Generals and politicians are notoriously slow in the head when it comes to adapting military tactics to a changing world. And when they do try to adjust, the result is usually disastrous.
Traditional European tactics evolved from the Roman practice of finding an open field with nary a tree for cover , amassing two large bodies of soldiers standing fact to face and marching them towards each other Or, if they were really dumb, they'd march them towards the other’s fortifications
This was all fine and dandy in the age of the sword, spear or musket. However, the Civil War changed all that. It was the world’s first industrial war in which victory was not decided by tactics, courage, valor, glory or es spirit de corp. Victory was determined by who had the biggest industrial plant. An army doesn’t win anymore; it simply out produces the enemy.
And what both sides in the Civil War discovered was that it was downright deadly to move masses of men across an open field in the face of modern weaponry. (Gen. George Pickett learned that painful lesson at the Battle of Gettysburg.)
So, one would think that military leaders across the world would look at the carnage the Civil War produced and rewrite their manuals.
Didn’t happen.
World War I broke out and the fools tried using the same tactics of moving masses of men across open fields. The result was even more disastrous. It wasn’t until World War II that the generals finally caught on, even though a variation of this archaic tactic continued in the form of assorted amphibious landings. A stretch of water offers even less cover than an open field.
It’s a hard and fast rule of military tactics that one never gives up a tactic simply because it doesn’t work. In the face of failure, the response is more of the same.
The atomic bomb pretty much put an end to the age of industrial warfare. There’s not much sense if fighting an industrial style war if you are going to annihilate civilization. But, that didn’t stop leaders from churning out tons of military hardware designed for a form of warfare that had outlived its usefulness. The result was failure in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Fast forward to our Eternal War of the Empty policy in which the United States finds itself mired in two wars of aggression, a new record for America. If Vietnam should have taught our leaders one lesson, it’s that you can’t wage an industrial war against an insurgency. For one thing, most insurgents are bright enough to pass on amassing large bodies of men on an open field in order to march them towards the enemy. Nor does bombing the shit out of them work, as we painfully discovered in Viet Nam. Advanced technology much of an advantage in such a war.
This is a lesson we’re learning big time in Afghanistan. Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt point out that, counting both active duty and reserve forces, the United States enjoys a 1,286:1 ratio over al Qaeda. However, this doesn’t stop our leaders from repeating over and over that al Qaeda represents a threat to the homeland and to the stability of Afghanistan and the Middle East.
This ignores the hard truth that al Qaeda doesn’t really exist. If two pissed-off Muslims sit down at a table and try to dream up ways of zapping the invading American forces, they are, ipso facto, an al Qaeda cell. As Turse and Engelhardt point out:
The Pentagon with its giant bureaucracy and its miles of offices and corridors, is the headquarters of the U.S. war effort, but there is no central al-Qaeda headquarters, not in Afghanistan or Pakistan—not anywhere. There is probably no longer an “al-Qaeda central.” Osama bin Laden has vanished or, for all we know, may be dead. Think of it, at best, as an open-source organization that is remarkably capable of replicating by a process of self-franchising.
Of course, this assumes that the reason we’re fighting our wars of aggression is to defeat al Qaeda. Not so. al Qaeda is simply a marketing tool to justify the continued existence of America’s number uno White Elephant, the Pentagon. Where once we branded nationalistic guerilla movements “communist,” we now call them “terrorists” or, even better, al Qaeda in (fill in the blank).
Of course, the reverse is true—al Qaeda needs the United States military to justify what remains of its existence.
I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories, but I have to wonder… Look at how botched recent attempts to blow up airplanes have been. You had Richard Reid with his shoe bomb, the plot to blow up an airplane with a bottle of shampoo and, finally, the exploding underwear. In all three cases, scientist agreed that there was no way in hell the devices could have brought down an airplane.
Some call it stupidity, even though history has taught us that it’s not wise to think of your enemy as stupid. Could it be, instead, an example of tactical brilliance?
I’m sure al Qaeda, or any terrorists with a single cell of grey matter, realizes that to actually bring down an airplane would bring a firestorm of death and destruction down on their homes. One the other hand, al Qaeda wants to keep America’s knickers in a knot so we will continue to ramp up our military presence in the Middle East, thus making it easier to recruit more insurgents.
What better way is there to accomplish this than with botched up bombing attempts. The suicide bombers are thrilled with the idea because it means they avoid a premature death. Our leaders get to spaz out every time an attempt fails and we ramp up our military efforts up another notch. For both al Qaeda and the Pentagon it’s a win-win strategy.
Meanwhile, we are treated to the paradox that with every drone and bomb we explode the Taliban increases their control of the Afghan countryside. But hey! Industrial warfare worked in the past so there is no reason it won’t work in the future.
That’s what the military calls learning from experience.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
It's Time!
Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court gave America back to her corporate handlers when it ruled that Congress could not place restrictions on corporate contributions to political campaigns. The argument was the same fallacious argument that has allowed our corporate oligarchs to befoul our democracy—corporations are people and have the same rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as human people.
So, it is time to reprise an idea I put forth about a year ago. Then it fell into a sea of silence, but perhaps the court’s decision has made the ground more fertile for its growth
What we need is a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that strips our corporations of their personhood. The net effect would be that our corporations would have no rights; they would only have privileges granted them by the state.
