those voices crying in the wilderness on behalf of all who have been voiceless, abused, and ground down.
A single voice, crying in the wilderness, can change the world. By God’s good grace, we may dare to hope that many voices crying in cities and towns and villages all over this land, may yet change our world in our time for the better, for ourselves and for all who will come after us. Amen.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
NOW FOR THE MERITS.... A BATTLE LOST, A WAR TO WIN
By: Paul S. Marchand
The California Supreme Court has unanimously held that the proponents of Proposition 8 have standing to defend if the State declines to do so. Initial reactions notwithstanding, we should welcome the opinion.
While disappointing to many, the ruling is based on upon sound application of the principle of stare decisis, which holds that similar cases should be similarly decided. As much as it may irritate many of us in the LGBT community that our civil rights should still be accounted lesser things than those of our straight neighbors, today’s advisory ruling, intended for the education of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, may well open the way to a substantive adjudication in favor of marriage equality.
It’s important to keep our eyes on that larger goal. As I’ve blogged before, denial of the right of GLBT people to enter the civil contract of marriage in effect reduces us to the status of slaves. Whether Ruth marries Naomi, Jonathan marries David, or Adam marries Eve, should not matter in a state in which people of every faith and none at all should be able to exercise equal civil rights without having those rights sacrificed to assuage the religious discomforts of this or that sect, denomination, or cult.
Thus, in keeping our eyes on the prize, we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by the temptation to vent anger at what is, to all intents and purposes, a nonsubstantive decision turning on issues of law, not of policy.
The California Supreme Court has unanimously held that the proponents of Proposition 8 have standing to defend if the State declines to do so. Initial reactions notwithstanding, we should welcome the opinion.
While disappointing to many, the ruling is based on upon sound application of the principle of stare decisis, which holds that similar cases should be similarly decided. As much as it may irritate many of us in the LGBT community that our civil rights should still be accounted lesser things than those of our straight neighbors, today’s advisory ruling, intended for the education of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, may well open the way to a substantive adjudication in favor of marriage equality.
It’s important to keep our eyes on that larger goal. As I’ve blogged before, denial of the right of GLBT people to enter the civil contract of marriage in effect reduces us to the status of slaves. Whether Ruth marries Naomi, Jonathan marries David, or Adam marries Eve, should not matter in a state in which people of every faith and none at all should be able to exercise equal civil rights without having those rights sacrificed to assuage the religious discomforts of this or that sect, denomination, or cult.
Thus, in keeping our eyes on the prize, we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by the temptation to vent anger at what is, to all intents and purposes, a nonsubstantive decision turning on issues of law, not of policy.
The Court’s opinion particularly Justice Kennard’s concurrence, offer guidance as to the Court’s rationale for its decision:
"When the voters, through the exercise of their constitutionally guaranteed initiative power, have enacted a new statute or have amended the state Constitution, and the validity of that initiative is challenged in a judicial proceeding, who may appear in court to defend the initiative?
"California‘s state trial and appellate courts have routinely permitted initiative proponents to defend an initiative‘s validity, and to appeal from a judgment holding an initiative invalid, particularly when state officials have declined to do so." (Concurrence of Kennard, J., slip opn. at 4-5, See also Majority slip opn., at 28-31. emphases added.)
The Court’s majority opinion also goes on to make it clear in no uncertain terms that “the state law issue that has been submitted to this court is totally unrelated to the substantive question of the constitutional validity of Proposition 8.” Maj. slip opn. at 2. (emphasis added.)
In short, while anti-equality forces may try to spin today’s ruling as a victory, they should perhaps remember the old adage about being careful what one asks for, because one might get it. If the State had been compelled to step in and defend Proposition 8, any of a number of outcomes could have been foreseen. There might have been large-scale resignations from the Attorney General’s office by lawyers choosing to resign on principle rather than defend an odious law. Conversely, the A.G.’s office might have, for the sheer sake of preserving its professional integrity, appointed the best and brightest lawyers it could secure.
As it is, Proposition 8 will now probably defended by the crew of cranks and crazies that defended it in the first place, along with their lawyers. If the poor performance of the proponents’ legal team in the District Court and the Ninth Circuit is any predictor of any subsequent performance before the Court of Appeals, we may dare entertain a certain measure of optimism.
