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- [00:01]
A
Welcome, friends, to Economic Update extra. This is where for our Patreon community, we continue the interview from the regular part of the program to allow you to get more of the interactions and insights of our guests. It is partly done to get the benefit of all that they have to offer us, but it is also our way of thanking you for the support through Patreon that you provide to us. It makes us grateful. It allows us to do this kind of work. And so it's of special importance to us. So, Reva, I want to pick up on asking you a question about Dennis Bernstein, the person whose interviews you've collected in the book. Would you say his approach was global or national? We're always in a bit of a tension about being in the United States, that we focus on this country, but we don't want to create or support, I should say, the notion that what happens here is the beginning and end of everything. We are part of a larger world, even though America likes to forget that from time to time. So how would you characterize his approach more global, more national?
- [01:19]
B
I would think both. But you're right that he is the exception that he talks global as much as he does. So, for example, the shootings in in the United States are terrible, but in the meantime, we have to worry about the children in Yemen who are dying of starvation because of US Foreign policy. One of the things that I mention in my introduction is the two quotes that most people believe got Martin Luther King killed a year after saying them. And one is the US Is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. And the other is you can't talk domestic policy if you don't talk foreign policy. And we are a greater purveyor of violence today than we were then. And there's more money in the military than there was then.
- [02:03]
A
Much more.
- [02:04]
B
Much more. And of course, Congress voted Trump more money for the military than he asked for. So it's Dennis is the exception in that he brings in the global, but he's certainly concerned with the domestic because we have people who don't have food in this country either.
- [02:21]
A
Tell me, I want to go back to this Follow the money. This is an old idea, but that really needs to be refreshed and applied today. It used to be in the formulation who benefits. In other words, ask who's getting the benefit out of something. That'll give you the clue to why it's happening. Were there some examples in these essays and in these interviews that you think capture the follow the money theme in a Particular way.
- [02:53]
B
Sure. Although one of the things that I think if there was one theme that I repeat most often with the book, and it's in the interview, is that if war is good for business, then we need to change the paradigm. There's a problem that our economy is based on this military paradigm. So that I think is an overview. If war is good for business, then we need to change the paradigm. But I'll give you some other examples in terms of money. So for example, the Flint water crisis. Okay, let's get a context of where that all happened. Okay, so this interview was written, was done by Marcia Coleman Adebayo, who is fired because she was a whistleblower with the epa. Again, under Obama, she says sacrifice zones are essentially primarily African American Hispanic communities and low income white communities. Flint, Michigan used to be an area where many African Americans moved to were escaping from state sponsored violence in the south from the Ku Klux Klan, the White Knights and all the organizations that were dedicated to killing black people. In the early 20s, 30s and 40s, they went to Flint seeking economic value, jobs in the auto industry. Lead poisoning is irreversible. It's an intergenerational poisoning. So the children of the fetuses who have been poisoned through their mother's womb, their grandchildren will most likely be lead poisoned. And one of the things that I was reminded by reading Marsha's interview again is that the auto industry, General Motors, they ended up getting a subsidy to get water that was less toxic for their machines. So in terms of money, and follow the money, there was a subsidy to the auto industry so they could make cars by not using this poisoned water. But under Obama, the EPA let these children get poisoned for generations. So if you follow the money, you find the root of the rot. It's always about business. And at this point it's so much a war economy that we just have to stop there. If I would say talk about one thing, the shooting in the synagogue, it's like, what are military grade weapons doing on the street? Why are we still sending them overseas to people who end up being the bad guys? So everything from again, who is on death row, it's poor people, it's not the rich people. There's one about the black prostitutes in LA and the guy who is just killing them all. It's like poor people are suffering and as you well know and say often, the rich are just getting richer and there's more and more of a stranglehold. And the other thing I say more and more frequently these days is it's not sustainable. You know this. It's not sustainable. Something's going to break.
- [05:43]
A
You know, it always strikes me that the gap between the ideology, the things said, and the reality. A society that celebrates morality, Christian virtue, family values, you can go on and on. It's not only that the reality violates all these nice phrases, it's almost that the phrases exist to cover over, to disguise, to mask the reality. The more you act awfully, the more you have to pretend that you're not doing it. It's like the person who goes to church on the weekend to try to erase all the ugly things they did during the preceding week. Did you get that out of your interviews? Is there some sense that Dennis might have captured between this, what we say and what we do?