Today, such an amendment stands a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing. However, as our economy continues to tank, and as Wall Street bankers continue to get trillions in bailouts while the disempowered class in America, which increasingly includes the Middle Class, continues to slip down the economic ladder, the temperature in Hell is starting to fall.
Besides, think of the fun we could have with such a movement! We could demonize the hell out of the bastards.
Look at where we are now. In an age when it is not only necessary to think outside the box but to reduce the box to kindling, a paralysis has gripped the Obama administration, which spends all of its time trying to figure out if we’re in a box to begin with, and, if so, how big it is, what color it is and is it really necessary to think outside the box when we could easily build an addition to it, provided they could get the financing.
Meanwhile, the Left loudly proclaims that, “Something must be done! Systemic change is needed; reform is called for!” And, there it ends as the Left fragments into a spray of mini issues--gay rights, women’s rights, peace, the environment, animal liberation, universal health care—each droplet suspended in space independent of the others. Each of these issues is important, but each is made all the more difficult because we are confronting a system that is decayed and corrupt, and until this tottering superstructure is addressed, the above issues will simply limp along without any satisfactory resolutions.
The drive for a 28th Amendment would serve two immediate purposes.
Dissatisfaction in America is badly fragmented. We are too isolated in our discontent, which is why we seek escape in celebrity infidelities and reality television.. The drive for a 28th Amendment could well be the lightening rod that would unify this discontent into a viable movement.
At the same time, the radical left has a millstone hanging around its, neck: a vocabulary straight out of the nineteenth century that, in today’s world, is devoid of both meaning and relevance.
The struggle is no longer between capital and labor.
Capitalism is dead; it’s been dead for decades. A CEO is not a capitalist; he is an employee. A capitalist grew capital by the sweat of his brow and the blackness of his soul. A CEO plays without other people’s capital while absorbing as much of it as he can through executive salaries, bonuses and stock options. The soul of a CEO is a bland beige.
We no longer have a working class; we have a dispossessed class that grows larger every day. It is an inclusive class claiming as it members not only workers but the poor, the working poor, undocumented immigrants, the unemployed, the employed who are squeezed for three hours of productivity for one hour’s pay and, increasingly, the middle class. It is just waiting to be mobilized by the right issue.
If there is to be any systemic change in the country, the corporation must be demonized, and the movement for a 28th Amendment would present the perfect platform from which to do just that. Let’s face it, the corporation is an anachronism, a dinosaur that has outlived its usefulness and is in the process of devouring itself as it takes the country down with it. That is the box that must be reduced to kindling! The corporation served its purpose; it gave us all sorts of nice toys and technological advances (many of which are destroying the earth, but isn’t your iPhone worth it?) but it’s time it was put out to pasture before it ruins us completely.
The amendment would raise the possibility of doing something about our corrupt Congress. Cynics tell us Washington D.C. is an open septic tank overflowing with the raw sewage of corruption. In truth, it is a bit more sophisticated than that.
Granted, raw sewage is pumped into the beltway via open trenches that run from the nation’s power centers. But, instead of pouring into the Capitol, it is first pumped into the K Street Sewage Treatment Plant. There it is sanitized and deodorized before being piped into the Halls of Congress disguised as campaign contributions. It is still sewage, but, it smells sweeter.
The short answer to this mess is public funding of election campaigns. On the surface it seems to offer much. By freeing the congress from the multiple snares of corporate purse strings, Congress might start representing the public interest. As it stands now, every time an elected official speaks of our national interests or national security, “national” is simply a code word for “corporate”. The system is gamed to minimize public influence on policy.
Congress tried to reign in corporate power with the McCain-Feingold Bill. But, before the ink was even dry on the bill, our corporate overlords went weeping to the nearest federal court and claimed that the bill violated its First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Money talks, and if our corporate patrons aren’t allowed to speak through their wallets, they are being unconstitutionally silenced.
And, the Supreme Court agreed with the poor darlings one-hundred percent.
The argument won the day, because under our current system, a corporation is a person.
People assume that corporate personhood was the result of a Supreme Court decision. In truth, the court made no such decision. The question of personhood arose when the court considered an appeal of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The focus of the case was the taxation of railroad properties.
As the case worked its way through the lower courts, the question of whether corporations were persons protected by the 14th Amendment was argued.
However, before oral arguments began before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite stated, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question of whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are of the opinion that it does.”
Because formal arguments had not begun, Waite’s remark was a non-binding obiter dictum that had no bearing on the outcome of the case. The question of corporate personhood was never mentioned in the court’s written decision. The court limited its decision to the question of taxing corporate property.
However, the court clerk, when writing the header, or summary, of the case stated that, “defendant corporations are persons…”
Thus, was corporate personhood born.
The principle is so engrained in legal precedence that a judicial reversal is virtually impossible. That is why only a constitutional amendment could solve the problem.
That our amendment would raise some corporate hackles is an understatement. Already, I hear lamentations about the sanctity of private property, etc. However, a very compelling argument could be made that the ownership of corporate property is so diffused amongst shareholders that it is a misnomer to call it private property. Since corporate property exists at the pleasure of the State through the granting of a corporate charter, it is more akin to quasi-public property than private property.
I admit this is heresy, but given rate at which corporations are eating us alive, I think some healthy heresy is called for.
