From the Rooftops

A few words of humility

2006-03-09T23:23:00.000-06:00

I just want to thank whatever fool nominated me for a Koufax, Jason. But it is true, I have actually had a few visitors from the great beyond.

I just want to say to all you gentle visitors that I know I am not worthy of such an actual honor. I do hope you like my odd little take on things, and hope I can muster something of interest to a few of you during this time.

The blogville sweeps week, heh. Well, anyway, go check out our radio station. They deserve a visit.

Cheers all,
-swift.

Gotta get my two bits in

2006-03-09T00:05:00.000-06:00

So a friend of mine says of the ports deal that there's no question it will go through. He points out that this is just a money grab. $5.6B in cash is already in the accounts of somebody out there, just waiting for a few details before it becomes usable.

He's got a point. Not chump change. Furthermore, it's not as if the owners of DP World are increasing their capital. This is a rights deal. $5.6 billion for the right to operate what, six ports for twenty years? Something like that. For that kind of money, this thing is getting done.

The problem, though, is that this is inspiring cognative dissonance in the group Dave Neiwert called "transmitters" It's very hard for the demagogic, zinger-slingin' right-wing media agents to find an angle to work on this.

Their audience has been trianed for years to be bigots. The verbal onslaught puts the listener in a position of power by highlighting the target's otherness. Almost always. Now, with this deal, the "bad guy" is buying into the system, so you can't attack them from the same angle. The troops still want to, though. For the Fox News set, arab = bad.

But it's the other side of the equation that nobody really wants to talk about. The people who want this deal done are the sellers. By facilitating the diversification of the Sheiks' business interests many ends are being furthered, and none of them are germane to mainstream political converstaion in any U.S. demographic group. First and foremost is the vassal-state relationship (and cash flow) between the Sheiks and the financial hegemons of the West. Second is the gray- and black-market shipping that benefits so much of the political economy both outside and inside the U.S. Third is the further internationalization of trade and labor that so benifits the "ownership society."

There's more, I'm sure, but what's important is that the existence, power and aims of the beneficiaries of this deal make people uncomfortable. That's the elephant in the room. And it's why, even after some face-saving shuffle is worked out, that people all over the political spectrum will continue to point to it as a harbinger of W's decline.

What's interesting is that we have to assume that these "interests" are either politically indifferent to the Republican Party or that they don't mind maneuvering anybody over a barrel. Perhaps especially some boob who actually thinks he runs the show.

Watching rocks wait

2006-03-05T11:20:00.000-06:00

Watching rocks wait
for waves of time and passion
we tilt with the spin of the world

So easy to believe
that rocks feel time slow
they sit with such unambiguous patience

Stillness pervades
The crash of the waves does not move us
Is nowness long? It certainly is lingering.

The seagull dips fast
The wind lifts her alight
We feel the wave rising afore us again.

Gut Feeling

2006-02-22T18:10:00.000-06:00

It's ajust a hunch and you know it would never come to light, but the Dubai Port deal is a setup. S-E-T-U-P.

Check it, everybody is jumping on this guy now. The big question it leaves is not what happens to Bush, his time is over. The question is under what program do we govern? Who determines it?

The Republicans have set policy exclusively for a good while, and this is their failure. But the tendedncy will be to tar and feather Bush but let the basic program keep rolling.

The non-opposition party nominally called Democrats will likely do nothing to establish an alternative narrative but this would be a great time to do so. Strike while the iron is hot.

As for the setup, everybody wanted this guy out, he's been a miserable failure. So he will go down as a very early lame duck. The question for interested journalists and bloggers is who actually put the deal together, especially if Bush officially didn't know about it.

Cheers,
Swift.

Humor as a Force Driving Historic Events

2006-02-17T13:04:00.000-06:00

Who has not made a joke about our Darth Vader-esqe VP? I dressed up as him for Halloween in '04 (I thought it would be my last chance). He is a scary man.

We are emerging today from the first shooting by an office-holder since the Hamilton-Burr business in the very early days of the country, when we were still a Republic.

How does something like this happen? And I don't mean old men drinking and wandering around with guns, although that seems an obvious enough bad idea. What I am getting at is a bit more obscure and bizarre.

When I have been a part of momentous events, I have frequently noticed an aura or "charge" to the time leading up to and during those events. It is almost as if the magnitude of the implications of an event impinge upon the space time surrounding the event.

It is as if, not literally, but with a sense that somehow echoes our more mundane senses, there is a ringing in the ears, a numinous light that suffuses the edges of the field of vision. Actions seem propelled by their inner logics and time slightly distends, leaving a feeling of lag or echo.

So what was the scene of the shooting like? These feelings I am describing surround events that shape the lives of a small group of people. When it is something that shakes the foundations of an empire, what forces are at play?

I would propose that Dick Cheney is so nasty, so without redeeming qualities and so obvious in his avarice that he created a bubble of extreme tension within the National Consciousness.

We needed some way to deal with this. It is no secret that he is a bad guy. You could use him as an example to teach children that bad guys do exist. I told you I dressed up as him for halloween. Let me ask you- have you ever tried to make your face do what his does? It is not easy, yet it is a habitual and ordinary movement of his facial muscles. The infamous sneer of Vice President Cheney betrays an emotional visciousness that can only make polite, concerned patriots of mild temperment and middle age extremely uncomfortable. It is difficult to imagine the man being pleasant at all, for any reason. He is not avuncular, he appears incapable of kindness.

The cognitive dissonance of the mass of Americans, who hold at various levels of their awareness a distate and discomfort with this man, shaped the space around this shooting. Now we can laugh. Laughing is close to crying, after all. Now we can collectively process what has become a very public embarassing family secret.

The funny question that occurred to me was, what did he say after he shot Mr. Whittington? My thought was, "Next time, two hundred thousand." A freind of mine suggested simply, "Got 'im!"

A Difficult Truth in the Midst of a Nasty Situation

2006-01-21T18:29:00.000-06:00

I was talking today with my mom. I was trying to convince her to watch the Al Gore speech. She didn't want to because it would only depress her due to the fact that little if anything could come of it. During the course of the conversation she broadly derided blogs as being a bunch of people talking to each other and not producing any organization to speak of. It was worthy of thought.

