— • —

On the ground today, a face-off is occurring between yuppies and proles: two revolutions, two forces on the scene.

On one side, the urban middle class. These are the young and the less young who very quickly sided with the rebels. Fed up with censorship, lack of freedom and repression, sickened by the material gluttony of the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans, they immediately seized the opportunity to express their thirst for independence and their hatred for the regime. They didn’t always go out into the street, but through their manipulation of the internet, particularly social networks, they played the role of citizen media perfectly, relaying information, posting live videos of the situation on the ground. It is often thanks to them that the big media networks like Al Jazeera, France 24 or Al Arabia completed their coverage of the events of early January. By swelling the ranks of the large demonstration of January 14, they provided the necessary contribution to win the last round, the fatal blow that finished off the Ben Ali presidency. Their mission accomplished, they returned to their garrisons to try to resume a more or less peaceful life, leaving to the new team the responsibility for getting things back on track. [...] It is clear that this sector of the population serves as the base of the Prime Minister and his team. Nothing can tell us yet how strong their support will be.

On the other side is the population of the nation’s interior. Left behind since the era of Bourghiba, they are the ones who provided the spark that set off the powder keg. It is these people who, although unarmed, went out into the street. They are also the ones who, prepared to receive real bullets in the stomach and head, confronted the bloody police machine. Like the young city dwellers, the young and the less young of the interior were just as fed up and sickened, but for different reasons. Democracy and liberty were among their demands, but they added to these insecurity and unemployment. As well-educated and well-trained as their fellow citizens from the city, they found themselves forced to accept marginal jobs in order to get something to eat.

Having known the brutal and often deadly repression of the government as a result of having occasionally risen up and proclaimed their despair, these people place no confidence in anything that reminds them, either more or less, of the dark years of the Ben Ali regime. They want, require and demand the departure of Ghannouchi and his entire team without delay. They haven’t forgotten the unkept promises [of the past]. Cut off from material comforts which in any case they don’t possess, they are ready to go all the way for what they call “their revolution.” Armed with convictions deeply rooted in the hearts of all their members, supported by a very strong labor union, they are camped in the streets around the Prime Minister’s office with the purpose of evicting its tenants. How much longer will they hold back?

The revolution of January 14 hasn’t said its last word. It is certain that Tunisia can expect further events whose impact will be even more profound than the departure of Ben Ali. It seems that as Winston Churchill said so well, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

As I write this, the debate on the ground revolves around the transitional government, in which many of the old faces appear, particularly Ben Ali’s prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, and the ministers of finance, interior, defense, and foreign affairs. Three political parties from the “legal” opposition have also been offered ministerial posts, but one of those parties has since withdrawn from the coalition, under pressure from Tunisia’s national labor union, the UGTT. Ghannouchi and the other holdovers from the days of Ben Ali have resigned from their party, the RCD, which was effectively the only political force under Ben Ali, and have vowed to cut all ties between the party and the state. Ghannouchi himself insists he has no political ambitions, and will step down as soon as elections are held. He promises that his government is only there to prepare the way for democratic elections, and that major reforms are in store in the political arena. As a sign of his sincerity, political prisoners have been freed, censorship has been lifted, and the national television channel is broadcasting expressions of independent, popular speech. Previously outlawed politicial parties, both Islamic and leftist, are now legal, and political opponents of Ben Ali are being welcomed back from exile.

All this is not enough, however, for many Tunisians, and pressure from the street is ongoing. Among the demands being made are a complete disbandment of the RCD and return of its assets to the people; accountability before the law for those responsible for the corruption and repression of the previous regime; a transitional government made up of completely new faces with no connection to the Ben Ali era; and a constitutional assembly to create new political structures, with one popular demand being to replace the presidential system with a parliamentary one. The argument here is that the existing system favors centralized authority and the rule of a single party, and the people don’t want to replace Ben Ali with a “dictator lite.” There is also the problem that after years at the margins, in exile, or in prison, the political opposition will need time to organize, reconnect with the people, and adapt their platforms to current events before fair elections can be held. If the elections are held within 60 days as the Constitution demands, it is argued, this will give the advantage to the RCD or its successor, as the only political party with national structures in place.

So there is still a danger of the revolution, which remains leaderless, being hijacked by wily politicians committed to the old way of doing things. Ghannouchi’s government seems to be playing a game of appeasement, in the hope that popular anger will die down and they can go back to business as usual. Ot to put it another way, even assuming they are sincere in their desire for reform, their instincts are with stability and the status quo. But Tunisians are now well and truly awake, and there is an outpouring of desire for profound change. People have “lost their fear” and are speaking out, forming popular committees to protect their neighborhoods, embracing the army as the one national force that has remained above politics, and engaging in spirited public debates about the way forward. I’ve seen this described as cathartic, a therapy session on a national scale. After twenty-three years of silence, those who have been handed a chance to write their own history will not easily be persuaded to go back into a coma. I suspect that for this reason alone, and because Tunisians sense their opportunity to serve as an example to the whole Arab world, the changes to the political order will be real and profound, and a representative system of government will emerge from the current confusion.