This brings us back, in a full circle, to our corrupted Congress. If corporations were stripped of their personhood, a campaign finance reform bill that eliminated corporate money from the electoral process would be better protected from a court challenge. There is no guarantee this would clean up the system. All it would do is increase the probability that it would be cleaner than it currently is.
Granted, the idea of a 28th Amendment sits way out there in the foggy fringe, but if our Neocon colleagues taught us anything, it is that today’s fringe is tomorrow’s mainstream.
This is a movement that could cut across class, gender and ethnic divisions because if there is one thing unifying America, it is our economic misery.
And if nothing else, the drive for a 28th Amendment would make our oligarchs and plutocrats sweat. That, alone, would make the effort worthwhile.
Sure, it looks hopeless, but I.F. Stone wrote:
“The only fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing—for the sheer fun of it—to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.”
It’s time to bring back the Merry Pranksters, but instead of promoting psychedelic drugs, they will promote the decorporatization of America.
So, it is time to reprise an idea I put forth about a year ago. Then it fell into a sea of silence, but perhaps the court’s decision has made the ground more fertile for its growth
What we need is a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that strips our corporations of their personhood. The net effect would be that our corporations would have no rights; they would only have privileges granted them by the state.
Today, such an amendment stands a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing. However, as our economy continues to tank, and as Wall Street bankers continue to get trillions in bailouts while the disempowered class in America, which increasingly includes the Middle Class, continues to slip down the economic ladder, the temperature in Hell is starting to fall.
Besides, think of the fun we could have with such a movement! We could demonize the hell out of the bastards.
Look at where we are now. In an age when it is not only necessary to think outside the box but to reduce the box to kindling, a paralysis has gripped the Obama administration, which spends all of its time trying to figure out if we’re in a box to begin with, and, if so, how big it is, what color it is and is it really necessary to think outside the box when we could easily build an addition to it, provided they could get the financing.
Meanwhile, the Left loudly proclaims that, “Something must be done! Systemic change is needed; reform is called for!” And, there it ends as the Left fragments into a spray of mini issues--gay rights, women’s rights, peace, the environment, animal liberation, universal health care—each droplet suspended in space independent of the others. Each of these issues is important, but each is made all the more difficult because we are confronting a system that is decayed and corrupt, and until this tottering superstructure is addressed, the above issues will simply limp along without any satisfactory resolutions.
The drive for a 28th Amendment would serve two immediate purposes.
Dissatisfaction in America is badly fragmented. We are too isolated in our discontent, which is why we seek escape in celebrity infidelities and reality television.. The drive for a 28th Amendment could well be the lightening rod that would unify this discontent into a viable movement.
At the same time, the radical left has a millstone hanging around its, neck: a vocabulary straight out of the nineteenth century that, in today’s world, is devoid of both meaning and relevance.
The struggle is no longer between capital and labor.
Capitalism is dead; it’s been dead for decades. A CEO is not a capitalist; he is an employee. A capitalist grew capital by the sweat of his brow and the blackness of his soul. A CEO plays without other people’s capital while absorbing as much of it as he can through executive salaries, bonuses and stock options. The soul of a CEO is a bland beige.
We no longer have a working class; we have a dispossessed class that grows larger every day. It is an inclusive class claiming as it members not only workers but the poor, the working poor, undocumented immigrants, the unemployed, the employed who are squeezed for three hours of productivity for one hour’s pay and, increasingly, the middle class. It is just waiting to be mobilized by the right issue.
If there is to be any systemic change in the country, the corporation must be demonized, and the movement for a 28th Amendment would present the perfect platform from which to do just that. Let’s face it, the corporation is an anachronism, a dinosaur that has outlived its usefulness and is in the process of devouring itself as it takes the country down with it. That is the box that must be reduced to kindling! The corporation served its purpose; it gave us all sorts of nice toys and technological advances (many of which are destroying the earth, but isn’t your iPhone worth it?) but it’s time it was put out to pasture before it ruins us completely.
The amendment would raise the possibility of doing something about our corrupt Congress. Cynics tell us Washington D.C. is an open septic tank overflowing with the raw sewage of corruption. In truth, it is a bit more sophisticated than that.
Granted, raw sewage is pumped into the beltway via open trenches that run from the nation’s power centers. But, instead of pouring into the Capitol, it is first pumped into the K Street Sewage Treatment Plant. There it is sanitized and deodorized before being piped into the Halls of Congress disguised as campaign contributions. It is still sewage, but, it smells sweeter.
The short answer to this mess is public funding of election campaigns. On the surface it seems to offer much. By freeing the congress from the multiple snares of corporate purse strings, Congress might start representing the public interest. As it stands now, every time an elected official speaks of our national interests or national security, “national” is simply a code word for “corporate”. The system is gamed to minimize public influence on policy.
Congress tried to reign in corporate power with the McCain-Feingold Bill. But, before the ink was even dry on the bill, our corporate overlords went weeping to the nearest federal court and claimed that the bill violated its First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Money talks, and if our corporate patrons aren’t allowed to speak through their wallets, they are being unconstitutionally silenced.
And, the Supreme Court agreed with the poor darlings one-hundred percent.
The argument won the day, because under our current system, a corporation is a person.