The problem, as a few others have recently noted, is that the Democratic Party leadership does not read us. They do not, in an real sense, know we exist. It brings to mind the metaphor of sports radio. People call in to the sports radio channel and argue for or against the Vikings dumping Duante Culpepper (who just asled for a RAISE after a horrible 1/2 season and a serious knee injury ) and who, exactly are they talking to? And it occurred to me that that's it, we are just like that. Talking to the coaches and GMs of the party, who don't even ever listen to the show.

This is the nasty situation. Jonathan Weiler nails it over at the Gadflyer, saying of Elaine Kamarck (writing at Ruy Teixera's site):

So, whom does Kamarck propose to carry a strongly critical message to the American people, one capable of demonstrating real differences between the parties, not only regarding the administration's over-reaching on the war on terror but its failures on national security more generally: Hilary? Lieberman? Bayh? Biden? How are any of these folks going to make it clear to the American people that they stand for a meaningfully different, and better, understanding of how to protect America? As posted on Tom Paine today, Molly Ivins raises serious doubts about whether centrists like these are up to the task, on national security and other issues.

Molly Ivins, for her part, brings some her strongest writing ever to bear on the task. She asks, pointedly,

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

And this brings me back to my talk with my mom. She was livid with the Democrats. She was even angry with Hillary. My mom was in Beijing for the Women's Conference in 1995. She has steadily and proudly anticipated Hil's run for Pres for years.

I am asking now, Who are you, Democratic Party?! How do we speak to you? That is what we are doing here, and if the level of brains displayed by Harry Reid on Lehrer is the best you've got, if the facts of The American Prospect's recent scoop on Democratic Party polling are true (via Digby), what in God's name are you going to do? You do not have the brains to respond to this.

Go Home! Declare it over, quit and let somebody with guts take your place! This is a dire cultural situation and we are too damn busy trying to keep our financial ends met to try to change the system with pot and rock concerts any more.

(For my part, I have thought this somewhat the crux of the matter for some time now. As I was writing in my recent post about John Lennon, our expectations are overwhelmingly shaped by what happened in the early '70s. I get the sense, today, of a sort of subliminal cultural puzzlement (much of it from boomers like my mom) about why no one is in the streets protesting this slow march to totalitarianism. And the answer, of course is that no one has time. That, and like I said, no draft.)

Which brings us to the difficult truth. If we can't stop it, we are slowly marching towards a discontinuity in our governmental structure.

If we can't get the Democrats to listen to us, they will keep losing, and as Al Gore so straightforwardly points out, our Constitution will either change or become meaningless. And that's the nasty, nasty truth. Because nobody else is telling the Democrats this. And if they can't hear us then they will keep believing the poison mirror of the oligarchs' media.

Maybe we need to have a liberal blogospheric position and lobbying event. Develop a platform, take small donations on the Dean model and start targeting specific legislators and party officials. I wonder if the Governor himself wouldn't give us some suggestions where to start. Otherwise, what are we doing here?

Holy Fuck.

2006-01-18T22:26:00.000-06:00

Al Gore is reborn. The change is not only thorough but deep, and will be a lasting one. He is now a man who knows what conviction is. We should all write all of our congresspeople and ask if they have watched his speech and ask that they make public shows of support.

I have only one real thought that I want to share this moment with those who come to read my musings, and it has two parts. The basic thought (which I have not seen mentioned elsewhere) is that as a former Vice President, Mr. Gore enjoys certain priveledges. One is a lifelong dispatchment of dedicated Special Service teams, the most advanced security one human being can be provided. Another priveldge he enjoys is the right to a daily security briefing at a level of security clearance coequal with the Office of the President.

Ok, one more thought. There has been a great deal of thought expended be pretty much all of us on the activist and committed liberal end of the political spectrum since 2001. Our efforts have centered around how we will find a place in a nation that is clearly headed for an uncertain future. Al Gore has had a personal involvement on those moments which led to our introspections, and he gets it. Thank God, he really does understand the gravity of this moment in history, and he respects the part he has been given to play.

Go to C-SPAN, watch the speech.

Jottings from a busy man..

2006-01-17T23:18:00.000-06:00

Well, started school today. It's something being 30 and entering a major university as a transfer student.

One thing that impresses me is just how many people are there. Maybe because the age groupong is so narrow (and race/demographics, too), it becomes slightly overwhelming. The little (and very diverse) community college I had been attending was full of friendly people. Here, where there are overwhelming numbers of relatively similar people, there seems little impetus for small talk. There would be no real likelihood of connecting again, after all, so why bother?

I have one class in the social sciences building. It is a place marked by subtle indications of a population that feels need to dig in, facing an onslaught. I do not blame them. Academics are often killed first. It did make me really think, however, about how very much sound thought is guarded in academia. Even given the obvious shortcomings of the institution there is a great deal worth protecting.

Yesterday was MLK Day. I saw my son sing in his community choir at the local childrens' museum. They sang a variation of "We Shall Overcome." I was reminded just how radical an act belief can be, when the belief is something that flies in the face of history and precedence. We are in need of reminders regarding the odds faced by the civil rights movement. We should be honored to be able to inherit thier lessons.

Peace,
-swift

Irony strikes again: Bird Flu in Turkey

2006-01-12T23:42:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: This post has nothing directly to do with its title.

The end is nowhere near here, but somehow it is easy to believe it is.

Watching the History Channel's show on John Lennon tonight brought home the differences between 1972 and today. The difference is not that the FBI isn't spying on us. The difference is that in the Viet Nam era there were tens of thousands of protesters living in ways that made the FBI's monitoring attempts very difficult.

Today we politely blog from home, secure that our aliases present to the world only the face we want seen. We are fools.

The Republic our founders so quixoticly handed off to us some two hundred plus years ago is dying tonight in Washinton D.C. "Conservative" legal scholars are dancing in the streets and Democrats are standing by the hospital bed offering milquetoast and off-topic rebuttals.

The majority of our contry is asleep at the wheel. Out here in the hinterlands of the liberal blogosphere we are heartened by stories of yore, Nixon's landslide in '72 before his ignominous fall. Well, for years before his fall there had been civil unrest rocking the easychairs of the middle-American householders. Today there is only a feeble bleating. The absense of the Draft and its concomitant deaths makes all of today's challenges to democracy seem abstract.

