Die Sammlung der folgenden Kommentare ist ausgelöst durch das, was
in der Psychologie, die C.G.Jung begründet hat, „numinose Berührung“ heißt. Es
meint das, wo eine Begegnung mit einer Person, einem Bild, oder einer Idee, eine außerordentliche Wirkung auslöst: diese Wirkung führte im vorliegenden Fall zur Geburt
meines „Banger-Archivs“ im vergangenen Oktober.
Die Wiese, auf der dieser kosmische Ochse grast, ist Ives Smith's Blog "naced capitalism", auf dem ich seit dem Schock vom 15.9.2008 täglich mitgrase.
Mein Banger Archiv enthält nicht jeden Beitrag von Banger, manchmal
aber auch Antworten oder Fragen an Banger und kann auch Links von Banger enthalten, und es stellt in den Augen von MM das wichtigste ungeschriebene Buch dar, dass es über die Gegenwart von einem umfassend gebildeten Amerikaner zu lesen gibt. Allen anderen Kommentatoren im NC sei hier ausdrücklich mein Respekt und oft genug meine warme Zustimmung versichert. Einzig wegen meines Filters: "In diesem findet sich Mundanomaniac und sein Esel am meisten wieder" erfolgt hier die Beschränkung auf den einen Banger.
MM bewegt es, diesen als Muster eines gebildeten amerikanischen
Ostküsten - Seniors zu loben, welchem in seinen Kommentaren gelingt, zu zeigen, was in
dieser besonderen Sonne/Uranus/Pluto/Jupiter- Woche zu feiern ist: jenen männliche Charakter, der Traum, Maß, Geist und Kraft - vereint.
4.4.2014, UTC 15:15.
Banger Archiv im Mundanen Tagebuch
October 21, 2013 at 10:43 am
The American people do not
want a job-guarantee program and would never agree to a full-employment system.
Why? Because in our culture there have to be winners who gain fabulous
advantages, rewards, and praise and losers who must gnash their teeth and either
die or come back to the competition filled with intense desire to succeed by
any means necessary–or so the myth goes.
Connected to this attitude,
our leaders always talk about “hard” work as if the “hard” part was a virtue. I
don’t want work to be “hard” I want it to be smart, elegant, and give me and
others time for goofing off, playing, partying which, studies show increases
creativity. As long as we hear that we should be rewarded for “hard” work
there’s no hope.
October 21, 2013 at 12:38 pm
Of course, everyone is for Mom
and apple pie so I don’t really think polls accurately reflect what people
really think both consciously and unconsciously. Our mythological framework
tends to be individualistic and competitive in outlook. For example, WPA
programs would be viciously attacked and would those attacks would resonate and
work for the majority of the American people and thus would be opposed.
Americans believe, as polls show, an amazing array of contradictory things.
All this was even true when
leftist ideas had more resonance in decades past. What people want is a highly
competitive capitalism that lifts all boats because all boats work “hard” and
act like the mythological “white man”; second to that would be a capitalism
that lifts most boats and so on. Down last on the list is a country that lifts
all boats simply because we ought to have an egalitarian society.
October 21, 2013 at 10:25 am
I loved your opening
paragraph–excellent example of good rhetorical style!
I have to differ here.
Obamacare is a political “grand bargain” that puts the private insurance
companies within a tighter state-structure than before. The reason so many of
the elites opposed the ACA is that it would be a model for future state/corporate
arrangements. Obamacare forces the insurance companies to genuflect (and give
us some of their most cruel practices) to the state in exchange for collecting
rents whereas before they didn’t have to do anything. This also forces these
companies to spend more money on lobbyists and increase the power of the
state–which the corporate sector sees as rents they have to pay to the state.
Under this system it is
theoretically possible that the citizens, through the power of the state, can
force the corporations to not be as malevolent as they would like to be. The
insurance companies complied because they avoided being legislated out of
existence (as should have happened) and lets them play the game in Washington.
Obamacare was a result of a
highly motivated FIRE sector letting Obama know that if he f!cked with them he
was a dead man politically (or even actually) and the glorious marketing
campaign of the Obama brand in 2008 which completely neutralized the left as a
political force.
As for this model being a
future example of legislation and regulation to come–I don’t think so. The
federal gov’t is in a state of paralysis that will last as far as the eye can
see until the left wakes up and begins to re-assert itself to move the pendulum
back to the center–without that we are moving to the neo-feudal future some of
us have predicted.
October 21, 2013 at 12:30 pm
It always strikes me as
curious that people don’t see the game is rigged and think these billionaires
are just prophets of profits–they aren’t for the most part (some exist of
course). They are well connected enough to trade on inside information and have
enough political sway to keep regulators at bay. In the U.S. the lapdog press
keeps the public in ignorant bliss–though I think that project is fraying at
the edges.
October 21, 2013 at 9:31 am
One thing we know for sure is
that there are people playing the game who DO know quite a lot of what the rest
of us do not know. This kind of information and access to it creates a level of
“insiders” who trade on their information and who are vested in the political
system and thus avoid prosecution–just sayin’…
October 21, 2013 at 9:36 am
Corporations are all chartered
by a political entity and all live within a system of laws and are responsible
to society by a whole series of interrelations as Yves pointed out. At one time
corporations existed at the “pleasure” of the state and could be disbanded when
they became obnoxious and that is the problem we face today.
October 21, 2013 at 9:56 am
Well said
This evolution of the “idea”
of a corporation has evolved through the situations you describe but also
clearly show the cultural changes that have occurred in our world.
For good or ill, the U.S. went
through a period of collective consciousness–the shared disaster of the
Depression, the New Deal, fireside chats, WWII, the Cold War, the trauma of the
60s were all things that were clearly etched in the public consciousness
despite the usual private concerns. And despite the craziness were were moving
somewhere together and becoming a better place to live, or so we thought. Then
came the 1970s cocaine replaced LSD–enuff said.
So the point here is that we
live in a culture of selfishness and believe that life is about feeding me–what
happens to you is your problem–we are not connected. The cable TV, the internet
and so on made us separate nations–and we see the result. Why shouldn’t Wall
Street operators game the system? Why shouldn’t CEOs or shareholders demand
quick and easy and fast and screw the public and screw the workers. You hire
armies of lawyers and lobbyists to write laws that only the army of lawyers
understand and viola–paradise for the rich. One way or the other, regardless of
what you think corporations ought to do, real people gain by the arrangements
and ideologies that dominate that world.
My view of the elites starts
with Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites. At one time the
elites felt at least some responsibility for the world they lived in, for the
people they interacted with everyday because their world was not so segregated
by class. Today the elites are stateless–they really don’t care. Stockholders
tend to be in that class and most of them don’t care–other than the pension
funds and they’re run by operators who look after their own interests.
This movement has trickled
down in society and we are witnessing the slow-motion disintegration of civil
society and there is nothing stopping its further movement other than inertia
which is, at present, our only ally.
October 21, 2013 at 8:55 am
I agree with you, Lambert,
when someone like Wolf comes over to the ideas that have been central to what
you all have been saying for years that’s a big f!cking deal and needs to be
leveraged for all its worth.
As for solutions to the
problem those are less important than getting the ideas wolf has articulated
onto the stage of the mainstream media–that’s the real trick. In fact, it is
the mainstream media we need to lobby not the politicians.
October 21, 2013 at 11:30 am
I think it’s a mistake to
demonize someone like Wolf or others who don’t share our POV. We gain by
listening compassionately and taking the good of what someone is saying or
doing and keeping our attention on that and not being so quick to judge. The
left ought to be about compassion and connection and not about alienating
others. When Wolf is with us we praise him–where he is not we critique him. My
guess, from knowing other people in high positions with good and honest hearts,
is that he really believes in capitalism and believes it is a wide enough
ideological “venue” to hold greater possibilities. Let’s not automatically
dismiss that or any other possibility. I personally, believe capitalism is
essentially against social morality and we need to move beyond it.