People assume that corporate personhood was the result of a Supreme Court decision. In truth, the court made no such decision. The question of personhood arose when the court considered an appeal of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The focus of the case was the taxation of railroad properties.
As the case worked its way through the lower courts, the question of whether corporations were persons protected by the 14th Amendment was argued.
However, before oral arguments began before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite stated, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question of whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are of the opinion that it does.”
Because formal arguments had not begun, Waite’s remark was a non-binding obiter dictum that had no bearing on the outcome of the case. The question of corporate personhood was never mentioned in the court’s written decision. The court limited its decision to the question of taxing corporate property.
However, the court clerk, when writing the header, or summary, of the case stated that, “defendant corporations are persons…”
Thus, was corporate personhood born.
The principle is so engrained in legal precedence that a judicial reversal is virtually impossible. That is why only a constitutional amendment could solve the problem.
That our amendment would raise some corporate hackles is an understatement. Already, I hear lamentations about the sanctity of private property, etc. However, a very compelling argument could be made that the ownership of corporate property is so diffused amongst shareholders that it is a misnomer to call it private property. Since corporate property exists at the pleasure of the State through the granting of a corporate charter, it is more akin to quasi-public property than private property.
I admit this is heresy, but given rate at which corporations are eating us alive, I think some healthy heresy is called for.
This brings us back, in a full circle, to our corrupted Congress. If corporations were stripped of their personhood, a campaign finance reform bill that eliminated corporate money from the electoral process would be better protected from a court challenge. There is no guarantee this would clean up the system. All it would do is increase the probability that it would be cleaner than it currently is.
Granted, the idea of a 28th Amendment sits way out there in the foggy fringe, but if our Neocon colleagues taught us anything, it is that today’s fringe is tomorrow’s mainstream.
This is a movement that could cut across class, gender and ethnic divisions because if there is one thing unifying America, it is our economic misery.
And if nothing else, the drive for a 28th Amendment would make our oligarchs and plutocrats sweat. That, alone, would make the effort worthwhile.
Sure, it looks hopeless, but I.F. Stone wrote:
“The only fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing—for the sheer fun of it—to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.”
It’s time to bring back the Merry Pranksters, but instead of promoting psychedelic drugs, they will promote the decorporatization of America.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
It couldn't have happened to a nicer party.
So the Democrats lost what had been a safe Senate seat in Massachusetts. There’s really no surprise there. If anything it was a vote against the feckless Democratic leadership. The center has long been a graveyard for the Democrats. Those who occupy it show the public that they stand for nothing, and that doesn’t sit well with voters.
It doesn’t matter that what Republican Scott Brown stands for—no healthcare reform and forget our legal traditions when dealing with “terrorists”—is onerous. The fact that he stood for something appealed to voters disgusted with vacillating Democratic leadership.
In truth, it’s no big deal that the Senate lost its veto-proof majority. The Senate leadership hadn’t done anything with it except wimp out and compromise on every issue.
If Senate Democratic leaders had any backbone, they’d force the Republicans to filibuster the healthcare reform bill and use the filibuster as a cudgel to beat the Republicans over their Neanderthal skulls when the midterm elections roll around.
That won’t happen, though. The rightwing noise machine kicked the spin out of them years ago, and the poor fools are still trying to find it.
Maybe this will be a wakeup call for Obama to get off his ass and start living up to his campaign promises. I doubt it thought.
A more viable alternative would be a third party because it looks as if the Democrats are ready to follow the Whigs into political oblivion.
It doesn’t matter that what Republican Scott Brown stands for—no healthcare reform and forget our legal traditions when dealing with “terrorists”—is onerous. The fact that he stood for something appealed to voters disgusted with vacillating Democratic leadership.
In truth, it’s no big deal that the Senate lost its veto-proof majority. The Senate leadership hadn’t done anything with it except wimp out and compromise on every issue.
If Senate Democratic leaders had any backbone, they’d force the Republicans to filibuster the healthcare reform bill and use the filibuster as a cudgel to beat the Republicans over their Neanderthal skulls when the midterm elections roll around.
That won’t happen, though. The rightwing noise machine kicked the spin out of them years ago, and the poor fools are still trying to find it.
Maybe this will be a wakeup call for Obama to get off his ass and start living up to his campaign promises. I doubt it thought.
A more viable alternative would be a third party because it looks as if the Democrats are ready to follow the Whigs into political oblivion.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Riffs on a Good Read
A good article is one that ends up covered with margin notes after it’s been read. Gaither Stewart’s “Symbolism, Ideology and Revolution” is one such article. I’d highly recommend taking time to read the entire article. That being said, let me begin to quote and riff.
Stewart quotes Umberto Eco who argues that:
[S]ociety…has become a universe devoid of a center. Everything is periphery. There is no longer a heart of anything.
What we have, instead, are faux power centers that are more media creations than reality. It has become clear by now that neither Obama nor any other president has every run the country. What the media calls the most powerful leader in the world is little more than a shill for the dispersed special interests and lobbyists who are the real power, and, as Eco noted, there is no center, no heart through which a sword could be plunged. Rather there is only a toxic mist made up of many discrete particulates that drifts across the land, constantly changing shape as it moves.
Eco goes on to say:
Power is multiple and ubiquitous. It is a network of consensuses that depart from below. Power is plurality. Power is the multiplicity of relationships of strength.