Today there is a growing sense of unreality as ever worse offenses against common sense and the principles of Liberty and Justice are only pooh-poohed, and yet the day-to-day living of basically all of us remains unchanged. Our lives are unaffected by these viscious blows to our collective dignity because quite frankly, we've mostly given up that dignity years ago. We sacrificed it piecemeal, taking jobs we knew were complicit in the moral quagmire of modern business because we were bereft of better choices.

Even those of us who haven't compromised ourselves this way have grown somehow used to losing. We have seen the futility of every kind of straegem and organization. We have witnessed the rise and dominance of hard cash and plutocratic control and we have despaired even as we railed against it all. And we have watched television. We have sat benumbed as it all floated away. There is no fabric of public gathering left, and without fabric, a tapestry can tell no tales.

Somehow, though, we all believe in the fable of Nixon's fall. We believe that bad guys lose, even if good guys don't necessarily win. This irrational belief may someday be our best strength, if it ever motivates enough people to stand up. With impending news of a court that will endorse even the most foul and blatant eviscerations of Democracy, I hope that people are ready.

But before I go...

2006-01-04T23:47:00.000-06:00

One big, multi-part question.

Stroll around the lefty blogs, Mathew Gross, Bottle of Blog>, TPM, Hullabaloo, etc. and ask yourself, is this a different universe? Do the emplyees of newspapers and TV news just eat gray mush all the time? Is that why there is no sense of the magnitude or very close proximity of political uproar?

Or is it something else? Do the reporters know what's going on any more? Certainly Andrea Mitchell, wife of Alan Greenspan, has an inkling (follow the TPM link), but what about the writers at major daily newspapers? What about the folks producing news segments for the networks? Because it's either that they don't know or they just don't want to talk about it.

More than any of the other stuff (at least at the moment) this makes me worried. This silence portends denial of a serious sort, the kind that can progress to dangerous, stultifing depths. Once this kind of denial starts to become really ingrained (like, a year or two ago), it becomes hard to change it. Where is the great catalyst that shakes the media rubes from their torpor? And what if there isn't one big shock but maybe a series of small bumps? The kind of bumps one might feel as an oligarchic semi-democracy goes off-road, veering slowly toward the swamps of despotism? How would the docile, sleep-walking media cover it?

Just a question.

STATUS UPDATE: PENDING

2006-01-04T23:07:00.000-06:00

Already suffering mild blog-fatigue, and also somewhat dizzy from the exigencies of everyday life, I looked up and realized that I was shortly to be entering a vortex. That is to say my transfer admission orientation to the bureaucratic behemoth is tomorrow, and since I am as usual a 5n-dimensional piece going into a space desingned for rectilinear 3-d packages, I will be very busy for the next few weeks as I complete my obeisances to the ancient gods of inconvenience and bother.

The beginning of a useful idea

2006-01-02T18:15:00.000-06:00

Warning: Very speculative ramblings! (No, I wasn't high, it just reads like I was.)

Balance and bringing balance. The fine art of strectching ones capacities in a way that develops precedented areas of strength while building capacity in underdeveloped areas so as to provide stability. I see the opportunity for a new naming of a dynamic. This would be a part of homeostasis, the compelling movement towards homeostasis.

This is the challenge of all contained entities. (What the living fuck is a 'contained entity' you ask? Well, I'll tell you what I mean by that.) A contained entitiy is any living being or organization thereof whose limits are easily demonstrated. A nation, a corporation, a person. Less true of a family, but sometimes and in some ways, sure. Not any kind of ecosystem that is not threatened. Communities vary, some are very open-ended, diverse or philosophically sound enough that they could be considered as uncontained. The important thing is the demonstrability of the limits of the entity in question.

Anyway, that's my whole point. Different demands based on this ill-defined variable, which can be seen at a wide variety of scales.

For groups of less demonstrable limits, the compelling movement towards homeostasis can be applied to the organizing principles of the group rather than the specific members and their established functions. Communities within science, art and philosophy are examples of this aspect of the dynamic. Existentialists failed to develop those elements of the organizing principles of their community that could have provided better stability, and thus had a very short moment of initial prominence. Newtonian physicists have done a much better job by comparison, stretching into fluid dynamics and the physics of atomic interactions even when the Tao (flow) and "quantum" reality are categorically beyond the limits of their purview.

As a counterpoint to this idea, I suppose that we could also say if an entity is very specifically focused in purpose and also well established in its context, it can be said to have enough strength and balance that the demands of this dynamic are less pronounced. I am thinking here of species niches at any level of ecosystem (including the role of various cells in a body, paramecia, etc.) Also in this group would be particularly well adapted/established organizations, such as trade groups like the National Association of Manufacturers. However, even for entities in this situation, the situation is changed in intensity rather than kind.

Trade unions are an example of a whole category of entity that have largely failed to respond to this demanding dynamic.

Also implied by my proposal (demonstrated very clearly by the example of trade unions) is the existence of a complementary dynamic, the continuing change at any given specificity of environment.

. . .

Why yes, I have been practicing my T'ai Chi. Why do you ask?

Whew.

2006-01-01T01:03:00.000-06:00

Thank goodness that's over. Let's get on.. wait. That schmuck's still president? Arrrghh! @*$#! @*$#! @*$#! @*$#!!!

Welcome to 2006. Remember to be good to each other.

Decisive action + no casualties= Sure thing.

2005-12-30T23:58:00.000-06:00

Raw Story, who you should all check all the time, has been linking to the interesting developments in the German press regarding the U.S. striking at Iran. The latest in Der Speigel (english), is very specific. Airstrikes soon, because of recent anti-Isreali rhetoric.

This "reason why" has the ring of truth to it. From der Speigel:

The DDP report attributes the possible escalation to the recent anti-Semitic rants by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose belligerent verbal attacks on Israel (he described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map") have strengthened the view of the American government that, in the case of the nuclear dispute, there's little likelihood Tehran will back down and that the mullahs are just attempting to buy time by continuing talks with the Europeans.

George seems like the kind of guy who would think that talking tough is serious business. This kind of thing might be enough to get his dander up. If he feels like going on the offensive is a good way to reclaim the initiative in the domestic political debate, this would be one way to do it.

