I’ve been absent in the sometimes sunny state of Texas. Austin is like no other city in Texas. But it is also wonderfully American. There are many enormous flags flying. There is almost no public transit, except in the downtown where buses take the lower form of proletariat to their menial jobs. It is also a landscape peppered with malls, big box stores and the usual suburban litter. It is also a vibrant American example of what can be done with a little thinking. It is the American capital of music, especially country. It is chic, it is clever. It posts bumper stickers saying “Keep Austin Weird.” It is also something of a Democratic outpost in a state where the governor is still fighting the Alamo.
It was against this background of America that I watched the State of The Union speech by the President. He seems to have abandoned all pretense of transformative change and has launched his campaign for re-election in 2012, an event less than two years away. He is flying high, straddling the very centre of American politics. He continues to evoke the spectre of Ronald Reagan whose only asset was really that he resonated with his audience. His performance as President was a woeful mess: tax cuts, runaway spending, and a lot of spine-tingling rhetoric as in”Tear down that wall Mr. Gorbachev!
Obama has taken his cue from the Great Communicator. He has, with some exceptions, tried to make Americans feel good about themselves. He indulged profusely in what they call “exceptionalism.” That is the constant praise of American productivity, ingenuity, hard-work, and an abiding love for democracy, all far ahead of any other country in the world. Whether or not any of these fulsome words have any basis in fact is irrelevant. It is what people want to hear. There was a lot of criticism of the President for his failure to be brave and to demand from his Congress a path toward recovery. Instead, after lavishing praise, he spoke of how more people were in higher education institutions than any place else in the world. He did cast a shadow by reminding Americans that they ranked low in comparison to the intellectual, especially science and math, accomplishments of many other countries. But that lament is tired. It has been proclaimed by every President since they country was stunned by sputnik. Obama used that old rhetorical lever to make the point that America needed more teachers.
Clearly he has focused on November 2012. And he is on a roll. The beginning was tragic but serendipitous: the massacre at Tucson. His ratings were climbing. And America seems not to have examined what he said in State of The Union, but how good it made them feel.
I noted, with some grim satisfaction that David Axelrod has left the presidential picture. The last few times I saw him on TV he was the king of political boilerplate. He said nothing. He didn’t even say it well. Like the Obama speech, Axelrod praised American superiority, the work ethic, and the pursuit of the American Dream. All of it full of sound and fury (and you know the rest of the quote.)
America succeeds because it believes in success. That they are 27th in academic achievement is pure slander. “Exceptionalism” means they are number one in everything. No other country has been so successful at the apparent creation of wealth. I won’t go into all the economic disparities, that’s been done to death. But when it comes to vocations they go where the money is. Obama wants teachers. The people want material success measured in possessions and money. The American Dream is not to be great. It is to be rich. Obama knows it. He is marching on and victory is coming closer as the Republicans stumble about trying to get some traction with their “fight the deficit” and “less government” catchwords. Polls show that neither one is an issue. They were lucky that last November the Democrats seemed to be looking the other way.
Still, it is one of my favourite places – if for no other reason than national ‘chutzpah.”
Monday, January 31, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
WHAT PRICE POLITICAL ADVANTAGE?
Obama was good, I mean really good, at the podium in Tucson. Before a packed house, with the overflow in a football stadium, the President got back his mojo. Do I sound like I’m making politics out of tragedy? I sure am. So is the White House, although in all fairness, I don’t believe for a moment that that was their intent. The tragedy gave Obama the chance of his presidential lifetime. Finally, people are cheering for his message of cooperation and a return to civility in politics.
That it took a shocking episode at the hands of an unbalanced man with an automatic pistol should not matter. But it does. In one fell swoop the president has managed to upstage the Tea {Party, who after all, are the ones most responsible for the loss of civility.) He has trumped all the Glen Becks and Rush Limbaugh and Sara Palins.
America looked at itself in the mirror. It did not like what it saw. It felt shame and it felt remorse. And, I have to be cynical; I am betting that the popularity poll on the day of Obama’s speech in Tucson is way up. It was already climbing up at 50%. In the next few days the new numbers will be in.
It is still obvious, judging by the mouthings of the Fox news ranters, that the solid Right had no good words for their enemy. But above it all, the man was utterly presidential. He rose above politics and perhaps even upstaged that upstart, that grossly misunderstood “Great Communicator.” (I say “grossly misunderstood, because he got nothing but credit while his record was abysmal.)
To compound the misery for the extreme Right, Palin, instead of calling for civility, blamed “blood libel.” In one fell swoop she put herself back close to political oblivion, while at the same time losing whatever Jewish vote she might have had. That she reinforced herself with her core supporter is beyond question. Some people cling hopelessly to disgraced dogmas.
Most Republicans are red-faced. They should be. The event, which of course was beyond reason, has put them on the defensive. It is they who have fostered the new political un-civility, if for no other reason than their embrace of the Tea Party people.
Just go back for TV clips of the signs those people took to rallies. Read the epithets, the slanders, the insults, and the stupidity. It has now come back to haunt them.
I am not optimistic enough to predict a nationwide Epiphany. The passion and grief will recede. It will be business as usual. The Republican leadership will go back to declaring that they want to beat Obama in 2012, and that that is their central focus. They won’t be able to hide behind the political fiction that they “listened to the voters.” The voters were confused. They were angry because millions were without jobs and the country seemed to be going nowhere.
One cataclysmic event has changed the political texture of American life. Not forever, but at least for now.
That it took a shocking episode at the hands of an unbalanced man with an automatic pistol should not matter. But it does. In one fell swoop the president has managed to upstage the Tea {Party, who after all, are the ones most responsible for the loss of civility.) He has trumped all the Glen Becks and Rush Limbaugh and Sara Palins.
America looked at itself in the mirror. It did not like what it saw. It felt shame and it felt remorse. And, I have to be cynical; I am betting that the popularity poll on the day of Obama’s speech in Tucson is way up. It was already climbing up at 50%. In the next few days the new numbers will be in.
It is still obvious, judging by the mouthings of the Fox news ranters, that the solid Right had no good words for their enemy. But above it all, the man was utterly presidential. He rose above politics and perhaps even upstaged that upstart, that grossly misunderstood “Great Communicator.” (I say “grossly misunderstood, because he got nothing but credit while his record was abysmal.)
