It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in the process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarch who have always existed and presumably always will always exist to get people to love their servitude.
Aldous Huxley
There’s someone in my head but it’s not me.
“Brain Damage”
Pink Floyd
George Orwell was a wonderful writer, deeply in love with the English language and always quick to call attention to its abuse. Yet it has always puzzled me why dystopian views of the future always cite his 1984 as a benchmark by which we measure this future dystopia, when our dystopia bears a closer resemblance to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
The unfortunate thing about the emphasis on 1984 is that is a misleading diversion. We look at our little worlds and conclude that they are nothing like Orwell’s world so everything must be okay. (Of course, if you’re an inner-city Afromerican male, your world is probably closer to Orwell than Huxley.)
In a 1962 speech at the Berkeley Language Center Huxley pointed out that Orwell wrote his book between 1945 and 1948 at a time that saw the downfall of Hitler’s totalitarianism and the rise of Stalin’s.
Huxley wrote his in 1932, at a time when the influence of Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, was beginning to peak. It was Bernays who argued that, “The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.”
Huxley said:
I’m inclined to think that the scientific dictatorships of the future, and I think there are going to be scientific dictatorships in many parts of the world, will probably be a good deal nearer to the brave new world pattern than the 1984 picture, they will [be] a good deal nearer not because of any humanitarian qualms of the scientific dictators but simply because the BNW pattern is a good deal more efficient.” (Huxley’s point that there will always be oligarchs is a good argument for changing them from time to time. This is called a revolution. Of course, it’s a given that no matter how democratic a revolution is, the formation of an oligarchy is inevitable, and any oligarch will sour over time. This is why they must be changed freaquently, much as you change the oil in your car every 5,000 miles.)
Huxley’s point was that a dictatorship was much more stable if the people consented to their servitude than if the servitude was enforced by guns and clubs, though even the most scientific of dictatorships will resort to the latter if the mob gets testy.
In Brave New World, people love their servitude because they are given an unlimited supply of SOMA, a drug that soothes. Instead of SOMA, we have a full medicine chest of psychotropic drugs comfort and caress our minds.
Our houses are filled with screens that divert our attention from the real world even as they paint a distorted view of that world. The problem with this ubiquity of screens is not mind control ala 1984, it is mind apathy.
In his talk, Huxley also spoke of suggestibility, which is the degree to which a mind can be manipulated. He suggested that in any given population, twenty percent of the people are highly suggestible while twenty percent can totally resist it. The remaining sixty percent could go either way depending on the circumstances, though he did point out that a heightened state of anxiety makes an individual more prone to suggestibility, as in the War on Terror.
What this means is that in the United States, 60 million people hang on Rush’s every word while 60 million think he’s a complete asshole. The remaining 180 million watch “American Idol.”
We are entering an era of increasing unrest as economic and environmental problems continue to mount. How this plays out depends to a large extent on how well the 60 million skeptics in America are mobilized. This is especially important because Fox News, the Tea Party and the radical right are mobilizing the 60 million sheep. And lies, if they are repeated enough, can sway the remaining 180 million, and that would be enough to silence the skeptics.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Herding Cats
There has been a lot written about the “War on the Middle Class, an unfortunate choice of words. Granted, the middle class is certainly under siege, but to call it a “war” is misleading. War needs a central command and a central strategy. What we have, instead, is an ooligarchical lynch mob, an example of monkey-see-monkey-do, all in the name of maximizing profits.
And the maximization of profits is the sole measure by which our oligarchs measure the economic health of America. They crow over the fact that productivity increased by 9.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009 and that 78 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 exceeded earning expectations.
All of these glowing reports of “better than expected earnings” are meaningless in light of the fact that a contributing factor to these increased earning has been a 5.2 percent reduction in unit labor costs thanks to the off-shoring jobs and the use of foreign workers. So, the increase in productivity has not seen a corresponding increase in wages. Had wages kept pace with productivity, the minimum wage would now be somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 per hour.
However, it must be remembered that our oligarchs would shed no tears over the demise of the middle class with its periodic outbreaks of reform mania that brought us an end to child labor laws, the civil rights movement, reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill, a regulated food and drug industry and scores of antismoking legislation, all of which have cut into to corporate profits.