Another factor weighing in favor of W. taking this step is the looming State of the Union Address. The man has to talk about something, you know? What good news does he have?

So, lets just say it looks like 5:4 in favor, since it's still a very drastic step. If they take it, what would this mean?

Well, for starters it would hugely affect the domestic political equation in Isreal, where the last I read, Sharon is not really doing well after his stroke. Regardless of how coherent Sharon is, however, the military is certainly quite ready to go after Iran. The polis in Isreal has, of course, been finally easing a bit to the left. Bad news for W. and the neocons. If they can start something with Iran, it's a lot more likely that the yahoo Netanyahu will end up back in power.

The wider gulf states would probably stand to benefit in the short run, depending on how the strike goes. Shi'a populations in the Gulf have of course been very attentive to the goings on in southern Iraq. If the media in the Middle East can play it right, the Gulf State Shi'a will be both somewhat chastened and more loyal to their own governments. This would likely involve some combination of loudly declaiming the U.S. action (what I think of as 'diplomatic outrage') while also finding some way to criticize Iran for destabilizing the region. So far so good. The appearance of these opportunities might be enough to earn tacit approval (read: encouragement) from some of the Gulf States named in the der Speigel article.

The problem, of course, is that Iran would not be incapacitated and would probably strike back. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard are a higly independent, initiative oriented elite force. I would look for something really nasty to go down in Iraq, probably in the Green Zone. The U.S. troops have likely gotten used to being able to somewhat trust Shi'a Iraqis. Typical of any Bantustan, the locals are needed to staff basic amenities. My guess is that there are several Iranian intelligence assets working in the Green Zone. If our guys weren't constrained by ideological blinders, they would take this into account. Of course, if that were true, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

Furthermore, I would not expect the general populace of Shi'a Iraq to be very happy with a U.S. airstrike in Iran. Many Iraqi Shi'a have family living in Iran, after all.

Also, there is a huge potential for bizarre nastiness with the Iran/Turkey/Kurdistan situation, should this strike take place.

At the very least, it would really complicate things. At worst we would be looking at the wider regional conflict that we have all been dreading (except the Christian "End Times" fanatics, of course, they would be thrilled). No matter what, it would make a smooth withdrawal of U.S. troops all but impossible.

Basically, this would be an idiotic move certain to lead to terrible developments; in other words, par for the course.

Okayness-ing

2005-12-29T21:47:00.000-06:00

-Or, What I saw at the movies-

Once upon a time there was a little cartoon character with the perfectly goofy name of Spongebob. Spongebob was a humble little guy in shirt and tie, and though he worked at a fast food joint, he also championed the temporary victories of staying young in the face of impending adulthood. While this sounds at first blush to be just another push towards the elongation of childhood, it is in fact very much more.

Spongebob, you see, has the distinction of being very successful. He also has a best friend, and their relationship earned their movie a heaping ton of outcry from the carping culture-crappers of the religious right.

The fun thing is that the movie earns it. Especially if you are a guy, I strongly suggest seeing this movie. What a wonderful warping and playful twisting of the half-knowledge of incipient sexuality. What a really, really gay-and-straight-friendly film. What a bunch of very bizarrely adult visual gags. What a feel good film, and in all the borderline ways implied!

-------

There are three big thematic movements that I see shaping the development of our culture (may be more, but these three at least). Number one is the very dangerous and dramatic gyrations of political form that accompany the late stages of empire. It's the one I usually write about. Number three is the curious and oft-underestimated persistence of spiritual emergence throughout the populace. That's for another time. Second, though, is the ever increasing tolerance and understanding prevalent within our culture.

Not sure about that last one? Consider, my lady love and I recently watched Notorious, the 1946 Hitchcock film starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. A wonderful movie. There was so much wrestling with and suppressing of emotion that you could have mapped the waves of psychic energy had you sand to dance across the space between those actors. They were that tense. Of course, Hitchcock, 1946, etc.. but still, have you heard of the Eisenhower years that followed? Notoriously repressed, haha.

Today, consider, I work (in produce at a goofy, high-end, natural foods grocery) with a fellow, a family man, a few years older than me, quite the character. He tells this story one day, about the neighbor girl who comes over because her family ignores her, watches TV a lot with his family. Says to my friend that she thinks she might have an STD (she's 14). He kicks his kids (11 and younger) out of the room and goes through this very dense, emtionally laden territory in a sensitive, caring way, takes her to the clinic. A gut wrenching story, but in a big way it's really about the neglect the girl is suffering at home. I bring it up here because later on, while there's nobody else in the cooler, I take the moment to tell him I think he did exactly the right thing, and he just opens up, starts talking, sharing his worries and cares. We talk it over a bit, and later he thanks me. This would've been all but impossible in 1985, much less 1945. In 1905 our middle class jobs barely existed. Our liberal bourgoise clientele certainly had no equivalent as sizable or prominent.

Today, I still hear people use the the word 'gay' as a derogatory adjective for things or actions, and of course the hate fest of the 2004 elections is another topic entirely. However, my gay family members are not only tolerated, they are openly integrated into many folds of society. Friends and relatives who are inter-racial couples are met with nothing worse than infrequent glares, at least in my fair northern clime (another co-worker just went to visit in-laws down south and said they were not served at a restaurant on the road). What I'm getting at is that I know that prejudice and bigotry are not dead, but they are losing, and have been, steadily, for quite some time.

Once upon a time (the 1990's) I liked to reflect on how powerful I thought it would be that a whole generation was being raised without any cultural endorsement of bigotry. From "The Real World" to "Will and Grace," "American History X" to "The Bird Cage," amazing work was going on, culturally. And everywhere bigotry was a shameful thing. There were no notable examples of a proud bigot other than the extremely marginalized, for example David Duke. Then came Karl with a K, and well, the rest is recent history. All the same, though, this recent blip of backlash cannot come close in real power to the trends that have shaped popular entertainment since the birth of mass media.

There are a lot of reasons for a lot of different parts of this that I would love to get into here (and bore my one or two readers,) and I should loudly note that the popular acceptance of misogyny is profoundly, disturbingly and puzzlingly harder to combat, but I try to limit my rambles to two major topics at a time at most. Enjoy the good mood, friends, and go rent the Spogebob Squarepants Movie.