To compound the misery for the extreme Right, Palin, instead of calling for civility, blamed “blood libel.” In one fell swoop she put herself back close to political oblivion, while at the same time losing whatever Jewish vote she might have had. That she reinforced herself with her core supporter is beyond question. Some people cling hopelessly to disgraced dogmas.
Most Republicans are red-faced. They should be. The event, which of course was beyond reason, has put them on the defensive. It is they who have fostered the new political un-civility, if for no other reason than their embrace of the Tea Party people.
Just go back for TV clips of the signs those people took to rallies. Read the epithets, the slanders, the insults, and the stupidity. It has now come back to haunt them.
I am not optimistic enough to predict a nationwide Epiphany. The passion and grief will recede. It will be business as usual. The Republican leadership will go back to declaring that they want to beat Obama in 2012, and that that is their central focus. They won’t be able to hide behind the political fiction that they “listened to the voters.” The voters were confused. They were angry because millions were without jobs and the country seemed to be going nowhere.
One cataclysmic event has changed the political texture of American life. Not forever, but at least for now.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
JUST WHO IS "GUILTY AFTER ALL?
I subscribe to one of the axioms of lawmaking: “extreme cases make bad laws.” So as I join the thousands of pundits weighing in on the Tucson tragedy. I am reminded of this fundamental. There is always, after any kind of extreme criminal event, an outcry that “there oughta be a law!" The killing by a probable psychopath is an “extreme case.” Sarah Palin, for whom I have utterly no sympathy, also goes too far, labeling the ones who blame toxic politics as “blood libel.” In making that statement she solidifies her ideological position among the creators and supporters of toxic politics; among the kinds of people who were photographed bringing automatic weapons to last year’s Town Meetings. Instead of cooling the irrational reactions, it does what Palin does best: excites the excitable.
If what I perceive to be political reasons, there is a line-up of blame-layers who want to “send a message” or some other such admonition. It is a sop to many of the public who are, with justification, angry, but it does not make good logic. And it is the kind of blind attitude that leads to repressive and unfair laws.
To adjust that thinking to the killing of six people outside a supermarket in Tucson, we are led by anger not logic. No less a person than the sheriff of the county blamed the toxic political atmosphere. Debate rages. On PBS, New York Times Op Ed journalist David Brooks declared that we can’t draw the conclusion that a mentally disturbed man did the shooting as a consequence of political ranting. It is true that the aforementioned Sarah Palin was one of the ones leading the charge: re-arm, take aim, and created those cross-hairs that aimed at congressional seats where she wanted to defeat the incumbent, including Democrat Gabrielle Gifford.
There are so many examples of “extreme cases making bad laws,” or more specifically – forcing extreme conclusions. At the risk of offended a few million women, the horrible systematic, methodical machine gunning of 14 women in Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnic institute was the act of a madman. Women’s leaders have used it, very successfully, as a springboard to highlight the plight of women as victims. It is true that society has so undervalued women for so many years that it would appear we give tacit “permission” for someone to run riot over them, to the point of murdering 14 of them. Every year there are vigils and rallies to remind us that women are victims and that a male-centred society is to blame. I recall that at the time of the mourning for those women, men were not welcome to share the demonstrations of grief.
Yes it is true that society seems to create an atmosphere of tolerance to extremes. It is true that political rhetoric has gone beyond democratic or constitutional fairness. It is true that millions of people have learned to hate their opponents. Hate is not an appropriate weapon. It is mindless and removes from the hater the responsibility to think.
In the same way that laws based on extreme cases remove the responsibility of judges to “judge” and impose on them a law that turns them into robots following orders. Can anyone show me that the “three strikes and you’re out” policy has in any way reduced crime by chronic wrongdoers? It is political The politicians who enact these draconian laws are perceived to "be on our side" while opponents appear to be “soft on crime.”
Yes, it is in a way legitimate to examine the actions of a madman in the context of the prevailing social and political atmosphere. Social boundaries have been altered. Behaviour restraints have been weakened; Compound it with the ravings of Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck and the alarmingly weak gun laws that in Arizona (and other places) allow the sale of an automatic pistol with a cartridge chamber whose size is beyond any real need. And to sell it to someone who couldn’t pass a sanity test and is further protected by his right to carry that lethal weapon concealed from public view.
But is all that the “cause” of the mass k8illing? Or is it just a concomitant of it? The man is crazy. He should have been apprehended as a threat to society and to himself.
But in a democracy, we really have no choice but to allow things to happen. The fact is that a dictatorship works better when it comes to public safety. But at what price?
I’d prefer a nutcase on the loose over cops at my doorway.
If what I perceive to be political reasons, there is a line-up of blame-layers who want to “send a message” or some other such admonition. It is a sop to many of the public who are, with justification, angry, but it does not make good logic. And it is the kind of blind attitude that leads to repressive and unfair laws.
To adjust that thinking to the killing of six people outside a supermarket in Tucson, we are led by anger not logic. No less a person than the sheriff of the county blamed the toxic political atmosphere. Debate rages. On PBS, New York Times Op Ed journalist David Brooks declared that we can’t draw the conclusion that a mentally disturbed man did the shooting as a consequence of political ranting. It is true that the aforementioned Sarah Palin was one of the ones leading the charge: re-arm, take aim, and created those cross-hairs that aimed at congressional seats where she wanted to defeat the incumbent, including Democrat Gabrielle Gifford.
There are so many examples of “extreme cases making bad laws,” or more specifically – forcing extreme conclusions. At the risk of offended a few million women, the horrible systematic, methodical machine gunning of 14 women in Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnic institute was the act of a madman. Women’s leaders have used it, very successfully, as a springboard to highlight the plight of women as victims. It is true that society has so undervalued women for so many years that it would appear we give tacit “permission” for someone to run riot over them, to the point of murdering 14 of them. Every year there are vigils and rallies to remind us that women are victims and that a male-centred society is to blame. I recall that at the time of the mourning for those women, men were not welcome to share the demonstrations of grief.