One sign of how closely the demands for change are in tune, even at the “extremes” of the political spectrum, is the statement of the Tunisian Communist Workers Party:

“All forces which played an effective and crucial role in toppling the dictator, whether political, trade unionist, human rights, or cultural, whether organized or otherwise, are, alongside the masses, to be involved in drawing Tunisia’s future and cannot be represented by any other figure or body in any negotiations or communications with the government.”

Meanwhile, the Islamic Annahdha Party is calling for:

“…a Constitutional Council which represents all political tendencies and civil society institutions such as trade unions, the Association of Lawyers, and representative bodies of unemployed graduates who played an important role in the revolution, with the aim of building a democratic constitution for a parliamentary system that distributes and de-centralises power on the widest scale possible….”

So let’s be optimistic, even idealistic for a moment and assume that the second phase of the revolution succeeds. Within a few months, we will be looking at a new Tunisia which, for the first time in its history, has a vibrant multiparty democracy, representing all strains of political thought from the socialist left to the Islamic right, in a popularly elected parliament committed to rebuilding the nation in the best interests of all its citizens. Some leaders, by their eloquence and sincerity, will capture the imagination of the people, but this will not lead to the emergence of a new Mafia don in the Ben Ali style, because the people will reject any politician who distributes public resources as a point of personal privilege, and alternance and competition will ensure a balance of power. Cafés and internet chat rooms, public squares and workplaces will be alive with debate, journalists will take eagerly to their new role as watchdogs of the public trust, and in the towns and villages, people will press their claims with municipal authorities with a new pride of citizenship. Bribes and patronage networks will become a thing of the past — okay, maybe I’m getting carried away, but at any rate, profound changes are in store for Tunisia. Now that the people are awake, I have no doubt that in a few months Tunisia will be running according to very different rules, and this will keep the neighboring autocrats in Egypt, Algeria, and Libya on their toes, because the old tired excuses just won’t work any more.

This is where the third revolution comes in — the revolution of social justice, or to use that dreaded word, redistribution. Ben Ali was more than a cruel repressor of free speech and political dissent, he was a man who consumed the resources of a nation for the benefit of himself, his friends and extended family. Where will those resources go now? Even more to the point, he was a collaborator with powerful economic interests outside Tunisia, who were quite happy to hold up his system as a “success story,” a model for development in the Arab world. It is instructive to note that Habib Bourghiba, Ben Ali’s predecessor, first ran into trouble in 1984 when he tried to remove price controls for food under the guidance of the IMF, and that among Ben Ali’s first acts as president in 1987 was to push through a package of IMF-dictated reforms. Neoliberalism, the ideology promoted by the IMF for over a generation, calls for a radical cutback in state intervention in the economy, through privatization of national industries, slashing of government social spending, and throwing the doors open to foreign investment. This inevitably leads to a sweatshop economy, which is exactly what happened in Tunisia. Development failed to benefit the people as a whole, but rather private interests seeking cheap labor, cheap agricultural products, and cheap tourism. The system wouldn’t have held together as long as it has without massive support from Tunisians living abroad, sending their wages home to help their families.

Mohamed Bouazizi, the young vegetable seller who set himself on fire and launched the Tunisian uprising, was a victim of these policies. His region of Sidi Bouzid was underdeveloped because it had no obvious resources to exploit, no Mediterranean beaches, no industry, and no ports. Bouazizi was presented in early reports as a college graduate reduced to selling vegetables on the street when he found no better work, but his situation was even more basic than that. He’d been to high school, but he had no special skills, and his family was unable to support themselves when their land was repossessed by the bank. As his sister put it:

“The worst thing was what happened to the land. We owned it with our neighbours and we grew olives and almonds. It was earning good money, but then things turned bad for a lot of people, our sales went down and the bank seized our land. I went with Mohamed, we appealed to the bank, we appealed to the governor, but no one listened. Other families had the same problem; people just ignored us.”

My point is that Tunisia is a symptom, a case model, of what is happening around the world due to globalization, which in its current form is concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Ben Ali’s entourage was just an especially shameless example. This is the problem that the newly elected, democratic parliament of Tunisia will have to reverse, if they want to solve the problems that led Bouazizi to his final act of desperate courage. Already, the international community is giving clear signs that they care about stability in Tunisia above all else, meaning the appropriate environment for investment dollars to keep flowing. Moody’s, the bond rating agency, has already downgraded Tunisian bonds, which are needed for the financing of state programs, and the other major bond agencies are preparing to follow suit. I can easily imagine even a government with the best intentions, and a populist bent, finding themselves confronted with an ultimatum from the world of international finance — either you toe the line and keep Ben Ali’s business-friendly policies, or the money will dry up.

I’m currently reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, and the story of Tunisia fits perfectly into her larger narrative. She shows how in nation after nation, starting with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s and continuing to this day, neoliberal policies have been forced on an unwilling people either through overt repression, or through back-room deals in moments of crisis. Her point is that these policies, which are the opposite of redistributive development that seeks to spread prosperity as broadly as possible, can never win the consent of the majority unless they are in a state of shock. Both Islamists and leftists in Tunisia are likely to call for redistributive policies designed to help the rural poor and urban working class, which explains why it was precisely those groups that were banned, tortured, and imprisoned under Ben Ali. But even if they will now have a seat at the table, the international community is likely to deploy its considerable resources to promote “responsible centrists” and “non-ideological technocrats” willing to play the game of finance and profit. Continuity will be the watchword, and withdrawal of aid and investment will be the threat. The last thing the IMF wants is the emergence of a Tunisian Evo Morales, a democratically elected leader who was quick to nationalize his country’s resources.

