tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90896128681716693972024-03-05T05:50:14.521-05:00The Great Book of MaladiesLaments of a philosophical pessimist. Notes on society, politics, and culture.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-17346455598216507482016-02-28T09:42:00.002-05:002016-03-01T17:04:53.435-05:00Hunger Games<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiZPVAuNPi4gBXP1TnK-0DSmAUTG6VchouDLlM5-23PmfzzlyRL3Em6pTpaQBZe_Iv75Ih6WfzxHAbZS37XFN9Oxuxgg3IHSnw5uvQaZB_DuKi7P1GrRIBHZV2s9JkZPSy7Jr3XL0kutc/s1600/president.snow_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiZPVAuNPi4gBXP1TnK-0DSmAUTG6VchouDLlM5-23PmfzzlyRL3Em6pTpaQBZe_Iv75Ih6WfzxHAbZS37XFN9Oxuxgg3IHSnw5uvQaZB_DuKi7P1GrRIBHZV2s9JkZPSy7Jr3XL0kutc/s320/president.snow_.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
I just read about a state university in Chicago that <a href="http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/chicago-state-university-sends-layoff-notices-to-all-employees-amid-illinois-budget-battle/ar-BBq5kgX" target="_blank">sent layoff notices to all 900 of its employees, including all administrators and full-time faculty</a>. It turns out that the school is among 57 public universities and colleges in Illinois that have not received funding in eight months due to a Republican governor tying passage of his $36 billion budget to changes in collective bargaining rights for public employees and worker compensation, business-friendly moves he says will help turn around the state’s flagging economy. If the legislature refuses to sign on to his changes, the governor wants lawmakers to let him make $3.5 billion in spending cuts in any way he chooses.<br />
<br />
Let that sink in for a moment. An entire university being shuttered and a whole state university system being held hostage for the sake of depriving citizens their rights to freely associate and collectively bargain, all so capital can more freely advance its interests. You want higher education? Well, then you must capitulate to capital's imperatives. Then, when you emerge from your education saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt that may never be forgiven, the minimum wage service economy will receive you with its cold embrace and you can live in your parent's basements. Oh, and the staff and full-time professors who worked at Chicago State? They'll work there once again, but at a fraction of the rate they once labored for. They'll live in basements too. The itinerant administrative class will land on its feet as it always does, as will the bankers and rest of our financial masters--"the smartest guys in the room."<br />
<br />
We are presently witnessing the systematic dismantling of all public services necessary to a decent, flourishing society. After every scrap of profit has been clawed out of the system the oligarchs will retreat behind tall walls manned by private security and let the rest of us fight for survival in a new war of all against all. This is not the <i>Hunger Games</i>. There are some nations in the developing south for whom this is the model for their <i>actually-existing</i> social order, not a Hollywood fantasy. A brutal model that serves only the distant and isolated few, and which consigns the rest to debt, penury, and hopelessness. The reality is good sight less glamorous than anything you might see in the dark on the silver screen. In reality, it's no game at all.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-51540699766138200732016-02-24T11:15:00.001-05:002016-02-25T20:28:40.709-05:00HRC and the Hermetically Sealed Box<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEiWrM5YnsPX_jzcVkCe9VMxPz-XJfr1xhnS439BvZPZc6qeFptjyrvgD4z1Rx5oZ9oUC6gFPNd-39QSGmrmzBQBGyAbsE_EWeQwss94M1goJhryUEtxp7h0W3PuY5be9uX5bsGkpYFnk/s1600/hillary-clinton-benghazi-hand-large-169.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEiWrM5YnsPX_jzcVkCe9VMxPz-XJfr1xhnS439BvZPZc6qeFptjyrvgD4z1Rx5oZ9oUC6gFPNd-39QSGmrmzBQBGyAbsE_EWeQwss94M1goJhryUEtxp7h0W3PuY5be9uX5bsGkpYFnk/s1600/hillary-clinton-benghazi-hand-large-169.jpg" /></a></div>
Let me start with all my cards face-up on the table.<br />
<br />
HRC, like all women (and especially women in American politics) has been and continues to be the target of sexist attacks. She has been and continues to be especially vilified by a Republican party which seems to have wholly internalized the idea that it is the only party that represents American ideals, and so any candidate who challenges them is to be destroyed without pity. Given this baptism by fire HRC has become a formidably smart, tough, and able politician, and is a strong candidate to be our next president.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, I will be voting for her opponent in the primary, and I urge others to do the same.<br />
<br />
The reason I am supporting HRC's opponent is very simple: she is too close to Wall Street and the other monied interests that are destroying our democracy. Her opponent is running against this vast, powerful, and interconnected system of interests and actually running quite well against it, all things considered.<br />
<br />
It's hard for me to imagine any reasonable person acquainted with our politics denying this is a serious problem. My view is that when a presidential candidate comes along who unambiguously names this problem and vows to address it you owe him or her your vote. We can never change this corrupt system if we constantly vote for candidates who refuse to challenge it. It really is as simple as that.<br />
<br />
And yet . . .<br />
<br />
<span class="s1">Not long ago former president Bill Clinton was campaigning for HRC in New Hampshire. He accused his wife's opponent of </span><span class="s2">focusing too much on big banks and the economy. Then the former president--one of the most skillful politicians of our generation--said the <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-clinton-sanders-hermetically-sealed" target="_blank">following</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s1">Hillary's opponent has a different view. It's a hermetically sealed box. It's very effective. The system is rigged against you by the big banks, and both parties are in the thrall of the big banks. Anybody who takes money from Goldman Sachs couldn't possibly be president.</span></blockquote>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Take a moment to let the full force of the utterly tone-deaf quality of this statement wash over you. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
First, there is the unambiguous ridiculing of the notion that our politics has been thoroughly corrupted by big money. Yet this "notion" is <i>fact</i>, and one that no serious person denies. But that last sentence . . . let's savor its bitter, arrogant, mocking tone again: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Anybody who takes money from Goldman Sachs couldn't possibly be president</i>.</blockquote>
<div class="p1">
We would do well to ask ourselves what a person like Bill Clinton would have to believe to utter such a sentiment? </div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
We might imagine they had utterly forgotten about the financial collapse of 2008 and the role that banks like Goldman Sachs had in bringing that catastrophe about. We might conjure up the notion that they are completely comfortable with the revolving door that exists between government and industry, and the increasing oligarchical character of our politics. We might imagine they have somehow lost all empathy for the slow death our our middle class, and are now simply unmoved by the enormous upwards transfer of wealth that has occurred in this country. We might even suppose they think we should simply elect the head of Goldman Sachs to the presidency since for all intents and purposes the nation's economy has been run for the exclusive benefit of its corporate class and other members of the 1% over the last thirty years, and so who better to be its steward?</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
And yet the HRC camp is seriously flummoxed as to why it's having such a hard time running against a life-long self-identifying <i>democratic socialist</i> in these primaries? </div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
We should at this point ask the obvious question: <i>who are the ones living in the hermetically sealed box</i>?</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
That's really it, isn't it? The Clintons and the rest of the titans of the donor class are completely clueless as to how a <i>socialist</i> could have <i>any</i> political appeal in these United States. And the only way they could be this clueless is that the reality they now walk in is completely divorced from the reality of the other 99% of the country's inhabitants.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The<i> Rolling Stone's</i> very excellent Matt Taibbi nicely captured this disconnect in a recent <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-tells-us-how-to-vote-20160205" target="_blank">article</a> that begins with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein lamenting the apparently unfathomable popular discontent with Wall Street, as manifested by the Sanders candidacy. "This has the potential to be a dangerous moment," Blankfein darkly intones, and then goes on to suggest that the widespread animus toward his kind is completely causeless and irrational, a mysterious but collective mood swing in the national psyche.<br />
<br />
But the most relevant bit of the article relates the quandary faced by the president of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_Pincus" target="_blank">Warburg Pincus</a> Timothy Geithner when he was treasury secretary under Obama and faced widespread discontent with the taxpayer bailouts he engineered to make the Blankfeins of the world whole again. On Geithner's account he sought advice from the former president Clinton, who counseled him that he ought not to take the public anger too hard. "You could take Lloyd Blankfein in an alley and slit his throat, and it would satisfy them for about two days," Clinton said. "Then the blood lust would rise again."<br />
<br />