It is true that the modern day reforms have become trivialized with the contemporary emphasis on such nonissues as second-hand smoke, childhood obesity and the elimination of transfats from restaurant menus. Of course, our oligarchs are four-square behind these reforms since they divert the middle class’s attention away from core issues such as the erosion of our civil liberties and the militarization of America.
The media loves to market the lie that we are the “richest nation in the world.” How can a nation be rich when its total corporate, private and public indebtedness equals 350% of it s GDP? Sorry fellows, but debt isn’t wealth as millions are discovering as their homes go underwater. Now American is suffering from “new-age” poverty in which one is poor because one does not have access to credit.
Some call the elimination of the middle class economic terrorism. I call it economic stupidity. The middle class has long been the backbone of the consumer spending that made up 70 percent of our GDP. The only thing that could possibly replace it is total war, which might give us a clue as to the direction in which we’re heading.
Our oligarchs have one unifying factor working for them that progressives don’t, and that is greed. Just as a lynch mob is an undisciplined collection of individuals focused on a single victim, so is our oligarchy an undisciplined collection of individuals focused on a single objective, the bottom line. The more labor costs are slashed, the better the bottom line looks. And if the middle class is destroyed in the process, it’s all the better. That means an end to pesky reform movements.
History isn’t planned; it just happens that way. And if we don’t like the way it’s happening then the solution is to make it happen another way. It’s kind of like herding cats. You never know where it's gong to end up.
And the maximization of profits is the sole measure by which our oligarchs measure the economic health of America. They crow over the fact that productivity increased by 9.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009 and that 78 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 exceeded earning expectations.
All of these glowing reports of “better than expected earnings” are meaningless in light of the fact that a contributing factor to these increased earning has been a 5.2 percent reduction in unit labor costs thanks to the off-shoring jobs and the use of foreign workers. So, the increase in productivity has not seen a corresponding increase in wages. Had wages kept pace with productivity, the minimum wage would now be somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 per hour.
However, it must be remembered that our oligarchs would shed no tears over the demise of the middle class with its periodic outbreaks of reform mania that brought us an end to child labor laws, the civil rights movement, reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill, a regulated food and drug industry and scores of antismoking legislation, all of which have cut into to corporate profits.
It is true that the modern day reforms have become trivialized with the contemporary emphasis on such nonissues as second-hand smoke, childhood obesity and the elimination of transfats from restaurant menus. Of course, our oligarchs are four-square behind these reforms since they divert the middle class’s attention away from core issues such as the erosion of our civil liberties and the militarization of America.
The media loves to market the lie that we are the “richest nation in the world.” How can a nation be rich when its total corporate, private and public indebtedness equals 350% of it s GDP? Sorry fellows, but debt isn’t wealth as millions are discovering as their homes go underwater. Now American is suffering from “new-age” poverty in which one is poor because one does not have access to credit.
Some call the elimination of the middle class economic terrorism. I call it economic stupidity. The middle class has long been the backbone of the consumer spending that made up 70 percent of our GDP. The only thing that could possibly replace it is total war, which might give us a clue as to the direction in which we’re heading.
Our oligarchs have one unifying factor working for them that progressives don’t, and that is greed. Just as a lynch mob is an undisciplined collection of individuals focused on a single victim, so is our oligarchy an undisciplined collection of individuals focused on a single objective, the bottom line. The more labor costs are slashed, the better the bottom line looks. And if the middle class is destroyed in the process, it’s all the better. That means an end to pesky reform movements.
History isn’t planned; it just happens that way. And if we don’t like the way it’s happening then the solution is to make it happen another way. It’s kind of like herding cats. You never know where it's gong to end up.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Money isn't money when it's spent on defense
It’s not a conspiracy, nor is it a case of bias. Rather it's a holistic condition so comprehensive that the mind, both personal and collective, is unable to wrap itself around any sort alternative. Recently, the lead story in The New York Times brought this home.
The ominous head line warned, “Party Gridlock Feeds New Fear Of A Debt Crisis: A Rising Fiscal Alarm.” (No Shit, Dick Tracy.) The second paragraph of the story cast a spotlight on our oligarchs’ mindset. The paragraph read:
After decades of warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating healthcare costs and an aging population would lead to a day of reckoning, economists and the nation’s foreign creditors say that moment is approaching faster than expected, hastened by a deep recession that cost trillions of dollars in lost tax revenues and higher spending for safety net programs.
