Guirgis, who is American Irish and Egyptian, criticized the casting director for not choosing Puerto Ricans to play the lead actors as he had written into the play.   Guirgis saw no excuse for this omission.  He argued, “But this play was cast in New York City and in Hartford, and you can’t tell me that there weren’t qualified Latino actors to play characters who are Puerto Rican.”  The problem is not just that Latinos don’t get these prized acting jobs or that viewers don’t get to view a more “diverse” cast.  The absence of Latinos on U. S. small and large screens as well as on stages ultimately has an impact on the political, cultural, and economic power of the Latino community.

Power is the capacity to influence the way other people think, feel, and act.  We gain that capacity when others believe that we have something of value that they want, need, or desire.  Our bosses can get us to come to work though we prefer to sit in the park because they can deny us the money and job that we need to maintain our lifestyle and lives.  President Obama is the president.  But, for a variety of reasons, the enormous, formal powers of the position does not permit him to move a Republican controlled House to enact his policies.  A major reason is that Republicans don’t think he has anything of value that he can offer them or take from them.  Unlike so many Republicans of the past, this new Republican cadre see nothing good coming out of government spending or programs.  Obama, thus lacks, both a carrot and a stick to move the GOP off of their recalcitrant back sides.

What does this have to do with acting?  A great deal of why people value some things and not others really has to do with perception and that perception is shaped by both rational and irrational forces.  Are Republicans correct about government inefficiency and worthlessness?  Perhaps.  Some government programs and policies are probably inefficient and harmful to the economy.  Some are not.  But it does not matter.  For a variety of political, economic, religious, and cultural (Tea Party) reasons the GOP has come to devalue all government in general.  Moving them off that right side fixation would require changing their perception that “government is the problem.”  That perception began with President Reagan as a campaign slogan and has simply become sunk deeper and become entrenched in the conservative subconscious since the 1980s.  Changing that perception is not easy.  It will require shifts in the kind of subconscious fears, hopes, images that frame how we all register and process the political world.  This is right brain stuff rather than left brain analytic reasoning.

Latinos are the largest racial/ethnic group in America, but they still fly under the radar for so many others in this country.  Latinos are ignored, forgotten, marginalized, and discounted in life and in death.  Part of this has to do with the diversity of Latinos.  We come in many different colors and national flavors. Part of this has to do with a lack of attention or appreciation for the kind of cultural style and contribution that Latinos have and can make to American life.  African-Americans have a cultural role in this country that Latinos lack.  African-Americans are often seen as villains, primitives, raw, lazy, and dumb.  But they are also seen often as strong, musical, athletic, creative, stylish, and funny.  In short, African Americans may often be vilified but they are also often imitated by white Americans.  The extreme versions of that imitation even has a name – Wiggers!  Latinos mostly face neither of these extremes.  They are mostly ignored.

Actors help to change what Daniel Kahneman has called the intuitive, automatic, and largely subconscious part of people’s brains.  Actors access that subconscious by offering associations and metaphors that can indirectly confirm or reject existing prejudices.   A Latino performer can inform a viewer that Latinos can have talent, be entertaining, offer happiness, engage in intelligent conversation, have distinctive styles, have profound insights, and be human. All of these provide the material for the quick intuitive and non-rational reactions that originate in the right brain and that calls the shots in so much of our actions.

Ironically, if Latinos are going to gain the social power that our numbers would suggest, we need to have more Latinos performing in front of the entire spectrum of audiences in this country.  We need Latinos actors playing numerous kinds of roles while still reminding audiences that they are Latinos playing those roles.  Latino actors have to express the full range of Latino experiences with all of its complexity, glories, and problems.  Anything less will simply perpetuate political and economic disappointment and frustration for Latinos.

I remember that Wilkerson was saying the same thing back in 2007 when he visited my university to speak at one of our classes on the Iraq War. My colleagues and I were teaching the FIRST COURSE in the NATION to explain the Iraq War and how we got there.  That historic course led us to write the book The Iraq Papers, released in 2010.  One of our students, Miguel Arvelo, had met Wilkerson while doing an internship in Washington, D.C.  He was incredibly intelligent, poised, humble, and determined to bring the criminals in the Bush administration to justice.