Sometimes, the battle one loses helps position oneself for a future win. I hope -and with justification, I think- that is the case here.
-XXX-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, CA. Almost 20 years ago, he litigated one of the first marriage-equality cases in California. The views contained here are his own.
"When the voters, through the exercise of their constitutionally guaranteed initiative power, have enacted a new statute or have amended the state Constitution, and the validity of that initiative is challenged in a judicial proceeding, who may appear in court to defend the initiative?
"California‘s state trial and appellate courts have routinely permitted initiative proponents to defend an initiative‘s validity, and to appeal from a judgment holding an initiative invalid, particularly when state officials have declined to do so." (Concurrence of Kennard, J., slip opn. at 4-5, See also Majority slip opn., at 28-31. emphases added.)
The Court’s majority opinion also goes on to make it clear in no uncertain terms that “the state law issue that has been submitted to this court is totally unrelated to the substantive question of the constitutional validity of Proposition 8.” Maj. slip opn. at 2. (emphasis added.)
In short, while anti-equality forces may try to spin today’s ruling as a victory, they should perhaps remember the old adage about being careful what one asks for, because one might get it. If the State had been compelled to step in and defend Proposition 8, any of a number of outcomes could have been foreseen. There might have been large-scale resignations from the Attorney General’s office by lawyers choosing to resign on principle rather than defend an odious law. Conversely, the A.G.’s office might have, for the sheer sake of preserving its professional integrity, appointed the best and brightest lawyers it could secure.
As it is, Proposition 8 will now probably defended by the crew of cranks and crazies that defended it in the first place, along with their lawyers. If the poor performance of the proponents’ legal team in the District Court and the Ninth Circuit is any predictor of any subsequent performance before the Court of Appeals, we may dare entertain a certain measure of optimism.
Sometimes, the battle one loses helps position oneself for a future win. I hope -and with justification, I think- that is the case here.
-XXX-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, CA. Almost 20 years ago, he litigated one of the first marriage-equality cases in California. The views contained here are his own.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
A GOOD NIGHT TO BE A 99 PERCENTER: THE END OF THE BEGINNING
By: Paul S. Marchand
It was a good night last night to be a Ninety-nine Percenter.
It was good to see mainstream Mainers restore a 38-year practice of election-day voter registration, rebuking the GOP’s consistent efforts to narrow the franchise.
It was good to see voters reject Mississippi’s misogynistic so-called personhood amendment that would have turned women into chattels of the state.
It was good to see the people of Ohio rise in support of public sector workers and their right to collectively bargain, reaffirming what ought to be an unquestionable American truth that our teachers, firefighters, and cops are our neighbors, not our enemies.
After the beating we Ninety-nine Percenters have taken in the last year at the hands of an out-of-control right wing, it was good to see us find our voice and reclaim our power at the polls.
But, as Winston Churchill said after the second battle of El Alamein, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
The analogy to El Alamein is a compelling one. In late October and early November, 1942, Axis forces under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel stood just 50 miles from Alexandria. If they could break through, the way to the Nile, to Cairo, and beyond that, the Suez Canal, lay open. The only thing standing in their way was the British 8th Army, under Lt.Gen. Bernard Montgomery.
We may be grateful that Montgomery and the 8th Army were victorious at Alamein; the history of our world might have been a much darker one had the battle gone the other way. Together with Stalingrad and Midway, El Alamein ranks as one of the most consequential battles of modern times. As Churchill noted after the war: "before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat."
For the last many years, it has seemed as if we Ninety-Nine percenters had never had a victory. Again and again, we had seen the playing field tilted against us; banks were bailed out at our expense, only to punish us for having rescued them with the pittances of our pockets. Reward was privatized while risk was socialized.
We of the 99 percent were blamed for our improvidence in wanting to hold onto the American Dream, while the wizards of Wall Street were routinely rewarded for mediocre performance with end-of-year bonuses that exceeded by orders of magnitude the total lifetime earnings of most of their employees.
When the “too big to fail” haves and have-mores defaulted on their obligations, it was everybody’s problem; when an average middle class family came up against hard times and needed help with the mortgage, it was that family’s “moral hazard.”
It was a good night last night to be a Ninety-nine Percenter.
It was good to see mainstream Mainers restore a 38-year practice of election-day voter registration, rebuking the GOP’s consistent efforts to narrow the franchise.