And so there you have it. The millions of people who had the economic foundations of their lives destroyed by Wall Street fraud don't have legitimate grievances; they're just mindless beasts whose blood lust must be sated.<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg88xQlSgAHxBiUR6Mw-ApcgxwgyEoAn5cf66zHRcr0ZyTLGd_u4nd0WQxOj7ptNnZi_dBRPU5D21jsINbnxHjzNKwxQbBjkz-4UYEvQXiLdCupxXvUyUbhyVqVKk0CJUZrO1y-pwQOs1U/s1600/102593251-456024380.530x298.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg88xQlSgAHxBiUR6Mw-ApcgxwgyEoAn5cf66zHRcr0ZyTLGd_u4nd0WQxOj7ptNnZi_dBRPU5D21jsINbnxHjzNKwxQbBjkz-4UYEvQXiLdCupxXvUyUbhyVqVKk0CJUZrO1y-pwQOs1U/s320/102593251-456024380.530x298.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and HRC</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In light of all this is it any wonder that the Clintons would believe there is nothing at all unseemly about a presidential candidate taking enormous speaking fees from the criminal element of the financial sector? HRC and her husband have raked in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/" target="_blank">literally millions of dollars giving speeches to some of the nation's most reckless bankers</a>, with HRC taking in <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/02/05/inside-hillarys-675k-worth-of-goldman-speaking-fees/" target="_blank">$675,000 from Goldman Sachs for three speeches alone</a>. When confronted with this HRC has insisted she can't be bought even while she refuses to release the transcripts of the speeches in question. But during a weak but honest moment at a </span>New Hampshire town hall meeting, she lamely admitted she took whatever Goldman Sachs was willing to pay.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Well, that more or less says it all, doesn't it? And doesn't it also explain why HRC's good friend and benefactor Lloyd Blankfein made no mention of her as part of this "dangerous" political moment?<br />
<br />
This is not to say that there is any direct and dirty <i>quid pro quo</i> for any of these payments. No, it only works that way in situations where political corruption is <i>illegal</i>. When you legalize such corruption as we have under the euphemism "campaign finance," the effect is far more subtle. The money buys access for your new well-off "friends" whom you carefully refer to in public as your "constituents," and eventually by dint of social proximity their views and values become your own, as their "donations" slowly elevate you to similar heights. Imagine the exhilaration of the Clintons, who escaped the small time hothouse politics of Arkansas to scale the heights of power to cavort among the kingmakers! Of course the Clintons are not unique; the capital is awash with people like them. All of them slowly sucked into the box of corruption and then hermetically sealed in. In this warm and comfortable box one can no longer "feel the pain" of the people (in the former president's saccharine phrase), or barely even hear their cries of distress.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Of course when you emerge from the box to ask for the votes of the people outside it a great deal of filthy lucre is stuck to you. And since politics is a dirty business, in such a situation you have no choice but to dirty up your opponent, in this case a crusty little democratic socialist from Vermont. The problem for HRC and her supporters, however, is that the good senator from Vermont is officially a political independent who only caucuses with Democrats and so could hardly be further removed from the corrupting heights of DC politics. As a general rule, Wall Street bankers don't cozy up to unapologetic democratic socialists, and neither do the representatives of big oil, big pharma, etc.<br />
<br />
So a good amount of the dirt thrown hasn't left much of a mark on Mr. Sanders. In many cases it's actually been pretty pathetic; an inconsistent vote here, a misspoken phrase there, some campaign official somewhere didn't get an FEC report in on time. Then there are the vague allegations that Sanders is insufficiently sensitive to racial matters, though the record shows he has been consistent in his support for racial equality throughout his political life. The really big gun surrogates are now being rolled out: the venerable John Lewis has pronounced Sanders MIA during the civil rights era despite the contrary testimony of the historical record; Paul Krugman has deemed Sanders's economic policies unrealistic despite the fact that they are realities in many parts of Europe; and on and on. There's even a ridiculous smear that holds that <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/01/31/the-bernie-bros-narrative-a-cheap-false-campaign-tactic-masquerading-as-journalism-and-social-activism/" target="_blank">Sanders supporters are uniquely rude</a>--<i>only</i> Sanders supporters, mind you--and so voters should punish the candidate accordingly.<br />
<br />
I've run across my fair share of, shall we say, <i>passionate</i> HRC supporters who have said some things that could be considered quite rude. Madeleine Albright's warning that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/06/madeleine-albright-campaigns-for-hillary-clinton" target="_blank">there is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women</a> immediately comes to mind, or Gloria Steinem's condescending remark that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/06/politics/gloria-steinem-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-boys/" target="_blank">young women are flocking to Sanders's campaign because they're boy crazy</a>. Younger women quickly and loudly rejected the idea that they should vote their vaginas, and both statements were eventually walked back. Profoundly stupid statements both, but I wouldn't hold them against HRC the candidate. This is politics. People get involved and get excited. This is the rough and tumble of the democratic process we claim to celebrate.<br />
<br />
I will say, however, and with great fear and trembling, that it seems with female HRC supporters of a certain age a whiff of <i>entitlement</i> floats in the air. The thinking seems to be, "Look, we wanted HRC eight years ago. We didn't get her. We supported Obama. You owe us. And this time we won't be denied."<br />
<br />
Of course it will sound condescending when I say yes, a woman president is long overdue. But need the first woman president be one who has shown she's just as corruptible as any of her male predecessors? Would that really be a bright day for the women's movement? Especially when the phenomenal Elizabeth Warren stands in the wings?<br />
<br />
Before you launch your slings and arrows, stay your hands for a moment. The conventional wisdom since Sanders's defeat in the Nevada caucus (53%-47%) says that identity politics will spell the end for his campaign, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-defeats-sanders-in-nevada-black-voter-support-appears-decisive/2016/02/20/d4e53ac6-d654-11e5-be55-2cc3c1e4b76b_story.html" target="_blank">as African-American voters there stuck with Clinton</a>. Apparently this signifies that the Sanders campaign is too white (or whiter than HRC's?)--whatever that means--and that John Lewis's disappointing slander of Sanders's civil rights record was deployed to good effect. Those of a certain age will recognize the cynical strategy deemed Clintonoid "triangulation." It's really just a more refined version of "divide and conquer."*<br />
<br />
I should bring this all to an end by saying that despite my severe misgivings about HRC as a candidate I will work mightily to elect her president should she indeed win the nomination, and I strongly urge all other Sanders supporters to do the same. A Republican presidency, given the current dysfunctional state of that party, would be a catastrophe. Though a President Clinton would give no more than lip service to Wall Street reform, her veto pen would protect what remains of women's tattered reproductive rights and keep the more savage impulses of the GOP at bay.<br />
<br />
But this year I will look back on my primary vote with fond memories, as one of those rare votes that wasn't cast for the sake of choosing the <a href="http://greatbookofmaladies.blogspot.com/2012/06/lesser-of-two-evils.html" target="_blank">lesser of two evils</a>. If casting a vote outside the hermetically sealed box cannot at this time bring about the possibility of the real, systemic, political change we so desperately need, perhaps it will at least sustain my soul until it can.<br />
<br />
______________<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*The legal scholar Michelle Alexander has created an <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/" target="_blank">excellent catalog</a> of the wages of "triangulation" and what it has cost the African-American community.</span></div>
</div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-61907432237425189472016-02-09T20:17:00.004-05:002016-02-09T20:21:33.882-05:00A Uniquely American Fallacy?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCiB0XJFaHtUOOmsLJVaw0KxXxxzOQBcwRYuSKqt966G5Fl2Gf0S4VeBwyy-ELOmM7MFr87kvXxczAYdB5x7_23dgb4RVELUD8xVBxwJJMSf_mKFuxTNwN21lvMYTCrZ1a7DM3b4N4iiE/s1600/koch-brothers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCiB0XJFaHtUOOmsLJVaw0KxXxxzOQBcwRYuSKqt966G5Fl2Gf0S4VeBwyy-ELOmM7MFr87kvXxczAYdB5x7_23dgb4RVELUD8xVBxwJJMSf_mKFuxTNwN21lvMYTCrZ1a7DM3b4N4iiE/s200/koch-brothers.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
I wonder if this is a uniquely American fallacy--the assumption that great wealth equals great intelligence. Of course some smart people make lots of money because of their smarts, but certainly not nearly always. In fact, 80% of new business startups fail. Yet the great deference shown to business people in the US is striking, and not just in matters of commerce. And out of this fawning deference comes a sense of entitlement. And from that: oligarchy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-29242778060473154672016-02-07T09:20:00.000-05:002016-02-07T20:20:10.495-05:00On Well-Fortified Silos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMaiFjwhaUgo_kp9YnPMvMevUX6s-c4pHb9OhPmEdNiiWgJaQferm5OwcyhtFeFEWSNOPe1XRBZiNmD_Co9WXqDsXj8tRsMi8f94OYFUV1gyFqN8DJKBMIsJAkEGHgzootJk3GHG8HJFw/s1600/silo+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMaiFjwhaUgo_kp9YnPMvMevUX6s-c4pHb9OhPmEdNiiWgJaQferm5OwcyhtFeFEWSNOPe1XRBZiNmD_Co9WXqDsXj8tRsMi8f94OYFUV1gyFqN8DJKBMIsJAkEGHgzootJk3GHG8HJFw/s320/silo+2.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