October 21, 2013 at 9:07 am
Not in the USA. This country
is deeply divided and to have a good fascism you need some kind of cultural
unity and we don’t really have that here. More likely we would have some level
of civil war and various feudal arrangements. The fact people are heavily armed
in this country, particularly in the South where I live would not make a
central authoritarian regime very tolerable unless it brought stunning economic
benefits–which it can’t. Besides, Americans are in no mood for a strong central
government–most of us believe, rightly, that national politicians are all
either cretins or thieves.
October 21, 2013 at 11:38 am
Well, I think you make the
only possible argument for authoritarian rule. Americans of all political
stripes and social classes love the military because they believe it is the
only institution that nurtures virtue. And yes, if the military decided to
install the whole laundry list of white Southern values I suppose they would
have a lot of support in my region but I think that support would be
short-lived as the reality set in unless, as I said, they were able to actually
make the trains run on time so to speak–and that, knowing the U.S. military
would be very unlikely.
Most of our love of the
military is based on movies and TV not reality. That effect would quickly wear
off.
And what of the rest of the
country? If you alienated the cultural left, mainly the people like Snowden who
populate the technocratic class the result would be sabotage–they may not be
armed with automatic weapons but they are armed with the ability to destroy IT
systems without which nothing can be run particularly the military. Also,
please understand that the military itself is very divided and have different
cultures. The Army, for example, have a dramatically different culture from the
Air Force and they would clash. Colorado Springs and West Point are even
further away culturally than they are geographically.
October 22, 2013 at 9:22 am
I don’t agree with you on
this. While the sharecropper system is one aspect of the current scene the
developing neofeudal order will be even more complex than the medieval one you
refer to. People aren’t going to accept the sharecropper system and will bind
together into formations around churches, communities, militias, powerful
families, street gangs, corporate entities both profit and non-profit and so on
which will have various levels of coercive features. Some will probably become
free-cities probably put together by guilds of highly skilled people, e.g., IT
people who hold the keys to everything–eventually these people will find that
they have collective power and can raise a ruckus (like Snowden like Anonymous)
and become centers of power. The emerging system will be very diverse in my
view.
We have to understand why
neofeudalism looks inevitable it is not strictly because of debt–it is a result
of a lack of cohesion and social bonding. White collar crime is rampant in the
corporate sector because the big-shots in that system have no sense of
connection to any collective so see themselves as pirate out for all they can
get when they can get it. This situation has always been an issue in the U.S.
and has contributed to the dynamism of U.S. culture but it’s always been
balanced by a sense of connection with some sort of minimal community structure
and fellow feeling for other humans–this has diminished in recent decades first
among the elites and now is wending its way downward.
November 3, 2013 at 10:47 am
The alternative if you are forced, like I am, to live in the USA is to
do several things:
1) enjoy life–because finding joy and pleasure strengthen us and makes
our POV more palatable–if we are depressed because we, in contrast to our
neighbor, know the full extent of the horror then our neighbor will not want to
join us–to understand things without attachment (a principle of martial arts)
enables us to function better–things are f!cked? So what feel the air blow
through your hair live in the moment.
2) Understand that you are living in the middle of a magical battle
against sorcery (PR, advertising, media and so on) where “they” are literally
trying to control your mind through making it pleasurable to do their will and
painful to do what you want to do. Decondition yourself from the mainstream
marrative that is false about nearly everything important particularly major
events. Liberating yourself from that mindset, in every detail will bring you
strength and hope–it is the mass deception more than physical force that is
enslaving us.
3) There are ways to strengthen yourself and open up your horizons to
higher and more inclusive states of consciousness whether through psychedelics,
prayer, meditation, and, above all nurturing your heart through compassion and
love.
November 3, 2013 at 9:44 am
I waver a lot. I don’t know whether it’s worth it to preserve what is
left of civil society to minimize human suffering or to advocate for chaos out
of which something might come.
One thing I do know and that is we are not just in a traditional battle
between plebes and patricians (we are) but in a magical battle for the
imagination collective and individual of mankind. The oligarchs consciously use
magic to control the populace. This magic consists of stage magic techniques of
slight of hand, misdirection, smoke and mirrors as well as neo-shamanism which
consist of using insights learned from a stunningly rich assortment of social-
and neuro-science research findings about how to manipulate human beings and,
finally (I suspect), real hoodoo/voodoo shamanism and God only knows what else.
My point is that the first thing we need to do is to understand that the
war is mainly being fought in the mind and spirit of human beings and the only
way out is to heal the damage already done to us individually and in our circle
of loved ones and then focus on strengthening ourselves on a psychic level.
An example of this is the tendency we all have of being negative about
this situation. We have to see this time as an opportunity and an opening. Why
not? We are living in, clearly, the most interesting period of history where
everything that happens has enormous consequences. Whether Rome fell or kept
going as an Empire was trivial compared to whether we take a wrong turn in our
society–the entire planet and civilization itself could be in peril. Had
Kennedy not believed in human beings rather than listening to his morally
corrupt and evil generals (their agenda all along was to have a nuclear war
with the USSR) how many of us would be here?
If we can see our own insights here as blessings and from which change
can flow we will change the psychic weather just a bit so that positive energy
can start to heal us. I will try to start with myself–I say the situation is
ripe for change for it has never been so obviously a result of malevolent
forces who are doing very little to hide their intentions–this makes it easy to
point out if we reach out and empower each other.
November 3, 2013 at 10:35 am
First of all there is an “idea” that we ought to be doing “everything”
for our kids. For many people that is just and ideological meme. I’m good so
that obviously, I do what is good and being pro-my kids is something I do. Of
course before that doing for myself to enhance my status (luxury cars and big
houses special shoes, handbags and so no) comes first because that is the
meaning of life–isn’t it? In other words those parents don’t really care much
for their kids–in fact, there’s an epidemic of texting while parenting–check
out what Shelley Turkle has to say on that.
Second, the idea that there is a commons has gone out of fashion–the
ideology of Margaret Thatcher (“there is no such thing as society”) so if other
people are having a tough time that’s just too bad, if anyone gets in the way
of cheap gas in the Middle East then kill them. And, even more, if someone gets
in the way of our fantasy lives they must be crushed (terrorists!!!).
It may be the case that most people don’t go as far as I’ve described
but it is the direction we are going in. Moral degeneration is the order of the
day and, also, an opportunity for all of us who have some sense of public
morality to show the practical value of a caring.
November 3, 2013 at 3:16 pm
The necessary information is widely available; for example, the
information about WMDs in Iraq was available but everyone chose to ignore it.
When I’ve spoken to people of high, low and in-between education or
intelligence (whatever that is–I speak here in the common sense of the word)
people have made it clear that they do not want to hear anything resembling the
truth–in fact the more education the worse it is. Simple laws of logic,
evidence and so on are ignored to protect a mythological framework. That’s why
it is so easy to fool the public. The hidden secret in this society is that
people, on average, do not want the truth or even talk about it. It’s not that
I or other people who share my views are that obnoxious or graceless. It is
interesting that for nearly all American intellectuals, for example, any
Socratic-type of dialogue is nearly impossible if the arguments starts shifting
outside of “normal” boundaries. Usually someone changes the subject–or the
person becomes enraged that anyone should have the temerity to question
official conventional wisdom.
I don’t mean to be critical here really, it’s just that is what human
culture is about. Mythological frameworks almost always trump anything you and
I might call the truth or even science–scientists are often the worst
offenders, as history has shown–paradigm changes come very hard in any group
who share a mythological framework.