It was good to see voters reject Mississippi’s misogynistic so-called personhood amendment that would have turned women into chattels of the state.
It was good to see the people of Ohio rise in support of public sector workers and their right to collectively bargain, reaffirming what ought to be an unquestionable American truth that our teachers, firefighters, and cops are our neighbors, not our enemies.
After the beating we Ninety-nine Percenters have taken in the last year at the hands of an out-of-control right wing, it was good to see us find our voice and reclaim our power at the polls.
But, as Winston Churchill said after the second battle of El Alamein, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
The analogy to El Alamein is a compelling one. In late October and early November, 1942, Axis forces under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel stood just 50 miles from Alexandria. If they could break through, the way to the Nile, to Cairo, and beyond that, the Suez Canal, lay open. The only thing standing in their way was the British 8th Army, under Lt.Gen. Bernard Montgomery.
We may be grateful that Montgomery and the 8th Army were victorious at Alamein; the history of our world might have been a much darker one had the battle gone the other way. Together with Stalingrad and Midway, El Alamein ranks as one of the most consequential battles of modern times. As Churchill noted after the war: "before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat."
For the last many years, it has seemed as if we Ninety-Nine percenters had never had a victory. Again and again, we had seen the playing field tilted against us; banks were bailed out at our expense, only to punish us for having rescued them with the pittances of our pockets. Reward was privatized while risk was socialized.
We of the 99 percent were blamed for our improvidence in wanting to hold onto the American Dream, while the wizards of Wall Street were routinely rewarded for mediocre performance with end-of-year bonuses that exceeded by orders of magnitude the total lifetime earnings of most of their employees.
When the “too big to fail” haves and have-mores defaulted on their obligations, it was everybody’s problem; when an average middle class family came up against hard times and needed help with the mortgage, it was that family’s “moral hazard.”
For us in the 99 percent, the hits just seemed to keep on coming. We were routinely blamed for the shortcomings of others; for Wall Street, an economic downturn was a “correction;” the challenge for Wall Street was to ensure that the burdens of such a “correction” were borne by anybody but those whose incompetence and peculation had caused the “correction” in the first place.
For us, an economic downturn was more than a “correction;” it was a nightmare of deferred dreams, foreclosure fears, credit crunches, and the always uncertain footing that is the ineluctable concomitant of a playing field that was tilted ever more against us with each passing year. Under such circumstances, was it surprising that so many middle and working class Americans should have been close to despair?
Perhaps that is why last night’s victories, in Maine, in Mississippi, and most importantly in Ohio, feel so good. If nothing else, they have send a message that we can fight back, that we can say “no” to the ongoing effort of the One Percenters and their right-wing allies to grab all the goodies while leaving us to pay for their profligacy. Against a right-wing mantra of “no, you can’t,” we of the 99 Percent have once again dared say “yes, we can!”
For last night demonstrated that as much as we of the 99 Percent can Occupy Wall Street, we can also occupy our polling places, that we do have the ability to hold out, that we need no longer passively tolerate our spoliation.
The muted rumble of approaching events we began to hear with the Wisconsin recalls is growing louder, and its message is clear: the once-silent, once-close-to-despair 99 Percent has found its voice. More importantly, we have found new hope. Last night was our Alamein.
This is our country; we will occupy it.
These are our cities, towns, and villages; we will occupy them.
And we will use the power of our numbers and our vote to preserve, protect, and defend what is ours.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, CA, a working city full of 99 Percenters, including himself, even if not everybody in Cathedral City realizes it. The views expressed herein are his own. All rights reserved.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
FEED THE RICH, TAX THE POOR, TILL THERE ARE NO POOR NO MORE
By: PAUL S. MARCHAND
Let’s blame the poor for being poor.
After that, we’ll tax the poor.
We’ll tax the poor till they have no more.
And then we’ll blame the poor even more.
It may sound like a bad riff on a Dr. Seuss story, but it’s actually the new political strategy being pushed by the American right.
There’s a kind of curiously unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth quality to the way in which the American right has taken out after the poor and middle class in this country. There certainly seems to be a disposition among the American right to want to turn on its head the lyric from Ten Years After’s classic song “I’d Love to Change the World” “Feed the rich, tax the poor, till there are no poor no more.”