To be accused of "silo-thinking" among academicians is to be accused of closed mindedness. The thought behind the accusation goes this way: the various disciplines are like towering pillars of knowledge that have been erected alongside each other. Each tower is isolated from the next. There is no communication, community, or intercourse between the inhabitants of each tower. This fosters an unhealthy insularity that fragments the whole of human knowledge and distorts our perceptions. It is said that we must "get beyond" these silos in the name of a more healthy "interdisciplinarity" that will restore the wholeness of the world.<br />
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Who could object to this worthy goal? It's completely <i>unobjectionable</i>, and in fact <i>desirable</i>. Except some of the more extremist holders of this view go so far as to say we should <i>tear down the silos!</i> Raze them to the ground! We must do this, we are told, because disciplinary "expertise" makes us myopic, if it doesn't blind us altogether. Down with the towers of established knowledge, and off with the heads of anyone who defends them!<br />
<br />
But the extremists can't really mean this. To destroy the silos altogether would be to say they've not helped us to see farther into the domains they tower over, and to drill down more deeply into their respective areas of knowledge. Are the silo-destroyers really saying we should forgo the accumulated insights generated by each? After all, whether we call it <i>inter</i>disciplinarity or <i>multi</i>disciplinarity or what have you, note that <i>disciplinarity</i> remains intact. Isn't the call for interdisciplinarity really a call for a great conversation among the various tower-dwellers in the name of a more cohesive community of knowledge? Isn't it a call for us to venture outside our towers to communicate with other knowledge-seekers <i>as informed by our various disciplines</i>? Wouldn't such a conversation have the potential to set off sparks that could better illuminate the shadows <i>between</i> the silos? But to <i>destroy</i> the silos altogether? Wouldn't that be to reduce all of human human knowledge to a dark and barren valley of Babel?<br />
<br />
An extremist view hardly to be taken seriously--so enough. However, the more subtle, the more <i>insidious</i> way the accusation of "silo-thinking" is expressed takes the following form, and is predicated on the idea that <i>not all silos are equal. </i><br />
<br />
Let us imagine some historians knocking on the door of the mathematics silo:<br />
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"Who is it?" ask the barricaded mathematicians.<br />
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"We're historians. We'd like to come in and do some interdisciplinary work."<br />
<br />
"None of you are mathematicians and we have the integrity of our discipline to think of. No thank you! Run along now!"<br />
<br />
Now imagine mathematicians knocking on the door of the history silo:<br />
<br />
"Hello! Historians! It is us, the mathematicians! We have an idea for developing a course on the history of mathematics, and we'd like to teach it. What do you think?"<br />
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"Well, you know, knowing the history of your own discipline is one thing, but understanding what history itself is and how history is made . . ."<br />
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"What? Oh--you historians and your close minded silo-thinking! You unilateralist cabal!"<br />
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One thing I've noticed is that those protesting the loudest about "silo-thinking" do so from the tallest and most well-fortified silos. And those shouting are in essence telling those down below in the shorter silos that they really don't deserve to have a silo at all.<br />
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In sum, the accusation of "silo-thinking" is often deployed as a Trojan horse against the humanities.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-49788966435620006962016-02-01T10:24:00.000-05:002016-02-01T17:50:06.993-05:00The Last White Male Privilege?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxA7bwfNDMfVpiQ4v_ID1eWF1WCfbbaZpdyQZaOcAtWrC-CZxw_YMQMZ9ZsB_Pm-mCUZzNV5dut2yrnxOG57FkqkEekvxg411QxP_bdAqwkoLr2q90y7xyx46teX4mzJ1duEIRK4mW8L4/s1600/oregon-militia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxA7bwfNDMfVpiQ4v_ID1eWF1WCfbbaZpdyQZaOcAtWrC-CZxw_YMQMZ9ZsB_Pm-mCUZzNV5dut2yrnxOG57FkqkEekvxg411QxP_bdAqwkoLr2q90y7xyx46teX4mzJ1duEIRK4mW8L4/s320/oregon-militia.jpg" width="320" /></a>Some announced the arrival of a "post-racial" society after the election of Barack Obama. Clearly these voices were mistaken. I strongly suspect we'll be much closer to that day when armed white men are violently dispatched by the law with as much ruthless efficiency as are unarmed black males.<br />
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Since the advent of miniaturized video technology decent people have looked on with horror at a seemingly unending stream of digitized recordings of white lawmen gunning down black men, teenagers, and even children with <i>extreme prejudice</i>. The victims have been shot while surrendering or otherwise complying with police instructions, while walking away or retreating from police, while sitting in a car or laying on the ground in submission, and so on. In many instances the victims are either unarmed or armed with far less lethal weapons (a knife, a toy gun, etc.), and oftentimes they had been identified to police beforehand as being drunk or mentally disturbed.<br />
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No matter. Being black-when-crazy, black-when-driving, black-when-walking, black-when-complying, black-when-a-child, black-when-breathing: all are apparently seen by many officers as sufficient grounds for the immediate and overwhelming application of lethal force. No one knows how bad this problem is, because there is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/08/how-many-police-shootings-a-year-no-one-knows/" target="_blank">no reliable national database of how many citizens are shot by police each year</a>. So we are forced to speculate. One oft-cited <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white" target="_blank">study</a> claims that young black men are more than 21 times more likely to be shot by police.*<br />
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By way of contrast, the very same video technology records the <i>extreme deference</i> with which officers approach white men with guns, up to and including assault rifles. In tape after tape, police approach with extreme courtesy, weapons holstered, hands contritely folded, and politely inquire as to why the white man is carrying a long gun in public. Almost invariably, the reason given, clumsily delivered in the argot of a street corner lawyer, boils down to this: "Second Amendment." After a few more desultory questions the officers then typically withdraw quietly, usually wishing the citizen a "nice day."<br />
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It almost doesn't bear mentioning that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvW_zBvJlsA" target="_blank">such an exchange is literally impossible to picture if we imagine the citizen a black male identically armed</a>. Anything less than almost impossibly instantaneous compliance with the hoarsely shouted orders of the lawmen would quickly result in his death or grave injury. Black males, it seems, don't have the same recourse to the Second Amendment; in fact, one could be forgiven if it is not mistaken as a license for white men to shoot unarmed black men for sport.<br />
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<a href="http://aattp.org/mi-open-carrier-will-not-be-charged-after-threatening-revolution-video/" target="_blank">Even in instances when an armed white citizen is manifestly menacing the public with his constitutionally-protected weapon in an unquestionably illegal fashion</a>, the police response is, shall we say, <i>restrained</i>. The armed white man, sometimes drunk or otherwise mentally incapacitated, is surrounded, but instead of force patient <i>negotiation</i> is applied. Officers try to "establish a dialogue" with the man; he is cajoled and gently persuaded to lay down his weapon; it's stressed how important it is to "avoid bloodshed" and work towards a "reasonable and peaceful" way out of the crisis. Again, it almost doesn't bear mentioning that such a circumstance would be lethal for a black man. To state the fact bluntly: it's pretty damn hard for an armed white man to get shot by the law in this country.<br />
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Bring in Exhibit A--the Bundy "militia." The background is well known to those paying attention. In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff#Confrontations_and_protests_in_April_2014" target="_blank">April 2014 the Nevadan Cliven Bundy faced down the federal government in a dispute over grazing rights</a> with the assistance of several armed white men aiming sniper rifles directly at federal employees until they withdrew; to date, <i>none of the participants have been charged with a crime</i>, much less seen the inside of a courtroom or a jail cell. Now, almost two years later, Bundy's son Ammon, along with a group of armed white men preaching violent insurrection, has illegally occupied a patch of federal land in Oregon since the beginning of last month. For almost a month the occupiers were allowed to travel freely through the loose perimeter law enforcement had set up around their encampment. They were allowed to go into town to purchase needed supplies, to attend meetings to rally support for their cause, and to run other errands. For almost a month, the law indulged the occupiers imagined grievances and repeatedly attempted to negotiate a peaceful surrender--to no avail.<br />
