So, in my last post I talked about the red elephant in the room - China - with Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Clinton. The subject was whether the U.S. should "go soft" on China as captured in his article Why getting tough with China won't solve our jobs problem - Salon. I left a question on his Facebook page:
"Do you think that if the United States addressed our many domestic problems - education, infrastructure and industrial policy - we could get back on track and prevent China from eclipsing the United States? I think this would definitely help."
To which another Facebook user, Mr. Thomas replied:
"Yea, Sora I think both the right and left have no concept about what to do about the MASSIVE unemployment we have and NO ONE has any idea about what to do about it. Meanwhile things will get worse unless somehow we can dismantle this UNFAIR + CORRUPT government. I think the US should hang out a "closed for repair" sign and back out of free trade for a while. Wish the Tea Party would jump on this."
My reply is this: We shouldn't totally back out of free trade and I still have faith in the U.S. government but Mr. Thomas is right - free trade shouldn't be the focus right now. That's why U.S. corporations with a global reach are finally reacting negatively to China's new nationalistic economic restrictions brought on by their entry to the WTO. What we in the U.S. need to do is to focus on ourselves for awhile and get ahead on creating new green technologies before China does. At the moment China, despite, or perhaps because of their huge dependencies on coal and oil is vying to become the world's first green economic superpower.
If the U.S. can get the move on green technologies and surpass the Chinese we could lower the unemployment here by creating new green jobs at green factories and industries creating said green technologies. The patents to said green technologies would belong to us and our products would be sold around the world with little competition for decades. Also the world would continue to look to our professionals as the managers, scientists, and leaders of new viable industries as it has done for the better half of the last century. Green technologies could be just like the car industry was for us in the 50s and 60s - a international industry standard and a money-maker that rejuvenates our economy and creates jobs (with the added bonus of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and offshore drilling). I say green jobs since this seems like the only new, unexplored industry just bursting with untapped economic promise and potential.
President Obama alluded to green jobs as a source of new capital and jobs in his latest State of the Union but he and everyone one else seems to be doing little to make this venture a viable reality. Maybe a Republican president and Congress would be more business-oriented but I doubt Republicans are very interested in green ventures. All I can say is that if the U.S. continues to dither and dather and China taps the green goldmine first, as President Obama put it in his address, we will no longer be "number 1" in the world. (And don't call me nationalistic; the world needs a strong U.S.). You guys know how I feel on China already.
Things I read this weekend:
"The horrific gang rape of a 16-year-old girl is roiling Canada. It's suspected that she was drugged at a rave on Saturday and then assaulted in a nearby field by a group of males. Truly adding insult to injury: The attack in Pitt Meadows, B.C., was photographed and videotaped -- and the evidence was then published on Facebook by one of her alleged attackers. The photos and video "have been viewed, shared, saved and reposted numerous times," an official told the Vancouver Sun..."only hours after disturbing pictures were posted on Facebook, teens were already suggesting the victim was a willing participant and asked for it."
In another report:
"The rapes occurred at about 1 a.m. Saturday in a field behind a house..The victim had become separated from her friends and was believed to have been given a date rape drug, Insp. Derren Lench said."This was a gang rape by several males who took advantage of a female who couldn't consent, was drugged and had no opportunity to defend herself," Lench said. "She was taken to a field by several males who raped her. It was an horrific act."The girl suffered significant injuries from what police described as an aggressive series of assaults involving between five and seven males that lasted 20 minutes.With the exception of the photographer, no one else allegedly involved in the rape has been arrested, although police said they had leads on some of the participants."
Those who read this blog already know how I feel about rape - as any normal person should feel: angry and disgusted. It goes without saying that no woman deserves to be raped. The author of the Salon article, Ms. Clark-Flory is unsure or unwilling about where to place blame, but I'm not.
The internet does deserve some of the blame. People circulated these rape pictures without a care or for a good story. There's a lack of culpability and traceability that is lost even on web sites with low anonymity like Facebook. If a nasty person uploads child pornography on to the internet, there should be a way to stop the spread using web technology, but there just isn't right now.
However, the real culpability falls on something larger and more abstract: society. Our technology can evolve to the nth level but disgusting things like child pornography and gang rape are always going to exist if people cannot change their basic attitudes about women and sexual abuse.
There's this post-modern backlash among contemporary women and men who believe "feminism" is a dirty word, but I believe the world could benefit from turning away from sexism and chauvinism and all other sorts of mindsets that lead to young girls being raped and psychologically and socially scarred for life. This isn't the first time something like this has happened and if we don't open our minds and fix that apathy, fix that cynicism, then horrible things like this will just keep on happening. Clark-Flory remembers:
"This reminds me of reports earlier this year about a woman who goes by the pseudonym Amy: Her uncle sexually abused her as a little girl and circulated the photographic evidence in child porn circles...In a letter to the court, she wrote: "It is hard to describe what it feels like to know that at any moment, anywhere, someone is looking at pictures of me as a little girl being abused by my uncle and is getting some kind of sick enjoyment from it. It's like I am being abused over and over and over again."