“Liberating yourself from that
mindset, in every detail will bring you strength and hope–it is the mass
deception more than physical force that is enslaving us.
3) There are ways to
strengthen yourself and open up your horizons to higher and more inclusive
states of consciousness whether through psychedelics, prayer, meditation, and,
above all nurturing your heart through compassion and love.(Banger)”
I fully embrace your approach
to the human mess caused by the specific degeneration in the minds of the
US-”elite” determinig the present world-stile.
One Way, that gives me the
independent mind I need to breath freely is the magic of the zodiac and the
running lights of heaven (Moses 1, 4).
Just today, the “magical” Reformations-Sunday found me meditating the present
earth-quarter of the determination of my fellow countrymen. (Recently I did the
same to the country governed in Washington)
Maybe some of you readers,
fluent in german,or daring to try the Google-Translator are interested in that
aproach.
Reply Banger says:
November 3, 2013 at 9:00 pm
Google translate is not great
from German to English–very different gramatical structure, obviously. At any
rate I know quite a bit about astrological symbolism and find your ideas
interesting. Certainly befuddlement is a good description to the situation in
Washington–though I’ve been away for a couple of years.
As an old friend used to say
“gasp.” Sex is a whole nest of complexities a sticky morass of conflicting
feelings. It’s where everything meets and comes together–it is the essence of
the universe which is, after all one big cosmic “bang” of yin and yang and all
mixtures in between.
But one thing I’ve noticed is
that people in our culture get it very mixed up perhaps because the Christian
religion (and other religions), early on, tried to delete sex from God – ya
can’t do it without inviting both religious and sexual perversion.
November 3, 2013 at 12:06 pm
You are right–bad language–what I usually say is “everything is a lie
even if it’s true” by which I mean that even if the literal facts are more or
less correct the context is false. Thus, to me, it is all lies, propaganda and
PR. I was able to observe how public opinion is formed–it’s all show-biz,
believe me.
November 10, 2013 at 8:21 am
See my comment in answer to this comment. Basically I believe there is
no choice for the Greeks but to create private arrangements that will look like
feudalism. And this movement in the EU to torture the periphery will result, I
believe, in new social arrangements. Already the Golden Dawn movement looks a
lot like a set of feudal arrangements where businesses are being recruited to
sign up to insure security.
November 10, 2013 at 8:18 am
Your last three paragraphs are on the money. Power starts from community
and community is something tangible. However, each of those small atomic
communities are now able to join with others to form emergent larger
communities that can become politically powerful.
I think there are signs of this happening in Greece as the central
authority both moral and physical is breaking down new and older political
arrangements will emerge. You see these arrangements in the Middle East and
they are basically feudal much like the political arrangements illustrated in
the movie Godfather.
Central states are failing and political trade arrangements like the EU,
WTO, and the TPP are all assaults on the nation state. All this results in
corporate domination of the world which means, in effect, a large scale global
system of neofeudalism. I’ve said before that, at this time, there is not
counter-movement. All we can do is join it by creating our own feudal entities
like, I believe, the Greeks will. Some of them won’t be pretty and will resemble
the
December 29, 2013 at 10:21 am
First, 2013 was an excellent year for a host of reasons at least
culturally/politically in the U.S.
1) The rejection of the use of force against Syria by the American
people and Congress may have been a critical turning point in U.S. history.
Generally, it is always easy to stampede the American public to go to war by
creating or reacting to a single event through the waving of flags and
exhortations by the government and media to meet our grand destiny and so on.
The public rejected that BS!!!! Even without a close understanding of the
situation! In this way, I believe the public has grown immune to the endless grabbing
of tax receipts by the military-industrial-security complex. Perhaps they will
move on to see that the security risks the media advertises is non-existent (my
view at any rate) and that there are real security threats from the government
and the Wall Street oligarchs that are far more critical than the odd mental
defective who gets caught in an FBI scam. All this has led to a move towards a modus
vivendi with Iran that looks to be permanent.
2) Even more important than what I just mentioned, was the election of
Pope Francis wherein the Church is skidding into a dramatic U-turn and
resurrecting Jesus as the center of the Church where He tends to be obscured by
most of the recent Popes other than Pope John the XXIII. Unless the guy is
whacked (a possibility) his Papacy could signal a dramatic change in world
culture (there are a lot of Catholics).
3) The revelations of Edward Snowden have had and will continue to have
a dramatic effect in world history. The huge structure of the American national
security state and it’s colonies (notably in the UK) has shown itself to be
vulnerable and full of leaks. Snowden, in my view, did not act alone but may
have been aided by dissidents within the intel community (there are such
people–Seymour Hersh often reports their concerns). I think all this has deeply
shaken the pecking order in Washington and has caused tech companies like
Google to re-assess their relationship with the national security state. I believe
that this along with public skepticism will gradually weaken the national
security state apparatus itself that has gone unchallenged since Truman created
the CIA.
4) Finally, the slow-motion rebellion against the federal government
that is building steam on the right and may, God willing, begin to build on the
left. I personally believe the federal government has passed the tipping point
wherein it has become a net-negative as far as the public is concerned because
people sense that the government seems to be, largely, a tool for the elites
and views us as subjects rather than our servants. This is a critical idea that
shows no sign of lessening. Obama has been able to keep the left in thrall (as
he was engineered to do) but that shows signs of wearing thin. I know people
here condemn me for saying this but I see a movement to bring together the
anti-authoritarian right and elements of the left hostile to Obama and not
obsessed with the culture wars.
5) I see some evidence that some elements of the public may be drifting
towards a more spiritual outlook. I see a focus and a hunger by many
Evangelical Christians to focus on inner change rather than forcing others to
conform to the dictates of the culture wars. As these Christians are confronted
by more friends and relatives who are gay they begin to see them as human
beings who share a common humanity and are capable of developing genuine
relationships with people of their choosing who they love and are loved in
return. Love has a strange way of being infectious–and when we see gay people
love each other how can anyone with a heart object? I believe this fact and the
revival of the notion that we ought to be looking at the log in our eye rather
than the speck in the eye of our neighbor will have profound effects.
Similarly, I think New Age ideas are maturing and becoming less of a fad as
people discover begin to take the advice of the Dalai Lama to pursue their own
traditions faithfully because all spiritual traditions contain the Truth we
need. Again, the Pope’s attitudes may well encourage this movement in Catholics
who may rediscover the deep spiritual traditions within Catholicism that was
often suppressed by the Church.
On the bad side:
We see a continuation of the stranglehold that vested interests have on
this society. People are still being seduced and weakened by dependence on
entertainment, consumerism, radical materialism, status-needs and so on. I
think in the next couple of years, however, we will see a drift towards a more
meaningful life.
December 29, 2013 at 4:31 pm
Theoretically, I agree–only players really play in the Machiavellian
game of international power-politics. But here’s the thing–not all forces are
malevolent and there are more than two sides. Do I think Snowden/Greenwald are
playing a “limited hangout” game? Yes I do. Do we have any idea what faction is
supporting them or what their goals are? Not really–we should be looking at the
whole picture but, frankly, most of us are afraid to do so.
December 30, 2013 at 9:14 am
I think we have seen the flowering of Western Capitalism and now it has
gone to seed. There is no chance that the old ways will continue–we are slowly
entering the withering stage but have perhaps a decade or two before this is
clearly understood.
I see automation, robotics, technology in general as both a problem and
an opportunity. Technology is now ripe enough to offer what many in the 1950′s
believed was the dream of drastically shorter work-weeks and the spread of
prosperity. With the proper social organization some of that was realizable by
the 60s–part of the War on Poverty idea was to create that sort of
society–where everyone could prosper. What happened? Why are we now so
pessimistic about the future?