Both Latin America and Eastern Europe have been touted in recent days as examples of how a democratic revolution in one nation can have a domino effect in other nations across the region. In the early 1980s, dictatorships fell across Latin America, and were replaced by popularly elected governments. A similar thing happened in Eastern Europe later in the same decade, as the Soviet empire came undone. This is inspiring for those who hope that Tunisia’s democratic changes will spread to other nations, but there is a warning here as well. As Naomi Klein makes clear in her book, the first elected governments in places like Argentina, Chile, and Brazil followed the same economic policies as their military-run predecessors, often with the very same individuals in charge. It was only twenty years later that Latin Americans felt secure enough in their democratic rights to choose leaders willing to stand up to the neoliberal consensus — people like Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, or Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. In Eastern Europe, early hopes of finding some middle way between communism and capitalism, such as worker-owned industries, were quickly overwhelmed by a wave of privatization, in which the nation’s factories were sold off at bargain prices to international speculators. No doubt Tunisia will be facing similar pressures to reform its politics, but not to mess with the lucrative financial arrangements put in place by Ben Ali.

There are millions of young people like Mohamed Bouazizi, in Tunisia and across the Arab world. They have a single aspiration, to lift their families out of poverty through their hard work. So will Tunisa’s third revolution ever take place? Will Bouazizi have a revolution worthy of his name? Will factories be built in Sidi Bouzid, so that Tunisia can start to produce for itself what it now imports? Will workers have the right to fight for better treatment by their employers, and a minimum wage of more than $155 a month? Will Tunisia’s largest bank, owned by Ben Ali’s son-in-law, now be nationalized? Will foreign companies be required to reinvest a share of their profits in Tunisia? Will the nation’s largest enterprises be forced to pay their fair share in taxes? Will decent housing, electricity, clean water, free education and health care be guaranteed to all? Or will Tunisia remain a sweatshop nation, with one economy for the rich and another for the poor — only this time with a popularly elected government as enabler, because that is how the game is played all around the globe?

A month ago, I didn’t dare to believe that anything would come of the Tunisian protests — as if believing in it would somehow jinx it, and bring the revolution to a halt. But Tunisia has surprised us all, and Ben Ali is gone. The outpouring of solidarity and popular feeling that has followed impresses everyone who is there. Clearly, Tunisians are ready to build a society worthy of their hero’s sacrifice. So I believe they will have their second revolution, the democratic one, and full political rights will be won. This is already a historic accomplishment, because the right to organize, speak without fear, and hold one’s leaders to account has been denied to Tunisians for far too long. But for these changes to mean anything in the long run, a third revolution is needed. Economic justice is the goal, and Tunisia must find a way to improve the quality of life for all its citizens. A whole set of tools is available, such as tariffs, planned development, guaranteed wages, jobless benefits, subsidized housing, national health care, and progressive taxation. The world’s richest nations have used these tools in the past to build their economies, but if Tunisia were to try it today, they would fly in the face of the IMF and these same powerful nations. It will take an engaged public that understands they are the authors of their own future, and a political class willing to translate the people’s desires into policy. Above all, it will take a whole new economic mentality, one that puts the economy to work for all Tunisians. Just as I didn’t dare hope that Tunisia would ever be rid of Ben Ali, I don’t dare hope for this now. But perhaps Tunisia will surprise us again, and if they do, it will be an example for us all.

Cross-posted to Talk Morocco.

“You have given me this opportunity to shine so dammit I’m going to shine.” — Antoine Dodson

An act of ordinary heroism (July 28):

YouTube remix, 8 million views (July 30):

Internet celebrity (August 10):

Background here and here. Musings about “race and media” here.

UPDATE: From a Reddit comment thread:

“I’m really glad he decided to capitalize on this, rather than let other people produce shirts and other merchandise. Remember, beneath the outrageous interview is a guy who ran into his sister’s bedroom to stop a rape — he deserves all the good fortune he can get.”

From Antoine Dodson himself (August 15):

“I’m really starting to get mad because everyone is out for money and don’t care about whats really going on. I’m not going to play this funny role anymore. I really haven’t foreal. Realize that my goal is to be a business man not a joke and… lately people been taking me there. That is not who I am. Understand that I was just mad and wanted justice for my sister. It wasn’t made to be funny. Although I thought it was funny but all jokes are aside now. People are really sweeping this under the rug. I hope that this man will be caught. You don’t know how this changed our life. So I guess it’s funny that we are moving from house to house too. I guess it’s funny my little sisters are scared t death to sleep at night. I guess it’s funny that he may climb in someone else’s window. This is not a game so don’t take it there.”