Peace,
-swift

Silently

2005-12-27T21:54:00.000-06:00

All the faces of the Goddess are real
aware of the answers we move about our dreams
awake or in denial we conduct our dealings
Love or dross, we spin our fables of meaning
and All our histories are real

The potential for language generation on blogs

2005-12-27T14:01:00.000-06:00

Over the holiday madness (an empire built on the backs of retail employees), I had an opportunity to reply to this very good guest post by poputonian over at Digby's Hullabaloo. Poputonian compares the liberal blogosphere to the social environment and pamphleteering in revolutionary era Boston.

Poputonian's rumination on the variety of groups working in loosely associated fashion during Paul Revere's time was apropos. The feeling of revolution is very much in the air out here on the blogs. The people of late 18th-c. New England, however, were involved citizens in a way that is vastly different from our contemporary info-polis. Today, there is little indication that Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry or any of their friends really know what a blog is.

Congressional leadership amongst the Democrats must very much feel the point of our semi-revolutionary fervor is directed at them as well as at the corrupt heart of Washington's halls of power. And they are right to feel this. I doubt that any of the prominent, socially climbing bloggers like Markos or Josh Marshall were happy when Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This is the sort of anti-democratic legislation that will haunt the United States for generations to come, and a lot of it came during the Clinton years.

I think I have written before about how happy I am that there is a thing called the Thirty-Something Dems Working Group in Congress. That is a good place to start. However, sooner or later we will need to address issues within the leadership of the party. The first ten minutes of Bulworth, where the senior Senator from California is hogtied by lobbyists and his own chief of staff, remain one of the most trenchant critiques of modern politics ever to see mainstream exposure. There has been no real change to this dynamic.

The locally prominent, reform minded Democrats that I talked to at a Howard Dean rally were all very cognizant of this problem. The closest any of them would get to a clear discussion of the problem, however, was to call out "special interests" and demand vague reforms. This abysmal abandoning of effective use of language was on prominent display throughout the Kerry campaign as well. Kerry was very good at talking in code words to try to indicate that he was far more liberal than he had ever really shown publicly. For my part I believe him. So what? Who knows it? Nobody. Even within the party, people are unable to speak plainly about the problems that this country faces.

Out here in flyover country, people outside of the political system are more able to talk to each other about politics than the Democrats are because the Dems realize at a subconscious level that in order to talk plainly about the systemic biases in this country they will have to explose their own indenture to the financial/insuance/medical, military/industrial/communications and marketing interests that have always had an overwhelming interest in the operation of this "democracy." The plain language that people want to hear from their politicians is difficult to manage when you are at risk of stepping on the toes of giants. Consequenty, voters are turned off by Democrats because it is clear that there are too many circuitous thought patterns and coded meanings going on when they talk.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are starting to wake up to the fact that they are fighting for their lives. They are also not from among the Beltway in-crowd who have far too much a penchant for the hierarchies of their own society. Nancy Pelosi in particular, with her recent proclamation that there will not be one party-wide position on Iraq is opening the door to the plain use of language by Democrats.

What needs to develop now is a sense that this variety of opinion and subsequent plain language is a basic principle of the party. The Repuglicans have, after all, been crazy good at promulgating very specific memes. The Democrats can differentiate themselves from this by using widely varied, but direct language. There is an army of think-tank language engineers working for them in this capacity right now. It's us, out here in the blogoshpere. The question is whether any will notice.

This is a very exciting time for our country.

2005-12-20T15:47:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time a very rigorous thinker, alarmed at trends within his culture, set out to make a differnce by writing books. Fortunately for him books were still a good way to make an impact in wider society. His major works, 1984 and Animal Farm did make a difference. Millions of people have read them and perhaps as many as tens of thousands have taken their warnings to heart.

Unfortunately, books are not what they once were in the great cultural debates. It seems likely that Our Hero, George Orwell's writings, were in the end too dated and too British to prevent the emergence of dangerously totalitarian trends in the

United States

.

Up until the Bush II years, I thought that Brave New World was far more relevant to our contemporary doldrums of democracy. Certainly it remains as relevant as it ever was. There has never before been a society as saturated by the anaesthetizing vicarious pathos of popular drama as ours is today. And as changes in culture have become more drastic, uncertainty in the wider existential environment has increased. People seem to always relate to their society and culture for existential cues and anchors. Who am I to question whether this is right or wrong. It is the way it is.

As these turbulent changes increase in their frequency and magnitude, however, there are born several complementary urges within the polis of culture. Huxley wrote in Brave New World about the urge to escape and immerse oneself in diversions. I know that, for example, I have become much more a sports fan in the past several years than I was as a younger man. I have watched democracy crumble and my fellow citizens endorse the new order in various ways, and it has been comforting for me to have some drama in which the resolution was not of such great consequence. Plus, sometimes in sports my team would win.

There is another cultural movement, however. The one that Orwell wrote about. For a long time I thought it far less applicable in modern times. Not because of any great progress in the tapestry of our culture, but just because the "soft fascism" of celebrity worship and popular branding were so successful that the more draconian methods were being rendered unnecessary.

Then, of course, following the great corporate putsch of vertical integration and neo-liberal economics, there came the demogogic onslaught of the late Clinton years. The consolidation of power had begun in earnest. The inclination towards dominance was in full flower, but there was still no need for these other methods. After 9/11 it was not about need, but rather about opportunity and inclination.

What can be said of this authoritarian type of political dominance? First and foremost is a reaction against an "other," who is "causing" these disruptions. If there is no convenient other outside of the body politic (the Hun, the Jap, Osama/Saddam Hussein), then otherness will be projected internally on some subculture or opposition political party or even a personality type or psychological trope.

Hyper-masculinity is usually promoted as a virtue, espcially in western (Apollonian?) cultures. We recently had the cultural experience wherein the intellectual allowance of nuance was openly ridiculed. Disgust and a queasy form of amusment mingled in the awareness of my fellow "liberal elitists" as we whispered in horrified tones of atavism and its perils. Loudly, many pondered leaving the

United States

for

Canada

or Western Europe, where the virtues of civilization are not so casually discarded.

