A couple of years ago, I wrote on this blog about the need for the new commune.     The original article was entitled, Boomers New Commune for Retirement Post-Recession. My first posting came on the heels of the economic meltdown.  I could see where the economic downturn, in fact the major disaster cost Boomers, their houses, their savings, their jobs, and dignity.   People who had saved short money who depending on their pensions, found their savings wiped out, their pensions in ruins.   Things did not look good then, and now, several years, later, the largest segment of the unemployed are those who are fifty-years-old and up.  Boomers.

As a generation, most Boomers lack enough financial security to retire as it is.  Few have put even  a scant $100 Thousand away for the golden years.  And now, a few years later, public service programs and entitlement programs are under attack.   While governments, federal and state kick back to the wealthy by allowing major tax breaks for the “job creators,” not jobs are really being created.  Not on the scale that is necessary.   It’s like the country is being sold off one piece at a time, and those who worked for thirty, forty, fifty years, find themselves confused, caught in a device of their own making…in big trouble.

Back in the beginning of the twenty-first century, all right, seven years ago, Marcia and I pitched to the television networks a dramatic series about Boomers finding themselves confronting the realities of not a brave but dumb new world.  As Marcia had developed such hits as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and oversaw Dynasty, we figured pitching a night time soap opera wasn’t that big of a stretch.   At the pitch meetings, we pointed out that what services that were taken for granted would be diminished or rescinded entirely.   The proverbial carpet was pulled out from under, and now it was time for innovation.

We detailed how social services would fade into history and the aged and the middle income people would have less access to adequate medical care, food, and shelter.  You know, the basics.   I pointed out how instead of needing midwives, there would be a demand for hospice workers, nurses, and medical technicians who could administer to the commune at large.   While there would still be a need to grow crops and work the land, there would also be the need for advanced technology.   In the old communes technology was feared and rejected.  In the commune of the aging Boomer, technology is necessary for communication, access to information, and in some cases a means for some to continue to make a living well into their senior years.

The new commune would be very different from the communes of the sixties, even though the point of common ground is that on both occasions they were established by the same generation.Young Boomers back then, people in their twenties, rebelling against the system, living sex, drugs, rock and roll.   Now it would be older Boomers, just living, trying to survive.   Back to the garden. The commune.  The commune with computers.  The commune with more companionship than sexual experimentation, where the commune dwellers had matured enough so they didn’t have to take a vote on who would wash the dishes and who would walk the chickens.   The drugs were of the prescription variety and the minding expanding process was relegated to things like scanning in photos of the grandchildren or organizing reading and education programs for the local schools and nearby communities.

You know, useful stuff.  Of course there would be comedy and drama, an audience keyed in to character interaction in this ensemble cast for a television series.   We pitched this idea to every network and some of the cable companies.   We told them that Boomers and such were a major audience and as their tastes and buying patterns were way different than the old elderly.  Boomers, unlike their parents, weren’t stuck on brands and were open to new products and services.  They were technologically oriented.    They had money.  some of them, anyway.

We described in marketing terms how sponsors would flock to but air time.    Here was a  culturally rich platform to sell their, designer jeans,  pharmaceuticals,  magical yogurts, nutritional health bars,  and luxury cars…the Valhalla of marketing platforms for the Lexus, Mercedes, BMW…and let’s not forget Viagra.

However, the networks were not run by Boomers.  The networks were run by people barely out of their fetal stage.   Little embryos and often with brains to match.  Network executives were largely people of privilege who had been largely insulated from the harsh realities of the world.  These are people who are largely not overly imbued with a sense of social empathy and as a group their historical understanding ranges all the way from Happy Days to Happy Hour.    This was a new marketing segment, an emerging marketing segment that had yet to be tested.  As someone who has worked in marketing, as yet to be tested, means that fifty people above and below have nary a clue of the issue  and its potential before you.   As  iconic screenwriter William Goldman has said about Hollywood, “No one knows nothing.”  And his sage-like statement is no truer than when essentially spoiled, self-absorbed and insecure people are confronted with a new idea.  Even it the idea sounds plausible, it can’t be because no one has proposed it before.   The system shuts down.   To the shock of no one, we were told no.

