comfort food and questioning wherefor the meritocracy?

For many, even as the calming haze of spring rains has settled over the Midwest, the events of the past few days have marked the skies clearing over the politico consciousness. As Obama takes the nomination for the Democratic ticket, perhaps we can all stop being baffled by the preceding weeks of untactful/annoying verbal jabs that the nominees have been trading. And now we can focus on the somewhat trite, but certainly necessary question: is Obama the hope of our generation? He certainly has the attention of marginalized groups that have learned helplessness at the hands of the system of democracy played out in the past century. Also, and so interesting to me personally, Obama has personally experienced another life, culture, and reality during formative years growing up in Indonesia. He also has professional experience as a community organizer in Chicago during a period of our history when potentially we need those skills the most.

These are fine questions but they don't even hint at the potentially more pressing quandary: how the hell do we dismantle the present corpratocracy without the whole thing going to shit? Even as the muscle has gone out of the dollar, the US government continues to push the ideals and results of neoliberal, globalized development into center stage until it is all we know and all we can imagine. This sort of disingenuous economic growth, based on inflated economic forecasts and international loans that are meant to create countries indebted to the point of servitude, is taken as the norm, called modern, post-modern or industrialized development when really it would be easier if we just called it what it is: feudalism. Funny how history has a tendency to repeat itself, isn't it?

There are a few people who are asking this question, and then taking it a step further and attempting to provide some semblance of an answer. Unfortunately, though these teachings are spot on and very illuminating, the time of scholarly activism seems to be over and so these ideas have only served to add some intellectual meat to chew on in this melting pot of belatedly publicized documents, intellectual property, and media spin. C. Wright Mills, in his 1956 work The Power Elite, describes the revolving door of military, economic, and government elite that concentrates power and knowledge, not to mention favors and ideology, within an insulated group of elite, and typically, white men. Cheney is a prime example, as our current VP and former CEO of Halliburton, which won a $7 billion contract in the reconstruction of Iraq (a smaller contract as these things go). The logic goes, if you bomb a city and then plan (re)construction you can easily forecast economic growth.

G. Willaim Domhoff also questions Who Rules America? In his work describing the private world of The Bohemian Grove, Domhoff describes the elite retreat and fertile networking space for many of the most powerful and wealthy men in the past decades. While Domhoff is not disputing that decisions are made in corporate and government meeting rooms, it is important to acknowledge the intense social cohesion that results in a ruling system of insulated ideals, personal favors, and priorities that serve a limited group at the expense of the majority. Reading accounts of the ultimate crumbling of the Mayan civilization exhibits many of the same attributes as we have in contemporary society - social stratification, environmental degradation, etc. - all traceable to the decisions of a highly insulated (feel free to read 'out of touch') elite class. (Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is also exemplary of this repetitive history)

In his 2004 book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins describes his own life story as an individual social actor, scouted by the US government, but always on the payroll of large corporations interested in billion dollar construction contracts in developing or war torn countries. The scheme as he describes it is alarmingly simple and pretty much the same formula since the Roman empire: identify which country is the greatest asset or threat to the globalized empire and make them subservient to our political and economic wishes. To do this, Perkins recounts his hand in inflated economic forecasts that were used to procure huge loans from the World Bank under the condition that the receiving country would contract US corporations in all development work, effectively channeling all monies back into the coffers of US corporations and a few wealthy families. When countries inevitably realized that the economic growth forecasted would not be realized, and as their social statistics became increasingly depressing, they were forced to default their loans at the price of huge debt, votes in the UN, political favors or the installation of military bases, or rights to national natural resources (read: oil).

This system, highly lubricated since the Carter presidency, has composed the central mechinisms for many forms of neoliberal 'growth' and 'development', the Green Revolution of Mexico, India, and Africa serving as a prime example. I put those adjectives in quotes because the American industrial development plan is based on our country, a country with alarmingly high rates of murder, suicide, drug abuse, divorce, rape, and social stratification - is this what growth and development is? Maybe if you were speaking metaphorically about something as palatable as cancer. But this mechanism is not a conspiracy - this is the American way and we have been there for the whole ride, even swallowed the ideology it is suspended in: economic growth is proportional to, and indeed at the very core of, the increase in benefits to humankind, that those who 'excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born on the fringes are available for exploitation'. (Perkins, xv)

These are the sobering questions that muddy my thoughts of social change within the frame of a new presidency, even with a candidate I perceive as hopeful as Obama. Here I am in quiet Door County, Wisconsin, the air heavy with the scent of cherry blossoms and my eyelashes already weighted with a morning of gentle spring rains giving way to a the softlight of embracing mist. And across the globe the contrast to this moment could be seen in countless lives. Young men and women still die in Iraq after the failure of the normalized system of economic enslavement forced us to resort from social actors in suits to those in tanks; fathers and mothers in oil rich Amazonian territories and African mangroves fear for the future of their culture and children; disenfranchised Americans must continue to wonder wherefore the meritocracy so espoused by our Jeffersonian ideals (keep pullin' on those bootstraps, kids!)? There is no way to pretend that my life reflects, or even takes into account, the suffering the majority of the world enjoys in our feudal system of economic empire - the tangible and moral implications of earning our daily bread are as murky as pea soup. The past few days of cooking have reflected this: loaves of fresh bread and a crock of pea soup now occupy my counterspace (and mentalspace).

Split Pea Soup
2c green split peas
7c water (or ratio of water and chicken/veggie broth)
1 bay leaf
2 chopped onions
2 carrots, chopped into coins
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 T olive oil
2 potatoes, cubed
1/2tsp thyme
2 fingers pressed garlic (always room for more garlic, I say)
dash cayenne and/or tobasco

*Bring to boil and then simmer until peas are done and veggies tender, about 1hour stove top, many hours in a crock pot. remove bay leaf (indigestible)

*add at least 3T good tamari or Aminos
4T nutritional yeast

*give soup a good stir to create texture and incorporate the nutritional yeast. check for saltiness and add more tamari as desired

Tasajara Oatmeal Bread

3c lukewarm water
1.5T yeast
1/4 - 1/2c honey or molasses
1c dry milk
2c unbleached white flour
2c whole wheat flour

4tsp salt
1/4-1/2c oil (or butter)
3c rolled oats
2-3c whole wheat flour
2c additional flour for kneading

*dissolve yeast in water, then gently stir in sweetening and dry milk
*stir in whole wheat and white flours until thick batter is formed (stir by sliding the spatula under/around sides of bowl and folding the batter over the top until fully incorporated, about 100 strokes until smooth batter is formed). let rise 60 min.
*fold in salt and oil, then additional flour and oats, with same spatula technique as above, until dough comes away from sides of the bowl
*knead on floured board, using extra flour to avoid sticking, until dough is smooth
*let rise 50min, punch down, let rise 40 min
* shape into loaves, let rise 20 min
*brush with butter or egg white, bake in oven at 350*
*remove from pans when top, bottom and sides are dark golden and loaf responds with resounding thump when tapped, hug someone and both take a deep breath to smell the goodness of this food while it cools, eat right away.