Yes it is true that society seems to create an atmosphere of tolerance to extremes. It is true that political rhetoric has gone beyond democratic or constitutional fairness. It is true that millions of people have learned to hate their opponents. Hate is not an appropriate weapon. It is mindless and removes from the hater the responsibility to think.
In the same way that laws based on extreme cases remove the responsibility of judges to “judge” and impose on them a law that turns them into robots following orders. Can anyone show me that the “three strikes and you’re out” policy has in any way reduced crime by chronic wrongdoers? It is political The politicians who enact these draconian laws are perceived to "be on our side" while opponents appear to be “soft on crime.”
Yes, it is in a way legitimate to examine the actions of a madman in the context of the prevailing social and political atmosphere. Social boundaries have been altered. Behaviour restraints have been weakened; Compound it with the ravings of Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck and the alarmingly weak gun laws that in Arizona (and other places) allow the sale of an automatic pistol with a cartridge chamber whose size is beyond any real need. And to sell it to someone who couldn’t pass a sanity test and is further protected by his right to carry that lethal weapon concealed from public view.
But is all that the “cause” of the mass k8illing? Or is it just a concomitant of it? The man is crazy. He should have been apprehended as a threat to society and to himself.
But in a democracy, we really have no choice but to allow things to happen. The fact is that a dictatorship works better when it comes to public safety. But at what price?
I’d prefer a nutcase on the loose over cops at my doorway.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
REFORMATION AND REPENTANCE REALLY WORK
The late Johnny Wayne, in spite of his wonderful sense of comedy and his and Frank Shuster’s success – all the way to the Ed Sullivan Show, was a prickly and combative character. His tantrums in rehearsal were well known. His proclamations were many. One of my favourites was after some showbiz character made a comeback after fighting addiction. Johnny said to me: “If I were a ref0ormed alcoholic or drug addict, I would go right to the top.” We know what he meant. He was not being unkind to people who conquered the self destruction of a career. He was noting simply that there is a positive public reaction to repentance and reform. No one does better that someone who renounces his ugly past and promises to do better. It is part of the biblical allegory in Genesis of the Fall and Redemption. A redeemed sinner is better that someone who never needed redemption!
So what is it that makes a homeless, once truly wacked-out guy named Ted Williams, one of today’s heroes. He was “discovered” by a Columbus Ohio reporter. He was standing at an intersection where he was panhandling passing cars. He was delighting his audience with a deep, mellow, radio-announcer voice. If the Enquirer reporter hadn’t told the story, he might still be on the corner pretending to be an announcer. Instead he has been offered work by the Cleveland Cavaliers. He has done a voice-over commercial for a major company. He has been re-united with his mother. He has guested on the big network morning shows out of New York. Why? All because he is repentant and has reformed.
I don’t begrudge him the work. But after a lifetime in broadcasting, including many years when I listened to audition tapes and hired on-air people, I am amused by the sudden eruption into stardom of this unlikely character.
He does have a good voice. It is resonant. It is deep. But he is no better that hundreds of radio people working hard all over America and Canada. The same mellow voice. The same announcer-ish cadence when he mouths the broadcast clichés like “coming up next on our show…”
I am glad he has reformed. I am glad he has dried out. I am glad for anyone who puts a wrecked life behind him and tries again. Nothing wrong with that.
What amuses me is the level of publicity the man is getting. It’s as if no one had ever heard a voice like his on the radio. Scan up and down the dial. The broadcast band is full of them. They are what we used to call, with apologies to Max Ferguson “Marvin Mellowbell.” He’s just a good announcer. He’s not a saint.
Maybe I should start drinking heavily. At 82, It would make a perfect picture – fighting the ravages of age and coming out from under alcoholism. That and my still resonant (I think) pipes, and I’d become the next resurrected radio voice. What an idea!
So what is it that makes a homeless, once truly wacked-out guy named Ted Williams, one of today’s heroes. He was “discovered” by a Columbus Ohio reporter. He was standing at an intersection where he was panhandling passing cars. He was delighting his audience with a deep, mellow, radio-announcer voice. If the Enquirer reporter hadn’t told the story, he might still be on the corner pretending to be an announcer. Instead he has been offered work by the Cleveland Cavaliers. He has done a voice-over commercial for a major company. He has been re-united with his mother. He has guested on the big network morning shows out of New York. Why? All because he is repentant and has reformed.
I don’t begrudge him the work. But after a lifetime in broadcasting, including many years when I listened to audition tapes and hired on-air people, I am amused by the sudden eruption into stardom of this unlikely character.
He does have a good voice. It is resonant. It is deep. But he is no better that hundreds of radio people working hard all over America and Canada. The same mellow voice. The same announcer-ish cadence when he mouths the broadcast clichés like “coming up next on our show…”
I am glad he has reformed. I am glad he has dried out. I am glad for anyone who puts a wrecked life behind him and tries again. Nothing wrong with that.
What amuses me is the level of publicity the man is getting. It’s as if no one had ever heard a voice like his on the radio. Scan up and down the dial. The broadcast band is full of them. They are what we used to call, with apologies to Max Ferguson “Marvin Mellowbell.” He’s just a good announcer. He’s not a saint.
Maybe I should start drinking heavily. At 82, It would make a perfect picture – fighting the ravages of age and coming out from under alcoholism. That and my still resonant (I think) pipes, and I’d become the next resurrected radio voice. What an idea!
Saturday, January 8, 2011
AFTER ALL THE RHETORIC - A LITTLE LIGHT
Slowly the worm may be turning. Incrementally there may still be change. Historically, even the winners in a populist-based election come face to face with reality. Cynically I suggest that even Rob Ford, the colourful new mayor of Toronto, maybe has more smarts and a better sense of realism that I gave him credit for. True, he did ice the winning night cake with Don Cherry, who has about as much political savvy as a turnip, laying it on thickly to the “bike riding left wing kooks.”
Politics is for show. Reality demands action. We’ve had the show. Is it now too much to believe that this man will accept new realities? Case in point: one city councillor, a right-wing Ford supporter is suggesting a new network of east-west and north south bike lanes with a curb separating them from the road.What happened to “the war on the car is over!?” Perhaps my optimism is premature. But I am convinced that Rob Ford uses other people to float his ideas. I said it before when I called Don Cherry a"stalking horse" for Ford's ideas.