Okay, so now here we are.   We have politicians wanting to do away with social security and deny a fair amount of social services.  On one hand you have Wall Street, like Sirens of the Cosmic Peep Show promising that if you just give them your money, lush retirement awaits you…you aging fool.  You can have a new career, another business,  a chance to do all the things and have all the experiences you should have had the first place instead of saddling yourself with a thankless job where you worked for trinkets and baubles until they finally fired your sorry ass during the latest Recession.

Out of work, unemployed, not a lot of bread in the bread box, you have according to the actuaries another twenty to forty years of life on this planet, and the question is how the hell are you going to make it?

How indeed?  Well, there are all these blighted towns out there they could be restored and turned back into communities.    Abandoned urban areas that could be reclaimed.   Communities where there is close proximity to the shops and services.  Where as a commune or compound you can actually function and live your life.   The modern commune.   Maybe there are jobs and maybe the jobs are created from within the commune.  Internet commerce or whatever.  In any event, most commune members would have some Social Security income, some kind of pension.    Maybe it’s not necessarily stuck out in the middle of some boondocks paradise where you are a million miles from the hospital, should your heart act up or your hemorrhoids start to bother you.

Places that are reclaimed.  Where you can be cared for by people just like yourself.  Everything from retired healthcare workers to IT folk, chefs, and crafts workers.   Other Boomers pitching in, long evolved from the concerns or post-adolescence and focused on the ardors of survival in a world that may yet reject them.  It ain’t the Garden, but then it aint’ the Grave Yard either.   And it sure beats the hell out of Leisure World.

The Evergreen Review and Grove Press publication list, first introduced Americans to Samuel Beckett and William Burroughs.    Grove published the unexpurgated version of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, among other of the author’s works,  and the unabridged work of Marquis De Sade.   Grove and Evergreen published international authors, some of whom would go on to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.   Like Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe and Per Lagerkvist in Literature.

Evergreen Review published Jean Paul Sartre, John Rechy, Octavio Paz,  Malcolm X, John Rechy, Jakov Lind, Jack Kerouac,  Jean Genet, and Allen Ginsburg.   There are so many that it is almost senseless to name them all.    You can find a list of authors at the Evergreen Review website, which I have linked to here…Evergreen Review.

Back in the Paleolithic Era when we were supposed to be good children reading Silas Marner, I was visiting the long defunct Marlborough Bookstore in New York.   The Marlboro Bookstore was a local chain and was unique as it put on its remainder shelf copies of Grove Press publications.  They sold them at a bargain off of list price.  Just a buck.  For one dollar, not the smallest amount of money for a high school kid in search of something  a little more a little more relevant than the classics, I could rummage Marlboro on the cheap and find in Grove and Evergreen this marvelous new world of writers.   These were writers who had not been  sanitized with century’s worth of time time and that incumbent respectability.   These were flawed individuals, exploring the world around us, offering us at times often gritty and surreal insights.

These were writers  who were flawed in character, erratic, and often unpredictable,.  They were lyrical and immediate, in your face.   They explored sex of all varieties and  drugs of every kind.  They examined changing roles of men and women in modern society.  They delved into politics and society and helped to demystify the bland myths of mid-century acceptance.    And for these writers, unlike the academics and the acceptable mainstream, this was not an intellectual exercise.    They practiced what they preached, and a good many paid the price for their indulgences.   Such is the price for living it.

This is where I cut my teeth.   These were the writers who worked to define modern times and now and then offer illumination and poetic transcendence to a world that was getting crazier by the moment.   Some of these writer had been published elsewhere.  Some had not been published at all.   But here in a changing America, Barney Rosset made sure their voices were heard.

I write this because Evergreen Review was kind enough to review The Guys Who Spied for China.  While I make no points of comparison to others who have graced its pages, my literary exposure started with Evergreen Review, so it’s like a full cycle.  I am delighted.  It means a lot to me.  Live long, Barney, and publish for another dozen centuries.   Given what the publishing world is today, it truly needs guys like you.

Here is the link to Kevin Riordan’s review of The Guys Who Spied for China.

Not long ago, on one of the book blog sites, some guy went out of his way to tell me how indifferent he was to my work.   I responded once and asked him if he was so  indifferent than why did he go out of his way to tell me.  I thought if he had actually read the book it would be one thing.  If he hated my guts for some other reason, okay.   I realize I am not on everyone’s Christmas list.