I suggest to you that only a small percentage of people even want to
look at that question. Here’s a hint: we had a couple of major political
revolutions we don’t acknowledge because we are, in our culture, generally
afraid to face reality, deal with evidence and connect the dots. We’d rather
live in the mainstream media land of fantasy, propaganda and misdirection.
December 30, 2013 at 9:21 am
Basically you make a lot of sense. What seems to be lacking in discourse
are central ideas and a broad perspective. Our central issues are political
(not economic) and the central issue in politics is history. We don’t
understand our history at all because we have not been able to grasp the full
magnitude of misinformation, misdirection and Big Lies that have come out of
the mainstream media including publishing, movies and video–so we end up
arguing in their historical language rather than one based on an close analysis
of power–particularly history after WWII.
January
1, 2014 at 8:10 am
Well, let a thousand flowers bloom, I guess. If certain states want to
go in various directions the voters seem to want then let them. We are a deeply
divided country culturally, religiously, ethnically, politically. We have deep
class divisions and a political establishment that is, by historical standards,
corrupt, cynical, and power-hungry. We have a mass media that is even worse
than the political leadership and has been providing the American people with
obviously false narratives about every aspect of political and cultural life
for decades.
People are beginning to realize all this and are searching for new
narratives, new perspectives and the right-wing has been willing to milk this
thread while the left sleeps in the suburbs and West Side apartments.
The appeal of Aynrandia is strong because there are no coherent
perspectives around that can be grasped by the simple-minded (most people are
simple-minded) because all they listen to is the media and their public
education sucked. Christianity should be one alternative since the philosophy
of Ayn Rand and Christianity are diametrically opposed but, sadly, the
Evangelical movement has itself become corrupt, self-seeking and degenerate
though I see signs of that changing as Christians try to deal with real life
and the life of the soul for even they are stirred by a hunger for
spirituality–so I think we might see glimmers of light there.
But we certainly aren’t going to see much from the moribund left. Why
are we so few? Why are we (on the left) so divided, so unwilling to organize to
be a militant force in society? I’ve tried to answer that and tried to ask that
question and most dialogue degenerates into intellectual pissing contests or
rambling about ideology. What does the left offer as opposed to Aynrandia or
what I would call neo-feudalism? I see nothing. Even social-democracy is kind
of dead. What is our vision? Are we even coherent? What do we have to say about
the unique characteristics of modern life very different from life in the 19th
and mid-20th century? The best service we have offered is we, like medieval
monks are trying to keep some semblance of the truth alive–but even that is
inadequate because we still speak within the narrative of the mainstream media.
We don’t look at the real history, we don’t debunk the media narrative on, for
example, the assassinations of the 60s where the evidence is completely
contrary to the official explanations should be central to the left-narrative
because if you can’t understand that we haven’t had a legitimate government
since 1963 then you fail to grasp the grand sweep of events since then.
Reply ↓ sufferin' succotash
January 1, 2014 at 9:59 am
I can’t go along with the notion that most people are simple-minded. Or
to put it another way, we’re all “simple-minded” in the sense that we want
plausible narratives to explain the world as it is. The key word is
“narratives”, and for people estranged from the world as it is–as many Americans
are, whatever their political views–the most plausible narrative is often a
conspiracy theory. This is just as true on Manhattan’s Upper West Side as it is
in Topeka. Conspiracy theories aren’t all alike; there’s a difference between
using a conspiracy theory as a learning device, a way of opening minds and
creating new perspectives, and confusing it with reality.
The current class warfare in this society isn’t a conspiracy; it’s a condition
brought about by the convergence of a number of factors over several
decades–”men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they
please”. The problem for the Left is how to explain this to Kansans who are
already knee-deep in right-wing furtive fallacies promoted by some very
well-organized and wealthy interests. If those opposed to those interests use a
concept such as the ‘one percent versus the 99-percent” to begin making
political headway, then this is a solid first step in political education. With
special emphasis on “first step”, otherwise the Left is just as guilty of
cynical manipulation as its opponents. But coming up with substantial factual
evidence regarding inequality, exploitation, etc., should be no problem
anywhere outside of downtown DC or midtown Manhattan.
January 1, 2014 at 11:18 am
I love people and I’ve traveled in the developed and less developed
world, not extensively, but enough to get a grasp of things. Most people are
simple-minded in terms of politics and society and do require simple
narratives.
History is often the history of conspiracies–court intrigue,
manipulation, trickery was describe in Herodotus and Thucydedes. I’ve been
around it, I’ve seen it in very small ways and have studied the evidence. The
class-war thing is also old–Livy well-describes the almost comic conflict
between the plebes and patricians only in this country the plebes are easily
fooled (simple minded) into thinking they ought to be on the side of the
patricians without being paid! That’s the height of imbecility don’t you think?
My friends and neighbors are simple-minded in the ways I’ve described
and prefer their company to the elites who are more complex but even more
deluded. I agree with William Buckley’s quote ” I would rather be governed by
the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two
thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University.”
January 2, 2014 at 12:04 pm
I think you bring up a very fertile questions: whose myths are we
talking about here. You claim that your or “our” myths are very different than
the myths of say an obscure tribe in Indonesian territory. Jung, however,
talked about something beneath or beyond myth that is deeply embedded in the
human psyche that social arrangements enhance or suppress and everything in
between. These deep archetypes cannot be put into words but, through inner
exploration, can be sensed and intuited and expressed at least in part in
today’s language–the actual literal expression might vary from culture to
culture but the “energy” of it remains the same. If we want to use science as a
source of material, we know that human beings are hard-wired for compassion and
connection thus, for example, a society that devalues compassion like our own
becomes stressed and anti-convivial as an existential reality.
My own encounters with non-western people and tribal people, though
limited, has shown me that we do have deep connections I did not expect but I
believe are real. With that perspective I’ve been able to see how shallow our
everyday life and interactions actually are–on the other hand, we’ve expanded
human horizons in many other ways that I feel are good including technology which
I see as, potentially, an aid for going deeper.
January 4, 2014 at 9:34 am
That goes to the heart of the philosophy that undergirds right-wing
political ideas. Remember, Margaret Thatcher said that there was no such thing
as society but, rather, individuals. To me this is akin to saying that the
world is flat, literally and the Moon is made of cheese. Yet, she and others
who follow a Randian or neo-Randian ideology actually believe this fiction
which is why most of these “conservatives” hate social-science outside of a
narrow brand of economics.
If there is no such thing as society then I am free to grab on to any
source of income I can whether it is government subsidies or selling my
children into prostitution if that is my pleasure. This part of conservative
moral philosophy needs to be looked at by those who espouse Randian notions
and, at the same time, claim to be Christian which is diametrically opposed to
the cult of selfishness.
February 16, 2014 at 10:06 am
The PD is a kind of symbol of
the perversity of assumptions about “rationality’ narrowly defined in the West.
The assumptions inherent in this idea that “rational” action equals selfish
action goes counter to everything else we know about human beings and their
ability to connect with each other. Over twenty years ago Loren Carpenter set
up a collective “hive mind” (see Kevin Kelly’s book Hive MInd (here is
the link to an online version of the chapter this is described) by asking
participants to do a number of tasks starting with a game of pong–people
collectively connected their actions to perform this and far more complex acts
like landing a plane in a flight simulator. I suggests, as much of social
science and now neuro-science has conclusively found that we are hard wired for
connection and communication and only a the perpetual beat of stress, distrust,
fear, and relentless propaganda dividing us all into “winners” and “losers”
keeps this perversity alive. This perversity is what we call individualism and
it became a useful tool in human development in the same way that adolscents go
through a phase of necessary separation from the family. But we are staying too
long in adolescence and must move on to social maturity.