Notice what isn’t mentioned as a major contributor to our deficit, such as a war in Afghanistan that is costing taxpayers a cool $57,000 per minute, or a trillion-dollar-a-year defense budget.
I guess these don’t exist. They are phantom wisps floating around somewhere overseas, well out of the public’s view.
If Napoleon’s army ran on its stomach, ours runs on its tires. Now the Pentagon is telling Congress that gasoline in Afghanistan costs our military $400 a gallon. That is what the Pentagon calls the “fully burdened cost of fuel” once all the expenses of moving fuel in and around a country that is without either infrastructures or gas stations.
Of course there are some locations so isolated that fuel has to be airlifted in giant bladders carried by helicopter. In that case, the fully burdened cost of gasoline jumps to $1000 per gallon. Factor in the fact that the large trucks used to haul tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles get seven miles to the gallon and you’re looking at one hell gasoline bill.
All of this assumes that the trucks carrying fuel escape roadside bombs and make it to their destinations. In June of 2008, 44 trucks carrying 220,000 of gasoline were lost to attacks while trying to deliver fuel to Bagram Air Field. That’s $88 million of gasoline up in flames. You could bail out a lot of underwater home owners with that kind of money.
Military sources call Afghanistan a “logistical nightmare.” It is said that in discussions of military affairs, amateurs focus on tactics while professions sweat logistics. I guess the amateurs planned Obama’s surge.
Obama plans to form a panel to “find answers” to our nation’s looming fiscal crisis. And I fear that this panel will reek of a prejudice for a neoliberal Washington Consensus as a solution that would include slashing social programs and privatizing as many government programs as possible.
Just when you thought Social Security “reform” was dead…
We may rest assured that no politician will have the courage to even suggest that a good place for some vigorous deficit reductions would be the endless corridors of the Pentagon. This simply wouldn’t do.
Besides, reducing defense spending does nothing for Wall Street while privatizing Social Security does much. And we all know whose going to be wielding the scalpel when it comes time to slash expenses.
The ominous head line warned, “Party Gridlock Feeds New Fear Of A Debt Crisis: A Rising Fiscal Alarm.” (No Shit, Dick Tracy.) The second paragraph of the story cast a spotlight on our oligarchs’ mindset. The paragraph read:
After decades of warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating healthcare costs and an aging population would lead to a day of reckoning, economists and the nation’s foreign creditors say that moment is approaching faster than expected, hastened by a deep recession that cost trillions of dollars in lost tax revenues and higher spending for safety net programs.
Notice what isn’t mentioned as a major contributor to our deficit, such as a war in Afghanistan that is costing taxpayers a cool $57,000 per minute, or a trillion-dollar-a-year defense budget.
I guess these don’t exist. They are phantom wisps floating around somewhere overseas, well out of the public’s view.
If Napoleon’s army ran on its stomach, ours runs on its tires. Now the Pentagon is telling Congress that gasoline in Afghanistan costs our military $400 a gallon. That is what the Pentagon calls the “fully burdened cost of fuel” once all the expenses of moving fuel in and around a country that is without either infrastructures or gas stations.
Of course there are some locations so isolated that fuel has to be airlifted in giant bladders carried by helicopter. In that case, the fully burdened cost of gasoline jumps to $1000 per gallon. Factor in the fact that the large trucks used to haul tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles get seven miles to the gallon and you’re looking at one hell gasoline bill.
All of this assumes that the trucks carrying fuel escape roadside bombs and make it to their destinations. In June of 2008, 44 trucks carrying 220,000 of gasoline were lost to attacks while trying to deliver fuel to Bagram Air Field. That’s $88 million of gasoline up in flames. You could bail out a lot of underwater home owners with that kind of money.
Military sources call Afghanistan a “logistical nightmare.” It is said that in discussions of military affairs, amateurs focus on tactics while professions sweat logistics. I guess the amateurs planned Obama’s surge.
Obama plans to form a panel to “find answers” to our nation’s looming fiscal crisis. And I fear that this panel will reek of a prejudice for a neoliberal Washington Consensus as a solution that would include slashing social programs and privatizing as many government programs as possible.
