Happy New Year's. Or: in the words of the late John Lennon, "Just give me some truth."

We live in a time marked by corruption, double-speak, injustice, violence, superstition and the creeping specter of right-wing totalitarianism. None of this is anything that the human race hasn't faced or endured before. Still, several generations of middle- and working-class people in the United States have enjoyed comfortable existences. We have relied upon -- and participated wittingly or not in the production and reification of -- febrile illusions and convenient myths that blocked from our view various of the certitudes of human history, including: inequality, oppression, exploitation, and financial and militaristic power-jockeying.

But just because we've awoken to find the world around us -- internationally and domestically -- in tatters doesn't mean we have to stop enjoying life. Quite the opposite.

I see the project of political self-education as continuous with the project of being a human being. It's not easy, sometimes, to be a human being, and the very notion that it has ever been easy is a seductive (perhaps irresistibly so) fiction. Whatever our political orientations -- left or right -- each of us has an idealized notion of human life that necessarily draws its raw materials from the past. That this idealized picture never actually existed as such often gets lost somewhere in the course of our endless discussions about the meaning of life, liberty and property as the Founding Fathers meant it. We want to believe that their interpretations of these things were more-or-less like the ones we espouse today.

An obvious example of this phenomenon is Thomas Jefferson. Both the left and the right in this country are fond of claiming him as their own. After all, he was among the most eloquent architects of the United States as an Enlightenment project, poised precariously (if that's possible...) between the polarities of violent revolution and orderly, reasoned deliberation. To the far right, Jefferson was and remains the prophet of the Confederacy -- the defender of States' Rights and of Southern self-determination (read: slavery). To the far left, Jefferson is our founding Civil Libertarian, opponent of slavery (in theory...) and the instrumental force in banishing governmental intervention into our personal, intellectual, moral and religious lives.

The truth, of course, is that Jefferson -- especially taken over the course of his lifetime -- was a walking contradiction. For all of his brilliance, wisdom and passion, he was often inconsistent, self-contradictory, stubborn, tone deaf and even dumb.

I think I lost track of where I was going with all of this... Oh well. I guess I really just wanted to say that these ambiguities and contradictions are part of what make us human beings, and the better we become at understanding this about ourselves and one another, the more adept we will be at being and living amongst human beings. We live in a deeply conservative age in which power is horded by a very small number of people whose conceptions of political and economic justice, reason and freedom center upon one thing: the necessity of maintaining the status quo. In one sense, it has never been an easier time to articulate a critique of the status quo. The injustices perpetrated by crony-capitalist oligarchies -- and the degree to which our elected representatives are in the employ of these oligarchies -- has never been clearer for all to see. It's as though all one needs to do is point one's finger, like identifying a leak in one's bathroom plumbing.

Of course, the trouble is that pointing this out doesn't seem to accomplish all that much. Describing the problems fails to alert our fellow democratic citizens to the necessity of taking political action in order to redress these injustices. But we should take this not as a defeat but as a challenge. We're simply not articulating ourselves clearly enough. Or we're not talking to the right people. Or we're being arrogant, lazy and self-righteous (guilty as charged...). I guess what I'm trying to suggest here is not just that the pen is mightier than the sword, but also that the truth is more durable, valuable, penetrating and infectious than lies.

Sure, the far right (both the radical-laissez faire right and its cousin, the let's bomb everything all the time right) has got legions of oil-company-funded "think tanks" to come up with strategies and propaganda for various right-wing pet-projects, like wars, the privatization of public infrastructure and lowering taxes. They've got the guns, the money and the numbers.

The only thing that stands so much as a chance against so menacing a phalanx is the truth.

Big man, pig man / Ha ha, charade you are!

It's here, at long last. The Crib From This Photoshop Moment (although I didn't literally use Photoshop). I felt the need to present my critique of the US Chamber of Commerce in a manner that captures the rhetorical nuances and socio-critico-theoretical apparatus that are within my meager capabilities to bring to bear:

With grateful acknowledgments (...and apologies?) to George Orwell and Roger Waters.

Okay, this means war. Public Enemy #1: the elitist plutocrats of the US Chamber of Commerce.

At least the Dems -- in contrast to the members of the GOP -- in Congress aren't readily and openly whoring themselves out to the US Chamber of Commerce.

From AP News, by way of Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan coalition in the House voted late Thursday to make it easier for corporations to engage in complex derivatives trades without government restrictions, eroding the reach of proposed regulations to govern Wall Street.

Democratic attempts to toughen the legislation failed.

Though not major setbacks, the votes illustrated the difficulties facing House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and the Obama administration as they seek to pass legislation aimed at preventing a recurrence of last year's Wall Street crisis.

Key votes loomed ahead, with a final vote on the sweeping legislation scheduled Friday.

Democrats hoped to fend off an amendment Friday that would eliminate the creation of an independent Consumer Finance Protection Agency. The agency is a central element of the Democrats' legislation and the Obama administration's proposed regulatory changes.

The amendment was offered by Rep. Walt Minnick, a conservative Democrat from Idaho, and seven other centrist Democrats. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been running national television ads against the creation of a consumer agency, said it would base its support for lawmakers in next year's elections, in part, on how they voted on the amendment.

"I think we're going to beat the Minnick amendment, but it's a real test," Frank, D-Mass., said Thursday. Creating a consumer agency is a top priority for consumer groups and for labor organizations such as the AFL-CIO.

Democratic leaders also were pushing changes that would add further restrictions on banks and financial institutions. One, vigorously opposed by banks, would let bankruptcy judges rewrite mortgages to lower homeowners' monthly payments.

A coalition of banking organizations on Thursday sent lawmakers a letter urging them to vote against the amendment. The House previously passed bankruptcy-mortgage legislation, but it failed in the Senate.

The legislation imposes new regulations on derivatives, aiming to prevent manipulation in and bring transparency to a $600 trillion global market. But an amendment by New York Democrat Scott Murphy, adopted 304-124 Thursday night, exempted businesses that trade in derivatives, not as financial speculators, but to hedge against market fluctuations such as currency rates or gasoline prices. The amendment also provided an exception for businesses that are not considered too big to be a risk to the financial system.

A Democratic effort to make more companies subject to derivatives regulation failed 279-150.

The Chamber of Commerce circulated a letter Thursday urging lawmakers to vote for the Murphy amendment and against the broader regulation. [...]

If ever there was an entity that is contemptuous of the basic, day-to-day existence of the ordinary, middle class American citizen and family in 2009 (and there was/is!), it is the US Chamber of Commerce. It is a truly despicable assemblage of liars and crooks, an organization of cigar-chomping Mr. Spacely-type Captains of Oligarchy.

Of course the US Chamber of Commerce is against the regulation and oversight! I mean, weren't excessive market regulation/oversight and rampant consumer protections the things that plunged us into this economic crisis in the first place?? Oh, wait.....

Anyway, what do you expect from an organization that opposes the prosecution of private contractors in Iraq who gang-raped American and Iraqi women?.

The history books of the future shall surely look back on this moment as the finest hour of laissez faire capitalism and its apologists.....

Link: Frontline's "The Warning" will detail the roles of Rubin, Greenspan, Summers & Geithner in enabling financial crisis.

More information and "sneak peak" video hyperlinks can be found at the blog DownWithTyranny,

whose author writes:

[...] Tonight at 9PM PBS is debuting The Warning by Mark Kirk. I heard him being interviewed on the radio this morning. It promises to be a blockbuster of a program and if you ever wonder how all these highly paid smart guys dragged the whole country-- if not much of the world-- into ruin, you really ought to try to watch. Kirk's goal is to open the black box and unearth "the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression." [...]