My Dear Barack,
I’m going to miss your predecessor. He’s such a gas. Here we are in an economic meltdown brought about by feral capitalism, and he sings the praises of the free market, to which he is looking for a solution to the very problems it created.
He reminds me of a drunken passenger clinging to a deck rail on the Titanic as her stern lifts in preparation for her final plunge, telling the passengers not to panic because the ship is unsinkable.
He is correct when he says the American system is an “engine of mobility," just as the Titanic was an engine of mobility as she plunged to the bottom.
It doesn’t get better than that.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
It's a gift.
Dear Barack,
You are fortunate that you are following an administration that has utterly destroyed its credibility by proving I.F. Stone’s dictum that a journalist only needs to remember two words: Governments lie.
I’m sure your initial impulse is to restore credibility to the government.
Take my advice: Don’t!
A total lack of credibility is a boon to any administration. Its absence allows you to lie through your teeth. If you are caught, the public shrugs its shoulders and figures it’s just business as usual.
If, however, you reestablish credibility and are caught in a diplomatic lie, public outrage will crucify you.
Your anonymous predecessor has given you a precious gift. Treat it with care and lie with gusto. The proles expect it from you.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
You are fortunate that you are following an administration that has utterly destroyed its credibility by proving I.F. Stone’s dictum that a journalist only needs to remember two words: Governments lie.
I’m sure your initial impulse is to restore credibility to the government.
Take my advice: Don’t!
A total lack of credibility is a boon to any administration. Its absence allows you to lie through your teeth. If you are caught, the public shrugs its shoulders and figures it’s just business as usual.
If, however, you reestablish credibility and are caught in a diplomatic lie, public outrage will crucify you.
Your anonymous predecessor has given you a precious gift. Treat it with care and lie with gusto. The proles expect it from you.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, November 13, 2008
"All the world's a stage..."
My Dear Barack,
I stumbled across a quote that ought to be the beacon that guides your administration:
“The most essential skill in political theater and the consumer culture is artifice"
There are two operative phrases in that quote. The first is “political theater” and the second is “consumer culture”.
Politics is no longer a struggle over issues; it is third-rate theater, a stage upon which the only thing that matters is the quality of the performance.
Your predecessors d didn’t fail because of his policies and wars, disastrous as they were. He fell because he was inarticulate and because he lost his ability to project an image other than that of a confused child. His image-building skills peaked when he did his hemorrhoidal strut across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
You sit at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to articulation and image building. I’ll bet you could make the following statement and get away with it:
You know, folks, the market is, indeed, self regulating. The only thing free market ideologues got wrong was the mechanism that keeps it balanced. It’s not the ‘invisible hand’;it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster®, who uses his Noodly Appendages to buy here or sell there. And sometimes, for the sheer fun of it, he roils the markets and creates an economic meltdown just to keep himself amused. So rest easy, America, there’s no need for regulation or panic. It’s simply a matter of time before the FSM tires of his game and restores balance and order to the market.
Repeat that often enough in a voice dripping confidence, and before you know it, the nation will be offering up prayers to the FSM.
The point is that when politics is reduced to theater, active citizens become passive spectators, content to sit silently and watch the show. If they don’t like it, the very worst they will do is leave at intermission. The days of throwing rotten tomatoes at poor actors are over. Your predecessor proved that.
In a political theater, all that matter is cosmetic changes. It was a masterstroke on your part to announce that you were going to reverse the presidential order limiting stem cell research. Right away the spectators believe they are witnessing the dawning of a new age. So enthralled are they that they never notice that meaningful systemic change is off the table.
The reason the public is so docile is summed up in the second operative phrase in the above quote: “consumer culture”. All a consumer cares about is being stimulated by a product or a brand or the image a logo projects. People are no longer judged by what they believe, but by what they wear. Now, when America rebels, she head to the mall to be pierced and tattooed. The discontented no longer issue manifestos; they make fashion statements.
I have high hopes for your administration. You are a suburb actor with consummate marketing skills. You will do well by doing nothing.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I stumbled across a quote that ought to be the beacon that guides your administration:
“The most essential skill in political theater and the consumer culture is artifice"
There are two operative phrases in that quote. The first is “political theater” and the second is “consumer culture”.