My reply elicited further responses from him where he again reiterated that it was the subject matter with which he would be indifferent and would never read.   I finally thanked him for taking  time  from what I was sure was a frantic schedule to register his indifference to the extent he had.   Civil restraint prevented my real considerations on the probable status of his life.  I have not always been the world’s best practitioner of civil restraint, so I guess that is mark of  progress.

Obviously, there was something about me or the book subject that caused this intense reaction.   And then I started thinking of how when we as a society should perhaps feel indifferent we go out of our way to declare our own distaste for things.   In fact, with certain politicos and celebrities, certain hot button issues,  rather than just declare our displeasure or say nothing at all, we cannot leave it alone.  Doesn’t matter what side of the political or social spectrum you are own or how enlightened you may perceive your lifestyle, there is always somebody or something that causes us to rail on wherever and as often as we can.  And that becomes a trap where the logic of indifference is corrupted by our passions.  We end up devoting way too much time and emotion to things with which we should really care less.

We should know better.   Not that we should know better because we are above it all and should transcend the rancor by taking the high road and retaining an enlightened state of mind.   We should know better because we are of an age when it is the media’s main job to manipulate our thoughts and sentiments, our social belief,s and political perspectives in order to establish a multi-level marketing platform for its celebrity flavors of the week.   In short, we are being used as marks and proud of it.    We are either the support group, or we are the opposition.   In the hands of a manipulative media and those ringing up the cash register we are two sides of the same coin.

Stirring up the crowds is nothing new.   Professional wrestling has done it for years.   In professional wrestling you have the hero, the glowing and glistening symbol of virtue and skill, and you have the heel.   The heel is the bad guy, the one who fights dirty and says outrageous things, who thumbs his nose at the crowd.   The heel revels in the crowd’s hatred.   Hen needs the crowd as much as the hero needs the crowd.   The crowd with its boos and catcalls supports the heel as much if not more than it supports the hero.   The crowd loves to hate the heel.  In both instances without the crowd there would be no controversy.   There would be no sport.

With wrestling as with most things socio-political, the hero and the heel are interchangeable.   A wrestler has a run as the hero for awhile, and then when his adoring public grows tired of adoring him, he becomes the heel.   Those who loved him, suddenly hate him.   He is the one now prancing arrogantly in the center of the ring and thumbing his nose at the crowd.   He is now the one disparaging his opponent while making outrageous predictions about the state of things to come.     As the hero he sold tickets to the show.  As the heel he sells tickets to the show.  People pay money to see him get his ass beat in.  And when it doesn’t happen, when he prevails over the current heroic symbol of virtue and merit, the crowd gets to hate him that much more.

The socio-political spectrum is different in a variety of crucial ways.   Unlike wrestling, with things political and social we don’t just invest in tickets.  We invest with our lives.   But nevertheless we are manipulated by a media, or more directly the media conglomerates,  that have a financial motivation to work us into a frenzy.   Media or more to the point what passes for news media these days has realized there is no money anymore in providing objective news reports and thoughtful analysis.    As Campbell Brown, a recent CNN news show causality, remarked that the public does not want objective news anymore.  The public wants the type of news that supports its own points of view.    Apparently, we would rather cheer blindly from the sidelines than try to analyze the facts.

Whether the media conglomerates created the condition where news as opinion pieces or whether they responded to public taste I suppose is a matter of conjecture.   But they certainly have profited from its condition.  By eliminating objective messaging and critical thinking from what passes for news shows, the conglomerates were able to develop  media celebrities of every stripe, ethnicity, and political perspective.   These are the chosen who were developed to pander to the crowds by offering an alternating spectrum of simplistic solutions to complex challenges or a spectrum of crackpot ideas.   In short, like wrestling, they were able to develop opposing forces for any issue.   This in turn created a passionate fan base and multi-marketing platforms and the subsequent delivery systems that can offer everything from speaking engagements and books, to rallies and picnic baskets.

It could be claimed  that Fox News was the first to venture forth on television with the decidedly slanted news format.     I should say Fox News took the elements political talk radio. and carried them further.  While I am not the world biggest fan of Fox News  and while my total talk radio listening time, annually, is less than an hour,  I give credit, if that is really the word, to these two platforms for changing the dynamic of news and politics.  Both talk radio and its logical spinoff, Fox News,  determined from the outside that their programming didn’t chase after viewers’ minds as much as their emotions.