Wilkerson is neither a bomb thrower nor a narcissist.  In fact, I recall how patient and gracious he was with our students, spending a couple of extra hours with them, after the formal sessions were over, to patiently and astutely answer a busload of their questions.  He admitted, at one point, that he had always been a Republican.  He indicated, however, his intent to vote for Obama in the 2008 election because of how deeply horrified he was at the war crimes committed during the Bush administration.  He was and remains determined to take the Bush Administration officials responsible for two unnecessary wars to court. Here is the Wilkerson interview:

Wilkerson video and transcript

Here is a chart outlining the woeful facts in this manufactured crisis and attack on the poor and middle class.

What Bush left us!

“From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared with just 16% among white households.”

Racism, last hired/first fired, undiversified investments, wage based incomes, low education, and who knows what else caused this disparity in economic decline.  The bigger lessons are, however, political.  As I’ve claimed before, the Tea Party fervor over their economic current plight is justified but exaggerated.

The gap in income and wealth has grown wider and wider during the last 35 years, for whites and everyone else.  But white declines are not as great as Latino and Black declines.  Either whites are just oblivious to the plight of minorities, which is a likely possibility, or they have other reasons for elevating their own poor situation.  It’s probably both.

As I’ve written before, I think that many Tea Party members have racist reasons for savagely attacking Obama, his policies, the deficit, health care reform, and government in general.  They are not just oblivious.  They are also resentful and fearful, primarily of increasing numbers of Latinos and other foreigners who, they believe, will tap into the government faucet at their taxpayer expense.  As Judson Phillips, a Tea Party Nation founder, claimed, “The Tea Party wants America to stop incurring debt obligations and to cut back on the wasteful spending already in place.” 

Despite all the silly and irrational talk about how America has to “live within its means,” Tea Partiers have no problem with spending and debt as long as it is for the military.  They hate any spending that goes for social programs and yet want to protect social security and medicare.  This appears like a contradiction until you realize that they are making a distinction.  ”Social programs,” such as welfare and food stamps, are the ones that Latinos, Blacks, and the undocumented use.  Those other, non-means tested, programs are for the white middle class.  Middle class whites are angry and frustrated.  They blame and want both political parties thrown out of office.  But they are especially angry and resentful about Latinos, Blacks, and the undocumented because Tea Partiers believe that these groups have found a way to suck milk from the government tit provided by taxing the white middle class.  It sounds absurd, but how else to explain the extraordinary contradictions in the Tea Party positions as well as the extreme and hateful depictions they offer of President Obama.

One example was Tea Party and Republican Carl Paladino‘s campaign for governor of New York State.   At one point Paladino advocated that welfare recipients be placed in some New York prisons that would be transformed “into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in “personal hygiene.”  Paladino eventually lost the election to Andrew Cuomo, but the racist and moronic ideas of the Tea Party live on.  One example is the doctored image below that Paladino sent by email of President Obama as a pimp and his wife Michelle as a prostitute.

Adam Smith coined the term “Invisible Hand” to describe the anarchic, unplanned motion and effects of countless individual traders making countless buying and selling decisions.  The market economy is, as a result, not the product of any willful act on the part of any individual, institution, or political official.  Smith saw the economy as a natural environment where the selfish interests of its inhabitants produces social good.  If Obama is responsible for destroying the economy, as Republicans claim, he must have the ability to control a natural process.  That is a God like awesome ability.

It’s true that many Republicans charge that Obama’s tax policies, regulations, and spending have “shackled the economy.” Obama has apparently, according to this view, only handcuffed the “invisible hand” of the market.  This is fair enough.  Adam Smith basically worried about the same thing.  But there is one big problem. Obama has only been in office for two and a half years and Republicans have been making this claim all throughout his presidency.  Indeed, it takes a very powerful president to move Congress, avoid Court rejections, fund and make policies designed to destroy the economy in such a short time.  The public and Wall Street, however, don’t seem to believe that Obama is a modern Leviathan.