The habituated momentum that makes a society and keeps power in its place also hollows society out as the ideals and ideology that set this momentum into motion gradually fades from memory and only a fragile ideological construct is left tht slowly becomes a parody of itself. We see this is the desperation with which our oligarchs cling to the belief in a self-regulating fee market, which is little more than an empty ideological shell staggering beneath the weight of the global economic meltdown brought about by a “free market” run amok.
Power is neither rational nor planned. It is a convergence of interests by those with the resources to implement them.
Stewart comments that one “notes little solidarity between middleclass and the poor.”
This points to the paradox of class in the United States. Because we cling to the belief that we are a classless society we find ourselves mired in class prejudice. The reason is simple: because we are classless we believe that everyone should be middleclass and those who isn’t well dressed, well behaved, orderly, polite, law abiding and Euromerican are marginalized.
The left castrated itself in the 60s when it turned its back on blue-collar America and, in doing so, lost its base. It has been impotent ever since. As a result, blue-collar America ended up voting for Regan who proceeded to screw them them to the wall.
Speaking of the European bourgeoisie, Stewart says:
Within that class emerge the thinking and movements for drastic social change.
This hints at a major difference between Europe and America. Europe has a history of vibrant social thought that reached down to all classes in a society. America has no such tradition. This is because we are a nation of technicians, not thinkers. For example, the mantras I grew up with were: “Say what you mean!” “Get to the point!” “Don’t beat around the bush!” In other words, we were conditioned to believe in “one word; one meaning.” Consequently, our language lacks depth, nuance and metaphor, without which there can be no poetry, and an ideology without poetry is a flattened balloon. (This explains why America is crawling with fundamentalists and why, when you scratch an atheist, you find a pissed off fundamentalist.)
Stewart argues that America is not bourgeois; it is middle class. And:
Lionel Trilling defined middle class in relations to the government. From the ruling or governing class one scales down to the lowest classes which are cut out totally from any relation with the government. The middle class, situated midway between the two, continues to believe—in its overwhelming false consciousness—that the government exists for it and for its interests.
However, now that the impoverishment of the middle class is underway, it will be interesting to see how it develops. Stewart contends that, “…the major target for proponents of radical change should be precisely those deaf and dumb, ignorant and obtuse, super patriotic middle classes.” We should take a hard look to see what we might have in common with the tea baggers. (Incidentally, an important component of “solidarity” is the willingness to listen.)
Unfortunately, the middle class has always wanted reform, but not too much reform. The reform is seeks is divorced from the structural and systemic changes that would be necessary to evolve into a truly decent society instead of the dog-eat-dog kennel we currently are. As Stewart notes about Liberals:
Liberals can take strong stands on minor community improvements; they can work themselves into a fury and campaign relentlessly and join sit-ins and carry placards concerning, let’s say, how the local school yard is to be used on weekends or about alternate days for trash pick-up, and still ignore the concept of social justice for all. Viewed from a distance, I therefore am dubious about so-called grassroots activities: naturally they are welcome, but I suspect in the long run harmless. No wonder Power as a rule lets them sit-in, sit-out, march and carry little placards. Liberals, at the most only potentially revolutionary, are Power’s ally and stand in the way of drastic social change.
Speaking of artists, Stewart argues that, “To write propaganda or paint conformist art is to succumb to the allures and/or the coercion of the reigning system. For that reason most artists are countercurrent. That is also why artists should stay away from the White House or the Elysees Palace.”
That is also why artists should avoid grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
I disagree with Stewart over how “countercurrent” our artists are. Art seems to have been reduced to arcane installations viewed only by the “creative” clique that clusters round the trendy galleries in the country’s metropolitan centers and what passes for contemporary literature is little more than empty naval gazing.
Articles like Stewart’s are why I prefer reading to television. The tube deadens while the printed page stimulates. The tube produces consumers while the printed page produces citizens. This could explain why there are so few citizens in America.
Stewart quotes Umberto Eco who argues that:
[S]ociety…has become a universe devoid of a center. Everything is periphery. There is no longer a heart of anything.
What we have, instead, are faux power centers that are more media creations than reality. It has become clear by now that neither Obama nor any other president has every run the country. What the media calls the most powerful leader in the world is little more than a shill for the dispersed special interests and lobbyists who are the real power, and, as Eco noted, there is no center, no heart through which a sword could be plunged. Rather there is only a toxic mist made up of many discrete particulates that drifts across the land, constantly changing shape as it moves.
Eco goes on to say:
Power is multiple and ubiquitous. It is a network of consensuses that depart from below. Power is plurality. Power is the multiplicity of relationships of strength.
The habituated momentum that makes a society and keeps power in its place also hollows society out as the ideals and ideology that set this momentum into motion gradually fades from memory and only a fragile ideological construct is left tht slowly becomes a parody of itself. We see this is the desperation with which our oligarchs cling to the belief in a self-regulating fee market, which is little more than an empty ideological shell staggering beneath the weight of the global economic meltdown brought about by a “free market” run amok.
Power is neither rational nor planned. It is a convergence of interests by those with the resources to implement them.
Stewart comments that one “notes little solidarity between middleclass and the poor.”
This points to the paradox of class in the United States. Because we cling to the belief that we are a classless society we find ourselves mired in class prejudice. The reason is simple: because we are classless we believe that everyone should be middleclass and those who isn’t well dressed, well behaved, orderly, polite, law abiding and Euromerican are marginalized.