While political radio could raise the blood pressure by taking call-ins, Fox News  inflamed the passions  with the Fox good guys taking on the bad guys.   Like some electronic rendition of the Medieval Inquisition, Fox pundits in the name of “fair and balanced” were fond of dragging the progressives and liberals, and the rest, for the opposing point of view.  Between commercials, they would give these straw men  five seconds to explain their point of view before browbeating them like some  jingoistic weed whacker.   If you believed in what the Sean Hannity’s and Bill O’Reilly’s had to say, you felt yourself vindicated.   If you were the more progressive thought you would find your blood boiling over.

Of course, the progressives or liberals, or whatever you wish to call them this particular season, considered this a terrible process.   Not enough vitriol could be injected into any conversation that related to Fox News.   Progressives couldn’t hate them enough.   As a result, Fox ratings climbed even more.   As for the pundits launched by Fox they two experienced what one would consider notable improvements in their careers.   Of course the more the opposition hated Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, the more their fan base supported them by reading their columns and buying their books.

Coulter, Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and, later, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, represented a new dynamic in media marketing.    Unlike wrestling, where the character was either the hero or the heel, these pundits were heroes and heels all at once.  They were loved and they were hated.  The more they are hated, then the more they are loved.    The more they are loved and hated, the greater their revenue.   Let them say something outrageous and it is all over the media, conservative and liberal alike.  The only difference is where one side applauds the remarks, the other side regards them as Satan’s spawn.   What is conclusive is neither the veracity or the falsity of their written and spoken words, but that their polarizing effect generates some major bucks for both the players and their handlers, the media groups.    So not only is there a lot of money in saying things that people agree with, there is an equal amount to be gained by having your critics declare how stupid you are.

The liberals, of course, after decrying the conservatives for their crass statements and wanton venality, finally decided that taking the high road offered little assurance they would reach their final destination.   So they formed their own media platforms that is other than those of the “traditional liberal media,” where progressive pundits could offer their own brand of ridicule for the things they detest the most.   Hence MSNBC, after myriad incarnations, developed finally a workable format for progressive ideology.    There are the Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann who offer their own brand of competing self-righteous indignation to what some may consider the good fight.   There is also Progressive Radio or Air America, or whatever it was the last time I looked with Tom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes,  and the famously unfunny funny man  turned current and competent U.S. Senator Al Franken.

For progressive media, a fair share of the commentary includes the castigation of  conservative mainstays like, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly,  Ann Coulter, and Sarah Palin.    Progressive hosts rail on about them like the fashion police dishing at high school.   This in turn inspires  lastest outrage from the Legion of the Outrageous, which in turn causes viewers and listeners to take ongoing umbrage and the latest indiscretion.   This not only boosts radio and sales for the support group, the progressive media pundits who now peddle their books, lectures, events and such, but gives food for the right to carry on with its own agenda, giving speeches, writing books and otherwise catering to their own support group.

In a world where many are concerned about ecological condition’s and environmental matters,  the socio-political  media is the primary example of environmental harmony.  If you say something your side likes and supports, you make money.  If you say something the other side hates, you make money.   The only time you can lose money is if you address complex issues with more than a sound bite or buzzword.  This tends to confuse the audience and tends to be off putting as critical thinking is required.  In a world we are programmed that solutions are simple and cinema heroes resolve international conflict in an hour and forty two minutes,  you don’t need the dynamics of complex critical issues and all that is required to solve them to go raining on the delusional parade.   The more you think about things, the less time you have for railing out your own particular party line.   Complex thinking requires deeper thought, which results in extended contemplation , which means fewer books and public appearances for those who actually have to explain themselves in greater detail.

While we are not exactly a nation worthy of our heritage as being born in the Age of Reason, we are not always stupid.  We recognize that these media pundits are not just out there for the well being of America or the general common good.  We recognize that Glenn Becks recent soirée  at the Lincoln Memorial is less altruistic and more for the benefit of Glenn Beck than anyone else.   We recognize that Rush Limbaugh didn’t make his few bucks by initiating a selfless campaign for the good of Mom and Apple Pie.   We realize Sarah Palin resigned as Governor of Alaska to devote more time to optimize her own window of opportunity to make money hand and fist.   We realize that every pundit right or left is dependent on their audience to stay on the air.  Former Congressman, Dick Armey, has feathered his nest as the spokes person for the Tea Party or whatever the hell it is called this season.   Al Gore didn’t go broke by promoting the environmental movement.   The more they incite their adversaries, the higher the ratings the more money they will make.