Another common tendency in this authoritarian expression of the play for dominance is one that Orwell expressed so well that we now call it after him. The idea of internally contradictiry language and constellations of ideas was also expressed by an American author, Joseph Heller, who wrote interestingly not of a hypothetical country in an abstract timescape, but rather of his experiences in the U.S. Army Air Corps. His insights are also enshrined in our language, of course, as we call Catch-22's after the book he wrote. In either case we can clearly see the dominance oriented ego work to overcome rationally expressed objections by denying the validity of the rational framework itself.

The dominance oriented ego is then unfettered by common sense in its exercise of Force. This is because common sense is dependent upon language and language (again in the Apollonian west especially) is most often overdependent upon development of rationality. Poets, preachers and other charismatic leaders, of course, are imprisoned or simply shot.

The Bush II administration, in all its Orwellian glory, has proffered us a new form of this internal contradictoriness. Today, this use of intentionally irreconcilable pardigms has been extended to the philosophical arena. For example, the GOP rose to power claiming a mandate for "states' rights" but quickly acted to impose federal authority over medical marijuana and assisted suicide laws. Some of this is mere hypocrisy, or in the case of states' rights, synecdoche for racism. It is a widespread and pesistent trait, however. The idea that there is a "strict constructivist" core of legal philosophy driving the current administration sounds good when explained: as the Constitution is written!! However, there is no doubt that even the more authoritarian and aristocratic of the framers of the Constitution would argue vociferously against the ability of the Executive to usurp the power of the Legislature and Judiciary regarding torture and spying, and they would likewise be horrified at the all but endoresement of a State Religion.

This form of argument, utilising a philosophical context for one basis of action and then acting clearly against that philosophy, short circuits the ability of any opposition politics that does not come from a well founded philosophy. In a day such as ours, when the dangers of hypocrisy have been irrelevant to the well being and comfort of most citizens for multiple generations, there is almost no cultural traction available to those who would argue against such brazen plays for dominance. What can be done is to call out these bastards for lying, call them out for having despotic aspirations, call them out for corruption and sleaze. In short, what must be done is to speak plainly.

I wrote previously about the tensions involved in challenging the underlying premises of a culture (to wit, why Hillarycare was more politically difficult than engaging in torture). There is a reason that the Democrats have had a much easier time challenging Repuglican corruption than they have challenging their despotic aspirations. To challenge the existence of corruption reinforces the idea that corruption in business and politics is the exception rather than the rule. To challenge the despotic tendencies of the juggernaut that is Bush II/Rove/Cheney calls into question the will to power that is the underlying premise of modern business practice.

This is a time when the existence of philosophical distinctions of great import is much closer to the surface than usual. Hypocrisy is categorically dangerous because it is always oriented towards freeing the will to power. In order to challenge hypocrisy, a politician would have to implicitly challenge the lying about social and economic reality that frames debates like international movements of labor. They would be challenging the pervasive disparity in CEO pay to the well being of median wage citizens. It is, in short, very difficult to do.

But because of the in-your-face egregiousness of the Bush II administration, this is a time when the dangers of hypocrisy have been exposed. The surrounding cultural context is well developed enough that an aspiring politician could sieze this opportunity and draw critical connections within the popular awareness. Not between hypocrisy and the surrounding culture of corporate dominace, that would still be political suicide. Rather, the foul smell of incipient despotism that emanates so powerfully from Dick Cheney and Karl Rove can be named and repudiated. Likewise the disengenuous obliviousness of modern Repuglican politicians who act as if social reality had no practical reality or consequences can be called for what it is. These simple, forceful acts of language could form the basis for a new examination of what we, as a culture, are all about.

It is very unlikely, however, that this will happen. Democrats are rarely bold, and never brave in the face of criticism from within the ranks of their own party establishment. If they disregard this opportunity, however, we will face a time when the premises of our culture are redefined to categorically include the right of power to act unilaterally.

Since this cannot happen in a vacuum there would be significant social and political turbulence. Do not relish in this thought. Whatever the outcome of this upheaval, it would not play out quickly, nor would any outcome recognizable as victory be very likely for anyone.

Update: According to Defensetech, agents of the type asked to do this spying are upset (via Josh Marshall). One of the problems we would face as a country if things do continue to go bad, is that there will be considerable fallout within the intel and defense communities. More than there already has been. Also in that post, apparently Sen. Rockefeller has been taking the extreme nature of the White House's policies very seriously. If he sent and kept hand-written copies of his letter protesting the program it's because he did not want to use his computer. Also, Digby has been working hard to demonstrate why the White House must've wanted to go beyond the reach of the courts in the first place.

Ariel Sharon Hospitalized for Stroke

2005-12-18T22:20:00.000-06:00

Well, if he wasn't 77, I'd say it sucks to throw the Isreali Right-Wing party into dissarray. You make a lot of enemies, definately some of whom could arrange for you to have a stroke.

Given his age, it's no sure thing, but it is an interesting coincidence.

In the Guardian aritcle on the topic this paragraph near the end cought my eye. (via True Blue Liberal)

Mr Sharon has never spoken openly about how he moved from being a major supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestinian areas to being the first premier to withdraw from settlements. He has also not spelled out the political direction he wants his new party to take so he would leave no clear legacy for the party he created. "Sharon is driven by the late recognition of the necessity of fixing Israel's borders as a matter of vital national importance. He has not disclosed the reason for his change of heart because he felt that it would incur too much political resistance to his plans," said Mr Ezrahi.

Well, I hope he's got it down in his journals. Sharon is clearly no peacenik, but by his recent change of heart on this issue, he has become a very interesting political figure. Remember that he could almost certainly be tried for war crimes for his role in Lebabnon in the early 80's, if anybody had the guts and resources to do it, and he swept into office by provoking the second intefadah. Vacating Gaza (and subsequently splitting Likud) was a bold, clumsy move, and it will etch Sharon's name deeply into the history books. I hope he is well.

To Protect and Serve

2005-12-18T21:02:00.000-06:00

There is a relationship between a free press and democracy that famously goes back to the American Revolution. Today there is a court-endorsed precept that advertising consititutes free speech. In fact it is not free speech, it is paid for. Neither is it freely available to those able to pay. Advertising may be rejected for any reason, of course, but the only real reason to do so is content, and that means politics whether it is party politics or simply that other advertisers (or a parent company) may be offended.

