Struggling with the inexplicable

I approached Paul Krugman's essay in the Sunday Times Magazine, "The End of the Middle Class," with some eagerness, and on one level it did not disappoint, providing an abundance of statistics and analysis to underscore the obvious--yet perversely disputed--reality of increasing income inequality in current-day America.

Krugman's basic thesis is that the decades from the thirties to the seventies, roughly, comprised a sort of economic golden age during which income levels in this country achieved some degree of parity. But see if you can spot the unacknowledged 900 pound gorilla in the middle of Krugman's analysis:

Some -- by no means all -- economists trying to understand growing inequality have begun to take seriously a hypothesis that would have been considered irredeemably fuzzy-minded not long ago. This view stresses the role of social norms in setting limits to inequality. According to this view, the New Deal had a more profound impact on American society than even its most ardent admirers have suggested: it imposed norms of relative equality in pay that persisted for more than 30 years, creating the broadly middle-class society we came to take for granted. But those norms began to unravel in the 1970's and have done so at an accelerating pace.

Hmmm…so the gap between the rich and the poor decreased during the middle of the last century…how can we explain this puzzling phenomenon? Is it the work of this mysterious deus ex machina to which Krugman refers, these vague "social norms" which somehow helped to set things straight during the span of time from the thirties to the seventies…?

…or, um, does it have anything to do with the fact that this time period coincides exactly with the rise and fall of organized labor?

It's a strange blind spot in an otherwise perceptive article, that the single most obvious factor responsible for an increased middle class standard of living is never even mentioned.

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 3:42 PM| link

A new discovery…

…to me at least: cartoonist Kevin Moore. I like his work. You might, too.

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 3:33 PM| link

Friday rants

If you spend anytime online at all, you'll run across the meme: I used to be liberal, but the left changed and/or betrayed me and/or grew irrelevant and now I am libertarian and/or conservative and/or beyond your petty political pigeonholing (which is just another way of saying libertarian and/or conservative).

But think about it. What's more likely--that the fundamental principles of liberalism somehow changed inextricably during the years of the writer's political conversion, generally somewhere between their mid-twenties and mid-thirties…or that the writer got older, grew more conservative and basically just changed his/her mind?

In short, the liberalism of their youth was probably reflexive and poorly thought out, and when they finally did get around to giving it any real thought, say, around the time they graduated into a respectable tax bracket, they suddenly realized: my gosh! I'm not a liberal at all! And more power to them--this space is unambigulously in favor of critical thought. After all, what a terrible waste it is to lose one's mind.

But...while these renunciations of their former beliefs are meant to give credence to their current arguments (I used to be a misguided liberal, but then I saw the light!), there is part of me which wonders: if their political philosophy was so poorly thought out to begin with--or at the very least, so casually adopted that it could be cast off like a cheap suit with unfashionably narrow lapels--well, why should I care what they think now?

Afterthought: this is an "if the shoe fits wear it" kind of rant, so there's no need to send me tales of your genuine and heartfelt political evolution. Let me just issue a blanket response in advance: I believe you. Honest. It's those other guys I'm talking about. Not you.

Not that the above rant isn't an unfair generalization, of course--it almost certainly is. Just like when people write about morally bankrupt leftists or cowards who oppose the war.

Just an occupational hazard, I guess.

Update: Predictably, Rush Limbaugh's favorite Winston Churchill quote is starting to show up in the inbox ("If a man is not a liberal at the age of twenty, he has no heart; if a man is not conservative by the age of forty, he has no brain"). Out of curiosity, I googled it, and according to this guy, at least, it seems to belong in the scrapheap of misattribution along with that bogus Julius Caesar quote that's been making the rounds lately. If anyone can find definite attribution, I'll pass it along, but regular readers know that I have no patience for this kind of thing from either end of the political spectrum.

* * *

The pro-war types would like to believe that opposition to the war is just a fringe thing, a bunch of goofball communists out marching around with the big puppets. And I'll concede that ultimately, the big puppets probably don't do us a whole lot of good, nor do anti-war events at which every group from the Transgender Albinos in Solidarity With Mumia to the Revolutionary People's Committee in Support of Even Larger Puppets has to have their twenty minutes in front of the microphone. As Max Sawicky wrote recently, "Lots of people are going to come out and take a look at what passes for the anti-war movement. If they see nuttiness at the core, they will not be encouraged."

But opposition to this war isn't just something that exists on the (allegedly) crazy fringes, without thought or rationale. People in favor of taking the war to Iraq argue that it's the only way to ensure our safety, and I believe they argue this in good faith--but not everyone accepts the argument. You don't have to be out on the wacko goofball fringe to worry that a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq could easily make things worse rather than better. I mean, these same people also argued that the bombing of Afghanistan would make us safer, but what did we ultimately accomplish there? The toppling of the Taliban, yes, but only in favor of a highly unstable oligarchy of rival warlords, a country in which progress is now measured by the number of witnesses required before someone can be stoned to death for adultery …and as far as routing al Qaeda, the director of the CIA says that al Qaeda has regrouped and we are at as great a risk of massive terrorist attack today as we were on September 10, 2001.