Politics is no longer a struggle over issues; it is third-rate theater, a stage upon which the only thing that matters is the quality of the performance.
Your predecessors d didn’t fail because of his policies and wars, disastrous as they were. He fell because he was inarticulate and because he lost his ability to project an image other than that of a confused child. His image-building skills peaked when he did his hemorrhoidal strut across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
You sit at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to articulation and image building. I’ll bet you could make the following statement and get away with it:
You know, folks, the market is, indeed, self regulating. The only thing free market ideologues got wrong was the mechanism that keeps it balanced. It’s not the ‘invisible hand’;it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster®, who uses his Noodly Appendages to buy here or sell there. And sometimes, for the sheer fun of it, he roils the markets and creates an economic meltdown just to keep himself amused. So rest easy, America, there’s no need for regulation or panic. It’s simply a matter of time before the FSM tires of his game and restores balance and order to the market.
Repeat that often enough in a voice dripping confidence, and before you know it, the nation will be offering up prayers to the FSM.
The point is that when politics is reduced to theater, active citizens become passive spectators, content to sit silently and watch the show. If they don’t like it, the very worst they will do is leave at intermission. The days of throwing rotten tomatoes at poor actors are over. Your predecessor proved that.
In a political theater, all that matter is cosmetic changes. It was a masterstroke on your part to announce that you were going to reverse the presidential order limiting stem cell research. Right away the spectators believe they are witnessing the dawning of a new age. So enthralled are they that they never notice that meaningful systemic change is off the table.
The reason the public is so docile is summed up in the second operative phrase in the above quote: “consumer culture”. All a consumer cares about is being stimulated by a product or a brand or the image a logo projects. People are no longer judged by what they believe, but by what they wear. Now, when America rebels, she head to the mall to be pierced and tattooed. The discontented no longer issue manifestos; they make fashion statements.
I have high hopes for your administration. You are a suburb actor with consummate marketing skills. You will do well by doing nothing.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
It's business as usual!
My Dear Barack,
I hope you appreciate the deep debt of gratitude you own to the good citizens of San Francisco. It was they who returned Nancy “Make-Sure-Democrats-Don’t-Rock-The-Boat” Pelosi to office with an overwhelming majority. She brings to the office of Speaker of the House a quality one writer described as, “her paranoiac fear of leadership.”
She is a woman driven by the deep-seated belief that, “A new president must govern from the middle.”
Ah, the middle, that musty void where nothing is ventured and nothing is gained. It’s a political black hole where the timid cringe and dare not speak. As the troubadour sings, it is the place where “silence drowns the screams”[1] of the bombed and the dispossessed.
And thank God, Nancy has her enabler in Harry Reid who, after you were elected, reassured our kleptrocracy that, “This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology.”
Brave words spoken by a brave man.
With Congress bent over and spreading its cheeks as it waits for your first legislative initiative, your foreign policy advisors are licking their chops in anticipation of a ramped up Cold War.
Yes, Barack, I am speaking of the goose that lays all those golden eggs so valued by our defense contractors. And what is the grain that is going to keep that goose fat and happy? Why, it’s none other than Ronnie’s exercise in dementia, the Missile Defense System that your unnamed predecessor wants to plant in Poland and Czechoslovakia, thus pissing the Russians off enough to start another arms race (Can’t you just hear those golden eggs dropping one after another).
According to another writer, “Obama’s foreign policy advisors have taken [Russia’s objection to the new system] as a ‘test’ of the new president’s mettle and persuaded him to publicly announce his commitment to [name deleted]’s Missile Defense system.”
How I love your foreign policy advisors, those aged children whose barnacle encrusted brains are frozen in the Cold War of the 50s and 60s. Listen to them and they will impart to you the arrested maturity needed to rule.
And, you are learning. Even before you’ve taken office you’ve reassured the Poles and the Czechs that you are committed to build this contract-rich system.
It’s been barely a week since your victory, and already our oligarchs are sleeping the sleep of the dead. That’s one hell of an accomplishment.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] King Crimson. “Court of the Crimson King”
I hope you appreciate the deep debt of gratitude you own to the good citizens of San Francisco. It was they who returned Nancy “Make-Sure-Democrats-Don’t-Rock-The-Boat” Pelosi to office with an overwhelming majority. She brings to the office of Speaker of the House a quality one writer described as, “her paranoiac fear of leadership.”