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Finally, last week several of the occupiers were arrested during one of their periodic outings. However, one vehicle fled the scene with police in hot pursuit. After their truck tried to run a roadblock of state troopers, one of the occupiers, one Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, exited the vehicle. On my viewing of the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2016/01/29/oregon-wildlife-refuge-lavoy-finicum-shot-on-tape-bretzing-sot.koin/video/playlists/wildlife-refuge-standoff-in-oregon/" target="_blank">FBI's video</a>, Finicum initially raises his hands in surrender but by my count his hands appear to move toward his waistband <i>three times</i>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/01/28/report-lavoy-finicum-armed-with-his-handgun-reached-for-his-waistband-just-before-he-was-shot/" target="_blank">where he kept his trusty Colt .45</a>. Only then was he shot dead by officers.<br />
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I want to repeat that for affect: Finicum appeared to reach for his gun <i>three times</i> before lethal force was applied.<br />
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Compare this to the many black men who often never even got <i>one</i> chance at their <i>empty</i> waistbands, if their hands even moved in that direction at all.<br />
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Again: it's pretty damn hard for <i>armed</i> white men to get shot by the law in this country, but frightfully easy for <i>unarmed</i> black men.<br />
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Also of note is the restrained response of law enforcement to a clearly illegal <i>armed</i> takeover of federal land, as compared to the highly militarized and aggressive response to <i>unarmed</i> citizens protesting the suspicious deaths of black men at the hands of police in places like Baltimore and Ferguson, MO.<br />
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Apparently, white men <i>with guns</i> have serious grievances that must be taken seriously; protesting black people <i>without guns</i> are an intolerable threat to public order, regardless of their claimed grievances.<br />
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And did I mention that as of this writing the land in Oregon is still being illegally occupied?<br />
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<i>Extreme prejudice versus extreme deference.</i><br />
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Of course the point of all this is not that police should treat white men as violently as they do black men. The point is that they should treat black men with as much deference as they do white men, all other things being equal. This would be more in keeping with the idea that the law should be enforced with as much consistency as possible, and with their traditional role as <i>peace</i> officers--as opposed to escalating violence and arbitrarily dealing death.<br />
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This would be the <i>reasonable</i> response to the situation. But as I suggested at the start, perhaps the best we can hope for, given the vicious vortex that forms where violence, racism, and the unholy cult of the gun meet in American culture, is that a day will come when white men will be summarily executed as frequently and with as much regularity as black men. The wanton slaughter of black men might be the last white male privilege, and once it is gone we'll have achieved a perverse sort of parity. This would count as progress in race relations in this demented nation of ours.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*However, there is no doubt that most grand juries refuse to indict officers who have shot black males in questionable circumstances.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-60086627038794078802016-01-31T07:56:00.000-05:002016-03-01T22:20:09.974-05:00The Flint Crisis and the Neoliberal Model<br />
<div class="p1"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh46Rb20pWr1saUnjGJYRD3IyanBAou_EybYPl_l962io2sXkJqVUmmvuPuSWJh_7VwOOFZWQS-KyVgXV4rRvt7DzLwRRKKJz0Wu10u21ZB4K38Oj_SoupLWoid-gc4wC25qXvj6DtvlIc/s1600/flint-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh46Rb20pWr1saUnjGJYRD3IyanBAou_EybYPl_l962io2sXkJqVUmmvuPuSWJh_7VwOOFZWQS-KyVgXV4rRvt7DzLwRRKKJz0Wu10u21ZB4K38Oj_SoupLWoid-gc4wC25qXvj6DtvlIc/s320/flint-2.jpg" width="320" /></a><span class="s1">What to do with the extraneous population of the dispossessed once the sources of its livelihood have been systematically plundered, de-skilled, downsized, outsourced? </span><br />
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</span> <span class="s1">In the neoliberal model there are two steps. </span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">First, the criminalization of what remains of the lives of those within this population and then the consignment of as many as possible </span>to a burgeoning for-profit incarceration system so another layer of profit can be scraped off it. </div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">Secondly, those who remain are condemned to a--quite literal--slow death by depriving it of the infrastructure necessary to its health and longevity. </div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">Death by economic deprivation, ethnic cleansing by another means. Capital tidying up its "externalities" in the wake of its "creative destruction." Utterly <a href="https://thirdcoastconspiracy.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/democracy-disposability-and-the-flint-water-crisis/" target="_blank">disposable</a> cities inhabited by dark-skinned people slowly ablated from the map.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-73804966830341719782016-01-30T18:27:00.003-05:002016-01-30T20:32:32.675-05:00On Trump and Fascism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="s1">I recently read somewhere that Donald Trump keeps a volume of Hitler’s speeches on his nightstand. If true I find this amusing, because it shows that Trump is not a very quick study. By all accounts Hitler was an electrifying speaker; there exist, for those who care to look for them, pictures of him rehearsing his speeches, and they show he was a master of the dramatic, messianic gesture. Though his trail through history was evil and blood-soaked, as a political orator Hitler was hard to match.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Trump, by way of contrast, comes off as nothing so much as a poor man’s Shecky Greene; there are the wild, spasmodic gesticulations, the repetitive “what gives?” shrugs, the constant shooting of the sleeves. Trump thinks he’s smart because he’s surrounded by people who tell him so, and watching him speak is like watching a drunken man performing at an open mike night at a strip mall sports bar, cheered on by his friends who’ve told him how funny he is when in fact he’s not clever at all. He’s not witty; he has no insight into the human condition that might prompt introspection or amusement; as a nominally “political” figure he was no vision beyond his vacuous platitudes about “greatness.” He’s all flash and no fire, and the impression he leaves behind him has all the permanence of the hoarse shouts of a corpulent carnival barker at a county fair. A more unlikely leader of a political movement is hard to imagine. Trump’s “substance” is only at the level of surface appearances, a kind of empty “bigness” of presence with no heft at all. He’s a vehicle for superficiality.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtdNTbwxzbAShb5Lt-u84s56roDWnYWuCLNEfGxESxY3vD0GQU7FgDoEnEUOGhZOwKuOu61KplyASJuO73VJKodam2Om2R68ByaninnPoFYLIHRB6sQwXBg8ATTKc0T2266_0WNKA0JKU/s1600/hitler-rehearses-speech-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtdNTbwxzbAShb5Lt-u84s56roDWnYWuCLNEfGxESxY3vD0GQU7FgDoEnEUOGhZOwKuOu61KplyASJuO73VJKodam2Om2R68ByaninnPoFYLIHRB6sQwXBg8ATTKc0T2266_0WNKA0JKU/s200/hitler-rehearses-speech-6.jpg" width="164" /></a><span class="s1">In short, to compare Trump to Hitler actually manages to do a disservice to Hitler, and not only at the rhetorical level. Hitler had a kind of demonic intelligence behind his eyes; he was quite adept at Machiavellian maneuvering; he had a worldview, detestable though that view was; and he had a program. <i>Mein Kampf</i> was an evil book by any measure, but despite history’s righteous judgment of it Hitler actually wrote it. The book represents his ideas and the lines of thought that lead to them, no matter how vile and twisted and obscene they were. In other words, Hitler was “thoughtful” in his own way, as evil as these thoughts were. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Try to imagine Trump writing a book (by himself!) about his political philosophy. It’s truly impossible, because it’s clear he’s never spent a moment thinking about politics. He has no political values or allegiances or ideology, no policies, no theory of governance, no proposed legislative priorities—nothing, nothing at all. This is not to say that the rest of the GOP field is comprised of people of big ideas, but at least they occasionally talk in some detail about this policy or that, wrongheaded though they usually are. Jeb Bush’s eyes reflect his haughty sense of entitlement, Ted Cruz’s betray his utter cynicism, Carly Fiorina’s are alight with the gleam of opportunism, and so on down the line. Even Ben Carson has thoughts, bizarre though they are, struggling to free themselves from something like a thorazine haze. The eyes of the stricken George W. Bush often had the cast of the wares of a fishmonger at the end of the day, but one could sense that neurons were firing somewhere in there, out of sequence perhaps, but firing nonetheless.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Now look into the dull pig-eyes of Trump. There’s no light back there at all. One imagines a skull full of dead, rotting, ground beef, incapable of generating any performance of cognition. On this reckoning Trump is a kind of mutant political creature. I’ve come to think of him as a walking, gesturing, animated mouth that constantly moves and makes sounds without the benefit of thought, but which somehow senses the resentments of its audience and then gives amplified and unapologetic voice to them. In this, the candidate Trump is the logical outcome of decades of overt and covert GOP pandering to racists and xenophobes; he’s the once barely suppressed id of the party base, finally burst forth and unleashed at a time of acute economic crisis and significant demographic shifts within our body politic. He’s quite happy to stir up the roughly 30% of the electorate which basically came unhinged after the election of a non-Caucasian president, and which are yearning for a return to “golden age” of unchallenged white, male, Christian privilege. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Yet Trump is no member of the <i>Lumpenproletariat</i>; the resentments he channels are not his own. It’s important to remember that he’s a creature of television, the medium of surfaces and superficiality. His oxygen is attention; he needs it to survive; it’s the only thing he craves. And if that means he has to demean women, or call all Mexicans rapists, or demonize BLM activists, or call for a pogrom on all Muslims, that’s what he’ll do. It’s just his nature, given the kind of creature he is. I’ve often wondered who was more morally despicable, racists and xenophobes who at least have the courage of their twisted convictions, or politicians who pander to these convictions out of political expedience. With Trump we have a third option: someone who will pander to such base emotions for the sake of ratings and clicks on social media—making him an especially execrable sort of creature.</span></div>