Yet,while we know these are puffed up entertainers posing as news analysts and politicians we cannot refrain from taking them seriously.   We care when Keith Olbermann rants on about Sarah Palin using bullets as symbols for the targeted politicians the Republicans believe are vulnerable to being unseated.   Obviously, Palin chose the bullet images as a ploy, in fact as part of her branding, but just about every commentator on MSNBC and elsewhere went for the ploy, revving it up disproportionately as if she was truly recommending the assassination attempts on these veritable  Moose Lodge Members.  Beware!  Oooohhh..     Served Palin well as it reinforced her branding, and served the progressive pundits as it reinforced their selling of  the great Palin threat.

There are hundreds if not thousands of examples.  A decade ago it was the Clinton’s, and now it is Obama.  Or it is what Limbaugh has to say about this or Pelosi has to say about that.  Dr. Laura, Al Shartpon…pick your poison and then go piss and moan.    People don’t just disagree, but they work themselves into a frenzy, inciting the blogsphere with incantations and variations on the theme.     And from it all we are farther and farther removed from any condition of unity or relative attempt at consensus.   We don’t exchange thoughts; we utter slogans.   Name the topic, name the person; each side has its jargon to address the issue.   Bite sized jargon that will fit nicely between commercials and book plugs.

I don’t discredit these pundits for self-promotion.  It is America, the land of opportunity.   It’s tough in an overpopulated world to rise from obscurity and make a name for yourself.   Especially when at heart you are an imbecile.  Well not really an imbecile, because despite all popular thought about some or our noteworthy media folk, it takes a  wily coyote to climb the heights of media recognition.   You can lack knowledge and you can have the intellectual depth that goes from A to B and back again, but there is a talent to manipulating the media to where you hold sway on public thought.

I guess in the end, I want to know why we even care about these people or what they have to say.  Obviously, most are a long way from scholars or experts on the subject.  And then, considering the state of things some of which are the result of the pondering of experts on the subject, why do we hold in such regard the positions of any of these people?   Logic would dictate that you delve deeper and conduct your own critical thinking, before this once easily accessible thought process is relegated to the junk pile of modern consciousness or turned into a lost art.   You would think we would regard most of these people as self-aggrandizing snake oil vendors and take their offerings no more to heart than we would a dancing bear.   You would think we would spend a lot less time pissing and moaning about them and tripping over their incomplete thinking and figure out in traditional American pragmatic process how to get ourselves out of this mess.

But we don’t.  Maybe as a nation we have too much time on our hands.  Without celebrity, we only  have ourselves.  And without the heroes and heels, we have only ourselves to blame and then we must shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding the country.   And that, media-wise, is a very hard sell.

The Constant Travellers, a novel by me, Gordon Basichis, has journeyed a long way over the years.   Since it was first published by G.P. Putnam’s its film rights have been optioned twice by two motion picture studios, Twentieth Century Fox, and MGM.   The Authors Guild adopted it as part of their Back in Print Program at the beginning of this century.   Originally, it has been recognized as a quirky Western Epic Fantasy, full of humor and philosophical insight.  It was seen as a metaphysical book, embracing and also satirizing some of our more sacred cows.

Some people loved it, and some people hated it.  Most agreed it was a mixed genre type of novel that fell into a lot of categories while never being pigeonholed by any single one.  One critic called it “the West that never was.”  I don’t think she was trying to flatter me.  But, nevertheless, I still took it as a compliment.  History for the most part is never as it was.  So in the arts, why not take it to a much further, illogical extension?

It was my first novel.  There was one before it where a publisher bought it but a regime changed aborted its release.  But The Constant Travellers came out with a lovely cover, at a time when covers were replicas of such exotic things as original oils.  In this case, noted artist, Ron Walotsky, painted the original oil that became the cover.  Ron was kind enough to sell me the painting, and it hangs on my wall to this day.

