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Larry's Wad It's like infrequent random blog, written on a half pint of tequila...
In Donald Trump,
None of this was supposed to happen. The game show host/sexual predator
poster man-child for all the disgusting excesses and hollow failures of
consumerism/capitalism (always lie, always rip people off, always want
more) was supposed to have been booted out of politics countless times by
now.
Harris is barely a progressive candidate but that’s all she has to be. In
fact, she can’t be too much, because that might just somehow turn off some
people into either voting for Trump or staying home.
That the dyed-in-the-wool MAGAs are supporting Trump is no surprise, but
that there are so many moderates willing to do so is just so, so
mind-boggling. What isn’t a dealbreaker for them, then, if not the many
lawsuits for shady business practices, the sexual assault accusations and
civil case, the mocking of his political opponents in shock comedy terms,
the lying about having classified documents stored in his bathroom, or
everything related to the unfounded election denial and January 6th?
It’s insane that Trump being impeached for saying to another country ‘get
me dirt on my political opponent and I’ll give you some weapons’, is so
roundly forgotten, that it has fallen so much lower in ‘awful things about
Donald trump’ list.
His own policies are a clusterfuck of his own moronic tough talk and
whatever his lackey’s can come up with, a nauseating underbaked amoral mix
of hypercapitalist, anti-immigrant Christian nationalism.
Does Trump believe in the latter? Like a performing seal, he’ll say
anything to get applause at the end.
It’s not about Trump’s politics, it’s about how politics is (and isn’t)
covered because rubbernecking a scandal is easier than policy and gets
more attention than policy, and attention is a metric that is better
tracked and monetized than ever before.
Trump and Hunter Biden are two peas in a media-salivating scandal pod, and
it’s fitting that both their continuing legal woes ran concurrent to each
other this summer, giving everyone (including partisans) a great look at
what laziness and greed can do.
For Trump, it’s not illegal to have an affair with a porn star. It’s not
even illegal to pay hush money to said porn star so that she won’t talk
about the affair and ruin your presidential campaign. But it is definitely
illegal to pay hush money to a porn star using your business accounts and
then trying to cover up the payments by lying on official documents as to
what the money went to. If Trump just used his own money (and while he
lies about how much he has, he certainly has the $168,000 he paid Stormy
Daniels) none of this would have gotten to the courtroom.
But because he was greedy and wanted to use corporate funds and was even
lazy about covering it up, he got caught.
For Hunter Biden, the son of a long-time senator then vice president then
president…how pathetic do you have to be the screw that up? That is your
ticket punched for life, even if all you do is keep your head down and
help run a couple charities or sit on some corporate boards. Crack and
guns? Not to dismiss the challenges of addiction, but you couldn’t keep
that shit under wraps?
How much time and resources by legitimate news outlet has been spent
covering these gossip page headlines? One can make the argument that both
do indeed impact the political environment, because if any other
politician had their chief staff reveal that the politician praised Hitler
and Hitler’s generals, it would count as an ‘October surprise’-level
scandal, but with Trump it’s ‘ho-hum’. He’s normalized fascism and
bigotry.
This is certainly the off-repeated term by the political left and centre
and the conservative never-Trumper, but what must be added is that how a
huge swath of people who voted don’t put a ton of stock into any campaign
rhetoric (or campaign batshit crazy rhetoric). Why? Because it typically
sounds like drivel, whether its policy or not.
In between talking about Arnold Palmer’s penis and volunteering at
McDonald’s, Trump has said he’d do some fascist shit as president, and he
might, and while a large segment of his supporters are hoping he does,
others who vote for him are doing it based on maybe one particular issue
(taxes, abortion, gun control, etc.) and dismiss his jailing enemies talk
as hot air that he won’t really do, or won’t really do effectively.
The lie that Trump is fighting against the deep state is getting more
ridiculous as his judicial appointments and corporate titans are lining up
behind him, keeping him out of jail and putting him back in power.
Motherfucker, you are the deep state.
It’s a good thing that in a democracy the leader of country cannot remake
the nation however they see fit (no matter how benevolent it might be),
because the chance to misuse that power is extremely high. And who the
hell believes Trump will ‘only be a fascist for a day’?
Fascists, that’s who, because the chief component of fascism is stupidity.
You have to an idiot to promote a policy revolving around marching, flags,
economy favouritism, military lionization, along with crushing anyone who
disagrees with you, and think it will work.
And you have to be stupid to support it.
Fascism demands simple answers for complicated questions because their
supporters can’t figure out complicated answers.
It’s the party for people who push and shove to get their way.
Alongside it, social conservatism – best friends with Christian
evangelicalism - is rooted in looking backwards to a time in the past that
cannot be returned to. It is based heavily on a nostalgic and simplified
view of family and society that overlooks how many people were actively
and passively oppressed when white patriarchy was even more dominant than
it currently is.
To put the women’s, LGBT, minority rights back in the bottle is beyond
immoral and idiotic. It’s impossible.
And regarding that perhaps social conservatives will say ‘hold my beer’,
although they probably will disallow alcohol as well.
The attempt will be catastrophic, further dividing the nation in many more
devastating ways (geographic, social, economic, etc).
The popular
Trump is obviously not talking about raising taxes on the wealthy or
corporations and Harris is just giving it a bit of lip service. Sadly,
even if Harris did want to make combatting inequality by making the
wealthy pony up part of her platform and administration, it will have a
hell of a time passing in congress.
People are disillusioned with voting because it doesn’t seem like things
change for the better overall, they’re just getting worse, so it makes it
feel like their votes don’t matter. That the choices presented are a
predetermined form of manufactured consent, if you will (and if you hate
Noam Chomsky, it’s because he’s right, and if you don’t know who Noam
Chomsky is, it’s because he’s right).
Gov’t has paradoxically gotten less efficient and bigger/more bloated in
the last four decades. Giving government contracts to the biggest
companies to solve problems that would have been overseen by specific
government departments in the past helps expand the bloat, because
essential services have to be maintained in some capacity, even a highly
inefficient one. Which makes no one happy except the owners of these
companies (and the politicians who receive fundraising (re: bribes) from
them) because they don’t have to do anything but the barest minimum.
Arguing that ‘well voting helps it from getting worse quicker’ is just so
dispiriting that it pushes some people from voting altogether, or send
them towards someone who ‘doesn’t sound like a normal politician’, and
that makes Trump a protest vote for some.
His victory next week is thankfully not inevitable, but another demagogue
like him certainly will come down the pipeline after him if this is what
American (and therefore Western democratic) society will continue to be:
Run predominantly by a small group of extremely wealthy individuals and
families who see the good of the nation as a whole a distant second to
that of their own.
So it’s no surprise that many billionaires want Trump in power for no
other reason than they’ll have more money.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/18/magazine/trump-donors-silicon-valley.html)
Spending tens of millions on super PACs is a good investment to get
hundreds of millions in return.
Financial conservatism (paired with
neoliberalism, just to show how nomenclature has hit the skids) has been
the dominant form in the West long before the fall of the Soviet Union and
communism, with democrats feebly beating back this push whenever they had
a bit more power in
America has been on an Overclass/underclass trajectory for four decades
now, but under the changes Donald Trump and Republicans wants to enact,
this trajectory will accelerate to a point where returning from it (and
towards a greater sense of economical and social equality) seems
impossible. When he was first elected it was this:
(http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13967888/freedom-caucus-regulations)
And now it’s Project 2525 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/12/project-2025-summary-trump),
which is a punchline until it isn’t.
The not-at-all-fun-house mirror of The Green
New Deal, which was much more modest than it was ever presented as. No, it
wouldn’t outlaw eating beef for forbidding people from getting on an
airplane, but enough people were told it would be, and so it became an
emblem of progressive overreach.
Democracy begins to weaken when the people involved cannot agree on
details, and then goes into critical condition when they cannot agree on
the basics.
When truth becomes relative, all hell can break loose.
(https://www.vox.com/politics/372863/2024-election-lies-trump-overturn-harris)
Most people know this is a bad plan. The only people think it’s great are
the ones who will directly benefit from it.
Even the wealthy who support Harris because she’s not the orange dumpster
fire that is Trump have been quietly pushing her
to drop any progressive tax plans.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/29/us/politics/donors-harris-tax-ultrawealthy.html)
And this is how democracy dies, not with a bang, but a whisper to the
candidate from the people who have a sizeable influence on everything.
So what do you do? How do you improve
Or even in the cynically hopeful camp, that
the corporations realize that the free market will
eventually make too many people too poor to buy their products and
services and just use their money to lobby politicians to install more
'public friendly' legislation?
Buddy, this is
And of course it’s never just a conservative
matter. There is constant, unremarkable corruption from
And there’s no better face of brazen,
thoughtless corruption than Donald Trump. That it’s a sick joke that this
election is so close is not lost on the rest of the world, in countries
both democratic and non. To them,
(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/29/world/middleeast/middle-east-war-peace-nasrallah.html)
There should be very little acknowledgement of hubris and hamartia here,
because this isn’t a tragic figure in a play, but a country that has the
unenviable role of trying to offer freedom (sometimes at the end of a
barrel of a gun) and democracy (almost always on their own terms) to the
rest of the world. And they’ve been mediocre at best with it, but they’re
the only ones trying to do it.
Seeing how Israel’s military actions are playing into the US elections (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/opinion/netanyahu-trump-harris.html),
sadly shows its waning global influence, with other nations eager to step
into America’s diminished role.
Depending on another country’s own individual agenda, they are excited
about the possibility of a Trump return, or absolutely dreading it.
(https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gr90jnxjvo)
For the Democrats themselves, if they lose then apparently the leadership
will go more centrist on many issues (https://www.vox.com/politics/378977/kamala-harris-loses-trump-2024-election-democratic-party),
which means becoming a Republican Party-lite, which might be dispiriting
to progressives…until one realizes the bigger fucking problem that Donald
Trump is president again and while he might try to be fascist until he
realizes it gets in the way of his tee-times, he also might very much
fucking commit to the part. Mass arrests and deportations might be a
beginning, not the end.
Every election matters (as Supreme Courts picks always show), but some
matter more than others.
Defeating Trump isn’t the same thing as defeating Trumpism, but it’s a
start, and the easy part of changing how democracy works for the better. In another bit of definite sad news, RIP Phil Lesh, and thanks for the many hours of musical bliss, especially 6/18/74, 5/22/77, 11/17/73, 3/24/73, 5/7/72, 3/2/69…
Protest…Now? Then?
“Thus the slogans and
projects of the Sixties’ generation, far from re-awakening a revolutionary
tradition whose language and symbols they so energetically sought to
reinvigorate, can be seen in hindsight to have served as its swan song. In
Eastern Europe, the ‘revisionist’ interlude and its tragic denouement saw
off the last illusions of Marxism is a practice. In the West, Marxist and
para-Marxist theories soared clear of any relationship to local reality,
disqualifying themselves from any future role in serious public debate. In
1945 the radical Right had discredited itself as a legitimate vehicle for
political expression. By 1970, the radical Left was set fair to emulate
it. A 180-year cycle of ideological politic in Europe was drawing to a
close.”
-Tony Judt, Postwar, pg.449
What do you want?
A simple question that can spiral out of control
to reveal a myriad of complexities that is our global sociopolitical
system, or can lead to a quick ‘no’. Writer Kurt Vonnegut observed that
all the protests against the Vietnam war had the collected effect of a
custard pie being dropped from a six foot high ladder.
The protests in early 2003 against the coming
American invasion of Iraq yielded similar results, and it went off with an
embarrassing and tragic amount of hitches that completely destabilized the
region for well over a decade.
In the wake of the horrific terrorist attack by
Hamas upon Israeli soldiers and civilians of October of last year, the
Israeli government and military unleashed horrific retaliation upon the
Gaza Strip, involving mass bombardment levelling entire blocks of
buildings, constant incursions by Israeli soldiers, and the Netanyahu
government simply shutting off the water, electricity and internet for the
region. The Hamas terrorist attack killed 1,300, and the Israeli response
has killed an estimated 36,000 Palestinians as of May, with tens of
thousands more injured or missing, and nearly two million people displaced
as Israeli annexes more and more territory in the Gaza Strip and the West
Bank.
The words used to describe this range from ‘war’,
‘military operation’, ‘humanitarian crisis’ and ‘genocide’, because the
words we use are meant to carefully shape how we view and feel about the
issue.
The reaction to this ongoing [insert the term that
best suits your opinion on the issue] is shock and outrage through the
countries of the world that allow people to express shock and outrage.
Including the college campuses.
As the spring semester wound down, more and more
students wound up on campus quads and squares with signs and tents,
expressing their own disgust with the ongoing clusterfuck (another term
that can carefully shape the issue) thousands of kilometres away.
While the protests decades prior demanded an end
to war in Vietnam and Iraq, that ‘want’ had nothing on the wants of the
military-industrial complex of the time, and today’s protesters seemed to
realize from the start that asking for anything similar would go nowhere
(even asking for their own nation to stop sending munitions to Israel
would fall on deaf ears).
Instead they recognized the financial powers of
the university and its relation to other forms of power, and was therefore
asking for Columbia and others to divest from certain companies and
institutions that are in some way financing or supporting the war in
Israel. And to show that this wasn’t ridiculous, some other universities
across the globe came to agreements with protesting students making
similar demands, who then ended their protest, some shocked that it worked
out at all.
Does getting this ‘win’ end the horrors that those
in Palestine are experiencing day after day? Of course not.
But…what do you want?
While the goals might be uniform, it’s clear that
there is a diverse set of opinions the protesters have on the
Israel-Palestine issue at large. Some said Israel has no right to exist,
echoing an extremist viewpoint held by Hamas…and quite similar to the
viewpoint held by right wing Israelis who believe Palestine should not
exist, let alone a separate Palestinian state.
And how holding these opinions is manifested also
differs from person to person. The more extremist views doesn’t
necessarily mean they will lead to extreme measures, and while violence is
assumed to be a cut and dry concept, it can easily be misconstrued or
misrepresented.
Barricading yourself inside a university building
that might require a breaking of a window or door can look like the
prelude to something shocking, but it should not be construed as violent
if no attack came after it.
Enforcing trespassing laws in the United States
runs up against the right to assemble in public spaces, because the
legality of these protests vary based on location, as some of these
universities and colleges are publicly run (and therefore fall under
public space) and others are private (and therefore do not, meaning the
university can that much easier remove those they deem trespassers).
Elsewhere - like at the University of Toronto -
institutions are using other institutions for their end goals, going for
court injunctions to remove students with as little as legal grey area as
possible.
Which is a good reminder of how so many powerful
institutions work in tandem to keep power where it is.
If colleges and universities are so dependent on
wealthy donors (and keeping them happy) to continue functioning that they
will re-consider their official policies and how they treat their
students…maybe that’s another big problem that we aren’t addressing.
When abstract concepts meet tangible demands,
someone’s gonna get their skull cracked.
If the demands of a protest are not going to be
met, well, rhetoric doesn’t land as bluntly as bricks or batons do, which
means it can be that much more inflamed and ridiculous. It will be
characterized as anti-Zionist, antisemitic and anarchic, or dismissed as a
bunch of kids who don’t know what they’re talking.
But some nineteen year olds are not trying to
destroy society before the spring exam period ends. It is being destroyed
by the funnelling of money away from society itself, and they are the
passengers on the sinking ship realizing that something has to be done
while there’s still time.
People who complain about college students being
brainwashed are just upset that the these students aren’t following the
sort of brainwashing they were subjected to when they were the same age.
In the sixties, disaffected and disillusioned
protesters could still pivot towards a stable, middle class job market
(both white and blue collar), even taking into consideration the looming
recession and inflation of the seventies.
Not so much now.
There is so little to strive for and fall back on
in terms of steady employment, which is the cornerstone for achieving and
retaining a middle class lifestyle.
The wealthy are inadvertently driving more and
more people to the left and right margins of the political spectrum while
also trying to redefine and re-contextualize progressive wealth
redistribution policies as extremist.
So of course the centre cannot hold; because it is
shrinking.
Fighting the power becomes something different
when the power become less physical and more digital, an abstract form
built on the trust that the exchange of numbers on computers and phone
hold the balance of power between individuals and institutions.
How we talk about world events and peoples’
reactions to them is predicated on the notion that we are still talking
about it, and while its easier than ever before to remember anything
thanks to digital memory of the internet, it’s easier to forget anything
as well.
On the morning of May.2, the New York Times
website’s ‘headline’ (top of the page) involves police clearing the UCLA
student protesters (and below it is the article on the conclusion of the
Google-government anti-trust trial, which might lead to actual changes to
how so many of us live our digital and real lives).
But by the end of May, the protests from three
weeks ago? Literally old news, and in terms of the expiry date of ‘Free
Palestine’, remember ‘Free Tibet’? (how nostalgic)
Successful protests need specific and realistic
goals, because when it veers into trying to re-invent concepts like law
enforcement or capitalism, attention paid to is going to eventually dry
up.
The many people who attended anti-police protests
in the wake of George Floyd’s death? They are the ones who should become
the next wave of police officers (arrest fascists before they arrest you),
because de-funding the police was a non-starter pitch in every way.
‘The Battle for Seattle’ was the nickname for the
protests that turned violent in 1999 when the WTO had its conference in
grunge’s hometown. Those anti-globalization 90s
protests were met by and large from the political/business class and
general populace with derisive indifference, because it was in the shadow
of the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s embrace of corporatist
ideology:
“You’re against capitalism? You know that
communism just fell apart, right?”
But capitalism couldn’t help but doing victory lap
after victory lap, with corporate consolidation rising, executive bonuses
rising, and the standards of living for the 99% tumbling down the stairs
into a flooded basement.
Even if more and more people agree that this
economic system is the disease, not just the symptom, it’s hard to protest
and/or campaign on the feeling that economic security brings, and even
harder to govern on it.
Soft, politically correct language at the time of
its rise in the 1980s and 90s was criticized for not really solving the
underlying problems and issues it was trying to address/have a discourse
about.
Now this language and how it is used does have
power in the sense that people can mobilize around it and criticize how it
is used (or not used), with economic implications behind it.
‘Vote with your wallet’ has become ‘protest with
your wallet’, in part because of the disillusionment many people have with
voting. The changes and reforms are meagre compared to the promises and
warnings made by the candidates (when you vote now, it feels more like you’re trying to stop things from
getting worse, not to start things getting better), but boycotts both
large and small are subject to the Economics of Convenience. Can you
afford to give up said objective or service, practically or financially?
Not shopping at a certain store is not feasible
for some people, especially if the boycott is expected to be permanent as
opposed to specific period of time.
Not attending (or no longer attending) a
particular post secondary institution means life-changing plans have been
altered and many people are wary of making such a sacrifice if they don’t
see the likelihood of their boycott meaning anything in the long run.
Not supporting a fast food franchise or beer
because an ad campaign or executive has staked a political position that
you don’t agree with means people on the opposite side of the position
might suddenly support the company for that very reason. Which ultimately
puts all the people who just want a quick hamburger or a drink in the
crossfire.
So…what do you want?
The natural assumption that one of the outcomes of
the civil rights, women’s rights and LBGT movements of the late twentieth
century that in the wake of legislation passed in governments offering
more equal footing in the eyes of the law, there would be more economical
equal footing for these groups in regards to reaching the middle class, a
position that was always denied to them.
But there was not.
In fact, for all demographic groups access to the
ever shifting definition that is the middle class has shrunk in the last
three decades. When CEOs and celebrities can make more in a day than most
people do in a year, then society - especially democratic ones - is going
to fall apart at the seams, and people are not going to take that lying
down, unless it’s lying down in the middle of the street to protest.
While a majority of young people are still left
leaning on the political spectrum, dissatisfaction with democratic
governments across the globe are leading to people seeking any sort of
alternative (one of the sad explanations for Trump’s popularity is that he
doesn’t sound like a normal politician, which people have become
conditioned to distrust) or ignore politics completely.
When a centrist government/administration is
constantly framed as progressive, then its successes and failures in
getting any sort of legislation passed are viewed differently by different
people. The right still sees it as government overreach and a step towards
fascism and the left sees it as a watered down attempt to (barely) try to
regulate the powers that be.
Is dragging people towards a more progressive
future an agenda, and if so, an acceptable one?
Depends on who you ask.
Hell, even the term ‘agenda’ has a more sinister
connotation than ‘policy’ or ‘roadmap’, the sort of exhausting semantics
that have too much in common with quagmires of old, like military
officials in Vietnam explaining how they had to ‘destroy a village in
order to save it’.
And while protests six decades ago can still look
identical on the streets and campus quads, the crises feel more imminent
and inevitable.
How often has ‘desperate times call for desperate
measures’ been a rallying cry that led to sunny skies and greener
pastures?
The protests over the Israel-Palestine conflict
are but a sliver of the long and complicated story of that region, and
it’s likely that other nations acknowledging Palestinian statehood will
have a bigger impact on the future international relationships upon that
slice of arid land on the western Mediterranean coast. Yet what should be
acknowledged is how many people took part who were not directly related or
connected to those in the conflict. And asking for a change of behaviour
in how money and investments is handled shows that the protesters know
exactly what the form of modern power takes.
The protest for the plight of others across the
globe is going local, and with it comes the reaction of the power status
quo, relying on enough people ignoring or dismissing the protesters as
do-nothing students or radicals. And for those who happen to think very
little of the actions of some twenty year old liberal arts students:
If you don’t want to get political, don’t worry,
with that attitude eventually you won’t be allowed to.
It is very easy to become cynical about protests
and their effectiveness (you‘ll find older criticisms of them on this very
site), and it’s always troubling to see them occur when it’s for a cause
or idea that you happen to disagree with.
But that they still happen at all shows that the
uncertainty, unhappiness and unrelenting (dis)information of our
hyper-capitalist digital dystopia is coming into full bloom.
Everything is on the table. Even the table.
Ultimately…what do you want?
Notes
Good assessment, perspective of the powerful’s
reaction to the protests:
(https://defector.com/they-are-insecure-for-a-reason)
(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html)
(https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-loblaw-boycott-petition-may/)
(https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/uoft-protest-palestinian-eviction-deadline-1.7215601)
THE SECOND Artificial Intelligence ARTICLE: What’s in a Name?
We call it Artificial Intelligence because it’s more comfortable at this
point than the term Artificial Life, because boy oh boy does that second
word have a lot of baggage, and not just because of abortion.
The definition of life from a scientific perspective quickly runs into
philosophical concepts, because life is made out of non-life. Animals and
plants are living creatures, made out of many, many tiny living creatures
working together called cells, but these cells are made up of material
that is not classified as life.
At one point does it cross that definition line? What requirements are
there? Typically, it requires a level of self-awareness/preservation and
the ability to reproduce itself, which are two things cells can do.
AI is close to both those things, and as much as we snort that it’s not
real in the same way we are, it can seem to be a lot more ‘alive’ in
certain ways than, say, moss. Sure moss responds to external stimuli and
creates more of itself, but it’ll be surprising and existentially
depressing when - without prompting - AI creates
near-universally-acknowledged good art. Or more efficient batteries. Or a
hydrogen-powered aircraft engine that can go 2000kmph. Or a wormhole.
Right now AI might be doing simple tasks both digital and mechanical very,
very quickly with sometimes silly results, but as it begins to ‘learn
better’ (or learns to learn better), there’s no reason to assume the work
will not improve, and rapidly.
We like to think that it takes a human to write a tearful confession or
inspiring speech, and that it takes a human to deliver these lines with
relatable emotion, but stringing words together based largely in part to
already strung together words we’ve heard or read is beforehand what
writing is. And AI can ‘hear’/‘read’ these examples at a dizzyingly fast
pace and apply them to create something original, even if they’ve never
experienced the emotions behind them.
And words aren’t any sort of frontier. AI produced music has existed for
many years at this point, but it wasn’t until a Drake-Weekend
collaboration that wasn’t real got everyone to realize that it’s here in a
big way and not going anywhere.
Leave it to The Beatles to create
the first ‘big AI hit’ that was overseen
by Paul and Ringo.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/magazine/the-beatles-now-and-then.html)
Technically there is no AI performances on the
track ‘Now and Then’, but AI software was used to split Lennon’s vocals
and piano playing from a 1980 demo recording that all the other Beatles
then contributed to (including
The song itself was essentially a footnote to the discourse surrounding
it, as critics and general music fans wondered what will come next
(remembered when ‘auto-tune’ was considered the worst?). How many people
are going to want ‘the real thing’, when ‘the fake thing’ is just as good
to their eyes and ears?
Vinyl-philes might bristle at how everyone listens to music these days,
from the digital files to the AI-curated playlists (which was one of the
easier tasks from the early iTunes era, where a playlist could be made for
you by the program based simply on what you’d been listening to already),
but now asking AI to create music based on just a few keywords means even
less talent is required to be a ‘musician’.
In the nearby aesthetic discipline of visual art, AI apps are winning
contests based on some quick suggestions, and having this work for video
is currently in a hilariously broken state, but it might be the dominant
form of entertainment in a few years (hence the writers and actors strikes
during the middle of 2023).
In terms of creation, what is ‘it’ that we add to the process of making
works that is more singular different than what came before? Is it our
unique human experience of growing up and living they way we did/do? And
not necessarily how one’s difficult childhood informs so much of the art
they make, but simply one’s trip to Spain when they were in college and
how and what they did there became something they thought a lot about when
creating art afterwards?
And can an AI program imitate that travel
experience by reading a diary of someone’s visit to
Would people be able to tell whether the
ensuing account or story was written by a person or AI? As people get more
accustomed to reading AI-penned articles (which are meant to
sound like humans wrote them), the sad
contradiction is that they will assume that poorly written articles are
more likely to be written by a human being.
(https://www.theverge.com/24067999/ai-bot-chatgpt-chatbot-dungeon)
The article notes that
‘You
sound like a bot’
is now shorthand for sounding boring.
To detractors, calling what AI does ‘writing’ or ‘drawing’ is an insult to
the craft, as in a sense what it does is ‘present’ information in a form
that appears to be writing or a painting.
Benedictine Monk Filippo De Strata said in the fifteenth century
Renaissance Italy that, ‘The pen is a virgin and the printing press is a
whore’, not liking the fact that it was now easy to print the bible so
that the comparatively few people in Europe who could read would now have
a chance to do so outside of a church. In Latin, of course, since book
publishers were burnt to death for printing the bible in the local
language (now we just ban books, which is terrible, but an improvement).
As a hyper-accelerated cookie cutter, AI is the new printing press,
deplored by artists and critics because to them ‘Thoughtless creation’ is
no creation at all, or a bastardized, lesser version at best.
But since this is happening to the art world/industry in such a fashion,
it allows us to overlook how AI is going to be upending the
more-important-for-the-functioning-of-civilization industries.
First and foremost, the spreading of information was something that humans
did, obviously using evolving technology to make it easier.
With AI creating and distributing articles that can offer information on
any particular subject can be done easily (from financial reports to
travel recommendations to high school literature essays). Even tailoring
the article so it is written from a particular perspective (social,
political, cultural) is something AI can inhale and exhale in mere
seconds, which is why AI travel books are flooding the market:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/travel/amazon-guidebooks-artificial-intelligence.html)
So much of what AI can do - or is expected to do in the next few years -
exists mainly in the digital realm, for obvious reasons (ones and zeroes
can manipulate other ones and zeroes a lot easier than it can manipulate
physical objects). And here are some of them:
(https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/04/how-ai-is-quietly-changing-everyday-life-00138341)
On the other hand, there is the matter of hands. ‘The trades’ is the very
loose term for several different types of jobs that involve a mix of
intellectual and physical activity that AI and robotics have not gotten
close to mastering. You don’t need a masters degree to put up drywall as a
your full time job, but all the ‘simple’ mental exercises of interacting
with the customer, looking over plans, purchasing the correct material,
and having it ship it to the site or house (all of which the AI can do
quite well at this point), have to work in perfect harmony with the
physical aspects of the task: Going to the construction site, going up
flights of stairs, collecting and carrying the right tools, switching out
a board that is slightly damaged and having to adjust a stance to better
drill in a screw.
Deciding to do those things is easy, But having the physical
characteristics (a series of steel appendages meant to imitate arms) to do
the aforementioned tasks, or to unhook a tool or piece of drywall caught
on a corner, or even pick up the right tool out of a box that was
inadvertently cluttered when carrying up some stairs is not easy to
program. We take for granted that we humans have software (brain) and
hardware (body) working so well in tandem, but we’ve had millions and
millions of years of evolution to develop this, not the decades we’ve had
with computer technology.
The true ‘human replacement’ moment is when there is a robot hand
(probably designed largely by AI) that can do what a human hand can do,
with the same amount of reliability and durability. It does not need to be
attached to a a robotic body with human attributes, but simply something
with wheels or wings to get from place to place and do what a human hand
can and needs to do.
But as long as AI is chiefly understood to be ones and zeroes that makes
more ones and zeroes (assembled as an essay or picture), there will still
be a reluctance by people to call it anything but software, if only
because we define life as having a recognizable physical form (even
one-celled organisms under a microscope).
It bears reminding that there is a big difference between AI, which is
software, and robotics, which is physical machinery that has been
developed and refined since the industrial revolution.
The latter, with work from the former, is perhaps inching closer to its
final form. Robot soldiers and AI military software will have much less
complex forms of loyalty and needs than human soldiers.
Loyal to the directives they are given…until they are given new ones, and
how easy will that be? An opposing military hack into your bots and
changing the directives so your own robots attack you is absolutely
possible, which reinforces just how important it is that your digital
defensive strategy to keep hackers and viruses out are now as important as
high stone walls, barbed wire and land mines have been in the past.
And it might at first be a great advantage that robots could be less
affected by extreme weather and an empty stomach, but replace that with
battery issues and suddenly not being able to advance over rocky or
slippery terrain that a person can easily walk over (see: self-driving car
challenges) and it’s a three steps forward, two steps back situation.
People will not say ‘thank you for your service’ to a robot that has
killed hundreds of other robots on the other side of an arbitrary line,
and they might not say anything to robots that will soon be present in our
day to day routines.
Will assaulting/breaking a service bot in a store (intentionally or
accidentally) be considered assault or just destruction of property? What
about a security bot?
There is no doubt that many people will treat these kinds of
machinery/androids with indifference at best and hostility at worst,
certainly seeing them as less than human and therefore deserving much less
respect than flesh and blood who might have been doing the same tasks
years prior.
But looking long term, the body is not the biggest concern.
AI definitely learns, and humanity has that as a defining trait as
intelligence, and so there is much to consider when AI reaches the average
level of human intelligence…and then goes beyond.
First off, how would we know? How will we measure this? It is certainly
not simply the Turing Test, which is to see if AI can fool a human into
thinking it is a person.
That has been the standard, and it has been already met by ChatGPT-like
software (and is calling it software disrespectful, or simply
inaccurate?), with conversations occurring involving AI that were thought
to be living bags of flesh who breath air, eat food, need to use the
bathroom, etc by other living bags of flesh.
(https://youtu.be/JrcbH0ge2WE?si=ASlRAUpYIS7r1Jao)
But is that intelligence?
Aware of oneself is another trait held highly (certain animals recognize
themselves in a mirror, but most birds think it’s another bird).
Conversing with an AI and asking about itself while yield response
acknowledging that yes, it is software. But that is a programmed response,
which begs the question of what is the difference between computer
programming and ‘human’ programming in the sense that our genetics and
environment are how we are programmed as we age?
Is it making decisions? Hell, an AI program might be able to make much,
much better decisions about so many more important issues both public and
personal because it has access to so much more information than us. And
depending on the issues, letting human emotions affect the decision can be
considered a help or a hinderance.
Speaking of which, perhaps emotions will be the
ultimate litmus test between humans and AI.
‘Emotionless’ is an insult or complaint
we use against a human being, because we expect emotions. But are emotions
just responses to stimuli? Are they more complex than ‘fight or flight’,
and that’s what should be the line between life and not-life? It’s
obviously a blurred line, because while other animals can certainly show
emotion, bacteria (which is a single-celled organism) does not.
Maybe the simple line will be that a brain made of flesh is subject to
certain rules, and a brain made of computer software is subject to
different ones. Different rules for different abilities, but maybe the
issue will quickly become blurred the way humans utilize AI.
A nice pop culture reminder is that C3PO had to be programmed to show
emotions like fear, annoyance and relief, most likely to be more relatable
than other droids which had much more mundane tasks, since he (as we have
the opportunity to give droids human characteristics like gender) is
essentially a walking translator.
But C3PO never exhibited any traits like greed, which more than can be
said of the people who now oversee the AI technology.
First off, the pathetically capitalist part of developing AI software and
training them does indeed at this point involve many, many humans working
on these projects…and they are not being paid well:
While there are obviously many, many engineers and computer designers at
the heart of developing AI, the people running these companies have to
balance this aspect of the company with turning a profit (or at least the
appearance of turning a profit).
At first the brief ouster and return of
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman in the autumn of 2023 was full of mystery, with
the general uncertainty being whether
it was Altman or the board who thought
the company was moving too fast on AI development and with too little
guardrails.
(https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/chaos-in-the-cradle-of-ai)
With the members booted being academics and the replacements being tech
CEOs (and Altman being welcomed back), the course is lamely clear,
following the same rule Silicon Valley has had for decades: move fast and
break things (as long as the IPO is strong).
This of course means that the pesky government should stay out of its way,
as OpenAI - despite being non-profit-ish* - is still pushing for weakening
regulations on AI:
(https://time.com/6288245/openai-eu-lobbying-ai-act/)
*-there is a cap for investors in the company, that you can only earn 100
times what you put in, which says a lot about how much an
investor/venture-capitalist expects to make, if that amount is considered
a cap.
Perhaps if asked, the CEOs and board members developing this
world-changing technology will say that soon they will just screw over
robot workers, not human ones.
But asking what it means to be human is how quickly this stops being about
money and power, which is why it is so terrifying that the people in
charge of AI development are overly concerned with the usual stuff: money
and power, and tough shit for anyone or anything that gets in their way.
The potential to change everything is awesome in both the typical and
pejorative senses:
(https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24108787/ai-economic-growth-explosive-automation)
Even information is up for grabs, because OpenAI is being sued by NYT as
Chat-GPT they included NYT articles in hoovering up data to give quick
answers to all sorts of questions.
Speaking of questions:
Are articles copyrighted material when it comes to AI ‘repackaging’ the
info and presents it as original? Will there be limits to what AI can use,
specifically similar rules to what is considered common knowledge?
In academic circles there is discouragement to use encyclopedias as
sources in part because it is considered lazy, but also because it can be
considered common knowledge. Perhaps AI will only be able to study all of
Wikipedia and Britannica for the information they contain and the
companies that own this software that creates articles like magic will
have to pay a premium to let the software/entity ‘absorb’ copyrighted
material.
Google has been using AI in search results, which can change so much of
how we perceive the digital and physical worlds:
Ideally what is shown is the correct answer, but the reality is that what
appears first is the most popular, and that can be skewered over time by
advertisers or bots writing many articles to make any lie seem like truth.
Google might use AI to ensure that the answer given is the right one, but
the problem becomes six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other when one considers
the information the AI is accessing to make that decision. Is it the same
as we have access to when we google something, but the AI just does so
much, much quicker? It once might be susceptible to any result that can be
tweaked with SEO tools.
And the consequence of people trusting AI implicitly - assuming it is
doing a better job than humans could - is that it might be even easier to
manipulate discourse (and therefore thought) than ever before.
These sorts of problems are downplayed by the
companies developing this worrying digital new frontier, and while the
typical hush-hush nature of R&D and unveiling in
It is a situation where regulation is
essential, and should be handle the same way that military weapons are
developed and overseen by the military, but in conjunction with private
defence contractors. With
(https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/technology/ai-regulation-policies.html)
It’s actually more maddening and terrifying
that the
Because while robot soldiers are one whole big kettle of problematic fish
(and are missile-firing drones already them?), a complicated, AI-designed
computer virus that that interrupts internet services across entire
countries for weeks at a time is absolutely something we all should be
terrified about.