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I learned long ago not to make predictions when it comes to US politics; for the last thirty-some odd years it has only grown increasingly unpredictable. I can’t say for sure that Trump will not win the nomination or the presidency, though even at this stage I doubt it. I will say, though, that he’s no Hitler, nor a fascist, nor an ideologue. He is, however, a demagogue of a most peculiar kind, though a demagogue we in the US deserve: stupid, moronic, unapologetic. This is not to say Trump is not dangerous. Whether his is a serious bid for office or not, real, live people will suffer as a consequence of his repulsive antics; in fact, the suffering has already begun. Thus we must loudly repudiate him at every opportunity, and steadfastly stand with his victims no matter the cost.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-9414834699886859702014-11-16T17:12:00.001-05:002014-11-16T17:12:56.191-05:00On the Death of Michael Brown<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The only way to think of Michael Brown’s death as a tragedy is to studiously ignore the tragedy of the American present and the American past. </div>
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The killing of a young black man in a small city in middle America rarely makes national headlines, and I suspect that the only reason we know Michael Brown’s name is because of social media and the loud protests following his shooting. But it is a tragic fact that young black men in this nation are routinely detained by police at the slightest pretext (or no pretext at all), far more likely to be killed by police, and even more likely to be incarcerated in our massive prison system that is mostly populated by non-Caucasians. These facts represent but a few symptoms of our peculiar culture, where every problem foreign or domestic is almost always addressed though coercion and violence. Witness a near constant state of warfare lasting six decades, a bizarre idolatry of firearms that costs 30,000 lives a year, and an increasingly aggressive style of highly militarized law enforcement that when given a choice between the safety of officers and the safety of the public they are supposed to protect and serve almost always chooses the former. Needless to say, it is predominantly communities of color that bear the brunt of this more bellicose policing. Add to all this the effects of the social violence generated by persistently segregated communities, schools, and opportunities, and witness a body politic torn asunder. We can see these effects most acutely in the very city that surrounds us, which was turned over to a racial minority historically barred from political power to govern in the midst of its era of economic decline. Anyone aware of this country’s long, tragic history of race relations—the genocide of whole peoples, the coerced “immigration” of slaves, a civil war fought over slavery, the terror of the Klan, Jim Crow, etc.—cannot possibly be surprised at the cheapness of non-Caucasian lives and livelihoods on our streets and in our cities. In an age of a superfluity of information, ignorance is no excuse. In fact, it is unforgivable.</div>
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But all of these tragedies are compounded a thousand fold by the persistent denial of racism’s persistence, and racism persists because we hide it out of sight both geographically and psychologically. Historically, the term “ghetto” denoted the place where a society’s majority consigned those arbitrarily prejudged to be inferior, undesirable, unwanted, inconvenient. So segregated from our modern ghettos of inner cities, rural cell blocks, and distant reservations, the majority far more easily forgets the burden that race places on some while remaining blithely unaware of the ways in which their own race privileges them. For example, I’m a white man who lives in a majority black city, but despite my minority status I’m far less likely to be subject to state violence or coercion—the statistics prove it. The different hues of different skins plays favorites, colors lives, and shapes destinies.</div>
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Of course on the long perspective race relations in this country have improved, but no one can deny that racism still exists. Congratulate yourselves on electing a black man as president, but never forget the hysterical vitriol he has faced as a consequence of his race. Praise your generation for being far more tolerant than my own, but recall that we still live in a nation where football fans privilege the plainly racist mascot of their team over the sensibilities of the peoples practically extinguished by our ancestors. Treasure your friends of color, but ask yourself perhaps the most pertinent question on this topic: why don’t they live near you, or you near them? And always bear in mind the sobering thought that in the world they live in they could well be the next Michael Brown. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-48923904487724641382014-09-07T20:46:00.001-04:002014-09-08T06:29:36.065-04:00Academe Contra Logic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Every professor decries the lack of "critical thinking" skills in their students yet collectively they cannot settle on a rigorous definition of what the term means. Therefore they continue to complain and very few of them teach these purportedly <i>essential</i> skills. And for good reason! Classrooms of students schooled in elementary logic would routinely embarrass their professors!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-45788365829613429982014-08-23T07:07:00.001-04:002014-08-23T12:22:53.775-04:00This Is Your Society on Austerity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is your society on austerity. Cash-starved on the promise of a bounty that never comes, every public good weakens and begins to dissipate. Eager physicians step forward with a certain cure--privatize! But they are fakes and charlatans, and to place public goods into private hands is to let poison into the blood for certain. Society is kept alive only so long as its energy can be leached off and consumed by its pretend benefactors. Every limb is methodically cut off in the name of the cure, the blood is slowly drained away, every vital organ harvested one by one until the body politic dies, and then the flesh is eaten and the marrow sucked dry, leaving behind nothing more than a skeleton that rings hollow as noble savages wander dazed in the cage of its bones.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-67456024480771758432014-08-07T15:35:00.000-04:002014-08-07T15:36:08.104-04:00What College Is For<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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From my friend <a href="http://docnagel.blogspot.com/?m=1" target="_blank">Chris Nagel</a>:<br />
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"I think often about what college is for. If it is not a gateway to professional career and prestige—which it never really was, especially not for students like ours at CSU Stanislaus—, and not a means of increasing individual wealth, then what? In brief, if all the (mainly crude) economic justifications for higher education are not true, what could be a good reason to go to college?</div>
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"I reject the citizenship rationale, because not only do very few of my students aspire to this in any meaningful way, but it is not clear what citizenship would mean, and whether developing citizenship would be good for students (unlike the economic rationale).</div>
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"I think I can say honestly that I believe the following.</div>
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"College education is the best way to learn to understand how knowledge, information, and power work at the level at which they work to control the world. What college educators can do is explain how knowledge functions as a shape of power, how knowledge shapes social institutions and practices, and how it shapes us. The practical use of understanding all this is to be able grasp how the people who own knowledge use it, and what they do to manufacture reality with it.</div>
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"Yes, there are people who own knowledge and information. These are not your teachers, but the people who, ultimately, determine what your teachers teach. They are not researchers at Stanford or Cal Tech. Instead, they are the owners of knowledge, information, and power in our society. For instance, the research professor at an R1 institution must get funding for research, and competes to get it, from those who have a vested interest in that research—the funding agencies, which are government and corporations. They own the products of that research. They literally own it. They control to a great degree whether the researcher can publish the research, profit from it, make changes to it, develop it along new lines, or anything else. In grant contracts, this is laid out specifically: who owns and controls this new knowledge. The Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, Monsanto, Dow, and Chevron use this knowledge to maintain and increase their power. This is not power wielded repressively on us, not power that coerces us by threats of violence. This is power wielded by controlling the shape of the world, the shape of reality—and by controlling reality, the people who own knowledge shape everything that anyone can do in the world.</div>
