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Jethro Tull fans will remember the line “slowly upstairs/faster down” from Stand Up’s “We Used to Know,” and that’s pretty much what Obama and Democrats are trying to accomplish in their current program.

To use another line from the same album, nothing is easy.

On the one hand, Obama knows that Americans expect their government to deliver (or at least facilitate) upward social mobility, which is why he’s spending time with his stimulus package and this new homeowner’s rescue.  That’s the upward mobility side.

On the other hand, he also knows that axioms of the left include the ideas that Americans consume too large a portion of the world’s resources, that they need to abandon single-family dwellings and live in < 100 m² apartments in high rises (like I used to see in the old Soviet Union,) that they need abandon their cars and embrace public transportation, that they need to cut down their carbon emissions, that they need to be stop being so ambitious and acquisitive, etc.  That’s the downward mobility side.

What we have here is a fundamental contradiction.  Democrats have dealt with this dilemma in a number of ways.

Jimmy Carter was honest enough to mobilise indoor sweaters and call for petrol rationing.  He was shoved aside in favour of Ronald Reagan and the Democrats lost the driver’s seat in American politics for the next quarter century.

Bill Clinton gave lip service to the left’s pet agendas, but he wouldn’t even submit the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate, knowing how unpopular it would be.  He turned over the economy to Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin (and later Larry Summers, now on the Obama team) and let the good times roll–until the credit bubble burst under his successor.

Barack Obama seems to be trying a slicker but trickier slight of hand.  Using the grim economy as a background justification for downward mobility, he nevertheless mobilises panic to get things going again, all the while plying the austerity/downward agenda in the background with the connaivance of such luminaries as Henry Waxman.

Make no mistake: the idea of prosperity through “green jobs” is a mirage.  Whether you agree with the whole global warming/environmental business or not, the inevitable result of actualising this agenda will result in people doing and living with less.  That’s downward mobility.  There’s no getting around it, except in the illusions the skilful can create in people’s minds.

If Obama didn’t have the inconvenience of representative government (along with those pesky elections,) he could simply let the economy slide down, accomplishing the downward agenda with little effort.  But American politics as always is a game of bluff.  How his whole convoluted game plan will play out economically or politically remains to be seen.

Evidently I’m not the only one who has doubts about this:

Left to their own devicies with the investment opportunity set now available the banks will earn their way out of the hole over a period of years. Miserably run as the banks are, this is preferable to handing a nationalized system over to the Harvard geeks. As I’ve said in the past, the prospect of bank nationalization fills me with mixed feelings. I would love to see the bankers get their come-uppance, if it did not mean that we actually would be governed by the late Willam F. Buckley’s nightmare regime, the faculty of Harvard University.

But, based on experience, I don’t see any relief any time soon.  If ever, in this Republic.  We are simply too addicted to Ivy League pap.

The new Attorney General pulled no punches on this one:

In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” said Holder, nation’s first black attorney general.

Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, Holder said, but “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

Given that he is the appointee of the first black (sort of) President (who was actually elected with a majority vote,) this may seem odd.  But there are some things to note about this.

First, one of the main reasons why we “simply do not talk enough with each other about race” is because we fear that, if we do not toe someone’s politically correct line on the subject at all times, we’ll be labelled bigots.  So silence is easier.

Second, this overlooks the fact that one group of people who has tried to integrate–Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians–get no credit for this.  Why?  Because a) they seriously believe in God and b) they’re considered homophobes!  (The migration of the Anglicans led by the Africans should be seen in the same light.)  It’s always something with the ruling classes in this country!  I think they’re just running Rusty with us, making one new “requirement” up after another.

One way to address this is for those who participate in the backlash campaign against Proposition 8 to quit using the N-word when describing the group of people who voted 70-30 in favour of the ballot initiative.

Three years ago my local church celebrated its centennial.  After the main celebration service I told a friend that we’ll probably celebrate the 125th anniversary in Spanish.  (Looking at my Facebook friends, I’m sure of it.)  Maybe then they’ll get off our backs, if for no other reason than that they don’t have the stomach to take on the teachers trade union and upgrade our foreign language education, so they’ll still only know English.

To some people at least:

As the Obama administration begins to deploy US troops back to the Iraq or Afghan war zones for their fourth or fifth tours of duty, I remain amazed at the silent complicity of my country. Why have we been so quiet? Is it because the Bush administration was, in fact, successful in sending our military down the path to foreign legion-hood? Is the fate of our troops no longer of much importance to most Americans?

Even the military’s recruitment and demographics are increasingly alien to much of the country. Troops are now regularly recruited in “foreign” places like south central Los Angeles and Appalachia that more affluent Americans wouldn’t be caught dead visiting. In some cases, those new recruits are quite literally “foreign” – non-US citizens allowed to seek a fast-track to citizenship by volunteering for frontline, war-zone duty in the army or marines. And when, in these last years, the military has fallen short of its recruitment goals – less likely today thanks to the ongoing economic meltdown – mercenaries have simply been hired at inflated prices from civilian contractors with names like Triple Canopy or Blackwater redolent of foreign adventures.

With respect to demographics, it’ll take more than the sons of Vice President Joe Biden and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to redress inequities in burden-sharing. With startlingly few exceptions, America’s sons and daughters dodging bullets remain the progeny of rural America, of immigrant America, of the working and lower middle classes. As long as our so-called best and brightest continue to be absent without leave when it comes to serving among the rank-and-file, count on our foreign adventurism to continue to surge.

Right before the election, I did a piece which once again highlighted the existence of the “two Americas.” If the Knowledge Class (led by the Elitist Snob) is now the “real” America, it will be interesting to find out what happens when the rest of us connect the dots on what this means.