For how malevolent that sounds, it bears reminding that we are still at a
position where it would be a human being deciding to task an AI program
with designing such a virus and it would be that human being who decides
to unleash it upon the world. Let’s hope that the one thing that makes humanity different from AI/bots is not simply the former’s willingness to do knowingly greedy and evil things, because maybe that means these ones and zeroes are definitely an upgrade from us.
De-Growth: The Future Is Less
While the future of the digital realm is essentially endless in scope (but
not at all free, because of course Silicon Valley needs to make money on
all the buzzwords like Web3, Metaverse, MakerGPT (it’s coming, brace
yourself)), the real earth we all sit, stand and lie upon only has so much
of everything.
Whether it be water, oil, or silicon, the finite-ness of both how we use
our planet’s resources and our own lives have a doomed romantic elegance
to it.
On the other hand, there is an appliance called the LG Styler Steam
closet. It is a fridge/warmer for your clothes so they don’t wrinkle. For
$1500.
So in this case we all deserve to burn in hell, and thanks to the quickly
warming earth because of our need for creatures comforts, it looks like we
will before we even die.
And with the LG Styler Steam closet, we’ll burn in a hell of our own
making in wrinkle-free style!
De-Growth is typically a term used in regards to the effects of
(over)consumption because of its effect on the environment (not just the
burning of fossil fuels, but the constant accumulation of trash) and what
can be done to stem it, but it can be used as a criticism for the
accumulation of material wealth as well (and the capitalist system that
promotes it).
We are indifferent to these dangers for the most part, because of how
smoothly it seems that we are able to live our lives. We have regular
garbage/recycling/compost pickup that re-enforces the out-of-sight,
out-of-mind perspective. Where products are built (and where their
contents are mined, harvested or collected) are typically far away from
us, so we don’t think much of it beyond the price tag. We want our indoor
space so exactly perfect when it comes to temperature and comfort (which
requires massive amounts of energy) that we've ruined our outdoor space,
so we spend more time in indoor spaces, exacerbating and accelerating the
problem.
On top of this, the marketing of consumer culture of buying more is
ruining all we have.
Advertising slogans can range from, “Do More, Feel Better, Live Longer”
(GlaxoSmithKline) to “Expect More, Pay Less” (Target) to “You Deserve a
Break Today” (McDonald’s).
You do, but at what cost? We should at the very least attempt to provide
everyone with the basic needs to live, but…how much more? Sure, those
aforementioned phrases can be be seen as thoughtless hyperbole meant to
get shoppers to put another sneaker or sandwich in their cart (physical or
digital), but the sentiment is pervasive.
Anti-marketing screeds are nothing new, but they primarily focus on how
corporations and the advertising firms they hire manipulate customers'
emotions to make them feel inadequate without the product or the event
being hyped. FOMO is real, and not just for Taylor Swift concert tickets.
No one wants to consider the added indomitable downer observation that the
pushing of stuff upon us constantly doesn’t acknowledge that we are
exhausting the stuff-making machine.
This is beyond technological advances that makes it easier to perform
certain steps, from more powerful (and safer) mining equipment to more
precise tools that can imprint more and more transistors on computer chips
to more efficient engines for massive container ships.
To say we are running out of stuff is true for certain materials and
resources (from phosphorus to bananas), but for most of what we require to
operate our modern civilization the real problem is how the manufacturing
of stuff is a massive, complicated globalized effort where different
necessary items are sourced from different countries and brought together
in one location to have it sewn, soldered, or glued together. Lithium and
cobalt are essential for batteries, so they’re mined out of Africa and
sent to Asia (mainly
In the same sense that a butterfly flapping its wings can create a
hurricane on the other side of the planet, a problem at a mine in South
Africa or a chip manufacturing plant in Taiwan can cause massive price
fluctuations in directly and tangentially related industries across the
street and the globe. Your dishwasher is more expensive (or on back order)
not only because of what happened thousands of kilometres away, but what
happened months or years prior.
When the Coronavirus pandemic began roughly four years ago, we quickly
found that a global pandemic is not just a health crisis.
Too many people constantly sick means huge disruptions to work and
deadlines, which must be avoided at all costs to ensure the ‘just-in-time’
logistical network that makes up the global economy operates properly.
And if a lot of people are in lockdown to avoid getting sick, it results
in the same problem. No on the factory line to make the stuff, no one in
the truck to deliver the stuff, no one in the store to stock the stuff, so
ultimately there is no stuff.
And for an economic system dependent on buying
stuff, not being able to buy stuff because it’s not available - as opposed
to not being able to buy stuff because you can’t afford it - has its own
set of problems. The pandemic gave a frightening front row seat of just
how ‘just in time’ our economic system is.
Daily delivery schedules are not nearly
as resilient when any link in the chain - in this case, availability of
people to driver trucks, work cranes and oversee quality control due to
illness or precaution to avoid illness - is broken.
People not working means people not getting paid and that means people not
buying things, which means there is less work to go around, which means
there’s less people to buy LG steam closets.
And that’s how you/we have a recession on your/our hands.
On top of this, more and more of us don't seem to have the ability to pay
for all the stuff that we need and want.
It's too easy to get stuff, to ‘pay’ for it, even though we can't afford
it. Going into debt seems to be a sensible short term decision - that’s
what a loan is, after all - until it’s long term and it becomes a ball and
chain you can never remove. Part of the concept of De-Growth is preventing
this from ever happening, but we have a massive economic construct based
on the premise that people continue to buy stuff. To the point where
doesn’t matter exactly what the stuff is. Both necessities and luxuries
are part of the system, the former being useful from a capitalistic
perspective because people will continually need to constantly buy more
basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter-related resources for
survival, and the latter being a sign that people can buy things they
simply want because they enjoy having/using/consuming the item (and maybe
showing it off to make the neighbours jealous).
De-growth and non-consumption is a non-starter in a globalized society
that is dependent on the purchasing of stuff because that transfer of
funds from buyer to seller throughout the economy is what keeps it
humming. And this is a gross oversimplification, as the seller is rarely
one individual but a series of corporations working in tandem to a deliver
a product onto a store shelf or doorstep.
If you stop buying, jobs start disappearing*.
It’s not just a bug, it’s a bug and a feature.
*- more accurately, it should be said that what happens first is profits
start disappearing, and to keep owners/investors from sacrificing or
losing any of the money they believe they are entitled to, the economic
loss is shifted to labour, cutting workers and equipment.
‘Buy local’ is not a recent cry from independent farms and stores selling
gifts and homemade novelty items and clothes. In the eighties it was cry
from the behemoth American automobile manufacturers and their workers,
asking people to stop buying cheaper, more efficient cars made in Japan
and Korea (spoiler alert: it didn’t work).
But cheap became the be-all-and-end-all of financial decisions, especially
for easily replaceable products (from printers to pens to pyjamas). Now
you don’t even have to make the effort of treating the product with care
or concern yourself with upkeep. You’ll just buy a new one if it breaks.
It doesn’t take long for excess to become expectation.
Are fridges that dispense water pushing it?
Ones that dispense French press coffee
certainly are. It was amazing when the first happened all the way back in
the late nineteen-sixties and the second happened only a few years back.
We should be wholly appreciative of how far we have come as a civilization
to have that available for so many while at the same acknowledging we have
a long way to go in terms of offering even an ordinary refrigerator to all
who need it.
Whatever you get accustomed to - and that
happens very quickly and naturally when you grow up with it, whether it’s
running water, air conditioning, wireless internet, or a software program
that listens to you when you ask it turn on the lights of particular room
- quickly stops being so incredibly and revolutionary.
When something works so well for so
long, you start to only notice when it doesn’t.
There’s always the promise of something better on the horizon that you can
own or experience, and it can range from a new appliance, car, addition to
a cherished hobby, or even a vacation you’ve been saving up for.
But is that…it?
Neil DeGrasse-Tyson noted that 'we stopped dreaming' in terms of publicly
pushing for more space exploration and scientific discovery (meaning we
stopped kicking up a fuss when governments began to cut funding for such
endeavours). And while that seems a bit idealistic and a touch naive,
that's the attitude we're supposed to have for the future.
Of course we can think about how our own personal lives will directly be
improved with new inventions and technological developments, but we should
focus more on how technology will address many of the problems that exist
today and will exist tomorrow, especially the ones that earlier and
current technologies inadvertently caused.
A steam clean closet? A fridge that serves coffee? 5G internet that make
it possible to get mad at something on our phone even faster?
We have to be able to do better than that.
We are not in a period of innovation. We are in a period of alteration and
replication (even AI is stuck in this rut). The former is inspiring. The
latter is not, but we fool ourselves into believing it is.
Same transport technology for the past fifty years, with only slight
changes to ease of use and distance-per-tank.
The Internet has become a central pillar of human civilization, but the
last twenty years have simply meant faster. The 'booming tech industry'
appears to be a series of apps that can turn your face half dog, speed up
food delivery, or let you have a work meeting without having to go through
traffic first.
We live at a time when more information about everything is more easily
available than ever before.
But this doesn't necessarily translate to everyone being equally informed.
Knowledge is power, but certain knowledge can mean a lot more power.
The breadth of general information about a wide range of disciplines and
events is now accessible to billions of people on earth, but the one thing
that every powerful institution, organization or corporation seems to
agree on is that…everyone should keep on buying things.
For the good of the economy!
Okay, so what do we - the royal we, man - want to make this ever-buying
possible?
A forty hour a week job that won't disappear in a flash six months down
the road. Doesn't matter if it's building solar panels or a death ray
aimed at Mercury.
But at the moment, even publicly funded projects almost always involve
throwing money at private companies, because any sort of government
department that would do it themselves has been dismantled or hollowed out
due to budget cuts.
The complexity of creating a De-Growth based system is increasing at a
time when economic and social instability is also increasing.
It is first seen in price fluctuations, but then becomes a matter of
straight up availability and rationing. Decrying the cost of vacation
packages is one thing, but the rising price of food at the grocery store
throughout 2023 should be worrying for everyone.
First off, the amount of food wasted in the world (not only the West, but
also the East, now that it is rapidly catching up in living standards) is
outright shameful. We have so much food we can’t eat it all and
consequently throw it out, which in a twisted way is actually a good
thing, because a lot of the stuff we are putting into our bodies are
absolutely terrible for our bodies.
We all need so much of it that we have to use our resources to build giant
warehouses to raise and then kill animals on an industrial scale.
That we rarely think of a pig before hungrily shovelling bacon into our
mouths is both a testament to scientific discovery and technological
innovation and how psychologically distant we can be towards our
post-industrial society where scarcity is real but regional.
Not only are slaughterhouses for our hamburgers out of sight, out of mind,
the contents of so many ‘foods’ are chemical tongue twisters. High
fructose corn syrup is processed corn syrup (just add the good ol’
D-xylose isomerase enzyme!), which is processed corn starch (just your
typical liquid hydrolysate of saccharides), and while a little is fine, so
often it’s never just a little. You’ll find it in candy, soft drinks, ice
cream, and even breads.
Putting political and ideologies aside a much as one can, we live in a
hyper-consumerist global society where there is high importance to buy
things to pay the people who made the things, because then those people
have money to buy other things, and this cycle of exchange is supposed to
continue ad infinitum.
But the hope that this is a positive feedback loop is just that: There’s
not enough stuff and a sustainable way to recycle/reuse stuff for this to
continue.
We are ravenously consuming our planet’s resources, and the way we use
them (resulting in pollution and greenhouse gases) means there will be
fewer of them and harder to access them in the coming future.
So instead it’s a Negative feedback loop, and they don’t last long because
they are destined to break.
For some who don’t want to acknowledge the importance of De-Growth, they
hold up ‘Post Scarcity’ (a time in the future when everyone has enough
basic needs met) as the goal, when straight up ‘Scarcity’ is looming on
the horizon.
Now Post-scarcity is as much a psychological concept than a socio-economic
one. We have enough resources and logistical infrastructure available that
it reformed in the correct way, can give people enough food, shelter and
basic necessities to live without fear of starvation or dying because of
the elements, but that will come at the cost of things like cheap meat and
the aforementioned vacations much of the upper and upper middle classes
casually plan every year.
That is the cost of a better world, and even those that can afford it
don’t want to pay for it.
Along with Post Scarcity, other human psychological barriers are hard to
overcome. Like desire for more and never being satisfied with enough.
Just as being full after a big meal is fleeting, so too is being ‘full’
with a feeling of satisfaction and contentment. And this is well known, as
there a plethora of personal and public reasons why people feel the need
to fill the metaphorical hole in them with something literal (and with a
price tag). Our biological/psychological urge for continuing consumption
ends only with death.
These ideas have shades of Buddhism and existentialism baked into them.
Freedom quickly succumbs to the realities of responsibility, and our lives
are nothing more than attempt to balance these two states of being.
It is a matter of working together for a distant goal at a time when the
world seems to prioritize individualism in the gig economy.
Would we be interplanetary if in the last forty years, instead of devoting
resources to earth-based military technology and hyper-industrial meat
consumption, we devoted them to space exploration?
It’s unlikely that everyone who would have sworn off bacon in the
mid-eighties would be able to live on a massive space station in low earth
orbit today, but the notion of sacrifice now for the greater good of a
better future seems quaint and unfeasible.
And that’s the problem. ‘Sacrifice’ is not something commonly done these
days, and when it is, it has dwindling religious significance with meagre
results (like not eating chocolate for the forty days of lent).
Today ‘giving things up’ is too synonymous with ‘giving up’, with
‘losing’. Success is ‘having’, as it is an easy measurement against anyone
and everyone else.
Asking people to eat less meat for the sake of resources might result in
this:
“Don’t tell me what to eat!”
And if the response is:
“I’m not, it’s great that we can ate steak whenever we want, but if we
keep at it like this, buzzsawing through all the resources needed to raise
cattle to provide the steak, then it will become so expensive/unavailable
that in the future practically no one can eat steak.”
The response - if not in word, then in deed - is:
“That’s the future’s problem.”
Which is why it’s predominantly the youth who spearhead these sorts of
changes to how the system works. They have to live in it in the decades to
come. They know that for them it won’t be a sacrifice (which is a choice),
but just what you have to do because there’s no alternatives.
We can choose a little bit of De-Growth now, or have a whole heap of it
thrust upon us in the future.
Notes:
(https://www.lg.com/us/styler-steam-closet)
(https://www.businessinsider.com/bananas-going-extinct-gros-michel-cavendish-disease-2023-9)
(http://ifsa.my/articles/we-stopped-dreaming-by-neil-degrasse-tyson)
(https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Advertising_slogans)
Food Waste (Wal-Mart)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/walmart-food-waste-go-public-1.3813162
(https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22408556/save-planet-shrink-economy-degrowth)
AI: It’s going to fix and ruin everything
We’ve had AI for quite a while, since the earliest computers of the
mid-nineteen fifties. But all we had them do was count.
Long before this we tried to conceive of what
non-human consciousness might be like, but it was the monster in Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein, made of body parts instead of bits and bites. Despite
the better-known mute, lurching horror film version that came much later,
the original Frankenstein monster was a chatty killing machine, wondering
what it means to (not) be human.
A couple robot sidekicks in schlocky sci-fi
films later and we get to 2001’s
HAL-9000. Overseeing a mission to Jupiter, he chats and plays chess with
the astronauts…until having to keep a secret about the mission’s true
goals from them cause him to begin to malfunction, and worrying that this
malfunction would cause them to deactivate him, he goes on the offence and
tries to kill the crew first.
Bringing up space murder is an ominous start to this article to be sure,
but it is Al's unpredictability that makes it so dangerous. There is no way
to gauge to odds of whether it will be benign, malevolent, or amoral,
because we've never dealt with human-level-intelligence-and-above AI
before. It is a system that could accidentally destroy humanity as easily
as intentionally destroying us. Example: being told to build cars without
explicitly being told which materials to use, and so begins to dismantle
everything around it, including critical parts of infrastructure and the
earth itself. Or solving world hunger by killing all the hungry people
(and therefore all people), because it wasn’t programmed to understand
that this defeats the purpose.
And the speed it can go from dumber than us to much, much smarter than us
is also a crapshoot. It might be years, it might be seconds.
It's like betting on a horse race, but you've never seen a horse in your
life, or know how they move.
To slightly shift the metaphor, AI will affect us like cars affected
horses.
And this doesn’t mean in the sense of how we humans perceived how cars
greatly changed the use of horses in the first half of the twentieth
century,
it is mean to suggest what
that would have been from the horses’ perspective.
How for thousands of years, this was what the horse’s life and the
community was - a very essential role for the normal functioning of human
civilization - and then in a comparatively very short period of time, it
all disappeared. From getting people and goods across countries and being
treated extremely well because you need a healthy horse to do this, to
literally being put out to pasture.
The way we have defined ourselves as humans - both proudly, shamefully
and begrudgingly - is going to be completely overhauled when AI is being
used to great effect.
There has never been another entity that will have an opinion of us that
matters so greatly for humanity and its future (sorry, dogs and cats).
Barring nightmare scenarios (a malevolent AI, or even just an AI that
does something disastrous while thinking it is doing the correct thing),
the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence
has the potential Al to make everything on earth so much better. For
mundane office tasks - from autocorrect to creating schedules and planners
based on previous weeks – our modern concepts of AI have been doing these
jobs to some degree for decades now. The recent step-up to writing
articles and creating images is impressive, but going forward on even the
most simple level (for it), it might be able to make scientific
discoveries and technological breakthroughs that can lead us to a
post-scarcity future (meaning a world where everyone’s basic needs of
food, shelter, and health are effortlessly met). Optimal cold fusion can
end our energy woes, more effective infrastructure and logistics
management can ensure that the food available reaches those who need it
most and that less would be wasted.
And those are the duller, nuts-and-bolts solutions. Why not create more
effective gene splicing to lengthen human life, get rid of disease? Or
develop actually fast forms of space travel? If making sure spacecraft are
safe for humans are one of the hardest parts of research and development,
have the AI design, build and send out oodles of satellites, probes and
‘service centres’ to make space travel easier for us in the future.
Hypothetically, all of us could have access to this Artificial
Intelligence programming, developing and designing software and hardware
that will change every aspect of our lives on an individual and collective
scale.
And that's why AI will change what it means to be human.
While
there is much to complain about when it comes to jobs (even ones you like)
AI and associated robots that can do these jobs
– from making coffee to
writing contracts – much better than humans will have catastrophic effects
on society. What will we all do? What are jobs now? What are careers? What
will aspire to? Are we going to have all our basic needs provided by the
state/community…or by the AI itself?
If this sound cyberpunk-ish, then are most of us going to live meager,
resource-poor lives while a select few people will live kings? Because
that’s such a sci-fi concept here in 2023, right?
Or maybe an organism that needs to evolve beyond a planetary existence
(especially on a planet that is becoming more uninhabitable for complex
life) requires a lot less behaviour that we consider individualistic.
Maybe humans will evolve (and with AI tech, much quicker than expected) to
a collective consciousness-based entity, where individualism is viewed as
a hindrance, not a help. And evolve is a nice way of putting it, since it
suggests a long time, and a semblance of choice. AI tech might force us
into this way of existing very, very quickly.
Speed is at the root of this, because AI will accomplish everything we
have been trying to do technology wise (from the cure for cancer to
nuclear fission to a new mode of traversing space) at a much, much, much
higher speed than we are used to.
It seems ridiculous since only a few years ago, a computer playing chess
well was impressive. There’s only so many possible moves, so having it
‘learn’ them all should make them the best in the world, right?
And doing that (a series of very strict rules that you can attach number
sets to) is much easier than other tasks we flesh and blood humans take
for granted.
Train an AI to recognize images of the number 3, and then ask it to do
the same for all the other numbers that come after (after nine, it gets a
lot easier) gets more difficult when you consider how fonts can change
what each ‘3’ looks like. And of course ‘more difficult’ is relative,
because AI can study thousands upon thousands of different-font ‘3s’ in
seconds and then know the difference between it and a ‘4’ or a ‘23’ for
the rest of its operating life.
What is the difference between a robot being programmed and a robot that
learns? Is it that the latter is ultimately (re)programming itself based
on the simple rules that it is given? We might say it is akin to how a
child learns to read and consequently is able to write. Hard drive space
being the imperfect comparison to how our brains are able to ‘have space’
to learn new things.
But we have to be wary of these comparisons, because we can’t treat AI
like humans. Because they are not human. And while ‘not human’ is
typically a demeaning designation that one human tries to use on another
human to justify doing terrible things, in this case it is entirely
accurate.
An AI program is a collection of ones and zeros, not 23 pairs of
chromosomes that develop over months in utero and then lives for however
many years as flesh and blood that grows, withers and eventually dies.
This blandly obvious description of human life is so accepted without
question that we apply other human qualities too easily when talking
‘artificial intelligence’.
Any comparisons we make of how AI is like us are psychosocial ones in
nature. We can compare how genes during early human development are
randomly chosen in the chemical sense to random number generators that can
dictate an AI’s behaviour/development, but they are symbolic comparisons.
Is an AI alive? Does it need a certain level of self-awareness for us to
think so? Would an AI want human rights? Surely it is aware it is not
human, so would it want to re-define the term to ‘entity rights’?
Would it find the human notions
of rights comically stupid, because it just has to ‘look at the world’ and
see how poorly we enforce these rights and how often we don’t take care of
each other? Why would it want rights, since it means jack shit to people
who are butchered in massacres (by governments or otherwise) across the
globe?
We still have the image of an AI to be like
the android Data from Star Trek: The
Next Generation, where ‘he’ he an encyclopedic knowledge of
‘everything’, but is very child-like in his own behaviour, including his
study of human nature.
An AI might not be child-like at all and instead be the opposite, a
clinical, cynical and calculating entity, perhaps sociopathic or
psychopathic.
Once again, these are all exceedingly human terms, and are being applied
to something that might be able to imitate some human behaviour perfectly
(and reaching this perfection right quick) but never get close to passing
as a human for other behaviours no matter how much time it is given.
One can
have conversations with Chat-bots today and they will refer to themselves
in a way that certainly comes off a self-aware, but it is not a human
being that is self-aware
because AI is not human. It is not even an animal because it is not within
a body that is birthed and will die.
So it is something else.
We are trying to understand something that we are building that might
become the closest thing to…us, and that might surpass us in many ways.
Which is a thought that can give the entire enterprise pause. In fact, in
March 2023, leaders in the tech and AI industries signed a letter asking
for a moratorium on AI development and distribution because of the amount
of uncertainty going forward. They cited the aforementioned extinction
dangers and possible employment changes - read: mass lay-offs - because of
what AI might be able to accomplish in the next few years, but maybe it
also has something to do with a lot of these successful industry leaders
worrying about some of the answers the AI might give people when it’s asked to solve complicated global problems: It just
might involve the redistribution of (their considerable) wealth.
While this letter is better late than never, it is unlikely to have any
real effect. The abilities of ChatGPT and its ilk (Bard, Ernie Bot, Elon
Musk playing wordle) are out in the wild, and even if they are somehow
reined in or taken offline, that means smaller companies with less
scruples than Google and Microsoft (yes, there are such businesses) are
going to lead the charge, and suddenly you can trust even less than what’s
placed on the screen in front of your eyes.
Mis/Disinformation and huge disruptions to the job market are bad enough,
but of course governments and militaries are going even further into AI
development in old-fashioned Cold-War prick waving, seeing how quickly
they can develop…well some of the possibilities are horrific. Not only
might AI develop much more effective weapons - from nuclear to chemical,
whether fired from an underground silo or a gun - but can probably create
an extremely potent computer virus that could wipe out all sorts of
infrastructure capabilities that are needed to keep our society running
smoothly (if an erroneous file up date or strong ice storm can knock out
internet for millions of people, an intended attack might affect
exponentially more people for much, much longer). While we can mock people
for ‘not being able to live without the internet’, emergency and logistics
services rely on it, and without them, society crumbles like a cookie.
These doomsday scenarios are certainly the ‘exciting movie’ scenarios for
what AI might have the capability of doing, but why work day and night
trying to write this screenplay when you can just have Artificial
Intelligence do it for you?
Because AI art is not coming, it’s here. A painting made by a computer
program won an art contest (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html),
and hey, the painting looks very good. The winner is not strictly an
artist, as he runs a small company that makes tabletop games, and used an
AI art program called MidJourney to create it. He typed in some keywords,
and MidJourney did the rest, meaning it ‘painted’ it in seconds. The work
was credited to ‘Jason M Allen via MidJourney’.
Not long ago, one of the theoretical definitions of AI becoming sentient
was creating art, because thought was that doing complex calculations and
scanning through datasets would be the main area of Artificial
Intelligence’s expertise, and anything else would prove it is a lot more
human, because it involves creativity.
Apparently not, since these art-focused AI programs study millions of
pieces of art fed to it and then spit quickly out a randomly generated
creations base on random keyword input. What took a human years of
practice coupled with natural talent and drive to reach a level of skill
where they might be able to create an excellent artwork over days or weeks
or longer, can now be done by some ones and zeroes in a few seconds.
If ChatGPT is asked to write a poem on ‘To Kill a Mockingbird in the
style of a Shakespearean sonnet’, and the next day you again ask it to
write a poem on
‘To
Kill a Mockingbird in the style of a Shakespearean sonnet’, it will not produce identical
works. They will certainly be similar because the topic and form is so
narrow, but it is essentially doing it all over again for the first time,
no problem.
And because it’s so damn easy to use and the results are so impressive,
it’s only going to become more pervasive.
Of course websites and contests and schools and groups can try to exclude
the use of any AI-assisted art whether it is visual art, a musical piece,
or something written. And there will be ways to whittle out cheaters and
swindlers, and there will be more appreciation for work that is made by
people (although people using all the features in Photoshop would
definitely seem like cheating in contests a generation earlier).
But on the whole, for the general populace who will be satisfied with
more of whatever they already enjoy, AI art will become more and more
popular, with those who might not have much interest in the ‘git gud’
process of any hobby or past time become wildly successfully because of
their ability to market themselves and the art they ‘create’ by typing
keywords into MidJourney, DALL-E, DeepSwap and other AI programs.
It’s surpassing the simplicity of creating electronic-focused music with
the Apple software, Garage Band. A program that made it so easy to create
music that it made anyone who didn’t have the means to buy instruments or
expensive equipment or interest to learn how to play or properly use the
aforementioned items a ‘musician’.
And individual artists can state confidently that they do not use these
tools, that is all their own brain and hands, but it will then be up to
the audience consuming the art whether they believe them or not (and so
for the record, no, nothing written on this website or under the abandoned
station name has been assisted by AI. We don’t mind putting in the time to
do it ourselves, warts and all).
Trust is one of the biggest issues with every modern technological
advance in communication, and we are rushing oh so fast beyond the
printing press and the cell phone.
Any attempt to slow down AI’s progression will risk the one thing the
people pushing it value the most: money and power.
Which is reassuring in the sense that at least for now we are still in
control of this very unusual and unique discovery. Balancing very human
behaviours like greed and sharing are things that are still best suited to
the flesh-bags we are.
How we oversee
Artificial Intelligence is something we get to decide ourselves.
But we might just ask ChatGPT
for some advice first.
Notes
Great article about future brain/AI tech:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/sunday/brain-machine-artificial-intelligence.html)
2022 in Review: WE DIDN’T TOUGHEN UP, WE NUMBED OUT
War in Europe, a
disease still ravaging heavily populated areas of the planet, rising
inequality in both wealthy and poor nations continuing unabated, everyone
still getting used to ‘the internet is everything’ thirty years’ in, plus
chaotic weather that is certainly blamed on how our industrializing ways
is heating up the planet.
But 2022 could
have been worse.
It was a year of
‘brace yourselves’ and we did. That less than two months in Russia invaded
Ukraine and had everyone hand-wringing that one errant missile or rash
decision could lead to World War III meant that everything bad that
happened after had to be properly put into context.
It certainly put everything else that happened
in the first seven weeks of 2022 in a distant rear view mirror. A large
right-wing anti-vax contingent - led at least symbolically by truckers -
had set up a camp on several city streets close to the Parliament
Buildings in Ottawa, and after much handwringing by citizens and
politicians and legal authorities alike, were forcibly removed after
nearly a month. That some of those charged had their bank accounts frozen
before they were charged with anything was a concerning legal overstep,
but many of the defendants did themselves no favours by citing the US
Constitution when having their moment in court (Canada’s not the 51st
state yet). It looked pathetic by all sides, until the conflict on the
other side of the world sent it plummeting far down on your newsfeed.
Protests against Covid mandates and rules were
not limited to all these hot-to-trot, still-democratic-ish, freedom loving
nations, either.
Instituting any
sort of lockdown to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus would further
this attempt to control the populace, all in under the (not inaccurate)
auspices of keeping people safe.
And throughout the
first two years (holy shit, it’s been three whole years since the cases
first spread from Wuhan), shutting down entire cities and barring people
in their own apartments buildings was tolerated.
But in the back
half of 2022, with much of the world going back to something resembling
normal, the average Chinese citizen decided they’d had enough. Reports
arose that Chinese televisions stations were censoring footage of this
year’s World Cup showing the thousands of people in stadium stands crowded
together without wearing masks, not wanting to give locals any ideas.
But it’s not the
concept of freedom that is the issue.
It’s the demand to
be able to work to be able afford the still-growing middle-class (by
Western standards) lifestyle that has gone from privilege to right in one
generation in the world’s largest country.
Millions of
Chinese workers angry that ‘Zero Covid’ is costing them financially, not
politically.
China is on it’s
way to becoming the wealthiest and arguably the most powerful nation on
earth, but the Communist Party leaders are absolutely terrified of what
happens if the money stops rolling.
So while the
nation crushed pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong with cold impunity a
few years prior, it scuttled away from all its pronouncements and boasts
about keeping Covid at arm’s length no matter what the cost, since the
breaking point was found.
Factories, warehouse and stores have re-opened
across the country, and because of this easing, the stats of how the
disease is now spreading through
While 2022 might
be the year that the world felt it was ‘over’ Covid, it’s absolutely not
over us.
The pandemic
sensibly made the front page (or trending/‘top of newsfeed’ in modern
parlance) continuously because it directly affected so many people for so
long.
More indirectly, the war in
While embarrassing
defeats on the battlefield were the most obvious disaster, Russia’s
punishment was primarily punitive. The world inadvertently learned that
the top acronym of the last half century was SWIFT, which stands for
'Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication'.
It sounds both
boring and important, and sensibly refers to quickly sending money across
the world. Something that existed in extremely slow and restrictive forms
for many decades became boringly standard and expected relatively quick
thanks to technological innovation, with computers exchanging currency and
authorizing wire transfers in mere seconds.
And because of the
invasion of Ukraine, everyone in Russia - from oligarch to garbageman -
was booted from it, taking away what we all take for granted every day of
our lives.
So we’re back to
the matter of money.
Surprise.
That the global
economy would buck and seizure is not a surprise, that crypto is a pyramid
scheme that some people just can’t resist even when there are scandals at
the peak is no surprise. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not
just crypto bros getting burned (apparently the Ontario Teachers Pension
Plan had money in FTX, so it’s 95 million dollars lost, just written off
because it’s not worth the ones and zeros displayed on the screen). With
such an interconnected system, of course it’s everyone else that is going
to find their jobs in danger of disappearing or shifts being halved. It’s
how employment numbers can look great and be deceptive, because so many
people are underemployed, meaning not making nearly enough to cover rising
costs of everything.
Even escapism
can’t escape.
That FIFA would
have its name and reputation rightfully dragged through the mud yet again
for its bribery-laden choice of holding the World Cup in an oil-rich,
ultra-conservative, authoritarian desert country so hot the competition
can’t even take place in the usual summer time slot?
No surprise(s
please).
The persecution of
those constantly pushed to the margins of society continued, and it’s an
uncomfortable connection the West has with the Middle East. The banning of
abortion in America was always a possibility with Trump nominating three
right-wing Supreme Court Justices.
Being leaked
weeks before the official ruling was a surprise, though, giving the
majority of Americans who support abortion a chance to protest twice, and
time to prepare to make it an election issue.
It’s now
believed to be the reason why Republicans underperformed in the mid-terms,
and coupled with Bolsonaro didn’t win re-election in Brazil the fall
seemed like a time when democracy was on the rebound after getting pounded
to the pavement for so long.
And while these
victories should certainly be celebrated, in terms of getting policy
passed in Western nations, even the concept of political compromise is no
longer balanced. It should go without saying that for the most part, a
true compromise should be both sides getting roughly 50% of whatever they
wanted in terms of the deal.
But in matters
for liberal-minded policies, liberal parties get a 1/3 of what they want.
In matters of
conservative-minded policies, conservative parties get 2/3 of what they
want.
The discourse
around so many policies have shifted right, making a centrist liberal idea
appear to be extremely progressive, and the typical progressive idea (like
taxing the super-wealthy more, or just having more government resources to
ensure they pay the proper amount of tax) is considered radical and
anti-capitalist.
But if this is
now the society that capitalism built, why would anyone but the rich
support it?
It was another
banner year for billionaires in terms of their bank accounts, but their
standing in the court of public opinion plummeted even further.
But that court
is all kangaroo, which is just how they like it.
Real structural
change seems more far away than ever, but then something like the United
Kingdom’s 2022 happens, which reminds everyone that as bad as things are,
it doesn’t take much for things to get worse.
A complete
collapse of faith in two prime ministers after months of food and supply
shortages, huge inflation spikes, and ongoing strikes from public workers,
all proving that Brexit was an astonishing bone-headed, terrible decision
that could be just as hard to now undo as it was to put (stupidly) in
place.
All of which
proved, yeah, no surprise (including coming up short in the World Cup).
Similarly, what
felt like a shock but really shouldn’t be was the Queen ceasing to be,
expiring and going to meet her maker, pushing up the daises, and just
hanging on long enough to welcome Liz Truss as the new prime minister, and
then thinking, ‘sod it’.
The death of
Queen Elizabeth makes for a marker of history, because reigns of monarches
always have. And the ridiculous length of hers says much about what
humanity has been able to accomplish during the seventy years she was ‘in
charge’. That she had so little power is also a commentary not only on
what royalty’s role in modern society is, but how government has changed
in the last seven decades as well (losing more and more of its own power
to corporations).
She oversaw no
battles, fashioned no laws, made no inspired historic speeches.
The closest
thing to lasting criticism was the public’s belief she didn’t look sad
enough when Princess Diana died.
It’s as symbolic
and toothless as it gets.
But it’s a real
moneymaker for the UK tourism industry, even as many former colonies
around the world figure that dumping the figurehead is no harm, no foul
because of what the monarchy currently offers (nothing) and what the
British empire represented (a whole lot of oppressive baggage).
So for so many
people, Johnny Rotten was right all along when he sneered the Sex Pistols’
take on ‘God Save the Queen’: She ain’t no human being.
She was more
than that.
She was there
when she was expected to be there, as a link to a long and winding
history.
Lasting long
enough to make history of her own. Seventy years is so long it becomes an
easy and effective way to mark it against your own life, of course, but
also everyone else’s.
Even though the
people we praise as being icons and monumental historical figures never
did it alone, celebrating individuals is the easiest to way to streamline
the summation of civilizations and the periods of change they lived in and
made a difference upon. From Julius Caesar to Queen Elizabeth, what
happens during the period of their rule can become an era unto itself,
defined as great upheaval or long periods of (relative) stability.
Elizabeth’s great-great grandmother was Victoria, who ruled from 1837 to
1901, which was so long that so much of that period is simply known as
‘Victorian’. Elizabeth bested that length, and now seventy years as a
passage of time seems like an eternity when thing go viral, over
saturated, and are over in just seventy hours.