The thing is, our metaphors for this are all wrong. We're fighting a twenty-first century war using twentieth century methods. The nation state is almost irrelevant to this conflict. Our enemy is not a tyrant bound by geography, a group of people who pledge allegiance to a particular flag. Nor is our enemy some sort of James Bond organization of supervillains, not at this point. What we seem to be dealing with now are small groups of angry people scattered all over the globe, people consumed by that unfortunate basic human desire to inflict destruction and generally fuck shit up. In other words, we're dealing with criminals. Contemptible, pathetic, sick in the head criminals. We can run around the globe overthrowing regimes and slaughtering civilian populations by the barge load, but when all it takes is a cell of twenty or thirty well-organized religious psychopaths to bring down some skyscrapers or inflict some other unimaginable catastrophe--well, it's like going after a mosquito with a howitzer. A dangerous mosquito, a mosquito infected with some super mutated strand of West Nile virus, a mosquito which poses an undeniable threat to one's safety and well being--but launching rocket shells into the walls of one's apartment may not turn out to be the best way to deal with the threat. The only way a conventional military response to this thing works is if we topple every single goddamn regime we disagree with and impose a Pax Americana on the entire globe, backed up with armies of centurions at every outpost of the Empire.

And if you think your taxes are bad now, just wait 'til you see the bill for that one.

* * *

On an entirely different subject, I was recently contacted by a writer for a large circulation magazine (who requested anonymity), working on yet another article about blogging. And looking at the questions this person emailed, I realized: I don't want to do this anymore. The interview, I mean, not the blogging. Blogging is a fine thing to do, and I'm happy that you all take the time to read mine, but let's face it--this isn't something that requires extraordinary talent, or much more skill than the ability to post an html link. It's like being interviewed about eating dinner or going to the movies or something--it's a fine way to pass your time, but it's not much more than that. In the last six months, I think I've done more interviews about blogging than about the cartoon itself, and that's just silly. I don't have that much to say about it. Yep, I sure do post them links. Rant a little every now and again. Yessir.

Enough of that, I think.

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 11:16 AM| link

FYI

The band Cake printed up some t-shirts with an old cartoon of mine on them for their summer tour, and they've got a very small number of them left for sale. Click here for info.

As you've maybe guessed, it's been another one of those weeks here at chez Tomorrow, the kind where your book is supposed to be finished and out the door but at the last minute you have to drop everything and deal with some problems you didn't catch on the first, fortieth, or ninety-seventh go-round. Hence the radio silence. We'll try to get back on the air soon, though.

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 6:58 PM| link

Still playing catch up

You've probably already seen this one, but hey, I've been away. Remember when the right-wingers were all over the New York Times for twisting the facts, taking Henry Kissinger's words out of context, unfairly making it look like he was opposed to the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, blah, blah, blah?

Well, it looks like Kissinger cut them all off at the kneecaps last week:

"I am viscerally opposed to a prolonged occupation of a Muslim country at the heart of the Muslim world by Western nations who proclaim the right to re-educate that country," said the former secetary of state, Henry A. Kissinger, who as a young man served as a district administrator in the military government of occupied Germany.

From the Times' story on the Bushies' plan to turn Iraq into the fifty first state of the Yoo Ess Aaaay. (Here comes another winter, waiting for utopia… waiting for hell to freeze over...)

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 10:45 AM| link

Into the echo chamber

Tapped apparently shares my annoyance with right-wing blogdom's fondness for such neat-o secret-treehouse terms as "fisking" and "idiotarian," and points us toward Calpundit's "Critique of Pure Fisking."

Also high on my list of grating terminology: self-congratulatory references to one's uncompensated output as "free ice cream"--as if the entire goddamn internet consists of anything but free ice cream.

* * *

Speaking of the warbling logs, check out the warbot. Plug your name in and get your own personalized warblog denunciation. For instance:

To oppose moral courage is to hate America.

Isn't it clear by now that the world is menaced by a pro-shoplifting madman who has already tried to kill the President's dad? When President Bush tries to protect us from weaseling brown men, hysterical Gary Hart and his fellow Democrats cry out, "racial profiling!" I suppose he'd rather invite Yassir Arafat over and make love. The proof that our mission is common sense and faith-based is that it's so risky.

God forbid the public be able to vote for unique dreams.