Just when you thought Social Security “reform” was dead…
We may rest assured that no politician will have the courage to even suggest that a good place for some vigorous deficit reductions would be the endless corridors of the Pentagon. This simply wouldn’t do.
Besides, reducing defense spending does nothing for Wall Street while privatizing Social Security does much. And we all know whose going to be wielding the scalpel when it comes time to slash expenses.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
"Cue the Angry Mob!"
One of the challenges facing 24/7 cable news saturation is that twenty-four hours is a hell of a lot of time to kill, especially if the emphasis is on image and not substance. Image is so much fluff and it’s difficult to make it sound weighty. The same is true of spin. Calling black white is easy; making it entertaining is not. One way to hype it up is through dazzling graphics and giant touch computer screens. The quick cut from scene to scene is necessary when what is being shown reveals little. Dazzle ‘em and they might not notice how vacuous it all is.
Another way of filling empty time with empty content is a parade of corporate shills and lobbyists, dragging their gravitas behind them, who are presented as impartial “experts.” Ex-politicians make excellent filler since the emphasis is on their past service and not their current service to a corporation or trade group.
As they say, “Out of the mouths of babes,” and the shills are no exception. Often what they say is revealing by what is not said. It’s called political analysis, though the analysis is as selective as it is slanted.
During the 2008 economic meltdown, “expert” Bernard Whitman appeared on Fox News to “analyze” the collapse of AIG. What wasn’t mentioned was that Whitman has worked for AIG to “develop, test, launch, and enhance their consumer brand.”
During the show, Whitman made a comment that is typical of our oligarchy’s response to public anger when he said, “The American people were understandably outraged about AIG. Having said that, we need to move beyond anger, frustration and hysteria to deal with the brass tacks of solving this economy (emphasis mine).”
Umm, Bernie, aren’t anger, frustration and hysteria the solution to solving our economy, along with torches and pitchforks? There are times when an angry mob can really stimulate systemic reform.
Some may find such a statement irresponsible, to which we reply, “So, what has responsible behavior done for us lately, besides tank an economy and mired us in two-plus unnecessary wars.” Face it, responsible behavior is an enabler for preserving the status quo.
Those who hold power never yield it willingly. Power only changes in the face of anger, frustration and hysteria. There is much about the Tea Party that disgusts me, especially their bigotry and xenophobia. But at least they’re pissed, which is more than I can say for progressives.
As frustration over the corruption flooding the Beltway increases, any fringe group that seeks to shake things up looks appealing. The danger is, of course, that one’s frustration becomes so intense that one compromises one’s principle just to join the mob.
“Stay cool!”
“Don’t be irrational!”
These are the mantras our oligarchs preach to the unruly mob. Reason has been degraded until it is little more than a tool for the protection of the status quo.
Progressives are “reasonable” and in being so they lend their tacit support tour oligarchy even as they criticize it. This “reasonableness” is why the Right has high jacked the Main Streeters that should be in the progressive camp.
The corporate state is an open wound leaking blood and pus; it’s going to take some strong medicine to staunch the flow.
Another way of filling empty time with empty content is a parade of corporate shills and lobbyists, dragging their gravitas behind them, who are presented as impartial “experts.” Ex-politicians make excellent filler since the emphasis is on their past service and not their current service to a corporation or trade group.
As they say, “Out of the mouths of babes,” and the shills are no exception. Often what they say is revealing by what is not said. It’s called political analysis, though the analysis is as selective as it is slanted.
During the 2008 economic meltdown, “expert” Bernard Whitman appeared on Fox News to “analyze” the collapse of AIG. What wasn’t mentioned was that Whitman has worked for AIG to “develop, test, launch, and enhance their consumer brand.”
During the show, Whitman made a comment that is typical of our oligarchy’s response to public anger when he said, “The American people were understandably outraged about AIG. Having said that, we need to move beyond anger, frustration and hysteria to deal with the brass tacks of solving this economy (emphasis mine).”
Umm, Bernie, aren’t anger, frustration and hysteria the solution to solving our economy, along with torches and pitchforks? There are times when an angry mob can really stimulate systemic reform.