February 16, 2014 at 10:54 am
What nurtures solidarity? To
put it simply, compassion and courage. These two principles will lead us to
personal as well as collective health.
As for your Mississippi
situation, you had no choice–there courage would have been foolish since the
culture has no room for worker-solidarity even among workers. Solidarity of a
sort exists in the Southern church which is culturally sympathetic to oligarchy
and neo-feudalism. As there is a clear spiritual authority and order, so there
is a clear temporal authority and order. Question one or another and chaos
results.
Reply ↓ ambrit February 16, 2014 at 3:33 pm
Banger;
Yes indeedy! One of the biggest crooks in this area, Hattiesburg Mississippi, is
the head of the largest Baptist Church in town. He is well known to be the
eminence gris behind the Mayor. The questionable votes that decided the
judicially mandated re-polling for mayor came from an area notoriously
controlled by elders from his church. Something to do with an open ballot box
that disappeared for several hours after the polls closed.
What’s the famous saying Frank Herbert used in Dune? Something like, “When
Church and State share the reins, disaster follows.”
Thank you for the absolution concerning my silence in the face of Evil. I do
think now, years later, that I sold a little piece of my soul by not speaking
up, or at least, refusing to participate, as in looking for another job. I
would suggest that that moment was a perfect Existential Test. Then, I think
back on how Sartre died, and scratch my head. The older I get, the more I
realize, I know nothing.
February 23, 2014 at 1:00 pm
I have mixed feelings about democracy but I can imagine a world that was
democratic but it would have to involve all aspects of life including our
economic life. I like the idea of group-mind that is talked about in the Wisdom
of Crowds and other social science experiments. The problem the Founders
had with democracy is that it could be subject to collective madness as well as
collective wisdom. I don’t agree–I think that “the people” can make all kinds
of mistakes and, in fact, are likely to make much greater mistakes than in the
Constitutional Republic we had a few years back that ended in 2001. But it can
also quickly right itself and make the right adjustments as the collective
gains collective wisdom. It’s worth a try.
March 5, 2014 at 7:21 am
Look, enough with the “corrupt
thug” nonsense. All major political leaders are tough guys and all need to do
things you would call “corrupt” in order to seize and maintain power. In much
of the world oligarchs act like oligarchs and don’t pretend to be saving the
world so they are called thugs. I’ve actually lived among real thugs and many
of them are friendly, personable, and decent with those they care about–if you
f—- with them then you pay a price but they don’t pretend to be saving the
world.
Power means using the fist–end
of story. Obama or Cameron or Putin it’s the same thing. The key difference
here is that Putin has largely eliminated most of his serious rivals or made
deals with them. He is far more flexible in his freedom of action and has a
certain advantage in this crisis that the West lacks.
March 5, 2014 at 7:37 am
Well said.
However, all countries, when
they can gobble up other countries. But my concern is not with Ukraine or
Russia–my concern, a citizen of the United States, is my country. I know my
history very intimately and know that it is in ambition and practice an imperial
power that wants to rule the world–for the good of the world of course. This
has always been a tacit assumption among many people in the U.S. and it is not
an irrational one. The U.S. has, potentially, the qualities of a world-state.
We are a multi-ethnic society that, despite obvious tribal differences, has a
common culture and series of myths. We believe here that, if only the rest of
the world were like us, we could all prosper together. We are, in short, the
world’s most ideological country–American Exceptionalism is shared by right and
left and by the ignorant and highly educated. Lately, this ideology has been
fraying at the edges.
What worries me is that the
myth-making apparatus in the my country is gearing up for war as it always does
whenever even the remotest chance of armed conflict exists. See my comment
below for more.
March 9, 2014 at 10:28 am
That’s because most people don’t understand politics in Washington. We
have a new alliance I will call the “Belligerent Party” made up of neocons like
Nuland/Kagan and neoliberals like Kerry–they are now joined at the hip. This
party has largely taken over the mainstream media, particularly cable TV which
is hungry for conflict and War (almost as a religion). The alternative party
are the realists whose views are presented by Henry Kissinger’s op-ed in the Post .
Not that I agree with it all but it shows an understanding of the situation as
opposed to trying to whip up hysteria to get a reluctant America to meet its
imperial destiny. Those that are simply opposed to war or those who just don’t
want to get involved in all this nonsense have little voice at this time.
Bangers Link:
How the Ukraine
crisis ends
By Henry A. Kissinger, Published: March 5
Henry A. Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.
Public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know
where we are going? In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great
enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from
three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not
how it begins.
Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether
Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it
must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a
bridge between them.
Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status,
and thereby move Russia’s borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its
history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the
United States.
The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a
foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The
Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for
centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most
important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709 ,
were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet — Russia’s means of
projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based by long-term lease in
Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and
Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history
and, indeed, of Russia.
The European Union must recognize that its bureaucratic dilatoriness and
subordination of the strategic element to domestic politics in negotiating
Ukraine’s relationship to Europe contributed to turning a negotiation into a
crisis. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities.
The Ukrainians are the decisive element. They live in a country with a
complex history and a polyglot composition. The Western part was incorporated
into the Soviet Union in 1939 , when Stalin and Hitler divided up the spoils.
Crimea, 60 percent of whose population is
Russian , became part of Ukraine only in 1954
, when Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian by birth, awarded it as part of the
300th-year celebration of a Russian agreement with the Cossacks. The west is
largely Catholic; the east largely Russian Orthodox. The west speaks Ukrainian;
the east speaks mostly Russian. Any attempt by one wing of Ukraine to dominate
the other — as has been the pattern — would lead eventually to civil war or
break up. To treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle
for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West — especially Russia and
Europe — into a cooperative international system.
Ukraine has been independent for only 23 years; it had previously been
under some kind of foreign rule since the 14th century.
Not surprisingly, its leaders have not learned the art of compromise, even less
of historical perspective. The politics of post-independence Ukraine clearly
demonstrates that the root of the problem lies in efforts by Ukrainian
politicians to impose their will on recalcitrant parts of the country, first by
one faction, then by the other. That is the essence of the conflict between
Viktor Yanukovych and his principal political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko. They
represent the two wings of Ukraine and have not been willing to share power. A
wise U.S. policy toward Ukraine would seek a way for the two parts of the
country to cooperate with each other. We should seek reconciliation, not the
domination of a faction.
Russia and the West, and least of all the various factions in Ukraine,
have not acted on this principle. Each has made the situation worse. Russia
would not be able to impose a military solution without isolating itself at a
time when many of its borders are already precarious. For the West, the
demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence
of one.
Putin should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of
military impositions would produce another Cold War. For its part, the United
States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught
rules of conduct established by Washington. Putin is a serious strategist — on
the premises of Russian history. Understanding U.S. values and psychology are
not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been
a strong point of U.S. policymakers.
Leaders of all sides should return to examining outcomes, not compete in
posturing. Here is my notion of an outcome compatible with the values and
security interests of all sides:
1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and
political associations, including with Europe.
2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when
it last came up.
3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the
expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a
policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their country.
Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of Finland.
That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce independence and cooperates with
the West in most fields but carefully avoids institutional hostility toward
Russia.
4. It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for
Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be possible to put Crimea’s relationship
to Ukraine on a less fraught basis. To that end, Russia would recognize
Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy
in elections held in the presence of international observers. The process would
include removing any ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at
Sevastopol.
These are principles, not prescriptions. People familiar with the region
will know that not all of them will be palatable to all parties. The test is
not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction. If some solution based
on these or comparable elements is not achieved, the drift toward confrontation
will accelerate. The time for that will come soon enough.