Commies. Fleabaggers. Freeloaders. Losers. Malcontents. Mooches. Socialists. Scum. Traitors. Troublemakers.
We shouldn’t be surprised, only disgusted, to see defenders of the One Percent lashing out with such vitriolic words at America’s middle and working class, and particularly at those millions of Americans who are either living in poverty, on the brink of poverty, or in daily insecurity of their own economic position and status. America’s One Percenters and their water-carriers in the media and in Congress use, and encourage their followers to use, bullying and hateful words most of their parents would not have tolerated from them as children.
If ever we needed proof that the American right is wrong, we have it now.
Perhaps that unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth anger betokens -- at least among the more perspicacious One Percenters-- a realization that the American middle and working classes have grown tired of being despoiled in the interests of a very few wealthy individuals and corporations. Perhaps a few of the One Percenters have begun to realize that the days when the Ninety Nine Percent would quietly acquiesce to being treated as an ATM are over. When a company like General Electric pays no income tax at all, the Ninety Nine Percent’s irritation (to put it mildly) becomes understandable.
Certainly, behind the anger of the American right and their water-carriers should lie a real sense of worry. Bullies often get worried when their targets begin to hit back. Like the too-often bullied gay kid in school who one day rounds on his attacker and breaks his nose, a majority of the American public is becoming increasingly disinclined to tolerate the misconduct of the favored few at the expense of the middle and working class many.
Every movement, it seems, has its own series of turning points. Like the 2011 World Series, whose turning point came in the Cardinals’ miraculous bottom-of-the-ninth rally in Game VI, the Occupy a movement’s turning point may very well have come when Scott Olsen, a twice-deployed Marine veteran, suffered a fractured skull at the hands of the Oakland Police.
For in that moment, millions of Americans who might otherwise have been inclined to dismiss the Occupy Movement as nothing more than a bunch of social undesirables throwing temper tantrums were forcibly confronted with the fact that the Occupy Movement looks a lot more like America than the right wing and too many of the mainstream media would have us believe. When a decorated Marine veteran becomes the victim of officially-sanctioned violence, Americans sit up and take notice.
Shortly after the injuries to Scott Olsen became national news, a sometime constituent of mine, himself a Marine veteran, observed to me that of all the people the Oakland police could have hit and injured, it had to be a twice-deployed, gainfully employed Marine veteran. Strike one. Strike two. Strike three. As my former constituent noted to me, the Marines are perhaps most insular and clannish of all our armed services. “Screw with one Marine,” my former constituent said to me, “and you’ve screwed with the entire Corps, living, dead, or yet to be born.”
What millions of Americans are now confronting is a disturbing reality that at least part of our social structure seems quite prepared to appeal to violence and hatred in order to avert a real conversation about the alarming growth of economic and fiscal inequality in this country. If we are to avert class warfare, there must be a conversation that does not take as its starting point the idea that the poor are taxed too little and the rich too much. The conversation also cannot start from Herman Cain’s wrong premise that the poor are to blame for their condition.
Of course, there have been times in our history when blaming the poor was not merely acceptable, but fashionable. While Herman Cain might have been perfectly happy to live in such a time, he seems to forget that under such a dispensation he himself would have been worse than poor; he would have been a slave. A society that claims to be Judeo-Christian in its values and outlook nevertheless seems astonishingly forgetful of repeated scriptural admonitions showing God’s preferential option for the poor.
Despite the admonitions of Scripture and even of the better angels of our personal natures, blaming the poor and inciting hatred toward them have become all too common in a society which has managed to go altogether too far toward re-creating and glorifying the inequalities of France’s ancien régime, and which refuses to find any lessons in the collapse thereof . Like Talleyrand’s Bourbons, the right-wing mockers and abusers of the middle class and the poor seem to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own.
Let’s blame the poor for being poor.
After that, we’ll tax the poor.
We’ll tax the poor till they have no more.
And then we’ll blame the poor even more.
It may sound like a bad riff on a Dr. Seuss story, but it’s actually the new political strategy being pushed by the American right.
There’s a kind of curiously unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth quality to the way in which the American right has taken out after the poor and middle class in this country. There certainly seems to be a disposition among the American right to want to turn on its head the lyric from Ten Years After’s classic song “I’d Love to Change the World” “Feed the rich, tax the poor, till there are no poor no more.”