From blogger Dr. Goddess:

“There is nothing wrong with Antoine. Or his story. Or how he chose to express himself. Kelly [Antoine's sister] and Antoine were very clear… they live in the projects. They are also Southern… they live in Huntsville, Alabama. And they both had a right to be exceptionally angry about Kelly’s attempted rape. Yet, even in their rage, they exhibited more intelligence and articulated a sense of well-being than many of the persons who have been elected or otherwise appointed (and some self-appointed) to represent us.

“Embarrassed by Antoine?! Please. We should be thankful he’s here. He may just force us to redefine our priorities and how we think we understand one another.

“Antoine Dodson’s character seems to be better than most.”

She goes on to remind us of how this all started. This is the story of a poor family living in public housing that failed to keep them safe. They reached out to the authorities in the aftermath of an attempted rape and were not taken seriously — so they got mad. This inspired her to write a letter to the Huntsville, Alabama authorities on their behalf, and she provides contact information on her blog for anyone else who wishes to “hold these people accountable.”

UPDATE 2: It occurs to me that the reason this young man’s cri de coeur touched a chord with so many of us — “Y’all need to hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband, ‘cuz they’re rapin’ everybody out here” — is because it reflects the unease we all feel in these troubled times. Don’t we all somehow feel under assault after a decade of economic crisis and war, with no end in sight? As Antoine said in a radio interview about all the newfound attention his family is getting:

“We’re not used to this, you know what I’m sayin’? Like, everybody steps on us, you know what I’m sayin’? People degrade us, so it’s like… all this love that the world has been showing us lately, is like, ‘Man, this is so amazing,’ and every time I get a chance with my sister, we cry about it, ‘cuz it’s so amazing, like, ‘Wow, two and a half weeks ago, nobody cared.’”

So doesn’t this young man speak for all of us, and our sense of powerlessness in some way? Haven’t we all wondered how this could possibly be happening, how there could be millions out of work and at risk of losing their homes, how communities could be closing their libraries and shutting off streetlights for lack of funds — yet the government, under a new president and a new party, still seems powerless to end the disasterous policies that brought us here? Antoine at least did something. He stopped a rapist, he protected his family, and he spoke up as we’d all like to do. So in this, the more I think about it, he is a hero — an accidental hero, the best kind.

“I’ll never stop fighting to make sure that the most powerful voice in Washington belongs to you.”

It’s nice to know that my voice is the one everyone else is listening to. It certainly doesn’t feel that way.

I wanted a much stronger economic stimulus back in the spring, focused on creating jobs by building a new, “green energy” infrastructure. I wanted at least some of the big banks to be taken over by the government, and thoroughly reformed before being broken up and resold to the private sector. I wanted guaranteed health care for everyone, paid for through a national system like in Britain, France or Canada. I wanted an immediate end to the use of drone aircraft in war, which invariably kills civilians. In fact, I wanted all troops withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq, closure of most American bases overseas, and a massive cut in our defense budget. I wanted an end to all those unconstitutional things Bush was doing in the name of national security. I wanted a criminal inquiry into torture, secret prisons, and the illegal war in Iraq. I wanted the U.S. to join the International Criminal Court, and to recognize the Goldstone Report that found Israel guilty of war crimes. I wanted a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with a right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel. I wanted full diplomatic relations and open exchange with Iran, Cuba and Syria. I wanted to allow anyone, anywhere in the world who wants to move to the U.S. to be able to do so, unless she has committed a violent crime. I wanted a new era of peace and prosperity worldwide, based on economic justice and respect for human rights — and if that wasn’t possible, I at least wanted the U.S. to try really hard to make it happen, without firing a single bullet.

I know my voice isn’t being heard in Washington, and President Obama isn’t hearing it either. There’s probably good reason for that, because my voice is one of many, and not eveyone agrees. But at least spare me the fatuous talk, Mr. President, because you don’t even know me.

Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001, and America’s preparations for a “long war” of revenge and conquest. There was heady talk by neoconservatives about America as the new Rome, and a New American Century. When I participated along with tens of thousands of my fellow San Franciscans in mass demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, I felt I was standing up for a better vision of how the world could be, and America’s role in it. In my own mind I was defending the globalist project, and the humanistic vision of the Clinton–Gore years, against the us-versus-them mentality we were coming to know under Bush–Cheney. It didn’t have to be this way, I felt. Surely all people of the world wanted the same thing: democracy, economic prosperity, dignity for themselves and their families. So why couldn’t we build this together? There were good capitalists and bad capitalists, I argued: those who felt that limited resources were something to be fought over and controlled, and those who created new technologies that enlarged the sphere of human possibility. America in the recent past had been a model of this new way. The neoconservatives and their wars of empire were betraying this vision.

I moved to Morocco in 2003 and lived there for three years because I wanted to experience life on the other side of the Islamic–Western divide, but just as importantly, on the other side of the divide between rich and poor nations. I thought a good deal at the time about democratic ideals, because it was clear to me that my Moroccan friends were hoping for changes in their country that would help it to become a society in which basic rights were protected, government was transparent and accountable to the people, and development was pursued in the common interest. I spoke often with my friends about the principles enshrined in the American Constitution, such as a government of checks and balances, the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty, the right not to be held without charges, and of course the rights of freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. I admired my friends’ ambition to build a more free and transparent society, and I insisted that these principles were the essential foundation of any such project.