Current local papers are full of stories about the success of the dedicated streetcar lines. The Globe and Mail says Rob Ford is wrong about dedicated light-rail transit. Remember the hullabaloo from the merchants along St. Clair west while the city (and it did take far too long) disrupted traffic to put in the dedicated line. The dust has settled. Surprise! It works. Everyone is happy! This from the Globe: “TTC reports that a streetcar comes every three minutes in rush hour on average. Now that the streetcars don’t have to compete with motorists for road space, the average trip takes eight minutes less than before. Streetcars arrive more regularly, so riders face fewer of those annoying long waits. The number of riders is up 15 per cent since before the project began. Far from showing how crazy it is to put rail transit above ground, St. Clair shows how effective it can be.”
Of course, I don’t live in that part of Toronto West, but the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth sounded like the same uproar when Chinatown was going to be “destroyed” by the dedicated link from Union station, up Spadina and all the way to Bloor. See for yourself. Business is booming. Cars and trolleys are no longer in conflict.
On the bandwagon too is the Toronto Star. “Transit City light-rail lines would deliver more than twice as much service for every dollar invested than would the subway expansions proposed by Mayor Rob Ford. That’s according to a study by the Pembina Institute, a green energy think-tank. Light-rail lines would put rapid transit within a six-minute walk for about 290,000 residents; new subways would similarly serve just 60,000. Low-income people, in particular, would benefit from the proposed light-rail routes.
Opposition to these changes helped get Ford elected. Now that part is over.I believe that Rob Ford will be listening. He can get what he wants without putting the city back 50 years into the heyday of the car and the ensuing gridlock. I think there will be a compromise. I believe that Ford really, underneath all the populist bombast, wants everyone to have a better city, and above all, doesn’t want to spend money on high ticket extravagances.
I go back to the other reality: what is happening in other parts of the world. Perhaps the most savvy country when it comes to transit – is France. Witness the world’s best subway system. But now, Paris and many major French cities, are in the process of building dedicated surface light rail urban transit. Do they know something we don’t? I think we may be on a different learning curve, but I think the good sense will prevail.
Politics is for show. Reality demands action. We’ve had the show. Is it now too much to believe that this man will accept new realities? Case in point: one city councillor, a right-wing Ford supporter is suggesting a new network of east-west and north south bike lanes with a curb separating them from the road.What happened to “the war on the car is over!?” Perhaps my optimism is premature. But I am convinced that Rob Ford uses other people to float his ideas. I said it before when I called Don Cherry a"stalking horse" for Ford's ideas.
Current local papers are full of stories about the success of the dedicated streetcar lines. The Globe and Mail says Rob Ford is wrong about dedicated light-rail transit. Remember the hullabaloo from the merchants along St. Clair west while the city (and it did take far too long) disrupted traffic to put in the dedicated line. The dust has settled. Surprise! It works. Everyone is happy! This from the Globe: “TTC reports that a streetcar comes every three minutes in rush hour on average. Now that the streetcars don’t have to compete with motorists for road space, the average trip takes eight minutes less than before. Streetcars arrive more regularly, so riders face fewer of those annoying long waits. The number of riders is up 15 per cent since before the project began. Far from showing how crazy it is to put rail transit above ground, St. Clair shows how effective it can be.”
Of course, I don’t live in that part of Toronto West, but the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth sounded like the same uproar when Chinatown was going to be “destroyed” by the dedicated link from Union station, up Spadina and all the way to Bloor. See for yourself. Business is booming. Cars and trolleys are no longer in conflict.
On the bandwagon too is the Toronto Star. “Transit City light-rail lines would deliver more than twice as much service for every dollar invested than would the subway expansions proposed by Mayor Rob Ford. That’s according to a study by the Pembina Institute, a green energy think-tank. Light-rail lines would put rapid transit within a six-minute walk for about 290,000 residents; new subways would similarly serve just 60,000. Low-income people, in particular, would benefit from the proposed light-rail routes.
Opposition to these changes helped get Ford elected. Now that part is over.I believe that Rob Ford will be listening. He can get what he wants without putting the city back 50 years into the heyday of the car and the ensuing gridlock. I think there will be a compromise. I believe that Ford really, underneath all the populist bombast, wants everyone to have a better city, and above all, doesn’t want to spend money on high ticket extravagances.
I go back to the other reality: what is happening in other parts of the world. Perhaps the most savvy country when it comes to transit – is France. Witness the world’s best subway system. But now, Paris and many major French cities, are in the process of building dedicated surface light rail urban transit. Do they know something we don’t? I think we may be on a different learning curve, but I think the good sense will prevail.
Friday, January 7, 2011
REFLECTIONS 2011 - Part 2.
REFLECTIONS 2001 – Part two.
The urge to write this “reflection” began like the last one with a TV show.
”Top Gear” is whimsy and satire and it pokes fun at the pretensions of car enthusiasts. The world-wide audience was big enough for a 60 Minutes feature. The three hosts are funny, whimsical, irreverent, erratic, and completely unpredictable. The irony is that they really love cars. But they are not even a little shy to tell us when a car is a rotten deal. They can actually scoff at BMW and sometimes Audi, and often Volkswagen.
What brought me to this piece, is another demonstration of how the once-high are brought low. The three went on one of their laughing-all-the-way rallies with three relics from the defunct British Leyland, a Rover, an Austin Princess, and another I couldn’t identify. What came to me was the sad story of irreversible decline of a once-proud industrial economy. British: Leyland was an archetypical example of everything that went wrong with British industry.In the 60s, the British government, recognizing that their car industry was going down the drain, did a shotgun marriage between Leyland, a still prosperous company, and another company that was an amalgamation of the failing Austin, Morris, and Triumph companies.
"Top Gear" rallied with three vintage 70s models. They laughed and joked as the cars failed, fell apart, and generally malfunctioned. In one hilarious scene one of the cars literally fell to pieces – the bumper fell off, a door went flying, the hood (pardon me – bonnet) disappeared. Of course I laughed, at the fun. I laughed, but inside a cried a little.