Commies. Fleabaggers. Freeloaders. Losers. Malcontents. Mooches. Socialists. Scum. Traitors. Troublemakers.
We shouldn’t be surprised, only disgusted, to see defenders of the One Percent lashing out with such vitriolic words at America’s middle and working class, and particularly at those millions of Americans who are either living in poverty, on the brink of poverty, or in daily insecurity of their own economic position and status. America’s One Percenters and their water-carriers in the media and in Congress use, and encourage their followers to use, bullying and hateful words most of their parents would not have tolerated from them as children.
If ever we needed proof that the American right is wrong, we have it now.
Perhaps that unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth anger betokens -- at least among the more perspicacious One Percenters-- a realization that the American middle and working classes have grown tired of being despoiled in the interests of a very few wealthy individuals and corporations. Perhaps a few of the One Percenters have begun to realize that the days when the Ninety Nine Percent would quietly acquiesce to being treated as an ATM are over. When a company like General Electric pays no income tax at all, the Ninety Nine Percent’s irritation (to put it mildly) becomes understandable.
Certainly, behind the anger of the American right and their water-carriers should lie a real sense of worry. Bullies often get worried when their targets begin to hit back. Like the too-often bullied gay kid in school who one day rounds on his attacker and breaks his nose, a majority of the American public is becoming increasingly disinclined to tolerate the misconduct of the favored few at the expense of the middle and working class many.
Every movement, it seems, has its own series of turning points. Like the 2011 World Series, whose turning point came in the Cardinals’ miraculous bottom-of-the-ninth rally in Game VI, the Occupy a movement’s turning point may very well have come when Scott Olsen, a twice-deployed Marine veteran, suffered a fractured skull at the hands of the Oakland Police.
For in that moment, millions of Americans who might otherwise have been inclined to dismiss the Occupy Movement as nothing more than a bunch of social undesirables throwing temper tantrums were forcibly confronted with the fact that the Occupy Movement looks a lot more like America than the right wing and too many of the mainstream media would have us believe. When a decorated Marine veteran becomes the victim of officially-sanctioned violence, Americans sit up and take notice.
Shortly after the injuries to Scott Olsen became national news, a sometime constituent of mine, himself a Marine veteran, observed to me that of all the people the Oakland police could have hit and injured, it had to be a twice-deployed, gainfully employed Marine veteran. Strike one. Strike two. Strike three. As my former constituent noted to me, the Marines are perhaps most insular and clannish of all our armed services. “Screw with one Marine,” my former constituent said to me, “and you’ve screwed with the entire Corps, living, dead, or yet to be born.”
What millions of Americans are now confronting is a disturbing reality that at least part of our social structure seems quite prepared to appeal to violence and hatred in order to avert a real conversation about the alarming growth of economic and fiscal inequality in this country. If we are to avert class warfare, there must be a conversation that does not take as its starting point the idea that the poor are taxed too little and the rich too much. The conversation also cannot start from Herman Cain’s wrong premise that the poor are to blame for their condition.
Of course, there have been times in our history when blaming the poor was not merely acceptable, but fashionable. While Herman Cain might have been perfectly happy to live in such a time, he seems to forget that under such a dispensation he himself would have been worse than poor; he would have been a slave. A society that claims to be Judeo-Christian in its values and outlook nevertheless seems astonishingly forgetful of repeated scriptural admonitions showing God’s preferential option for the poor.
Despite the admonitions of Scripture and even of the better angels of our personal natures, blaming the poor and inciting hatred toward them have become all too common in a society which has managed to go altogether too far toward re-creating and glorifying the inequalities of France’s ancien régime, and which refuses to find any lessons in the collapse thereof . Like Talleyrand’s Bourbons, the right-wing mockers and abusers of the middle class and the poor seem to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
ON THE STUBBORNNESS OF FACTS
By: Paul S. Marchand
It has not been a good last few days for serial deniers of reality, either on the front of climate change or in Libya.
Climate change deniers got a rude shock last week when UC Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller, long known as a prominent climate change skeptic, concluded, after extensive study, that existing climate science is correct, and that the Earth’s surface is indeed warming. For his apostasy from the ideological camp of climate denialism, Prof. Muller has become the target of angry right-wing climate deniers out to attack not only the methodology of this study but also his personal integrity.