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"Knowing how this happens means you are more free, because you understand what your own choices and actions in life mean, and what they don’t mean; what you can and can’t do; and what could matter and might not matter about what you do. Knowing how knowledge, information, and power are distributed, and how the owners of them build the world we live in, makes it possible to consider strategic options for living in that world."</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-61674572088907204392014-08-06T16:52:00.000-04:002014-08-20T10:41:32.461-04:00The Oldest Problem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The problem is as old as Plato, for whom the only blameworthy ignorance is not knowing what one doesn't know. And given the hyper-rich social media of the present day ignorance spreads much more quickly and at such a high volume from so many different sources that people tend to cluster around "facts" already congenial to their own world views and prejudices, rather than subjecting them to critical scrutiny. In such an environment strong convictions trump wisdom, resulting in the manic stupidity we witness at the highest levels of our public discourse. And the situation is barely better among our higher educators, I'm afraid. The future looks very dark.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-42190352511278195592014-07-16T09:25:00.000-04:002014-08-20T10:42:44.189-04:00On the Fetishization of Debt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What's peculiar about debt-obsessed politicians is that they think that society exists for the sake of a balanced budget, and not the other way around. They think that if the only way to balance the budget is to destroy society, then so be it. But no one really lives this way. Budgets are meant to address the necessities in life so we can flourish in freedom. No one would stop heating their home for the sake of erasing their debt; they would seek a new stream of revenue for paying for this necessity. Those who think otherwise are fetishizing over a mere economic abstraction.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-89060066636360580942014-06-11T13:18:00.000-04:002014-08-20T10:43:17.680-04:00Fifteen Lessons from Sandy Hook<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuBbXe2SbkxHgQ9fsFD-ralveYYQSBcr_0t_jolkIDjq3H4GXe_8RxNSWL6kXGTkCZ6Lw7igyaafZeSjxHQeNQlx9hd9I9qkc12zADMbgnJS849g8ROTMJBbsAVCuZwo4KicwZ75LwYUg/s1600/its-been-a-year-since-the-sandy-hook-shooting--and-america-has-done-nothing-to-stop-the-next-one+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuBbXe2SbkxHgQ9fsFD-ralveYYQSBcr_0t_jolkIDjq3H4GXe_8RxNSWL6kXGTkCZ6Lw7igyaafZeSjxHQeNQlx9hd9I9qkc12zADMbgnJS849g8ROTMJBbsAVCuZwo4KicwZ75LwYUg/s1600/its-been-a-year-since-the-sandy-hook-shooting--and-america-has-done-nothing-to-stop-the-next-one+(1).jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></div>
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1. Some gun people think that if you don’t know the difference between a clip and a magazine you’re not qualified to speak on the issue. They are wrong. The average person knows everything they need to know about guns: guns are by their nature potentially deadly and in the wrong hands can inflict ghastly damage on the human body.</div>
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2. Some gun people claim that because <i>any</i> object is <i>potentially</i> deadly <i>all</i> objects are potentially <i>equally</i> deadly. This is <i>prima facie</i> false. </div>
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3. Some gun people claim that because stricter regulation will not eliminate all gun deaths, no stricter gun regulation is warranted. By this logic all laws and regulations should be taken off the books, since no law is 100% effective. This is the perfectionist fallacy.</div>
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4. Some gun people think that being permanently armed is the best protection against random violence. The two armed and trained Las Vegas cops recently shot dead while eating their lunch is but the latest testament against this claim.</div>
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5. Some gun people claim that an armed citizenry is the best bulwark against governmental tyranny. But I would claim that if they are depending on an armed but unorganized citizenry to protect against tyranny they’ve already waited too long to react. If the U.S. military sides with the government, these citizens will be quickly obliterated by far more sophisticated weaponry. Preventing tyranny is most effective when it is still in its infancy. Rampant gun ownership and political freedom are not coextensive.</div>
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6. Some gun people justify their position by making references to fevered conspiracy theories, “false flag operations,” etc. These conspiracies only serve to distract us from real social and political crises that are right in front of us in plain sight: the evisceration of the middle class, the wholesale corruption of our political system by big money, legislative paralysis, criminal wars and their attendant profiteering, decreased civil rights, increased surveillance of citizens, deteriorating due process, indefinite detention, torture, etc. Reality is frightening enough without making up more things of which to be afraid.</div>
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7. Some gun people think that 30,000 gun deaths a year is the price that must be paid to secure their constitutional right to bear arms. But there is no individual right to bear arms embedded in the second amendment. The Supreme Court has erred, as it has in the past. Until some future court corrects this error, 30,000 Americans a year will continue to pay for it with their lives.</div>
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8. Even if there was an individual right to bear arms embedded in the second amendment, no right in the Bill of Rights is absolute. It is hard to imagine any right, however legitimate, being “worth” 30,000 deaths per year.</div>
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9. These are the best arguments the NRA has; everything else is slogans, falsehoods, expressions of desire, selective citations of evidence, fear mongering, etc.</div>
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10. To talk about guns in the U.S. is to talk about race. For every victim of a high profile mass white-on-white shooting, hundreds die and are wounded by gunfire in the inner city. This is why people of color favor more gun control than do whites, by a significant margin.</div>
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11. While thinking of countries that have struggled with the politically primitive rule of men with guns, I discovered the bitter irony that the U.S. is using its freedoms to abandon the more advanced concept of the rule of law to revert to this primitive political condition.</div>
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12. This primitive political condition was called the <i>state of nature</i>, the <i>state of war</i>, the <i>war of all against all</i> by people like Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes, all foundational thinkers to our way of governance. All would wonder at the absurdity of a culture that would willfully dispense with one of the primary functions of society: to protect citizens from arbitrary violence.</div>
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13. Guns make every one of our individual and social pathologies potentially more deadly. Sexually frustrated? Shoot women. Short tempered? Shoot your wife. Don’t like your grade? Shoot your teacher. Having a bad day? Grab your gun from the closet and eat it. Stressed at work and mad at the boss? Shoot him. Afraid of black people? Stand your ground and shoot first. Incompetent parent? Leave your loaded gun on the coffee table and let your five year-old shoot your three year-old. Stupid? Bring your gun to a party and play Russian roulette. Paranoid schizophrenic? Go buy a gun from WalMart and take aim at the voices in your head. Politically deluded? Assassinate two cops eating lunch. Low self-esteem? Get together with your friends and bring your long guns into a family restaurant. Confused as to which are the bad guys with guns and which the good guys with guns? Shoot. <i>Shoot</i>.</div>
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14. Nothing will change. If the slaughter of twenty first-graders in their classrooms cannot prompt a reform of our gun laws, nothing will. Perhaps if a gunman went to Congress and dispatched 20 politicians, maybe. But still only maybe. </div>