Great Britain was, for more than 150 years, the dominant world power. At the heart of its success in building empire and creating world markets, was the Industrial Revolution. Nothing, empire-building, a dominant navy, a reasonably decent political system, nothing could equal the power reaped from the revolution in methods of production. Why was Britain so far ahead of the rest of the world? Put too simply perhaps was that the country had a virtually unlimited supply of coal, the fuel that made the steam that powered the machines, and an empire that brought an endless supply of raw materials.
It is a sad irony for me, Anglophile supreme, to realize that the country where the Industrial Revolution began; the country that used its resources and resourcefulness to build an empire with their booming industrial base, had simply broken down. There was a time when British-made meant the ne plus ultra of excellence. From the looms and spinning machines invented by English and Scots came a domination of the textile industry, using raw cotton from their colonies. From their machine shops came engines unsurpassed anywhere. From their Clyde-side shipyards came, not only the most powerful navy in the world, but the finest luxury ocean liners. Britain had rail systems when other countries still used horse drawn stage coaches. The English were supreme in cars, followed perhaps by the French and Germans. They dominated that sector until America discovered assembly lines and cars for the working man. But for every ten thousand Tin Lizzies on the road, there was one majestic Rolls Royce, hand-made in every detail. The world standard might arguably be given to the Germans who, with Daimler-Benz were the first, but no one built any motorized luxury like the Brits.
Post WW2 the country was in industrial and economic decline. In the 1950s a British government parliamentary committee examined declining productivity and its loss of world markets. The economy had been devastated by two world wars. In fact, when Britain, totally unprepared for it, declared war on Germany in 1939, it has still not repaid its debt from the first war. They went from a domination of industrial output during the 19th century, to a wasting away of that output by the end of WW2. To illustrate: In 1880 the UK accounted for 41.1% of the world’s manufactured products but by 1913 this had decreased to 11%. The skid was unstoppable. The parliamentary committee announced that the country’s historic success had become an illusion. It had had fostered an attitude of indifference and a belief that whatever happened, the British way would prosper. There was entrenched wealth, but very little innovation. The British aircraft industry, which had been third to only the U.S. and the Soviet Union, was living on the fading glories of Avro and Rolls Royce, the domination of the Spitfire, Hurricane, and Lancaster bomber.
Enough history. Two items present themselves to me, one is serious the other the “Top Gear” reflection of the British supremacy in satire and whimsy. First, and most recently, there was the spectacular failure of the Rolls Royce engine in the Airbus super-jumbo. The other one is the utter decay of the British Motor Industry, once a guiding light for car lovers everywhere. Trouble was, the Brits continued to believe in their cars long after the rest of the world had given up on them.
I went through my English care “phase.” Many of us did. I had a cranky Standard Triumph and I even tried an aging Vauxhall. My comedy partner Garry had his fling. He owned an Austin Healey which looked good, but which, according to him malfunctioned in most weather and came to a stop if it rolled over anything as small as an empty cigarette package. In later years he clung tenaciously to a Jaguar sedan which declined all effort to start in damp or cold weather.
The famous English brands did not disappear. The Mini, which was Austin’s last gasp at success, became one of today’s stars but built by BMW. Similarly the Rolls Royce car is made by a German company. The motorcycle business, once beloved of all bike riders, disappeared. The kick-start engine of the old Triumph (and countless other models) simply could not match the battery-driven starter of Honda, Kawasaki, or Suzuki. In the U.S. Harley survived only when the government bailed them out. (Sadly, Harley has moved its production from its original home, a great way to say thanks to the American public whose taxes bailed it out. But that’s business.)
Slowly it unraveled. English cars wouldn’t run in extreme weather conditions and were cranky to start in any morning that was cold, or wet. I had a Volvo in 1957. In those days Volvo was cobbled together from parts taken from other cars. I loved it. But it had a Lucas ignition system and was often unpredictable in unusual weather. Perhaps the real trouble was that, having been so dominant for so many years, they would cling stubbornly to obsolescent systems. We used to take a couple of weeks every winter in Barbados. So would many thousand people from England. I got into a conversation with one of them and commented on the English failure to build a car that could be successfully exported to places with less predictable weather. He snorted. Literally. “We still make the greatest cars.” Years later, with the same attitude, the Big Three saw their markets shrinking under the onslaught of well-made, inexpensive (and at the time not really very good) Japanese cars. General Motors could be heard with “Americans will never buy those little cars. We’re the ones they want.” It was that stubbornness that laid them low. It was the same stubbornness that did an even more dramatic killing of British motors. (Sidebar: during my 3 months in Paris, one of the really literate French guides joked about why the French car industry failed to succeed with exports to America. His own father scorned air-conditioning, but he ruefully admitted, Americans wanted comfort and the French didn't give it to them.)
But the New World was not immune from obsolescence. U.S. Steel, and the others – like Bethlehem, the dominant players, suddenly found themselves challenged by better quality, lower prices, and superb salesmanship from other countries. Just as only the ghost of the car industry exists in places like Coventry, the ghost of the steel industry lives in enormous empty steel plants in what we now call the “rust belt.” (Which should certainly anger Canadians since Big Steel has turned its back on Hamilton after promising a prosperous future.)
Today, America suffers from the same malaise that undermined British industry. “We are the best. Our workers are the most skilled. Our factories are world-class.” Sound familiar? Self-delusion, since the ambitions of the Asian Tigers and the resurgent Chinese, are at the root of the failure to compete.
And as I said in the last piece, the people seem to think that what is best for them is to retreat to happier times, voting for political reactionaries. Turning the clock back simply doesn’t work.
I repeat, nothing I have written in these two somewhat gloomy blogs – is new. I have assembled information and come to conclusions. Remarkably Canada stands aloof, insulated from reality by our virtually unlimited resources. Like sending feedstock i.e. raw crude oil from the Oil Sands to U.S. refineries so their economic engine can keep working. But that, as I always say – is another story.
The urge to write this “reflection” began like the last one with a TV show.
”Top Gear” is whimsy and satire and it pokes fun at the pretensions of car enthusiasts. The world-wide audience was big enough for a 60 Minutes feature. The three hosts are funny, whimsical, irreverent, erratic, and completely unpredictable. The irony is that they really love cars. But they are not even a little shy to tell us when a car is a rotten deal. They can actually scoff at BMW and sometimes Audi, and often Volkswagen.