Now, nobody likes to be wrong. When evidence disproves a cherished idea or hypothesis, our reaction can range from mild disappointment through irritation to outright concealment and spoliation of conflicting evidence. But one of the signal hallmarks of intellectual honesty, per se, is a willingness to modify an idea or hypothesis to bring it into accord with facts.
It was John Adams --defending the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre case in 1770-- who observed that “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Yet, far too many of us find ourselves subscribing to a philosophy that proclaims “don’t confuse me with facts; my mind is made up.” These are the same kind of intransigent people as Oliver Cromwell addressed in his famous 1650 letter to the Scots Kirk: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
So it is with climate change deniers; there is a strong current of both intellectual dishonesty and ad hominem attack in the claims and assertions climate change deniers use to try to advance what has become for them an almost religious faith. A personal example: a couple of years back, when I was serving on the Community, Economic, and Human Development Committee of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), the organization was in the process of finalizing a document relating to alternative energy and the challenges of climate change. Needless to say, conservative Republicans on the committee tried --thankfully without substantial success-- to turn the document into a climate change denying tract.
So common are phenomena like climate change denialism that behavioral scientists have coined the term “confirmation bias” to describe the process. Reduced to its simplest terms, confirmation bias is the tendency all of us have to accept information that accords with our own views and to reject that which does not. In that regard, we all tend to match Friedrich Nietzsche’s description of Ralph Waldo Emerson as “one who lives instinctively on ambrosia - and leaves everything indigestible on his plate.”
Of course, confirmation bias is hardly limited to climate change denialism; we can see it in the hyperventilating, backtracking, obfuscating, and climbing down in which Republican politicians have been engaging in the days since the late Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s Sheikh of Shriek, met his overdue and unlamented end. To hear the GOP tell it, the President either did too much, did too little, failed to include our allies, let our allies take too much of the lead, or just did or didn’t do whatever it was the GOP did or didn’t want done. All they can seem to agree on is if the President did it, or likes it, they don’t approve. Reflexively.
To listen to people like John McCain or Marco Rubio or Lindsey Graham complain about the fact that on Barack Obama’s watch the United States and our NATO allies were able to get rid of a perennial disturber of peace is to find oneself in an Alice in Wonderland altered reality in which one does not know whether to laugh, to cry, or to rage against the Brobdingnagian stupidity of a political party which seems to have forgotten its 2008 campaign sound bite of “country first.”
Time was, within relatively recent memory, that elected officials of both parties subscribed to an unwritten, but nonetheless powerful, understanding that domestic politics should end at the water’s edge; when Americans are in harm’s way, we may debate over means and ends, but seeking to undercut the execution of the nation’s foreign policy in order to secure domestic political points was considered out of bounds.
Unfortunately, that was then and this is now; times really have changed for the worse. The willingness of certain Republicans and Republican-leaning Democrats/Independents to criticize and downplay the Administration’s success in Libya, especially after the individuals in question had, to use Sarah Palin’s phrase, been palling around with Col. Qaddafi, does not speak well either for their common sense or their patriotism. Apparently, for Republican Obamanators, party now comes before country, not the other way round.
We had not thought it possible that the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States could have undone so many, so badly, so completely, so quickly, as to bereave ostensibly intelligent and experienced people of their basic faculties of commonsense and commonweal. Sadly, that is exactly what has happened. The confirmation biases of the American right now appear so entrenched as to make it impossible for them to accept the overwhelming weight of evidence supporting the science of climate change, while concurrently making it equally impossible for them to accept that the Obama Administration has in Libya actually accomplished a worthwhile and long-standing foreign-policy goal of the United States.
Such invincible error may incorrigible, but we are under no obligation to tolerate its propagation in silence. If the GOP wants to deny not merely the anthropogenicity of global climate change, but also its very existence, and if the GOP would rather be seen as carrying Col. Qaddafi’s water, or rather than that of the United States and the rest of the civilized world, that is their privilege, as it is our privilege to vote them out of office at the earliest possible opportunity.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own. All rights reserved.
It has not been a good last few days for serial deniers of reality, either on the front of climate change or in Libya.
