It's nice to see that the utter fanatic fringe will be convening across the Potomac in beautiful Virginia to commemorate their hero, Timothy McVeigh. I've never actually understood gun nuts. The 2nd Amendment, I understand. Gun nuts, the ones who think that the 2nd Amendment allows them to carry guns unconditionally, I don't. The 2nd Amendment allows for some pretty broad rights, but I think it's kind of ridiculous to assume that something applicable to 18th century technology isn't in need of some tweaking.
Free speech doesn't really change over time, although the media to deliver that speech has, and those changes have been the subject of vigorous debate. Free speech is also restricted by our libel and slander laws, as well as the more tricky public safety concerns (e.g. yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater). Apparently the 1st Amendment still stands.
However, you propose one slight little change in gun laws, like let's say requiring guns to be licensed, and you have the gun nuts literally up in arms, threatening revolution, pretending to be patriots (a most ill-used word in most cases). In the case of tomorrow's protest, conveniently scheduled on the same day as fellow gun nut and mass murderer Timothy McVeigh parked his truck packed with explosives in front of the Oklahoma City Federal Building -- including daycare center --, the protesters are apparently convening to protest the recent broadening of gun laws, which now inexplicably allow people to carry weapons in national parks.
Given that gun rights are apparently not in any immediate danger, and are in fact expanding, the gun nuts have to strut their stuff, in the words of the chief organizer, to warn the government about the passage of the health care bill and other sundry items that he feels (apparently because he doesn't know the definition of either word) equals "totalitarian socialism." Of course, the government will feel duly chastised when the few score nutcases show up with their handguns, rifles, and other small arms.
After all, the prospect that nationwide a few thousand or so veterans of the paramilitary equivalent of fantasy baseball camps, sprinkled with a few actual military veterans, have access to such intimidating weaponry and a will to use it on active duty police, military, and federal officials must send shivers down the spines of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
18 April 2010
29 March 2010
How did it come to this?
How did our nation end up in the mess it's in?
We are the world's wealthiest nation. Our education system, for all the criticism it takes, is fairly extensive and in many cases exceptional. Our institutes of higher education are magnets for international students, demonstrating global esteem and at least the perception of quality. A great many of us have instant access to information through the internet, and since nearly every American household has cable/satellite, we are subject to a barrage of news and information...oh.
Wait a minute. Maybe we have too much information, as that old band The Police once sang. Not too much information as in let's stifle it and censor things and close avenues of communication, but too much information as in we're not processing it properly and if we don't have the tools to process it properly, we're simply awash in information with little way to get our bearings as to which is good information and which is bad information.
Just as the advent of the newspaper allowed information -- and let's not forget, gossip -- to spread at exponential rates (see Balzac's Lost Illusions for an excellent commentary on the at-that-time state of the art lightning fast communication), and television did the same thing in the 1960's (bringing among other things the Vietnam War direct to the American public), so too has the internet and the spread of cable infotainment channels like CNN and Fox revolutionized information access and transmission.
You Tube allows the semi-intelligent to become celebrities for a short time by doing stupid things to their bodies (and for the stuff You Tube won't show, there's 4chan) or by filming their children in states of dental-sanctioned inebriation. Andy Warhol's prediction becomes absolutely prophetic.
Unfortunately, our ability to process the information seems not to have kept pace with the access to it. It's become even worse since Fredric Jameson talked about "total flow" back in the early 1990's in Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
The success of poststructuralist attacks on the notion of objective presentations of truth were necessary interventions that dislodged the monolithic power of either myths of the state (see the Schoolhouse Rock videos of American history) or of media as a fundamentally objective pursuit. Unfortunately, the right-wing had by and large failed to understand these arguments and incorporated only the first part into their analysis both of poststructuralism and the media. Interestingly and paradoxically, the right wing is quite comfortable arguing that poststructuralism is morally bankrupt because it denies objective truth ("eternal, universal, and natural God-given truths"), while at the same time adopting poststructuralism's critique of that sort of truth as they condemn the "liberal media."
What's missing, of course, is the second part of the poststructuralist critique, one that Derrida for instance was at pains to return to again and again (see "Violence and Metaphysics," Of Grammatology, Spectres of Marx, or nearly any of his late works -- the quickest gloss may be "Violence and Metaphysics" contained in Writing and Difference -- see esp. pp. 128-29): that the absence of an unmediated access to universal truth does not mean that we can therefore throw out standards of judgement. It's quite simple, but easily forgotten in the easy soundbite of "moral relativism" that right wingers like to throw around.