What brought me to this piece, is another demonstration of how the once-high are brought low. The three went on one of their laughing-all-the-way rallies with three relics from the defunct British Leyland, a Rover, an Austin Princess, and another I couldn’t identify. What came to me was the sad story of irreversible decline of a once-proud industrial economy. British: Leyland was an archetypical example of everything that went wrong with British industry.In the 60s, the British government, recognizing that their car industry was going down the drain, did a shotgun marriage between Leyland, a still prosperous company, and another company that was an amalgamation of the failing Austin, Morris, and Triumph companies.
"Top Gear" rallied with three vintage 70s models. They laughed and joked as the cars failed, fell apart, and generally malfunctioned. In one hilarious scene one of the cars literally fell to pieces – the bumper fell off, a door went flying, the hood (pardon me – bonnet) disappeared. Of course I laughed, at the fun. I laughed, but inside a cried a little.
Great Britain was, for more than 150 years, the dominant world power. At the heart of its success in building empire and creating world markets, was the Industrial Revolution. Nothing, empire-building, a dominant navy, a reasonably decent political system, nothing could equal the power reaped from the revolution in methods of production. Why was Britain so far ahead of the rest of the world? Put too simply perhaps was that the country had a virtually unlimited supply of coal, the fuel that made the steam that powered the machines, and an empire that brought an endless supply of raw materials.
It is a sad irony for me, Anglophile supreme, to realize that the country where the Industrial Revolution began; the country that used its resources and resourcefulness to build an empire with their booming industrial base, had simply broken down. There was a time when British-made meant the ne plus ultra of excellence. From the looms and spinning machines invented by English and Scots came a domination of the textile industry, using raw cotton from their colonies. From their machine shops came engines unsurpassed anywhere. From their Clyde-side shipyards came, not only the most powerful navy in the world, but the finest luxury ocean liners. Britain had rail systems when other countries still used horse drawn stage coaches. The English were supreme in cars, followed perhaps by the French and Germans. They dominated that sector until America discovered assembly lines and cars for the working man. But for every ten thousand Tin Lizzies on the road, there was one majestic Rolls Royce, hand-made in every detail. The world standard might arguably be given to the Germans who, with Daimler-Benz were the first, but no one built any motorized luxury like the Brits.
Post WW2 the country was in industrial and economic decline. In the 1950s a British government parliamentary committee examined declining productivity and its loss of world markets. The economy had been devastated by two world wars. In fact, when Britain, totally unprepared for it, declared war on Germany in 1939, it has still not repaid its debt from the first war. They went from a domination of industrial output during the 19th century, to a wasting away of that output by the end of WW2. To illustrate: In 1880 the UK accounted for 41.1% of the world’s manufactured products but by 1913 this had decreased to 11%. The skid was unstoppable. The parliamentary committee announced that the country’s historic success had become an illusion. It had had fostered an attitude of indifference and a belief that whatever happened, the British way would prosper. There was entrenched wealth, but very little innovation. The British aircraft industry, which had been third to only the U.S. and the Soviet Union, was living on the fading glories of Avro and Rolls Royce, the domination of the Spitfire, Hurricane, and Lancaster bomber.
Enough history. Two items present themselves to me, one is serious the other the “Top Gear” reflection of the British supremacy in satire and whimsy. First, and most recently, there was the spectacular failure of the Rolls Royce engine in the Airbus super-jumbo. The other one is the utter decay of the British Motor Industry, once a guiding light for car lovers everywhere. Trouble was, the Brits continued to believe in their cars long after the rest of the world had given up on them.
I went through my English care “phase.” Many of us did. I had a cranky Standard Triumph and I even tried an aging Vauxhall. My comedy partner Garry had his fling. He owned an Austin Healey which looked good, but which, according to him malfunctioned in most weather and came to a stop if it rolled over anything as small as an empty cigarette package. In later years he clung tenaciously to a Jaguar sedan which declined all effort to start in damp or cold weather.
The famous English brands did not disappear. The Mini, which was Austin’s last gasp at success, became one of today’s stars but built by BMW. Similarly the Rolls Royce car is made by a German company. The motorcycle business, once beloved of all bike riders, disappeared. The kick-start engine of the old Triumph (and countless other models) simply could not match the battery-driven starter of Honda, Kawasaki, or Suzuki. In the U.S. Harley survived only when the government bailed them out. (Sadly, Harley has moved its production from its original home, a great way to say thanks to the American public whose taxes bailed it out. But that’s business.)
Slowly it unraveled. English cars wouldn’t run in extreme weather conditions and were cranky to start in any morning that was cold, or wet. I had a Volvo in 1957. In those days Volvo was cobbled together from parts taken from other cars. I loved it. But it had a Lucas ignition system and was often unpredictable in unusual weather. Perhaps the real trouble was that, having been so dominant for so many years, they would cling stubbornly to obsolescent systems. We used to take a couple of weeks every winter in Barbados. So would many thousand people from England. I got into a conversation with one of them and commented on the English failure to build a car that could be successfully exported to places with less predictable weather. He snorted. Literally. “We still make the greatest cars.” Years later, with the same attitude, the Big Three saw their markets shrinking under the onslaught of well-made, inexpensive (and at the time not really very good) Japanese cars. General Motors could be heard with “Americans will never buy those little cars. We’re the ones they want.” It was that stubbornness that laid them low. It was the same stubbornness that did an even more dramatic killing of British motors. (Sidebar: during my 3 months in Paris, one of the really literate French guides joked about why the French car industry failed to succeed with exports to America. His own father scorned air-conditioning, but he ruefully admitted, Americans wanted comfort and the French didn't give it to them.)
But the New World was not immune from obsolescence. U.S. Steel, and the others – like Bethlehem, the dominant players, suddenly found themselves challenged by better quality, lower prices, and superb salesmanship from other countries. Just as only the ghost of the car industry exists in places like Coventry, the ghost of the steel industry lives in enormous empty steel plants in what we now call the “rust belt.” (Which should certainly anger Canadians since Big Steel has turned its back on Hamilton after promising a prosperous future.)