There has been a growing sense in the meta-media environment that the Democrats do not act in a focused, savvy way when presenting ideas to the public. The Republicans on the other hand, especially since the Reagan administration, have made media management a calling and a craft. No story is accidental or uncoordinated. Ratings hooks abound and good meals are served. A sense of camraderie is fostered.

The Democrats, agrue sympathetic media foot soldiers, aren't doing their part. There needs to be, offer Lakoffian tacticians, a bigger picture and coherent language. (That much is true, of course, but can we please talk also about content? Where are the cries for a coherent philosophy from Dems? Oh, yeah, right-wingers ask that question. Think about it.)

The issue today, though, is the idea that the Dems need to appproach news like the R's do. By this logic, the wiretap story would be argued on cable news (on stations where management is anywhere from sympathetic to partisan in favor) by armies of heretofore unknown talking heads trained by billions of dollars in contributions from degenerate, rabid plutocrats. The same catchy phrases would be used by many of these message transmitters, and letters and editorials would appear in scattered news outlets across the country arguing the very same points. Soon, drama would ensue. People would tune into cable news a little more often, to catch juicy developments and heated rhetoric. Advertising revenue would be plentiful. Then, answering "the will of the people," Democratic pols would offer concern alternating with indignation, win elections and cheat on redistricting plans to make sure they can never lose again. At least, I'm pretty sure that's how it goes. Did I miss anything?

What it all amounts to is that the media reps want to be spoon fed. As the newsrooms around the country have gone more and more to budget management ala the Harvard Business School model, there have been precious few resources for investigative shoe leather and patient building of backstory. We all know this. This is why the sympathetic foot soldiers of the media horde wish the Dems would act more like Republicans, because they know that otherwise there is little excuse to tell another side of a story.

Again, there is some substance to this criticism. At it's higest levels, the Democratic Party is hamstring by crossed lines of powerful influence and political sympathy. This is why ted Kennedy can eloquently bash Bush policy, but can not address the global reality of a viscious class inequity. He and his ilk are too indebted to high-dollar power brokers of the American (global hegemonic) aristocratic establishment.

Where we are today, however, there is no need for reporters to work long hours building a careful background on the wiretap story. A quick phone call to any major political science dean of any respectable university will quickly result in some very juicy quotes. Dinosaur moderate Republicans from the old hard-copy phone number lists can be dredged up to righteously cast scorn upon the usurpers who defile the institutions that a majority of Republicans used to believe in. These are easy stories to write.

Furthermore, if it is left to the Democrats to build a case against this gruesome disfiguring of the face of Democracy then it will be only partisan politics. If this is rendered as a partisan story, then the dramatic changes being made to the legal fabric of the United States will necessarily be obscured by the partisan origin of the story. This story is profoundly different from most politcal stories. If the writers covering the story do not convey that difference then they are failing their duty to the American people and the institutions of this Nation.

Oh goodness, where to start?

2005-12-17T23:54:00.000-06:00

Digby has some great stuff, as usual. This is about a college senior who was visited by Homeland Security Officers after requesting Mao's Li'l Red Book through a college inter-library loan.

Josh Marshall has been blowing away every possible rationale for the NSA wiretap problem, and really getting to some investigative journalism into what might be underlying why the administration would have tried to get so extremely extra-legal regarding this issue. I reccomend checking his site regualrly over the next few days.

But what has really got my dander up is this must-read from AlterNet. Basically, beecause of what's going on in Ohio right now, we're really screwed. And I mean long term, just straight fucked.

This is the problem, as I see it: There is no motivation for any powerful information establishment organization to attempt to remedy the situation as presented by the three stories referenced above. The idea that there is an unchecked authority in the office of the President, being wielded in extremly undemocratic ways, should be newsworthy. That internal security is focusing on thoughtcrimes and wiretapping willy-nilly should be preposterous and deeply alarming.

But in fact, we have every reason to avoid looking. Keep your head down, mind your own business, don't challenge the boss when he's in a bad mood.

Furthermore, an ineffective opposition tends to promote cynicism and apathy. Unfortunately, right now the Democrats are relying on the press to be hard-nosed investigative journalists and the journalists are relying on the Dems to make a newsworthy fuss. And of course, as everyone should know, newsroom budgets have been being structured along a for-profit model since the 1970's.

So who can show us the way? What type of dramatic action will frustrated citizens gravitate towards? When, in 2006, after the Dems make disappointing gains and the Repulicans have once again started to dominate the political rhetoric of the day, what will be the impulse of the Democratic Party Leadership?

Will people start ot suddenly challenge this ever more powerful one party state? Hell no! People will hew more closely to the party line and work harder to curry favor with the Despots of Dementia, the Cabal of Morons. With no back up, no exemplar of principle, no community of noteworthy dissent, why should any one stick their neck out? There is no reason to.

Yes, I'm a wee bit cynical tonight, but there is no indication that the Democrats recognize the depths of enmity that the ideologues they are facing bear towards Democracy. And though it is an ugly truth, when we step back and consider the indications of such stories as are making the rounds tonight, it must be our conclusion that that is the dynamic at the heart of our current difficulties. And why not?

Are we to be surprised when a culture of secrecy and power turns against Democratic practice? The mistake was in imagining that with the curtailing and exposure of programs like COINTELPRO that we had somehow turned a tide. In fact we had only made temporary gains. There is no doubt that the focus of power in a militaristic society is what I said: secrecy and power. We have had ample warning that the development of information technologies could only prove too tempting to the domineering tendencies of the "domestic security" establishment. Where do we go now? We shout from the rooftops. The prevalence of this activity is what protects us. We have little else. Certainly we are unlikely to hear the Democrats defending the college student in Digby's story. Even if Paul Krugman or Frank Rich writes about this in the New York Times, it will be a story noticed by few and talked about only in passing. But here, I am telling you, is the seed of a terrible thing.

The question, of course, is how far will the authoritarian right take this struggle. Truly, there can be little thought that they would win fair elections next year. But elections are less fair today.