Some may find such a statement irresponsible, to which we reply, “So, what has responsible behavior done for us lately, besides tank an economy and mired us in two-plus unnecessary wars.” Face it, responsible behavior is an enabler for preserving the status quo.
Those who hold power never yield it willingly. Power only changes in the face of anger, frustration and hysteria. There is much about the Tea Party that disgusts me, especially their bigotry and xenophobia. But at least they’re pissed, which is more than I can say for progressives.
As frustration over the corruption flooding the Beltway increases, any fringe group that seeks to shake things up looks appealing. The danger is, of course, that one’s frustration becomes so intense that one compromises one’s principle just to join the mob.
“Stay cool!”
“Don’t be irrational!”
These are the mantras our oligarchs preach to the unruly mob. Reason has been degraded until it is little more than a tool for the protection of the status quo.
Progressives are “reasonable” and in being so they lend their tacit support tour oligarchy even as they criticize it. This “reasonableness” is why the Right has high jacked the Main Streeters that should be in the progressive camp.
The corporate state is an open wound leaking blood and pus; it’s going to take some strong medicine to staunch the flow.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Another Spittle Spray of Christian Love
They call it the “Manhattan Declaration.” The document is an attempt by conservative Christians to reignite the culture wars that so consumed the nation in the early years of the last decade. The Declaration compares pro-choice advocates to eugenicists and Nazis and argue that same-sex marriage will be the road to polygamy and incest.
That, in a nutshell, is pretty much it. It contains the usual hype and bluster about creeping totalitarianism in the United States, even though its issuers would like nothing better than to turn America into a theocracy that would replace the Constitution with Leviticus. (Granted, stoning is a cost-effective means of execution, but really, now…)
The first thing to understand is that this is not a Christian documents because the individuals who drafted it and those who signed it are not Christians; they are Christianists. Christianism is an ideology that does its damndest to steer Christianity around the teachings of Jesus and resurrect the wrathful Jehovah of the Old Testament.
The whole concept of Christian love and forgiveness is anathema to them. They prefer their deity pissed off and ready to kick some ass. This is what makes organized religion so dangerous. As theologian William Stringfellow puts it, “The American churches more often than not have been among the most menial, manipulated and degraded vassals of the power of death.
Christianists hide behind the ramparts of dogma and express their piety in a spittle-spray of rage. Slaughter rocks when done in the name of God, and mendacity tastes sweeter when flavored with scripture.
As far as abortion goes, I refuse to entertain any pro-lifers unless they are active as hell in the peace movement. If they were serious about the “sanctity of life,” they would be storming the Pentagon, and Roman Catholic bishops would be demanding that our military budget be cut to the bones. But, that would mean an end to the patriotic violence they find so stimulating.
One of the best defenses of abortion was told me by a devout Roman Catholic who attended mass daily. He quoted Genesis 2.7, which reads: “then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being (emphasis mine). In other words, the Bible tells us that life begins when an infant draws its first breath, or when is can survive outside the womb. Prior to that, it is simply a mass of cells.
But then, how could you have a culture war with thinking like that.
As far as homosexuality goes, Leviticus does have some nasty things to say about it. But the same book also prohibits the eating of shell fish. Now, the ban on shell fish had a practical basis since eating them in the days before refrigeration could be deadly.
When you stop and think about it, the ban on homosexuality also had a practical basis. In biblical times, the average life expectancy was somewhere around 21 years. The average was dragged down by an inordinately high rate of infant mortality. Back then, a woman had to go through six pregnancies just to keep the population stable.
Couple that with the fact that the main source of labor for the labor-intensive endeavors necessary to keep the village or farm going was children and we can understand why homosexual unions were banned since such a union would deprive the village or farm of twelve pregnancies.
However, fast forward to the modern area when Homo sapiens cover the earth like vermin, a homosexual unions start to make a lot of sense.
To date, 419,000 people have signed the declaration. (That’s .002 percent of the population for those who keep track.)
The religious right wants a utopian society that would consist of well-behaved Christians living lives of piety and obedience who would behave with propriety while attending a public stoning. I have no doubt they would oozed Christian love while the victim died a slow and painful death.
The problem with any utopian society is that you have to wade through so much blood to establish it. All you can do with the legions who don’t buy into your particular brand of ideology is herd them into a stadium and kill them.