March 9, 2014 at 10:18 am
I like Yannis and contributions here–I think he’s a little Jesuitical in
his commentaries but let’s start with what is really going on here. The
Ukrainians are split into different groups and are ripe for destabilization.
There are all kinds of grievances I’m sure–if you are in an “out” position in a
neo-fedual society you are going to be irritated but, frankly, the alternative
is neo-feudalism with other faces. There is no evidence that the main thrust of
the demonstrations were towards creating a Western European state–that simply
is not going to happen nor should it. However, the critical facts are that this
was a country that was gradually moving in a Western direction and had free
elections. The demonstrators proved that Ukraine cannot be a democracy because
they sought to reject the will of the people in the streets with wild scenes of
hooliganism chiefly fueled by right-wing youth. Yannis ignores this.
The action of NED is ignored by Yannis–he may not even know that is or
how it is constructed and what it’s agenda is. It is made up of four sections,
one Republican headed by John McCain, the other Democrat, headed by Madeleine
Allbright, one Chamber of Commerce and one Labor (mainly AFL-CIO) I don’t know
who heads these right now. It’s agenda was to promote U.S. interests in the way
that the CIA did (overthrow governments the current faction in the foreign
policy establishment didn’t like). It seems that neoliberals and
neoconservatives have come together to form an alliance. Both factions are
belligerent in the sense they favor a U.S. based Imperial system guaranteed by
U.S. military, “soft”, and covert power. Most of the mainstream media are on
board and are enamored of Victoria (Torry) Nuland wife of Robert Kagan one of
the chief ideologues of neoconservative policies.
Let me explain what this alliance wants. They want “full-spectrum
dominance” in all areas of geopolitics such that any power outside of the U.S.
cannot even think about challenging the U.S. thus its main targets are Russia
and China. Neoliberals now have signed on to the neoconservative strategy of
chaos, first in the Middle East and central Asia, now in Eastern Europe. Why do
they want this? They believe that without the “mission” of world dominance the
U.S. will dissolve into hedonism as well as regional, factional, racial,
cultural conflict and fights and “something.” This was noted in neocon writing
in the 90s. For awhile the “Ware on Terror” seemed to galvanize public opinion
and even brought a sense of euphoria in the U.S. a sens of being united against
what I believe was largely a manufactured threat–but that notion, after
trillions of dollars thrown in the garbage and untold numbers of dead has run
out of steam. This is why when the alleged gas attacks were made in Syria the
mainstream media, the Washington establishment rose up, shockingly, with a cry
of “War!!” and yet, the people were unmoved. Quickly the so called evil Putin
defused the situation and Kerry and his new neocon friends had that haggard
look. Then the Ukraine came along–nurtured by NED and other operatives since
2004′s “Orange” revolution now revenge was at hand–money poured in and a coup
was set up. Mind you Yanukovych was out of his league and was your average
Eastern European/Central Asian despot no particularly bad but not good either.
Somewhere along the line the U.S. made the oligarchs that run Ukraine an offer
they couldn’t refuse while assuring them they’d keep their power and Yanukovych
was out.
Now, Putin and his friends are considered “bad” because they see the
world as it is. They know that if you are weak and too “democratic” and liberal
your ass is cooked and you are under the rule of the Empire. Putin sees his job
as maintaining Russian power and using balance of power politics acting, on the
whole, intelligently in international affairs. He understands that this Ukraine
game is part of a larger effort on the part of the U.S. to encircle Russia with
military alliances usually with brutal oligarchical leaders always threatening
the Russian federation with covert operatives, aiding separtists and so on.
That’s the reality of big-power politics nothing, my dear Yannis, in all this
has anything to do with “democracy” or all the pious claptrap that comes out of
the West. This is, as it always has been, pure power politics both on an
international level and within the Washington establishment itself.
One last thing I urge readers to read Henry Kissinger’s op-ed in the Post .
It is a reasonable and peaceful piece probably written by staff that pleads for
moderation rather than belligerency. But the belligerent clique has the ear of
Kerry and maybe Obama–I don’t know–the politics will be interesting to view. In
the final analysis, however, the American public doesn’t really want more war
even a new Cold War–I think our disunited state has gone too far to unite about
anything at this point. Europe is unimportant in this matter other than a
source of funds, I guess–good luck with that. Giving oligarchs more billions is
just what the Ukraine needs, right?
March 9, 2014 at 7:46 pm
Tut tut, Hugh. Really? Russia is what it is–and Putin is not Jeffereson.
The point we are making is that the U.S./EU was involved in promoting this coup
d’etat of a democratically elected government as a part of a general policy of
destabilization in multi-ethnic countries in critical regions of the world. Did
the U.S. establish the notion of “full-spectrum dominance” or not? Isn’t it a
fact that the same ideologues that fueled the follies of Bush are back in the
saddle and their aim is Empire, for the good of the world of course. I’m a
citizen of the United States and an anti-imperialist who has, like Henry
Kissinger, observed a half-century of conflicts that only made a lot of money
for military contractors. I don’t want these guys to have more power so I care
about who is in power here not Ukraine and I don’t give half a damn about
Crimea. And why, pray should I? What has Putin done on the international stage
that is even remotely comparable to U.S. actions? He at least pulled off a
lowering of tensions in Syria. Russia is not much of an imperial power. I’m not
sure Putin acted wisely in the Crimea but I do know that he believes that right
wing revanchists are in power in Kiev. Imagine Mexico being ruled by Hugo
Chavez–that would never have been allowed even if the Mexican people had voted
for him. Imagine the Russian Foreign Minister stirring up violent demonstrators
in Washington and calling for the overthrow of the Obama government. How can
you justify your stance? Because Russia and Putin are “bad”? Are we children
here–who, in this fiasco is “good”? And don’t say “the Ukrainian people”
because that is a hard thing to describe–isn’t it?
March 18, 2014 at 9:17 am
Thanks for the link–great story and well-written. Just a comment on his
attitude towards Putin and his allies–all people in power are corrupt to some extent.
Obama is a weak leader installed by Wall Street and other corporate forces–he
can’t act like Putin and doesn’t have the power-base to overrule the deep
state. If he had been more ruthless he would have had more power. The
power-elite in Washington are more diverse and have competing interests. The
power-elite in Russia are, to all appearances, more united and focused which
allows Putin to act in bold moves. Are they more corrupt than American leaders?
Depends on how you define corruption–are they more violent than American
leaders? I would say the answer is no–clearly, Russia could never dream of
causing death on the scale the U.S. has since Putin came to power.
March 18, 2014 at 8:55 am
So then, why didn’t the USG think about that before trying to engineer a
coup against the democratically elected government of Ukraine. A government
that was corrupt as the government was before and as the government will be
once it gets a chance to coalesce.
The whole thing is confusing–what is going on? Why the push for a new
cold war?
March 18, 2014 at 1:26 pm
I think a section of the oligarchy wants war to unite the people of the
U.S. And perhaps the EU. That seems to be the agenda.
March 18, 2014 at 12:44 pm
Yes, I noticed the propaganda thing from the opening ceremony which I
thought was very cool and the chatterers I chief was laying it on thick.
Because the American propaganda organs are so used to fooling the publics
they’ve gone more blatant and fact free every year. They have done the research
on the AMerican public and know that the vast majority of the Amrerican public
lack all critical thinking skills.
March 18, 2014 at 12:44 pm
Yes, I noticed the propaganda thing from the opening ceremony which I
thought was very cool and the chatterers I chief was laying it on thick.