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15. The elites love that we love our guns, and are happy to let us have them. Having already taken the country from us, they allow us our guns and then play us off against our own government, the only instrument powerful enough to allow us the possibility of reclaiming from them what is ours—“we the people.” From the perspective of the elites, guns are actually pacifiers that allow some people the illusion of political agency. These people only worry about government “gun grabbers” and remain blind to the fact that the elites have grabbed well nigh everything else, as if nothing else—a decent job, health, affordable education, a future for their children—is as precious as having the ability to deliver death at a distance. This is no agency at all, or if it is it’s an agency for losers, losers who don’t even know that the war they spoil to fight is already over and they have been defeated, like those Japanese soldiers who fought on for years after their country’s surrender. To give them their due, at least these soldiers could take aim at their perceived enemy targets. But how do you shoot a multinational corporation? How does one take aim at capital? It is precisely this quandary that makes the American cult of the gun so absurd, so pathetic, so pointless, and so tragic.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-6390470956139073972014-01-22T09:20:00.002-05:002014-01-22T09:27:07.017-05:00Confirmation of an Ancient Thesis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The good book famously teaches that one cannot serve both God and Mammon. Christ himself drove the moneychangers out of the temple, understanding that one could not look to God while consumed with a desire to overfill one's pockets. Before that, Plato very explicitly cautioned that the appetitive types be kept very far away from the levers of political power, understanding that this ever-grasping class would steer the ship of state onto the reef of ruin. All of the ancient sages we claim to venerate have always warned us of overvaluing the "goods of the world," understanding the lust for things to lead to vice, sin, decadence, and social decay. Now, over two millennia later, we've given over whole societies, perhaps even the whole globe, to such types. And not just to the farmers, merchants, and craftsmen of Plato's day. No, we long ago gave our well-being over to bankers and financiers who can move vast sums of money across the globe at the stroke of a key, producing nothing but vast profits for themselves while producing not a single good or service for society. Given our present state of affairs, there is no need to revise the ancient thesis. Indeed, our horrified eyes pronounce the thesis <i>confirmed</i>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-29522807532744513152014-01-20T21:39:00.003-05:002014-01-20T21:39:53.638-05:00So Obvious It Requires No Further Explanation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading their army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.</i></div>
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― Theodore Roosevelt</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-26159558603292846292014-01-04T08:39:00.002-05:002014-01-22T10:58:10.385-05:00John Tomich (1960-2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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No one is ready for this. At this point in our lives, many of us have eulogized grandparents and parents, aunts and uncles, but no one expects this—to come together to mourn and remember someone who should still be walking among us, <i>here</i>, in middle life. No one <i>can</i> be ready for this. Even today I suspect that many of us have <i>still</i> not reckoned with the sudden reality of this enormous absence in our lives. For many of us, our minds are still struggling to catch up with our broken hearts.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>A week ago today my old friend Pete called me late to ask about some disquieting messages on his Facebook feed, and after rushing to my computer to see for myself I felt my heart go faint with vertigo. Within the hour, after several frenzied messages and phone calls, another old friend, Jane, called to confirm the worst. “He’s gone, John is gone,” she said with a catch in her throat, and in that instant I felt my heart plunge deeply into the pit of my stomach. After a moment of stunned silence and a couple confused, whispered exclamations of disbelief, we both agreed that we each had to go cry for a while, and we promised each other we would talk later.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I sat with tears running down my cheeks, and watched my screen for a while to see how we start to grieve in this age of the internet—and what I saw was a beautiful thing. I saw that since the time the world had started to steadily pull our lives in different directions, John’s had spread and intertwined and had its wonderful effect on other constellations of neighbors, colleagues, and friends, most of whom were unknown to me. As the pixilated messages of shock and sorrow, memory and condolence continued to slowly accumulate, I started to see them as a confirmation crystalizing right there in front of me, a confirmation of John’s exceptional qualities as a person and friend. His warm reach was long and embraced many, and many beyond me were devastated by this loss. This made me think of the only passage in western philosophy that almost always moves me to tears, the account of Socrates draining off the last of the deadly hemlock, and the reaction of his friends:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a companion (Plato, <i>Phaedo</i>, 116d).</blockquote>
<div class="p5">
After posting this tribute I went to bed, my face covered and tears flowing, awash in the collective calamity of our loss of our friend John, our husband John, our father John, our son John, our brother John, our kin John.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Every day since last Thursday I returned to read John’s page, and every night, alone with my thoughts, I would ruminate about what these testimonials and sentiments said about his life. These recalled to me John’s wide-ranging, curious, sharp, and playful mind, his articulate insights about the larger world, his love of tinkering with technology or any mechanical problem, his amazing photographic eye, his boundless passion for every genre of music under the sun, his shirt-off-his-back generosity, the boisterous wit of his conversation, and the warmth of his company over food and drink. But even while weeping silently in the dark over the loss of our friend, every night without fail I found myself smiling through my tears at his relentless sense of humor. Let’s be honest: no one can think about John for very long without smiling or laughing out loud, even now. We all have our “John stories,” and to tell them all would take many happy hours, if not days. The thing I’ll remember most vividly about John is his unrestrained and joyful guffaw that came from straight from his belly. There was never anything false or pretend about it, and it was impossible to resist. In John was an insatiable lust for life that found its expression in laughter, and it is his laughter that I will always keep with me.</div>
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<div class="p6">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Of course John’s family knows all of this better than any of us, because no matter how long any of us have known John, or how well any of us think we know him, his family know him at a higher magnitude of intimacy. I know that the words I am about to speak might not reach them in their sorrow, but I find I must speak them anyhow. An old friend of mine from Duquesne wrote me the following last week:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Life is full, especially the lives of those who impact us deeply. This is obviously true in life, but this fullness cannot be emptied, even in death. We need to find new ways to let their lives be full, and continue to fill us, and to pass this fullness on to others, and to share with them and fill them with the joy of a life well-lived, so that our loved one’s life remains, in a very real sense, a life well-lived. </blockquote>
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To Sarah, and Anton, and Stella: I know you realize that John’s life, though not nearly long enough, was well-lived and full—well-lived and full because you helped to fill it with your love and your own lives, and because his life and yours combined and flourished in love, filling you all. John’s life is still full even today because all of us are here to celebrate this fullness despite our sorrow. It’s okay to weep in your laughter and smile through your tears; I suspect that it is within this weird, paradoxical tension that we can continue to feel John most closely, even in his absence, so the life he lived can continue to fill us throughout our lives, and we can share the well-lived joy of his life until the end of our days. In this, your husband, your father, our friend, will remain. In us.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-37471228013006020752013-12-24T11:23:00.000-05:002014-01-04T11:04:02.505-05:00The Life of O'Reilly<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHJZu26BAkIOmZz9WAG4CLcVtPUAfcLJ_Z4BGf_3cQxbbrNP-X3csqQqqe6Sza4-8yRUCUB6hzhMrJIiqHLQzL3Q7yh1BjxP8HMl_biRRRvwCABDx-FJFfP_yMFG-PZxbn0pArq12hRhQ/s1600/BillO.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHJZu26BAkIOmZz9WAG4CLcVtPUAfcLJ_Z4BGf_3cQxbbrNP-X3csqQqqe6Sza4-8yRUCUB6hzhMrJIiqHLQzL3Q7yh1BjxP8HMl_biRRRvwCABDx-FJFfP_yMFG-PZxbn0pArq12hRhQ/s1600/BillO.jpeg" /></a></div>
It must be soul-killing to play a pompous, boorish nincompoop mouthing patent inanities, even if you're paid millions annually to do so. At least your average Tea Partier truly believes every element of his fantastic ideology. It informs his worldview, sustains his soul, and makes his heart jump with life. The life of O'Reilly is pathetic by comparison; a perfectly intelligent person wilfully playing a fleshly puppet spewing stupidity into the ether, to be recorded by posterity as nothing more than a pimp selling ignorance, all so he can trade on his empty celebrity and pose with the powerful.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-89651684906834293192013-08-29T09:38:00.004-04:002013-08-29T10:06:50.336-04:00On Syria<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYq4NLbGg5fm4GN5je4g9tNYtHuHNtKUXtuYV9-zNh98SSs4_zNJHIKl8WkF3GEQn_N5c4n6rvjixgog0ioTDwd9cMoThP_rELuRALFSRkn-61K60UUQ_UQvixuqDIv2LSksXl8JAyPU4/s1600/ap972293042119_custom-05a83871102915104d0a064eb1278f409e4979b3-s4-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYq4NLbGg5fm4GN5je4g9tNYtHuHNtKUXtuYV9-zNh98SSs4_zNJHIKl8WkF3GEQn_N5c4n6rvjixgog0ioTDwd9cMoThP_rELuRALFSRkn-61K60UUQ_UQvixuqDIv2LSksXl8JAyPU4/s320/ap972293042119_custom-05a83871102915104d0a064eb1278f409e4979b3-s4-c85.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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"I am against delaying reaction to what is a massacre of a thousand people," he said. "You saw these pictures of these dead children. Come on. This is horrific. We can't stand by and watch this happen."</div>
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Senator John McCain</div>