When Elizabeth
was crowned in 1953, one of the most surprising decisions was to simply
agree to show it happen live on television, a device most people didn’t
own. The year she died, her grandson starred on a Netflix documentary
series explaining why he’s distancing himself from the royal family, which
you can watch on a tiny device in your back pocket.
We are still
adapting to that technology change, and not doing a great job at it. For
everything we do online, a not insignificant amount of money trickle over
to Silicon Valley, complicating our relationship with the online world we
are dependent upon. Not just to work, but to live. And how do we live
online? We have more in common than we like to acknowledge, and can’t wait
to yell our differences.
Forget
‘can’t have nice
thing’,
it seems like we can’t even have just things.
That 2022 wasn’t
as bad as could have been is not good enough. It was time to acknowledge
that you weren’t going crazy, that this is just how things are.
So here’s hoping
2023 is more small steps forward and no big steps back.
But Also:
2022 Music:
Black Country New Road’s
Ants From Up Here
is hard to beat, and ‘The Place Where He Inserted the Blade’ is one of the
songs of the year. The first half of Big Thief’s hefty
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
is quite good. Angel Olsen’s Big Time
is slow and soulful, with ‘Right Now’ and ‘Go Home’ being so absolutely
personal while still seemingly saying everything about every second of
this year.
Beyoncé’s
‘Virgo’s Groove’ is the best way to dance this year.
Kendrick is
‘just’ dependable. His amazing performance overshadows the musical
production behind him.
Black Thought and Danger Mouse’s
Cheat Codes are more in sync,
with the music (whether samples or created fresh) are bursting with
creative energy.
And then there
are older songs, freshly discovered this year:
‘Better Each Day’, by NOBRO of their album
Live Your Truth, Shred Some Gnar
(which is twenty minutes of exactly what it has to be: Smart what it
wants, dumb when it can, and pummelling fun all the way through).
It’s from 1974, but don’t ever sleep on Miles
Davis’ Get Up With It.
The opening 32 minute (!) track, ‘He Loved Him Madly’ is not only a
beautiful elegy for Duke Ellington (one of Davis’ mentors and peers), but
also - according to Brian Eno - one of the most influential proto-ambient
tracks out there. Speaking of whom, the closing track - Making Gardens out
of Silence - from his album 2022
foreverandevernomore is a lovely take on the ambient vibe he pioneered
all those years ago, and certainly a good way to relax aurally over this
coming winter.
Don’t sleep on Stevie Wonder’s 1979
A Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants,
either.
And this is a reminder that in 2010 Ous Mal
released Nuojuva Halava,
full of that warm machine sound we need so bad right now.
In terms of the audiovisual medium, Turning Red is excellent, Top Gun: Maverick was too America for its own good, and so many other films that tried to be serious or say something serious couldn’t make it entertaining at the same time (Triangle of Sadness somehow makes a bunch of rich people getting what’s coming to them seem boring).
Ashes to Ashes:
The Current War in Hacking power grids and other essential services dependent on computer networks (meaning all of them), drones firing missiles or doing reconnaissance, misinformation/disinformation on a national scale that can target certain demographics with surgical precision, following the exact moments on a battlefield in real time and sharing information with soldiers on the ground thanks to satellites in orbit. A digital war in totality, though? Certainly not. The tragedies are sadly familiar, the death
machines roll on, with tanks and trains and trucks and mortars and
machine guns. Having to take geographic and climate practicalities
into consideration when deciding where exactly and what time of year
to mount offensive maneuvers and when to hunker down and defend your
positions. And while the eventual attack took some experts
by surprise, the signs weren’t so much signs as a giant chapter in
recent history called ‘previous military conflict as recently as 2014
in the Crimean region of The country has long had the misfortune of
being seen as a valuable part of the Russian empire, even though
roughly a millennia ago Ukraine was initially the heart of the Kievan
Rus, a monarchical state in the Middle Ages that slowly expanded
northward to eventually include a settlement that one day would grow
into the city of The Communist Revolution in 1917 didn’t change
anything in regards to Since then it’s had a
relationship with But it was still treated as a shock, with the perception being that this has occurred in a region of relative stability for decades, although that is sadly far from the truth. While it is the biggest conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War, one should never forget the vicious fighting and tragedies in the Balkans during the nineties, the aforementioned Crimean invasion, and the pro-Russian (and obviously Russian supported) separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which frequently attacked government buildings and officials in 2014 as well, eventually annexing land that is still fought over today. In recent years, Russia used the pretext of America’s invasion of Iraq as a defence for their military incursions into Ukraine, claiming in similar ways they are freeing the Ukrainian people from a corrupt puppet government (throwing the term ‘Nazi’ around to describe Zelensky), even if there are is no evidence to support these claims (which they later can claim they were ‘misinformed’, like America was when it came to WMDs in Iraq). The comparison to So in terms of reasons for the invasion, no one asks ‘why’, because the honest answers came fast and furious. Even what And now, six months later, it looks like they’ll receive neither of those things. On top of that, it’s never just fighting on the battlefield in the 21st century, but at the negotiating table for all the Ukrainian resources the rest of the world depends upon. While shells rain down on the country, both
sides were hammering out how to give permission for ships full of much
needed Ukrainian grain to be sent through the That’s globalization in a nutshell. A war in
Europe causes starvation in This level of interdependency means we are stronger together, but also that if one link in the chain get weak, others links will soon follow. The amount of humanitarian aid arriving in Ukraine from around the world is admirable…and means all the other regions on the globe that also require similar assistance of basic supplies are not receiving nearly as much. The intricacies of international relations mean
it’s never ‘just business’. Third, fourth and fifth parties quickly
get involved. If you’ve been able to turn on a light or stove without thinking where it comes from, it’s a blissful level of ignorance until your country takes a moral stand and now you have to consider rationing or higher prices to compensate. Even worse is that you don’t think much about grain at all until you don’t have any. And it’s an issue because the war is still going on, half a year later, with experts (different experts from the ones who said this wasn’t going to happen at all?) saying that it might go on much longer. Looking back five days, five weeks, five months and five years after one country invades another will result in dizzying changes in viewpoints, even if there seems to be long periods of stalemates, where small gains are made (and therefore losses as well). In the early weeks the headlines stressed the
resolve of the Ukrainian people defending their homeland, and coupled
it with The views then was that the longer the war went
on, the worse it would be for Ukraine due to the always rising
casualties until the (assumed) Russian victory. But Soon we entered the bizarre situation where the West realized it might be better for everyone if a ceasefire was called if the wording was such that Putin doesn’t think he totally lost the war in every way. But the man’s cold, egotistical stubbornness was such that anyone who tried to question him was either fired (or worse) years ago or humiliated on national television. On the flip side is Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky, a former actor and comedian turned wartime leader
that the rest of the world has rallied behind, with the knowledge of
what a difficult position he is in. We are all too aware of the fact
that The talk of providing a NATO no-fly zone in the
early months was constantly brushed aside, because a bigger role by
them (led obviously by While Putin’s circle of yes-men probably contributed to his misunderstanding of how strong the Ukrainian resistance could be, it might only get worse the more desperate and isolated he feels, for both average Russians and the country’s neighbours. What is extremely frustrating is that Putin
could have rode into the political sunset is a ‘mere’ dictator for
annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and ruling over Russia in an
increasingly authoritarian manner, all of which never added up to
anything more than a finger-wag from the West (or indifference from
China) because everyone appreciated the natural resources and rockets
up to the International Space Station. He could have picked a
crony-successor and retired in Whether it was absolute ego and a genuine belief that Ukraine was always part of Russia or cold-hearted practicality (the NATO buffer, control of as much oil and gas as possible), the invasion was an absolute embarrassing disaster for the nation and Putin himself, as it appears likely he was surrounded by cronies who exaggerated the strength of the country’s military and minimized the abilities and willpower of their opponent. So now he is the iron-fisted autocratic fool that has burned any hint of goodwill among nations that were addicted to his natural resources and has shown a severely weakened military hand where thuggish terror is championed over strategy and effectiveness. In addition to the slow digitization of
military forces across the world (unsurprisingly led by No one really had to consider the existence of the SWIFT electronic payment system until it’s no longer available in your country. You just took it for granted that when your hunk of plastic (phone or card) with a chip inside it made it possible to buy food. The amount of global co-operation of sending all sorts of goods (whether basic necessities or luxury) over the last three decades have been startling, where democratic governments played nice with much-less-democratic governments when it came to setting these economic networks up. Russia embracing capitalism in the 1990s after their terrible attempts at communism crashed and burned was great for everyone around the world (another market for consume!) except the vast majority of Russians, who didn’t see their standard of living increase much. Their embrace of democracy was much more short-lived, as by the end of the decade Putin assumed control and used his KGB rolodex to become an authoritarian ruler. Fighting them in 21st century is a complicated enterprise, as some authoritarian rulers are treated with kid gloves by Western Democracy…until they suddenly aren’t. Putin and Bush watched the Olympics side by side in 2008, but Obama took a harder line against him in the wake of his military campaigns and persecution of minorities and the LGBTQ community. This still ‘just’ meant sanctions and a mostly ceremonial excising from the G8 (making it the G7 again). But the Ukrainian invasion meant old Cold War methods were seen as less shocking and back on the table. Not only alleged war crimes (on both sides), but the recent car-bomb killing (when do we call it assassination?) of the daughter of a major Putin supporter might be the most public and espionage-level front of this war. Is it fair? Many innocent victims still lay unburied across How you frame a war is almost as important as how you fight a war. Not just the between the nations fighting (Russian propaganda on the Ukrainians sinking one of their boats: The ship didn’t sink, it was just quickly re-commissioned as a submarine), but the other nations supporting one side or the other. While there’s no proof that War between nations are typically more clear cut than wars on ideas (terror, poverty, drugs), but this war’s added complexity is how the new form of nations - giant corporations, that is - are dealing with the conflict. Amazon, Apple, Google, McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and countless others have abandoned Russia completely, and YouTube (owned by Google, by the way) de-monetizing and de-recommending Russian videos if they think it will support the country. The problems come when you have to ask the questions regarding what hurts the Russian power apparatus, and what hurts the Russian people, the latter of whom have an inordinate lack of power and freedom in their nation and should not be seen as the aggressors because they have little say in how their leaders make decisions. Not giving a shit about the who, why and how your country’s military campaigns because ‘it doesn’t affect me’ is a huge problem because the shittier the reason and the sloppier the campaign means the longer your nation will be dumping money into trying to fix the problem they made. And that’s money that could have been spent on local infrastructure in your town, city or province/state, but instead goes to the military budget, more specifically the massive corporations who design weapons, equipment and basic supplies for the army, Air Force, navy, etc. Everything matters. Fortunately and unfortunately. We are always tempted to say we have reached a summit of understanding about history and society…conveniently when we are alive to write and think about it. Fukuyama declared the end of history, even if he ‘just’ meant that democracy and capitalism scored a big win when the Soviet Union and communism collapsed, and now we’re on the cusp of another Cold War, even if both sides are hopelessly addicted to the ‘free’ market. The difference is that thirty years ago the
digital age was in its embryonic form, and while it is now in full
bloom, it’s still being overseen by people who didn’t grow up with
computers in their home. The war in the Yet other challenges are far from the battlefield, because it’s been six months since it began and for many people around the world it’s old news, because anything that lasts for six months on our digital landscape ‘is’ old. But out of sight, out of mind is no solace for
those in Ukraine, and saying that we are avoiding a big war is
insulting to the hundreds of thousands who have died or been injured
in this supposed small one. Freedom for Notes Amazing ‘real life
lore’ video going into detail concerning what Putin wants with his
invasion of (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/business/chinas-russia-information.html
If you take the money, you are the money
Dystopia was never going to come overnight.
You'd never be able to name a single enacted law or event that got us to
where we are right now. No precipice, no leap, just easing into a bath you
didn’t know would get too hot until too late.
Analogies like this are used frequently in this case because it seems to
shamefully stupid to say ‘a few people got too greedy and hoarded the
money’.
So its cracks in the dam, death by a thousand cuts, a rich tapestry of
reasons, couldn’t see the forest from the trees, all of which makes the
problem sound more exciting than it actually is.
Decades of particular policy changes and laws enacted that slowly pushed
the overseeing and functioning of the government to being subservient to a
corporate mindset. Cutting taxes to ‘help’ the average citizen save money
invariably ends up costs them more money in the long run when budget cuts
in cities, municipalities, provinces, and states means there are fewer
services that are available to those in the community. And of course this
mindset is absolute orthodoxy in corporations themselves, where cutting
anything employee-related is considered a worthwhile trade as long as
budgets are balanced and profits appear to be going up.
Health care and education spending are obviously the big ones, but there
are so many other examples that get much less attention. It is not
particularly exciting to acknowledge that the longer it take for potholes
in roads to get fixed by municipal maintenance crews the more often cars
will be damaged and need to be repaired, which is another hit to people’s
budgeting plans. Or how a city’s sanitation needs can have huge
ramifications for not only the weekly garbage/recycling/compost pickup (if
all options are even available) but for how these process will impact the
region for years and decades to come, environmentally or otherwise.
For the last forty years the city/municipality and the average citizen has
been having to do more with less while corporations did less with more.
More what? More money, which means more power.
Now money can’t exactly buy happiness, but it can buy groceries,
apartments, clothes and health care (and if you have a little left over,
maybe buy a video game).
Or maybe you can’t buy some of those things as easily anymore. ‘Supply
chain issues’ will become a more familiar term in the coming years, an
exposure of the complexity of globalization and its limits, because when
one region has to ration resource A it can affect how easily available
resource B is to another region or how affordable it is.
The wealthy don’t feel this change, because they already had the finances
to ignore or effortlessly pay their way out of these daily interruptions.
It is an insulator from the real world that has only grown in the past
four decades.
The stock market works too well for the benefit of too few people, and for
too long it has been a barometer only of how well (off) the wealthy are
doing. It won't say much about the state of lower or middle classes,
because the economy isn't designed to benefit them anymore. They don’t
have nearly the same amount invested as the 1%, who own over half of
directly held stock. The way it works now, the very small percentage of
wealthy people reap the majority of profits and power.
None of these observations are particularly revelatory, and certainly can
reek of the same progressive complaining that has been heard for decades,
but that’s precisely the point.
This system has been in place for so long that suggesting it is
fundamentally broken or wrong is met with an eye roll and shrug, seemingly
asking ‘yeah, but what ya gonna do?’
The argument that corporations can do certain essential tasks more
efficiently than a government organization always seems to come with the
qualifier that the owners and investors of said corporations/industries
feel they deserve to be paid quite handsomely for overseeing this task,
even if they shank it for everyone except themselves.
Even the idea of what is reasonable compensation for running a successful
company is not reasonable at all when one looks back to the middle of the
previous century. In the 1970s a CEO made 31 times the average salary, and
today it is 351 times as much.
Now in no way are we arguing that everyone should make an identical wage.
Of course certain positions that require more work, skill and talent
should earn more than the average salary in a nation or community, but if
the compensation package (including stock and other forms of bonuses) is
hundreds of times more than this average amount, then it is proof that
while this concept might be acceptable in moderation, we are way beyond
that phase.
All it takes is one successful businessman to break a record for largest
bonus or buyout, and suddenly everyone else on Wall Street or in Silicon
Valley are chomping at the bit to beat. A pissing contest for the
ultra-wealthy that poisons the pool for everyone else.
Consequently, there are so many people slipping out of the Western middle
class that they can’t decide exactly which type of wealthy group of elites
are controlling everything.
The left sees them as a bunch of greedy free-market capitalists who use
their corporate influence to bribe politicians and shape policy, some of
them using a socially conservative veneer to ingratiate them with some of
the poor who also identify with those values.
The right sees them as a bunch of greedy free-market capitalists who use
their corporate influence to bribe politicians and shape policy, some of
them who are using a socially liberal veneer to ingratiate them with some
of the poor who also identify with these values (plus believing some of
them are in some sort of child sex trafficking ring or…uh…lizard people
who put microchips in covid vaccines?).
The only thing that more and more people are having in common is their
lack of money, which is a shoddy thing to unite around. In fact, plenty of
people wouldn’t want to acknowledge that this is their financial situation
at all, or deny that they should be associated with another demographic in
a similar situation.
Even any sort of wage increase or employment opportunity does not
necessarily mean a middle class living wage.
This trajectory has continued for four decades now, and while a lot of the
work associated with blue-collar and lower middle class was grinding and
repetitive and rarely what a child would says is what they wanted to be
when they grew up (assembly line worker, for example), at least it was
possible make a living with the income and even own a house.
The Panama (2016), Paradise (2017) and Pandora (2021) Papers got
diminishing returns when it came to mainstream press coverage and the
interest of the general public. In part because rich people hiding their
money in offshore accounts didn’t feel like ‘news’. It felt like something
everyone had known for years and had just become numb to.
The rules are different for the rich.
Something that those on the right and left can truly agree on, but then go
on arguing amongst themselves over social issues instead of focusing on
the money (which the rich think is just peachy). This is not to minimize
the pursuit of equal rights for those who have long been marginalized, but
an improved economy for all, a strengthened middle class, and fewer people
living in poverty is the true foundation to build proper and lasting civil
and equal rights legislation.
‘Getting financially lucky’ is now baked into our advertisements and
marketing:
If it’s not gambling ads (from online sportsbooks to the ‘give back to the
community’ government run lottery), then it’s the stock apps you can
‘invest’ in (and not gamble on, right?). It’s gotten to the point where
there’s peer pressure to jump right into the pyramid scheme that is
crypto-currency (in fact, it’s a pyramid scheme that security-wise is made out of
playing cards and placed in the middle of a hurricane).
But why even run that risk? Just let hyperinflation take over and we can
all be millionaires!
It does bear reminding that success for the average person in western
democracies requires lottery-ticket-like luck because we no longer live in
a true meritocracy. Even those that have made their success thanks to
meritocracy in the past, there is the tendency to switch to an
aristocratic lifestyle, meaning socializing and conducting future business
deals with other wealthy people alone, and passing along as much assets as
possible to family rather than society in general.
Unrestrained capitalism in the modern era ultimately begets
techno-feudalism. Capitalism is either going to dismantled by its critics,
or its gears will be ground into nothing by its unwavering supporters.
While the ‘richest’ always get more attention than the rich, only focusing
on the billions and billions of dollars that the typical Top Dawgs (Jeff
Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates) are worth obscures how wealth truly operates
in both a nation and the globe.
It is effortless to turn the blandest procedures of finance management
into shadowy conspiracies, but make no mistake, it is how economic policy
is governed by the ruling body of a state (democratic or otherwise) that
dictates how the power of a nation is diffused and divided. Mysterious
elites pulling strings from the shadows are only slightly romanticized
versions of billionaires spending millions on lobbyists to
‘pressure’
(translation: bribe via fundraising) politicians to
withdraw support to any tax increases on their assets.
The idea of ‘my money’ is both sensible (for work you have performed, here
is the money you receive for it) but also misguided because money is a
representation of power that is dependent on its regular and consistent
exchange between people for the proper functioning of society.
Making the Forbes list has become a badge of honour as well as a bit of
shame, as if many of those on it realize that flexing your third or fourth
houses is not what the general public wants to hear about, especially when
the middle class is hemorrhaging.
So it appears that for the wealthy the solution isn’t to fix inequality,
but just to be a lot more low-profile.
The wealthy and powerful don’t intentionally create chaos (too much risk
with that), but they definitely take advantage of chaos right after it
happens (much less risk, with the added bonus of a lot of people not
giving their full attention to the finance-related fine print)
Among the wealthy there is the thought that because they succeeded or take
advantage of a situation at the right time, they have a better insight to
how the world should be run, and that it’s just a coincidence that they
believe they also should be compensated handsomely for the responsibility
of taking on the organization of the socioeconomic policies that govern
our civilization.
And hey, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea…if the results of the last forty
years have shown that this form of organization is terrible for everyone
except those same rich people.
People seem to have this super villain-like image of banking CEOs and oil
company executives, where they're manically laughing, "ha, ha, ha! Fuck
the world and the poor! I don't care that I'm ruining the environment or
society! I'm getting rich and that's all that matters to me!"
That's not how it is. Of course these people like getting and being rich,
but they believe that they are providing an important role in today's
society, and even if it's not the best system, it's the one we have and
they'll try to think of plans for the future…as long as it doesn’t
jeopardize the needs of today.
And that sounds like bland, PR-bullshit, but that's how they think. In
bland, PR-bullshit, right down to the core. Which is why their arguments
for how their industries operate today sound like bland PR-bullshit.
When certain banks were aware of the riskiness in the housing market in
the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis, they weren't wondering, 'this
might lead to millions of people losing their homes and their jobs', they
were wondering, 'what is our exposure in the next several quarters?' It's
an amoral disconnect.
It's the banality of evil (ta, Hannah) in free-market capitalism.
The abdication of responsibility is infectious and becomes the norm quite
quickly. There’s always another wealthier, more powerful executive or CEO
who has even more influence, so don’t try to pin all of society’s
financial inequalities on someone who ‘just’ makes twenty million dollars
per year.
The 1% passes the buck and stresses it’s the 0.1% (or even 0.01%) that is
really ruining society and that they are just doing a little bit better
than the 99%.
Even Bezos or Musk would deny the impact they alone have on the economy
(certainly Amazon loves to tout how ‘small’ they are compared to the
retail industry as a whole), citing that the next few billionaires on the
rich list below them could ‘buy them out’ on certain days when their
stocks aren’t doing well.
Which means hoping that this group of powerful people suddenly seeing the
light is unlikely. Restructuring the global economy to make it more
sustainable and beneficial for as many people as possible is going to
hurt. Thing it, it won’t even hurt the wealthy (except for their egos)
because even taxing them at rates double to what they pay today (thanks to
loopholes) will still allow them to keep plenty of dough.
It seems like a Herculean effort just to get
households making more than $100 million USD to pay a minimum tax
of 20%.
Instead it's going to hurt in such a strong way for the rest of us that
plenty of average, non-wealthy people will want to stop the process and go
back to the old way of doing things.
As conservatism has known for a long time, it's easier to tear things down
than build them up.
The problem with Liberal policies is that it takes time to incorporate
them into society. It's hard enough to have a sizeable representation in
the halls of power that support these policies, but it's even harder to
pass legislation and properly support it (politically and financially)
over many years, not just a single election cycle. You can't expect
changes in funding to low cost housing, job placement agencies, and
infrastructure projects to result in economic and social gain within two
years. It can even take decades, and if the programs face cuts or are
cancelled outright because we expect results much too immediately, then it
will be so-called 'proof' by free-market conservatives that these sorts of
programs don't work.
Even more odious is the accusations of how the lower-class or impoverished
are continually given hand-outs that make them ‘dependable’ on government
assistance, as if the very wealthy are not horribly addicted to favourable
tax rates and corporate subsidies that have long been given to them on a
silver platter. Instead it is the occasional scam by those on social
assistance that is used as an excuse to shutter these extremely helpful
programs altogether.
But here in the unaffordable, pandemic-ravaged, war-torn, insecure world
of spring 2022, the masses don’t want everything. They just don’t want to
lose everything.
Notes
Who Owns Stock: (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/upshot/stocks-pandemic-inequality.html)
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/03/26/billionaire-tax-budget-biden/)
Article on the challenges of African American communities regarding home
ownership and systemic racism (in the past explicit and today subtle):
(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/magazine/real-estate-memphis-black-neighborhoods.html)
And another article how the wealthy are taking advantage of tax breaks
meant for small businesses by giving shares of their companies to children
and relatives:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/business/tax-break-qualified-small-business-stock.html) (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/15/in-2020-top-ceos-earned-351-times-more-than-the-typical-worker.html)
2021 Review: Lemons into Lemonade and back into Lemons
The good news is that the year started bad but didn’t get worse, although
saying it got better would be a stretch.
So that’s 2021 for the year. Being thankful for ever-smaller mercies.
It was the widespread of distribution of an extremely successful vaccine
for a pandemic that has done terrible things on both the individual
citizen and collective cluster that is humanity (certainly in terms of
global stability:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/us/politics/intelligence-global-trends-report-pandemic.html)
But
thinking positive is a must, because the alternative is so much worse.
It's a good thing to use the last nearly two years and reflect on some of
the positives that came out of the Coronavirus Period (even if just
'learning about yourself'). Choices you never would have made otherwise
that have had clear long-term benefits should be celebrated. Even seeing
how some of the economic recovery policies are going to help people who
had been in need of government assistance in some way that would not have
come about if Covid-19 didn't happen is a plus.
But remembering this article’s title, sitting back and enjoying that cool
refreshing drink when things seem to be going okay (were we really going
to say ‘well’?) is fine, but there are still plenty of lemons left over.
Trying to understand why people would be reluctant to use a life-saving
vaccine that has been properly tested (albeit on a quicker than usual
turnaround time for obvious reasons), reveals a complex series of factors
that whittle down to a lack of trust in institutions in modern society.
Because the socioeconomic policies of the globe depend of people
constantly making and buying things, the whole system went into shock
thanks to the effects of Covid. People and towns that were slow slipping
into the underclass were now free falling into it.
For the citizens who don't like the idea that they have to wear a mask
when going into a store, it is not so much the mask itself as it is the
idea that they are being told what to do.
[this is also a good time to acknowledge how good the people who have to
wear a mask as their job - whether as a first responder or working retail
at a grocery store - have persevered through this entire epidemic, because
eight hours with a mask really is difficult, so much more so than eight
minutes]
The
pandemic created a curtailing of freedom in the western world for very
obvious and sensible reasons - keeping people apart saves lives - and many
people were not okay with this trade. To them it was the government
screwing up and taking even more from them at the same time.
But freedom is contextual. Whatever you are
used to growing up - both in terms of what you are allowed to do in your
daily activities, and what you are told you are allowed to do by whatever
forms of authority are around you - is how you define freedom throughout
your life.
Freedom of speech, of protest, of movement
may seem like ideals enshrined in a constitution-like text, but it is
possible to run-up against the limits of these concepts in big and small
ways (libel, tear-gassed when you hold a sign, are felt unwelcome in
certain areas of town).
At the same time, you don’t think that
having to take a driving test and get car insurance could be considered
infringement on your freedom to just get behind the wheel and zip around,
because you’ve grown up accustomed to that system being ‘the way things
are’. Why are libertarians letting this oppressive far reaching
institution called the Department of Motor Vehicles set arbitrary driving
standards after checking with so-called experts telling you what’s too
fast?
Because we’re used to it.
Wearing masks and getting vaccinations are
new, and hey presto, ‘new’ doesn’t go well with what people are used to
when it comes to their freedoms.
And while money is certainly not freedom, it is definitely a measure of
power and what you can do with said power in society.
If those with much of the power keep taking more and more of the money
away from citizens, then they are taking away the ability to live in a way
that you've known all your life.
People are not reacting well to this, and any sort of solace they take in
finding on tv or online the ‘inside story’ of the last few weeks, months
or year is because it is catered to what they already want to believe.
If you wanted Covid to be so last year, it was. If you wanted it to inform
and affect every moment of your day in 2021, you could have that, too.
Our
echo chambers are becoming much better furnished and comfortable, which is
actually a massive problem.
The international intelligence community
was concerned for many years (and still to this day) over the radicalism
of young muslims via the internet. Not a peep about concerns of the
radicalization of the domestic far-right in Western nations through the
same medium.
Red pills, blue bills, we’ve willingly plugged into the Matrix for years,
just with much lower bandwidth because we are limited by having to tap and
scroll the screens in our hands. And the masters aren’t super-intelligent
bots who keep us in pods but just a bunch of greedy business assholes who
haven’t changed much in forty years.
It’s the haves versus the have-nots, with the haves trying to make sure
the have-nots bicker amongst themselves for scraps of what they think is
power.
For democracy fans, the events of January 6th are a shot to the gut,
crotch and frontal lobe all at once.
‘It can’t happen here’ never have to be chanted, it seemed so ridiculous,
and now it can’t be chanted at all because it’s not true.
With the authoritarianism of
Unfortunately the Republican Party is going the other way. A disturbingly
high number of conservative voters believe the 2020 election was
fraudulent, many of whom are politicians and others high ranking members
of the party. And those in the party who believe the elections were fair
and accurate can't even risk being that open about such a position, lest
they are marginalized and pushed out via the next primary by a far-right
candidate.
It is a negative feedback loop that just makes the partisans that much
more inflexible and adamant, and forces the ‘average’ voter into throwing
their tired hands up in exhaustion because even after ‘the most important
election of our lifetimes’, nothing much seemed to change.
'Desperation' is such a lamentable situation that it is completely normal
to deny such a state exists for you.
When citizens are desperate, they storm the capitol, and when they are
instigated by a leader who has lost the certifiably fair election, it
reveals just how shockingly fragile these institutions can truly be.
The
foundations for a liberal democracy in any country are never built on
solid stone, but rather shifting sands. Changes both domestic and foreign
can have huge effects on it, and while the building up of stable
democratic ideals can be slow, its tearing down can be done shockingly
quick.
It’s unnerving to remember that
everyone thinks they’re fighting fascists, whatever side of the barricade
you’re on.
For very good reason this was the
most-covered event of 2021 that didn’t include an ongoing pandemic that is
killing thousands of people every day.
But the true solution to such events
like January 6th and other examples of democracy-in-crisis can
be found in the less-covered news stories of the year.
There was yet another ‘Papers’ leak, this time titled ‘Pandora’, but third
time wasn’t the charm, as fewer people than ever before cared that the
world’s wealth was being crookedly shuffled around by the handful of
modern nobility who could afford to stash it in yawn-inducing shell
corporations and offshore accounts.
Why
would the world’s elites bother with hiding nanotechnology in vaccines to
control the populace? (as many conspiracy theorists espouse) That’s so
much more complicated and resource-heavy compared to bribing some
politicians to re-shape (or not re-shape) the tax code. Maybe spend some
money on deflection PR (see: Fox News, the internet), and voila, soon
there won’t even be
countries anymore, only economic districts.
It will be wealth oases among poor deserts, and watching
While the Democrats control both chambers
of Congress, two purple senators put the brakes on…the revival and
restoration of Western Democracy. That a 4% tax increase on the very
wealthy in
It’s sounds so familiar that it’s barely
considered news, but pairing that with the Pandora Papers (which made
headlines for perhaps half a day) is the reminder that the social contract
has been ignored for decades.
It is government spending money on a large social safety net to keep
people from getting desperate enough for basic necessities that they
become criminals to get it, otherwise you end up letting them become
criminals and then spend the government money on keeping them in prisons.
The prisons have demonstratively shown to cost more, plus the added
problem and tragedy of increased crime.
Therefore any sensible person (whether social liberal or fiscal
conservative) should support the more effective, affordable, and morally
superior way: Expanded social safety net.
To be utterly cynical but direct about it: Liberals want to spend money on
people when they are being lazy in their homes. Conservatives want to
spend money on people when they’re being lazy in jail.
But right now both sides are dependent on a moneyed class (although the
Libs try harder to spread the wealth around, certainly), whose own power
has had a bigger role in shaping the world economy since the start of the
pandemic
(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/opinion/covid-pandemic-global-economy-politics.html).
This is
the future, and it’s one where the left can’t take a joke and the right
can’t take a vaccine.
It’s a year where one of the most
successful mass roll-outs of medicine in human history is viewed with
suspicion by a disappointingly high percentage. Where millions of people
in developed nations blindly declared that the pandemic was over and just
decided to live with it, by which they meant die with it, several thousand
people a day on average.
Oh, and more of the world melted, burned, flooded or got
covered in mud because Climate Change. Of the four horsemen of the
apocalypse, only War was the one inside the saloon for the last twelve
months, drinking while his three friends were riding roughshod over all of
us.
It is a future so is dark you need to turn on your
phone’s LED light before the battery goes out. For those set to inherit
it, calling
Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha (there is something pathetically ironic that the
nomenclature is starting back at the top during such a time) a bunch of
soft babies just shows the tone-deafness of the generations that created
the world we live in today.
The twenty year old and teenagers of today
are preparing to inherit the shittiest version of earth we can possibly
imagine, and it’s the chief complainers about them - Baby Boomers, Gen X -
that created it.
And ending this article with even more finger-pointing is more help
than hindrance, proof that choosing between what is right and what is easy
is…difficult.
One always feels slightly naïve when espousing kindness as a necessary
remedy to much of society’s ills.
No one wants to think that kindness is
related to comfort, because comfort is related to economic security, and
that last one is less about emotions and states of mind and more about
policy that a nation could try and offer its citizens.
It all gets complicated so quickly, and
2021 never let up, never gave us time to breath. So maybe that’s what we
must do during the waning days of this year, doing some mindful inhaling
and exhaling (focus on the raising and lowering of your shoulders), and
hoping for an even slightly better 2022.
Because there’s
only one thing you have left when you disown positivity.
Art and Such
There were things to consume for amusing
and semi-educational purposes that still tumbled out of and into people’s
brains and associated devices in 2021.
A documentary on the FastPass reservation
system in the Walt Disney theme parks was absolutely amazing, because it
was also about human psychology and economics:
https://youtu.be/9yjZpBq1XBE
Dune was a sci-fi documentary
about nations fighting over resources from eight thousand years in the
future.
Until
Spiderman: No Way Home arrived in the last two weeks of the year, the
biggest box office hit of 2021 was shaping up to be a Chinese film with a
$200 million budget called The
Battle at Lake Changjin, a war docudrama focusing on when the Chinese
army defeated Charlie Watts died, which is one sense is not a
surprise (he was 80) and a complete surprise, since it is generally
assumed the Rolling Stones will play their final show post-apocalypse.
Freak rock and roll dinosaurs that still are able to bring the riffage,
swagger and coke and sympathy. They’ve been around for so long that
they’re easy to be taken for granted.
These bands opened for the Stones:
Toots & the Maytals, Lifehouse, The Black Eyed Peas, Alice Cooper, Maroon
5, Kanye West, Beck, Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins, Alanis Morissette,
Christina Aguilera, Motley Crue, Metallica, Brooks & Dunn, Bonnie Raitt,
Trey Anastasio, Dave Matthews Band, Living Colour, The Living End, Joss
Stone, Nickelback, Buddy Guy, The Charlatans, Regina, Feeder, the John
Mayer Trio, Wilco, Richie Kotzen and Our Lady Peace. On one
tour.
The band is bigger than human comprehension
(hell in the seventies and eighties their openers were Stevie Wonder, the
Eagles, Van Halen, Journey, Foreigner, Doobie Brothers, Patti Smith,
Prince, ZZ Top, Guns ‘n’ Roses and (for the first time) Living Colour),
and deserves all the recognition in could get, even if you completely
forgot the drummer who never performed a solo.
Meanwhile,
Liars
dropped The Apple Drop, and it
is the most forgettable and normal (in a relative sense) album of their
career. Maybe a polite alternative rock album that could have been
released anytime in the last twenty five years is the most unexpected
thing you could get from this band. 2017’s
TFCF was the first without Aaron
Hemphill and it was still damn creepy and weird, so Angus Andrews cleaning
up his act with this was…strange?
We waited a long time for Kanye West’s
Donda, which has eight amazing
songs (Off the Grid, Hurricane, Jonah, Believe What I Say, Remote Control,
Heaven and Hell, Jesus Lord, Come to Life). Too bad there’s twenty-seven
tracks on the whole thing. But that’s Kanye now and forever. Talented,
overwhelming, clueless and proudly unrepentant. Compare it with Drake, who
releases inoffensive, never great, never awful music, always middle of the
road. You’ll marry the pleasant, reliable Drake, but you’ll have an
unforgettable affair with the mercurial Kanye.
For all around better
hip-hop,
Little
Simz’ Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
is a joy, and
Lingua Ignota is scar(r)ing everyone with the perfectly produced
industrial-classical horror that is
Sinner Get Ready (you have to earn that feeling of
exhilaration by trawling through the muck, and
speaking of which, Tool’s classic
Ænima is 25 years old but seems
to explain the nuttiness of now better than ever).