Most public opinion polls show that the American people still blame Bush more than they do Obama for the poor performance of the present economy.  They see Obama economic policies as different from and better than that of Bush.  And if campaign contributions are any indication of preference and support, Obama is beating all the Republican presidential candidates. He has raised more contributions than all the other Republican candidates combined ($46.3 to $36.5 billion).  Obama’s closest competitor is Mitt Romney at $18.5 billion.  Moreover, Obama has raised money from all parts of the country, all demographic groups, a larger share from the under $200 category, as well as substantial amounts from very rich Hollywood and Wall Street moguls.  Campaign support does not always translate into electoral victory.  But it is an indication of the political preferences of one sector of the public.

Republicans have not paid attention to either what the public thinks or what many business people want.  They insist on placing blame only on Obama for the current mess in the economy.  While that is a crafty political strategy, it has logical problems. Even if we put aside such facts as that Obama did not start two unnecessary and expensive wars, start the auto and wall street bailouts, or give tax reductions to the rich, the claims that Obama has wrecked the economy in such a short time reeks of bombast and delusion.  One good example is the conservative TownHall Magazine worry that “President Obama’s attempt at caring for our health may be sickening, and even endangering, the American work ethic.”  Apparently TownHall thinks that we will decide to work less once we start to receive health benefits under Obamacare!  If true, I’m sure Americans who have had to work more than one job to pay their bills will welcome the opportunity for a more normal life.  But what exactly does this kind of exaggerated complaint and fear in the conservative camp mean?

Is Obama so powerful that he can insert his “socialist” ideas inside the minds and souls of the American people?  Can he take on the entire political system to bend it his way?  Is Obama more powerful than a locomotive?  Despite the fact that conservatives claim that Obama is “soft” on defense as well as incompetent as an economic policy maker, they also imply that Obama is super powerful and capable of, or has already, turned this country upside down and inside out.  I think the conservative fear is that Obama has once again reclaimed the idea that our government should and can help us live a better life.

Obama threatens to upend the conservative ideal of a people who cherish no other authority higher than God.  Health insurance policies (especially the single payer system), government regulations, and taxation undermine the natural and moral process wherein individuals pursue a “natural” self-interest in the savanna of the marketplace. Far from just handcuffing the economy, Obama’s policies, conservatives believe, will make government achieve as much or more authority and power as God.  That fear of diminishing God’s authority is also why conservatives are so adamantly against Gay marriage, abortion, global warming, and the separation of church and state.  Ironically, social conservatives believe individuals make too many choices.  They are also afraid of the possibility that man is or can reshape himself and the environment.  For conservatives, it is God, not man, who decides what happens in this world and God does not make mistakes (i.e. gay people or global warming)

Republicans and conservatives, thus, imply that Obama is a Superman, in part, because they have political reasons to lay all the problems of the economy at his feet rather than on Bush.  But they also imply that Obama is a Superman for another even more important reason.  They think he will elevate the role and purpose of government in our economy, our society, and our lives.  He will erode the hard-won conservative victories of the last 25 to 30 years that has reaffirmed the glory and power of God in American society. Strangely, the conservative portrait of Obama as someone who wants and is reversing conservative core values, has the unintended consequence of elevating Obama to a godlike status.  Their insistence that Obama is a socialist, a Muslim, and a non-citizen may marginalize and racialize Obama for many of their constituents, but it also empowers him.  Only an alien, if not a devil, they think, would undo God’s work and supplant His authority.  But it is also true that Superman came from Krypton. Didn’t he?

Voter turnout is, thus, just as if not more important than voting results.  In the last several elections, we have seen not only a fluctuation in voter preferences but also a fluctuation in turnout.  The absolute percentage of the voting eligible population that voted as well as the proportion of the public representing different racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, and class backgrounds varied significantly from one election to the other.  Thus, the “public” that voted Barack Obama into the presidency in 2008 was greater in numbers and different in constitution to the public that voted Republicans into office during 2010.  Obama had more young people, women, minorities, and seniors turning out to vote in 2008 than turned out in 2010.