At the same time, however, the internet was bringing me news almost daily of how America had betrayed its own principles in the name of the “global war on terror” and imperial ambition. Wiretapping without a warrant, a global network of secret prisons, torture, kidnapping of suspected terrorists, assassinations with robot aircraft, funding of death squads and militias, use of white phosphorus on civilians, and the mother of all war crimes, the illegal war itself: it seemed that nothing was off limits to the power-mad, fiercely ideological war profiteers in Washington. My only consolation was that eventually democracy would prevail, the abuses would be turned back, sanity would be restored, and the Constitution would return to force. Perhaps even justice would be done, and the war criminals would be held accountable for their crimes. All it would take would be an election in which the basic decency of the American people reasserted itself, putting in place an administration committed to doing the right thing.

I was back in the U.S. for the 2008 presidential election, and the nearly two years of political maneuvering that preceded it. Progressives, those who seek justice and equality for all people and oppose the idea of American empire, were looking for a candidate, and many thought they had found him in Barack Obama. But even though Obama had opposed the invasion of Iraq before it even began, he did so on pragmatic, not idealistic grounds. “I’m not opposed to all wars,” he said. “I’m opposed to dumb wars.” Another early warning sign was when he went before AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and spoke of how he had walked on the streets of an Israeli town and found it to be like “a suburb in America.” I liked what he said about regimes like Iran and Cuba—that we should not be afraid to sit down with them, without preconditions, to discuss our differences—and I liked the way he seemed to understand the aspirations of young people in poor countries to improve their lives in ways that Americans take for granted. But in the same foreign policy speech where he spoke of “reaching out to all those living disconnected lives of despair in the world’s forgotten corners,” Obama called for “building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people.” His rhetoric was quick to defend the idea that America has a unique mission in the world—a “beacon of hope” that shines on the huddled masses—and this mission, though couched in humanistic terms of “recognizing the inherent equality and worth of all people,” still justified American intervention in the affairs of every nation, through military means if necessary.

Even before becoming president, Obama presented a plan to expand America’s fighting force by 90,000—and while he supported military withdrawal from Iraq, it was only to refocus our efforts on what he saw as the “right battlefields in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Meanwhile, foreign policy scholar Chalmers Johnson had written a scathing critique of American empire in the form of three books, Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis, in which he reminded us of the amazing fact that America has military bases in no less than 130 foreign nations—a network built up to contain the Soviet empire during the Cold War, but in no way diminished since then. What are we still doing there? Johnson asked. To what end? Obama’s project was not to dismantle this network, but in fact to strengthen it, to make it more intelligent and effective, extending American influence even further. For Obama, humanism and dialogue were simply tools in the toolbox of American empire, ones the Bush administration had neglected. I supported Obama through lack of a better choice—of course, electing a president who wants to diminish American power is impossible—but I periodically wondered if my fellow progressives were naive in assuming he was one of us. Since the election, Obama’s willingness to continue many of the worst Bush-era policies—military courts for suspected terrorists, attacks by robot aircraft that inevitably kill civilians, use of the U.N. veto to defend Israeli aggression, and so on—has confirmed my doubts.

Just before the election, the American empire suffered a huge, self-inflicted blow in the form of an economic collapse brought on by uncontrolled speculation by the nation’s largest banks. Obama’s level-headed response to this helped get him elected—he proposed stimulus spending to create jobs, aid to struggling homeowners, regulation of global markets, and long-term reforms in the fields of education, energy and health care—and in this, at least, I was proud to support him. He seemed to understand that American and indeed global development were at risk if they were left in the hands of speculators and profiteers. He seemed ready to use the power of the state—the people’s power—to protect the common good against corporate interests in ways not seen in a generation. Clinton had been a tinkerer, I felt, albeit an effective one—Obama would reform the system from top to bottom. He had a bold, integrated vision, and the moment was ripe for a profound transformation. He would lay the foundation for a new progressive era, much as Roosevelt had done in the Great Depression.

Instead, since taking office, Obama’s reforms have been terribly cautious, and in many ways they aren’t reforms at all. His stimulus spending was the minimum necessary. His handling of the banking crisis has left all the old structures intact, and even the old practices. Wall Street is already designing new speculative products, such as life insurance policies resold in the form of securities—“the earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return.” Worse still, Obama’s signature issue of health care reform is shaping up as a huge giveaway to the private insurance industry, rather than forcing them to compete on equal terms with a robust public plan available to everyone, as he promised during the campaign. No wonder the populist right is throwing “tea parties” and talking revolution. They feel it’s business as usual in Washington, with handouts to the very forces—banks and insurance companies—that are squeezing every dime from their pockets. Even Obama’s most ardent supporters are beginning to have their doubts about all the compromising they’ve been forced to do. Obama is beginning to look like a tool of corporate interests—smoother and more thoughtful, no doubt, than Bush, but serving the same ends with greater intelligence. So in economic as well as foreign policy, Obama is reinforcing, rather than dismantling or reforming, the existing structures of exploitation.