Today, America suffers from the same malaise that undermined British industry. “We are the best. Our workers are the most skilled. Our factories are world-class.” Sound familiar? Self-delusion, since the ambitions of the Asian Tigers and the resurgent Chinese, are at the root of the failure to compete.
And as I said in the last piece, the people seem to think that what is best for them is to retreat to happier times, voting for political reactionaries. Turning the clock back simply doesn’t work.
I repeat, nothing I have written in these two somewhat gloomy blogs – is new. I have assembled information and come to conclusions. Remarkably Canada stands aloof, insulated from reality by our virtually unlimited resources. Like sending feedstock i.e. raw crude oil from the Oil Sands to U.S. refineries so their economic engine can keep working. But that, as I always say – is another story.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
REFLECTIONS 2010 - Part One
“CBS Sunday Morning” is a “must watch” for me. It is a loving look at the people, places, and institutions of America. This morning it was, predictably, a look back at 2010. I got much more than I bargained for.
It is “Sunday Morning” on this first day of 2011 that triggered the urge to write all that follows. Nothing I have written is original. No concepts are new. Pretty well everything I am writing has been said. All I have done is to synthesize them into one theme: obsolescence.
The theme runs through everything from the decline of American world hegemony to the rise of China. They are all externals, but they haunt the American psyche, a psyche that is bound to primitive ideas and obsolete institutions. Primitive! Obsolete! Sometimes self-deluding because America can’t relinquish “the greatest…” of this, that, the other, and everything in-between.
The new Republicans in the House of Representatives, the “Tea Party” Congressmen prove to me that America has lost its way. They plan, at the opening of Congress to read, in its entirety, the Constitution, and I suppose the Bill of Rights. Interesting to note here that many Americans who trumpet their “Constitutional” rights are really not talking about the original document, written by Thomas Jefferson and presented to the first Continental Congress is Philadelphia. The “rights” of Americans, while originating in the rhetoric of the Constitution, are embodied, not in that document, but in the amendments to it. The Republican Congress will continue to use an obsolete system to solve today’s problem. That defines “reactionary.”
The Tea Party zealots want a return to their view of an original sense of what America is about. They want to “honour” the Constitution. If I were to be completely cynical I would say that even the most shrill, most strident of these people, probably knows that the Bill of Rights, the amendments, were changes made to the Constitution. If not changes, then adjustments. And these are the very people who want to believe that what was written by Jefferson (and the others of course) is immutable, graven in stone, and the eternal guiding light to reality. It is not. (Just a side note: without John Locke, that famous Scotsman, much of the language in America’s seminal document would not have been written. It was Locke who wrote of “inalienable” rights – although he included property as one of them.)
America, in its zeal to protect the past, is strangling its future. The Constitution was created nearly 250 years ago. It was born in an age when slavery was accepted. (Although it was vehemently argued in the Continental Congress.) It was born when physicians still “bled” patients to remove the corruption that was causing disease. It was born before electricity, before the Industrial Revolution, before steam trains and automobiles, before Relativity and before Freud. It born in an innocent age when 13 disparate colonies coalesced to create a new nation. History will remember that it was a fractious union at best. History of course will demonstrate just how fractious it was when from 1861 to 1865 hundreds of thousands of Americans died trying to kill each other in a God-forsaken fight over the Constitution.
This is the Tea Party wants. This is the America that America now says it wants, just a scant two years after believing they had voted for change. Change is inimical to America. It violates sacred principles.
On “Sunday Morning,” perhaps the most interesting discussion was that while the rest of the world idealized and often envied the American Way, and wanted most of what the American Dream embodied, there seemed to be no one who wanted to have the American style of government, the style embodied in that petrified document: the Constitution.
What emerged from the program was the reality that unless America was prepared to change its political systems, it would continue to slide irrevocably into decline. The multi trillion dollar public debt is getting larger. The country has barely survived the greatest (I believe even greater) economic collapse since the Great Depression. There is still grinding poverty among millions who are unemployed, who are displaced, who have lost their homes, and who have lost hope. Then come comparisons to China. They inevitably include the reality that there are still tens of millions living in pre-boom conditions. But China is still an “emerging” economy, so there is an excuse for the economic disparities. But there is no excuse for America. “Sunday Morning” pointed out that even before the Great Recession the median wage in the country was dropping. The crisis of 2008 made it worse for more people.
The President bravely defends the principles that have made America great and has compromised his own principles in the face of the overwhelming political “shellacking” the voters gave him. In spite of what should have been revelations for future prosperity, they voted against change. They voted to return to the comfort, the security, the predictability of the past: to Republican orthodoxy.
Nothing I say here is new. It is many years since “The New Romans” said that power was moving west and that it was crossing the expanse of the Pacific. It has devolved to China. Not the democratic notions that prevail in America and (even though they hate to admit it) in the countries of Europe,America is still the most powerful country on earth and Europeans acknowledge it. The military power of America is what helps maintain some stability and preserves a way of life that many emerging nations and jihadist fanatics want to upset. They see that power as maintaining, for all of them - their place in the world.
But the tide has turned. The American people have lost their nerve. (I’m not sure they had much of it anyway.) They voted for the comfort of the past. That political passage is still called “reactionary,” because it retreats from tomorrow in favour of the comforts of what used to be.
Consistent with the dynamic of American Society, they are fundamentalists, in more ways than one. The political strangulation of new ideas is not unlike the strangulation of new social ideas by another Fundamentalism and a powerful desire to maintain the “faith of their Fathers.” So just as policy is glued to the Constitution, social change is glued to Biblical “truths.” You hear a lot of the Tea Party people invoking the Divine. (But so does President Obama – so there you are.)
In Canada, where there is just enough difference, and in spite of government by Conservatives, we are still a “liberal democracy,” even though too many Canadians can’t define the reality of being Canada. Many Canadians, when faced with a few difficult truths, will respond to the reactionary demagogue who will make them feel better by returning to a happier time. In Toronto we voted for Rob Ford, a larger-that-life messiah who would undo the pressure put on all of us, and make us believe again. In Ontario, we will probably return to the Mike Harris model when the Conservatives win the next provincial election. Not because they are better, but because everything new is not working the way it should under present government.