Because the American propaganda organs are so used to fooling the publics
they’ve gone more blatant and fact free every year. They have done the research
on the AMerican public and know that the vast majority of the Amrerican public
lack all critical thinking skills.
March 19, 2014 at 10:28 am
The same could be said for any country with imperial roots and/or
ambitions. I view the crisis there through the eyes of realpolitik and the
interests of the American people. Russia is what it is as is China (another
racist country) they are entitled to their spheres of influence. You, although
you don’t say so, may favor U.S. imperialism but I see it as ultimately
destructive to my country (the U.S.) and those currently in power are far, far,
far, more dangerous to me and people I know than Putin.
Russia reacted to a U.S./Nato operation to expand their power–certainly
the Western Ukraine favors Europe but their street toughs staged a coup
supported and funded by the U.S. and other forces and that was an act of
aggression–remember the gov’t was freely elected and replaced a corrupt
gov’t–it itself was corrupt as will any future government–only it will be
subject no to Russia but to the IMF. Pick your poison–both choices are bad.
March 19, 2014 at 12:17 pm
There was an attempt at an invasion and attempts to invade Cuba. An
agreement was reached about Cuba with the Russians back in the day that defused
the situation after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Since then there has been a
punishing embargo against Cuba but no military action–all due to an agreement
with the USSR. But other countries in Latin America were ruthlessly brought to
heel over many decades. Plus, look at the population of Cuba and its raw
materials and capabilities then look at Cuba–are you serious in comparing the
two?
Cuba is a tiny island and not important or a threat to the U.S. The Ukraine
is a threat to Russia because the coup is part of a long-standing policy to
undermine Russian power and surround Russian with NATO bases. It’s pure
power-politics. Russia allowed the Baltic states to leave the Russian sphere
with minimal complaint despite the fact that the USG promised to not expand
NATO. The U.S. broke its agreement.
I’m a realist and believe that change needs to come slowly in
international relations–sudden moves can spiral out of control.
March 19, 2014 at 10:46 am
I found Wahl’s appearance on Colbert kind of nauseating but not
unexpected. I don’t doubt that she was uncomfortable with RTs stance–but it’s
obvious, if you watch, that the view expressed there are not censored–yes,
those views tend to be Russia-centric but it is RT. Compared to Comedy Central
which is a more amusing but even more narrow version of MSNBC it is fairly
diverse.
As for Martin–she goes in all kinds of directions that no one on cable
ever goes through–I don’t care for her personality but her views are
refreshing.
March 19, 2014 at 11:49 am
Just a note on what is going on in Washington. Though I no longer live
inside the Beltway I have lived there most of my life. It has always been full
of plots and counter-plots with multiple interest groups all angling for
influence, money and power. It is exactly what you would expect the capital of
what is one of the most powerful empires in history.
People miss the fact that the stakes in these power games are
unprecedented. The power-game is played very hard and very fast and ruthlessly.
There are periods of calm when the plots and the factions are in balance, there
are times when one group dominates and then falls. Currently the
neoconservatives are back on top in Washington. Do they have popular support?
No they don’t but they don’t need that–they hold the narrative and much of the
media. Who are these guys? Political parties have nothing whatever to do with
anything. These people are just more likely to be social liberals, agnostic or
atheist than cultural conservatives. They do prefer that others are culturally
conservative because they know and have articulated the fact that too loose a
society will result in too much free-thinking and independent thought.
Currently the neocons are locked in a struggle with realists who don’t
believe the U.S. is all-powerful or all-wise in its action–these are men and
women who believe in moderation and a conservative (in the original meaning of
the word) and careful approach to foreign policy–imperial ambitions and hubris
are things to be avoided. This group is at a disadvantage because they tend to
be skeptical of true-believers, narcissists (most neocons are narcissistic) and
idealism which they believe always leads to foolishness and authoritarianism
and Americans tend to be caught up in enthusiasms and heroic visions of
themselves.
March 19, 2014 at 2:00 pm
Good points. Don’t disagree at all. BTW, they are all monsters roaring
at each other–one hopes for a balance of power so that those of us who live
between the cracks can survive.
March 20, 2014 at 9:33 am
I don’t think student loans will be as big a factor in the future as it
is now. Non-traditional learning will gradually eat into the need for a
university education. Right now, going to college is more of a class-marker
that tell employers that you a) either had enough money in your family to
attend college; or b) you are seriously in debt and will tend to be very compliant
and dedicated. However, at some point, the need for expertise and skill will
fuel an interest in people who have found a way to acquire those skills. There
has been a lot of evidence about how little people actually learn in college
that those who pursue non-traditional courses will gradually get the upper
hand.
Still, as a matter of public policy, our “leaders” clearly prefer a
highly compliant worker who is perpetually in debt either through student loans
or home loans. Order and maintaining power is at the top of the oligarch’s
agenda outstripping economic growth.
March 20, 2014 at 9:53 am
The Mandel story on Ukraine is very good but he failed to mention the NED
funding of the demonstrations and the general use of the color revolutions, the
Arab “spring” and other movements by the USG create disorder throughout the
world. Nuland is not a fascist or Kerry is not a terrorist–yet they both want
to fund fascists and Islamic extremists in order to create a strategy of
tensions and/or chaos in various regions of the world.
I’m less interested in Ukraine–which I believe is on the way of
resolving itself. Russia has clearly stated that it will pursue its interests
and if the USG and the EU want to make trouble, so be it. Ukraine will have to
be effectively partitioned–there is no way that the fascists of the West will
impose their will on the East–the status quo will soon be established. But for
Washington and who has power there this matter is critical. There is a clear
domination emerging of a re-tooled neoconservative movement made up of
opportunists and fanatics who want the U.S. to continue to pursue the
full-spectrum dominance policies of pre-2006 Bush, meaning solidifying and
strengthening the Empire. Some believe that the U.S. power is waning and in
some ways it is–but the U.S. still controls the major shipping lanes and is the
guarantor of stability both through its use of the military and its related use
of dollar hegemony to impose order in the world–which is why the EU slavishly
follows U.S. dictats in the area of foreign affairs and macroeconomic policies.
Right now the struggle between the neocons and the realists (the only
major forces other than neoliberals who are divided between the two sides) is
raging in the bureaucracies. I think the realists will win in the end because a
strategy of tension only helps the national security state and may harm Wall
Street, we’ll see.
March 22, 2014 at 9:55 am
I urge readers to read “Neoliberalism as Social Necrophilia: The Case of
Greece” at Truthout. The Greek situation is our future and an illustration of
Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine.” The ruling elites know that they can do
anything they want. They can destroy societies and know that there will be no
opposition. In the U.S. the open theft and fraud that went on in starting in
the late 90s and early 00s met with only tepid opposition and there was no
opposition or serious call for prosecution of this unprecedented crime wave.
Something about contemporary life has frozen not just the human mind but
the heart as well. Our modern culture is deeply flawed because it cannot react
to crisis. Climate-change, massive criminal activity on the part of elites, the
degradation of democratic institutions (at least in the USA), the deepening
corruption of all cultural institutions particularly the corporate sector but
spreading through education, religion, charities and so on is met with
muteness–perhaps because the door is wide open for escapism, petty cultural
issues, and the culture of narcissism which degrades the commons.
We write and talk about this but we do nothing and there is much that
could be done.
Kommentar: susan the other March 23, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Aby, this country of ours has no mandate to govern. It provides no well
being, no nutritious safe food, no protected drinking water, no essential
transportation, no health care except token health care which is almost as bad
as none, no family support, no education, and no jobs and no welfare. Etc.
Please do not become too sad. We are all with you.