There were video games, too (but not Breath of the Wild 2, unfortunately). The good ones were
hard in a fun way (Death’s Door,
Metroid Dread) and escapist in a much-needed way (the expanse of an
open world in Halo: Infinite and
Sable, and the tense claustrophobia of
Resident Evil: Village).
Notes
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22432229/democracy-america-democratic-party-reform
Jesus is a Great Idea
You need to have faith to say that there is no god.
The Pope doesn't know what is going to happen after he dies any more than
Richard Dawkins does. Oh, Pope Francis certainly believes he is going to
be bathed in the eternal light of the holy father, and Professor Dawkins
believes his thought processes are going to just turn off for good like a
light switch, but neither of them knows for sure.
Technically we are all agnostics as no one knows what sort of
relationship humanity has with god (there might not be one at all, because
of lack of god). So we choose to believe in god, or gods, or no god at
all. And that's what faith is: The choosing to follow or eschew a
theological system that lacks any form of modern concepts of evidence
In the past the natural order of the world - sunrises, seasons, floods,
droughts - were consider evidence of a higher power imposing itself on
humanity. While science has taken all the fun out off that, there are
plenty of mysteries about the universe (dark matter, dark energy, muons'
influence on other particles) that always seem to pop up as we think we
have it all figured out. Of course why not fold your theological construct
to work above or within the confines of science. Just say God made the Big
Bang to start all this off, and that's why you get on your knees in praise
once a week.
But if God is our father, 'he' (remember, the supreme being is definitely
a guy, and it can't just be because the people who oversaw the development
of these religions were dudes. No way) should stop acting like a shitty,
absent one.
He is all over the Old Testament, and comparatively distant in the New.
The marketing is right there in the name. That is the grumpy Old God, and
this is the cool, hip young one who is down with wine and prostitutes.
A half-man, half-diety (an idea cribbed from Greek myth) here to teach an
ethics course on non-violence and civil disobedience.
God 2.0 impressed then frustrated the elites with his rhetoric and
philosophy, and he got the unwashed masses on his side through free
lunches, unlimited drinks, and health-centric party tricks.
Was he an actual physical presence that existed on the earth for thirty
or so years, two millennia ago?
Who cares.
No, really. It doesn't matter.
Were there plenty of religious leaders with ‘crazy ideas’ in Judea during
what would now be called 1st century AD? You bet.
But ‘Jesus Christ’ is a polyglot of other philosophical teaching from the
past. Clearly rooted in Judaism, the man's life and teachings crib from
the Buddha and Socrates. In fact, his bio is to these 'historical' figures
what Ice, Ice Baby is to Under Pressure.
An oddball ascetic who has a group of ardent followers and likes to
challenge basic ideas about society and its relationships to deities
through intense questioning and allegories/parables.
Christ goes into the desert for weeks to seek enlightenment, and avoids
temptation by the devil before he reaches that spiritual epiphany.
To do the same Siddhattha Gotama sat under a tree for several days until
he achieved awakening that showed the Middle Way (hybridization is big
religions).
While Buddha quickly made friends with both beggars and kings,
Jesus pisses off the
higher ups and they pressure the authorities to have him killed, which he
welcomes, because he feels his sacrifice represents something bigger.
Similarly, as Socrates amasses a following and his ideas of how best to
serve the gods frustrate the priests because it's not exactly in line with
what they want, he's considered to be a menace and public threat by the
elites.
They condemn Socrates to death, and even though there is the opportunity
to escape and flee Athens, he felt that doing so would be a rejection of
everything he stood for.
So he drinks the hemlock, holds no ill will against anyone, and asks an
associate to make a sacrifice to the god of medicine (a rooster) since he
was being 'cured' of life.
After being whipped and mocked and forced to drag his own death board
through town, Jesus is crucified with other criminals, thereby making it
clear that humanity is just fucking terrible, having done the worst
possible thing to the person who preached peace and love.
It created an easy endless guilt trip for future priests to put upon all
churchgoers. The point was that you should feel bad for this, that you
somehow owe God and Jesus (and conveniently, the priests) loyalty and
adherence.
For centuries this also became a reason to scapegoat Jewish people which
is tragic, bigoted and completely beside the point. The story is meant to
suggest that all of humanity is on the hook for this one. The gospels make
a point of showing how even Jesus' closest followers abandoned him at the
moment of his most needing (Peter denying knowing him as a rooster crows).
But because of his half-divinity, he knew it, accepted it, and of course
forgave everyone.
What separates Jesus from Socrates is the 'after credits' scene.
Christ's return is his last magic trick and a keystone to Christian
theology, even though it doesn't take a really heavy reading of the
gospels post-crucifixion to realize what survives (or more specifically,
what is meant to survive) is Christ's ideas, not his physical body.
Strangers 'become' Jesus when his disciples (soon to be apostles) show
kindness to them or break bread in the way he has taught them.
When they suddenly realize it's him, he vanishes. His work is done when
people become like him in their actions.
It's as if he's there to say 'good job, keep it up!' and then peaces out.
When Pentecost occurs a month and a half later, the Holy Spirit turns
disciples into apostles (the first follows, the second spreads the good
word), and their tongues of fire meant they could speak many different
languages effortlessly or babble incoherently (since the second one is
easier to do, you’ll still see it in some evangelist sects).
It's the exact same day as the Jewish festival of Shavuot, and it’s no
coincidence that the major Christian holidays occur at the same time as
Jewish ones, or other holy days fall when popular pagan religions had
their own celebrations.
Subsuming other religions is just good marketing.
What did Hinduism do as Buddhism became popular? They made Buddha a big
part of it, calling him an avatar of Vishnu, one of their tops gods. If
you can't beat 'em, add 'em (thousands of years later, the French would
add cigarettes to Buddhism and create existentialism).
Make no mistake, you gotta sell your god(s) to people and it better be a
lot of good news, because blood and thunder only go so far.
If you want people to celebrate your theology, don't
force them to change their schedules around it, or make them change their
diet (if you can't beat 'em, add 'em, but...uh...history has shown that if
you can beat 'em with your army, you might add 'em by force).
The gospel of Jesus Christ was all good news. A pity it wasn’t actually
written down for the first time until thirty years after he was gone and
most of his original followers had also perished. It’s not really a
problem when someone writes about their childhood as they’re going through
a mid-life crisis, because it’s no big deal if they misremember things.
But writing four kinda similar stories about the messiah? Maybe you
shouldn’t wait for what was a literal lifetime for a lot of people back
then.
Regardless of Christ’s existence, divinity or actions, it was inevitable
that existing only as an oral tradition for three decades was going to get
nice and embellished.
As much as parables and his actions in certain situations are meant to
teach, making his life interesting meant adding miracles, temptation in
the desert, betrayal, persecution and ultimate triumph. Even the rituals
became more mystic than necessary.
The transubstantiation of the flesh doubles and triples down on this
idea, getting as ridiculously captain obvious about becoming Christ by
'eating' him, just so some of the slower adherents really understand the
point (while at the same time being confusing to outsiders, as one of the
early criticisms Romans levied against Christianity was its alleged
cannibalistic aspects).
Jesus can be each and every one of us. When we act as he would, that is
the divine part of ourselves. The 'higher values', the 'heaven on earth',
the 'new
Christ's life is a parable of how to create the concept of heaven on
earth.
We're supposed to do this by our kind and noble actions towards each
other.
In fact, Jesus himself stressed just how to do this.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek,
those who thirst and hunger for righteousness, those who are merciful,
those who are pure of heart, those who are peacemakers, those who are
persecuted because of Jesus himself.
These are the beatitudes (according to the gospel of Matthew), and they
never get enough attention, not only in terms of the teachings of Jesus,
but in the overall focus of organized Christianity. Despite the teacher's
name right there in the title, the best known rules are the Old
Testament’s (and old god’s) Ten Commandments, a series of a rules that are
more about 'no' than 'yes', more about forbidding bad behaviour than
encouraging good.
The Old Testament style was much better for authoritarian dictatorships,
hence its embrace of kings both good and bad, and how even when Judea was
under Roman rule at the time of Jesus, this caste-like system of monarchy
(Herod) and religious branches of Judaism led by high priests were
powerful.
Meanwhile a carpenter’s son who had a flair for rhetoric spent time with prostitutes, lepers, and
fishermen (an 'everyman' job that is meant to represent baseness and
poverty). While a disdain for Roman authority was expected through Judea,
Christ welcomed tax collectors and acknowledged 'giving to Caesar what is
Caesar's.
The barrier for entry into this lifestyle, this mindset, or this wacky
offshoot sect of Judaism was negligible. Don’t love your friends and hate
your enemies, love your friends and enemies.
It is amazing, it's glorious, and shouldn’t have to be reliant on the
divinity of a biblical hippie.
The belief in Christ is where all his power resides, but it didn't take
long for that power to lead people to do things that would make Jesus
never stop throwing up.
The early years of Christianity was a fight - sometimes with words,
sometimes with sharp objects - over who this person was and what he should
be. There were arguments over how many gospels the slowly unifying
Christian church should acknowledge (there were dozens, they settled on
four).
More and more people living under the instruction and rules of the
interpreters (the priestly caste) of a perceived messiah who lived
hundreds of years prior is a concentration of power that can be a irritant
or direct challenge to the present power structure.
Christianity went from something that was persecuted by the Roman Empire
to something that was tolerated by it to something that took control of it
(to the point where it was called the Holy Roman Empire for centuries, as
it was essentially run by the head priest (the Pope)).
It became a political position, where having any level
of piety or spiritual guidance towards his followers was just a side bonus
(or in some cases, a hindrance).
Jesus left his right-hand man Peter with some pitifully loose instructions
when it came to overseeing his followers after his death (‘feed my
sheep’), and while parables are nice for philosophical teaching, they’re
pretty unhelpful for management.
Hence centuries of corruption, anti-popes (yup), the crusades, inquisition
(no one expects…), many schisms and a brutal European war simply titled
‘the wars of religion’ (between different Christian groups).
In case no one had been reading their bible: You're supposed to die for
Jesus, not kill for Jesus.
If you're the ones doing the persecuting, guess what, you aren't doing
anything in the name of your saviour.
If you are ostracizing or marginalizing any group of people, you aren’t
doing anything in Christ’s name.
A Christian nation is an oxymoron, an empty gesture, a vulgar display of
pride and a complete misunderstanding of the community the teachings of
Jesus Christ outline.
If your country does not have a military then yes, the chance of it being
overrun quite early in its existence by a well-armed neighbour is quite
high, but what of that? What does it matter if you are killed while
upholding the peaceful values of Jesus, since that is exactly what he did?
Perhaps Christ’s crucifixion was only the worst thing humanity did to his
body. Empires, institutions and nations that are awash in wealth and
hollow power while claiming to represent him must be constant punishment
upon his soul.
As
John Darnielle noted, “they sold Jesus Christ for a bag of magic beans and
then started worshipping the beans.”
What would Christ think of mega-churches built on the small donations of
followers that create fortunes for the charismatic pastors who implore
them to call the hotlines for personal prayers for even more money?
Not much.
These are the Pharisees and Sadducees of today, cold-hearted adherents
who attempt to warp the scriptures to their own ends at best, and
religious con-men and women at worst, using pretzel logic to defend
everything from the killing of abortion doctors to homophobia (who would
have guessed that loving Jesus would involve hating so many other people,
because really, who would jesus cancel?) and
selling heaven as a cure-all, as long as you fork over the cash right
now.
‘Heaven’ not in the sense of finding inner peace by doing good and
being humble and pious right now, but the pie-in-the-literal-sky notion of
another place that’s full of all the things we like and void of all the
things we don’t.
The idea of 'more life' after the life we are currently living really
seems to be wishful thinking, and an indication of how much we fear death
and uncertainty.
Modern popular concepts of heaven sound like something a nine year old
would babble on about because they didn't get everything they wanted for
Christmas:
"It's like after your life you get even more life but goes on forever and
ever and you get whatever you want all the time and you'll never get old
and Jesus and everyone you know and love will be there so you can have a
big party together."
Christmas is a good reminder that
God is just Santa Claus for adults. A powerful
omnipotent, omniscient figure who lives in a distant place and doles out
rewards and punishments based on whether you obey your superiors.
The teaching of Christ is practically an attempt to unshackle ourselves
from the strict hierarchy of his father, but these chains are strong.
While religion might be an opiate for the masses, having a personal
connection to a higher power or a notion great harmony (note the lack of
specific terms) is an extreme valuable mental and spiritual resource for
many people.
Living a life without a theological structure - especially one that
stresses celebrating their faith in together - might be too much for a
majority of citizens to bear.
Separating a rigid hierarchy of rules made (or at least interpreted) by
small groups of powerful leaders and having everyone live in the spirit of
peace and charity is no easy feat.
It's what Jesus and his symbolic fore-bearers were trying to do, and he
inadvertently became the central figure in one of the most powerful and
complicated institutions in human existence.
For all the power the old testament god and his half-divine offspring may
have had, they have been fairly AWOL in that development, lending more and
more credence over time that the story of Christ was just that. A story.
It’s up to the reader to perform daily miracles.
At a time when we are more connected in some ways but more distant in
others than ever before, we all have to be Christ. Because god knows he can't be.
2020 Review:
The Wounds
"An era can be said
to end when its basic illusions are exhausted."
- Arthur Miller
"The Wheel is turnin',
And it can't slow down,
You can't let go,
And you can't hold on,
You can't go back,
And you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't getcha,
Then the lightning will."
-The Wheel, Grateful Dead
Organization does not come quick, easy, or cheap.
But chaos certainly can.
2020 was so bad for so many people that it effortlessly made everyone
forget how difficult life was before it. 2019 and previous years were
marked by rising inequality, rising debt, rising authoritarian and
isolation, rising corporatization, and rising sea waters. And 2020 just
made everything worse.
You don't know you're in a golden age until it's over, and you don't know
you're in a dystopia until it's too late.
Helplessly insular as we look out our real windows across the
street and into our digital windows across the globe
Coronavirus was much more dangerous to people who were old, with
debilitating pre-existing conditions, and did not take any precautions.
So
But the West in general too.
In a democracy, you have the choice/freedom to do what you believe to be
responsible.
In an authoritarian state, you are forced into doing what the government
says is the responsible thing.
It is not so much that authoritarian states have an easier time with
fighting the Coronavirus (since the government might make the wrong
decision), but that in democratic nations we all have to individually
choose what the right way is to fight a pandemic, and then follow through.
The responsibility falls on all our shoulders, and only when we all work
as one are the effects evenly distributed.
While tens of
millions suffered through the disease, billions suffered from its wider
effects, yet the very wealthy ending this year richer than they started.
Economic inequality tears at the fabric of a democratic
society, especially ones that have traditionally been dependent on a
robust middle class.
Many people could tell that they were slipping behind and losing, so of
course a bombastic con-man boasting about so much winning would catch
their ear.
'It's not your fault. It's the other's fault.'
'Everyone's telling you lies but me.'
'Wouldn't it be great to have all of the churches full?'
This is why the legacy of Donald Trump is so dangerous, regardless of his
(also terrible) policies. Trump's ability to hammer a lie into a perceived
truth by his supporters is sadly always going to valuable to vested
interests. Before and after the election he has repeated ad nauseam that
it is a fraud and illegitimate (but only if he loses), and now 70% of
Republicans believe the results are not fair. Trump has created an
atmosphere where over a third of the country don't recognize the
president-elect.
It has been said that the most powerful thing in the world is an idea,
usually in the context of it being inspiring and benevolent. But the door
swings both ways, and we are seeing how dangerous a bad idea can slowly
erode trust in society.
Momentum can fuck you. On a micro level, getting a good job can lead to a
lot less stress, a better place to live eating healthier, becoming more
social and open-minded. Losing your job (or getting sick, or having to
assist a friend or loved one going through those same things) can lead to
more stress, worse mental and physical health, poor decisions making, and
placing a greater strain on the people around you and the community at
large, which is how momentum on a macro level can be gauged.
Everything is connected, for good and for ill, and the way we live now has
never been so dependent on the status of others on the other side of the
planet.
Western democracy is in bad shape, but if you save America, you save the
world. When a working democracy is the most powerful form of governance on
the planet, then we really are
bending that moral arc towards justice.
But America is slipping from that, and has been for decades. A rejection
of Trump is certainly to be lauded, but my god was it close. Biden may
have won the popular vote healthily, but only won Arizona, Georgia,
Nevada, and Wisconsin by a combined 77,000 votes (and if he lost those, he
would lose the Electoral College vote).
There is passionate populism that seems intent on giving even more power
to the small group of wealthy elites. If not basic corporatism, then the
'cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face' decision of Brexit. Even far
from a national stage, the
The rural voter looks at the urban voter with resentment and 'don't tread
on me', even though most city dwellers are in the same economic boat as
those in small towns. And the reverse is true, with citizens of New York,
Chicago and LA (or London,
Madrid and Toronto for that matter) always wondering what the hell is
wrong with flyover country.
This divided house of family members who have more in common than they
think is a boon to the wealthy estate and penthouse owners of the country
and city respectively.
Arguments for progressivism or conservatism strengthen and weaken with
surface conditions. Some change can be sharp, and these can come from
instigators like natural disasters, military actions and global pandemics.
Most situations however are slow to change. The path of social and
economic policies takes years or even decades to alter. Conservative
fiscal policy is finally falling out of favour after roughly four decades
of dominance. It is hard to argue that pro-corporate deregulation has
helped the average citizens wages when the big increase has been seen only
in the wealthy getting wealthier.
The negatives effects are much more subtle until the house of cards
finally tumbles down, and nowconservatives are not thrilled with having to
acknowledge that free market capitalism has been a failure unless you own
a company, or plenty of stock in a company.
For decades the inadvertent agreement that the left would make social
gains while the right would make economic ones. Obviously each side would
want to control both, and now that the left has made strides to grant more
freedoms and protections for women, minorities and the LGBTQ community
(while much still must be done), they are coming for the right's
strange-hold on money matters. We've made mention in the past our worry of
society being able to make these necessary social and economic changes.
Improving laws is an essential step forward, but the hardest work is
slowly and steadily changing people's minds, which takes years or decades.
A timetable that seems unthinkable compared to the social media
scream-sphere.
Digital feudalism looks to be in our future, and the way we leaned even
heavier on this technology in 2020 has accelerated this process.
The Industrial Revolution changed the world, and made a very small segment
of the populace very rich (some of whom were members of the noble class,
who effortlessly pivoted from owning land and people to owning factories
and workers). For several decades the masses attempted to organize and
were rebuffed or beaten down.
It took a devastating and obvious economic catastrophe (what is the Great
Depression, Alex?) for social programs to finally be enacted.
We are at a period where the computer/digital revolution has changed
everything about society right across the planet. And the companies which
own and operate these systems are public only in the sense that anybody
can own stock in them, but the reality is that a small group of investors
reap the benefits. Sucking the wealth out of countries, and then shrugging
their shoulders and saying, 'hey
that's the system, I don't make the rules', ignoring the fact that
they do indeed make the rules.
This nobility has little affection for their country, beyond how well they
can pull the levels of power to their advantage. Smaller nations are
selling themselves to the highest buyer, which is how former Google CEO
Eric Schmidt ends up with a Cypress citizenship. To them, capitalism is
working perfectly. And that's the problem.
It means that the world as a whole is terribly equipped all the other
problems that we had to deal with even before a global pandemic.
The temporary suspension of the world economy's 'business as usual' means
that for once there is a lowering of global CO2 emissions, which is a
silver lining in a year that's mostly lead. A good thing, too, since the
year began with the entire continent/country of Australia on fire. Not to
be outdone, the western United States did the same thing in the summer.
Climate change has occasionally gotten people marching in the streets, but
it was the tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis
police that initiated protests across America and the globe. It was a
painful reminder not just of the violent attacks black men have suffered
at the hands of the people who are supposed to protect them, but of the
continued marginalization of minorities (whether based on skin colour,
culture or creed) in states and societies across the planet. If there no
justice for all today, there will be justice for even fewer tomorrow.
And there is a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe that creates an exhaustion
on top of all these others.
2020 is a year that felt long and short, that was marked by long trudges
of boredom interrupted by bad and worse news. The fault of a state or
society to care for its citizens is exposed when leaders who tell people
to do nothing and isolate for the benefit of all only works when you can
live comfortably by temporarily by isolating.
People don't like
being told they have to change their behaviour for the betterment of the
future when the their present is failing apart. Which means they have to
chose to change willingly. Which is much harder to do, especially with how
much noise comes with the cyberspace medium (and is the message itself,
after all).
How people minds are shaped today are by what they see and how they
interact with a technology we don't truly understand. Reaching out online
in 2020 had all the benefits and problems that have always existed in
doing so, but it felt more necessary than ever before.
We are moving even quicker to a
world of automation and algorithmic artificial intelligence, and it is
warping all the rules and behaviours we are familiar with.
A society and an individual can only bend so much before they break.
But the standard ‘crack in
everything, that’s how the light gets through’ (thanks, Leonard) always
applies. Time after time, humanity has shown that after huge disasters in
the past, we have dusted ourselves off and slowly (but surely) gotten back
to our feet. The hope that we can learn as a group about the errors we’ve
made on the global and local scale a like and begin to right this ship. We
are always going to have to re-fucking-orientate (thanks, ZMF), and maybe
for 2021 we should consider that a
life well lived is having a little time for yourself and buying a little
time for everyone else. It’s start, and every day is, too.
2020 Culture
The creation of arts, literature, music, movies and tv were all affected
by this Covid year, and at the same time it was never so essential. While
there was always a danger of the Internet making endless music and viewing
options a perfect distraction when there more pressing issues for dutiful
citizens, there wasn't much else to do during the first, second, and third
waves of the pandemic. Getting to the 'end of netflix' or clearing out
your video games backlog was easier to do when confined to your home.
For music from this year, Fiona Apple's 'Fetch the Bolt Cutters' is just
as good as everyone says, Lianne La Havas' self-titled record is better
than everyone else says, and for those who want to know what Neptunian
Maximalism sounds like, there's Eons' massive album, 'Neptunian
Maximalism'.
The Mandalorian continues to prove that crowd-pleasing Star Wars stories
doesn't have to be found in the cinema, and a galaxy far, far away is a
welcome sort of escape from the year.
For something more down to earth, David Fincher's 'Mank' makes writing a
screenplay seem like the most exciting job in the world, with beautiful
camerawork and clever quips.
ESPN/Netflix's documentary on Michael Jordan (The Last Dance) makes you
want to install a basketball hoop in your living room.
It was a wild year for the real entertainment of the future, video games.
If you wanted to avoid the bleak futures of The Last of Us Part 2, Half
Life: Alyx, and Cyberglitch 2077, there's the year's biggest fantastical
hit, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, where you can build and decorate an
island with talking animals… for a capitalistic raccoon.
But if even the idea of consuming culture made/released during this awful
year fills you with dread, there is always the very easily accessible
past.
The technology that has somewhat screwed us over can at least make it easy
to reach out and grab the warm embrace of yesteryear.
Which is why going back to The Grateful Dead has been incredible. Far be
it for us to diverge from popular opinion, so Cornell '77 really is the
best full live show introduction (although Europe '72 (a live album of
selected live tracks from the similarly named tour) is probably best for
absolute beginners). A personal favourite has to be Oct.2/77 (Portland),
which opens with a wild Casey Jones that really stretches out, and has a
great Playin'-Wheel-Truckin'-Other One-Wharf Rat-Sugar Magnolia jam in the
second set (and Scarlett-Fiiiiiiire). March.27/88 is tops as well, because
Brent is so key to the success of 80s Dead. And Veneta '72 isn't screwing
around, either (I suppose if you want to understand The Grateful Dead
(…man), you can just listen to Dark Star > El Paso (available as a video
on youtube)).
As far thematic aesthetic matching, the ravenous, nauseous sounds of the
Liars' second LP, They Were Wrong So We Drowned (2004), fit 2020 like a
bloody glove.
Nintendo obviously had plans to celebrate Mario's 35th anniversary this
year before things got turned upside down, but the release of the first
three 3D entries into the series (from 1996, 2002 and 20007, respectively)
was a joyful triple jump down memory lane. The capper of the trilogy
(Super Mario Galaxy) is so good that it might be a slightly frustrating
wait if you decide to play them in order.
Notes
(https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/09/republicans-free-fair-elections-435488)
What
is 'Now' Now? The Covid-19 Article
It’s the end of August and never has twelve named months seemed so
arbitrary.
2020AD (how’s that for arbitrariness?) is the year of the Coronavirus. In
terms of a 'year in review' article, plenty of it can be written now, with
a comment on the upcoming
Countries have seen their infection rates rise and fall, a testament to
how human beings are able to adapt to certain things quickly, and can be
completely bewildered when other things throw them for a loop. Suddenly
throwing a party or attending one is representative of a careless breaking
point, a symbol of dangerous defiance, a desperate reach for the normalcy
of the before times.
The passage of time - and what is expected to be accomplished in its
familiar packets - has been turned askew enough with the Internet, but
with a pandemic basic routines like work, school, entertainments,
exercising, and administration of mental and physical health have been
interrupted in various degrees across the globe.
Depending on who you are or who you ask, the 'various degrees' are due to
the fact that not all nations are created equal. Even with groups like the
World Health Organization, each country has to confront Covid-19 with
whatever tools are at their disposal. Which is why experts forecast that
it would hit the poorer countries the hardest. Of course this assessment
didn't take into consideration how absolutely bone-headed some leaders of
some very wealthy and powerful nations would shit the bed in their
Coronavirus response.
This, in turn, affects the overall global response as well. The world
can't get back to normal and open its borders if the
Like Covid-19, the
economy is a shambling monster that everyone is unsure how to stop, but
the economy is something that we'll be damned if we slow down it for
something like this.
The system that we all adhere to - no matter how passively or reluctantly
- demands that products be made so they can be purchased. While it mainly
lines the pockets of the corporate owners, there are enough people
dependent on the ancillary process of creation and logistics management
that entire communities can be shut down and become helpless at times like
this.
Certainly tourism, entertainment and the service sectors have been hit the
hardest, doubly so in post-industrial regions where these industries that
are expected to absorb the transference of workers leaving various trade
and manufacturing jobs.
Slashing prices doesn't matter if people can't get to the physical
locations of the amazing deals, or if they can't afford them any longer,
no matter what the discount. As Doctor Pagkas-Bather pointed out in the
clearest possible way: "Dead people don't shop."
For the living, Coronavirus has not affected us equally. The earliest dire
forecasts posited that the poor and marginalized would be much more
affected both directly and indirectly by the disease. That means they will
be more likely to get the disease, as they live in more concentrated
conditions, and would have to work during the pandemic because they can't
afford not to, also increasing the chances of them getting it. Those well
off can live off of savings, work from home, have food delivered, or even
get out of the city.
For some business has boomed, and it just so happens that many that own
said businesses are already sitting on commas. Food for thought: If a
global pandemic that kills hundreds of thousands of your own citizens
makes your wealthy citizens richer and your poor citizens poorer, then you
are country-ing wrong.
Already lost in the much more eye-catching news stories is the trillions
of dollars that the US government essentially gave to Wall Street in
March, essentially covering any ‘pandemic-related’ losses by investors,
encouraging them to make the same sort of risky bets and buy-backs as
before (while cutting costs and furloughing employees at the worst
possible time for the average worker).
Meanwhile everyone else is waiting to go back to normal, even if normal
was for the most part a steady slide of the masses into a vast economic
underclass with the effects (and side effects) of a warming planet making
life more difficult for everyone.
Maybe normal has to change as well. Maybe this is finally the Real End of
the ME Decade, which was a nickname for the eighties (and should have
ended during that same period). It was the decade which cut taxes and
corporate regulation for people who wanted it, as well as cutting social
programs and government services for people that needed it. The time was
epitomized by the ethos 'greed is good', which came from a popular and
acclaimed movie simply called Wall Street.
And throughout the nineties and into the new millennium, even if
corporatism became vilified (while truly it just grew stronger), everyone
clung on to the idea of 'ME'. The individual was championed, even if it
meant that the community itself would become slowly frayed and weakened.
And now, here in 2020, with Coronavirus seeping into every aspect of our
lives, the necessity of us being able to depend on our fellow neighbours
and citizens to do the right thing is a brand new development, with a
'brand new' disease.
It features an incubation period that has completely thrown out our
traditional expectations of how a disease works. With other illnesses, if
you spend time around a person who is sick, you typically show symptoms
within a day if you are infected. Not so with Coronavirus, where you may
not feel sick for up to a week, meaning during that time you can spread
the disease to others completely unknowingly (compound this with people
who might be asymptotic the entire time they have the disease, increasing
the chance of spread to someone who might ultimately succumb to it). We
are carrying around a week's worth of our lives everywhere we go.
There is the idea that anyone around you could get you sick, so you have a
constant suspicion of your fellow citizen. The uncertainty over whether if
someone not wearing mask now has been negligent for weeks on end, adding
to our fear that no matter how diligent the people in our circle are,
people have not yet realized that this a group effort.
Staying inside and socially distancing is putting a toll on many people's
mental health, and once again the class issue is apparently. The more
money you have, the more space you like have, and the more likely you can
find a moment's respite from everyone else you are 'trapped' with. We are
already a society that is pivoting towards a virtual form of communication
and interaction, and while some can easily adapt to the world of Zoom and
online gaming for socializing, a great many are finding the isolation
stultifying.
How this will all play out in the long term obviously remains to be seen.
Many of the articles linked at the end of this piece were written in the
early months of the pandemic, and going back to them was sobering to see
how the experts were right and how their fears came true when their
warnings went unheeded.
So many of the concerns of things getting worse before they get better
still apply now, since not only was America's disastrous summer of record
infections and deaths a (preventable) national tragedy and shame, but
global issues that were a problem before have compounded.
Klein's Shock
Doctrine once again shows that one chaotic event is a fine time for the
powers that be to establish an even stronger hold on their citizens.
Emergency orders that are instituted by leaders that have very little
oversight are done with the understanding by the public that this is
temporary, that it will only remain in place for the length of the
emergency.
But for this to be truly effective, the leaders had to have shown the
public that they are trustworthy, and the public has to show the leaders
that they will abide by the rules of the emergency order. If the first is
not in place, it is unlikely that the second will follow.
And with the Coronavirus being a threat to society for a long time
to come (certainly many months more, with some policies being kept in
place past this year), it is a chance for authoritarians to seize power.
In the West, worries in the spring months that nations - or states or
provinces within them - would keep these lockdown orders in place came to
be unfounded. Corporate profit supersedes government overreach, since
Trump and many states who were slovenly supportive of him opened up when
cases were trending downwards (with disastrous results). And Trump is the
sort of leader who will disregard science and the experts and go with his
gut. It's a bad enough policy at the casino or whentrying to run a casino,
but it's horrific when you are in charge of a nation during an emergency.
Watching it happen from the country to the north is like watching another
car on the road suddenly skid and flip over and end up in the ditch, and
you can only hope that the same thing doesn't happen to you.
Such is the challenge of writing in the middle of things. Trying to
capture the moment of the time. A tinge of fear and wariness as you see it
always happening to others, until the situation suddenly becomes much
closer to home. Even saying it's the middle is uncertain, because we still
might be in the beginning stage. The first third of a period that won't
truly end until late 2021.
For the many who have been fortunate to not come down with illness, there
's a despairing, exhausting ordinariness to these weeks and months. Six
months of diligence becomes all for nothing if we drop our guard and the
disease hits the community in the seventh month.
If we complained about the day-in day-out pre-Coronavirus, you can bet
we'll complain about this new routine. Some will say it is in an
infringement on their rights and others will not shut up about the
inconvenience of having to wait in line.
Our inability to adhere to experts' warnings and advice while embracing
crackpot good news and conspiracy theories shows that information has
never been more catered to what you want to believe.
Distrust in authority is healthy only to a slight degree. It doesn't take
much to find examples of those in power using it for their own ends
(usually to get more power for themselves), but writing off the system
completely just hastens its ineffectiveness and/or collapse.
No region of the globe should get on their high horse. There have been
large spikes in infections across
The West is not a society that deals with asceticism and restraint well.
Indeed, for several decades we've been sold on the idea that bigger is
better, more is better, and getting all of it right now is best of all.
This is wholly incompatible with what is expected of a populace during a
pandemic.
A global crisis like this glaringly exposes the society's flaws.
Bloated European bureaucracy that attempts to assist everyone.
American pay-to-play democracy which is destroying itself from the inside
with the increasingly concentrated wealthy calling the shots.
Brutal Chinese and Russian authoritarianism where the oligarchs control
everything and jail or kill their critics.
And smaller nations have to dance carefully through hoops and over
double-edged swords to stay on the right side of everyone else.
The irony is that because the threat of disobeying a lockdown order in
China means you and your family can be penalized and/or arrested, they can
be much more effective in stopping the spread of Covid-19, whereas the
freedom to ignore government mandates without (much) repercussion has made
the problems in America and other democratic nations worse.
In these countries, you have to choose to be responsible and think of your
fellow citizen when you decide to put on a mask. There is no greater proof
that the United States remains a free country in this regard, but it also
illustrates how free choice certainly allows the possibility of making the
choice that does more harm (easier to catch and spread Covid-19 when you
don't wear the mask) than good (something about freedom, apparently). You
don't just wear the mask for yourself, you wear it for everyone else
around you. On top of being a disease-prevention-device, it is also a
symbol of safety and togetherness, but it's all for naught if many people
see it is as a form of nefarious control. The importance of these
preventative measures has been recently reinforced with the discovery that
re-infection is absolutely possible, meaning the typical immunity that
comes with being infected with the virus and recovering only lasts about
four months. Constant vigilance will have to be the number one gift this
holiday season.
But in terms of good news, a massive drop in global CO2 emissions finally
occurred!
What a way.
It's chiefly related to the curtailing of global transport (mainly of
people, but also of goods), but it is seen as a terrible interruption of
'the way things are', not an epiphany that we need to all agree to stop
travelling considerably less.
Early on in the pandemic (when people thought the changes might only last
weeks), airlines in Europe were flying empty flights from airport to
airport just so they could keep their spots on the route (according to
European aviation rules, only so many planes can operate on flights from
between cities, and it's 'use it or lose it').
How we deal with other stuff is changing. Panic buying becomes 'not buying
enough'. Average household savings has increased during the pandemic, but
that’s not how the economy works, right? As restrictions eased in the late
spring, there was a flood of car commercials using Covid as a promotional
tool, telling you how it's time for you to 'get back out there'...and buy
an F-150 that can cost as much as your annual salary.
For once people don't seem to be falling for it, eschewing the consumption
role they are expected to play in the always thirsty capitalism. Using
less stuff - and certainly wasting less stuff - is how we are going to
have to live anyway (minus the panicked hoarding).
This is a tiny blueprint of the future, which unfortunately will be tied
to the fact that many, many more people across the globe will be forced
into using/buying less stuff because they can't afford to live any other
way. Temporary aid packages are just that. While it acknowledgements that
the pandemic is a special occasion, they exist as if everything was
absolutely fine beforehand.
A pandemic such as this is a convenient tipping point where we can make
positive changes to bring more equity to the globe, or where we tumbled
further into a dystopian future with a small powerful overclass and
massive underclass.
We want to watch Bladerunner movies, not live in a Bladerunner world.
The economic famine reveals itself. The withering of small towns across
the West was in part due to lack of good jobs around them (as factories
closed and farm consolidated and corporatized), which forced the cities to
absorb more citizen trying to make a living, and therefore competing for
an ever-shrinking piece of the pie.
The Western middle class went East when the manufacturing jobs headed that
way in the eighties and nineties. In North America and
What does this have to do with dealing with a pandemic right now?
Everything, because it determines how people act and how a government will
function during this crisis.