- [06:46]
B
There's a lot of what we say and what we do that's hypocritical. And he does bring that out and everything from. Well, one of the interviews. And again, this is war. Brian Wilson was the one who was run over by the train, lost both of his legs. He's in here. And it was to stop armaments to Central America. We have to stop the militarization of this society. And there's something about the interview genre and by the way, so I'll drop some big names and then there's some regular people, right? So the big names are you Oliver Stone, Ramsey Clark, Alice Walker, who talks about Palestine, and then regular activists in the trenches. And he does a good job of showing how. Let's not, like you said, let's not pretend that we're caring about human life here, if this is what we're doing. Another example, I run a bed and breakfast in South Lake Tahoe. I have people come from around the world and I have people come from the military. I ask a lot of questions. And one of the things I like to ask people in the military a is do you think it's making us safer? And if they're honest, they'll say, I'm not sure. But in terms of the ethical and the morality question is the most sacred question is, can I take another person's life? And people don't ask the why anymore. And Nuremberg supposedly showed that you can't just follow orders. But from the Vietnam generation, we were wondering, is this war okay? But we need to have people ask those kind of questions more because, like you said, the hypocrisy that we say that we're concerned about the mass shootings in this country, but the militarization and the normalization of endless war, because it makes money, makes a fraud of every pretense at preserving human life.
- [08:34]
A
Also, it also struck me, in addition to what you're saying, that a country that so quickly and regularly uses violence around the world, whether it's in Afghanistan or Iraq or any of the other places, can't really be surprised if people inside the country who have grievances or problems think that violence is the way to solve it. To preach that you don't want them to use violence while if you're a leader in the United States while you're using it all the time and providing elaborate justifications for doing so strikes me as either naive to a point that that's unbelievable or just dishonest.
- [09:20]
B
I'd probably go more with the dishonest. They know again, and you were alluding to it earlier, I'm beginning to feel like there's something narcissistic, that we're only concerned about American lives. It's one planet. And also in terms of the planet, the last chapter is about the planet. And you sort of have to see it. But it says there is no plan parentheses et B. There's no planet B. There's no plan B. And of course the greatest polluter on the planet is the US Military. So we need to start looking at where the money is going, what it's doing to this planet, and in the hypocrisy, because every life is sacred, including the lives that were lost at the synagogue. But it's around the world, and like you said, US Foreign policy is just blatantly disregarding anybody's interests other than the guys with the big bucks.
- [10:09]
A
I'm reminded too of John McCain who died recently. And because he had been a prisoner of war, he kind of understood that if the United States tortures people, that will come back to be a torture of Americans that you don't just not torture because it violates your ethical norms, your religious commitments, your human decency. You also do it for self protection of your own people. And if you can't, it bespeaks a kind of blindness. And it's the same kind of blindness of the people who don't follow the money, who are afraid, I suspect, to ask the question, where's the money involved? For fear of where it'll lead them.
- [10:52]
B
Absolutely. And if I can do this little anecdote, I say this often again in my bed and breakfast, I get people from around the world. So a common question, very common, is, is it true that you only have two political parties? This is my answer, yes, but it's really one party and it's Wall street. And they decided anybody but Bernie. So they cheated and they gave us an unelectable candidate. That's why we got Trump. So we'll blame it on the Russians. And that's really what's going on. So we need to look at the normalization. Like you said, there's a normalization of violence around the world and then we don't think it's going to come back and bite us is. Well, you said naive at minimum and dishonest at maximum.
- [11:32]
A
Well, thank you very much, Riva. Thank you for producing this book, for giving all of us, in a sense, a historical document of a whole list of interviews documenting over many years what has been going on in the United States. And I can't think of a better introduction to the range of problems and the range of critical perspectives that Dennis produced on the radio and that Reeva and Teen here has given us as an enduring legacy and in written form. Thank you very much for joining us and for the work that you've done. Thank you so much and thank all of you in our Patreon community. I hope you found this economic update extra as valuable as hive. And I look forward to speaking with you again next week.