Returning now to the globalist project, with which I began this article: I’ve conflated it here with American empire, but it is also the heir to earlier imperial projects, notably the British Empire of a century ago, and the European colonial project in general. In fact, “globalization” is nothing new. For centuries there has existed an international network of financing, trade and military might, designed to extract the resources of faraway lands for the benefit of a tiny elite. In the Clinton years, I persuaded myself that this project had turned democratic—indeed, for its century on the world stage, the American empire has promoted itself as the champion of democracy and opportunity for all peoples. But its record is far from that, and only the willful self-delusions of American public discourse blind us to that reality. From the military interventions in Latin America of the 1920s, to the CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s, to the support for dictators around the world in the 1970s, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today, America has continually and aggressively intervened in the affairs of foreign nations in the pursuit of its own interests—or more precisely, in the interests of its powerful elites. Obama has in no way deviated from that course. Indeed he affirms it, in two wars and countless “advisory” engagements around the world—and affirming it is a necessary condition for his being president.

We live in a world where power relationships are what matter, and no matter how much humanizing rhetoric we use, the fact remains that this is a bloody game. Directly or through its sponsorship of local forces, America has been responsible for millions of deaths on every continent since World War II. It’s not that the American empire is worse than any other, but precisely that it is no better. It is the nature of empires to work this way, and the current focus of imperial expansion is the Islamic world. What astonishes me is how it is possible for Americans to continue to believe in our civilizing mission as bringers of democracy and opportunity to faraway peoples, while our armies are spreading destruction in the service of corrupt regimes. Iraq was recently ranked as the most corrupt government in the Arab region, while Afghanistan is the second most corrupt in the entire world, after only Somalia. Meanwhile we provide exceptional support for the state of Israel, in the form of direct financing for whatever weapons they choose, while turning a blind eye to their program of ethnic cleansing in Palestine—even when the Goldstone Report on last year’s war in Gaza, accepted by all but eighteen of the world’s nations, accuses them of “direct attacks against civilians” and targeting “the people of Gaza as a whole.”

Whenever we read or think about these strategies of domination and conquest, we do so through the filter of our own supposed humanitarian intent. But how can such a logic stand up to scrutiny? The only way is to demonize our victims, taking away their humanity. Those weren’t women and children who died under our missiles at a wedding party, they were Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists. If there were women and children involved, it was their fault for harboring terrorists. Israel used this same logic when fighting Hezbollah in 2006, and again when fighting Hamas in 2008. They aren’t really people like us—like “a suburb in America” as Obama said of the Israeli town he visited—they are dangerous, angry people, crazed by an ideology that values death over life. To defend our humanistic values against such a threat, we have no choice but to use the most severe measures. Our bombs and bullets are a reflection, not of our own inhumanity, but the inhumanity of our enemy. They made us this way!

This line of thinking first appeared in the American psyche during the Indian Wars of the 19th century. It was an era of frank territorial expansion, or “Manifest Destiny” as it was called then—meaning that God had given America the right to occupy the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. To justify our massacre or subjugation of the people already living there, they were painted as savages who knew no scruples in war. They would slaughter our women and children if they could, so we had no choice but to slaughter theirs. They had no army or uniforms, so we were at war with an entire race. I am indebted to a recent article by Arthur Silber for pointing out that in America’s first war beyond its shores, this thinking and these tactics were translated to the world stage. In the Philippine–American War of 1899–1902, America seized the Spanish colony of the Philippines as its own, but the Filipinos fought bravely for their independence. Hundreds of thousands died in this conflict, and an American general gave the order to kill everyone over ten. This was justified with rhetoric familiar to us both from the Indian Wars, where most of the officer corps had gained their battlefield experience, and from the “global war on terror” today. “It is not civilized warfare,” said the Philadelphia Ledger, “but we are not dealing with a civilized people. The only thing they know and fear is force, violence, and brutality, and we are giving it to them.” Mark Twain, at the time America’s most celebrated writer, wrote an eloquent protest against this hypocrisy, but the war was popular with the American people. Later the same rhetoric was used against Germany in World War I, Japan in World War II, and in Vietnam, which American soldiers called “Indian Country.”

In 2004, neoconservative luminary Robert D. Kaplan wrote an article proclaiming that the whole world is now “Indian Country” and that Americans must be prepared to fight “dirty little struggles” against “small clusters of combatants hiding out in Third World slums, deserts and jungles.” We will encounter “warrior braves beside women and children, much like Fallujah.” Such thinking is now the common wisdom of America’s top generals like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, so the connection of the Indian Wars to the “global war on terror” is complete. America is engaged in nothing less than a war of imperial domination around the globe, which requires demonizing whatever popular, local forces may stand in our way. It is Manifest Destiny all over again, only this time on a global scale. American force has the right to assert itself wherever it pleases, because it America’s mission to bring light to the darkness. Unfortunately, whether he realizes it or not, this is the meaning of Obama’s “beacon of hope.”

Where lack of resources is the rule, ignorance will breed.

Where injustice rears its head, lack of resources feels like destiny.

How to break this ugly circle?