I am proud of this book.  It was truly a labor of love and a work of fiction written by a young writer who knew almost nothing about the exigencies of the publishing industry with all its precepts and machinations.  I never pitched it or really wrote an outline for it.  One day the first couple of sentences popped into my mind and off I went, working out the story as I progressed.  I loved writing that way as the characters and story was always filled with surprises.  I knew in my efforts I would try to deconstruct time and space and demonstrate for the children of fate and circumstances there really are no accidents.   Life has its meaning not in the greatness of the celestial or in eternity, but in the people you meet and the things you learn from them as you wander down the road.   True enlightenment, as I believed then and still believe today, is not handed down by a higher order but through the experiences gained from human interaction and where you take them from there.

Life for some is more serious than others.  Life may be serious, but it is the humor and irony that we discover in the events of our journey that serves to lift us to a greater recognition of our very finite place in an infinite universe.   Without our eliciting the quirky elements to even the more sober conditions of life, we are doomed to a very prosaic existence.

Anyway, The Constant Travellers, has arrived in the twenty-first century and made it to Kindle, Sony Reader, and soon will be on IPad and other epublishing channels.   I am happy about this.   The money, fortunately, is not so important at this juncture in life.   But to see a newer readership, a mixture of younger people and former drug taking, sex having Boomers who may see this book as a life once led, there is much gratification.   I am glad to see it out there.

What a trip it has been.

“ Ebook Description

“Sex, drugs, and the West that never was. In this funny and philosophical tale, young Shelby Lopez encounters Thunderbird Hawkins in post Civil War America. The Indian shaman teaches Shelby of the Great Necklace and the Great Book. Their journey leads them to wisdom and an understanding of man’s destiny. While set in the Old West, the novel’s modern idiom is as contemporary as if it were today.”

]]> http://www.hopefulromantics.org/2010/08/reflections-on-the-constant-travellers-now-on-kindle-and-ebooks/feed/ 0 http://www.hopefulromantics.org/2010/08/will-they-serve-frozen-yogurt-at-the-next-revolution/ http://www.hopefulromantics.org/2010/08/will-they-serve-frozen-yogurt-at-the-next-revolution/#comments Mon, 02 Aug 2010 12:20:01 +0000 Gordon Basichis http://www.hopefulromantics.org/?p=1329

All rhetoric aside, revolutions are not started by the poor.   The poor may contribute later on, or pile in and take the revolution to certain extremes, but they are not the ones who start it.  I realize it is romantic to think of the poor rising up to break the yoke of poverty, but it is simply not the case.    It could be argued that if the poor were that well organized, then they would get it together enough not to be poor.

It’s the disaffected bourgeoisie, the merchant class, the middle class, that always  always gets the ball rolling.    If at first it is not the middle class directly then it is their progeny, their erstwhile sons and daughters who grow restive in the coffee houses or on the job, in the schools, where discussion leads to protests, and protests leads to violence, or the series of incidents that set it all off.   Robespierre, one of the leaders of the French Revolution, was from a family of lawyers.  Castro, in Cuba, was from a wealthy middle class family and also a lawyer.

Lenin was also an attorney; his father a director/inspector of the public school system.    Trotsky was raised in a family of wealthy farmers.  Che Guevera was from an upper middle class family and was himself a doctor.   Mao Zedong’s father may have started life as a peasant, but by the time Mao was still a young boy the old man was doing just fine as a  farmer and grain merchant.

The American forefathers were largely merchants or gentrified farmers.   Those frocked coats and powdered wigs cost a few bucks, and none of them have been cited as showing up in a peasant rags. In the case of most revolutions, the leading intellectuals and rabble rousers took their cues from  principles and doctrines in the literature of choice.    The French and the Americans cited passages from the Age of Reason, while the Russians and Chinese took their cue from Karl Marx.   Most peasants weren’t reading Marx at the time, and the literature found in  Age of Reason or the Enlightenment was mainly accessible to those that had money, and certainly those who could read.