The left castrated itself in the 60s when it turned its back on blue-collar America and, in doing so, lost its base. It has been impotent ever since. As a result, blue-collar America ended up voting for Regan who proceeded to screw them them to the wall.
Speaking of the European bourgeoisie, Stewart says:
Within that class emerge the thinking and movements for drastic social change.
This hints at a major difference between Europe and America. Europe has a history of vibrant social thought that reached down to all classes in a society. America has no such tradition. This is because we are a nation of technicians, not thinkers. For example, the mantras I grew up with were: “Say what you mean!” “Get to the point!” “Don’t beat around the bush!” In other words, we were conditioned to believe in “one word; one meaning.” Consequently, our language lacks depth, nuance and metaphor, without which there can be no poetry, and an ideology without poetry is a flattened balloon. (This explains why America is crawling with fundamentalists and why, when you scratch an atheist, you find a pissed off fundamentalist.)
Stewart argues that America is not bourgeois; it is middle class. And:
Lionel Trilling defined middle class in relations to the government. From the ruling or governing class one scales down to the lowest classes which are cut out totally from any relation with the government. The middle class, situated midway between the two, continues to believe—in its overwhelming false consciousness—that the government exists for it and for its interests.
However, now that the impoverishment of the middle class is underway, it will be interesting to see how it develops. Stewart contends that, “…the major target for proponents of radical change should be precisely those deaf and dumb, ignorant and obtuse, super patriotic middle classes.” We should take a hard look to see what we might have in common with the tea baggers. (Incidentally, an important component of “solidarity” is the willingness to listen.)
Unfortunately, the middle class has always wanted reform, but not too much reform. The reform is seeks is divorced from the structural and systemic changes that would be necessary to evolve into a truly decent society instead of the dog-eat-dog kennel we currently are. As Stewart notes about Liberals:
Liberals can take strong stands on minor community improvements; they can work themselves into a fury and campaign relentlessly and join sit-ins and carry placards concerning, let’s say, how the local school yard is to be used on weekends or about alternate days for trash pick-up, and still ignore the concept of social justice for all. Viewed from a distance, I therefore am dubious about so-called grassroots activities: naturally they are welcome, but I suspect in the long run harmless. No wonder Power as a rule lets them sit-in, sit-out, march and carry little placards. Liberals, at the most only potentially revolutionary, are Power’s ally and stand in the way of drastic social change.
Speaking of artists, Stewart argues that, “To write propaganda or paint conformist art is to succumb to the allures and/or the coercion of the reigning system. For that reason most artists are countercurrent. That is also why artists should stay away from the White House or the Elysees Palace.”
That is also why artists should avoid grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
I disagree with Stewart over how “countercurrent” our artists are. Art seems to have been reduced to arcane installations viewed only by the “creative” clique that clusters round the trendy galleries in the country’s metropolitan centers and what passes for contemporary literature is little more than empty naval gazing.
Articles like Stewart’s are why I prefer reading to television. The tube deadens while the printed page stimulates. The tube produces consumers while the printed page produces citizens. This could explain why there are so few citizens in America.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
The Serenity of Modern Warfare
The successful execution of America’s Eternal War of the Empty Policy does not require toughness or resolve. All that is needed is for those in charge to achieve a sublime state of moral nihilism that transcends the division between good and evil.
In this elevated state of moral nihilism, consequences no longer exist. The dead are not dead; the maimed are not maimed. It is an ethical void scrubbed clean of the gore that is war’s traditional aftermath. In this netherworld dead children, who really aren’t dead, continue to play in the streets under the loving gazes of their mothers, whose limbs haven’t been blown off. Dead fathers returned from their destroyed factories and the family sits down to its evening meal even though its home has been reduced to rubble. Life goes on, no matter how brutal the bombing.
Slaughter is sanitized. A clean-cut young man sits at his laptop somewhere in Nevada and with his mouse directs the course of an unmanned drone until a collection of hovels is in his sights. He clicks the mouse and in a flash, the hovels are no more. He closes his laptop, goes home to his family and gets a good night’s sleep. He’s put in a good day, and as he sleeps he is blissfully unaware of the death and destruction he has wrought.
Moral nihilism works best in value-free individuals. This emptiness is achieved when the ties that bind an individual to family and community are severed. Into the void that remains pour the facile symbols of the state, symbols that are effective because they have been stripped of their original meaning until they are empty shells that resonate with meaning in individuals who are also empty shells. The best example of this is the flag lapel pin. This once proud symbol of freedom and democracy now signifies the moral void that has made us a hegemonic wonder to behold.
To reach its peak efficiency, moral nihilism requires an environment in which nobody is in charge. Instead of a single evil mastermind, there is a collective mass consensus that is more reminiscent of a pool of toxic sludge than a grand conspiracy. Its driving force is a blind momentum that drifts along more from habit than resolve. Any attempt to think outside the box is thwarted because the box is constantly growing and expanding so the mind is never able to step outside of its confines.
Language, stripped of passion, is the medium of this moral nihilism. The language of the nihilist doesn’t sing, it drones. Here is an example of its poetry:
A cluster bomb delivery will be examined to determine the optimum configuration of bomblets from a maximum probability of destroying the target.