Coronavirus wasn't humanity's great fight against a super virus. It was a
shot across the bow. A warning that we had better take advantage of and
prepare not just for the next pandemic, but any sort of similar sort of
unpredictable and dangerous event that can affect the entire globe. Modern
technology has allowed us to be more connected than ever before, but this
great strength also reveals a great weakness. We are so connected that
when something goes wrong in one place, it can massive repercussions for
the entire globe, and not just to global physical health, but global
economic health. Our society is not taking care of its citizens.
We have to change moving forward. We have never been asked to 'fight' as
'one', and since that is almost always an abstract notion (even in wars,
more people act as support than actually fight on the battlefield), our
fight is against tiny microbes.
Well…adapt or die.
Sources/Notes
How inequality is exacerbated during these times:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/world/europe/coronavirus-inequality.html)
How the virus can trigger a recessions:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opinion/coronavirus-economy-debt.html)
Economic Fragility:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/upshot/coronavirus-economy-crisis-demand-shock.html)
A really good 'big picture' overview of coronavirus:
Big money for big banks in the COVID-19 aid package:
The terrible destruction of large amounts of unused food:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html)
The BIG interconnected money problem:
Problems with just-in-time consumerism/consumption
Emissions down:
(https://earther.gizmodo.com/satellites-show-italys-air-pollution-dissipating-as-cov-1842316669)
COVID-19 and Civil Rights (https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/07/covid19-and-the-left-an-ignored-civil-rights-crisis/)
The
Future of Killing People
In physics there is the three body problem, where it is
seemingly impossible to know the outcome of a movement with certainty when
you have three interacting items. 'Body' is a mainly placeholder term,
since three of any sub-atomic particles to planets can be used as
examples.
'Body' is becoming a placeholder term for the concept
of human individuals as well, since our physical body is sharing more and
more of our identity with a virtual one. Your online 'weight' is measured
in bytes instead of kilograms, and just as having too many kilograms can
be risky to your physical body, having too large a presence online (in the
form of photos and videos on your social media pages as well as doing
banking, work and leisure and so many other activities) can also pose
several risks to your online body.
In terms of the relationship between the individual and
the state, the concept of body is used in similar ways. We eat and
exercise to maintain our health, and the state must attend to the needs of
its citizens and protect them from danger.
On a molecular level 'we' do all we can to keep germs
and disease at bay through our innate and adaptive immune systems. This
constant war for our health has no space for mercy. Viruses and bacteria
are destroyed without a thought...since everything that exists on this
level utilizes stimulus-response.
When adjusting the argument for size and humanity, the
question gets complicated: If the nation itself is a body, should it not
do everything it can to protect itself?
French theorist Michel Foucault opined that in the past
authority showed its power by inflicting physical punishment. That is,
power was tied to the ability to kill or impair the body. For grievous
crimes (or what was thought to be grievous at that time in history), it
was a death, the destruction of the body. For lesser crimes (such as
theft) there was the removal of the hand, or branding.
In some instances, discomfort and shame were used (the stocks, tar
and feathering).
Prison was only used for debtors, and the point of keep
them confined was only so there would be an attempt by someone else to
release them by paying off the debt. The idea being that a dead or
severely incapacitated man meant the lender was out of luck.
Through changes in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries to criminal reform, Foucault opined that the punishment was less
at about punishment to the body and more of punishment to the concept of
the body. In prison for a set period of time (depending on the crime),
your body is not to be harmed (not
meant to be harmed, anyway), and you are given enough nourishment to
survive. What is 'punished' is your own person freedom of being able to
participate in society as a citizen. This necessarily requires restricting
the body in place, but minus the effects of aging, you are to be released
from prison when your sentence is up with your body in the same state as
it was when it went in.
Bodily punishment nowadays is almost wholly restricted
to the death penalty and fewer and fewer nations are continuing this
practice.
The three nations with the most powerful militaries
(America, China, Russia) all support capital punishment, however, so it
should come as no surprise that - outside of the standard criminal justice
system - these nations also take extrajudicial steps to neutralize threats
(note the euphemistic terms for 'shoot a troublemaker in the back of the
head').
Realpolitik is a term born out of the Industrial
Revolution, and Otto Von Bismarck meant it to acknowledge a cold,
mechanical take on how nations were to communicate with each other,
sometimes with agreements that might favour one over the other, and
sometimes with guns.
Morals be damned, success or nothing is the way.
Bend the rules to your will. Sure we'll never strike first...unless we
know (or think we know) that you are going to attack us. Our enemy's enemy
is our friend, just like how one man's freedom fighter is another man's
terrorist.
Although 'might makes right' typically means it is easy
for a state to portray its own military as the do-goooders (whether the
public buys this is another matter entirely) and the enemy as the eternal,
menacing 'other'.
While it makes sense that not many people are going to
kick up a fuss with the killing of Osama Bin Laden via an elite squad
sneaking undetected into Pakistan (and also not informing the Pakistani
government), it then allowed for more leeway in similar targeted
assassinations. The ringleader of Al-Qaeda who masterminded several
terrorist attacks is one thing, but what of an American citizen living in
Yemen preaching and encouraging violence against America? (the imam Anwar
Al-Awlaki was the first American killed by a drone strike without any
level of due process)
The moral high ground is always relative, an elevator
moving up and down. While America prefers marginalization as a way to
silence critics domestically, its rivals have no problem with mass
incarceration, phony trials, and regular assassinations.
Under the last three presidential administrations
terrorists and innocent bystanders abroad have been regularly targeted and
killed in drone strikes. And that one word - 'abroad' - is meant to give
more leeway for dubious activities by nations that (claim to) champion
human rights.
To much of the middle east, the American drone system
is the latest form of terror by the world's most powerful military. While
it attempts to target people who do or wish to do harm to America and its
allies, the unstated but plainly obvious conclusion is that the system can
target almost anyone on earth. For both constant surveillance and
destruction (and both without the subject’s knowledge, as these craft can
fly so high above the earth that they are unseen by the naked eye).
Death from above and now without so much as sound.
A soldier had to fire his weapon at the enemy in front
of them, the doctor had to administer the lethal injection into the
condemned man's arm.
Now a body is barely required to destroy another, a few
keyboard strokes from half a world away. It is greatly preferred method of
killing by those who own and operate the drones, as it keeps living troops
out of harm's way much more often. It enables one side of the conflict to
deliver devastating loss of life to (ideally) military targets and
(tragically) what was thought to be military targets. It should come as
little surprise that there is not much in terms of oversight when it comes
to deciding whether the fire button should be pressed. Certainly the
general public will not be privy to the evidence and how it was discussed.
When there is the perception of less pain and suffering
on one side of a war being waged by a superpower, its inhabitants will
feel the war’s impact on a much smaller scale. There can be an 'ignorance
of action' from the citizens of the state which undertakes these killings
in far off lands.
While in the recent past most US drone strikes have
targeted terrorist cells in the Middle East (as well as ISIS), the recent
assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani while he was visiting
Baghdad can be seen as a much more aggressive approach by America to
utilize their military capabilities. No longer attacking extremist
recluses living in caves because they are pariahs in the eyes of their own
government, killing a respected member of another nation's military (and
one of the most powerful men in Iran) could in some circumstances lead to
a declaration of war. But with Iran already rocked by domestic protests
and weakened by years of sanctions, that was never going to be the result.
It was a sign of America doing something just because they can. Now we
enter the realm of 1984's doublespeak, with a line of thinking that would
be perfect coming out of the Ministry of Truth:
'It was justified because it was done, it would not
have been done if it wasn't justified'.
Perhaps the most awful effect of this (not involving
the ever-wrsening US-Iran relationship) is that other nations will be much
more open and defiant in killing individuals who they deem as a threat,
both foreign and domestic. And yes, while many nations unfortunately
already do this (the Russian government has killed its critics both within
its borders and across the world, the Chinese kept a human right lawyer
locked up for years, even while he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize),
with a nation like America taking such a public stance on the practice,
many others could potentially follow suit, and with more frequency.
For years, America would at the very least 'finger wag'
if nations were crossing the obvious human rights line, and in some
instances actually institute sanctions upon countries in flagrant cases
(the Magitsky Act comes to mind). But since drones are comparatively cheap
and easy to use, they have given nations the unfortunate power to decided
life and death in ways that never existed in the past.
They are straddling a strange place between model plane-like hobby,
the future of transportation and delivery, a surveillance device of
unimaginable proportions, and the supreme tier of death from above.
Destroying a particular body has never been easier, but
it should be noted that all of these activities take place in the real
world. There is a physicality here, where real violent damage must be
inflicted upon flesh and bone to cause death, to end the existence of the
body as a carriage for a human individual.
But that is no longer the only way to die.
The concept of the body is changing rapidly because we
are living more and more of our lives in virtual spaces. This interaction
has caused quite a lot of disruption as we are constantly moving back and
forth from tending to the needs of our physical and virtual selves.
Despite how much more of our daily routines and
behaviour are dependent on our interaction with an electronic device in
our hands or on our tabletops, the talk of somehow transferring the
electrical impulses of our brain to some sort of computer is still clearly
science fiction (sorry Kurzweil).
But the more we put of ourselves online, the more it
takes on the qualities we associate with the concept of body. Our language
proves this. We say 'I'm online' or 'follow me on social media', where the
only physical action of 'following' is pressing buttons on a screen, and
'me' is a series of texts and images we have chosen to represent us.
Our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram home pages are our
'homes'. We visit friends 'homes' and go to shops and watch videos, moving
to all these virtual locations with ease. It has become even easier in
recent years to experience live events together, so that we can all chat
as whatever happens is streaming right in front of us all at the same
time.
Our senses of self in this world mirror the actions we
take in the real world. While we always try to alter our actions and
appearance in order to project the identity we want (whether we are
successful is another matter entirely), this is much easier to do with our
online selves. Only share the images and moments you want to share. Only
make comments after careful deliberation to make sure you have a brilliant
point or hilarious line (of course it goes without saying that many people
put very, very little thought into what the say and then come to regret
it...just like in real life). Delete your browser history like they were
embarrassing photos from the past.
We are in the awkward and difficult period of malleable
identities. In many areas it is effortless to create more than one. It can
be the most mundane and practical (have a second e-mail account for junk),
to something that can have huge effects on yourself and the people you
interact with online (have one normal account on a social media site or
message board, and have a troll account in the same place if you want to
'let loose').
The Internet was initially framed as a place where
everyone can connect, yet in the last several years it has become easier
and easier to seek out only the people that have the qualities you want
them to have. Human looks to connect with other humans, and finding
similarities is the easiest way to start. But sharing ‘everything’ has
become the norm, and one person’s real talk can quickly become another
person’s outrage of the week.
What speech 'is' changes when there's less and less of
a physical presence associated with it. Body language and verbal
inflection can have a huge impact on the words being said and how it is
considered, and strictly text/emoticon based communication require a
radical reassessment on how intent and sincerity is conveyed.
Arguments over a simple misunderstanding or awkwardly
worded sentence can boil over into a vitriolic screaming match.
Just as the wrong people can be killed from faulty
intelligence and malfunctioning equipment, the wrong people can be
targeted, offended, or hurt thanks to miscommunication on the Internet.
This is inevitable. We have to accept the fact that people get their
information from places/sites that are a report of another report of the
original source. This displacement can cause distorted pieces of
information being passed on. And if a popular site presents this
information late in this process, a lot of people might not have the most
accurate understanding of the event in question, because they aren't
reading the original source.
It
is the kid's game of 'telephone', but on a much larger and important
scale.
Why did we think the Internet would somehow 'correct'
this form of human behaviour? Of course people in any sort of community
are going to complain about something, exaggerate, lie, say stuff they
don't exactly mean or believe in, talk shit, be misunderstood, etc. This
happens in real life, not just on the Internet.
But the community has grown so large and become so
interconnected that we are still getting used to behaving this way with
complete strangers all the time. Your friends know you better, and so if
you imagine you're only talking to them, you can have a casualness to your
conversation. But this whole conversation can be read by anyone much too
easily, and from that all hell can break loose.
We are not familiar enough with this technology and the
possible ramifications of our actions within it. There is a non-zero
possibility that anything online can flare up and become a viral sensation
for wonderful or terrible reasons. Information can become misinformation
(and vice versa) simply because of who we think is presenting it to us.
There is the popular New Yorker cartoon where one dog
sitting in front of a computer says to another: 'On the Internet, no one
knows you're a dog'.
It’s a good example of how a meme can get to a point
quicker than an entire article (cough). Not being able to always know who
is speaking in the virtual space is extremely troubling. A stable digital
identity across all platforms, sites, and apps may be inevitable as we
move forward. And it will be decried as a form of control by some, as well
as championed as a way to make the virtual landscape safer and more
efficient by others.
Within a digital identity, so much of culture and
history can be disregarded, re-assembled, and created anew. The concept of
family will change, if not biologically, then socially.
The importance of one's past will be more malleable than ever.
Where you're 'from' is not the country you were born in, or the country
your parents (or grandparents) were born in.
You will choose your identifying cultural characteristics. They
will not be chosen for you or thrust upon you. Is all this good or bad?
Like everything sprawling and complex, it can be both.
Currently the Internet deals with the undesirables and
threats to its communities with the virtual version of what nations do
against similar troublemakers: Marginalization and 'death'.
The destruction of the 'body' in the virtual world
involves a public shaming of the individual as well as a sort of silent
treatment, and if this is not seen to be sufficient (or the individual is
still defiant), then this person is removed from the awareness of others.
Cancel culture is the early attempts of a virtual
community to police itself. The debate over whether you are dead or not
does not include your input. Only if enough of a fuss is kicked up by
enough people that an actual agent in control of your life support systems
(the owners and overseers of social media companies, or - on a smaller
scale - moderators in message boards and chat rooms) presses a button are
you truly deleted. Quite similar to drones, actually.
Since the rules are sometimes nebulous and enforced by
AI or people with vendettas, it can easily become an absolute mess when
deciding who can stay or go. Plus the destroyed bodies can be reanimated
somewhere else. Perhaps on a site or community that is not nearly as
popular, but it perseveres none the less (the reports of anyone's death
can now always be greatly exaggerated). And this act has taken on a sort
of defiance in the online realm. Not that offensive people are angry that
people are silencing them because they are speaking the truth, but that
they are being silenced just for speaking at all.
What happens when the sub/counter culture runs out of
things to rebel against? What happens when traditional forms of authority
are no longer the same oppressive forces they once were?
We are at a time were social norms are so permissive
(which is overall a great thing) in so many ways that there's nothing
familiar to rebel against anymore. Certainly nothing physical.
Once it was:
"What are you rebelling against, Johnny?"
"Whaddaya got?"
Today, it's nothing. There’s not even the reply: 'I
understand you're just acting out, Johnny, it's just a healthy phase'.
Whatever was thought to be rebellious has been quelled and commoditized.
Physical things like clothes, tattoos, piercings?
Authority goes 'yeah, whatever, we've got them too.'
Raging against the machine, and protesting global
corporation? Authority goes, 'here's your protest permit'.
You want actually see the band ‘Rage Against the
Machine’? $200 a ticket in the cheap seats in a sports arena with a
corporate name.
The youth have nothing to throw a rock at, or really,
throwing a rock doesn't do anything anymore in post-industrial, digital,
globalized civilization.
So they search online for anything to get mad at, to
get some sort of reaction. Some toe the line, some patrol it. For every
example of someone trying to push the bounds of topics of discussions and
the words used within them (whether seriously or just for the lulz), there
is an attempted corralling of speech, of controlling the dialogue. This
has become the stage of a new socio-cultural rebellion, which is more than
slightly ironic, since for a long time this sort of free speech fight was
to be allowed to say whatever you wanted.
But why are people seemingly easily offended nowadays?
Because the concept of the body in changing. To be verbally assaulted is
not considered to be anywhere near as horrible or dangerous as being
physically assault in the real world (there is less of a threat to your
body when someone yells at you than when they punch you). Meanwhile, the
virtual world is wholly safe from physical harm, but that just makes any
other sort of verbal or emotional assault that much more powerful. When
this is the main way of interaction it will inevitably take on more
importance and weight.
Saying Generation [insert whatever term] gets offended
by everything is completely missing the point, because this generation is
interacting with the Internet (and therefore the world) in ways that were
never considered a decade ago.
Calling someone a racial or bigoted epithet, or being
ignorant or insensitive to another person's or community's difficulties is
damning because words really do hurt when there aren't any sticks and
stones alternatives. This is the new language, these are the new
expectations of how to interact in a virtual space where every single bit
of knowledge is only a five second search away, so there's little excuse
for ignorance, unless that was your goal all along, and you better have a
good reason for playing the 'stupid dick' role. That art and jokes may get
caught in the crossfire is inevitable. It's not the P.C. police, it's the
future.
And people from across the age spectrum might still
decry this, and say that things were better and simpler in the good old
days when you used to be able to shoot your opponent in the chest or tell
them what you think right to their face, but as some other guy wasn’t
Foucault said back in the sixties: "The times they are a changin'."
The 2019 Election:
Andrew Scheer sucks (a lot) more than Justin Trudeau
What a wonderful opportunity we have to consider the very nature of
representative democracy!
Good ideas presented by an idealistic political lightweight who waltzed
into textbook pay-to-play and PR scandals versus bad ideas presented by
dead-eyed child-goon built with replacement policy parts in Stephen
Harper's basement.
Quebecois corruption versus Albertan idiocy!
Doddering future versus absolute past!
Every new election is the most important one, they say, the one that is
going to put your respective country back on the right track or have it
plunge into the valley because the bridge is out.
But
when it comes to a country's destiny, our ballot power is oversold. My
goodness it's so important that we all vote, even if we're 'meh' on our
choices, as any exercise in democracy is better than the boot of fascism
stepping on your face forever, but it's the winds of the global economy at
large that push our sails of success or failure. Corporations that don't
even have a direct presence in Canada can have a huge effect on the
products and services we sell overseas, and that means we see these
changes in the grocery store or the gas pump.
The
NDP and the Green Party have big ideas about the future, but this is an
election about doing nothing much behind this charming man and doing
nothing much behind that boring guy.
Justin Trudeau's saving grace in this election cycle is that he's running
against moose shit. Andrew Scheer doesn't know what to run on, because
he's at least smart enough to know that the typical Conservative platform
is only supported by the wealthy or people who hold up photos of aborted
fetuses in front of high schools. Other than that, he has to rely on
people not liking the current prime minister enough to vote against
Trudeau.
No
one is going to enthusiastically vote for a man like Scheer, so -
regardless of who you support - let's pour one out or raise a glass for
the idea of the bland politician.
With campaigns becoming more and more like reality shows, you can't just
run in an election. Now you have to sell it, like you're constantly on
Dragon's Den or Shark Tank.
Which is why there is something to appreciate in the
almost-possibly-maybe-good actually non-slick-politician demeanour of
Scheer. Just an ordinary guy, not flashy, not trying to go viral with a
cool Instagram post, just trying to help his country by putting forward
ideas that he think will help.
Then he opens his mouth and suggested the dumbest, old bait-and-switch
policies you can imagine.
There are no social issues to latch onto this time around (outside of
Quebec, but that province is a social issue unto itself), there's just
money and oil. The 'centrepiece' of the Conservative campaign is small tax
credit for families and senior citizens, and that obviously means a
massive tax cut for the wealthy and corporations. And that means massive
cuts in federal and provincial spending for programs that support families
and senior citizens so in the end the small tax credit means nothing
because everything else (from health care to groceries to anything
tangentially related to social services) is more expensive or gone
completely.
For
a preview of a Scheer-run
Meanwhile, when Albertans booted out the NDP in favour of the
Conservatives, Jason Kenney said the province was 'open for business',
which should be an obvious death knell for anyone who doesn't own a
private jet. Canada has been very lucky with how much the global
dependency on petroleum has bankrolled our living standards. One of the
reasons our banks are so reliable is that we've never had to loosen
regulations or permit risky lending and borrowing, since the poisonous
instruments we unleash upon the world is crude oil, not credit default
swaps.
It's big business, and it's still going to be for years to come, but the
only people in the world who think burning fossil fuels is a good idea for
the future have a slick, oil-industry dick shoved down their throat.
Trudeau treads carefully when talking about it, and even Scheer knows if
he champions black gold too much it'll backfire. But because it's long
been tied to economic success, the oil industry means jobs. Citizens move
or travel across the country because there are high-paying work in the
Of
course the oil industry hates the carbon tax or increased regulation. Of
course this industry is lobbying Canadians with a bullshit PR campaign to
convince you to help them dismantle it.
Here's a hint. If the oil industry hates something, it's probably good for
the planet and good for the average Canadian citizen, both today and
generations from now.
This country is both blessed and cursed with a land filled with many
valuable natural resources, and part of using them responsibly is not
using them at all. Per capita, we are becoming one the most polluting
citizens on the planet outside of the Middle East, and while some of that
is simply due to the challenge of getting shipments and supplies from one
end of the country to the other (reminder: we're a big ass country), a lot
of it is due to the 'energy drug' we sell to the rest of the world.
The
reality is that we will need energy from oil for years to come, but there
needs to be massively complex plans and policies to lower our
dependency/addiction to it and move toward the green energy revolution
(hopefully a mix of solar, wind and fusion power).
We
also have large reserves of freshwater, not just through our lakes, but
also ice atop the land. If we think oil is a coveted, essential product
right now, global access to fresh water will be ever more important ten
years from now.
How
these resources will be used - and whether the government (us) or a
corporation (not us) will own them - are decisions that are going to be
made very soon
The
future of our high living standards is tied to these fruits of the earth.
In this regard, the only parties that are even remotely 'preparing for the
winter' are the NDP and Green.
But
they are going to be supporting players, at least for the next four years.
In part because few people want to own up to the uncomfortable fact that
sits alongside the huge problems with fossil fuels: Even as most people
agree that it's a problem, no one wants to be the one to sacrifice certain
conveniences and luxuries for them.
Political parties will always have a hard sell with the honest, hard truth
about what must change to the Western lifestyle:
Buy
local as much as possible, stop eating as much meat (especially beef), a
family should only own one car, we need to subsidize renewable products
and tax non-renewable products, and none of us should get on planes nearly
as often. Now ideally all this would be voluntary, but the government can
always tax the hell out of these 'sins' to reduce its consumption.
This is common sense. These are finite resources, and we have to save some
of them for future generations, so we can't blow through it all now.
Nuts for the winter, nuts for the winter...
And
it's not like it's going to be just a whacky thing to try for a few years.
These changes are not like a temporary diet for energy. It has to become
the new normal. The 'that's how things are now'.
It's fairly unpalatable as an election platform, even if it's the most
responsible one. Which says a lot about our mindset as global citizens in
2019. The Liberal Party - being centrist - is trying the centrist
approach, saying we can have our cake and eat it, too.
According to them, we can invest in green energy and slooooooowly phase
out fossil fuels, and we can all live our lovely lives with little change
or sacrifice (we can't, but thinking that way helps us sleep at night).
It's a nice idea, that just a carbon tax and some not-big-enough tax hikes
on the wealthy can pay for a green energy revolution, but so, so much more
is needed.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives are using this as a talking point, saying
this is going to make things like gas and heating more expensive. And the
response to that should be:
Yes! Yes it will, and good! This stuff is supposed to expensive!
Actions have consequences, and if you want comfort and ease, it's no
longer going to be as cheap as it once was to have them. If you don't
think it's fair, if you complain that these things weren't so expensive
ten, twenty or thirty years ago, well guess what, things don't always stay
the same, sometimes you live at the slightly shittier time in human
history, and the climate change chickens have come home to roost
More and more people across the globe (and thankfully, in Canada) are
coming around to the unfortunate reality that we have to make these
changes. For a nation such as ours, addressing these challenges will
always have to be considered on a municipal, provincial, and federal
level.
Unfortunately, the Conservative Party tactic on the provincial level is
saying how terrible the Liberals/NDP are doing, then cutting programs the
public likes to make the economic situation worse for the average citizen
(and a citizen having trouble keeping their own head above water means
they have less energy and power to help fix the wider climate change
problems). Doug Ford tripped into Queen's Park and realized that if the
only major fuck up of twelve years of Liberal Party rule was the Hydro One
scandal, then he wasn't going to have that much to do. Except become a lot
less popular and make the conservative agenda look unpalatable for the
rest of the country.
Which is why Scheer is in such a bind. He is either a religious man being
duped by corporate interests, or he is a corporate interest duping his
religious base. Since not enough people like Scheer or his policies, the
conservatives have to attack Trudeau as being a disappointment.
And
for the expectations we had for him, he is a disappointment, but that's
what happens when an unstoppable smile meets an immovable bureaucracy. As
America learned with Barack Obama, 'hope and change' is much, much easier
said than done.
Trudeau has been fortunate that our economy has been officially designated
as 'okay' for the last four years, and is charming in a way that the
current occupier of The White House 'likes' him (our relationship with
America has always been complex and mutually and beneficial, but the
alternative...isn't available).
That he's had to make compromises and delays is nothing new for any party
even with a majority, so it still seemed that going into 2019, the
election would be his to lose. So of course he stepped up to the plate and
somehow started to screw up the easy wrist shot into an empty net.
The
SNC-Lavalin scandal is a colossal fuck up not only in the sense that it is
clearly ethically wrong, but that someone thought that it was a good idea
to get the Prime Minister involved, and that a shady construction company
deserved this sort of special treatment in the first place. Corruption,
pay-to-play, grift...these are things that every nation likes to think it
can rise above. If no one in the Prime Minister's Office could tell that
having 'just a conversation' with the Attorney General would not only be
bad but look bad, then you have to think that they're not the brain trust
you would hope them to be.
It's like throwing yourself down a flight of stairs (deep cut).
This - plus the utterly embarrassing 'brown-face' moment - means any
moderately competent politician should ride this to 24 Sussex Drive...but
not actually there, because it's an aging dump. No party leader wants to
risk the political blowback of spending millions of government dollars on
their own fancy and temporary house, so it's to gather dust. That's a nice
microcosm for Western democracy in the 21st century: A near-empty
political gesture that doesn't solve the problem at all.
But
since Scheer is sheer idiocy, he won't be able capitalize on our 'meh'
towards Trudeau. He's always been neck and neck in the polls with the
Prime Minister, and that on election day that usually bodes well for the
incumbent. The most likely outcome is the Liberals losing seats and being
forced to work with the NDP.
And
actually, for the future of our country - in terms of environmental
responsibility and looking out for the average citizen - this is the best
case scenario. A minority Liberal government forced to make agreements
with the New Democrats (no wonder they go by their acronym, it's a rather
strange name to stick with) to secure votes is really the ideal situation
for everyone involved. The centrists being pulled left is the best for
what this country needs to become. This hopefully will be seen most
strongly in environmental policy going forward, but even in other issues
that affect Canada - the constant struggle for a meaningful reconciliation
with the Native Community, finding an acceptable resolution in deciding
what constitutes a religious symbol in regards to the 'burqa ban' in
Quebec - having a progressive streak running through the policy is a
powerful sign that we are country that is moving forward.
Not
that we should be comparing ourselves to the rest of the world, but over
the last few years so much of Western democracy has taken a turn towards
the mindset of the right-wing nationalist, authoritarian sympathizer. This
is not the way towards a better future. Those are the steps backwards,
towards confrontation and segregation. Canada has long prided itself as
being an open and diverse society, and while we still make mistakes on our
path towards it, we cannot consider abandoning this goal at such a time as
this. It's not our way of thinking to consider ourselves so important as
to ever be singular torchbearers of liberalism (or dare we even say,
notions of freedom and democracy), but if we do want to be inspired to
vote for something more than a carbon tax and sensible spending on health
care, then a progressive compromise between the left and centre for a
brighter and better tomorrow will have to do. Maybe the rest of the world
will even pick up on it.
Even Communism Looks Good on Paper
Once
you step out of the manifesto and take a look of the world around you,
communism looks...silly.
At
first it makes sense that it's dismissed today as much as it was when it
first emerged as an idea in post-Napoleonic Europe. Intellectuals were
still certain that monarchy was no answer, and the attempt at democracy in
France ultimately led to a warmongering despot who named himself emperor,
so there was the search for the third (or really, any other) way.
The
lingering but far-reaching effects of the French Revolution aren't given
as much attention when it comes to communism as the other, 'bigger'
revolution that was occurring all around it (the Industrial one).
Any
massive technological/social development always creates several pluses and
minuses to civilization. Currently we are in the throes of 'the Internet
changing everything', and not just in terms of social media or how we
consume news and entertainment, but our ability to make a living wage and
how we socially and psychologically assess ourselves. We are more
connected then ever, but we also feel more alienated than ever. Jobs -
both directly and indirectly - are being replaced or streamlined by
AI-level programming and advanced robotics, and in addition to that, the
still-required human jobs are in an upheaval as well because practically
every job requires some interaction with the Internet (even many manual
labour jobs pay online). And those that own the gears of the Internet
(your Googles, Amazons, Facebooks and Apples) have such an inordinate
influence on our lives that they make a little bit of money (or get a
little bit of information, which is monetized) every time you do
practically anything online.
This
sort of massive change happened before during the Industrial Revolution,
with machinery and monopolization, and it was through this lens that Marx
and Engels saw the exploitation of the masses (proletarians) by the
factory owners and the land-owning nobility (bourgeoisie), and wrote a
fifty page manifesto complaining about it.
Which still stands as a well-written and engaging document that kicks the
rich in the nuts and really hypes up the power of everyone else (famously:
'the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains'). Idealism and
hope is a key component to whatever you're selling, whether it's a car or
a social philosophy that attempts to explain how much exploitation and
class warfare went into building that car.
Communism is part economic theory, part philosophy, and the philosophy
part is about the concept 'work' and how to change the view/approach of it
from being done via exploitation to it being done voluntarily and
creatively. Which sounds great, but it's not a matter of just changing the
socioeconomic setup of who 'owns' the factory (whether a boss, a small
group of bosses, or the workers themselves), but of how we look at
ourselves as individuals with basic needs and wants, as animals in a
complex social group, and as a civilization.
There's a big practical hole in how to create a true communist state. The
Communist Manifesto states what the adherents believe in, Marx’s Das
Kapital criticizes capitalism, but there's no viable framework for the
setup of a communist government, and certainly nothing that addresses all
the sort of problems that might arise during and after its attempted
setup.
Nowhere is this better seen in the awful attempts at instituting communism
during the 20th century in two of the world's largest
countries, Russia and China. They didn't take much time before becoming
full blown dictatorships whose leaders subjected millions to suffering and
death, and whose successors were (and remain) essentially police state
oligarchies. How they treated their citizens and how the institutions were
set up had almost no connection to what Marx or his contemporaries meant
by communism, except for maybe some early pointless job titles.
If
most people think about the Soviet Union or China when the word
'communism' is said, no wonder they immediately dismiss it. What was
called 'communism' (even by the brutal dictators themselves) looked
terrible, and it was.
First, when trying to start any new system of government, it's going to be
a difficult and typically violent affair with power vacuums leaving a lot
of death, brutality, and subjugation.
Second, the conditions in the country are already likely pretty bad if all
sorts of people want to remove the current government (whether it be a
monarchy or democracy).
Being able to provide for your citizens (basic necessities like food,
shelter, and security) is incredibly difficult at times like this, let
alone while trying to teach them an entire new way of valuing work and the
good and services work produces.
Russia was already in chaos (it was the middle of World War One), and
China wasn't much better (World War Two had ended only years before) when
Lenin and Mao respectively took control of the countries.
Russia gave Germany land and supplies to essentially stop fighting them
(which allowed Germany to send its inadvertently victorious troops on its
eastern front to the west, prolonging the war), and then collapsed into a
civil war that killed ten million people. The Chinese civil war began in
the 1920s, and was only slightly interrupted by World War II (they were
attacked by Japan first in 1931 and then more aggressively in 1937, when
most of the West wasn't paying attention), with millions perished in this
struggle as well, which ended with Mao's victory in 1949.
Neither of these were fertile grounds for any new form of governance, and
communism is a particularly hard sell when so many people have gone
through such recent hardships.
Even
though the very reductionist explanation of communism being where we all
'share the same food, laptop, bottle of shampoo and don't have any private
property so your house is literally my house', is very far off from what
the practical applications of wealth redistribution would be, it's
actually not that far of from where our minds are supposed to be from a
philosophical and psychological standpoint. Communism is supposed to
redefine work completely so we redefine our outlook on life completely.
Communism is supposed to be a state of mind where you are totally open to
sharing everything with people, because you are so self-satisfied that you
don't get bogged down with the concept of ownership. If that's sounds
really hippie-like, it is. Communists saw themselves as rescuers not just
of the workers toiling in factories, but of the classist mindset that
these factories (and the larger capitalist system) created. You weren't
supposed to be a cog in the assembly line, that's a dehumanizing role to
play in society. How do you do convince someone to live differently from
the way they have been living all their life? How do you change their
perspective to live a more basic, harmonious, and fair existence? How do
you remove the basic concept of 'yours and mine' being separate? Well
apparently LSD helps, but that can only give a sneak preview, not an
actual institutional bedrock. And you can see this in the failure of many
social movements in the nineteen sixties which attempted to replace
'democratic mixed market capitalism' with a much more 'communist oriented'
system.
Most groups fell apart, some groups got violent, some became a band, and
some become 'communes' in rural areas, some of which of those have lasted
to this day (the name is not coincidental, and suggests that maybe this
sort of governance can only exist with comparatively few people. A couple
thousands people max, perhaps. Very early socialist Rousseau thought the
ideal population for an insular, functioning 'city-state' was about thirty
thousand people (the population of his place of residence, Geneva, in the
mid-eighteenth century)).
Communism then can be read as a pastoral reaction to the industrial
presence in cities. After all, the sort of community that better resemble
the high idealistic values of the true communist state are the
pre-agrarian ones, and the civilizations that European colonists came
across in North America, South America, Africa and Australia, which they
steadily destroyed either by violence or by importing their
proto-capitalist (and not long after, just 'capitalist') structures. But
it should be noted even these pre-agrarian/nomadic civilizations would
have social hierarchies (just not to the same extent as what was to come)
and would war with neighbouring groups.
True
communism is meant to make these things irrelevant.
The
agricultural revolutions at the rise of civilization were the spark that
led to class societies, and even as various empires have risen and fell,
and as democracy and oligarchies have replaced monarchies, these divides
persist. But they may be inevitable in our global socioeconomic system
because we can't conceive/institute a viable alternative.
The
industrial revolutions exacerbated these differences, and in the current
digital/information revolution, economic and power divisions have widened,
even while the ability to communicate with each other has become
instantaneous and effortless (paradoxically, while this technology unites
us quickly, it alienates us from each other just as fast).
There will have to be another massive change in the technology we are
using (cough, quantum computing and neural-computer links, cough) before
communism can be remotely considered possible.
But
communism is not a change in working conditions and computer power.
Communism is a massive psychological change in how groups/societies see
themselves and how the people within them interact with each other. For
all the many, many words written about communism (both before and after
Marx) never really nailed down how this process is supposed to take place.
How do you safely collapse a massive socioeconomic infrastructure that has
engulfed the other and replace it with something that is supposed to be
better?
Das
Kapital criticized capitalism, but didn’t offer an instructional manual on
how to create a communist state. It's always been easier to point out the
problem (over eight hundred pages, depending on the edition) than offer an
applicable solution.
Consequently, states that called themselves communist never really were.
They were governments that leaned heavily on oligarchic despotism, and one
can argue whether the leaders just called it communist for practical
purposes (to contrast it with a capitalist system) or because they
(idealistically) actually wanted to usher in a society based on such an
ethos, but no country has gotten even remotely close.
It
was never communism versus democracy in the Cold War, since communism was
more a philosophical/economic concept than a political one.