Another misnomer is that revolutions occur out of principle.   That they are driven by the abstracts of ideology and their anticipated application.   Revolutions, at least successful ones, are based in economics and not the more higher minded principles as some would believe.   Most successful revolutions emanate from self-interest and economic necessity before being disseminated to a greater mass through rhetorical ideology.   Even in today’s world where even the most complex strategic considerations are boiled down to simple jargon and sound bites, embedded at the root core there is short and long range self-interest and its related economics.  The higher minded rhetoric, all that stuff about liberty, equality…whatever…comes after when you need more bodies to sacrifice themselves for the greater cause.

I think about revolution not because I am encouraging it.  I do ponder at what point the middle class once again decides it has had enough of the chicanery and double dealing that leaves it holding the bag.   I think about the Tea Party and realize that some laud them while some mock or hate them, fearing the worst from the dregs in their lot.  But the Tea Party thing didn’t come out of nowhere.  People are pissed off.   The middle class is pissed off.  These are the people who have lost their houses, their jobs, their dignity, and their chance to make life better for their children.   While with the Tea  Party all that anger is being channeled almost entirely to the wrong places, the frustration is real.

Their jobs are going offshore.  Their trades skills if not obsolete are being transferred to other countries, leaving crafts people to work in humiliating call center positions where they try to accommodate those as pissed off as they are.   Small businesses have watched the stimulus money get kicked back to the larger banking and financial interests.  They have watched the money go offshore so domestic interests can make nice with foreign interests, so everyone is happy for the next financial shell game.  Many small and medium size business owners realize they are in a game of musical chairs, and when the music stops they may lack a place to plant themselves.    The less evolved make irritating claims about wanting their country back.  Few realize that while there were always virtues there were also the ugly elements of sexism, racism, and the economic leverage of the Robber Barons that is not at all unlike the way things work today.

But the smarter souls realize the middle class is dissolving.   It is a species facing extinction, or if not extinction then certainly a serious depletion among their ranks.   It is becoming increasingly evident, at least to me, that both the right and left are creating a permanent underclass.  The Conservatives may be more calloused and venal, willing to exploit cheap labor, and under the guise of free enterprise ship people’s livelihoods to other places, in order to serve their bottom line.    But then the Liberals or Progressives, or whatever they are this year, in offering meager entitlement without any real job training or actual support of industry have policies that may keep people alive but eliminate their chances of obtaining the skills that will empower them toward gainful employment.   At the end of the day, it is really two sides of the same coin with both sides pandering to their bases.  One caters to the rich, and the other tries to garner votes from the poor.  The middle class pays the tab and then finds itself ignored.

Common sense would be that rather than just hand people money, it would be wiser to re-purpose factories, even in the supposed archaic industries.   Develop a modern version of Roosevelt’s WPA where younger folks can form in teams to  employ modern technology with seasoned business sense to make stuff.   No country survives by merely shuffling paper around.  You need to make stuff.  Even in a global economy you cannot constantly suffer trade deficits for goods you can be making here.  Or, more to the point, you can not do it and survive.  Re purposing  factories would allow the government to supplement production.    The factories might even operate at a loss to stay competitive, but that loss would not be nearly as costly as just laying out billions for stand alone entitlement programs where nothing comes back to the coffers.

But then some argue, why bother with outmoded industries?   Well, for one thing not all of our citizens are technological geniuses.   Some of the work may be mind numbing, but it is a living, and a better living than either the call service job that has filled in in many blighted cities, or the government check that covers close to nothing.     It is better to have people working at something,  especially products that would reduce our imports and overall deficits, than not working at all.

We talk about what great innovators we are.  We love to revel in our inventions and our technological brilliance.    We boast of our start ups and how great technological achievements have originated from that humble garage workshop.   It may be true.   But as Co-Founder of Intel, Andy Groves, points out in his terrific article on Bloomberg Business Week, entitled How America Can Create Jobs, even when we innovate through the start ups we no longer scale these companies but instead the big outfits buy them out and ship most of the work offshore.  There is little chance for a new Microsoft or anything else when either that fledgling company is left to fend for itself, having no access to the kind of capital that would enable scaling to competitive levels.    There is little chance when that nascent company is bought up by the big kid and its resources moved offshore.