Climate change deniers got a rude shock last week when UC Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller, long known as a prominent climate change skeptic, concluded, after extensive study, that existing climate science is correct, and that the Earth’s surface is indeed warming. For his apostasy from the ideological camp of climate denialism, Prof. Muller has become the target of angry right-wing climate deniers out to attack not only the methodology of this study but also his personal integrity.
Now, nobody likes to be wrong. When evidence disproves a cherished idea or hypothesis, our reaction can range from mild disappointment through irritation to outright concealment and spoliation of conflicting evidence. But one of the signal hallmarks of intellectual honesty, per se, is a willingness to modify an idea or hypothesis to bring it into accord with facts.
It was John Adams --defending the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre case in 1770-- who observed that “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Yet, far too many of us find ourselves subscribing to a philosophy that proclaims “don’t confuse me with facts; my mind is made up.” These are the same kind of intransigent people as Oliver Cromwell addressed in his famous 1650 letter to the Scots Kirk: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
So it is with climate change deniers; there is a strong current of both intellectual dishonesty and ad hominem attack in the claims and assertions climate change deniers use to try to advance what has become for them an almost religious faith. A personal example: a couple of years back, when I was serving on the Community, Economic, and Human Development Committee of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), the organization was in the process of finalizing a document relating to alternative energy and the challenges of climate change. Needless to say, conservative Republicans on the committee tried --thankfully without substantial success-- to turn the document into a climate change denying tract.
So common are phenomena like climate change denialism that behavioral scientists have coined the term “confirmation bias” to describe the process. Reduced to its simplest terms, confirmation bias is the tendency all of us have to accept information that accords with our own views and to reject that which does not. In that regard, we all tend to match Friedrich Nietzsche’s description of Ralph Waldo Emerson as “one who lives instinctively on ambrosia - and leaves everything indigestible on his plate.”
Of course, confirmation bias is hardly limited to climate change denialism; we can see it in the hyperventilating, backtracking, obfuscating, and climbing down in which Republican politicians have been engaging in the days since the late Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s Sheikh of Shriek, met his overdue and unlamented end. To hear the GOP tell it, the President either did too much, did too little, failed to include our allies, let our allies take too much of the lead, or just did or didn’t do whatever it was the GOP did or didn’t want done. All they can seem to agree on is if the President did it, or likes it, they don’t approve. Reflexively.
To listen to people like John McCain or Marco Rubio or Lindsey Graham complain about the fact that on Barack Obama’s watch the United States and our NATO allies were able to get rid of a perennial disturber of peace is to find oneself in an Alice in Wonderland altered reality in which one does not know whether to laugh, to cry, or to rage against the Brobdingnagian stupidity of a political party which seems to have forgotten its 2008 campaign sound bite of “country first.”
Time was, within relatively recent memory, that elected officials of both parties subscribed to an unwritten, but nonetheless powerful, understanding that domestic politics should end at the water’s edge; when Americans are in harm’s way, we may debate over means and ends, but seeking to undercut the execution of the nation’s foreign policy in order to secure domestic political points was considered out of bounds.
Unfortunately, that was then and this is now; times really have changed for the worse. The willingness of certain Republicans and Republican-leaning Democrats/Independents to criticize and downplay the Administration’s success in Libya, especially after the individuals in question had, to use Sarah Palin’s phrase, been palling around with Col. Qaddafi, does not speak well either for their common sense or their patriotism. Apparently, for Republican Obamanators, party now comes before country, not the other way round.
We had not thought it possible that the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States could have undone so many, so badly, so completely, so quickly, as to bereave ostensibly intelligent and experienced people of their basic faculties of commonsense and commonweal. Sadly, that is exactly what has happened. The confirmation biases of the American right now appear so entrenched as to make it impossible for them to accept the overwhelming weight of evidence supporting the science of climate change, while concurrently making it equally impossible for them to accept that the Obama Administration has in Libya actually accomplished a worthwhile and long-standing foreign-policy goal of the United States.
Such invincible error may incorrigible, but we are under no obligation to tolerate its propagation in silence. If the GOP wants to deny not merely the anthropogenicity of global climate change, but also its very existence, and if the GOP would rather be seen as carrying Col. Qaddafi’s water, or rather than that of the United States and the rest of the civilized world, that is their privilege, as it is our privilege to vote them out of office at the earliest possible opportunity.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own. All rights reserved.
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