NOW THAT IS A THOUGHT!

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York, and his articles appear in Common Dreams. In his most recent article he expresses surprise at the failure of Obama’s use of the bully pulpit.

David Green reflects on the communication incompetence of the Obama Administration, suggesting that they have nothing to sell. Obama, he says, has not taken control of the political agenda. There seems to be an absence of debate, perhaps an inevitable concomitant of bipartisanship. The Obama Administration does not seem to have a progressive aspiration of any purpose. To be centrist in official American discourse is to be right of centre.

If bipartisanship is the Obama foil, the tactical genius of the Republicans is to cede the central ground and apply to the more politically animated people out further. As an aside I am thinking of reclaiming my Kenyan citizenship, although admittedly there a few documentary hurdles to cross, but who takes any notice of documents. OK, I know when craziness takes hold it builds. The “birthers” have now been trumped by the “deathers”, via The Raw Story.

In passing, Professor Green suggested a very good idea, that might work here as well:

Imagine, for example, if there was a war on greed, instead of a phony and destructive war on terrorism. Imagine how far that might go toward framing solutions to so many of our problems, from the economic crisis, to healthcare, to foreign policy militarism, to global warming.

In fact, I would suggest, that is the type of rhetoric that is made necessary by the existential threat of global warming. Once one has accepted the responsible scientific consensus about the truth of what is happening with the global climate there needs to be a change in the means of production and consumption together with greater equality across the globe.

Then too, I suppose it is possible to have two thoughts. Thom Hartmann has a new book: Threshold – The Crisis of Western Culture, in which he suggests the reason for the rare skill set required by the leaders of the international cropracracy. CEO’s it is suggested required the mind of successful frontline soldiers. The puzzle, via Alternet, is why do CEO’s need to be paid so much?

I’ve examined this with both my psychotherapist hat on and my amateur economist hat on, and only one rational answer presents itself: CEOs in America make as much money as they do because there really is a shortage of people with their skill set. And it’s such a serious shortage that some companies have to pay as much as $1 million a day to have somebody successfully do the job.

But what part of being a CEO could be so difficult — so impossible for mere mortals — that it would mean that there are only a few hundred individuals in the United States capable of performing it?

In my humble opinion, it’s the sociopath part.

CEOs of community-based businesses are typically responsive to their communities and decent people. But the CEOs of most of the world’s largest corporations daily make decisions that destroy the lives of many other human beings.

Only about 1 to 3 percent of us are sociopaths — people who don’t have normal human feelings and can easily go to sleep at night after having done horrific things. And of that 1 percent of sociopaths, there’s probably only a fraction of a percent with a college education. And of that tiny fraction, there’s an even tinier fraction that understands how business works, particularly within any specific industry.

Thus there is such a shortage of people who can run modern monopolistic, destructive corporations that stockholders have to pay millions to get them to work. And being sociopaths, they gladly take the money without any thought to its social consequences.

Add another pinch of insanity, and we are well along to understand how some corporations can act without regard to the welfare of the planet and the future of all human kind. A small but important claim for a working democracy, is that most people maintain their sanity, and it is usually true with just a few exceptions. Let us hope that it has equal, or greater, application to those selected as leaders.

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