I'll skip a bit here, but suffice to say that eventually we get around to the idea that it isn't so much knowledge that's power -- at least culturally -- but transmission of information, good or bad. Conspiracy theories, which used to be confined to small groups of isolated crackpots, are now given the power and reach afforded by globally linked communities. The speed of information and the format of information does not lend itself to extended critique or immersion in the object: instead we are immersed in an unending stream of information that doesn't separate the latest Disney-channel star's scandal from market news or political maneuvers -- other than the fact that the scandals are given higher billing and more air time.
So we have the advent of the Tea Party movement -- a gathering of malcontents (which isn't a bad thing in itself) whose numbers wouldn't qualify them for any sort of attention in the days when the supposedly evil mainstream media (and look, I have plenty of critiques of traditional media outlets, but I'm really tired of the idea that they can all be collapsed into some monolith -- the great media conspiracy theory) actually evaluated the newsworthiness of events and movements. However, in these latter days of news as entertainment, we have Fox in particular actively promoting the Teabaggers -- surely and odd position to be in if one is interested in notions of "objective journalism" (of course, I'm all for reportage, but there's a fundamental difference between activist-journalists filing reports for explicitly aligned outlets and a major news corporation pursuing a "news story" as though it's part of their new fall line-up).
Stupidity parades itself around on the basis that the "mainstream media" has silenced the "real story." Truth claims can't be evaluated because "liberals" (who are all at once progressives, communists, socialists, and fascists) won't let the truth be told. Conversely, mainstream television pundits, whose truth claims are eviscerated on a daily basis by, of all things, a comedian, are the heroes of the teabaggers, who apparently have no critical faculties for evaluating truth claims. Evidently having been served miserably in their varied educational histories, they are unable to distinguish between liberals, communists, and fascists. All are wrong, and all are one.
Stupidity is on tour, coming to a city near you, in the form of the Tea Bag Express.
We are the world's wealthiest nation. Our education system, for all the criticism it takes, is fairly extensive and in many cases exceptional. Our institutes of higher education are magnets for international students, demonstrating global esteem and at least the perception of quality. A great many of us have instant access to information through the internet, and since nearly every American household has cable/satellite, we are subject to a barrage of news and information...oh.
Wait a minute. Maybe we have too much information, as that old band The Police once sang. Not too much information as in let's stifle it and censor things and close avenues of communication, but too much information as in we're not processing it properly and if we don't have the tools to process it properly, we're simply awash in information with little way to get our bearings as to which is good information and which is bad information.
Just as the advent of the newspaper allowed information -- and let's not forget, gossip -- to spread at exponential rates (see Balzac's Lost Illusions for an excellent commentary on the at-that-time state of the art lightning fast communication), and television did the same thing in the 1960's (bringing among other things the Vietnam War direct to the American public), so too has the internet and the spread of cable infotainment channels like CNN and Fox revolutionized information access and transmission.
You Tube allows the semi-intelligent to become celebrities for a short time by doing stupid things to their bodies (and for the stuff You Tube won't show, there's 4chan) or by filming their children in states of dental-sanctioned inebriation. Andy Warhol's prediction becomes absolutely prophetic.
Unfortunately, our ability to process the information seems not to have kept pace with the access to it. It's become even worse since Fredric Jameson talked about "total flow" back in the early 1990's in Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
The success of poststructuralist attacks on the notion of objective presentations of truth were necessary interventions that dislodged the monolithic power of either myths of the state (see the Schoolhouse Rock videos of American history) or of media as a fundamentally objective pursuit. Unfortunately, the right-wing had by and large failed to understand these arguments and incorporated only the first part into their analysis both of poststructuralism and the media. Interestingly and paradoxically, the right wing is quite comfortable arguing that poststructuralism is morally bankrupt because it denies objective truth ("eternal, universal, and natural God-given truths"), while at the same time adopting poststructuralism's critique of that sort of truth as they condemn the "liberal media."
What's missing, of course, is the second part of the poststructuralist critique, one that Derrida for instance was at pains to return to again and again (see "Violence and Metaphysics," Of Grammatology, Spectres of Marx, or nearly any of his late works -- the quickest gloss may be "Violence and Metaphysics" contained in Writing and Difference -- see esp. pp. 128-29): that the absence of an unmediated access to universal truth does not mean that we can therefore throw out standards of judgement. It's quite simple, but easily forgotten in the easy soundbite of "moral relativism" that right wingers like to throw around.