She is a woman driven by the deep-seated belief that, “A new president must govern from the middle.”
Ah, the middle, that musty void where nothing is ventured and nothing is gained. It’s a political black hole where the timid cringe and dare not speak. As the troubadour sings, it is the place where “silence drowns the screams”[1] of the bombed and the dispossessed.
And thank God, Nancy has her enabler in Harry Reid who, after you were elected, reassured our kleptrocracy that, “This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology.”
Brave words spoken by a brave man.
With Congress bent over and spreading its cheeks as it waits for your first legislative initiative, your foreign policy advisors are licking their chops in anticipation of a ramped up Cold War.
Yes, Barack, I am speaking of the goose that lays all those golden eggs so valued by our defense contractors. And what is the grain that is going to keep that goose fat and happy? Why, it’s none other than Ronnie’s exercise in dementia, the Missile Defense System that your unnamed predecessor wants to plant in Poland and Czechoslovakia, thus pissing the Russians off enough to start another arms race (Can’t you just hear those golden eggs dropping one after another).
According to another writer, “Obama’s foreign policy advisors have taken [Russia’s objection to the new system] as a ‘test’ of the new president’s mettle and persuaded him to publicly announce his commitment to [name deleted]’s Missile Defense system.”
How I love your foreign policy advisors, those aged children whose barnacle encrusted brains are frozen in the Cold War of the 50s and 60s. Listen to them and they will impart to you the arrested maturity needed to rule.
And, you are learning. Even before you’ve taken office you’ve reassured the Poles and the Czechs that you are committed to build this contract-rich system.
It’s been barely a week since your victory, and already our oligarchs are sleeping the sleep of the dead. That’s one hell of an accomplishment.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] King Crimson. “Court of the Crimson King”
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Intellectual Make Believe
Dear Barack,
I mentioned in an earlier letter that your greatest handicap while in office will be your intelligence. You must always be on guard against it lest you do something that would have unintended consequences.
For example, you undoubtedly find the effort to introduce Intelligent Design into our schools to be so much foolish nonsense, which it is. And it would be your instinct to discourage it.
But, before you do so, it would be wise to step back and place the Intelligent Design controversy into context because it is a key element in The Big Picture.
Your unnamed predecessor used Intelligent Design as a club to discredit science, and it is up to you to continue this effort. Now, I realize that this may be a little hard for you to wrap your intelligence around, so let me explain.
The trouble with science is that it deals with reality in a corporate culture that increasingly deals in fantasy and make-believe. (Were the public to share this obsession with reality, an entire public relations industry could be wiped out.)
So, by casting doubt on the theory of evolution, our oligarchs cast doubt on all of science. This is why the Republicans have been courting religious wingnuts. Nobody raises hell like the deluded.
If the public could be convinced that science screwed up evolution, it might ask what else science screwed up, like global warming--oops! I mean climate change.
Now we get to the crux of the matter. There are simply too many scientists pointing to the reality that Homo sapiens has pretty well trashed the planet and that we are living on borrowed time.
The danger is that if the public bought into this it would negatively impact the economy. The proles would engage in all sorts of unhealthy activities like walking or taking public transportation or growing their own food. Taking public transportation would be especially dangerous because the next thing you know, they’d want more of it. Hell, isn’t our automobile industry in enough trouble?
A dumbed-down public is a happy public. Why torment people with reality when they can live out whatever is left of their lives in blissful ignorance. It’s the humane thing to do. So, check yourself before your start criticizing Intelligent Design. It’s more intelligent than it appears.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I mentioned in an earlier letter that your greatest handicap while in office will be your intelligence. You must always be on guard against it lest you do something that would have unintended consequences.
For example, you undoubtedly find the effort to introduce Intelligent Design into our schools to be so much foolish nonsense, which it is. And it would be your instinct to discourage it.
But, before you do so, it would be wise to step back and place the Intelligent Design controversy into context because it is a key element in The Big Picture.
Your unnamed predecessor used Intelligent Design as a club to discredit science, and it is up to you to continue this effort. Now, I realize that this may be a little hard for you to wrap your intelligence around, so let me explain.