Almost 57% of the U.S. voting age population voted in the 2008 election while less than 38% did so in 2010, according to data from the U.S. Elections Project .  That swing or decline in turnout of 19% is all we need to know to understand why it appeared like the public were giving Republicans a “mandate” in 2010 and appearing to take away the “mandate” given to Obama in the 2008 election. Similarly, a look at the turnout results broken down by states shows wide discrepancies between 2008 and 2010.  Republicans took control of Wisconsin state politics in the 2010 elections but only with votes with a turnout of 49.5% of the voting age population.  The Republican 2010 “mandate” in Wisconsin represented, thus, a fraction of that less than 50% turnout!  For example, Scott Walker became governor in Wisconsin with 52.3% of the vote. That vote is a little over half of the 49.5% voting turnout or about 26% of the eligible voters in Wisconsin.  A public “mandate”?  Hardly.  This means that the resulting Republican assaults on liberal and Democratic policies, including public unions, were “mandated” by about one-quarter of the voting public!  That does not compare favorably with the over 56% of the vote that Obama won in 2008, especially since that Obama majority came from a Wisconsin voter turnout of 69%.

Election analysis is a risky business.  What they mean is a lot more difficult to establish than who won.  Voters can change their minds.  And different voters come out to vote in different elections and years.  Nevertheless, it has become far too easy for politicians and the media to read far too much into election results than the numbers actually permit.  This is not only bad analysis but a manipulation of the public.

Elections can help us gauge what it is that the public may want.  But they do not do so if we do not pay careful attention to what they don’t tell us. The negative consequences of such bad analysis is as much political as it is academic.  Here, like in many other facets of our political system, we cannot help but speculate about how money facilitates this dangerous interpretation of the public’s will.  There are far too many mechanisms that thwart public will, from campaign financing to the compromised form of ballot systems utilized in voting.  The manipulation of electoral results that comes by ignoring turnout is far easier to correct than the others.  But it requires that the public be far better informed about voter turnout than they have been up to now.

Intelligence gathering is a very complicated and long-winded process.  Good information comes from multiple sources.  Some information may even come from the use of torture.  But not much comes from the use of torture, according to the research. Experts also claim that even if torture can produce some good information, in general, it produces much more false or misleading pieces of information.  In fact, one government interrogator concluded that the false information that came from the use of torture “slowed us down on the road towards Osama bin Laden and numerous other members of al-Qaeda.”
What is more interesting is the fierce insistence on legitimizing torture as an instrument of state policy and intelligence gathering.  The advocates of torture argue with an intensity that probably represents their own subconscious fears and desires.  The morality and human rights issues aside, torture advocates don’t seem very interested in assessing the complicated facts involved with the use of torture.  They don’t seem to care about whether any useful information comes from the use of torture.

I think the reason for their myopic and missionary turn to torture is a product of power.  Those with power, as I’ve argued before, turn to torture because any other method for extracting cooperation and information places them on a more equal footing with their torture targets.  Engaging in the normal interrogation and establishing friendly relationships with prisoners, like so many police and intelligence officers do, means treating them as equals.  They don’t want information so much as they want to preserve their power.  One theologian argued that the resort to torture comes “from a power so unsure of itself that it can only lash out, not in investigation, but in revenge.”  But I think it is a whole lot more.  It is not just revenge.  The powerful are  enraged.  The powerful release their outrage against those with the impudence to challenge them.  Just take a look at the Mission Statement of Liz Cheney‘s Keep America Safe foundation.  It begins with a discrediting of the Obama administration for appearing weak and uncertain.

Amidst the great challenges to America’s security and prosperity, the current administration too often seems uncertain, wishful, irresolute, and unwilling to stand up for America, our allies and our interests.

But it follows that unsubstantiated attack with an admission that

Since 9/11, the United States Government, through our armed forces and our intelligence and law enforcement professionals, has succeeded in preventing any further attacks on the American homeland. This is a major achievement.

Thus, we need to torture and yet our security forces have prevented many terrorist attacks.  The contradiction in these two positions is, of course, about politics.  They attack Obama but defend Bush.  But what is interesting is that what they really seem interested in achieving is the appearance of strength and power.  They conclude their mission statement with

Keep America Safe believes the United States can only defeat our adversaries and defend our interests from a position of strength.  We know that America has, for 233 years, been an unparalleled force for good in the world, that our fighting forces are the best the world has ever known, and that the world is a safer place when America is trusted by our allies and feared and respected by our enemies. 