The power of this passage rests in the absence of a child attracted to an unexploded bomblet. Nowhere is there a photograph of the child after the bomblet has exploded. The prose sits in a state of pure innocence which reduces war to little more than a pushing and shoving match.
But, do not think for a minute that our moral nihilists are totally lacking in compassion. Leo Tolstoy had them in mind when he wrote:
I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means except by getting off his back. Of course, if the man throws me off his back, I have no choice but to kill him so the contagion of his freedom doesn’t spread to other carriers.
A savage brutality once drove war. Now it is driven by the serene barbarity of the civilized.
In this elevated state of moral nihilism, consequences no longer exist. The dead are not dead; the maimed are not maimed. It is an ethical void scrubbed clean of the gore that is war’s traditional aftermath. In this netherworld dead children, who really aren’t dead, continue to play in the streets under the loving gazes of their mothers, whose limbs haven’t been blown off. Dead fathers returned from their destroyed factories and the family sits down to its evening meal even though its home has been reduced to rubble. Life goes on, no matter how brutal the bombing.
Slaughter is sanitized. A clean-cut young man sits at his laptop somewhere in Nevada and with his mouse directs the course of an unmanned drone until a collection of hovels is in his sights. He clicks the mouse and in a flash, the hovels are no more. He closes his laptop, goes home to his family and gets a good night’s sleep. He’s put in a good day, and as he sleeps he is blissfully unaware of the death and destruction he has wrought.
Moral nihilism works best in value-free individuals. This emptiness is achieved when the ties that bind an individual to family and community are severed. Into the void that remains pour the facile symbols of the state, symbols that are effective because they have been stripped of their original meaning until they are empty shells that resonate with meaning in individuals who are also empty shells. The best example of this is the flag lapel pin. This once proud symbol of freedom and democracy now signifies the moral void that has made us a hegemonic wonder to behold.
To reach its peak efficiency, moral nihilism requires an environment in which nobody is in charge. Instead of a single evil mastermind, there is a collective mass consensus that is more reminiscent of a pool of toxic sludge than a grand conspiracy. Its driving force is a blind momentum that drifts along more from habit than resolve. Any attempt to think outside the box is thwarted because the box is constantly growing and expanding so the mind is never able to step outside of its confines.
Language, stripped of passion, is the medium of this moral nihilism. The language of the nihilist doesn’t sing, it drones. Here is an example of its poetry:
A cluster bomb delivery will be examined to determine the optimum configuration of bomblets from a maximum probability of destroying the target.
The power of this passage rests in the absence of a child attracted to an unexploded bomblet. Nowhere is there a photograph of the child after the bomblet has exploded. The prose sits in a state of pure innocence which reduces war to little more than a pushing and shoving match.
But, do not think for a minute that our moral nihilists are totally lacking in compassion. Leo Tolstoy had them in mind when he wrote:
I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means except by getting off his back. Of course, if the man throws me off his back, I have no choice but to kill him so the contagion of his freedom doesn’t spread to other carriers.
A savage brutality once drove war. Now it is driven by the serene barbarity of the civilized.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Who needs freedom when we are eating right?
Fastidiousness is the midwife of oppression. Authoritarian stats are neat freaks that want their ducks in a row and have a pathological fear of anything that has not been scrubbed clean of all that makes it human and unique. The sophisticated ones are oblique and subtle in their approach. Over time they put together rules and regulations, which, individually, seem so innocuous that people barely notice that the screws are being tightened, but in their totality are oppressive and highly restrictive.
Authoritarian states of old obsessed on what people thought and how they acted. Modern states obsess on what people eat. In this respect, Mike Bloomberg’s New York City is on the cutting edge of contemporary authoritarianism.
When speaking of New York City, a caveat is necessary. In the public’s mind, New York City covers an area roughly from the tip of Manhattan to the borough’s 96th Street, allowing for an margin of error of ten to fifteen blocks in either direction. Most outlanders are unaware that the city has its own flyover land in the form of its outer boroughs.
But getting back to Mike, the man is very concerned that his subjects eat right. First he pushed through legislation regulated the amount of transfats in food. Next, he made restaurants post calorie counts. Now he wants to regulate the salt content in food. I guess he figures the proles don’t know how to eat right so their big brother has to tell them to finish their veggies. All of this was over and above his smoking ban so his subjects’ nostril wouldn’t be violated by the rank odor of cigarette smoke, one tendril of which would be enough to send the victims lungs into a spasm of pulmonary disorder.
The rationale for these rules and regulations is that they saves money by reducing the medical expenses associated with the poster child disorder of the twenty-first century, “obesity.” Mike wants us all svelte, even if it costs us our freedom to eat as we please. It’s so damn sloppy that way. The idea of all that salt and grease ravaging our bodies is too much for Mike to bear.
Of course, the expenses associated with the treatment of obesity pale compared with the expenses associated with old age. It costs an arm and a leg to keep those senior citizens breathing. If Mike was serious about saving money he’d outlaw aging. The old farts are parasites draining assets from the system that would be better used to treat Manhattan’s beautiful people. By caring for the aging we are creating a moral hazard in which citizens are encouraged to age. But, by God, they’d think twice about doing so if they knew they wouldn’t be cared for in their dotage.