The trouble with science is that it deals with reality in a corporate culture that increasingly deals in fantasy and make-believe. (Were the public to share this obsession with reality, an entire public relations industry could be wiped out.)
So, by casting doubt on the theory of evolution, our oligarchs cast doubt on all of science. This is why the Republicans have been courting religious wingnuts. Nobody raises hell like the deluded.
If the public could be convinced that science screwed up evolution, it might ask what else science screwed up, like global warming--oops! I mean climate change.
Now we get to the crux of the matter. There are simply too many scientists pointing to the reality that Homo sapiens has pretty well trashed the planet and that we are living on borrowed time.
The danger is that if the public bought into this it would negatively impact the economy. The proles would engage in all sorts of unhealthy activities like walking or taking public transportation or growing their own food. Taking public transportation would be especially dangerous because the next thing you know, they’d want more of it. Hell, isn’t our automobile industry in enough trouble?
A dumbed-down public is a happy public. Why torment people with reality when they can live out whatever is left of their lives in blissful ignorance. It’s the humane thing to do. So, check yourself before your start criticizing Intelligent Design. It’s more intelligent than it appears.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Monday, November 10, 2008
Practicing the "Faith"
My Dear Barack,
Let’s chit-chat about religion. I’m glad to see you’re carrying on the rightwing tradition of using religion as a smoke screen to divert the public’s attention away from the multiple sins of The Beast that is imperial power.
You understand that organized religion has but one function, and that is to erect a firewall between Christians and the teachings of Christ. Its raison d’état is to marginalize all those who take Christ’s dictum to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc, and ad nauseam seriously, while it defends the status quo as defined by our corporate oligarchy.
You showed your true colors early in the campaign when the faux flap over Rev Jeremiah Wright exploded. Wright’s sin was carrying on Christ’s tradition of trashing a temple that served high priests instead of God. As expected, the angry Whitemen of the religious right threw a hissy-fit. “How dare Wright speak the truth,” they roared!
Wright was swimming upstream of a tradition that preachers are suppose to be polite and deferential unless they are raging against sins preapproved by our corporate elite such as gay marriage, sex, teenage pregnancies, porno or premarital sex. To rage against actual sins, such as prejudice or imperial wars, is unforgivable.
They screamed; you listened and dumped Wright.
There’s no faith like the pragmatic faith of one lusting after power. This is the faith that chalks the Cross on every bomb dropped on heathen villagers. It is a faith fed by a self-delusive hubris and exceptionalism.
I have pointed out to your predecessor (whose name will never be mentioned in these letters) that religion serves The Beast best when the ego farts and the soul thinks the breath of the Spirit is upon it. It is when the ego is stilled that religion can become a malignant force for systemic reform. We saw this with the Civil Rights movement. (Nobody seems to have noticed how White televangelists started to grow in influence and power as a result of that debacle.)
I rest easy knowing that you will keep Christianity safe and sanitized. Christianity must continue to be an instrument of social control. Whenever it slips the bounds of propriety, all hell breaks loose.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Let’s chit-chat about religion. I’m glad to see you’re carrying on the rightwing tradition of using religion as a smoke screen to divert the public’s attention away from the multiple sins of The Beast that is imperial power.
You understand that organized religion has but one function, and that is to erect a firewall between Christians and the teachings of Christ. Its raison d’état is to marginalize all those who take Christ’s dictum to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc, and ad nauseam seriously, while it defends the status quo as defined by our corporate oligarchy.
You showed your true colors early in the campaign when the faux flap over Rev Jeremiah Wright exploded. Wright’s sin was carrying on Christ’s tradition of trashing a temple that served high priests instead of God. As expected, the angry Whitemen of the religious right threw a hissy-fit. “How dare Wright speak the truth,” they roared!
Wright was swimming upstream of a tradition that preachers are suppose to be polite and deferential unless they are raging against sins preapproved by our corporate elite such as gay marriage, sex, teenage pregnancies, porno or premarital sex. To rage against actual sins, such as prejudice or imperial wars, is unforgivable.
They screamed; you listened and dumped Wright.
There’s no faith like the pragmatic faith of one lusting after power. This is the faith that chalks the Cross on every bomb dropped on heathen villagers. It is a faith fed by a self-delusive hubris and exceptionalism.
