Bill Moyers — Still Seeking That First Clue?

Bill Moyers is not a young man. Nevertheless, he has been active since his retirement from PBS. Bill still thinks life is unfair. He's right about that!

Bill also thinks we should do something about that unfairness. By "we" Bill means our utterly corrupt, hilariously dysfunctional political system. (The dysfunction is largely a consequence of the corruption.) So Bill often shoots himself in the head right off the bat. Invisible Americans Get the Silent Treatment is a good example.

It’s just astonishing to us how long this [presidential] campaign has gone on with no discussion of what’s happening to poor people. Official Washington continues to see poverty with tunnel vision — “out of sight, out of mind.”

Whoa, Nelly! Let's stop right there. Ask yourself: how astonishing is it that politicians don't want to talk about the poor?

And we’re not speaking just of Paul Ryan and his Draconian budget plan or Mitt Romney and their fellow Republicans.  Tipping their hats to America’s impoverished while themselves seeking handouts from billionaires and corporations is a bad habit that includes President Obama, who of all people should know better.

Remember: for three years in the 1980’s he was a community organizer in Roseland, one of the worst, most poverty-stricken and despair-driven neighborhoods in Chicago. He called it “the best education I ever had.” And when Obama left to go to Harvard Law School, author Paul Tough writes in The New York Times, he did so, “to gain the knowledge and resources that would allow him to eventually return and tackle the neighborhood’s problems anew.” There’s a moving line in Dreams from My Father where Obama writes: “I would learn power’s currency in all its intricacy and detail” and “bring it back like Promethean fire.”

Oddly, though, for all his rhetorical skills, Obama hasn’t made a single speech devoted to poverty since he moved into the White House.

Not a single speech devoted to poverty in nearly four years. Bill finds that odd.

Why, for most humans, does that first clue never arrive? This is a complicated, deep question. Take Moyers. What kind of mush does his Big Brain contain? Is it as simple as this?

I'm a liberal. Barack Obama is a liberal. Liberals care about people, unlike those callous conservative bastards. So Obama should care. Yet he doesn't make speeches about the poor, let alone do anything special to lift them out of poverty. What's the problem? I'll give him a hard time, maybe that will do the trick!

I do not want Bill to die without that first clue. But it has to be a first clue, not something complicated like how stratification and inequality have characterized complex human societies since the Neolithic Revolution. (See my post Human Nature — Exhibit B.) So what might that first clue look like? Let's try this—

The poor don't have any money (because ... uhhh ... they are poor). Money runs the political world. Therefore, politicians don't have to pay any attention to the poor.

I know — it's a Big Leap. If Bill had a firm grasp of this first clue—a firm grasp of the obvious, as one reader recently put it—he would no longer find it astonishing how long this presidential campaign has gone on without any discussion of the poor. He would no longer find it odd that Barack Obama has not made a single speech about the poor since his Inaugural Day. And then a proper discussion of what's really going on could begin.

Bill finishes up with a flourish, a call to arms, if you like.

We know, we know: It is written that, “The poor will always be with us.” But when it comes to our “out of sight, out of mind” population of the poor, you have to think we can help reduce their number, ease the suffering, and speak out, with whatever means at hand, on their behalf and against those who would prefer they remain invisible.

Speak out: that means you and me, and yes, Mr. President, you, too. You once told the big bankers on Wall Street that you were all that stood between them and the pitchforks of an angry public. How about telling the poor you will make sure our government stands between them and the cliff?

Speak out ... you have to think ... how about telling the poor.  Bill! Wake up! You're not getting any younger. This is it. Last chance!

Then again, maybe having a clue is not actually the point of human life on Earth

Comments

[Ben]

Dave, the link to Human Nature — Exhibit B isn't working properly. I googled the article and found the blog entry here: http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/08/human-nature-exhibit-b.html

[Dave Cohen]

Thanks, Ben.

Fixed!

-- Dave

[Circle Jerk]

For someone who has "been around the block" as many times as Moyers has over his professional lifetime, he must know that what you write is true. He chooses to ignore that, just like Obummer and everyone else in the higher levels of power.

Sounding the alarm and proposing solutions to poverty is in the same vein as man-made global climate change, overpopulation, fiat currency, etc. etc. etc. Ain't gonna happen becuase the solutions (if any) are not feasible.