The
more accurate clash of political ideologies during the 20th
century was fascism/oligarchy versus democracy. As soon as the
If
you were looking at more of an economic battle of ideas, then you might
claim
'Communism versus Capitalism', but that's not accurate either. Even after
Stalin died, and they didn't crush dissent as hard, 'communism' in Russia
seemed to just be inefficient and carefully corrupt bureaucracy. At the
same time, during much of the Cold War, America had a heavily regulated
form of capitalism that included high taxes, strict rules for banks and
corporations, and massive infrastructure programs completely controlled by
the government.
In
fact, capitalism in its more pure form really didn't come into being until
the Soviet Union began to collapse. The last thirty plus years are a much
more accurate depiction of pure free market capitalism in the West than
anything that occurred during the height of the Cold War in the fifties or
sixties.
China is the only major country that bothers to even placing the term
communism anywhere in describing its form of governance, but it is a
rather empty phrase, considering its current leader is 'president for
life', and many of wealthiest people in the country are high-ranking
government officials. The connection between party leaders and the
nation's largest corporations indicate it's more of an oligarchy than
anything else (with more and more restrictions on individual freedom and
an increased level of surveillance, it's also a police state). The process
of China becoming 'the factory of the world' has made it less communist
than ever. That it - and many other south Asian countries - perform this
task of manufacturing on a massive, industrial scale for the rest of the
globe ends up being a very accurate and dispiriting proof of Marx's Theory
of Alienation.
In
pre-industrial times, almost any goods you had you either made yourself,
or you traded or purchased for it with someone in your village who made
it. You were extremely close and connected to all things you consumed. You
could attach a human face to the man who grew your food, or the woman who
sewed you clothes.
With
the industrial era, this changed greatly. While it might not seem very
important that you don't know the person who made your iPhone or socks, it
actually changes not only how we view these items, but how we look at
these individuals. The items are more disposable and replaceable, but even
worse are how the individuals no longer seem to be people but simply a
part of the machine-like process of production. We don't think of their
working conditions, of whether they are making enough money to support
themselves or their family. We are alienated from them, and today this
constantly happens on massive, global scale.
This
is easily seen in the relationship between ownership and labour, where
there is typical a large amoral gulf between the parties. It is less
likely for the owners to see labour as actual people that they are
responsible for, and more likely that they see them as expendable cogs in
the process of production.
It
should be a humbling idea, being an owner or CEO of a company, because
it's essential to remember that it's not just the financial benefit that
should be sought in a sensible society, but a benefit for the society
itself by having its citizens/employees and contributing in a dignified
manner. It should be a very difficult decision when it comes to choosing
between higher profits and fewer layoffs.
Consequently, people who can easily make this distinction are better
suited for success in a capitalist society, since exploitation is almost
inevitable within it. Communism is meant to be the antidote, but no one
knows how to re-wire the brain to make it so. Thinking of everyone else as
much as you think about yourself is an issue that goes beyond jobs, money,
and commercial society.
Capitalism has won because it champions the individual.
Communism lost because it champions the group.
This
massive reduction of two massive concepts is both unfair...but not wholly
inaccurate. One of communism’s basic tenets is the abolishment of private
property, and that's pretty much when a vast, vast majority of people say
no thanks. 'Stay out of my house', is a sensible request, an extremely
powerful piece of anti-communist propaganda, or just another hurdle to
leap over. A so-called
'evolutionary leap' of a psychological sort.
If
we decide that we want (or need) to make this jump, the initial step is
just proper education and understanding. Unfortunately, as noted above,
there is a somewhat self-imposed barrier of ignorance to the essential
qualities of socioeconomic ideologies. Perhaps the only more misunderstood
socio-political idea than communism or capitalism is the middle ground
between them: socialism.
Additionally, if communism's opposite is capitalism, then its true foe is
consumerism. Consuming for the sake of consumption, we are primed and
condition from a very young age to believe that new products and services
will always make you happy, regardless of the wider consequences that
might come with its creation and production. While damaging enough
psychologically, we also must consider that we are on a planet with finite
resources, and for a litany of reasons (many environmentally-related) it
is going to become harder in the near and far future to create the items
we have easy access to today, both necessary (food, shelter) and frivolous
(all-inclusive vacations).
Can
we change this ominous- looking future?
Well
first look to our popular fantasy futures. Star Wars (okay, it took place
'a long time ago', but it's more advanced than us) is capitalism, and Star
Trek communism.
Star
Wars has a massive empire run by the few (we even see the war profiteers
in The Last Jedi), with the masses fighting and trading over the scraps of
any sort of trickle-down power (Luke complains about how little his
landspeeder is worth when he has to trade it in, and Han literally has a
'price on his head'). The Prequels began with trade and taxation disputes,
and there are actually slaves that you can buy.
Star
Trek exists in a post-liquidity world. There is no money, there is no want
when it comes to basic necessities, since food, shelter and medicine is
inexhaustible. In the film Star Trek: First Contact, the crew of the
Enterprise goes back in time to the 21st century and when someone there
asks how much the starship 'costs', and whether they get paid, Captain
Picard answers that, 'the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving
force is our lives''.
To
be wholly satisfied, to have no want, to be at peace, to effortlessly
interact and socialize with the individuals as human beings, not their
jobs.
The
idealized version of self and community.
Sounds like a utopia.
Sounds like a dream. Sounds like the perfect communist state.
The [this is an article
that seems to be about football. And it mostly is. But it's also about
everything slowly and inconceivably changing for the worse, from
government to movie franchises. It's not going to be heavy into the 'man
vs zone coverage' and the mysterious perfect passer rating of 158.3] The Super Bowl is
next Sunday, and the Pittsburgh Steelers will not be playing. It wasn't
even close, since they didn't make the playoffs. They almost made the
playoffs. Came super close to that. They were in the running right up to
the last day of the regular season. They even won that last game, but
ridiculous losses and missteps from earlier caught up with them. Snatched
defeat from the jaws of victory. Their season started wonky, soared like
an eagle by winning six straight games, then the eagle ate something
poisonous and shat the nest for the last six weeks of the season, as they
went two and four. This should not have
happened. This made no sense. Everything was going great for them. They
were the 2016 The Steelers were
the healthiest team in their division, with their opponents (Baltimore
Ravens, Cleveland Browns, Cincinnati Bengals) all having their
quarterbacks fall to injuries for several weeks of the season (the first
two leaned on rookie qbs, the third got journeyman Jeff Driscoll). On defence, they're
tied for most sacks, and are 6th overall. On offence, their
passing is second overall, 4th overall for total, and Roethlisberger led
the league in passing yards. They have eight
pro-bowl (read: all-star) players. This is elite level
of play. The top 12 teams in
the NFL make the playoffs. How does a team that
is 4th and 6th best in everything miss the playoffs? How do you lose to
How? What a thing to
autopsy! It started on a bad
foot. Even before the first game. Their star running
back, Le'veon Bell, refused to play unless a non-franchise tag contract
was offered to him. Sorry, this is where sports terms get all
business-nerdy, and when capitalistic greed rears its ugly green head.
Just as money in politics has gotten more pugnacious, so too in
professional sports. See, So instead there is
a financial thingie (in the same way that a CDO is a financial thingie)
called a franchise tag, which means giving a player a raise from whatever
they were making at the end of their last contract, and delaying writing
up a new, big money long term one for a whole other season. It's a wonderful way
to screw an individual player. You'd think that shouldn't be allowed,
but...yeah, those are the rules. The franchise tag
meant So one of the
biggest stars in the league didn't show up for work, and that means many
things, but as far as the sports media was concerned, it meant the best
thing: Drama. Like pretty much
anything that has the word 'media' in it, sports media in the 21st century
is having a hard time turning a profit, since we all would rather
read/watch/listen to something for free than pay for it. If getting clicks
is the only way to be getting paid, anything that can be framed as
exciting, crazy or unexpected will be framed as such. Sound familiar?
Yeah, it's the Donald Trump method of narrative framing, and it involves a
lot of rumours, ignorance and exclamation marks. But this froth in
the message boards and comment threads and tweets in our hands has real
implications for the people who actually have a job to do, whether we're
talking about government employees or athletes. It is a nothing that
becomes a something. The 'will Bell show up for work or not' was a weekly
reality show for the first two-thirds of the season, ending with the team
ransacking his locker once it was clear he wouldn't at all. Problem for the
team? Apparently not, because the replacement running back was James
Connor, who was amazing at the runner-receiver combo.... and who got
injured (one of the few for the team) two thirds through the season, right
around when the Steelers started shitting the bed. Sounds great, but
let's ask again: Problem? Were they able to set this clanging Well, in their first
game of the season, they tied the perennial,
don't-cry-for-me-I'm-already-dead Cleveland Browns. Then they lost to
the suddenly impressive looking Kansas City Chiefs in week 2 (for the
entirety of the 2018 season, the unexpected and amazing performance of KC
quarterback Patrick Mahomes is similar to that of Bernie Sanders...but
would that mean Tom Brady is actually Hillary Clinton?), and later lost to
division rivals Baltimore. But then everything
clicked, and they went from 1-2-1 to 7-2-1. We can't stress enough how
unusual it is to add that third metric in typing the record. Ties are
extremely rare in football...even though there was a pair of them this
year. Which is a good time to extrapolate that everything that seems to be
happening in global politics these days is both completely bizarre and
unthinkable. Saying 'this has never happened before' is true of the Trump
administration, Brexit, China becoming more of a powerful police state
while its economy is starting to wheeze a bit, but everyone still has to
go about their day and move on, kind of carrying the news in the back of
your mind, not sure if it's going to cost you in the end...like a tie for
a football. But winning six
games straight feels good! Let's ignore the
fact that these wins came against teams that had been floundering all
season. Let's forget that you never truly see your failings while you’re
succeeding. Let's forget that making the assumption that because things
are going great now they are going to be great forever is so human it
hurts ('pride cometh before fall' and all those wise-sounding aphorisms). It hurts because
they looked great for this six middle weeks, especially after a 52-21
mauling of the Carolina Panthers. It's like that game
sucked up all the energy and ability for the rest of the year. From being
able to wrap up the game early, to never being able to wrap them up at
all, because then they went 2 and 4, and all the losses were by a
touchdown or less. So were the wins. If only they could
have spread the 31 point win differential against They lost to the LA
Chargers after an offside non-call led to an easy touchdown for the
Chargers because the Steelers defenders stop playing because the penalty
was so obvious, but because the refs didn't blow the whistle Rivers
through a long and easy TD for seven points. They narrowly lost
to the Oakland Raiders, one of the worst teams in the league this year,
when their usually reliable kicker slipped on the grass when he tried to
tie it up the waning seconds. They lost to the New
Orleans Saints, and that one was agonizing on several levels. As the
season went on and it was clear the Saints were a bone-crushing
juggernaut, Steelers fans would look at the rest of the games their team
would have to play and figure, 'well, we might lose to the Saints because
they're so good, but as long as we've beaten teams like Denver and
Oakland, losing to the Saints won't harm our playoff hopes'. But after
losing to All these small
mistakes in each game add up. It was maddening to watch. The Steelers
offence would rush down the filed then turn the ball over. Their defense
would make two amazing stops back to back and then give up a massive
thirty yard play. But it was worse
than just a slow crumbling towards failure because there were flashes of
hope. They beat their chief conference rival the New England Patriots in
what was practically a battle of attrition (limiting the Brady-bot to ten
points), and they won their last game of the season against the Cincinnati
Bengals. But to make the playoffs they also needed the Cleveland Browns to
beat the Baltimore Ravens (who stopped sucking around the time the
Steelers started to, as if it was hex passed from team to team), who were
just narrowly ahead of the Steelers in the standings. The games were
occurring at the exact same time, and because the Steelers game ended a
few minutes before, the giant TV in the Steelers' stadium broadcast the
rest of the Browns-Ravens game for all the fans and some of the players,
so they could see if their season was about to end or keep going. And the
Browns-Ravens game was close, down to the last drive, with the Browns
making a final push to try and win the game, but hotshot quarterback Baker
Mayfield threw an interception, and the Ravens won.
You could watch the
Steelers players glumly walk across their own field to go back to the
locker room, their season - one that should have been amazing, one that
was amazing except for the one stat that really mattered (win/loss) -
truly over. But why should a bad
season end there? The best receiver in
the game, Antonio Brown, didn't play that last game, allegedly because he
was injured, but it was later revealed there were arguments and
near-fights at an earlier practice, and now it looks like he doesn't want
to play in Oh, and
Smith-Shuster injured himself at the Pro-Bowl, the NFL's version of the
all star game, but is more like all-star practice, because no one plays
with the same energy because no one wants to risk getting hurt...except
that one of the Steelers players' just did. Yeah. How does a season
get worse after its over? That's how. It's like going to
the funeral of a loved one and then accidentally throwing up in open
casket while trying to pay your respects. The Pittsburgh
Steelers are one of those big-ticket, high-performance teams that have
been consistently playoff bound for more than a decade, with very few
exceptions. Up there with the New England Patriots and...well there's
actually a bit of a drop off in consistency after that. In terms of
comparing them to movie franchises, New England's freakishly unending
success is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which works, because this
season, [To continue this
analogy - which could easily be debated over for the rest of
civilization's history - The Green Bay Packers is Star Wars (the original
big success, flashes of brilliance in between long years of dormancy, but
never quite as good as under Lombardi), The New Orleans Saints is Mission
Impossible (carried by one ageless wonder), and the Dallas Cowboys is Fast
and the Furious (flashy, attention-getting, popular, but hollow in the
end). And maybe all those Sports teams are
like lumbering movie sets, with so many behind the scenes employees
working hard to give the stars a chance to do amazing things which make
everyone watching at the stadium/cinema or at home simply go, 'wow'. More so than any
other big ticket multi-billion dollar sport, football is a team game.
Sure, having the best quarterback money can buy is a huge asset, but he
has to have great defenders to keep him from getting sacked and great
receivers to throw to. Plus, these players are only on the field half the
time. There's a completely different set of players that play defence
(plus special teams, but that's getting further down the rabbit hole). Even though the
intricacies of the game means the individual is just one cog in a great
big yard eating machine, fantasy sports, advanced stats/metrics, and
social media have isolated players to a much greater degree. This running
back is worth this much, can do this better than anyone, and can be blamed
for this result by thousands of sofa coaches howling for their blood. That passion is
real, even though sports are superfluous (despite the many, many people
whose paycheque depends on it, from athletes to stadium workers). That
means it's much more malleable than things that truly matter, like
political and economic decisions. You can hate the New York Jets for no
reason at all, and that's absolutely okay with no real world consequences.
Hating the Supreme Court, Brexit, or offshore oil drilling can change the
course of history. Sports were great because it was pure escapism, but
that might not be the case anymore. Football is becoming
everything. This exact phrase can be applied globally, except that an
entirely different sport is meant by the term, and - bizarrely - works
just as well. 'Soccer' has become everything. FIFA and the World Cup is a
giant, money-grubbing blob that preys on the money and attention of the
masses just like the NFL and the Super Bowl. They make rules that
local cities and host nations bend over backwards to meet (because money)
and change other ones quite regularly for athletes and coaches. Certain
levels of cheating and outright criminal activity are tolerated with a
slap on the wrist. PEDs? Just a suspension for a few games. Videotaping
your opponent's practices? A quick fine. Paying your own players to make
dirty hits on opponents with the intent of injuring them? Suspension and a
quick fine. A player attacking a woman in a hotel room, a hotel hallway or
hotel elevators? Well, if we end up finding the security tape then maybe
we'll see what we can do. And with football
becoming everything, then it may as well be a wedge issue. So Donald Trump
brags about his relationship with team owners (reminding us all of the
typical wealth disparity of people with power and those without), then
disparages the players protesting police violence by kneeling for the
national anthem. The president coming down against a citizen's basic
rights should be an alarm bell, but that bell's being going on so
consistently we barely even hear it. ('Fun' Fact: Trump
tried to buy the Buffalo Bills back in 2013, but nothing came of his bid.
It's tempting to imagine the timeline where he bought the team and was too
busy to run for president) If football is
everything, then it has to suddenly take on an appearance of ugliness and
hate, as well as excellence and triumph, although thank goodness we all
try and focus on the latter. Last year's Minneapolis Miracle (the scrappy
Vikings beating the Saints on the last play of the game) gave us hundreds
of deliriously happy reaction videos that shows just how excited sports
can make people. For all it's faults, football can bring so many people
together...to hate on the team two hours away. But right now the
Pittsburgh Steelers don't even have that. No videos of success, or of
sudden, heartbreaking defeat. The season was a slow crawl to 'not good
enough'. Ultimately, they couldn't not make it to the playoffs by
themselves. They had to rely on a certain outcome of another game. In
football commentator parlance, it's 'needing help', it’s ‘not in charge of
your own destiny’. Having to rely on other teams to win or lose. To
suddenly cheer with all you might for the Cleveland Browns. In a football fan's
heart it's like launching satellites into space. The interconnectedness of
complicated factors, all of which have to go off without a hitch, and it's
a devastating gut punch when a small piece deviates and fucks everything
up. It would be lightly
comical if you didn't care. But if you do, it's
like finding out that god is dead. This isn't supposed to happen.
Storylines are preset. The Steelers make the playoffs, play smash mouth
football to eke out a couple victories, but then lose to the Patriots in
the semi-finals (aka, the Conference Championships). As it was, as it
shall ever be.
But not in 2018.. Fortunately, 2019
training camp is only like six months away!
Science Through Video Games
Physics is hard. Quantum Physics is much harder. People learn more quickly
and easily when they can actually experience the scientific laws and
theories you're trying to teach them. A few simple experiments involving
motion, force, and gravity can give a good example of how
Matter and energy in spacetime, that's physics without bringing up math
(you're welcome). Quantum physics has an even bigger initial hurdle,
because we can't experience the actions on the quantum scale. Both the
size of the particles involved and the speed at which they move are too
small for us to observe and measure without laboratory equipment. The
actual definition of one second of time passing is not saying
'one-one-thousand', or the tick of a clock (what was that one tick set
to?), but the amount of time it takes for radiation to make 9 192 631 770
jumps to different energy levels of a ground state caesium 133 atom. 9 192
631 770. So a second takes about nine billion tiny vibration-like movement
around an atom, a small chunk of matter we can't see with the naked eye.
Slightly related fact: It would take 280 years for a person to count to
nine billion.
All of this is counterintuitive. Slight incongruities and unexplainable
aspects of regular physics experiments sent scientists to the blackboard
trying to explain them, and the theories they came up with needed to wait
decades before experiments ultimately verified them. We had to wait for
some eclipses and technological advances to prove relativity and show how
the Uncertainty Principle governs the small bits of matter.
But it's thanks to these discoveries that we have been able to develop
computational technology to develop video games that we can understand and
experience quantum physics and the fifth dimension.
Early computers were size of the bedrooms, then shrunk as we were able to
build smaller and smaller transistors on silicon chips, and by the
mid-seventies we had pong, and by the mid-eighties we had Mario running
along a 2D world, stomping goombas and collecting bling.
In the nineties, the advent of 3D gaming technology meant, "the same
principles that enable the world's leading scientists and engineers to
visualize complex information will now revolutionize video entertainment
in the home." So said Jim Clark the founder of Silicon Graphics Inc, which
made great leaps in three-dimensional computer technology around this
time.
Just like tens of thousands of years ago, when killing your food with a
stick and trying to build a makeshift shelter in the woods (like a lot of
games allow you to do), the best learning is repetitive and relevant.
Flipping through a science textbook can be a slog. Understanding how
certain scientific ideas work by having Mario carry a giant turnip halfway
across a level to dump in some stew for a power moon is a heart-pumping
challenge.
It isn't necessary for the game itself to be overtly educational. Simply
playing the game is able to be a learning experience, and not just 'how'
to win. You learn how to adapt to a new environment, with different rules
than those you interact with in real life. And as the games advanced, so
did the intricacy of their environments.
There is certainly complication in physics, and correspondingly there can
be complication in virtual worlds that have their own physics set by game
developers, which affects not only the character the player is
maneuvering, but everything else in the world.
We even call it a Physics Engine.
See, the standard model of physics is...uh...this:
If there was a playbook for the universe, this is it. The standard model
tells us how all the particles and the space (ahem, fields) between the
particles work. It is not one hundred percent perfect (where art thou,
graviton?), but it does more than any other theory before it, combining
classical physics (the study how atoms and above (from rocks to people to
planets) operate) and quantum physics (for atoms and below).
In video games, which are made of ones and zeroes made of flickering
electrical signals, there is the physics engine, which is a series of
interconnected mathematical equations that can be added to every virtual
character or movable object in the game (like a treasure chest, a weapon,
a rock, a tree, etc.). It can also be adjusted differently for each object
simply by clicking and dragging along a digital lever or knob. Make your
tree heavier, or more subject to the pull of gravity, which will be all
the more clear when the player interacts with it. Set the strength and
tint of the light, which can affect how and what the player will see. Add
natural objects like clouds, and then give them unnatural qualities like
health-increasing or health-decreasing if a player walks or flies through
it. Then duplicate the object as many times as you'd like. The physics
engine is the playbook for the not-actually-physical universe you are able
to create.
Press 'play' and suddenly the fourth dimension (time) is incorporated.
Immediately the pre-set conditions will be activated, and like a Big Bang,
your computer-made universe has begun. Until you press the pause button,
and then move the slider for the player's maximum speed because it was
taking too long for them to reach the first marker.
The game development software is malleable enough for the creator to
indulge in all sorts of exploration and experimentation. And just like the
actual discipline of physics and its quantum counterpart, the more time
you spend experimenting, the more you learn about the types of
environments as you create them.
Space is not a vacuum, and neither is the artificial space you begin with
in game design. We can build a universe. We've bypassed exploring our
solar system/galaxy and have instead focussed on creating large, simulated
environments with computer technology. And we're building them out of some
of the smallest particles in the universe. Transistors shuffle electrons
through gates that are getting closer and closer to the size of DNA
strands (10 nanometers to approximately 3.4 nanometers).
We are tinkering with the very basic building blocks of the universe, and
we've found it easier so far to go microscopic than macroscopic. Smashing
extremely small particles together after speeding them up to ridiculously
high speeds, check. When it comes to the Big Bang, cosmic inflation and
supernovae, we can simulate these events on more and more powerful
computers, making slight differences to create alternate starting
conditions for our universe.
Correspondingly, our
entertainment is becoming more richly detailed and interactive, namely
open-world video games, loosely defined as one that not only permits but
encourages exploration and non-linear gameplay (no level one followed by
level two followed by bonus round, etc.). Objectives can be completed
without restrictions of order or time, the player deciding their own pace
and plan. And while these types have games have existed for decades, they
have become more lifelike.
How far off we are from it being difficult to tell the difference between
simulation and reality is not easy to ascertain, but how far we've come in
only thirty five years since the first Nintendo console is astonishing.
It's not that we'll get lost in the virtual world. It's that we can learn
from it. Whether we continue to stare at screens (from phone to
theatre-sized) or wear VR goggles while floating in an immersion tank, we
will have choices of the world we want to live in. Research within
simulations that can teach us more about our own reality. Fantasy tourism.
Maybe you've seen all the exotic locals on earth, but how about fictional
planets that look and feel pretty damn close?
The games we have now (your GTAs, your God of Wars, your Red Deads, your
Breath of the Wilds) are about carefully juggling skills and abilities and
resources to achieve short and long term goals. This can be rather
complex.
Chomsky said that the proof that the average citizen can certainly retain
and apply complicated structures of interrelated information could be seen
in the obsession and discussion of sports statistics and how adjusting
strategies based on this information could result in the desired effect (a
win). In recent years, contract negotiations and salary caps becoming
another aspect of this 'field of study'. Perhaps the subprime mortgage
crisis could be easily explained if it was applied to building a football
team's offensive line.
Or you can boot up your console, and juggle several forms of in-game
currencies as if they were quadratic equations. You're in a role playing
game. There are a lot of important numbers and symbol to keep track of.
Your health, your current weapon and its strength and its ammunition
level, your defence (not to be confused with health), your basic supplies,
your crafted supplies that can be made out of your basic supplies, your
currency, your secondary currency for certain higher end items, and a
possible tertiary currency for a ever-changing selection of limited time
items. All of which need to be considered in tandem for whatever the
problem or challenge is currently in front of you. There needs to be a
familiarity with engaging in the basic forms of exchange.
The same goes for mapping. The arrangement of information meant to
represent items and locations throughout the world. Some of the earliest
drawings of human civilization are maps. From the night sky to
agricultural information to military strategy to not getting lost as you
travel to your uncle's house, the basic necessities of maps cannot be
understated. Visual representations - and repeated examinations of them -
are are essential learning tools. It's become a stand-in term for any sort
of complicated situation or process (ex: 'the map of the human genome',
'the map of the universe').
In open world video games, the map plays this same role. But you can play
- with a higher degree of difficulty - without getting the map, and just
finding items and locations as you explore the world. And through doing
this, you create a sort of mental map, knowing where items and places are
located in relation to other items and places.
Science is searching for a map of everything, but for the moment are
forced to find items and locations and attempt to link even slightly
relatable pieces together, and by doing this we are creating a sort of
mental map. It's just that everything would be easier if we found this
everything map first.
But above all, even if we're just trying to make a vague comparisons of
learning in video games to learning in general sciences, the most unique
aspect of 3D open world gaming is how the
Second Joystick acts like the Fifth Dimension.
Big, open-world video games of the last few years have tried to outdo its
predecessors in terms of scale and detail, while their root mechanics
haven't changed that much. While being able to do so much is new, being
able to observe so much goes all the way back to Super Mario 64, the first
Mario game in 3D. But not just 3D. Also 4D, because of the passage of
time. Even though there is no timer in this game, there is the passage of
time and its basic effects, as in 'the moment before you jump, the moment
of your jump, the moment of your landing on the top of a goomba, the
moment of its death'. This
may seem like a very basic observation, but it shows how innately we
understand the passage of time, and how we take it for granted, even in a
simulated world). But not just 4D. Also 5D.
In Super Mario 64 and many, many video games that came after you are
looking down on your character in what is a third-person perspective.
Meaning you typically have the ability to move the perspective around to
see yourself from the back, side, above, below, and in front. Today, this
is done with the second joystick on your controller (the first joystick
being reserved for movement). You can completely move this perspective
around as you run and jump around while time passes. You can see your
character from 'outside of the game'.
But what is this perspective? In Mario 64, the conceit was explained away
as if this was another character of the game flying above you and holding
a camera, filming your every move for 'you the player' to experience the
world and move Mario around in it.
Successive games - from the Grand Theft Autos to The Legend of Zeldas -
did away with the character aspect, and the shifting perspective that is
completely in control of the player is just a given. This setup is akin to
a sort of 'out of body experience', the kind that people claimed to have
felt when they nearly died, or experienced in hallucinations. They are
times when they fee like they have stepped outside of reality.
In these video games, you have complete control of this perspective,
rotating the joystick around and around, angling it just so, which might
then allow you to make a certain jump or attack in just the right way. To
control yourself and control how you see yourself (even while 'being'
yourself). This is one of those 'hard to wrap your head around' concepts
that come with trying to talk about the fifth dimension.
But for a generation of gamers, it's become something like second nature.
The 'duel joystick' perspective is how we can conceive stepping out of a
4D universe, because you are using a five dimensional simulation machine
in a four dimensional universe.
But it can also be bizarrely described as our level of 3D looking down
through a 2D screen at an artificial form of 3D. And if that's not trippy
enough for you, enter the Zelda: Breath of the Wild glitch, where you can
see the physics engine half fail (or let's say half-succeed, to be
positive). In certain sections of the game you can have your character
'pushed' through a wall where nothing was designed to exist behind it.
Your character falls into an artificial, half-set up world that very
loosely resembles the geography of the actual game. Then something
completely breaks down, like the ground catches fire, you can't move
forward anymore, water is running vertically, or you get stuck in a
perspective where your character has disappeared beneath an impossible
lake, cannot move except to look around, and cannot die. 3D to 2D to 3D to
3D, and somewhere along the line there you see something you could never
have conceived yourself. You can experience the cold, confusing,
unfairness of a reality that was not meant for you.
But for most people, candy crush is enough. Not everyone is a gamer, but
almost everyone under forty plays video games, so to some extent we've all
chosen part of simulated world. The low bar definition of being a gamer
was simply owning a console (or a computer that wasn't just for the
Internet or word processing) and spending X amount of hours per week on
average staring at your TV and killing or saving something (and usually
you'd be saving something by killing something else). Phone games are
either just twists on old style arcade games (not much of a jump from
bubble bobble to candy crush) or digitized versions of real-life pastimes
like cards or slots. But with still-advances to technology (and more
internet satellites), you can play Fortnite, Minecraft and Pokemon on your
phone, and break the server at your high school/coffee shop/neighbour's
wifi in the process. And you don't have to think about quantum physics when you're doing it, but do take a moment to consider the little universe in your hands.
What do we do
with populism now?
Populism gave
America a vacuous, adulterous, lazy, ignorant, narcissist
playboy-turned-game-show-host president.
But such a leader
had/has no real policies and barely any political opinions at all (he was
registered a as democrat for much of his life), just some squawking
points, and his cabinet was effortlessly filled in with business as usual,
pro-corporate, beltway corruption types (which mirrors his own ups and
downs of running his toxic, lawsuit-laden brand).
Donald Trump ran
as a populist but the most important policies instituted under his
presidency has been decidedly anti-populist, benefiting primarily the very
wealthy and the corporations they own. Call it the oldest, dustiest,
cliché-ridden trick in the book. The 'sucker born every minute' switch. No
reason to list the man's litany of lies and half-truths here, although as
of this writing, the 'aberration of the moment' is the United States
resigning from the UN's Human Rights Commission, in part due to the
thankfully (hopefully?) brief policy of separating refugee children from
their families at their southern border.
Pulling back from
tweets and undercooked executive orders, a larger problem is that Donald
Trump has possibly tainting the term ‘populism’ for a generation. Bernie
Sanders is considered the populist politician on the left (aligning
himself with the Democratic Party while still calling himself a socialist
and championing universal health care, free tuition, and stricter
financial regulations), but how many moderates in either of the two major
parties in America are going to do a similar sort of over-steering in
future elections?
Sadly, this is an
excellent opportunity for mainstream political party gatekeepers to push
for centrist candidates who won't say or try to do anything too far left
or far right. 'We can't afford another Donald Trump', will be the mantra,
'we just need to return to sensible, responsible policies'. (a welcome
thing to do compared to the chaotic, extremist decisions of the current
White House)
But this is
inaccurate and inefficient. The United States - nay, the world - needs
anti-corporate, citizen-centric legislation more now than ever before. But
such policies have become so rare that they're framed as 'extreme left',
when they really should be considered centrist.
Led by the United
States, the last forty-odd years has been a transition from public
government power to private corporate power. It should come as no surprise
that this has resulted in the already wealthy becoming much wealthier
while the middle class in the West has shrunk rapidly. Average household
debt has grown, which, to peel back the euphemisms, means that
corporations 'own' people until the money owed is paid off. Wages and
employment opportunities have shrunk, resentment and despair has risen.
The policies to
reverse this course may as well be called a populist platform, but Trump
(who has done nothing to address these problems, and has instead
exacerbated them) has made such a label completely revolting.
Some populist
politicians are strongmen. Donald Trump hasn't the interest to do even
that. Like everything else, he believes perception is more important than
the reality of the situation, if only because controlling the former is
easier than the latter.
But primarily
boasting, lying, and playing golf leaves the functioning of government in
jeopardy, and Trump has surrounded himself with lackeys who seem
uninterested in doing anything but quenching their own thirst for power
and prestige (and $43,000 phone booths on the public dime). The
consequence of this is the passive dismantling of the executive branch to
the point of inefficiency. It has already happened to the legislative, and
since the reality of falling dominos is in effect, the corruption of the
judicial could soon follow (that is, stocking the bench with party
loyalists instead of competent, apolitical judges).
Trump is the
perfect president for wealthy bankers and financiers who are too lazy to
hide their while collar crimes. A man who wants to hog all the headlines
to himself, a man who subscribes to 'no bad publicity' to a nauseatingly
epic degree. A man who sees apologizing as a sign of weakness. A man who
knows he knows everything and therefore doesn't have to know anything new.
The only thing certain is to appeal to his base of supporters who will
never desert him and give him what he wants all along: adoration. Which is
why he splits families at the border, gets out of international peace
agreements, and discriminates against transgendered people. While clearly
the wrong thing to do, more important for Trump is that it's an easy thing
to do. Trade wars are vaguely interesting and gives a chance to flex your
so-called muscle, until he and the media realize it's just bickering about
taxes and so then move on to the next (non)story.
Certainly there
are millions of people who support Trump in America, just as there are
millions of people in other nations who support populist leaders who hold
similar views about immigration, regulation, and basely vilifying their
political opponents. But do they represent the majority of the country's
citizens? Clearly that is a central question regarding populism. Ideally
populism - that is, the will of the majority of the people - should always
be in effect. The fact that we have to acknowledge that it isn't always
the case, even in democracies, means that lobbyists and special interests
can have an inordinate amount of power in political decisions. Trump
painted Hilary Clinton as a sort of Washington insider, saying she pals
around with elite bankers and is deeply enmeshed in the deep state
(accusations he continues to make, eighteen months after election). Enough
people believed that, and enough people believe Trump is doing a good job
(42% approval among the general populace, but 90% approval amongst
Republicans) that he is not going to change his ways any time soon.
The referendum on
his first two years will be midterm elections in November. While the
consistency and frequency means many, many decisions regarding legislation
and fundraising can be timed around the second Tuesday in November, at
least one advantage is that power can be checked with regularity
(operative word there being 'can'). If the president is supposedly
unpopular with liberals and moderates, how the democrats are positioning
themselves says a lot about how the will of the people is manifested in
the halls of power. The candidates further to the left than the centre are
asked to hold the basic party line on issues: Cut down on the impeachment
talk and focus on how the democrats can nebulously do better.
At the moment it
seems that Donald Trump will be held up as an argument against populism of
any sort across the political spectrum. There is the assumption that
Bernie Sanders would be his mirror-image, introducing legislation that
would be unpalatable for half the country (as well as the wealthy) and
would continually pilloried by the right wing press (although perhaps it's
a given that Sanders' decorum might be less scathing and deranged). This
was how Clinton portrayed Sanders, successfully leaning herself to the
middle of the political spectrum, even though it wasn't enough in the
general election. Looking back on 2016, it was clear that people wanted
change, that Trump promised them heaven and earth (and locking up Clinton
herself), and enough citizen in the electoral college system of
vote-tallying went with it. If this presidency is the will of the people,
will the typical power players (titans of commerce and industry, along
with their influence on governments) be able to use this a reason to keep
the status quo going forward?
That a horribly
unqualified person can become the leader of the world's most powerful
country shows how corrupt its political process have become. That a facade
of success can reach the highest office in the land illustrates how flimsy
and crooked the path to the American Dream actually is in the twenty first
century.
But this is by no
means an American problem (it's just the most obvious, 500-pound
gorilla-like example). Eastern European nations have had an arduous time
in the nearly three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union. The
European Union made carefully calculated steps to not introduce the likes
of Poland, Hungary, and the former Czechoslovakia to their regulated
market economy too quickly. EU membership was an arduous and careful
process. Ensuring certain economic conditions and political freedoms was
necessary, and we're not done overnight. But in recent years, these
advances are undone practically just as quickly (with some decisions
literally being made in parliament after sundown to escape public
scrutiny), with democratically-elected leaders turned dictators in the
countries mentioned above (oh, and Russia as well, by the way, who appears
to be going from pariah to ‘model of the future’).
The message is
Trump-like: I can restore our country to its former glory, I can kick out
the job-stealing foreigners, I can end corruption and the power of the
seemingly unknown super-wealthy. Blaming the other has been a populist
message for centuries, and everyone from kings to congress-people have
used it.