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What a foul and steaming pile of manure. We in the US routinely witness the slaughter of innocents without lifting a finger. We're not bothered in the least by mounds of corpses even if the product of our own policies or proxies--especially if the dead complexions are of a darker hue. We even consider our own 30,000 annual deaths by gunshots to be normal; we don't care enough to protect our own citizens from violence. We are the most hard-hearted of peoples, immersed in our own tawdry culture of distraction, isolated from each other and the world and armed to the teeth, but at the same time easily manipulated by reliable old war horses like McCain who never met a missile he didn't want to send over the horizon to deal death at a distance. The gift bequeathed by Bush and company, and one happily received by Obama, is the Orwellian concept of permanent warfare, where the enemy is ever-shifting and therefore unconquerable, providing morally and materially corrupt politicians the means of easily manipulating an apathetic and ignorant population. They can arbitrarily point to any convenient stack of bodies and loudly proclaim that a line has been crossed and <i>now</i> we must act <i>immediately</i>, that our former enemy is now our ally and vice versa, and to not act now is to allow this newly anointed evil to prevail.<br />
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Be assured that this strategy will work--yet again. But let us not flatter ourselves that the impending and deadly intervention is due to our collective kind hearts and far-reaching empathy. As history up to the present shows, we have an inexhaustible tolerance for the indifferent witness of slaughter. We care more about our "reality" shows than the reality of wholesale massacres; this is our default mode. When the missiles fall on Syria, it will be due to our fearfulness, our stupidity, our cowardice, and our seemingly unending desire to play the hapless marks of our conniving leaders.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-54327391463672475062013-08-07T15:37:00.000-04:002013-08-07T15:40:01.991-04:00A Modest Proposal<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAwdSz9ES4QaADHvxZ8WkHnSPTDPPMmNf8tveRP4NadaSNqwAVgJ5Nkzmq4cOev_6n0wluA4oZVdgfXKl8DkQvCzDr2axcm2dyBZJmUEW9IgO2tu112lwwTLdU7zw-PNIMy73vyc7O9DY/s1600/1-15--guillotine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAwdSz9ES4QaADHvxZ8WkHnSPTDPPMmNf8tveRP4NadaSNqwAVgJ5Nkzmq4cOev_6n0wluA4oZVdgfXKl8DkQvCzDr2axcm2dyBZJmUEW9IgO2tu112lwwTLdU7zw-PNIMy73vyc7O9DY/s320/1-15--guillotine.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
What to do with cannibals intent on consuming all of society for themselves and their own kind? The only sure course of action: off with their heads!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-18055716597228921512013-08-07T15:14:00.000-04:002013-08-07T15:14:09.936-04:00Economics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlqsaeJFEyG5LqIObHKYkJ62ibhcUHorAGfuOkFbT_2Kp0Z2Mh615DOzTWn7Uai-q7-emtSqh9jbcnTIyZf3toihtzNedwCGbH7sC1H9XTTJOKhZsx5T00WtnGqM2RmzwfMUguTQut2-E/s1600/200px-Portrait_of_Milton_Friedman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlqsaeJFEyG5LqIObHKYkJ62ibhcUHorAGfuOkFbT_2Kp0Z2Mh615DOzTWn7Uai-q7-emtSqh9jbcnTIyZf3toihtzNedwCGbH7sC1H9XTTJOKhZsx5T00WtnGqM2RmzwfMUguTQut2-E/s1600/200px-Portrait_of_Milton_Friedman.jpg" /></a></div>
Not only the dismal science; also the most dogmatic.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-87152180443467781112013-07-14T08:56:00.001-04:002013-07-14T17:26:45.357-04:00Strange Fruit<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2EpPO2c-xSzd-yjxNZVgL6OCwC17puP9eaiaqAsnCkZklUmA-RWwmclq2brQcR-iVng4FU1PDw0bU0C4y_dHTWdIueXrV2AhVMkxYVN6FK95t4wCLNMk9H2icKtzlVaq8a1NZKOUHRms/s1600/stragefruit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2EpPO2c-xSzd-yjxNZVgL6OCwC17puP9eaiaqAsnCkZklUmA-RWwmclq2brQcR-iVng4FU1PDw0bU0C4y_dHTWdIueXrV2AhVMkxYVN6FK95t4wCLNMk9H2icKtzlVaq8a1NZKOUHRms/s320/stragefruit.jpg" width="320" /></a>We are now a nation that legally justifies extrajudicial lynchings. I don't know what more needs to be known or said about us than that. As a white man in a city that's 80% black, I can't look my fellow Detroiters in the eye. A jury in Florida delivers a verdict last night, and this morning I can't stomach the stench of my own white skin.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-24754788111835155902013-06-20T23:02:00.001-04:002013-08-07T17:29:24.219-04:00On the Useful Idiocy of the 30%<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiokX75zAAaw5P9SXJ5MyCkrhVv2EH1JI3Mn5BfuV2Ak8C5N8SaACxc4qOkXcfgfhOZfsyRa4LKHQy9MplZbSTDqUzRZquu89UM0uhvN5fLPsFZ0mA_Aq8zWIKC_i6a7RJRY_YmZ5RUdcI/s1600/alecguinnessthebridgeon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiokX75zAAaw5P9SXJ5MyCkrhVv2EH1JI3Mn5BfuV2Ak8C5N8SaACxc4qOkXcfgfhOZfsyRa4LKHQy9MplZbSTDqUzRZquu89UM0uhvN5fLPsFZ0mA_Aq8zWIKC_i6a7RJRY_YmZ5RUdcI/s320/alecguinnessthebridgeon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Roughly thirty percent is the number most often cited in connection with birtherism, the false flaggers, the president-is-a-Kenyan-Nazi-socialist-communist-Muslim gang, and other elements of the paranoid right. On the one hand we should be grateful that this number represents a resounding minority; on the other hand, it should make us uneasy to think that every eighth person we pass on the street is one of these feverishly deluded citizens. Still, we might take comfort from the fact that this demographic trends old and white, and is passing from its mortal coil to be replaced by a more diverse and infinitely more tolerant generation of Americans. In other words, the “culture war” in the U.S. is resolving itself nicely, through the sheer weight of shifting demographics. One more generation, at the outside, ought to do it.</div>
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However, the paralysis of our economic and political system by the toxin of finance capitalism will endure until some kind of broad-based social movement demands systemic change. What becomes more evident every day is that the moneyed, multinational elite no longer regard themselves as a part of any civil society and are entirely unaccountable to any system of laws. Their economic machinations have become entirely detached from any traditional form of productive activity and as a consequence have left vast swaths of destruction in their wake. </div>
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The best model for understanding this global dynamic is colonialism. In the past, large colonial powers would insert themselves into various parts of the world where they could extract valuable natural resources for the purpose of the generation of wealth (often under the cover of “the white man’s burden”). Though clearly exploitive and often racist, these powers would frequently leave something useful behind: a school system, an efficient system of civil servants, etc. </div>
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But today’s colonialists are stateless and aim at the direct extraction of not only natural resources but also wealth itself in any form: school systems, the civil service, etc.—anything that could be sold or traded for a shekel. They buy and sell anything or anybody, without even a veneer of moral justification. They happily cannibalize their own societies and nations, insatiably. Their loyalty extends only to their bottom line; they live only for sheer, unadorned, soulless extraction, and they will extract everything if permitted.</div>
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Any of this can be easily verified through a variety of legitimate measures; indeed, as time passes and the impudence of our masters grows stronger, the evidence sits there plain as day for all to see. And our masters so love the 30%! Why? Because they would much rather have the population fixated on nonexistent plots of the FBI blowing up the Boston Marathon, or government agents slaughtering first-graders at Sandy Hook, or the building of FEMA concentration camps in Montana, or the president's impending imposition of Sharia law, or whatever Beck and Jones might be raving about on any given day. Our masters would much rather have us arguing about such inanities than focusing on what has become increasingly obvious since the late 1970s: that our government has come to represent large corporate business interests at the considerable expense of the people. Lenin had a phrase that could easily be applied to those who belong the 30%, and their Tea Party faction: “useful idiots.” That they are idiots has always been obvious; but let us never forget whose interests they really serve, even if obliviously.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-13064200631031853842013-06-16T23:37:00.000-04:002014-08-20T10:51:37.731-04:00Death By Drowning<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Zc6MMhRFEJTRD7VZ5kykFmMeQzFHCaQrOEACK-lN7xpJWoNE6goAGF_UfVRUFAt3EIhLnl1Jq4eIJTG-_3pL9xpQwap-t6dGi4UY6DPa3jBd9pThKNGW6Y5PFV-_Y6FG8-nurpnardA/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Zc6MMhRFEJTRD7VZ5kykFmMeQzFHCaQrOEACK-lN7xpJWoNE6goAGF_UfVRUFAt3EIhLnl1Jq4eIJTG-_3pL9xpQwap-t6dGi4UY6DPa3jBd9pThKNGW6Y5PFV-_Y6FG8-nurpnardA/s1600/images.jpeg" /></a>Go ahead, drown government in a bathtub. But bear in mind that society will be next.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9089612868171669397.post-4389648759315683882013-06-16T21:57:00.002-04:002014-08-20T10:52:45.511-04:00Topography<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikveIpQKKUqzxxClN5eUlA1WgrT7YDS8lswjpKqGR94WVmPaesDakEYM4cV2X55Tc9aAROIIA2qh-8vIioTC6d4LdhrG8FHLa62y8G3Awx60ynqQgYsGrFAWlVeTMaphY1w5STRUcrtUk/s1600/mtnmap.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikveIpQKKUqzxxClN5eUlA1WgrT7YDS8lswjpKqGR94WVmPaesDakEYM4cV2X55Tc9aAROIIA2qh-8vIioTC6d4LdhrG8FHLa62y8G3Awx60ynqQgYsGrFAWlVeTMaphY1w5STRUcrtUk/s320/mtnmap.gif" height="320" width="282" /></a><br />
<div class="p1">
The sooner we understand that government is simply the main instrument used to extract wealth from civil society on behalf of finance to the acute impoverishment of the former and the obscene enrichment of the latter, the sooner we'll have a better grasp of the topography and extent of the growing crisis.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0