And let me just restate once more that the old families of wealth and prestige are complicit in these dynamics by their passive acceptance of them. There can be a reshaping of the media landscape in this country with a few high pressure meetings, and it is not happening.

Update: Mathew Gross has some very specific thoughts on the matter as well, as does Steve Gilliard, quoted on Mathew's site. I'm going to sleep now, so you can go find out what those very worth-while thoughts are for yourself.

I've been thinking about 2008.

2005-12-16T14:02:00.000-06:00

I want to make bumperstickers like the "Wellstone!" ones that at least everyone in MN recognizes. I want to make ones that say "Hillary?" over a solid blue background. I think that most clearly sums up my feelings.

Though of course if it were to be Hillary against either McCain or Giuliani, well, I'd work my ass off for Hillary. What's that, you don't mind McCain? Give that man control of the military for one term and I guarantee you you'll take it all back. He may stand for ethics and morality within the service, but what he would do with his ethical army would be like to make Paul Wolfowitz blush. This is a man who believes in the use of military force.

Hillary, of course, would likely be just as bad, given that she would have to overcome the double toughness stigma of being a Democratic Woman. Hell, she might just nuke somebody. But I don't think so.

I don't care who it is, the Dems need to learn to be tough, and I mean in terms of facing the onslaught of the Very Conservative Media. Maybe Hil's the one to learn the lesson.

I've always thought it out like this: In the NBA, when opposing teams play against the L.A. Lakers in Los Angeles, they know ahead of time that they're just going to put up with certain calls made by the refs on behalf of the home team. It is unlike any other relationship in the league, and it has everything to do with TV ad revenue when the Lakers win. The Democrats are always playing against the home team. It's all about the power of the country club power lunch and pleasing your boss. I cannot imagine a circumstance where the Dems would be t liely to be treated fairly by the mass media group-think. There's just too much culture clash and steroetyping.

The sooner the Dems realize this, and start playing for the win and not for the refs, the sooner they will have a chance to win real popular approval. Because from outside the bubble, many Americans have an intuitive sense of this dynamic, and of how the Dems should respond.

The question is, who will take on Citibank? And by Citibank I mean the whole financial/insurance/pharma/agricultural/international trade sector of the economy that gives contributions and poer to the Joe Bidens and John Kerrys of the world. Because if that's the coaching staff (to extend the metaphor), then what does it mean to play for a win?

Here's a thought you may not have had.

2005-12-14T18:28:00.000-06:00

The big two reasons the U.S. won the Cold War were that citizens of the eastern bloc nations wanted reliable access to foodstuffs and that the young people wanted to partake of the mythically sexy culture of the West. These reasons are exactly why we are not likely to "win" what clash of civilizations does exist between the West and the Muslim East. Citizens of these nations are not starving and they do not want rock'n'roll or blue jeans.

Just what this "other citizenry" does want seems unlikely to be a common variable given the very different historic experiences of countries such as Egypt, Iran, Algeria, Qatar, Lebanon, Pakistan, etc. Regardless, whatever is wanted in each locale is almost certainly tied to historic validation, and we cannot provide that except by losing.

However, there is another kind of historic trend brewing very slowly in the greater Islamic culture. A friend of mine maintains that Islam needs to experience its enlightenment, akin to Europe throwing off the reigns of the Catholic Church in the 16th century. I think he is wrong, for a variety of reasons, but importantly, I think something else is happening.

As Muslim citizens acclimate in particular to Western Europe, a new sense of identity and a new set of desires are forming that will in time mutate into a form that is relevant to the experience of Islamic peoples in the desert countries of their origin. Viewed in this light, the recent civic unrest in France is the most encouraging that could possibly have happened. I say this because that rioting signified a desire for cultural acclimation, validation and fulfilment in a way that is very dissimilar to, say, unrest in the streets of Egypt promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood during recent local and parliamentary elections.

In any case, these are the movements that matter. Military operations and metaphors serve mostly to obscure what is really at play, and of course to consolidate power for demagogues around the world.

2005-12-13T15:48:00.000-06:00

giants climb the stairs of heaven
carry us
as offerings
to the fell gods of history

the dying moans of thousands are but shadows
in the greater works of genius

and our remarkable efforts to change this vast world
matter when we are walking, carrying a load

Happy Holidays!!

2005-12-09T20:12:00.000-06:00

So this has been getting under my skin a bit, but the lovably anonymous posting ricky.zee over at Bottle of Blog hits the nail on the head with this one:

I could rant. But this "War On Christmas" defies any rant. It's so goddammed stupid, if you started mocking it, today, you wouldn't even be halfway done by the time God, Almighty blew the sun out of the sky for once and for all.

It really should be the final--and this time we're serious!--knife in the heart of modern conservatism. I mean, if the record setting deficits of the last three fiscally conservative presidents weren't enough, if the expansive ginormous government of the last three "small government" conservative presidents weren't enough, if the total lack of accountability and personal responsibility from the last three conservative presidents weren't enough...

...and we won't even mention the entire philandering, profiteering, and prison bound conservative leadership in Congress...

...then this really ought to do it. I mean, it really should.

The War On Christmas???

There's no War On Christmas, you fucking morons. Not by Soros. Not by the ACLU. Not by your major department stores.

None. Not now. Not ever. None.

And, contrary to his honorable protestations, he does go on to rant. And he should, he's very good at it.

What he doesn't mention, and what no one seems to have mentioned, is that the supposed "defense of Christmas" crowd are really, in fact, spouting anti-Semitism.

Now, it seems very obvious to me that this whole drama is just a red herring to keep the fanatic base from noticing that there is actual news happening all over the place these days. After all, one Congressman has resigned and another seems poised to fall soon, and Tom DeLay is in deep doo-doo, and Karl Rove is not much better off... Better whip up something nice and juicy, right?

Well, ok, but, what exactly are we saying here? Only Christmas is a legitamate holiday this time of year? Leaving aside the glaringly obvious fact that New Years' Eve is something everybody outside of Mormons and cultists celebrate, what's left? Oh yeah, Hannukah. Not acceptable, apparently.

As much as the ugliness regarding gay marriage around the election in '04, this shows the brutal ugliness that lies not far under the surface of the modern evangelical movement.

Shalom.