But then, Christian love has always been a great rationale for murderous mayhem. Hell, if someone won’t convert the best thing to do is send them upstairs to have a heart-to-heart with the old man.
That, in a nutshell, is pretty much it. It contains the usual hype and bluster about creeping totalitarianism in the United States, even though its issuers would like nothing better than to turn America into a theocracy that would replace the Constitution with Leviticus. (Granted, stoning is a cost-effective means of execution, but really, now…)
The first thing to understand is that this is not a Christian documents because the individuals who drafted it and those who signed it are not Christians; they are Christianists. Christianism is an ideology that does its damndest to steer Christianity around the teachings of Jesus and resurrect the wrathful Jehovah of the Old Testament.
The whole concept of Christian love and forgiveness is anathema to them. They prefer their deity pissed off and ready to kick some ass. This is what makes organized religion so dangerous. As theologian William Stringfellow puts it, “The American churches more often than not have been among the most menial, manipulated and degraded vassals of the power of death.
Christianists hide behind the ramparts of dogma and express their piety in a spittle-spray of rage. Slaughter rocks when done in the name of God, and mendacity tastes sweeter when flavored with scripture.
As far as abortion goes, I refuse to entertain any pro-lifers unless they are active as hell in the peace movement. If they were serious about the “sanctity of life,” they would be storming the Pentagon, and Roman Catholic bishops would be demanding that our military budget be cut to the bones. But, that would mean an end to the patriotic violence they find so stimulating.
One of the best defenses of abortion was told me by a devout Roman Catholic who attended mass daily. He quoted Genesis 2.7, which reads: “then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being (emphasis mine). In other words, the Bible tells us that life begins when an infant draws its first breath, or when is can survive outside the womb. Prior to that, it is simply a mass of cells.
But then, how could you have a culture war with thinking like that.
As far as homosexuality goes, Leviticus does have some nasty things to say about it. But the same book also prohibits the eating of shell fish. Now, the ban on shell fish had a practical basis since eating them in the days before refrigeration could be deadly.
When you stop and think about it, the ban on homosexuality also had a practical basis. In biblical times, the average life expectancy was somewhere around 21 years. The average was dragged down by an inordinately high rate of infant mortality. Back then, a woman had to go through six pregnancies just to keep the population stable.
Couple that with the fact that the main source of labor for the labor-intensive endeavors necessary to keep the village or farm going was children and we can understand why homosexual unions were banned since such a union would deprive the village or farm of twelve pregnancies.
However, fast forward to the modern area when Homo sapiens cover the earth like vermin, a homosexual unions start to make a lot of sense.
To date, 419,000 people have signed the declaration. (That’s .002 percent of the population for those who keep track.)
The religious right wants a utopian society that would consist of well-behaved Christians living lives of piety and obedience who would behave with propriety while attending a public stoning. I have no doubt they would oozed Christian love while the victim died a slow and painful death.
The problem with any utopian society is that you have to wade through so much blood to establish it. All you can do with the legions who don’t buy into your particular brand of ideology is herd them into a stadium and kill them.
But then, Christian love has always been a great rationale for murderous mayhem. Hell, if someone won’t convert the best thing to do is send them upstairs to have a heart-to-heart with the old man.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Hot Air and Power
As children we were raised with masturbatory fantasies of power. We saw films of steel mills spewing there red-hot sprays of molten steel, scores of brand new automobiles marching along their assembly lines, muscular workers turning giant bolts on giant machines with giant wrenches, tons of concrete being poured to create Hoover Dam, and, most thrilling of all, warships plunging through stormy seas as wave after wave broke over their bows and formations of fighter jets cutting across a clear blue sky.
We grew up believing we were entitled to both power and progress, to industrial and military might. Progress, we believed, was a straight-line ascent that would go on forever and ever.
That was then; this is now. Now we are beginning to see that rather than a straight line, technological progress, like all other cultural movement, inscribes a parabolic curve with it ascent, apogee and descent, and at this point in time it appears that we are on the descent segment of the curve. The advances in technology are becoming increasingly trivial (do I really have to stream videos on my cell phone?). One could even argue that the technological advances that profoundly changed society surfaced between 1820 (the emergence of the railroads) and 1930 (the splitting of the atom) and that these major advances, while they seemed fantastic at the time, are now producing some very negative feedbacks.