I'll skip a bit here, but suffice to say that eventually we get around to the idea that it isn't so much knowledge that's power -- at least culturally -- but transmission of information, good or bad. Conspiracy theories, which used to be confined to small groups of isolated crackpots, are now given the power and reach afforded by globally linked communities. The speed of information and the format of information does not lend itself to extended critique or immersion in the object: instead we are immersed in an unending stream of information that doesn't separate the latest Disney-channel star's scandal from market news or political maneuvers -- other than the fact that the scandals are given higher billing and more air time.
So we have the advent of the Tea Party movement -- a gathering of malcontents (which isn't a bad thing in itself) whose numbers wouldn't qualify them for any sort of attention in the days when the supposedly evil mainstream media (and look, I have plenty of critiques of traditional media outlets, but I'm really tired of the idea that they can all be collapsed into some monolith -- the great media conspiracy theory) actually evaluated the newsworthiness of events and movements. However, in these latter days of news as entertainment, we have Fox in particular actively promoting the Teabaggers -- surely and odd position to be in if one is interested in notions of "objective journalism" (of course, I'm all for reportage, but there's a fundamental difference between activist-journalists filing reports for explicitly aligned outlets and a major news corporation pursuing a "news story" as though it's part of their new fall line-up).
Stupidity parades itself around on the basis that the "mainstream media" has silenced the "real story." Truth claims can't be evaluated because "liberals" (who are all at once progressives, communists, socialists, and fascists) won't let the truth be told. Conversely, mainstream television pundits, whose truth claims are eviscerated on a daily basis by, of all things, a comedian, are the heroes of the teabaggers, who apparently have no critical faculties for evaluating truth claims. Evidently having been served miserably in their varied educational histories, they are unable to distinguish between liberals, communists, and fascists. All are wrong, and all are one.
Stupidity is on tour, coming to a city near you, in the form of the Tea Bag Express.
28 March 2010
Anatomy of a fad.
I love the fact that Sarah Palin is hitching her wagon so tightly with the new Know Nothing Party. Nothing could ensure her irrelevance in 2012 more than saddling up with the political equivalent of EMF. In fact, being associated with tea party rallies is going to be about as attractive as being known for Italian hoagie and Mountain Dew fueled Dungeon and Dragons weekends.
Here's a sneak peek into the future: the health care law has been in effect for two years, the economy has rebounded, unemployment has fallen to 7% or thereabouts, and Glenn Beck has exhausted all doomsday scenarios.
Republicans who stayed aloof from teabagging will pound Palin into the ground with samples of the most bizarre and extreme of the teabaggers, essentially making her look as if she's the president of the Timothy McVeigh fan club, and the Republican Party establishment will know that a Palin primary victory will equal a general election defeat, because the Democrats will run ad after ad of teabagger tinfoil hat theory with shots of Ms. Palin egging them on, as she did this weekend in Searchlight, Nevada.
I have to admit I'm not up on the alternatives, though. I suppose Mitt Romney is in the hunt, and probably the bass player from the midwest...um, Huckabee. McCain's Presidential aspirations are over. I guess another Bush might try his hand, maybe Jeb, but I'm fairly certain the country is a little bored with that family.
With any luck, we won't be wasting lives and dollars in Iraq anymore...
Here's a sneak peek into the future: the health care law has been in effect for two years, the economy has rebounded, unemployment has fallen to 7% or thereabouts, and Glenn Beck has exhausted all doomsday scenarios.
Republicans who stayed aloof from teabagging will pound Palin into the ground with samples of the most bizarre and extreme of the teabaggers, essentially making her look as if she's the president of the Timothy McVeigh fan club, and the Republican Party establishment will know that a Palin primary victory will equal a general election defeat, because the Democrats will run ad after ad of teabagger tinfoil hat theory with shots of Ms. Palin egging them on, as she did this weekend in Searchlight, Nevada.
I have to admit I'm not up on the alternatives, though. I suppose Mitt Romney is in the hunt, and probably the bass player from the midwest...um, Huckabee. McCain's Presidential aspirations are over. I guess another Bush might try his hand, maybe Jeb, but I'm fairly certain the country is a little bored with that family.
With any luck, we won't be wasting lives and dollars in Iraq anymore...
23 March 2010
Alexander the not-so-Great
I was listening to NPR today when they interviewed Lamar Alexander -- or at least played a sound bite from him -- on the student loan bill currently before Congress. I can't remember his exact idiocy on the radio, but here's what he committed to print earlier this month:
Let's leave aside the fact that states run DMVs. I wonder if Alexander understands -- or maybe he just doesn't know -- that the government already provides student loans (and that's on the federal and state level) and they haven't required any DMV-like apparatus to do so.