Not long ago, I wrote an article called “Why Is Morocco Stuck?” in which I blamed Morocco’s lack of progress on two things: “the political and economic system, and the mentality of the people.” This provoked the following exchange with one of my readers, which I think is worth reproducing here.

reader: You’re naive to say it’s the people’s responsibility. Take those magazines that always get slammed illegally but soundly by the authorities. That’s terror against a corporation, and the authorities don’t fear public opinion. So what do you think can happen to individuals put in the same situation? Simply worse.

I won’t say we’re stuck, we’re just slow. Some people just have to bear with it because change is progressive. I think you’re being naive, but also impatient. I believe that if Morocco becomes a lot better in the future, with democracy and clean streets, you probably won’t like it.

eatbees: You mention the dangers involved when individuals speak out, but my point is that people need to take this risk in large numbers, because the authorities can’t use their techniques against millions at the same time. Yet this requires a change in mentality.

For the moment, the majority accepts things the way they are. They’re ruled by “fear and ignorance” as a friend of mine says, and the authorities get their way. But African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, or those living under communism or third world dictatorships (Chile, Philippines, South Africa…) changed things by no longer accepting the way things were, and the regime was unable to put down this new mentality.

So the situation in Morocco is first of all the responsibility of the authorities, but it’s also the responsibility of the people, because the people accept it—and in many cases, actively collaborate! As a guy I know recently put it, “The mafia is us. We’re all part of the corrupt system in one way or another. It won’t change until we change ourselves.”

I don’t know why you say, “If Morocco becomes a lot better in the future, with democracy and clean streets, you probably won’t like it.” If a traditional beach is destroyed to put in fancy apartments and cafés for the rich (and launder their money from trafficking) then it’s true I won’t like it. But if Moroccans are able to choose their own leaders and plan their own destiny, and this results in cleaner streets, better schools and a more modern lifestyle, why wouldn’t I like it?

reader: Maybe you don’t say it, but it’s what I think. I can imagine cities after getting modernized, turning to be exactly the same as Casa or Rabat, which you and I dislike.

eatbees: There’s good and bad forms of modernization. Casa has its good points and bad points. What I like there is the freedom there, and the autonomous culture among young people. What I don’t like is the chaos, pollution and lack of planning.

Too often in Morocco, modernization is what I call “bastard modernization,” which is either bricolage to serve the needs of the moment, with no thought to sustainability; or projects designed to enrich the interests of well-positioned individuals without serving the needs of the people from the bottom up.

Maybe any developing nation has to start this way. I guess the U.S. began with bricolage too, and evolved its ideas of citizenship and humanistic development later. But there have been so many theorists studying how to integrate economic development with concerns for the environment, sustainability, local tastes, and a healthy quality of life. What I’d love to see in Morocco is development driven by the choices of citizens, aided by experts, and designed for high quality over the long term. I don’t think that would turn out like Casa today!

Examples of bricolage go from the most simple, such as using laundry detergent to wash floors and dishes rather than buying a specialized soap for each task, or making folded cones out of old newspapers to hold the roasted nuts sold at neighborhood stands; to the more complex, such as installing a light switch in an awkward location because that’s as far as the wire will reach, or sharing shirts and pants with one’s brother so each can have a wardrobe instead of a single garment, or the system of “grand taxis” which allow Moroccans to travel to places buses won’t go, so long as they’re willing to squeeze six people into a space meant for four, and wait until enough people gather who are going to the same place. The ultimate example of bricolage is the Moroccan shantytown built from rocks and scraps of metal; or on a less desperate level, the sort of neighborhood where homes are built as the owners can afford them, a floor or two at a time, with empty lots in between waiting for their neighbors to pull together enough money to begin their own project.

Bricolage is the opposite of professionalism, which has standards and procedures for everything. I used to like Moroccan bricolage, considering it an art form, a sign of an irrepressible free spirit and the Moroccan genius for improvisation. In the West where everything works as it should, we are in danger of losing our spirit of self-reliance, and becoming paralyzed should things ever actually break down. Moroccans, however, deal with broken-down systems on a daily basis, so their sense of improvisation is finely tuned. I considered this a competitive advantage.

When I expressed these feelings to a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, he objected that bricolage is in fact an obstacle to development. He is an adept at web design who believes in doing things the right way. He pointed out that bricolage is a response to a lack of resources; and he seemed to feel that adapting things to tasks for which they aren’t really suited is an unhealthy mentality. He pointed out that in the West, when we improvise—as in the famous case of the first PC, cobbled together in a garage in Silicon Valley—we do so within a system where everything works and the material resources are readily available. Bricolage, however, is a desperate response to a system in disrepair. My friend sees it as a sign of Moroccans’ misfortune, not as something to celebrate. Perhaps it is even a factor in perpetuating the breakdown, by accepting it as normal and multiplying it into the future. More professionalism is needed in Morocco, my friend would argue. The solution is to reform the broken-down system and do things the right way in the first place. However, this requires a material investment that is not being made; and bricolage is an engrained habit that will be hard to break.