"If Saddam could attack us at any minute, what was Bush doing on vacation for a month?" says that most hysterical of the bigots, Tom Tomorrow. Grumble, grumble, grumble. The truth makes the funny little creatures who make up the fork-tongued elite resort to bizarrely emotional insults and cries of "unconstitutional!" "Don't hurt me," says Tom Tomorrow. Oh? I suppose he'd rather invite Saddam over and make love. For the love of Christ, do the bigots know no shame? Well, duh.

And this:

"There could be some unwelcome consequences," said Tom Tomorrow this week on the set of The Real World. Oh? Really? But this is standard political debate for the pro-shoplifting leftoids of the elite, who respond to completely logical arguments with irrational name-calling. For the love of Christ, do the leftists know no shame? That's not what Tom Tomorrow was saying last year. The absurd self-immolation of the appeasers and their anti-war Left is anti-war.

The Islamists of the wildly pro-shoplifting Left are not capable of rational thought. So they accuse confident people like President Bush of whatever pops into their heads.

Beyond Germany, it's difficult to identify any country where anti-Americanism is on the upswing. There's Tom Tomorrow on Good Morning America, making such inexplicable and pathological claims as, "I was wondering, has anyone who is less than several thousand miles away from Baghdad said anything about feeling threatened by Scud Missiles? 'Cos they don't go that far," as he put it last week, and suggesting (with the deceitful viciousness and blatantly calculated disgrace that is his trademark, wont and fashion) that Joe Lieberman's patriotic crusading is for the purpose of votes. Blatantly, to be one of the Chomsky-like Fifth Column is to stagnate and devour.

Breathtakingly, Tom Tomorrow wants to have his cake and eat it, too.

Wacky big time fun is being had!

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 10:10 AM| link

Fisk this

But now let's list exactly what we really must forget if we are to support this madness. Most important of all, we absolutely must forget that President Ronald Reagan dispatched a special envoy to meet Saddam Hussein in December 1983. It's essential to forget this for three reasons. Firstly, because the awful Saddam was already using gas against the Iranians –which is one of the reasons we are now supposed to go to war with him.

Secondly, because the envoy was sent to Iraq to arrange the re-opening of the US embassy – in order to secure better trade and economic relations with the Butcher of Baghdad. Thirdly, because the envoy was – wait for it – Donald Rumsfeld. Now you might think it strange that Mr Rumsfeld, in the course of one of his folksy press conferences, hasn't chatted to us about this interesting tit-bit. You might think he would have wished to enlighten us about the evil nature of the criminal with whom he so warmly shook hands. But no.

Strangely, Mr Rumsfeld is silent about this. As he is about his subsequent and equally friendly meeting with Tariq Aziz – which just happened to take place on the day in March, 1984, that the UN released its damning report on Saddam's use of poison gas against Iran. The American media are silent about this too, of course. Because we must forget.

We must forget, too, that in 1988, as Saddam destroyed the people of Halabja with gas, along with tens of thousands of other Kurds – when he "used gas against his own people" in the words of Messrs Bush/Cheney/Blair/Cook/Straw et al – President Bush senior provided him with $500m in US government subsidies to buy American farm products. We must forget that in the following year, after Saddam's genocide was complete, President Bush senior doubled this subsidy to $1bn, along with germ seed for anthrax, helicopters, and the notorious "dual-use" material that could be used for chemical and biological weapons.

And when President Bush junior promises the Iraqi people "an era of new hope" and democracy after the destruction of Saddam – as he did last night – we must forget how the Americans promised Pakistan and Afghanistan a new era of hope after the defeat of the Soviet army in 1980 – and did nothing.

More.

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 8:28 PM| link

What kind of man reads andrewsullivan.com?

I don't keep up with his blog, but apparently Andrew mentioned me at some point recently. Had this waiting in the inbox when I got back, from one of his readers:

Praise Allah that Andrew Sullivan turned me on to your cartoons, particularly
the latest one. I was one of those weirdos who actually valued his freedom
and thought my life belonged to myself and not to politicians; but once
exposed to your keen insights, Aristotelian logic and profound grasp of
economics, I have decided to give up all that pro-feedom crap, become a
socialist, and work for the elimination of whatever liberties Der Staat ,
through whatever oversight, still leaves us. In fact, as a protest, I'm going
to put on a little Sixties-style street theater by marching naked (with a
tube of KY jelly in hand) on IRS headquaters, presenting my posterior, and
shouting, "Do me, Big Brother--do me real good."

I assume the irony of one of Andrew's readers indulging in such thinly-veiled homophobia speaks for itself.

I met Andrew a few years back, at some book festival thing, and he told me that he tried to get my work into The New Republic when he was editor of that magazine. My guess is, he's not such a big fan anymore.

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 8:17 PM| link

I'm back...

...and I clearly can't leave you kids alone for a minute.

I'm beginning to think that if the Democratic party were on fire, it wouldn't be worth the trouble it would take to piss on them.

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 8:16 PM| link