I'm tired of hearing about such horrid stories because I don't see why such things have to happen in today's world. Those rape photos on Facebook shouldn't be up in the first place, and if they are, they should be flagged and reported. The people who spread such photos believe they are doing nothing wrong and that must change. The people who had the audacity to suggest that a drugged 16-year old girl asked for a gang rape, believe there's nothing wrong with that suggestion and that must change. That group of boys, many of them who may not be brought to justice for their evil act, believed that there was nothing wrong with gang raping a girl and that must change.
How? Those boys sent out a message about how they feel about women. Our society must send a message that such behaviors are wrong and are unacceptable instead of routinely giving them a pass or blaming the victim. We need stricter laws and we need stricter punishments and most importantly we need a change of attitude because if we don't make preventing rape our imperative, no one is going to care. So we need to care; we need put rapists behind bars, and we need to care about rape victims instead of belittling and forgetting them because our neglect could mean the abuse and violation of another woman and isn't our society tired yet of letting such atrocities happen again and again? How many times does something as drastic as gang rape have to happen before there's a change?
What?! Ew!! If not Clinton, then Palin, right? Realistically she might not run because 1) ten other Republican hot shots including Gingrich, Huckabee and Romney have dropped the same hint and 2) she's enjoying her celebrity status without the office. But of course if she were to run that would be as big a boon to the Democrats as O'Donnell is:
As I said in this article's comment section I don't know why the Democrats aren't linking their opposition to Palin already. In fact painting the GOP as a bunch of O'Donnells and Palins is almost the only way Dems have a shot in this year's primaries, much less in 2012. Why? Because President Obama seems intent on alienating his base instead of energizing his base:
"OBAMA: Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get — to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed — oh, well, the public option wasn’t there. If you get the financial reform bill passed — then, well, I don’t know about this particularly derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and — (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.) We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation."
This is President Obama mocking public option supporters even as his administration goes lukewarm on the once heroic health care reform bill. As an avid supporter of the public option myself in bygone days, I am tempted to believe that President Obama never really believed in the public option but simply used it as a carrot to lure out the base in hysteric, Congress-pressuring droves only to drop them and the public option like a hot potato.
Now, according to Obama, the bright-eyed youth, union members and the "professional left" who ardently supported him and his Congress are now all cynical, petulant and ungrateful. I'm almost tempted to be as off put as one of my favorite bloggers, Glenn Greenwald. Instead of telling his base to "get over it" shouldn't President Obama be framing his call to action as a second chance to push forward with the reforms his base elected him for?
However, my voice of reason is telling me to fall back on my reaction to Gibbs "inartful" criticism of the angered left:
"Even though I think Gibbs was being a bit sophomoric here, I do concede that it's really easy to get frustrated and disappointed when the "professional left" seems so eager to eat its own. Seriously Maddow, why bash Axelrod? He's on your side; I'm sorry if Pres. Obama refuses to be a big, fat, flaming liberal you want him to be.You see Pres. Obama was never a flaming liberal, even if everyone thought so in 2008. He's a centrist and a smart politician, and despite this he's taken many political risks and drained his political capital in order to bring about many political victories for the left such as health care reform (albeit w/o the public option). Gibbs was simply pointing out that the left should be more grateful instead of becoming cynical and reacting to the GOP's bashing of Obama with similar bashing of Obama...The lesson we should take from this episode is that the Dems need more solidarity. Divided we fall, right?"
Indeed. Yes, President Obama shouldn't alienate the independents and the left with "inartful" jokes made for the amusement of rich party donors but the left needs to understand they're not the only ones in the universe. We have the Tea Party banging down the Senate door because the other half of the country believes President Obama is the most unpopular, radically left president ever. I don't think the base realizes how much we've been able to accomplish with the GOP religiously saying no to everything.
Yes, we're disappointed, but to unload on him and abandon him when he needs us the most just because he hasn't established world peace seems a tad unfair. Things are bad, but relatively we've got it good. If you want more reforms, don't get cynical! Trust me professional and unprofessional left, the Republicans won't give us a better deal. Come out in droves and re-elect President Obama. Stand with him, he needs us more than ever. Let's bring back the youth, the optimism, the hope, and most importantly the change of 2008 this year and 2012.
- Ryu
P.S. Happy Birthday to my blog guys, which has been running for two years, from September 2008.
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