But, what can you expect from an administration that banned large demonstrations from Central Park’s Great Lawn because it might hurt the grass. That’s America for you, more concerned about its lawn than its liberty. If the grass is green and the air is fresh and women can slip into a size six, all is well. Fastidiousness rocks!
Authoritarian states of old obsessed on what people thought and how they acted. Modern states obsess on what people eat. In this respect, Mike Bloomberg’s New York City is on the cutting edge of contemporary authoritarianism.
When speaking of New York City, a caveat is necessary. In the public’s mind, New York City covers an area roughly from the tip of Manhattan to the borough’s 96th Street, allowing for an margin of error of ten to fifteen blocks in either direction. Most outlanders are unaware that the city has its own flyover land in the form of its outer boroughs.
But getting back to Mike, the man is very concerned that his subjects eat right. First he pushed through legislation regulated the amount of transfats in food. Next, he made restaurants post calorie counts. Now he wants to regulate the salt content in food. I guess he figures the proles don’t know how to eat right so their big brother has to tell them to finish their veggies. All of this was over and above his smoking ban so his subjects’ nostril wouldn’t be violated by the rank odor of cigarette smoke, one tendril of which would be enough to send the victims lungs into a spasm of pulmonary disorder.
The rationale for these rules and regulations is that they saves money by reducing the medical expenses associated with the poster child disorder of the twenty-first century, “obesity.” Mike wants us all svelte, even if it costs us our freedom to eat as we please. It’s so damn sloppy that way. The idea of all that salt and grease ravaging our bodies is too much for Mike to bear.
Of course, the expenses associated with the treatment of obesity pale compared with the expenses associated with old age. It costs an arm and a leg to keep those senior citizens breathing. If Mike was serious about saving money he’d outlaw aging. The old farts are parasites draining assets from the system that would be better used to treat Manhattan’s beautiful people. By caring for the aging we are creating a moral hazard in which citizens are encouraged to age. But, by God, they’d think twice about doing so if they knew they wouldn’t be cared for in their dotage.
But, what can you expect from an administration that banned large demonstrations from Central Park’s Great Lawn because it might hurt the grass. That’s America for you, more concerned about its lawn than its liberty. If the grass is green and the air is fresh and women can slip into a size six, all is well. Fastidiousness rocks!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Bull Guts and Prosperity
Fiat currency is to finance capitalism what lead was to alchemy. Both are base materials their possessors sought to transform into something of value through the muttering of incantations. Only finance capitalism succeeded. Fait currency obtains value when a well-armed bully shakes a dollar bill in a peons face and snarls, “This mother is worth what I say it’s worth!”
I wonder if the alchemist, as he stood over his bubbling cauldron, asked himself, “What if I succeed and turn this lead into gold? What will that do to the price of gold on the open market? Will we not reach the point where it would take a ton of gold to purchase what a pound of gold now purchases?”
One thing we can be certain of, the finance capitalist never asked this question about his fiat currency. Why bother when you can produce value as fast as you can print it.
Finance capitalism is the alchemy of today as it busily produces value out of a base material--paper. It is all fantasy. Fantasy is the hot air that has inflated the multiple bubbles that have maintained the illusion that we are a prosperous nation when, in truth, our economy has stagnated as we shipped our manufacturing base overseas.
Ours has been the prosperity of increased indebtedness as more and more consumers join the ranks of the poor. We need the poor because they debt they piled up during flush times is a major source of revenue for our financial capitalists. They are the vultures who profit every time funny money changes hands.
Their goal is the total economic meltdown that would give them the opportunity to wrap a neoliberal garrote around the neck of what remains of the New Deal and slowly strangle it.
All of this was made possible when the bean counters enticed the virtual economy to pack her bags and leave the real economy. There’s more profit in fanatasy than there is in actually making something or in providing a real service.
The priests of old assessed risk by studying the innards of a gutted bull. The priests of finance capitalism assess risk using “risk assessment models.” I suspect the priests of old had better luck with their bull guts.
I wonder if the alchemist, as he stood over his bubbling cauldron, asked himself, “What if I succeed and turn this lead into gold? What will that do to the price of gold on the open market? Will we not reach the point where it would take a ton of gold to purchase what a pound of gold now purchases?”
One thing we can be certain of, the finance capitalist never asked this question about his fiat currency. Why bother when you can produce value as fast as you can print it.
Finance capitalism is the alchemy of today as it busily produces value out of a base material--paper. It is all fantasy. Fantasy is the hot air that has inflated the multiple bubbles that have maintained the illusion that we are a prosperous nation when, in truth, our economy has stagnated as we shipped our manufacturing base overseas.
Ours has been the prosperity of increased indebtedness as more and more consumers join the ranks of the poor. We need the poor because they debt they piled up during flush times is a major source of revenue for our financial capitalists. They are the vultures who profit every time funny money changes hands.
Their goal is the total economic meltdown that would give them the opportunity to wrap a neoliberal garrote around the neck of what remains of the New Deal and slowly strangle it.
All of this was made possible when the bean counters enticed the virtual economy to pack her bags and leave the real economy. There’s more profit in fanatasy than there is in actually making something or in providing a real service.
The priests of old assessed risk by studying the innards of a gutted bull. The priests of finance capitalism assess risk using “risk assessment models.” I suspect the priests of old had better luck with their bull guts.
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