If we define bricolage as a lack of appropriate resources, we can see it as the curse of the Moroccan economy and of society as a whole. An educated woman who works as a civil servant recently gave me an example. It’s well known that Morocco produces many college graduates who are unable to find jobs at the professional level. As she put it, thanks to a flawed educational system that isn’t in sync with the needs of the market, a lot of these graduates are unqualified for the jobs they seek. “They don’t even know how to write a simple letter.” As a result, they are forced to look for work as waiters, cab drivers, carpenters or house painters, where there is already plenty of competition and they aren’t qualified either. “Such jobs tend to require either manual skill or brute force, and they don’t have it.” So what do they do? She gave the example of a young man who goes into business as a subcontractor, rounding up work crews for construction projects. Each morning he goes to the place where day laborers wait looking for work, and transports them to the site. He pays them and takes his percentage, all of it under the table, without taxes or benefits of any kind. This is bricolage in the domain of employment. It’s true that a college graduate has found work, and is giving work to others, but it isn’t a sign of health in the Moroccan economy. To the contrary, he isn’t working in the field he trained for, he isn’t contributing his taxes to the national budget, and there is no security in what he’s doing of the sort that would allow him to plan for his future or start a family. The moment he gets sick and is unable to work, he will find himself without income, unable to support himself.

What sort of economy treats bricolage as a normal thing? It can be argued that such an economy is based on exploitation. Rather than investing its resources in the material well-being of its workers, the Moroccan economy prefers to take advantage of a population desperate for work and struggling to survive from day to day. A friend of mine gave the example of a shop that sells trifles like nuts and candy, where a man might work for as little as 500 dirhams a month, or two dollars a day. Such workers spend their entire lives in the shop, sleeping there at night, opening it in the morning, cooking their meals there, and never leaving even to drink a coffee in a popular cafe. If they are frugal enough, even with that meager income they can send money back to their families in the countryside, or save enough over the years to open a shop of their own. But the shop owner is taking advantage of them in the same way that employers in Europe and the U.S. take advantage of immigrant labor, paying a wage that others are unwilling to accept, and driving down wages for everyone in the process. Another example is a computer repair technician I knew in Tangier, who earned about $250 a month despite having a specialized skill. The money he earned wasn’t enough to pay his monthly expenses, and he was always borrowing from his boss or falling behind on his rent. Worse, after two years on the job he was still being paid under the table, so he had no benefits and no job security. I advised him to talk to his boss and try to negotiate a better deal, but he refused, saying, “He’ll simply tell me there are plenty of others like me, waiting at the door for a chance to take my place.”

So bricolage in Morocco isn’t the same as improvisation in a developed nation. It isn’t exotic, romantic, or an art form. It may be the sign of an inventive spirit, but more essentially it’s a response to a dysfunctional and even exploitative system. I now accept that my friend is right, and bricolage is an obstacle to Morocco’s development. Rather than eternally struggling to make the best of what is available, Moroccans should learn to demand the best resources for the task. This will require investment across all levels of society, and a transformation in the way Moroccans think, so they no longer accept a life built from scraps as normal.

Even though I’ve been away from Morocco a long time, the details of buildings, dress and behavior are instantly familiar to me, and the rhythms of life envelop and somehow comfort me. I guess this makes it hard for me to fully relate to a statement like Mohammed’s that “Morocco is a hard place to live in,” even though the evidence is all around me. Last night a discussion broke out between Mohammed and another friend as to whether Morocco is a “horrible” country as Mohammed put it, or merely a “cruel” one as my other friend said. My friend defended the idea that a country can be cruel without being horrible, which led to the question of how Morocco can be cruel and generous at the same time. I pointed out that Moroccans feel a moral obligation to help each other, even strangers, while Americans tend to feel that other people’s problems are none of their business. My friend feels that if Morocco ever succeeds in developing itself to the European level, this generosity will disappear because it’s a holdover from Morocco’s communal past. In fact, he feels that this type of generosity is actually an obstacle to Morocco’s development, because it goes against individualism which is a necessary condition for progress.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’m at the Gnawa Festival, which attracts eccentric young people after all, but there seems to be a wider range of self-expression in Morocco than I’ve seen in the past. I’ve seen a punk with a mohawk and a Ramones T-shirt, an emo with a buzz cut and long locks falling into his eyes, chin goatees, specially cut sideburns, afros, dreadlocks, even the occasional piercing or tattoo. The question is whether all this will lead to expression on any other level, as happened in the 1960s in the West when youthful self-expression mutated into political struggle. I suspect that most of my friends here would say definitely not. In fact, they would call such expression a ruse, a false freedom, a distraction from the real problem which is, as Mohammed put it, that the rich run the country in their own interest. Just as it always has, power in Morocco comes from the top, so nothing ever happens here unless it’s in the interest of the power elite, the Makhzen.

In this vein Mohammed mentioned an article he’d written in which he traced Gnawa back to its historic origin as the music of slaves, and proposed that modern promoters of Gnawa are creating a new generation of slaves, in this case the slaves of globalization, the global consumer economy that in Morocco profits only the rich. As we watched an open air concert I proposed, “So the rich want to turn Morocco into a show for foreigners to get their money, rather than developing the country in the interests of its people,” and he replied, “That’s it in a nutshell.” The Makhzen is happy to see the young poor of Morocco amuse and distract themselves with hairstyles and such, because they expect that’s as far as the self-expression will go. Meanwhile they could care less about the future of these young people, at best seeing them as props in the show they’re putting on, a show called Morocco.