It could well be, in the far, far future, that our Age of Oil will barely register as a cosmic fart on the timeline of geological history, assuming anyone is still around to make this observation.
Empires also inscribe parabolic curves, and ours is definitely on the decent segment. John Michael Greer points out that “[E]mpire is the methamphetamine of nations; in the short term, the effects feel great, but in the long term they’re very often lethal.”
Power once seized must be defended, and this is how empires end up bankrupt Empire is an ego trip, and ego trips are essentially fragile balloons filled with hot air. With the passage of time this hot air leaks out and all that is left in a flaccid membrane.
Power doesn’t just corrupt, it rots the brain because those who achieve power live with the fear that they could easily lose this power. Therefore everything outside of the corridors of power is seen as a potential threat. Clear thinking and power don’t mix well. In an effort to hold on to it the powerful end up hollowing out the very institutions that gave rise to their power.
Power only feels safe when it is growing. Unfortunately, growth is a parasitic vampire that sucks the life blood out of its host. As the host weakens, power weakens until it withers and dies. If there is one rule that governs power it’s that it’s never forever. Yet, those who hold power believe it is. That is their tragic flaw and why the gods spend so much time laughing.
The feudal lord of the thirteenth century was convinced that feudalism was not only ordained by God that it would last forever. The powerful always think they are the endpoint of history while behind their backs history continues to move at its slow, steady pace. And nobody, but nobody, knows where it’s going.
-
We grew up believing we were entitled to both power and progress, to industrial and military might. Progress, we believed, was a straight-line ascent that would go on forever and ever.
That was then; this is now. Now we are beginning to see that rather than a straight line, technological progress, like all other cultural movement, inscribes a parabolic curve with it ascent, apogee and descent, and at this point in time it appears that we are on the descent segment of the curve. The advances in technology are becoming increasingly trivial (do I really have to stream videos on my cell phone?). One could even argue that the technological advances that profoundly changed society surfaced between 1820 (the emergence of the railroads) and 1930 (the splitting of the atom) and that these major advances, while they seemed fantastic at the time, are now producing some very negative feedbacks.
It could well be, in the far, far future, that our Age of Oil will barely register as a cosmic fart on the timeline of geological history, assuming anyone is still around to make this observation.
Empires also inscribe parabolic curves, and ours is definitely on the decent segment. John Michael Greer points out that “[E]mpire is the methamphetamine of nations; in the short term, the effects feel great, but in the long term they’re very often lethal.”
Power once seized must be defended, and this is how empires end up bankrupt Empire is an ego trip, and ego trips are essentially fragile balloons filled with hot air. With the passage of time this hot air leaks out and all that is left in a flaccid membrane.
Power doesn’t just corrupt, it rots the brain because those who achieve power live with the fear that they could easily lose this power. Therefore everything outside of the corridors of power is seen as a potential threat. Clear thinking and power don’t mix well. In an effort to hold on to it the powerful end up hollowing out the very institutions that gave rise to their power.
Power only feels safe when it is growing. Unfortunately, growth is a parasitic vampire that sucks the life blood out of its host. As the host weakens, power weakens until it withers and dies. If there is one rule that governs power it’s that it’s never forever. Yet, those who hold power believe it is. That is their tragic flaw and why the gods spend so much time laughing.
The feudal lord of the thirteenth century was convinced that feudalism was not only ordained by God that it would last forever. The powerful always think they are the endpoint of history while behind their backs history continues to move at its slow, steady pace. And nobody, but nobody, knows where it’s going.
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Saturday, February 13, 2010
Streamlining the Constitution
The Constitution has always been a pain in the ass. It’s hard to know what our founding fathers were thinking when they started hand out rights as if they were candy. If the goddamn document had never been written there never would have been a 9/11 because we would have snuffed the bastards before they even planned it.
This certainly seems to be the premise behind the multiple policies designed to keep us safe from terrorists by seeing how many terrorists we can create by blowing up their families.
If nothing else, many of these policies reflect the corporate state’s belief that efficiency is more important than civil liberty. Trials are expensive and involve too much effort on the part of the government to prove that in accused is guilty as charged. Prosecutors actually have to dig up evidence and then contest with a troublesome defense attorney to win a conviction. How much nicer it would be to do away with the whole process.