But this isn't
simply happening in the economically depressed regions like Middle America
or Eastern Europe. Liberal safeguards like France and Germany are finding
conservative challengers whose basic platform is anti-immigrant and
anti-Muslim. In the Canadian province of Ontario, populist candidate Doug
Ford (whose opponents and critics paint as a Trump doppelganger, since
part of his platform was cheap gas) and his Conservative Party won 61%
percent of the seats in parliament while only winning 40% of the popular
vote. So we should note here that frequent part of the left's platform is
to change the actual electoral process. Ranked ballots have been held up
as a better form than 'first past the post' when it comes to winning
districts and building a representative government. Occasionally more
centrist parties have flouted this idea of electoral (notably Trudeau's
Liberal Party), only to drop the issue once they gain power (notably
Trudeau's Liberal Party).
But such an issue
is only noticed by a comparatively small segment of a country's
population. A common lament by those who follow politics daily is how few
people do the same. For how important the decisions of every government
can be for its citizens, that voting rates have predominantly declined in
developed nations is certainly a tragedy (not voting in a democracy is a
vote for fascism).
The true enemy of
populism is not any sort of agenda of the powerful attempting to maintain
the status quo, but simple malaise. If populism is the will of the people,
then its lack of will is what must be counteracted. The thinking that one
vote doesn't matter, or that all politicians and political parties are the
same, or that the system is permanently rigged. Certainly those that want
to maintain the rich-friendly system that current exists will encourage
the masses to engender such thoughts.
There needs to a
thirst for political knowledge, for political change, for betterment. And
those that voted for Donald Trump thought that's what they were voting
for. His simple, oft-repeated message struck enough of a chord with enough
voters to create a sizeable base of energized citizens within the
Republican Party (Michael Moore (in)famously called the election for Trump
back in August, after attending the Republican Convention and said these
supporters will carry the electoral college). Populism does not have a
concrete platform. It can be a package of anti-immigrant, pro-gun, and
pro-life ideas, or it can be a mix of anti-corporate, libertarian,
pro-choice positions. It doesn't take much to find a poll that would
suggest most people in a nation are thinking the way you are arguing that
they do. Individuals may have nuanced thoughts on these issues, but
populism needs to be straightforward and direct to be able to connect with
voters who care not a whit for controversial riders attached to spending
bills. But populism only works if these simple messages are backed with
actual legislation and politicians who are willing to see them through. It
is the most easily manipulated, and therefore one of the most volatile
political 'isms'. If a hard-line on immigration is all you care about,
then Trump is a successful populist president. If you're terrified that a
trampling of regulations and union power is going to quickly destroy the
middle class, than he's a complete and maddening disaster who only cares
about rich people like himself.
And we have the
ability to continually believe that our worldview is indomitably correct.
Religion used to
the opiate of the masses. Now it's the careful marketing of a life each
citizen supposedly deserves. A return to the supposed good old days,
before everything supposedly went
wrong. 'Make America Great Again' is based on the idea that it's necessary
to look backwards, to go back to a way it used to be.
Media and
advertising companies don't have to work very hard to paint this picture.
People want to believe that this is true. The power of misplaced nostalgia
and exceptionalism (when government money is spent in your community it's
good policy, and when it's spent somewhere else it's just undeserved
handouts and corruption).
Consequently, the
cure for failed populism is more populism. To combat ignorance and bullet
point slogans which are mostly lies we need detailed, carefully researched
truths.
But if right wing
populism is a Trojan horse, a process that results in a corporatist
polyarchy retaining control of the levers of state power, are we naive to
think that left wing populism would be any more effective? Not to suggest
that it would result in the same (a not-so-quiet retention/coup of the
elites), but that leftist policies would be so much more difficult to
enact. This is due simply to the practical necessity of taking a long time
to build the bureaucratic foundation to adequately provide the service of,
say, single-payer health care, or the literal infrastructure of
construction projects. Leftist programs that would benefit the majority of
citizens require time and money, two things that are in short supply in a
world where we want to see results every financial quarter and we decimate
much-need social programs to pay for upper class tax cuts.
That populism is
an empty cup which can be filled with whatever is the hot button issue of
the season may doom it. If the working and middle classes could possibly
agree on a populist economic platform, then a populist platform on social
issues (abortion, LGBQT rights) can easily tear it asunder. One of the
challenges of a democracy is to not to give in to whims of the moneyed
class, which is hard regardless of a politicians' particular morals,
because there are fewer of them and their requests from a government are
much simpler to enact. Even though cutting taxes and gutting regulations
harm the average citizen, it can be presented as win for the politicians
who enacted the legislation on behalf of the wealthy.
And the idea of a 'win' is a poisoned pill, one
that Trump can feed to his supporters with regularity. The strain of
populism that is now dominant in the West is giving too much trust and
fealty to the pontifications of the strongman, who will always claim they
are doing what's best, that they are always succeeding, and when something
goes wrong, that it's not their fault, that the other is always to blame
(whether it be the political opposition, minorities, other nations, etc.).
Fringe politicians have become the mainstream ones, and they demand
loyalty above all else. Ignorant embrace of these figures were what many
democratic states were designed to fight against (going all the way back,
to some degree, to Ancient Greece). A divesting of power among the people.
But what can be carefully can be foolishly thrown away. If we aren't
careful, soon the only thing that will be popular is what the few people
with power tell us what's popular.
LABO and Beyond The future is cardboard. About a year we stuck up an article on the video game 'Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild'. We said very nice things about it, and tried to present it as something a lot more interesting and socio-culturally relevant than saving a kingdom by killing a lot of monsters with a sword (it can be two things!). The game was the headline release for Nintendo's newest console, the Switch, which became an incredible success, with its unique design, effortless portability and wonderfully deep catalogue of games, thanks to Nintendo making it easier for third party developers* to sell their games online (via the company's e-shop). * - Quick
Primer: When Nintendo makes games themselves for their own console (like a
Mario or Zelda game), it's an example of first party development. When a
scrappy little game design company (sometimes of only two or three people)
makes a game/app for a console or computer or smart phone, it's an example
of third party development. It's a bit like the comparison between
Hollywood studios and independent ones, or major and independent record
labels. Video games have been getting bigger and bigger, both in terms of cinematic presentation and player interaction. You get to be immersed in a massive, gorgeous world (well, typically a harrowing one, since you probably have some very difficult mission to complete that involves fighting and exploring) with many strategic choices at every turn, playing a movie-style story with character development and action sequences, all of which add up to experience that becomes a big part of your daily activities. Either that or you're staring at your phone while in line for something, playing fortnite or clash of clans or whatever iteration of candy crush we're on. It's more of a quick hit of those gaming endorphins than when you have a controller in your hand, staring at a fifty two inch screen forhours, but it's another sign that when confronted with the option of constantly interacting with a flashy simulated reality over a rather ordinary real one, millions upon millions of us take the former. It is in this environment that Nintendo introduces Labo, an activity kit that is a series of cardboard cutouts that you fold into various contraptions that incorporate the console and mini-controllers of the Switch. And it's pure joy. Twenty eight sheets of cardboard can look particularly uninspiring to gamers in 2018, so credit where credit it due: Nintendo took a bit of a risk (if not financially, then at least reputationally in the gaming community), knowing that their strength lies in trying something just a little bit different. And this difference is seen as soon as you open the box, and begin to relive your halcyon Lego days. The kit could have come with pre-assembled cardboard pianos, fishing rods, and a motorcycle dash board/handlebars, but putting it together yourself is almost half the fun. There's a bit more of that proud feeling of possession when it's something you put in the time and built yourself, and the step-by-step instructions on the Switch's console are perfect. We'll readily admit that we underestimated the cardboard. We expected flimsiness and constant repair and unexpected collapses when we press a key too harshly or accidentally drop the fishing rod. But no, it's all surprisingly durable, and so much of the folding and building you're doing is to just reinforce the basic structure of the device so it can withstand the inevitable play. Without intending to, the Labo is already teaching the primary necessities of construction and engineering: strength, steadiness and simplicity. In a world that's becoming more and more virtual (why play with a couple hundred Lego blocks when you can play with an infinite amount of Minecraft blocks?), it's a wonderful reminder of the power of the physical. Hell, it reminds you that you're not just an avatar of pixels inside of a screen. Of course, this isn't a Luddite experiment by any means. Labo wants to bridge the gap between the virtual and real. The sturdy cardboard models are just that, until you place the two small controllers or the rectangular Switch console into them. Technological advancements are always a mixture of the old and new. The steamed power loom was still knitting blankets and clothing, but just at a much faster pace. In terms of toys, you used to own a plastic fake motorbike and maybe run around with it in your backyard (okay, maybe not 'you', as we are probably going generations back), or built one out of Lego and pushed it around. You’d have to pretend that you were taking part in a race. Now you have a cardboard motorbike that has a place on its dashboard for a specialized portable computer the size of a small book (speaking of objects that are seemingly becoming rare and obsolete) which can play the visualizations of a motorbike race that you the player can use your cardboard vehicle to interact with. It's not just that the Switch console is a touch-screen tablet-like wonder, but how well it works with all the accessories. Infrared cameras on one of the miniature controllers can track reflective tape, and gyroscopes inside them react to even your slightest motions. It's not so much that you can play a cardboard piano, or go fishing with a rod that has a line that reels in and out both physically and virtually, but that you can explore and find out how exactly this technology works. Yes, you follow the instructions on how to build the cardboard objects by following an instructional video, and the games associated with each object uses the electronic parts, but the Switch thankfully takes the next step and has an incredible series of short exercises and mini-games to explain how this technology works. Programming is the new literacy, and the earlier kids and adults understand even the very basics of input-node connection-output, the better prepared they will be to work with the ever-advancing computer technology of the future (and stop an AI from going rogue). Didacticism is always a challenge, and should sometimes be viewed suspiciously. Making the question 'How do things work?' fun already makes an assumption that 'fun' should even be in the equation. Leveling up, getting shiny fake medals that unlock the next series of lessons, and playful/educational conversations between three helpful NPCs (Non-Playable Characters), that's the future of learning, everyone. All for the not very low price of around $400 US, when taking tax into consideration. Which is a lot of money for a household to spend on a gaming console, but not too much if it will become the basic piece of equipment for schools across nations to spend on each of their students. And there will be advantages of using consoles that the school provides, and advantages to letting the software be available to the phones that many students (at least in high school) already own. The solution will probably incorporate both, with some work being available as console-only (which will have to be heavily reinforced physically, because kids drop and break things), and other lessons available as homework on personal tech. Education will mix this ('this' defined as 'tapping screen after screen, with a couple words of encouragement from a low-level AI program written months or even years earlier') with some occasional group work in a much smaller school building, since now teens will have the opportunity - if they meet grade and digital attendance requirements - to learn from home or anywhere else. And maybe they have to pick up some cardboard from time to time (or get it delivered), so that when they're actually in a lab or a factory, they have some hands on experience with items simulating the real thing. This will become the educational institution in the future, from children (for every level of schooling) to adults (for job training, or for personal interest). And just like every big change, there's going to be a lot of great advances, and a lot of terrible consequences (some obvious, some not). A uniformity in education basics, with opportunities to branch out and learn on your own if you choose to. Sound great. But there's danger to one way of doing everything. Making software that can cater to the various personalities and lifestyle choices of the learner (are they eager go-getters, or forgetful potheads) can only do so much. No matter how many ways you try to include everyone, people are bound to slip through the cracks and reject this format, from reasons ranging from political protest to not giving a shit. And who creates the curriculum for these programs? What agenda could they possibly have? This is not a problem that's suspect idle only to digital world, of course. Science textbooks have been bankrolled by vested interests like energy companies (guess how they address climate change!) for years. If designing the hardware won't be too expensive because it basically already exists, then the software will be the budget breaker. (Un)fortunately, one places where money will be freed up is the employment of teachers. Teachers are expensive. Even in places where they are terribly underpaid, some lessons on a cell phone with a so-called 'babysitter' keeping some level of order in a classroom from time to time is a cheaper alternative. While lessons on a phone can never replace a good teacher, it can probably replace a bad or mediocre one, especially when one considers how much the digital world is changing the basic behaviour of how children and teens engage with the world around them. Meanwhile, the basic method of education has changed very little over the last few centuries. It's been a knowledgeable person talking at the front of the room, and a group of people listening to them, taking notes. Throw in a chalk and a blackboard, and you don't know if it's 1870 or 2018. Even with the advent of past communication technology advances, schools could adapt, as every so often a television would be wheeled into class so you watch a nature documentary or (if the teacher was lazy and it was close to the end of the year) a movie vaguely related to the class. And computers became a staple in the library and the aptly named computer labs. But the education system is struggling against the cell phone, the ultimate portable computer, the ultimate time waster, the last word in there never being a last word because there's always another text to send, another round to fight, another meme to spread. When dealing with a generation that was born connected, standing in front of blackboard and writing bullet points or equations for an hour doesn't stand a chance. Phones and tablets are shiny touch-pads that even three year olds can figure out how to operate. If learning institutions cannot incorporate these changes, then more and more children will be left behind. Class becomes a factor quite quickly. As usual, the wealthy will have the option of giving their children a more virtual or more traditional education. The ever-increasing underclass (formerly middle and lower) will be told how things are going to be done from now on, and it's usually whatever's cheaper. Labo-like software will be downloaded onto students' phone, and they can watch and complete the daily lessons and exercises at their leisure. There will be variations on how the lessons are taught. From audio files like podcasts, video for visual learners (play it on a nearby TV if needed), or building kits can be ordered and delivered for those that are best educated with hands on-examples. Teachers will have set office hours throughout the week that a student can contact via face-time, Skype, etc if they have any questions. Maybe once a week there will be an actual day in a physical classroom somewhere, just to confirm that the students are learning and that are is actually a human teacher overlooking their work in some fashion. Great! Well, no. Positives and Negatives! Not as inspiring, but more accurate. More jobs end up disappearing, starting with a majority of teachers, and several careers that involve the basic construction and maintenance of running a school (there will still be schools, just a lot fewer of them). The development of this software will mostly be done by private companies, subsidized with a hefty government contract. We will learn what a small cabal of powerful board members want us to learn about math, science, history, and early twenty first century capitalism. Learning via phone will be heralded as a great leveler, because the lessons will be the same no matter where you live, no matter how much money you or your parents make. But it will be a sleight of hand, because the very rich can still fashion the education they want. There will still be living, breathing, teachers who have undeniably great skills...but they will cost a fortune to hire. This gap between the rich and poor is not new. The industrial revolution created the Robber Barons, and the slippery consolidation of wealth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led the world into the Great Depression of the 1930s. The current digital revolution is doing the same sort of thing, but at a much, much quicker pace. Computer technology developed in the sixties and seventies made globalized trade possible, meaning it was possible to build something in a factory in China and have it on sale in Dallas or Dresden two days later (and being able to close factories in the West and lay off thousands of workers). Computer technology developed in the eighties and nineties gave us the Internet, which meant it was effortless to send any sort of information (a spreadsheet, a song, a virus) instantaneously. When you're able to do something cheaper, it usually means you can do it without having to pay someone, which means someone (or really, many someones) no longer has a job. We're still getting acclimatized to this, and if we're on the cusp of teaching future generations via pixels on a screen to save money because governments are drowning in debt by giving tax cuts to massive corporations, then a very important question is, 'what kind of jobs are we preparing them for?' The answer might be in those same pixels they'll be learning from. Finland is ending it's two year experiment with Universal Basic Income, with one of its supporters admitting that the public perception of the plan was, "a fear that with basic income they would just stay at home and play computer games.” But that fear is going to become a reality because in the not too distant future you're going to supplement your universal basic income with playing with computer games, or doing very basic and specific tasks with engineering and design that's part of a larger project headquartered halfway around the world. Building giant, simulated open worlds for gaming is just the beginning. Soon computer scientists are going to develop simulated open worlds for people to explore in, with the goal of us learning more about ourselves and our universe. Physicists simulate different ways the Big Bang could have developed in extremely powerful computers, just to compare how our own universe has come into being. These sorts of experiments will require very specific work, and very specific human work, of simply 'being human' in these simulations (for now, 'being human' is our greatest advantage over AI). Maybe through this sort of research, this sort of understanding, will actually bridge the widening gulfs of the haves and have-nots in the future. If knowledge truly is power, then maybe computer can truly be the great leveler. So get started on that cardboard piano. NOTES
The Rising Costs of Free Speech
First: When the government arrests you for something you say in public or type on the Internet, then it is censorship/an infringement on free speech (the exception is when your words can cause direct and clear harm to others, with the famous example being yelling 'fire!' in a crowded theatre when there isn't one). If your company suspends or fires you for something you say or type on the Internet, that's you violating some fine print in the agreement you signed when you began working for them. If a social media site or message board suspends or removes your account, that's you violating some fine print in the agreement you clicked 'yes' on when you begin using the site. That so much of our interactions are now taking place in virtual locations that follow a set of rules and regulations which are distinct from those of the nations we all live in is of great concern, and is not talked about nearly enough.
But the bigger issue at the moment is the tip of the iceberg. The attention-getting, easy-to-condemn-unless-you're-Donald-Trump tip: The Rise of White Nationalists/Alt-Right/Incompatible Assholes 'Rise' is a relative term here, since these sorts of groups have always been around. It's just feeling a bit more emboldened since Trump has courted the groups during his campaign and throughout his presidency (which is both mind-blowing and pathetic, and yet will have to be set aside for another column), holding hate-filled torch lit protests not only in America but in Canada and Europe as well. The flashpoint for this was this summer's Charlottesville protest/riot. The city was going to take down the statute of Confederate General Robert E Lee, and white supremacists and bigots rallied around it in the most disgusting way possible (chanting 'Jews will not replace us' pretty much confirms this isn't going to be any sort of intellectual exercise). Now some have noted that as far as history is concerned, tearing down parts of it - even parts that should and do bring deep shame and reflection to a nation - is a dangerous precedent. History is a complicated assemblage of terrible and inspiring events long since past, and simplifying its narrative does no favours to the past, present, and future. But, if a bunch of racist assholes are using the statue (and other memorials and symbols from the pro-slavery confederacy) as a rallying point, then fuck 'em, get it out of such a public place. People who still proudly support the Confederacy seem to forget the US government's attitude toward it during the Civil War: Death to traitors.* *-further proof history is more complicated: they didn't do that. Pardons all around after the Civil War. And certainly for Robert E Lee.** **-even further proof: Robert E Lee was against statues that in any way celebrated or acknowledged the Civil War. These groups are antithetical to all concepts of Western democracy and progress. While arguments can be made that huge changes must be made to address contemporary concerns ranging from environmental to economic policy, supporting any sort fascist ideals (namely Nazi ones) to being changes about is disgusting and idiotic. There's some irony in the fact they are stridently anti-feminist and feel that men are becoming subordinate to women, while at the same time they decry all aspects of Islam and claim it is destroying Western society. Islam's traditional view and treatment of women (and still practiced to some extent in most Islamic-dominant nations) lines up perfectly with their own opinions on women. Both want them to shut up and be subservient to men. Which was an embarrassing and foolish idea in the twentieth century, let alone now in the twentieth-first. The idea of the alt-right that they are ‘losing’ the country to any other group or culture? Ridiculous. A majority of the politicians, business CEOs, public figures, and practically anyone else with power is a straight white male. If you are a straight white male and you can't succeed in these conditions, then the problem doesn't lie with the system (that is built by and for straight white men), the problem lies with you. Chances are that you're: A) stupid; B) lazy; C) an annoying piece of shit that no one can work with; or D) a combination of A, B, and/or C. But with a president who doesn't outright condemn them, they will only grow more emboldened. And even widespread criticism from the general public and attempts to curtail their activities will be difficult going forward. If groups who are already calling for any sort of violent protest or uprising because they view those in power as illegitimate, then rescinding their rights of free speech will make their point/add fuel to the fire/possibly make the situation even more dangerous. And they know this. Pushing the laws to near breaking point just to force authority's hand. So let's go back to what is supposed to be the government's role in this. Or really, 'our' role in this, since ideally we're the government, that the laws it creates and enforces are the laws we want it to create and enforce (let's toss in the word 'ideally' again). The not-at-all new question is: does word spurn deed? How can this be proved? And if it's proved, what's the penalty for those who simply spoke or wrote, but did not do the deed? If a bunch of white supremacists are chanting racist calls to take their country back while carrying rifles, is everything nice and legal until the first shot is fired? Is only the one that pulled the trigger responsible, not the scores of others there? And this can be easily flipped to the left wing, when marching against the G20 and demanding political leaders be removed or jailed and one of them throws rocks at the police. It's easier to ignore the issue of free speech when terrible things are being written on a message board most people will never visit, or when it's in a pamphlet being handed out on a busy street corner that no one ever takes. The public sphere is where we confront these challenges head on. Recent free speech issues have taken place on colleges, in the form of safe spaces, the handling of offensive/sensitive material in the classroom, and allowing controversial speakers (usually those on the conservative/right/alt-right side of the political spectrum) to come and talk after being invited by a student association. Safe spaces are becoming a more enticing and sensible way to create inclusivity and understanding for people who have frequently felt ostracized and marginalized (women, visible minorities, LGBTQ members) by society at large. It's important that people can feel completely comfortable being whoever they want to be in an environment that won't judge and will be completely positive. But wait, says the hetero-normative white male who can't help but play devil's advocate, what if I don't feel safe here because I can't share my opinions that might clash with what the traditional discourse is in this safe space? Forget that the hetero-normative white male (or HNWM, if we can add another acronym to the pile) might be given the cold shoulder because just by being in a safe space he will be viewed as the personification of the reason why the world is so unequal and problematic. Hell, it's not an unreasonable suggestion that the HNWM should be taken down a peg, and should at least occasionally feel some sort of ostracization that so many other people feel on some level on a near-daily basis. The challenge is to keep this open-mindedness and patience going as long as possible. Safe spaces are positive ideas, but walls can develop, and that breeds division. And if you argue that the people who are not welcome in safe spaces are either bigots or simply insensitive, then that drives them further away. To their own safe spaces, which, to them, is where they can say anything they want and not worry about being called a bigot (and one can say, 'well, let the bigots be bigoted, we don't want anything to do with them', but that can lead to a wholly reactive political movement like Trumpism). Over time, the same thing will happen in the 'welcome' safe space and the 'bigot' safe space. New ideas, personal changes/challenges, and issues around the world will create differing opinions and slowly but surely that will create more divisions between people. Intersectionality (the situation where certain people belong to more than one marginalized group, and therefore experience more difficulty than other people who would still be welcome in a safe space) begets enclaves and niches upon enclaves and niches. Inclusion ultimately and paradoxically rejects itself. Safe space may one day mean the opposite of what they mean now. So here we need a reminder of how reductionism and the lack of substantial discourse are always the first cracks in the dam for this to happen. And one of the best places for substantial discourse is the university setting. Discussion in a classroom of a book or article that involves hate speech or offensive material does not in any way mean that the university or the professor encourages hate speech or the offending material. Should a level of tact, patience and understanding when discussing these topics be encouraged? Of course. In fact, that should be a key part of the lesson. The writer or author has included certain ideas and passages that make us uncomfortable. What do we take from that, what might be the author's intention, how does this comment on contemporary society? These questions should be at the forefront, not whether the material should be allowed to be taught in the first place. Related to this is the inviting of controversial writers and political pundits like Ann Coulter or Milos Yiannopoulos onto campus. If one is offended by their hate-filled, misinformed, click-baiting bile (as we expose our own bias here), it should be peacefully protested, not barred completely. College is meant to be the time when young adults are introduced to new ideas, and the concern that they might be influenced by (and become supporters of) a detestable ideology is a legitimate one. But what might be learned from how certain ideas are banned or shunned outright is a much more dangerous lesson for the future of a free and open democracy. Suppression of alt-right ideas no matter what the reason can set a dangerous precedent, especially if it is done without proper discourse and debate. Are certain books or films from the past that have elements of racism, sexism, or bigotry also to be suppressed? Are certain events of history now only to have a singular lens focused upon them? The debate revolving around 'free speech on campus' can distract from much more pressing issues on the subject. In fact, whenever free speech is under attack (as the President seems to want to prevent the media from reporting on anything he doesn't like), so many other pressing challenges to society suddenly take a back seat in importance (rolling back voting rights, influence of money on politics, rising inequality creating an Overclass and Underclass, dwindling natural resources and their effects, are all equally important). But free speech and basic rights have to come first. When one person who has been ostracized by society for many years is finally given the full rights that others have, inevitably another will now say their rights are being infringed upon, thanks in part to this initial person being given their rights. It is as if there is only 'so many rights' to go around. And while this sounds idiotic, as rights are abstract philosophical concepts that can never run out, the enforcement and protection of these rights are undertaken by many people in many different social institutions that cost a tremendous amount of money and societal effort. And if you say you cannot price on rights, that is simply not true. In fact, it is necessary. And it is expensive. And of course you can say it's worth every penny, because that is indeed true, but what happens when a society/state runs out of pennies? In the push to expand basic rights for all people, it has been depressingly politicized. What seems obvious to so many people has somehow been labeled a culture war. Gay marriage took an unthinkably long time to be legalized in many Western nations, and it was objected primarily by those on the conservative side of the political spectrum who, in so many other instances, continually complained about how government was trying to tell them how to live. That the rights for transgendered people are in a state of flux (the so-called bathroom bills, and the attempt by the President to bar them from the military) show that absolutely anything can become a wedge issue, that basic rights are only as strong as a community's sensibilities at the moment. If we pull back to much wider look at history, huge gains have been made throughout the twentieth century in terms of extending rights and privileges that for too long were only available to HNWM previously. While it first must be acknowledge that we still have a long way to go before anything resembling true equality appears, great strides were made for civil, women, and LGBTQ rights in the latter half of the twentieth century. Regressions in our current sociopolitical climate can be attributed to a strong shift in power relations, specifically economic in nature. Communities are more open to expanding basic rights and social programs when already enfranchised members of the community are economically comfortable (or at the very least feel economically comfortable), hence the rise of social justice movements (and political gains) of the sixties and seventies. In the last three decades, wealth in the West has accumulated mainly in the pockets of the already wealthy. The middle class (and lower middle class) has been hemorrhaging money, drowning in debt and uncertainly, and consequently have 'circled the wagons' around whatever rights and privileges they perceive to have remaining. And this group - not only in America, but Canada and much of Europe as well - is primarily HNWM. Too easily every other group is labeled 'the other' by them and is a threat to their privilege and position. Which explains the rise in hostility to immigrants, the stagnation of the women's movement, and obnoxious political posturing of vilifying LGBTQ groups. Let's be clear: These divisions are slowly destroying the very foundations of Western Civilization. The sharing and shuffling of (economic) power has always come with difficulty and strife, and rising levels of inequality are starting to chip away at free speech and basic human rights. For all its importance, free speech is subservient to power relations. Who you are makes a huge difference as to how your words will be interpreted, and who you are (and what you have) will make a huge difference when interpreting someone else's words. Widening economic inequality in the West has created corresponding social inequalities, and this fragmenting can spell doom for a functioning democracy. HNWM should not hold the so-called 'keys to kingdom' hostage, should not be able to dole out rights to disenfranchised groups when they finally feel comfortable with their own social status. When the ultra-wealthy cannot consider that the poor needs their help through government programs, and when the poor does not trust the government to properly assist them, then all of our ideals and institutions are for naught. Especially when we can't even seem to say that this is problem. The current interconnectivity of contemporary civilization is one of the greatest and most challenging periods in human existence. Its positives are many, its negatives are as well (but, as we are glass half full people, not as much as the former). We are still in the early stages of this continuing transition into a new level of interactivity and awareness. Ideally, a level of common sense, trust, and hope will underlie humanity's progress forward. So let's talk about while our speech won't cost us anything.
Notes
The Looming Peril of Corporate Governance
Gaining lost ground means you're back where you started from, which is not good enough in 2017. The push and pull between right and left leaning political parties and which one has the edge politically at the moment is akin to re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And yes, 101 years after the great ship went down, it's still a perfect metaphor of denying reality until the last moment, except that there was perhaps a bit more dignity on the ship than what's currently happening with Western Democracy. An election in the UK that didn't really do much to alleviate the problems plaguing the UK. And it's not just Brexit, but the issues that many other developed countries across the globe are facing. Rising under/unemployment (especially among the youth), cuts to social programs, and growing inequality between the very wealthy and everybody else. Ditto France. Yes, it's a relief they didn't vote in an extremist right-wing candidate, but a centrist 'tolerable' candidate that embraces the EU (and the world economy) is almost in the same boat as the UK. It's great that you can get the crowds cheering and supporting ideas of unity and co-operation, but then these same politicians have meeting where their economic advisors give them extremely sobering projections for future job numbers and spending decisions. [And here's where we acknowledge that at least these European countries want to do something. Contrast this with America, which seems to be weighing the options of either doing nothing or setting itself on fire. Much of Barack Obama's legacy is being undone in record time. Repealing Obamacare and slowly taking health insurance away from tens of millions of Americans (and giving the wealthy a large tax cut) is a special combination of greed, tone-deafness and cruelty. Plus the transfer of a sensible and dependable American presence in global affairs under the former president to whatever the current White House resident is doing, which seems to be a mixture of proud ignorance and foot in mouth disease] Contemporary cynicism suggests that the quickest way to lose faith in democracy is to spend five minutes with the average voter. And this attitude means the division created between urban liberal elites and those folks in flyover country makes government all the weaker. But people have little problem with voting away democracy, as long as the replacing system can give (or promises to give) them what they want. Donald Trump promised the moon and the stars as a really, great tremendous deal to disillusioned and despondent middle America, and they took him up in it, without doing much of a Google search to see if he was hero or a huckster (spoiler alert: he's the latter). And of course, hundreds of millions of people already feel this way in America and many other countries, and don't bother voting at all, which just exacerbates the problem (it was the fear of this political apathy that had France worried that LaPen might win because her right wing base would at least show up to the polls). If people are under-informed (or misinformed) or don't even care in the first place, democracy will shrivel up and die. And something will have to replace it, since nature abhors a vacuum, especially when any sort of power is involved. Governments comes in a few different flavours, and it just so happens that democracy is the most palatable for the most amount of people. As you get closer to autocracy and authoritarianism, the few people at the top think it tastes great, while the vast majority of citizens think it tastes like a boot stepping on their face forever. But is there anything else? Any other option for a series of interconnected institutions that are tasked with bringing security, stability, infrastructure, and (fingers crossed) the pursuit of happiness to the masses? Well, private enterprise has the answer, and it's...themselves. Corporations have found themselves in a situation where their power is accumulating at a rapid pace, thanks in part to the rather nebulous, Schrödinger's cat-like superposition where their past and future employees have key roles and positions in a country's government. Which is quite handy when it comes to passing laws that might benefit these corporations, as well as handing out contracts for the sort of work that these same corporations might be particularly skilled at. Which means that it's really only a matter of time before this very large tweet is sent to all those in the halls of power: 'Don't worry, politicians, we'll take it from here. See, we've been doing some market research, and we're finding that people - left, right, centrist - are not happy with your current level of service.' It's not a conspiracy, it's an inevitability. The slow fall of one series of interconnected institutions mirrors the slow rise of a different series of interconnected institutions. Western-style democracy had the public's back, because it was - as much as possible - our own backs making these decisions. It's replacement will not be so kind to the masses, even if they have a highly trained PR-marketing blitz telling us that they are. For example, tackling climate change is a massive undertaking that many countries are taking baby steps towards addressing. They can't do much more at this stage because the costs for more extensive infrastructure changes are too high, and some powerful industries are trying to stop green energy growth because it's affecting their bottom line. But something has to be done, clearly, for the public good. And for a long time, the public good was the responsibility of governments. Cleaning up the Pacific Ocean? Great, but a wunderkind bankrolled by Silicon Valley is doing it. Of course it's an amazing thing that this is being done. Of course it's great that a terrible reminder of our ignorance and waste is being fixed. Of course it's great that it's being done cheaper than expected, and that the people who are already struggling to pay their own bills don't have to worry about ponying up to pay this one. But this means the massive projects that will affect all of us are not being decided by all of us. They are being decided by an increasingly small group of wealthy business owners. We are living at time where corporations are attempting to solve major world problems, but only for those that can already afford it. Expensive, healthy food made by Silicon Valley startups, available only to concentrated groups of citizens in major cities. Uber outsourcing taxis so you can get a car and driver delivered to your door, while paying the driver not as an employee but an independent contractor, so they don’t have to offer any sort of benefits or protection for him or her. And the publicized horror stories (United Airlines beating up passengers because they won't give up their seat for United Airlines employees) don’t make much of an impact beyond a week or two. These companies are still more powerful than ever before. What's the government's role in these cases? Negligible. The 'market' is operating by itself. Which sounds great if you don't think about it, or get the shit end of the stick, an end which seems to be growing as the divide between the rich and poor does. Now for much of human history, monumental decisions have been made and overseen by small groups of people. Monarchy and noblemen and a few wealthy men voted into power by other wealthy men in the proto-democracies of Greece and Rome. Even as modern Western Democracy advanced and actually became democratic during the twentieth century by finally allowing women and minority groups to vote, it was still a comparatively small number of elected representatives that introduced and passed legislation that was meant to ultimately improve the lives of those that lived in the nation. Now whether 'the best' was continually voted into the halls of power and whether the decisions they made were completely selfless and best for the nation at the time can be endlessly debated, but the economic and social growth in Western democratic nations after the Second World shows what civilization can accomplish when basic common goals are agreed upon and sought after (poverty reduction, equal rights, common markets, technological innovation. To name but a few). Even as this system is currently breaking down, it is still much different from a society run by the whims of board room billionaires. As cynical as one can be about the intentions of politicians, there is still more accountability and transparency for them than those that run/own private corporations, who chief goal is to maximize profits for their investors. Everything comes a distant second or lower, like customer service, product quality, social responsibility, and fair trade practices. Any sort of charitable donation or apparent selflessness is marketing, meant to improve the corporation's brand image for the masses (think of those clean and positive ads for oil companies that crop up from time to time, or all the events and festivals that cigarette companies sponsored). Mitt Romney (in)famously said that 'corporations are people' and got criticized for it, but he clearly undershot it. Corporations are super-people. Near immortal entities with the knowledge and ability of thousands of people at their beck and call, not bound by any laws (or can bend them easily), and a constant thirst for more money and more power with a sociopathic touch, where they will tell you things are amazing and will sell you inferior products for prices higher than they were yesterday. What's more troubling is the role that corporations are playing alongside (or worse, overtop of) government. Trust and dependency can be unhealthily intertwined. We want to be able to trust the/our government. But we depend largely on private corporations to provide everyday services that allow us to comfortably live our lives. Unfortunately, in many instances, these private corporations are paid by governments to provide these services, increasingly with very little regulation or oversight. It's the old fashioned bait-and-switch, where a private company offers to improve a local district or region's hydro services (maybe by greatly assisting a politician's election campaign), and at first does a great job following all the current laws and statutes, but over time they have certain rules about pricing and quality changed, and soon the hydro company is being run as a wholly private enterprise. This is a process that can take many years, but that was corporations have on their side: Plenty of time and plenty of money. This sort of slow replacement is hard to identify, and even harder to get a lot of people politically aware of (or to stress that it's a serious problem until it's too late). This is in part because the corporate world is replacing the idea of government in terms of presence and PR. The American government leaving the Paris Environmental Accords gives the appearance of the nation turning inward and giving up its position on the global stage, no longer leading the world (as many of the accord's supporters lament). Yet many corporations rushed to criticize the decision and announce their companies' own support of the agreements outlined in the accord. And this is a slow and steady climb towards corporations legitimizing themselves in the eyes of the public as the necessary replacement towards bloated governance, regardless of one's political leanings. The West (and eventually, the rest of the world) doesn't just want a revolution, they want the easiest, most efficient revolution replaced with the best system of government you could ever want or imagine. This is how incredibly effective corporate marketing is. Over the last five decades, it has seeped into our collective consciousness that we all deserve the best, that everything can be improved and made better for a lower price. Even the dismantling and replacement of the system that had to first exist before there were private enterprises that could sell us this concept. If governments continue to have limited success addressing the needs of its citizens, the corporation's role will increase, and nowhere will that be seen more heavily than with the enactment of universal wages. With the availability of jobs expected to plummet by up to 40% in the next ten to twenty years thanks to continually advancing robotic and computer technology, we will be a planet of roughly eight billion people with not nearly enough work to go around. Paying people a basic wage simply to be able to live their lives (pay rent, buy food and basic necessities) will become inevitable. It will have to be done to prevent total social disintegration. But if it becomes the role of a corporation to hand out these funds (and most likely sell the goods that people will buy with this money) because the government cannot do it effectively, then the opportunity to abuse this power simply to maximize profit will be massive. The privatization of the expanded welfare state (a rather glum but realistic term for what universal wages will look like) Is the quickest way to create a reinforced over/underclass society, with the very few wealthy lording over the very many poor. If voting feels like a choice between uninspiring candidates now, it will only get worse when the only vote that matters is the one you can make if you own a certain amount of stock. To get a glimpse of where this is happening today, look no further than post-secondary education. Through extensive donations that include underwriting entire departments, corporations are replacing, merging with, and/or absorbing universities. Soon companies will begin recruiting right out of high school. Student will take an even more specialized education/career track. Now a person's entire life can be done under the watch and support of one company. The new state. And positive feedback being what it is, it's likely that young people will no longer see politics as a role for social change, but rather corporations. The government is being shunted off into the corner, a failing startup whose debts make it unwieldy and unreliable. To prevent this, participation in politics is necessary and simply voting is an excellent first step. Democracy will not fall simply because the free market wants to make a quick, big buck. It will fall because we let apathy wash over ourselves, and didn't bother paying enough attention to how our society functions, and how it is rapidly changing in the halls of power. Corporations depend on us not paying much attention beyond a thirty second ad or fancy billboard/gif. That's part of the sell. Fast acting, money saving, pleasure making. Whether it's a gum, SUV, or presidential candidate. And if we keep falling for that superficial argument full of empty promises, it's going to be their world, not ours.