Power has both substance (capacity) and appearance (fierce eyes, gnarly teeth, military regalia, etc.).  Rather than face the reality that President Obama has enhanced the power of the office by not limiting it to mere force, his critics focus on what presidential power looks like with Obama in office.  It looks like Cheney and other apologists for torture promote “enhanced interrogation” to remind others in the world about the greatness of their power. Or are they simply reminding themselves?

Why were there no powerful Latinos in the U.S., where the second largest population of Latinos in the world now lives?  What good is a list like this?  Does it represent a true depiction of the reality of power?  The truth is that this Forbes list does not really capture who is more powerful, especially among Latinos.  In fact, the most powerful Latino in the world is actually dead and not on the list.

Forbes explains that the “people on this list were chosen because, in various ways, they bend the world to their will.”  Perhaps. But their methodology, the rules they followed to establish the amount of influence, was flawed.  They utilized four measures.  All sprung from an assumption that power comes from things and official titles.  First, Forbes measured influence by counting the size of their followers ON PAPER.  Thus, they assumed that a person had influence if they occupied a position where they had many employees, listeners, and followers.

For heads-of-state we looked at population; for religious figures we measured the size of their flocks; for CEOs we counted their employees; and for media figures we considered the size of their audience.

That’s like thinking that just because my Christmas tree has a lot of light bulbs that I can also make the room bright.  It’s a possibility but not always automatic.  It’s not automatic because I may not have any access to or the ability to turn on the light switch that sends electricity to those bulbs.

Second, Forbes “checked to see if they have significant financial resources relative to their peers.”  They gave “power” points for such things as GDP, net assets, sales, and profits.  Again, Forbes assumed that possessing valuable material is the same as power.

Third, Forbes awarded bonus points to those who “were powerful in multiple spheres.”  Presumably, someone has more power if they are not just a prime minister, but also a media mogul and a billionaire.  Thus, power comes from possessing multiple “things.”

Fourth, Forbes awarded points if someone actively wielded their power.  This measure makes the most sense except that it is a nominal measure; it is either on or off.  It really does not add much to the evaluation of how much power people have, though it points in the right direction.

These measures explain why so few Latinos made it to the list and why the ones that did are basically rich.  There are not that many wealthy Latinos and few who occupy positions with large numbers of employees, audiences, or citizens.  The Latino men on the Forbes list are not household names, even among Latinos.  Are there more powerful Latinos who did not make it to the list?

The most powerful Latino may actually be dead.  Most polls show that el defunto Ernesto “Che” Guevara has reached such high levels of respect and adoration around the world that he has become an almost cult-like and saintly figure.  There are plenty of reasons for this, not the least being that the image of Che has become a valuable commodity with world wide commercial demand.  In any case, Che is definitely very popular.  Check out this online poll.  His popularity has actually risen in recent years.

If we followed Forbes’ methodology, we see that Che is head and shoulders above most of people on the power list, especially the Latinos.  He has captured the attention of people all over the world from young to old, from Latinos to Asians, from developed to developing countries, etc.  In Bolivia, where Che met his death in 1967, he has become a surprising saint-like figure.  Bolivians hang pictures of Che alongside Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the Pope.  They refer to him as “San Ernesto de La Higuera.”
In fact, Bolivians seem to believe that Che’s assassination has even been avenged…by God.  They point to the violent deaths suffered by six of the Bolivian politicians and military officers, including Bolivian President René Barrientos, who were involved in Guevara’s assassination as proof of what they call the “curse of Che.”

Bolivian peasants are not the only ones to draw comparisons between Che and Jesus.  In 1999, the Church of England created controversy when they launched a campaign to attract parishioners by depicting Che as Jesus.  Both were healers and devoted

their lives to advocating for and protecting the poor and meek.  Thus, the Church slogan, “Meek. Mild. As if. Discover the real Jesus.”