And the Obama administration is aiding this effort by continuing the Bush policy of targeting American citizens for assassination if the administration deems them “terrorists.”
Glen Greenwald quotes Dahlia Lithwick who calls the policy part of the administration’s “own special brand of terrorism-derangement syndrome.” Pogo Possum summed it up nicely when he said, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.” (He made the comment back in the 1950s when Albert the Alligator was being investigated for speaking English instead of Americanize.)
It’s for certain we are in more danger from our government than from any terrorists who might be floating around.
“Terrorist” is such a delicious label that makes the corporate state’s job so much easier. It’s a much more sophisticated label than “Communist.” “Communist” was too damn abstract to have any sort of real punch. It had to be propped up with an array of sub-labels such as, “pinko,” “fellow traveler,” “subversive,” the esoteric “comsymp,” and the ever popular “commie.”
Terrorist requires no such help. Its legs are strong enough to stand on its own and justify all sorts of derangement. Of course it helps that “terrorist” immediately brings to mind brown skin and a heathen religion. This gives the label a little extra oomph.
There is a toxic irony to all this. The only difference between the ’93 bombing of the World Trade Center and 9/11 is that 9/11 succeeded in bringing down the towers where the ’93 bombing failed to do so, even though that was its intent. However, all the perpetrators of the ’93 bombing were apprehended, tried in a court of law with all of its pesky constitutional safeguards in place and convicted. All of this was accomplished without a Patriot Act, military commissions, rendition, torture or wars of aggression. Meanwhile Obama bin Laden continues to make tapes.
And now the president wants to execute American citizens without the benefit of a trial by their peers.
Greenwald pointedly asks, “[I]f the Fifth amendment’s explicit guarantee—that one shall not be deprived of life without due process—does not prohibit the U.S. government from assassinating your without any process, what exactly does it prohibit?
I guess this is the change we can believe in.
This certainly seems to be the premise behind the multiple policies designed to keep us safe from terrorists by seeing how many terrorists we can create by blowing up their families.
If nothing else, many of these policies reflect the corporate state’s belief that efficiency is more important than civil liberty. Trials are expensive and involve too much effort on the part of the government to prove that in accused is guilty as charged. Prosecutors actually have to dig up evidence and then contest with a troublesome defense attorney to win a conviction. How much nicer it would be to do away with the whole process.
And the Obama administration is aiding this effort by continuing the Bush policy of targeting American citizens for assassination if the administration deems them “terrorists.”
Glen Greenwald quotes Dahlia Lithwick who calls the policy part of the administration’s “own special brand of terrorism-derangement syndrome.” Pogo Possum summed it up nicely when he said, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.” (He made the comment back in the 1950s when Albert the Alligator was being investigated for speaking English instead of Americanize.)
It’s for certain we are in more danger from our government than from any terrorists who might be floating around.
“Terrorist” is such a delicious label that makes the corporate state’s job so much easier. It’s a much more sophisticated label than “Communist.” “Communist” was too damn abstract to have any sort of real punch. It had to be propped up with an array of sub-labels such as, “pinko,” “fellow traveler,” “subversive,” the esoteric “comsymp,” and the ever popular “commie.”
Terrorist requires no such help. Its legs are strong enough to stand on its own and justify all sorts of derangement. Of course it helps that “terrorist” immediately brings to mind brown skin and a heathen religion. This gives the label a little extra oomph.
There is a toxic irony to all this. The only difference between the ’93 bombing of the World Trade Center and 9/11 is that 9/11 succeeded in bringing down the towers where the ’93 bombing failed to do so, even though that was its intent. However, all the perpetrators of the ’93 bombing were apprehended, tried in a court of law with all of its pesky constitutional safeguards in place and convicted. All of this was accomplished without a Patriot Act, military commissions, rendition, torture or wars of aggression. Meanwhile Obama bin Laden continues to make tapes.
And now the president wants to execute American citizens without the benefit of a trial by their peers.
Greenwald pointedly asks, “[I]f the Fifth amendment’s explicit guarantee—that one shall not be deprived of life without due process—does not prohibit the U.S. government from assassinating your without any process, what exactly does it prohibit?
I guess this is the change we can believe in.
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