So you're left with the question: Is Alexander stupid or disingenuous?
Starting in July, all 19 million students who want government-backed loans will line up at offices designated by the U.S. Education Department. Gone will be the days when students and their colleges picked the lender that best fit their needs; instead, a federal bureaucrat will make that choice for every student in America based on still-unclear guidelines.I guess I'm naive; I never picked my lender when I went to college -- I applied for a student loan and -- bam -- there was Sallie Mae. Apparently Alexander thinks that the government is going to install DMV-like offices to service loans:
Finally, the government should disclose that getting your student loan will become about as enjoyable as going to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Let's leave aside the fact that states run DMVs. I wonder if Alexander understands -- or maybe he just doesn't know -- that the government already provides student loans (and that's on the federal and state level) and they haven't required any DMV-like apparatus to do so.
So you're left with the question: Is Alexander stupid or disingenuous?
22 March 2010
Liar liar pants on fire.
Texas Representative Randy Neugebauer, who called fellow Congressman Bernie Stupak a baby killer while Stupak spoke on the floor of the House now claims he was referring to the Healthcare Bill, telling anyone who will listen that he actually said, "It's a baby killer."
Nice try.
I suppose he thought that particular lie was simpler and more believable than his first choice, which was rumored to be "Baby killer whales are cute."
The actual baby killer, of course, -- and parent killer and plain out person killer -- would be Neugebauer and his fellow self-centered hatemongers, all cut from the same cloth who have opposed any form of legislation geared toward the greater good of the nation. Is the health care bill perfect? Hell, no. It gives way too much to the very vampires who have been sucking this nation dry for decades. However, it's a start, and that's better than where we were.
Nice try.
I suppose he thought that particular lie was simpler and more believable than his first choice, which was rumored to be "Baby killer whales are cute."
The actual baby killer, of course, -- and parent killer and plain out person killer -- would be Neugebauer and his fellow self-centered hatemongers, all cut from the same cloth who have opposed any form of legislation geared toward the greater good of the nation. Is the health care bill perfect? Hell, no. It gives way too much to the very vampires who have been sucking this nation dry for decades. However, it's a start, and that's better than where we were.
19 January 2010
Lessons to take from the Massachusetts Special Election
OK, so you're a Democrat, and you need to know what the lessons are for your party given the resounding defeat that Brown laid on Coakley in Mass. today. Well, I've done my share of studying Democrats, so I'll offer up some post-election party insider thought:
"Geez we got beat today by a Republican. Maybe we should try to act more like Republicans."
That's pretty much the way the party has thought since 1972. I was three years old then, so I've never actually had a political party to get behind (let's face it, the SWP, PL, etc. are not going to win any elections and while part of me wants to join one of those parties because maybe if enough people joined it would change, another part of me resists joining any party at all). Sure, I vote Democratic mainly to keep pure evil at bay, but there's little joy in seeing corporatist pawns parading around like they're champions of the working class because they happen to get a little less from lobbyists.
These tools have had a supermajority for months now and they couldn't pass anything meaningful. Imagine if Cheney had had that material to work with. There would be next to nothing left of labor laws or civil rights legislation. The Bill of Rights itself wouldn't be worth the match it would take to burn it. Hell, the Republicans got more done with 51 votes than the Democrats could get done with 60. And you can poo-poo all you want that Lieberman isn't really a Democrat and so what, you'd be right. So what? Come out forcefully with a health care bill with teeth and let the do-nothings block it. Let them take the heat for the impasse. Let them look like fools filibustering instead of offering solutions.
Instead, what do the Dems do? They dilute and dilute in a feeble attempt to herd every cat in the Party into one pen. It ain't gonna happen. So instead of the do-nothings looking like roadblocking fools and Lieberman looking like a turncoat yet again, the Democrats in the Senate and the White House (and to a lesser extent the House of Representatives) look like weak dithering morons.
Did Gingrich give a rat's ass when he ramrodded the Contract on America through Congress? Hell, no. The Republican leaders had a program and they executed it. Sure, it was shit reactionary mean spirited legislation growing out of a deep hatred of government, but they didn't care. It satisfied their misguided ideology. The Democrats, with superior numbers, couldn't capitalize on the Obama wave to do anything useful to mainstream Americans. Instead, they scatter like cats from a vacuum cleaner at each incoherent utterance from some teabagger. The Democratic Party of the 21st century is not the Party that brought the USA Civil Rights legislation, the right to collective bargaining, or anything remotely progressive. Let's go over some of their recent hits:
So does the Massachusetts Senate seat loss mean much to Democrats? In real terms, no. They'll continue to act as if they lost because they weren't Republican enough. They'll continue to shiver every time some pudgy comfortably compensated pundit on cable news barks "Communist" at them because their giveaways to industrial interests weren't big enough.