Moyers makes millions over his lifetime. He could live a life of poverty and use his personal wealth to do something, but that would require a level of self-realization that most folks simply couldn't deal with.

[Screech]

Would you like to know more about Obama and his flirtation with caring about the poor? Read this and notice the publication date.

http://www.scribd.com/webber3292/d/92392289-Fitch-on-Obama.

Enjoy the future.

[James]

It never ceases to amaze me the self-deception that people will indulge to try to make the world fit their ideal. Specifically, such arguments show such a glaring blindness to human nature, it has to be willful.

Greed. It is a defining human characteristic. It is the reason we have society, on two levels. The first is the stated reason- to protect from the greed of others which results in forceful takings, assaults, etc. It's largely theoretical and used to sell the idea. Then there is the real reason- society protects the greed of those with resources. Laws are there to "maintain order" which really means protect the wealthy.

In a capitalist economy, greed is the motivation at all levels. The wealthy accrue while the middle class provides skilled labor and capital flow for market expansion (a bigger pie for the wealthy to eat). They hope to one day be rich, but one bump and they fall into the impoverished masses that are necessary to do all the menial and difficult work necessary for society to function.

Nevermind that most of the wealthiest are born into that role and the rest rise on the crushed skulls of their fellows; to the victors go the spoils! If you are poor, it is because you are a loser and society doesn't care about you! Meanwhile the workers work away hoping for shiny baubles. Greed.

The real problem is that the top forgot that the bottom supports it and you need the middle to keep things running. Like a parasite destroying it's host, the ultra wealthy have sucked the lifeblood from the world economy. But if the system gets too broken, bad things happen. If the masses lose faith, things often get nasty. Then a new order of elites is installed to rule more justly (usually because they have the biggest knives/guns/gangs/etc.), and the cycle begins again.

[Joy]

Moyers is the last significant surviving relic of the JFK era save Zbig. The late Gore Vidal and Pierre Salinger knew things, and tried to share them with the public. Salinger died in France, Vidal regretted his return from Italy. Moyers is a horse of a different color, he knows things and wishes to obfuscate them, which is why he got a TV show rather than a push into exile.

[Mike Weber]

Coming in late here, so this comment will no doubt be swallowed up by the "next big thing", but what the hell ...

I've been poor, really poor, all my life, and will be as long as I live. (When I finally started getting my Social Security four years ago, I learned that I'd earned a grand total, in 40 years of work, of a little over $150,000 - not per year, total). As such, I have to say I have very little sympathy for the middle-class, about whom it's currently very fashionable to hand-wring. All that's happening is that the house niggers are finally learning what it's always been like for the yard niggers.

Crack on Moyers if you will, but he has enough moral spitzerinctum to at least say something about poor people, even if he is a misguided voice in the wilderness. Myself, I'd love to live long enough to see poor people get up on their hind legs and do something for themselves - same as black people in this country did after WWII. Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and black people everywhere burning American cities is what won them what rights they have, not pious white legislators and social workers plugging for them. (Before you jump to conclusions, I'm white.) When poor people, of all colors, do the same, we won't need Bill Moyers to speak for us.

[Screech]

Spitzerinctum? Very good, Mr. Weber.

For some information about race riots, largely instigated by Black American veterans after World War One, (Yes, that's WWI.) read the book titled, Red Summer, by McWhirter.

And for those of you that think corporate finagling and political and judicial corruption and malfeasanse is a recent occurence, read White's book titled Railroaded.

No, friends. This country has been in the crapper for many, many years.

[James]

It's the human condition. Throughout the entirety of human civilization, there has always been rampant corruption and division of wealth *because it is designed to work that way*. It is not a fluke or an error- it is the whole point. A system of order to maintain the wealthy. Mr. Weber is absolutely right- the haves will never give anything up unless they feel endangered. Then, they will only give as much necessary to diffuse the threat. If force can be used to quell it, even better. But any improvement is temporary and arguably the fluke. The haves will seek to get back any loss and then some.

Mr. Obama understands all this far more than the average citizen and, apparently, more than Mr. Moyers. Anyone familiar with the president's background knows wrapping himself in the garb of the poor and common man while simultaneously serving the wealthiest is his MO. The poor in Chicago are as poor as ever. The rich are wealthier than ever. Same as at the national level. Hope and change? More like more of the same.

Ironically, it is probably why he will beat Mr. Romney, who can't even pretend like he understands the average voter.