What Kind of Country Are We?

Germany and Japan have highly unionized work forces: New Dealers made sure that unions were strong before the Allied occupation forces relinquished control. Ditto South Korea. The rationale: democracy would have a better chance to flourish, and Nazi/Fascist brutes would have less likelihood of regaining control if confronted by strong unions.

But Brazil, France, Spain, Russia, India and South Africa also have union-organized auto industries. In contrast, a large portion of the US auto industry, especially beyond the rust-belt states, is not unionized and unionization is declining rapidly. The foreign transplants, like Nissan and Honda, are unionized in virtually every other so-called 'developed country.'

Despite weakened unions, the US Chamber of Commerce's reaction to Obama's NLRB appointments, ratified in the recent filibuster deal in the US Senate, was that a major disaster had occurred. American business appears to have an aversion to unions, not just among the auto transplants in the South.

Omigod! The NLRB might actually attempt, again, to fulfill its mandate that employers not unduly interfere with union organizing elections!

As soon as FDR was gone, business rallied against unions, and in 1946 a Republican Congress passed Taft-Hartley, weakening unions and making "right-to-work" legislation viable. Since 1946, 23 states have passed such laws. Is it just coincidence that right-to-work states have fewer union workers (6.48% vs 10.8%) and lower wages?

All the southern states except Kentucky, all the plains states, almost all the Rocky Mountain states are right-to-work, and now two states from the industrial heartland (Michigan and Indiana) are, as well.

Right-to-work is a euphemism. RTL means employees in a union-organized workplace don't have to join a union, or pay union dues, but can benefit from a union contract. When workers become "free-riders" like this, unions lose money, power and eventually their contracts. Then employers don't have to face an organization representing workers.

Gerrymandering elected majorities from white, rural minorities, Tea Party state legislatures, from Wisconsin to Texas, now pass draconian abortion laws, slash services from education to Medicaid, cut taxes on the wealthy, and raise them on the poor. It's a coup that exploited the 2010 reaction to Obama and the unlimited corporate and private funds released by Citizens United. It's a coup of corporate elites, and it's frighteningly successful in the states, where it's compounded by the generations-long decline of organized labor.

The US Congress is divided between a similarly gerrymandered, reactionary House majority, and an inchoate, moderate Senate majority corrupted by corporate money. The US looks increasingly like the despotic, declining Empire of Fifth Century Rome, led by a fabulously wealthy elite dominating an increasingly impoverished majority. The coup isn't complete, but it's dangerously close. The military-industrial-security complex doesn't know it yet, but an Empire based on mass misery is like a hollowed, rotten tree: it'll go down fast in a storm, despite its sophisticated surveillance and automated weaponry.

Gay Marriage, Drones & Inequality

Social progress seems slow, but in societal terms it's probably moving about as fast as it can: acceptance of gays, even if the Supreme Court can't keep up with the changes in society, is lightning fast.

On the other hand, environmental progress is moving in reverse along with economic equality. War and instability have become more destructive, even if there is no "world war."

Post-Citizens United: corporatist conservatives must punch themselves with glee: successes small: sneaking through "the Monsanto protection act" in the Food bill, and big: persuading the chattering classes inside the Beltway that the deficit/debt is an urgent problem that only can be solved by cutting what they derisively call "entitlements," not subsidies to the burgeoning wealthy.

Our media is so skewed towards the agenda of the wealthy and corporations, that it doesn't seem absurd that we're slashing government spending when unemployment is far too high. Our media is more controlled by wealth and corporate interests than it was in Venezuela before Chavez. He opposed it with state-owned media, and selective de-licensing.

US media excoriated Chavez as a dictator, while he won landslides in at least five elections, elections certified by Carter as freer than the US.

Venezuela may have more democracy than we do, since Republicans work assiduously to deny the right to vote to likely opponents, and a Supreme Court Justice derides Voting Rights Act Section 5 as establishing voting rights as a "racial entitlement."

The US claims it's exceptional; it isn't, except in things we shouldn't crow about, like the highest per capita rate of incarceration, the most expensive and least effective health care system, a falling working wage, soaring inequality, and endemic violence fueled by our wide open "gun culture."

We don't, any longer, score high on educational attainment: almost every other OECD nation has higher college graduation rates: the US used to lead.

Our military is exceptional: the US has the world's most effective killing machine--long before we started using drones. But it still loses wars: Vietnam, Iraq (really), and now Afghanistan.

The size of our military is also exceptional, but that demonstrates another American failing: like North Korea, we spend more money on war-making than on any other "discretionary" government function--we substitute brute strength for sense. We value guns over children, even our own children (100+ days since Newtown and no new Federal gun control law). But the Bible is "brought to you by Walmart," an American company. Exceptional!

The American Empire hasn't lasted long; it's failing progressively and making enemies everywhere. Soon the muscle-bound US will be only the second wealthiest nation.

Targeting immigrants and homegrown terrorists with drones, disenfranchising minorities (those we haven't jailed) and the poor, the US is also becoming almost as authoritarian as China, our successful competitor.

Evil Deeds

People do evil things, but they argue they do them for reasons they believe are justified, or because they believe, they are doing good, not evil.

How about the NRA? Some gun-owners think they do good, because they defend their right (constitutional or delusional) to hunt coyotes with an AK-47; "it's so much fun!"

But do the NRA lobbyists do good, when they try to protect human rights abusers in other countries, by lobbying to block the Arms Trade Treaty now before Congress? NRA lobbyists call it a "UN gun grab," and try to scare Congressmen, claiming it will enable the UN to confiscate weapons from US citizens. It won't; it's an international treaty to prevent weapons sales to rogue groups and countries, not individuals within nations; it's meant to regulate arms traders between countries, especially the ones selling to terrorists, torturers and tyrants. The NRA just wants to sell guns.

What about the oil companies lobbying to complete the Keystone XL pipeline, or to expand drilling operations, or to prevent regulation of fracking? Do they, or their lobbyists really believe that there is no such thing as global warming, no impact from burning more and more oil and no environmental damage? In the film, Promised Land, the Land Manager acted by Matt Damon, sells farmers on the chance they'll make a financial killing by signing on to his gas company's fracking project. Then he has second thoughts: fracking can do permanent damage to the water supply, as well as causing air pollution. The film confronts the issue of consequences, and whether it's ethical for companies to ignore them in pursuit of profit. Matt's co-worker continues selling gas-drilling leases, saying, "It's only a job."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposes selling off scrap metals with low levels of radioactivity, assuring the public it's safe. Yet, the UN has recently concluded: because background radiation has increased world-wide--from weapons tests, nuclear accidents, etc.--no added level of radiation is safe. Yet, the NRC, and its clients, the nuclear power industry, have a problem: millions of tons of waste cost millions to store, but could earn millions to sell. So, NRC regulators say 'it's safe.'

What these, and other possible examples, demonstrate is an inability of corporate or government decision-makers to distinguish between corporate economic interest (profits) and public wellbeing: the latter concept has become almost antique.

Meanwhile, cancer rates skyrocket, storms increase their destructiveness, guns kill thousands, cheap food kills more through obesity, and the US is only exceptional in all of these ills.

No, it's exceptional also for killing more outside its borders than anyone else. World civilization is murderous, especially from corporate obsession with profit.

Repeal of Citizens United is only a first step. Either corporations are tamed, or they and their owners, like the Late Roman Empire's Senators, will drive world civilization to extinction.