RIP Ted Kennedy. RIP Paul Wellstone.
"Geez we got beat today by a Republican. Maybe we should try to act more like Republicans."
That's pretty much the way the party has thought since 1972. I was three years old then, so I've never actually had a political party to get behind (let's face it, the SWP, PL, etc. are not going to win any elections and while part of me wants to join one of those parties because maybe if enough people joined it would change, another part of me resists joining any party at all). Sure, I vote Democratic mainly to keep pure evil at bay, but there's little joy in seeing corporatist pawns parading around like they're champions of the working class because they happen to get a little less from lobbyists.
These tools have had a supermajority for months now and they couldn't pass anything meaningful. Imagine if Cheney had had that material to work with. There would be next to nothing left of labor laws or civil rights legislation. The Bill of Rights itself wouldn't be worth the match it would take to burn it. Hell, the Republicans got more done with 51 votes than the Democrats could get done with 60. And you can poo-poo all you want that Lieberman isn't really a Democrat and so what, you'd be right. So what? Come out forcefully with a health care bill with teeth and let the do-nothings block it. Let them take the heat for the impasse. Let them look like fools filibustering instead of offering solutions.
Instead, what do the Dems do? They dilute and dilute in a feeble attempt to herd every cat in the Party into one pen. It ain't gonna happen. So instead of the do-nothings looking like roadblocking fools and Lieberman looking like a turncoat yet again, the Democrats in the Senate and the White House (and to a lesser extent the House of Representatives) look like weak dithering morons.
Did Gingrich give a rat's ass when he ramrodded the Contract on America through Congress? Hell, no. The Republican leaders had a program and they executed it. Sure, it was shit reactionary mean spirited legislation growing out of a deep hatred of government, but they didn't care. It satisfied their misguided ideology. The Democrats, with superior numbers, couldn't capitalize on the Obama wave to do anything useful to mainstream Americans. Instead, they scatter like cats from a vacuum cleaner at each incoherent utterance from some teabagger. The Democratic Party of the 21st century is not the Party that brought the USA Civil Rights legislation, the right to collective bargaining, or anything remotely progressive. Let's go over some of their recent hits:
- Gutting social programs under Clinton
- Continuing under Clinton the creeping deregulation of banks etc that helped bring on the current recession
- Rolling over and playing dead -- no, even worse lap dog -- for the Bush Administration in giving Bush a blank check for the Iraq Boondoggle, passing the PATRIOT Act, and No Child Left Behind.
- Being held hostage by one soulless Senator whose party allegiance is worth about as much as Rush Limbaugh's marriage vows
So does the Massachusetts Senate seat loss mean much to Democrats? In real terms, no. They'll continue to act as if they lost because they weren't Republican enough. They'll continue to shiver every time some pudgy comfortably compensated pundit on cable news barks "Communist" at them because their giveaways to industrial interests weren't big enough.
RIP Ted Kennedy. RIP Paul Wellstone.
05 January 2010
An overview of the past year.
2009 was not a stellar blogging year for me. Only one month did I manage double-digit posts, and two months I didn't post at all.
Here's the thing: I rarely missed it.
Sure, every now and then I would feel bad that I was neglecting the blog, but the main problem is that I've been out of touch with the District for too long.
It's not the so-called blogging community with their meet-ups and flame wars (I only met another blogger once, and that was by chance) that I've lost touch with, but the feel of place. My blog was mainly political, and much of that national, so it wasn't really a strict DC-living blog, but that's where the energy came from.
I'm not exactly shutting down the blog, at least officially. I might keep writing.
Who knows. There's so much disappointment everywhere.
Here's the thing: I rarely missed it.
Sure, every now and then I would feel bad that I was neglecting the blog, but the main problem is that I've been out of touch with the District for too long.
It's not the so-called blogging community with their meet-ups and flame wars (I only met another blogger once, and that was by chance) that I've lost touch with, but the feel of place. My blog was mainly political, and much of that national, so it wasn't really a strict DC-living blog, but that's where the energy came from.
I'm not exactly shutting down the blog, at least officially. I might keep writing.
Who knows. There's so much disappointment everywhere.
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