Che’s popularity is also extremely wide and infused into multiple realms of human life. His ideas and image has spread to movies, television, music, books, magazines, advertising, business, art, fashion, political campaigns, and even computer games.  His life has been portrayed in at least 10 major motion pictures from the Francisco Rabal performance in El Che Guevara (1968) to the Benicio del Toro portrait in Che (2008).  Che also continues to be a constant source of inspiration and reference in scores of television shows from The Simpsons to The Colbert Report to the Che Guevara t-shirt worn by the character Steven Hyde on That ’70s Show.    Artistic reference as well as tributes have also been made to Che in hundreds of songs and music.  As early as 1968, the German composer Hans Werner Henze dedicated oratorio Das Floß der Medusa as a requiem for Guevera. American rock bands, French alternative rock, Australian punk rock, as well as Jamaican reggae bands have all included specific songs, images, and references to Che.  In fashion, not only does Johnny Depp wear a Che pendant around his neck but also the New York Public Library‘s gift shop offered a Che Guevara watch for sale in 2004.  The popularity of Che’s image is not just a commercial phenomenon.  Artists from around the world, from Harlem, New York to Ireland, have turned to Che to provoke and capture the public imagination.  In fact, commentator Hannah Charlton of  The Sunday Times claimed that

Che wears Che

Che’s appearance and ideology even informs games, both virtual and real.  For instance, Che was referenced multiple times in the computer game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.  Also, a domino-toppling exhibition conducted in the Netherlands in 2008 where 4,345,027 falling dominoes tumbled for two hours resulted in the depiction of an image of Che.

The point is that Che has tremendous, wide, and deep influence all over the world.  A large portion of that influence is political. In Latin America Che remains an iconic revolutionary figure that both political leaders and political insurgents draw upon to enlist support and to symbolize a hopeful and heroic vision of the future.  Che, however, has also been popular in places much farther remove from Latin America. The Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda refer to the rebel group he leads as the “Group of Che” and the rebels wear Che Guevara t-shirts as their uniform as recently as 2008.  The celebrated Hong Kong political activist  Leung Kwok-hung wears a Che Guevara t-shirts during his many public protests demanding increased democracy.   Desi Bouterse, elected President of Suriname in 2010, often appears in public wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt.

One can even argue that Che has had considerable influence on the democratization movement in the Middle East.  Observe the Iraqi protester in the picture at left.  I think this is not just a fashion statement but also a political gesture on his part since he sports a beret as well as the Che tee shirt.  He is also sitting with others who are dressed in more formal and traditional garb.

The point of all of this is to show that the ability to move others, to influence the way others think, act, and feel, cannot easily be captured in the amounts of money or people that are putatively under someone’s control.  It is also true that power may not always be in the hands of the living.  As this essay shows, the dead are often more powerful than the living.  Senores Pinera, Batista, and Guzman Loera have some power.  They can get some things done.  I’m pretty sure, however, that their ability to move millions of people and resources come, if at all, mostly from the positions they hold.

Che’s influence comes, however, from the place he occupies in people’s hearts and imaginations.  Che, of course, is no longer here.  His power, however, is real, dynamic, and expansive.  Latinos as a community, ethnic group, nation, raza, or people want and need to improve their ability to influence others.  Our economic, cultural, and political future demands it.  I think the best place to start is with Che and not with Forbes’ Pinera, Batista, and Guzman Loera.  I’m not sure what this would entail.  Do we also make use of Che’s image?  Do we invoke his message in our dealings with other groups and our respective states?  Does he inspire Latino politics and policies?  Who knows at this point?  All I know is that Latinos should find a way to harness the electricity and power that Che continues to generate around the world.

Hispanics’ representation on influential political boards has not kept pace with their increase in numbers

This was the main argument in my book Boricua Power.  It would interesting to see how this plays itself out as the numbers of Latinos in the United States continues to climb.  Can Latinos make themselves more attractive to others in this society as workers, thinkers, and performers?  Only by doing so can Latinos gain more influence.  At this point, the challenge looms very large.  The current political economy has decreased everyone’s value.  We’ll see if Latinos can reverse this trend.

Governments Don’t Overspend