My last comment is about the five cent payment for plastic bags in supermarkets. Proponents of this cancellation accuse government of taking their money. Enlightened societies believe that government is not some abstract instrument, owned by “them.” They understand that “we” are government. Even the Americans still believe in “By the people, of the people, and for the people.” The sad truth is that it has become a hollow proclamation. Mistrust of government is what gets Neanderthals back into power.
I am not through with this topic I’ll be back with a further examination of the need to recede into the dubious comforts of the past.
It is “Sunday Morning” on this first day of 2011 that triggered the urge to write all that follows. Nothing I have written is original. No concepts are new. Pretty well everything I am writing has been said. All I have done is to synthesize them into one theme: obsolescence.
The theme runs through everything from the decline of American world hegemony to the rise of China. They are all externals, but they haunt the American psyche, a psyche that is bound to primitive ideas and obsolete institutions. Primitive! Obsolete! Sometimes self-deluding because America can’t relinquish “the greatest…” of this, that, the other, and everything in-between.
The new Republicans in the House of Representatives, the “Tea Party” Congressmen prove to me that America has lost its way. They plan, at the opening of Congress to read, in its entirety, the Constitution, and I suppose the Bill of Rights. Interesting to note here that many Americans who trumpet their “Constitutional” rights are really not talking about the original document, written by Thomas Jefferson and presented to the first Continental Congress is Philadelphia. The “rights” of Americans, while originating in the rhetoric of the Constitution, are embodied, not in that document, but in the amendments to it. The Republican Congress will continue to use an obsolete system to solve today’s problem. That defines “reactionary.”
The Tea Party zealots want a return to their view of an original sense of what America is about. They want to “honour” the Constitution. If I were to be completely cynical I would say that even the most shrill, most strident of these people, probably knows that the Bill of Rights, the amendments, were changes made to the Constitution. If not changes, then adjustments. And these are the very people who want to believe that what was written by Jefferson (and the others of course) is immutable, graven in stone, and the eternal guiding light to reality. It is not. (Just a side note: without John Locke, that famous Scotsman, much of the language in America’s seminal document would not have been written. It was Locke who wrote of “inalienable” rights – although he included property as one of them.)
America, in its zeal to protect the past, is strangling its future. The Constitution was created nearly 250 years ago. It was born in an age when slavery was accepted. (Although it was vehemently argued in the Continental Congress.) It was born when physicians still “bled” patients to remove the corruption that was causing disease. It was born before electricity, before the Industrial Revolution, before steam trains and automobiles, before Relativity and before Freud. It born in an innocent age when 13 disparate colonies coalesced to create a new nation. History will remember that it was a fractious union at best. History of course will demonstrate just how fractious it was when from 1861 to 1865 hundreds of thousands of Americans died trying to kill each other in a God-forsaken fight over the Constitution.
This is the Tea Party wants. This is the America that America now says it wants, just a scant two years after believing they had voted for change. Change is inimical to America. It violates sacred principles.
On “Sunday Morning,” perhaps the most interesting discussion was that while the rest of the world idealized and often envied the American Way, and wanted most of what the American Dream embodied, there seemed to be no one who wanted to have the American style of government, the style embodied in that petrified document: the Constitution.
What emerged from the program was the reality that unless America was prepared to change its political systems, it would continue to slide irrevocably into decline. The multi trillion dollar public debt is getting larger. The country has barely survived the greatest (I believe even greater) economic collapse since the Great Depression. There is still grinding poverty among millions who are unemployed, who are displaced, who have lost their homes, and who have lost hope. Then come comparisons to China. They inevitably include the reality that there are still tens of millions living in pre-boom conditions. But China is still an “emerging” economy, so there is an excuse for the economic disparities. But there is no excuse for America. “Sunday Morning” pointed out that even before the Great Recession the median wage in the country was dropping. The crisis of 2008 made it worse for more people.
The President bravely defends the principles that have made America great and has compromised his own principles in the face of the overwhelming political “shellacking” the voters gave him. In spite of what should have been revelations for future prosperity, they voted against change. They voted to return to the comfort, the security, the predictability of the past: to Republican orthodoxy.
Nothing I say here is new. It is many years since “The New Romans” said that power was moving west and that it was crossing the expanse of the Pacific. It has devolved to China. Not the democratic notions that prevail in America and (even though they hate to admit it) in the countries of Europe,America is still the most powerful country on earth and Europeans acknowledge it. The military power of America is what helps maintain some stability and preserves a way of life that many emerging nations and jihadist fanatics want to upset. They see that power as maintaining, for all of them - their place in the world.
But the tide has turned. The American people have lost their nerve. (I’m not sure they had much of it anyway.) They voted for the comfort of the past. That political passage is still called “reactionary,” because it retreats from tomorrow in favour of the comforts of what used to be.
Consistent with the dynamic of American Society, they are fundamentalists, in more ways than one. The political strangulation of new ideas is not unlike the strangulation of new social ideas by another Fundamentalism and a powerful desire to maintain the “faith of their Fathers.” So just as policy is glued to the Constitution, social change is glued to Biblical “truths.” You hear a lot of the Tea Party people invoking the Divine. (But so does President Obama – so there you are.)
In Canada, where there is just enough difference, and in spite of government by Conservatives, we are still a “liberal democracy,” even though too many Canadians can’t define the reality of being Canada. Many Canadians, when faced with a few difficult truths, will respond to the reactionary demagogue who will make them feel better by returning to a happier time. In Toronto we voted for Rob Ford, a larger-that-life messiah who would undo the pressure put on all of us, and make us believe again. In Ontario, we will probably return to the Mike Harris model when the Conservatives win the next provincial election. Not because they are better, but because everything new is not working the way it should under present government.
My last comment is about the five cent payment for plastic bags in supermarkets. Proponents of this cancellation accuse government of taking their money. Enlightened societies believe that government is not some abstract instrument, owned by “them.” They understand that “we” are government. Even the Americans still believe in “By the people, of the people, and for the people.” The sad truth is that it has become a hollow proclamation. Mistrust of government is what gets Neanderthals back into power.
I am not through with this topic I’ll be back with a further examination of the need to recede into the dubious comforts of the past.
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