March 24, 2014 at 12:22 pm
Well, Occupy tried some good simplified slogans and, frankly, they
didn’t stick. While the left talks about the “99%” the rest of the population
doesn’t much care because, as most people know, Americans like to think of
themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires (or even billionaires) who
accuse the poor of being irresponsible and making poor choices–if you want to
work in America, the story goes, you can succeed. How do you argue with that?
Sociological studies? Lectures on the psychology of poverty and generational
suffering? Americans equate economic success with virtue because that’s the
social ethic–not necessarily because they are mean or ignorant it’s and
underlying assumption on the part of most Americans.
How can you simplify Yves’ assertion that the budget crisis is phony?
You can say “government debt is not like consumer debt” but that goes nowhere.
You can say that the ruling elites are stealing our money but most people will
ignore that because American cultural icons are often con-men and women. After
all, the Bankers cheated us fair and square in the old-fashioned art of the
hustle–they put in the sweat to run the cons–why not get the rewards?
March 25, 2014 at 9:03 am
This is a clear exposition of what most people who comment here have
understood for some time. In my case, I realized this over two decades ago when
the trends we see in full flower were glaringly obvious.
The problem is cultural. The U.S. is the land of the hustle. On the plus
side this makes Americans more creative and innovative on the minus side it
makes it possible for people to game the system so much as to render it
virtually inoperable. And that’s where we are today. Once there was a balance
in U.S. society–hustlers were balanced by progressive religious sentiments,
high-brow activism (Jane Addams) and a sense of responsibility among
significant numbers of the elite for the general direction of American society
whether it was wrong headed or not. Also, there were organized forces, social
movements that balanced the greed of the hustlers. After WWII when the U.S.
found itself on top of the world things started to change. Success and
prosperity brought, ultimately, the culture of narcissism. This culture
features the glorification self-interest in a way Adam Smith never dreamed of,
i.e., the ideal became for every person to be completely “free” of all
entanglements and obligations to family or society even though most people did
not live it out and maintained some degree of moral sentiment. Material wealth
was the road to that free and easy lifestyle that is glorified in endless
American movies. This ideal, like Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island, turns even
seasoned hustlers into donkeys. And there is no real counter-force. Even those
who are most vociferously “Christian” are just as bad or even slightly worse in
their narcissism than the general population–they use their “faith” to justify
anything they do. Those that don’t follow the Evangelicals may not know that
once you are “saved” you can do whatever you want to do and you will still
inherit heaven! If you need proof of narcissism there you are!
Thus the ruling elites have lost all sense of moral restraint and the
ideas behind Christopher Lasch’s book The Revolt of the Elites are even
more valid today than when he wrote it almost two decades ago. We can complain
all we want, wave our angry fists at the oligarchs but, for most Americans,
these elites are merely living out the dreams of most of the general population
even our most religious people.
People often ask about what to do about all this. Let’s be clear
then–this is more fundamental that economics or public policy. Our task is to
start from scratch and realize that the ultimate task of the modernist project
is to clear the decks of outwork social mores and rebuild on stronger
foundations. The very illness we see is inherent and necessary but we can’t
stop at the edge of the precipice we can’t throw out old ideas and customs
without understanding that we must, with the detritus we see around us, build
something new–and that starts with us. We need to ask why we are here? What is
the point of our existence? Who are we? From that we will find, I believe, that
we are deeply social animals that find true creativity through cooperation and
connection with each other (rather than our current relatively alienated
status) and thus we have to redefine society and grasp the necessity of moving
towards each other as best we can.
April 4, 2014 at 8:14 am
The IMF is an integral part of the world imperial system staffed by a
class of international bureaucrats that have very little interest in the lives
of the poor not because they are particularly evil but simply because they are
part of the world’s new hereditary nobility which has reconstituted itself out
of the ruins of the old regimes that burned and crashed in the 20th century. In
other words, we are now getting back to the normal human condition–rule by
elites. These elites will, increasingly, rule by decree enforced by military
force. We aren’t there yet but we are going in that direction.
place of conflict but so is Washington itself with many forces competing for power and money.
The fact is, I believe, that PR/advertising/”education”/media are all practicing the black arts. The craze some years back with Harry Potter indicated to me then, as it does now, that subconsciously people believe they are in the midst of battling wizards and I think it is true. Our only recourse, allcoppedout, is to to practice magic ourselves–hopefully a less costly yet more potent variety.
It does not produce free thinkers, it produces biomachines programmed for specific tasks. Only by jumping of that threadmill and living on the margins do one have the time and reserve energy to actually dive into the material.
And the devil was firmly uncorked when science delved into the workings of the mind. This then unearthed a mass of techniques to get past the rational and appeal directly to the emotions and instincts. Tuning “products” to talk directly to the ape lurking within. Initial attempts were crude, fear, lust, anger and so on. But now they have it refined to the point that they can mix and match the exact response they want, as long as they don’t give people the respite to contemplate what is going on (much less exchange notes).
Putin believes in a strong central state acting in the interest of his subjects not just to protect borders and keep order but to preserve and enhance culture–thus his favorable view of the Orthodox Church and traditional values. He understands, correctly, that there is something rotten in modernist values that tend to fragment society into the culture of narcissism–without which the West would not so easily impose increasingly tight and authoritarian controls of people who are, increasingly, so morally weak that courage and other virtues are out of the question. Mind you, I don’t agree with Putin nor do I think the way forward is the way back–I think we need to break through, in the West, the culture of narcissism and embrace the Modernist project even more by truly embracing the facts before us rather than the myths the magicians of information war are throwing at us to control us. Cultural conservatives are right that morality is a requirement for a convivial life but their morality is a dead-end–we cannot develop and prosper as human beings by going back to fear-based religion and the repression of people who have won, at great expense, their right to be dignified members of society. But we cannot linger in the emergent feudal world dominated by hungry predators who are capable of eating us alive, literally.
Putin serves, I think, as a temporary block to the triumphalist advance of the corporate state/Deep State and, despite his obvious faults, deserves our respect. In terms of the Ukrainian crisis he had to do what he did. His next moves will be determined by the West which now, as I see it, lies confused and moving in contradictory directions at the same time.
Ukraine represents one of a score of government overthrown using similar techniques by the USG, once it used the CIA and other contractors and, in the mix today, are also the NED and other semi-official entities. This project is fueled by fanatical followers of the American Exceptionalism delusion and led by, what we thought was a discredited movement, i.e., the neoconservatives.
Compare Russia under Putin with the U.S. under Bush and Obama–which country has the most toxic oligarchs? Which country has been waging war all over the globe against non-existent and trumped up “threats” (e.g. Saddam) that resulted in millions of people dead, wounded, or driven from their homes? Certainly Putin has his Chechnia which he inherited from the U.S. puppet Yeltsin–which the U.S. encouraged, btw tut-tutting all the way.
Everyone recruits the twenty-something, student-debt recent college/university graudates to troll on the internet. I saw it with my own eyes working a tech contract in one of the top-tier PR firms on K Street quite a few years ago–I was put in the midst of these young people when blogging first began to be a big deal–I also saw endless lobbying of reporters and Hill staffers, party girls and the whole nine-yards.
Whenever there is an article on climate-change in any major forum the trolls come out with a vengeance more than any other issue including Obamacare. Why is this? Because the open secret in Washington is that the energy companies have given these PR firms a virtual blank-check for their work. It should be no surprise that there is such opposition in lightening the load of student loans–it forces young people into a life of prostitution.
It is critical that we understand the mechanism for manufacturing consent and the fact major industries and the oligarchs that run them are involved in a conspiracy to deceive us and that this extends into the media and involves anything from favors to threats. The left often does not understand that the oligarchs do not play by any sort of rules other than the general rules of establishing power that Machiavelli gave us. Academia, btw, is not exempt.