I have pointed out to your predecessor (whose name will never be mentioned in these letters) that religion serves The Beast best when the ego farts and the soul thinks the breath of the Spirit is upon it. It is when the ego is stilled that religion can become a malignant force for systemic reform. We saw this with the Civil Rights movement. (Nobody seems to have noticed how White televangelists started to grow in influence and power as a result of that debacle.)
I rest easy knowing that you will keep Christianity safe and sanitized. Christianity must continue to be an instrument of social control. Whenever it slips the bounds of propriety, all hell breaks loose.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Let us now praise wealthy madmen
Dear Barack,
It’s time we talked about The Market, that utopian place where rational beings make rational decisions based on rational self-interest, the sum total of these decisions guaranteeing that The Market will maintain equilibrium and will insure the positive outcomes for the public.
Not.
According to the proponents of behavioral finance, the market is a mob that behaves like a mob, driven as it is by primal emotions. On writer explains:
The current events in the financial markets are much better explained by the next great paradigm shift in economics, behavioral finance. Here, it is not assumed that human economic actors operate with computer-like logic and dispassion, but are subject to the same wide emotional swings from euphoria to panic, from fear to greed, that is expected in the rest of the human condition. This framework much better explains a financial system willing to lend to anything with over 40 chromosomes (“46 chromosomes? That’s so old fashioned!”) a few years ago, but unwilling to lend even to itself right now.
Warren Buffet knew what he was doing when the planted his desk in a Nebraska cornfield, well away from the hysteria that is Wall Street.
The basic mechanisms that drive the market are ego, greed and stupidity.
Ego is the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, and stupidity is the conviction that we couldn’t possibly be wrong.
Greed is grossly misunderstood. Everyone assumes it is driven by a desire for money and power. Neither money nor power has anything to do with it. On the contrary, all greed lusts after is to the fawning adoration of all the creatures it believes to be its inferiors. Money and power simply facilitate greed, they aren’t its object.
Greed doesn’t fear going broke; it fears the mob turning on it when it realizes greed is simply so much hot air.
Your job, as president, is to stroke The Market and reassure it that it amounts to something. Praise its wisdom even as it shakes itself apart in a paroxysm of stupidity. Preach the superstition that it will eventually achieve balance and equilibrium, even though The Market’s idea of equilibrium is a blind tightrope walker clinging to the wire by his toenail.
However, when madmen finance your campaign, you have an obligation to praise their sanity.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
It’s time we talked about The Market, that utopian place where rational beings make rational decisions based on rational self-interest, the sum total of these decisions guaranteeing that The Market will maintain equilibrium and will insure the positive outcomes for the public.
Not.
According to the proponents of behavioral finance, the market is a mob that behaves like a mob, driven as it is by primal emotions. On writer explains:
The current events in the financial markets are much better explained by the next great paradigm shift in economics, behavioral finance. Here, it is not assumed that human economic actors operate with computer-like logic and dispassion, but are subject to the same wide emotional swings from euphoria to panic, from fear to greed, that is expected in the rest of the human condition. This framework much better explains a financial system willing to lend to anything with over 40 chromosomes (“46 chromosomes? That’s so old fashioned!”) a few years ago, but unwilling to lend even to itself right now.
Warren Buffet knew what he was doing when the planted his desk in a Nebraska cornfield, well away from the hysteria that is Wall Street.
The basic mechanisms that drive the market are ego, greed and stupidity.
Ego is the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, and stupidity is the conviction that we couldn’t possibly be wrong.
Greed is grossly misunderstood. Everyone assumes it is driven by a desire for money and power. Neither money nor power has anything to do with it. On the contrary, all greed lusts after is to the fawning adoration of all the creatures it believes to be its inferiors. Money and power simply facilitate greed, they aren’t its object.
Greed doesn’t fear going broke; it fears the mob turning on it when it realizes greed is simply so much hot air.
Your job, as president, is to stroke The Market and reassure it that it amounts to something. Praise its wisdom even as it shakes itself apart in a paroxysm of stupidity. Preach the superstition that it will eventually achieve balance and equilibrium, even though The Market’s idea of equilibrium is a blind tightrope walker clinging to the wire by his toenail.
However, when madmen finance your campaign, you have an obligation to praise their sanity.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
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