And both sides of the aisle are equally culpable.  The conservatives bark about free enterprise and the lack of government intercession.  These were the same people who couldn’t wait for government handouts from the bailout, where many suffered little or no consequences for their duplicity and lack of sensible business practice.   On the other hand, we have the current majority in government boasting of its reforms.    They boast of a  financial reform and a bill that has no teeth.  Companies too big to fail are still too big to fail.   As for much of the legislation, five minutes after  its passing any corporate interest with a team of lawyers and common sense has figured out a way to beat most of it.   There is little pressure for this current or any future administration to reduce or eliminate tax credits for shipping its jobs offshore.   There is little incentive via added tax credits to encourage even foreign companies to set up shop over here and hire American laborers.

So, in all, minus the rhetoric from both sides and all the concomitant window dressing, you have people either out of work or working jobs so meager they can’t support their families.   Credit extension to the regional banks who would in turn provide funding for local businesses is little more than a passing topic of conversation.    The economy is once again stalling.   Consumers are reluctant to make purchases.  There is talk of a double dip recession.   There is talk the housing market could slip even lower with increased foreclosures.

And the middle class?   I have to wonder at what point does the toxic mismanagement reach critical mass?    It is one thing to wear a ridiculous hat with tea bags draped from its brim.   It is another to consider the twenty-first century version of tarring and feathering, vandalizing, and otherwise making life miserable for those who have reduced this country to a shadow of itself.   I think about this recent little fiasco in the California City of Bell where it was recently discovered that four of the five council members were getting paid about $100,000 for their part-time jobs in the blue collar city of 40,000 people.   The Bell city manager, who made nearly $800,000, which is roughly three times the salary of the President of the United States.  For the City of Bell.

Why did it take so long to figure out that these conniving individuals were getting paid so much for so little?  The salaries were only made public after a Los Angeles Times investigation, based on California Public Records Act requests, uncovered the ugly fact that the city payroll was bloated with six-figure salaries.  Since the discovery, some of the grand city officials have resigned.  Others are defiant.  Attorney General, Jerry Brown,  is contemplating criminal charges.   There is much rancor about their very generous pensions.

But supposed they hadn’t resigned.  Suppose they all remained defiant and the state government ignored this outrageous transgression on the public trust.  One has to wonder at what point do the riots start where some of the city officials are dragged into the street?  Maybe never.  Maybe the citizens of Bell all toss back a beer and a Zoloft and go back to American Idol.    But suppose this incident or an incident much like it does get out of hand.   And then suppose in other parts of the country the citizens there think a little tar and feathering of sorts is not at all a bad idea.   You know, little local and regional things that suddenly erupt beyond the point of control.

I know it is a lot of supposing here, but if history tells us anything,   major changes gestate for years before breaking out to a greater order.   History demonstrates it takes just a series of minor incidents that evolve from miniature rebellion to considerable revolution.    America had its Boston Massacre, it’s Tea Party, and Lexington and Concord. Russia had its riots in St. Petersburg.   France had the storming of its much hated Bastille.  And so it goes.

I am not saying we are about to see a full scale revolution, replete with Civil War and all the other accouterments that give new meaning to dangerous living.   No extreme sports are necessary when you have massive rioting and killing in the streets.   But we  are not a country that angers easily.   On the top side of our national persona, we have an embedded sense of law and fair play that if it doesn’t hold us back from theft and duplicity at least burdens us with guilt.

On the down said, we are spoiled, fat, lazy, and have far too many distractions.   A revolution is hard work and takes focus and a great deal of concentration.   Between channel surfing, texting and gossiping, focus and concentration is not particularly our strong suits.    It  may be difficult to sustain anger when you take mood elevators and believe your critical assignment is attacking the nearest buffet.  We are out of shape and eat a lot of frozen yogurt.   It could be argued that unless Fro Yo wins the concession for the next American Revolution, turnout will be minimal at best.   And if there is a turnout, then is everyone proclaimed a hero?  Does everyone get a trophy?  Hard to say.

But then that anger is growing out there.  It is diffuse and misdirected, concerned with petty concepts like racism and people’s sexual preferences.   It is concerned with lifestyle choices and religious beliefs or lack of them.   But then we aren’t there yet.  We aren’t at the place where that slow to anger big dog finally gets off the porch where sensibilities start to galvanize and find articulation.  Where the middle class declares, “enough of this,” and decides that voting for the same thing regardless of party cannot turn it around.   When it becomes clear that it is not an issue of wanting one’s country back but moving it forward.   Against the deliberate intransigence.  And in the face of those who wish to keep you right where you are.