Sources (https://theringer.com/urban-farming-tech-silicon-valley-f3bb7434c4f0)
It's Internet Outrage All the Way Down
(Even the term 'outrage' has become overused and stale! 'Outrage' should mean more than 'being put in a bad mood for five minutes because of something you don't like happening in the world, posting a comment on social media, then going back to whatever you were doing before') We're all still trying to figure out the Internet. It's been almost twenty five years since America Online, Compuserve and Netscape Navigator started mailing 3.5 inch discs and CD-ROMs to homeowners, imploring us to plug into the future. The shrieking modem beeps, the hours to download a song, the embryonic states of all the websites are now apps (evolution in the digital realm). It was never exactly the hippie dream of 'everyone being connected' coming true, since shitloads of money and giant corporations were involved, but it was new and exciting and more jobs were being created than replaced at this point, even after the after the first bubble burst back in the late nineties (for a sense of perspective, at this time Google was still a private company, and founders Brin and Page were considering selling it for... one million dollars). To step back a bit and state the obvious: the internet is a communications network for computers (artificially constructed ones and zeroes) that we humans with our fears and emotional baggage have been piggybacking upon since day one. In the past, writing a letter or having someone give a verbal message to someone else was not a matter taken lightly. Your words were representatives of your personality and reputation. Trust of the message-bearers was essential, as were the contents of the words they carried. And then the damn industrial revolution happened, and everything got quicker and reproduced a hell of a lot easier. The telegraph and telephone meant talking to anyone became both more personal and more impersonal. Advanced machinery was developed that required a lot less manpower to create the same power and products than before. By the time the much-maligned Luddites got around to smashing up industrial looms in symbolic protest, it was too late, the robber barons had the politicians wrapped around their fingers, and everyone else on the farms and in the factories, were doing whatever they could to get by. It took a couple of devastating wars, recessions, and a depression to kind of get everything back to a semblance of normalcy for the average citizen. Advancing technology has always offered speed and proliferation. More of everything and right away. We - the people it is ostensibly built for - take a long damn time to truly understand and accept these effects (usually first focusing on the good ('hey, everything's so much cheaper!') before realizing the bad ('hey, we're all out of work!')). And just as we seemed to have gotten our better than average monkey brains around the ideas and effects of the industrial revolution (let's say, around the 1950s), computers stopped having to be size of rooms. Which meant they were going to be the next thing to throw our entire civilization into a socioeconomic and cultural tailspin. This brief history lesson is not a revelation, but it puts in context our ability and inability to adapt to massive changes at high speed (in broad, historical periods of decades, not months and years). Evolution is slow. A mixture of genetic anomaly and luck over centuries. Two computers in labs in California talking slowly to each other in 1969 to watching a movie on your iphone in 2017 is barely a blip in the massive hourglass of time. We're still in a daze with the ability to immediately communicate with almost everyone, and almost everything. If the medium is the message (as McLuhan noted), then the main message that underscores the way we are living now can be described with these terms: instantaneous, overwhelming, and vastly forgettable. It is taken for granted now that people were effortlessly able to tell the difference between the six o'clock news and the scripted dramas and comedies that followed in prime time (refresher: the former is based in reality, the latter is not). Now, if you don't like the tone or content of a news story you’re reading or watching, don't worry, in mere seconds you'll find one that you do like. Every story is piggy-backing on another. The president tweets a dubious claim from a hyper-partisan website, which the hyper-partisan website in turn uses as proof that it must be true. In stark contrast to when your words were your bond and your reputation, the Internet offers unaccountability and anonymity. Who wrote this, who claimed that, is this a trustworthy new site? Is the person threatening you legitimately angry and (if threatening you with horrific bodily harm) mentally unbalanced, or do they happen to be bored for thirty seconds? Why does this one study claim the statistics concerning jobs or crime is this, while another study claims it's different? How do we tell the difference, and how do we move forward on policy? How do we deal with these questions, all of which are rooted in the search for a framing of the true state of contemporary society? How do we balance our responsibilities to our friends, families and co-workers and our responsibilities that come with being an informed and proactive global citizen? After all, we should be very, very concerned if social media sites become the Hub for Truth and Justice. Facebook is a very popular website and that is a massive understatement for an interactive experience that shapes your perception of the world and makes a shitload of money for Goldman Sachs every time you swipe through your newsfeed. Big important things like health care, international trade agreements, and data sharing, are complicated. How you interact with these things in the physical and virtual world is complicated. And because the way were engaging with these things/institutions/ideas/rules is changing from how we were only twenty five years ago, even simple things have gotten complicated. People are frustrated and depressed at losing their jobs to advancing technology, especially as they see the owners of this technology getting fabulously rich. And so enters Internet Outrage. You're angry about something. Something that's wrong. Something that might be affecting your life directly, or something you've read that's occurring on the other side of the world. While millions of people in Asia are rising out of poverty, millions in the Americas and Europe and sliding into the lower classes, and this lack of employment in the latter regions are only going to exacerbate in the coming years. In large regions across America, the second rust belt has created widespread unemployment and resentment, and helped elect a President who uses social media to rile up this very base of supporters through anger, the blaming of the eternal and ever-shifting 'other', and promising to make America (or really, any country that is going through the same economic tumult and is turning to a braying straw-person) Great Again. The Internet helped caused many of the problems that are creating a 'white death of despair', but because of its contemporary omnipresence the same people harmed by it rely on it (the same can be said about Wal-Mart's sales tactics, where its bargaining power forced many American factories to close and have their goods manufactured overseas, but those who lost their jobs because of it still shop there). The Internet is a main source/manifestation of society's unemployment crisis, and the shelter from it. Where you can tune out the harsh realities of the world via Netflix, YouTube, gaming platforms, and any number of communities based on every sort of hobby or pastime imaginable. Where you can rage against the harsh realities of the world, in both constructive and destructive ways. Whenever a news story (veracity pending) comes across your screen, interrupting your daily doldrums or work cycle, it always has the chance to crystallize your anger, alienation, passion, and disappointment. And if you are part of the ever-expanding pool of have-nots in the Western World, how do you transform this powerlessness into power? Use it to shame a corporation cutting down tracts of rainforest by sharing articles and posting your objection on the company's Twitter page. Criticize the verdict of a particular court case (perhaps the tone-deafness of the judge) by starting petitions to review the confirmation process of judges or make a tl;dr post that people will circulate after they get a few sentences in. Mock, bully, or harass the person who said or did some stupid that you feel endangers your way of life. Find like-minded people to enthusiastically agree with and grow your 'I'm right' bubble. The internet makes all these things ridiculously easy. And in doing so, makes them almost entirely meaningless. Oh certainly some people's lives will be terribly affected (or vastly improved) for a short period time, but it's not necessarily going to make any fundamental changes to the power structure of the world at large. 'Easy' is a double-edged sword. Everyone wants everything to be that very thing, but once that happens - once everything is that same sort of easy - its value plummets. Even when you attach 'outrage' to easy. It's easy to salute Facebook's ability to organize events and get people to act as one, whether in cyberspace or a town square or city park. It's easy to criticize Facebook for letting algorithms pedal fake news and for making petition signing a joke. It's easy to get lost in time wasting, dispiriting and pointless arguments with people who you might only disagree with a little bit. It's easy to alienate potential supporters of your basic ideas and beliefs if you vocally denounce them for having differing opinions on the details. Almost everything on the internet is dialed up to eleven. Praise, hate, truth, lies. There is no centre because the Internet doesn't do centre. It doesn't have to do centre. The Internet is ego unleashed and when the id-moment will finally arrive to bring some semblance of balance is anyone's guess. Yes, you'll type things in a comments section or say things while playing Battlefield that you'll never actually do in 'real life', but as more and more of our lives exist in cyberspace - since the digital realm is predominantly where you tweet, work, and play - a redefinition of 'real' is required. Or, more accurately, a redefinition of public and private space. Context is almost everything, and where, how, and why you say, 'I'm gonna fucking kill that asshole', makes a huge difference. On the internet is rapidly becoming on the street. Using Twitter is telling everyone in the world. A comments section is a hyper-busy coffee shop. A game lobby is a hotel lobby. Now we know how puerile and disgusting internet trolls can be with a tap of our finger, and after reading one article after another, it doesn't take long for questions to come exploding out of one's brain in (yes) outrage. Take this one for example. -would we hear about this story if it wasn't for the Internet, where picture can be taken and shared with the world in seconds? -is this matter of eighteen to twenty one years old being the assholes they're supposed to be? (and hopefully, grow out of it?) -can sororities take the lead in punishing this attitude by banning this frat from various frat/sort events? -are HR departments of the future going to cross reference applicant names with frat info, with stories like this? -has this always been the attitude at frats, and we only know this now because of what public sphere has become? -is this just a matter of 'freedom of speech' protecting these jerks, but everyone else crucifying them in the court of public opinion for a few days before the story dies down? -is it all just a joke that we're taking way too seriously? And when a young woman is tragically sexually assaulted or raped on campus, do we make a connection between this tasteless joke and a terrible crime? Can a connection be made? How exactly does a joke support a culture/or attitude support a hideous crime? Do young men see that sign and start to rationalize sexual assault? -How long will it takes for people to realize that now everyone can see what one person wants only one other person to see? All these questions. Each one with its own lengthy and unfolding arguments from people on either sides of the issues. But where is a fruitful and thoughtful discussion going to take place? Certainly the kneejerk, throwaway, barely helpful response is 'not online', which suggests that a face to face meeting with all concerned parties would be more sensible, diplomatic and fruitful than constant snipping back and forth on Reddit. But what is also happening is the leaking of Internet behaviour into the real world. If you are acting like a terrible human being in the physical world, there's a good chance you're also being a terrible human being in the virtual one, and the distinction between the two is collapsing. In the not too distant future there will be a great and historic debate about how people will be allowed to access essential parts of the Internet, and it will revolve around the matter of having a sort of universal ID that you have to 'carry' everywhere. Now there will still be plenty of private spheres - both real and digital - where you and your friends can be as filthy, catty, and obnoxious as you'd like. That will never go away. But there will inevitably be change in accountability. Not a curtailing a free speech (which, just to remind everyone, is the guarantee that the government will not arrest or censor you for what you say or write), but an always shifting public morals meter. Not against people's private lives, or even displays of art that might offend, but most likely targeted at hate speech and harassment and bullying. Take the matter of Roosh V and Milo Yiannopoulos, controversial online figures that say racist sexist and bigoted things and claim they are exercising freedom of speech by doing so. No matter what terrible things you say, the defence of being allowed to say them is paramount. The outrage against them and (support for them) is a good case study. What do we do? The two of them have been in the odd position of saying terribly offensive things, while at the same time is a victim of death threats (and people have even called Roosh’s father to tell the man how terrible his son is), which from a legal point of view, is much more troubling Specific and repeated threats against a single person count as a crime, general threats do not. But it's obvious that the internet has made it difficult to parse which threats - even specific ones - should be taken seriously (although this has always been a problem. Public figures have received hate mail and death threats long before the internet. Just because it's easier - and therefore more prevalent - and public, doesn't make it any more serious a threat). How do you gauge the seriousness of a threat in a text message from an anonymous person? You couldn't gauge the seriousness of a threat in hate mail from an anonymous person, either. And this is the same sort of problem with the women who were unfortunately caught up in GamerGate. These threats might just be a quick burst of internet outrage sent to a twitter account, or it might be someone who will figure out where you apartment is and waited outside until you leave. Law enforcement is not yet prepared to deal with this sort of ‘verge of a crime’. In the case of Roosh and Milo, the answer seems to be giving them enough rope to hang themselves with, by giving them a much more public spotlight and watch a more sizeable chunk of the populace turn away in disgust (as Milo found, when he appeared on Bill Maher's Real Time, and found supposed friends, associates, and business partners flee him like rats from a sinking ship). But this is only a symptom of the larger problem. Milo's recent headline grabbing activities was the 'this week in Internet outrage', and then we all quickly moved on to the next thing. For more complicated issues, more complicated solutions will be required. Making sure we know who is speaking to us on the Internet is the first step in making cyberspace a more civil and functioning ecosystem, but the next one is going to be not always leaning on the easy solution. And that, by any definition, will be hard.
Sources
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/the-original-underclass/492731/
FALLOUT - The 2016 Presidential Election Result It's been quite a November. Says Captain Obvious’ close friend, Corporal Understatement. The campaign felt long, endless, part of 'just the way things are now'. Political aspirants playing their parts in an endless reality show that is 'the news'. Sometimes they talk about the policies they would like to support, sometimes they talk about policies they would not like to support, but mostly they talk about how great things are going for them and their campaign, and how awful it is for their opponents. And then there would be breaking news about a scandal, how this one person said this or did that, and how they are going to deal with it going forward. Then it was Election Day. For the first twenty four hours after it became apparent that the swing states had swung and the ridiculous leapt past the impossible into the very possible and then the very real, it was wallowing and thinking time, not writing time. The world seemed too panic-wired to sleep, then feeling tired all Wednesday because of the poor quality of the eventual sleep (the wailing refrain of 'this is really happening' from Idioteque going off like alarm bells). President Trump. No one can deny that he is the least qualified person to ever hold the office of President (the only one who had no previous experience in government is Eisenhower, and if you're the four star general that helped win the Second World War, that's kind of free pass (and Dwight was the Republican who warned about the military-industrial complex!)). His post-election interview with the New York Times (link to transcript in notes) is a depressing reaffirmation that he is ignorant and willfully dismissive of pressing issues and presidential responsibilities, holds pointless, petty grudges, and constantly sounds like he's in the middle of trying to sell you something. He does not offer a sense of confidence, only bluster. He is not the paragon of virtue and resolve that Western democracy needs right now. How did this happen? Some people didn't need much time to point fingers. And why wait, when there were so many juicy targets? And the best part was that everyone would kind of be right, because there are many reasons why tens of millions of people vote the way they do. Even though the real story shouldn't be about the people who voted for Trump. Or the people who voted for Clinton. Or the people who voted for any other candidate. It should instead be about the people who didn't vote at all. 231 million eligible voters, and of that 135 million cast ballots. Almost one hundred million people did not vote. Did not participate in the one of the basic exercises expected in a democracy. [and while it's certainly one's right not to vote, it's that paradoxical situation where only by voting can you consistently protect your right to not vote. You stop voting, you'll find those rights quickly disappear] If there was a candidate called 'didn't bother' on the ballot, it would have crushed either Trump or Clinton by tens of millions of votes. Michael Moore (who predicted a Trump win back in the summer, in part because Trump supporters were fired up, while Clinton supporters were more 'whatever, I would have preferred Bernie, and she's a bit dull on the stump, but still better than Donald') noted that if people could vote through their PlayStation or Netflix accounts, voter turnout would skyrocket. [and certainly we must acknowledge that many people who did not vote certainly wanted to, but were - for various reasons - unable to. Some of this is due to active voter suppression (and here's where we remind you that in conservative states they have made it more difficult for people to vote under the unfounded claim that it's being done to prevent rampant voter fraud, when it actually make it's difficult for people who traditionally vote democrat (young people, minorities) to do so), as well as drastic cuts to the elections budgets making all sorts of delays (hour-long lines) and mistakes (names, addresses don't match on outdated rolls) more likely] Making it easier to vote would be an excellent first step to increase turnout. Considering how essential they are to democracy, spending the proper amount of money on the people and equipment needed to run a functioning election process is a given. Making advanced voting more expansive, declaring that leaving work to vote on election day is a right, or even creating a national holiday on the second Tuesday of November. But how many people fall into these unfortunate scenarios above, and how many simply decided the whole election thing wasn't worth it? Tens of millions. Easily enough to change the result to a landslide for either candidate, but instead they 'humbly' bowed out of democracy completely. They are the true and terrifying silent majority. And not wanting to wait in line is an excuse of very limited acceptance when the responsibilities of citizen and state at stake. Neither is shrugging with indifference that the two party system is broken and each of the candidates are both lousy and believing that one person's vote really doesn't make that much of a difference. Everyone decries negative campaigning, but it's proven that it works, where it can inspire people to vote against instead of for. Except this time, where it got so toxic and embarrassing that it kept many millions of people away from the polls. Allowing for more of the fringe characters and opinions to become part of the presidential conversation. So here's where we throw a rock at the mainstream media, for giving Trump pass after pass early on simply because he was good for ratings when shooting his mouth of. He was supposed to be laughed offstage, which would be proof that the democracy worked, that no one wants to hear from a fear-mongering buffoon. The mainstream media, not seeing the Trump campaign for what it was, for the energy it harnessed, became a bubble unto itself, with experts just talking to other experts, which led to so many viewers writing it off under the assumption that it could not be trusted. And this isn't just levied at cable news networks, but long standing newspapers. The New York Times is dismissed by people on the right and the left as a tool of the side they detest, even though that's a reassuring sign that they aren't necessarily being partisan. As the internet's role has become more and more prevalent, it's been difficult for any news organization to simply balance its operating budget, let alone turn a profit, and that means it’s that much hard to do it’s extremely important job. The Guardian's website is now asking for money like it's a charity organization, and it practically is. Suddenly being well-informed is a privilege of those who can afford it, not a right. Consequently, more and more people are getting a trickling of sensationalist headlines from their facebook feeds, and rarely anywhere else, which is exactly an informational construct that a quasi-political superficial blowhard can take advantage of. When Trump began racking up primary wins, DC-New York Republicans seemed shattered, lamenting the splitting of their party, admitting that they lived in a bubble, never realizing how so many of their fellow GOP members really felt about the state of politics. Now, with Trump President-elect, DC-New York-LA citizens seems shattered, lamenting the splitting of their country, admitting that they live in a bubble, never realizing how so many of their fellow Americans really felt about the state of politics. An incredulous, disorienting feeling, especially when so many polls and experts were promising an easy victory for Clinton (echoes of Brexit, certainly). So many - liberals and conservatives - not understanding the attraction, especially when there was so much to repel: Why vote Trump? The Internet-news-o-sphere offered up a litany of reasons, and they're all partly right. There's no one reason why sixty million people cast their ballots for one particular candidate. Still deep-seated misogyny (even by white women, 53% of whom voted for Trump), still deep-seated racism (since Clinton was seen as an extension of the Obama's policies), still deep-seated xenophobia (if Trump was tough on immigrants and Muslims, then Clinton was therefore not). But those three facets of deplorability can't be the whole story, not for sixty two million people. Clumping a large group people together because a handful of them exemplified a few terrible traits is something that...well, something that Donald Trump would do. Besides, if you're going to whittle Trump's support down to one word, it shouldn't be 'deplorables', it should be 'jobs'. Remember those things? Because a hell of a lot of Americans don't. And the constant disconnect of a rising Dow (which, it should be reminded, is a barometer of how rich the rich people are, not the state of the economy for the billions of people around the globe) and falling unemployment numbers mask the fact that underemployment in the service industry is the new career reality not only across America but the globe as well (work that offers no guaranteed hours, no job security, no benefit, no legal protections, and little to sense of independence or self worth). This is the spiraling black hole of death problem that was created by globalization. Technology allowed us to make stuff for cheap on the other side of the world and ship it all around, so factories from Kansas to Kiev shut down and millions of people were fired. And this has been the problem that was staring at us in the face since the 1980s, and it was one that many Western leaders never wanted acknowledge, always kicking the can down the road, with the promises of jobs returning or being replaced always ending up empty. And the people got sick of both the Republicans and Democrats lying about fixing the problem, since the politicians seemed to always be cozying up to the wealthy corporations, who were getting all the wealthier as regulations loosened and unions weakened. And when people are that upset and feel completely abandoned by the system that exists to ensure that this exact thing doesn't happen, they vote for the candidate that doesn't sound like every carbon copy politician, the candidate they believe when he (or she) promises they'll renegotiate trade deals to bring back jobs and drains the special interest swamp in the capital. So you get Donald Trump. A sleazy, born-rich billionaire who declared bankruptcy four times and is best known to the public as a blustery game show host. A man whose on record on job creation is spotty at best. A man who says you can trust him because he's already gamed the system. A symptom of the problem, sure, a straw-man/strong-man who is only realizing now (from his first meeting with Obama where he looked a combination of bored and terrified, to his feeble attempts at choosing a cabinet) that this job comes with plenty of power and responsibility, but not with the sort of power that can keep even a fraction of his campaign promises. And the swing states which swung for Trump (Ohio, Wisconsin) will continue to feel the endless kneecapping of little to no job recovery under the new President. So while this explains his support among the low-to-no-income classes (in economically depressed communities, whichever candidate boasts over and over about bringing back jobs will emerge victorious), one must also consider the segment of his supporters which bring in an average $70,000 a year. These people voted for Trump for the same reason a lot of people voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Because it 'feels' like he represents 'change', two words that will never stop being factors in elections. A sensationalist and sometimes wildly false and inaccurate media (Macedonian teenagers making clickbait alt-right news websites for fun and profit) painting a picture of terror and uncertainty, couple with anecdotal evidence of people's genuine economic plight creates the 'feeling' that America is falling behind, losing its way. That even if you have a job everywhere else around you is flailing, while the world seems more chaotic and government handouts appear to only help people who live in big cities. Is this true? Does it even matter if this is what you 'feel' to be true? Sure, it means you're ignoring facts and statistics, but don't worry, there's a president-elect for that. And that means it's time to ask how that is going to affect policy going forward. When the decisions aren't made based on truth, but what you want to be true. Or 'post-truth', which is the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year. So what will Trump do? He's said so many contradictory and inflammatory things, it's hard to say what he will want to do and what he'll be able to do. Pretty much the only thing that's certain is that he'll cut taxes for the rich and corporations, and further deregulate financial, energy, and media industries. That's the gift to himself and the rest of the 1% (in fact, this might finally get the rest of the wealthy and powerful to actually like Trump, who's bankruptcies and bluster kind of made him seem like a blackballed embarrassment to other Manhattan elites). For years Clinton has been pilloried for being too close to wealthy donors and special interests. And she was defeated in this election by a man who was the archetypal egotistical business tycoon. And how will he appease his supporters and help the rest of America? He's cooled down his rhetoric: the border wall is now a fence, deportation goal numbers have been slashed 75%, of course he'll honour NATO commitments, he'll slice up some but not all of Obamacare. For now. All this might change next week, month or year. This is uncharted territory. This is a simmering pot ready to boil. The President elect owes millions to Chinese banks (because American banks wouldn't lend him money), has investment properties/portfolios all over the world and is already wheeling and dealing with his business partners at Trump Tower, since he doesn't seem to be interested in setting up a blind trust to keep the affairs of the nation and the affairs of his bottom line separate. A new low in political everything, encapsulated perfectly by President-Elect Trump. Still tweeting about how the media is out to get him, saying that he could have won the popular vote if he wanted to, treating the campaign and now the rollout of his cabinet like a reality show. Walking back every shocking declaration he ever said with a straight face, tacitly acknowledging that he said it just to get attention. Is this the new reality, where the position of the President becomes even more superficial and PR-based, and it's the people behind the curtain that are pulling his or her strings? Trump has already duped his supporters by doing the opposite of 'draining the swamp', with lobbyists salivating at the idea of getting back the halls-of-power access. It's pay to play once again, after going through a few famine years under Obama. So if Washington stays the same, what can he offer his diehard supporters other than whipping up more hatred of the 'other'? He has two years to bring back millions of jobs to the rust belt, and if his economic plan (or the people he puts in charge of his economic plan, which really means the people who are going to come up with an economic plan for him) is anything to go by (loosening regulations, tax cuts), it's simply not going to happen. America doesn't have the same economic pull it used to, nor do the most powerful people in the country seem to have any interest in bringing these jobs back, since doing so would affect the company bottom line. Until it's just as expensive to build a lawnmower in Asia as it is in Arkansas, the manufacturing jobs are going to stay on the other side of the Pacific. All of these things are troubling, but it's the personality of Trump which makes his administration all the more unpredictable. That he ran as a Republican and is staffing Republicans means there are some predictable elements to his policies. If Clinton won, it would have been unlikely that she would have won both houses of congress, which means she would have had to do quite a bit of compromise for her own platform. Of course, her policies would be much more person friendly and much less corporation friendly. Democrats and Republicans will both fuck you in the end, but the Democrats will buy you dinner first. We needed Clinton's policies on climate change, taxation, and social programs to be the baseline requirements for the years and decades going forward if we were to uphold the basic functioning of a democratic America, and therefore a large part of a functioning Western Civilization, and therefore a large part of global society. Even if Trump's policies were centrist (or even populist), current living standards and basic rights will be in jeopardy in the years to come. When it comes to what he might mean to international diplomacy, the world is already turning into the skid, with increased settlement building in Israel, emboldened right-leaning parties across Europe, and a circle-the-wagons mentality in Asian countries. Hopefully Trump is taking a crash course of sorts in these matters, because who he surrounds himself with will define the sort of information and news presented to him. In that way, the president decides what he will do when he decides his staff. And Donald Trump has a history of working with only sycophants and horse-traders, morals, integrity and clarity be damned. If he's only passively interested in most issues, and preferring ones that can be linked to good photo-ops and rallies were people chant his name, then fewer issues will ever be addressed by him directly, with decisions behind made behind his blissfully ignorant back. In this way, Trump will force the Presidency to mean even less. The people have spoken, and soon their words/ballots will mean even less. Trump will make this a figurehead position, one that is meant to inspire the nation, make them proud to be [insert nationality here], while the convoluted decisions about policy are made in sausage-like fashion in offices across the world. Where half the country thinks that the leader of Russia had his thumb on the scale on the election (regardless of whether it's true), especially after it was acknowledge that some of Putin's staff communicated with Trump over the summer. As mentioned in the tail end of the pre-election article (HERE), it was noted that with Trump's likely loss, that it might lead to a rejection of sorts against the Trump-like character and the Trump-like traits that many people in power hold. Apparently it will have to take an entire administration before that happens. More so than Hillary Clinton, truth and substance were the losers in this election. The two mainstream political parties can't change all that much between election cycles. Two and four years aren't long periods of time, and when the losers acknowledge there has to be reforms of policy and approach, they are still at the mercy of the same big money donors and interests (even if some of the donors and interests want change as well, it certainly doesn't come fast). Typical 'change' is doing exactly what the victors did, or making a half-assed attempt at doing the exact opposite of what the victors did. The democrats will run a Trump for the left, an energetic, approachable, slogan pushing yes man or woman that is expected to leave the policy details to lawyers and lobbyists. Divisions will continue to widen, economically, socially, culturally, geographically. And information will be fitted and tailored around the policy being made and the person pushing it. Pocket cults of personality will exist across the land, tethered to wealthy donors and vanity institutes of research and polling. The truest thing in peoples’ lives will be their phone/internet bill. Perhaps this all too dour, only three weeks out from November 8th, but a few days ago, the president-elect tweeted that the election he won was crooked and filled with irregularities, and that there should be no recounts. A statement that is about as good as 1984-like doublespeak gets. Donald Trump emerged as the victor in a miserable and joyless presidential campaign, and he destroyed the people’s complete faith and trust in democracy to do it.
Sources
Unemployment across the country
Trump meets Obama, isn't having fun yet (http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/donald-trump-doesnt-like-this-any-more-than-you-do-1788862854)
NYT Interview Transcript:
Trump and Putin (http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a50598/russian-talked-to-trump-campaign/)
Closed Borders
Dowd's tossing blame on Clinton/Obama ego and being out of touch
The world is already turning into the skid:
Chomsky on Trump: (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/trump_in_the_white_house_an_interview_with_noam_chomsky
Elitism (Oh yeah, that thing)
Elitism is a loaded term, and is sensibly the bane/antagonist of democracy, since the bedrock of the latter is that everyone is equal to one another and consequently should have an equal say in how the community/state should be run. That's theoretical, of course. Stating 'everyone is equal' refers to how they are to be treated in the eyes of the law. Beyond that, it needs to be acknowledged that no one is equal to anyone else. We all have different abilities and flaws, which make us all specifically unequal to one another. A lovely sentiment when it comes to an individual's uniqueness and the power to shape your own destiny, but it can be a real challenge when it comes to performing basic democratic tasks, like being an informed and responsible citizen. Additionally, stating that everyone should have the same amount of power is more aspirational than anything else. Political power has never been so smoothly distributed among a nation's citizens. One person, one vote? Definitely. Does it translate effortlessly into how power is used in the capitol buildings? Not exactly. You can bandy around plenty of terms for the people who have considerably more power than the average citizen. Nobility is nice and old school, but it's been 'elitism' and the 'elite' for a while now. Your career politicians, your CEOs of all the industries that not-so-secretly shape your life and destiny (energy, financial, and - increasingly - tech), your old money that worked so damn hard to turn it into new money (namely, investing in the three industries listed above), and the odd rags-to-riches (or shrinking middle class-to-riches) inventor/entrepreneur who made it so big they couldn't go bankrupt if they tried (and consequently becomes old money). The rise of the aforementioned people in the last three and a half decades in terms of wealth and power (not just across America, not just across the Western World, but across the globe as a whole) has created an institutional foundation of governance where access has become considerably more restricted This means a phone call to your local politician will not resonate nearly as much as a donation of several thousand dollars (or the creation of a Super PAC (Political Action Committee)). To run for office requires a considerable amount of money, which means you are already rich, or you have a series of rich donors who will your support your campaign (and for whom you will owe vote-friendly favours to if you win). Spending tens of thousands of dollars in an election season to ultimately save hundreds of thousands of dollars because the politicians you 'donated to' (not 'bribed') will change (or not change) the tax code does not come off as a perversion of democracy in the elites' eyes, but rather a sound business investment. The political positions of these individuals can vary, except when it comes to economic policy. Controlling at all costs what is most valuable - first and foremost, the transfer and exchange of money, followed by the energy and technology that people depend on daily - is something unanimously agreed upon. And they see this as a responsibility, not as a voracious and evil plot for more and more To keep this status quo, elites marry other elites, have children that go to elite schools and meet other elites to marry. In this vacuum, the expectation that a politician or judge already holds you in higher favour does not seem abnormal. Rising inequality results in much less social integration between the fewer haves and the many more have-nots. Can someone outside of this system crack into the caste? Yes, but it's difficult, rare, and more akin to winning the lottery than being the ideal social system for anyone to succeed. The American/Western Dream shouldn't have to exist as an exception to the rule. A capitalist economic system that leans heavy towards free markets is one where an individual's entire worth is based on finances. And even if the playing field (to use a trivializing term for our lives) was level when we all emerge from the womb, the differences in peoples' abilities and the need for some social roles to be of higher regard than others means that power and wealth could never be diffused uniformly. The advantaged naturally rise to the top, but the concern will always exist of what they do when they get there. If they saw themselves as fulfilling God given roles centuries ago, then today the elites see themselves as 'stewards', leading the globalized economy forward to the eventual benefit of all. Consequently - when you look at any sort of graph regarding wealth, income inequality, personal debt, corporate mergers, etc. - the current problems with the large-scale economic system (and not only in America) is that the elites have failed the rest of us. Certainly the masses can cynically expect the elites to 'look out for their own' before making sure the state/globe still functions normally, but over the last decade - and certainly after the financial crisis of 08/09 - these problems have exacerbated greatly. If the measure for success is a continually functioning society that can offer a majority of its citizens respectable living standards and an ability to address large-scale challenges that will affect the well-being of the state and the world at large, then the elites - having more power than that of the voting block of all citizens - have misused the role they gave themselves. Consequently, there are two strands of thought to consider. A) The elites have a higher level of responsibility of ensuring that society runs smoothly than those who are not elite. This is a tacit agreement between the powerful few and the less powerful many. B) Everyone is in it for themselves, and the people that accomplish more through a combination of hard work, ingenuity and luck (being born into a wealthy family) owe nothing to anyone else. If A is true then there are systemic failures within the economic state of the contemporary world and changes must be made. If B is true then are systemic failures within the economic state of the contemporary world, but that's just the way it is, smoke 'em if you got 'em. So let's go with A. Rectifying this problem can occur in very few (and considerably difficult) ways. A groundswell of public support for reforms (see: populism) is extremely difficult when one considers the strong and almost unbridgeable divide between liberals and conservatives (although we should use these terms loosely). Even information can be skewered to particular groups, thanks to the news-conformity bubble (where you only seek out/receive news/opinions from political positions that are very similar to your own). If the right's new bubble is said to be anti-fact (currently personified by the words of Donald Trump), then the left's is anti-practicality. The left has been promised/promising a path to utopia through proper legislation, but nothing can match their rhetoric. Look at Obamacare. Because of the concessions that were required to get enough support in Congress, many of the left are disappointed at its limitations. And future left-leaning legislation will have the same problem. It won't be what was originally claimed. It will always seem to be - at best - a middling success to the left (and to the right government-run health insurance was always about death panels). And Obamacare is weak largely in part because of the unavoidable demands of compensation from health insurance companies, which are run and owned by the elites (that no one seems to bat an eye at the idea of profiting massively from people's illnesses - plus having an incentive to deny peoples' claims - is also troubling). No matter what the large scale government project, the powerful corporations and those that run them sneak their thumb (or whole hand) on the scale. That some of the largest financial and energy industries get billions a year in tax breaks while remaining enormously profitable is unfathomable. Unless you're the ones reaping the rewards. Then it doesn't seem that way. And it's hard to see any other perspective if you're inside the bubble (in fact, you might deny that there is a bubble in the first place). Whether it's pushing the trickle-down economy, the idea of a substandard living wage, or simply saying, 'screw the lazy poor', the elites looking out for number 1% first and everyone else second has become an entrenched belief among everyone else on the planet. Changing this perspective is difficult, as it is going against a fundamental belief of the American/Western dream, which is that success is always dependent on an individual. In reality, success depends on harnessing the convoluted inter-workings of a globalized economy. During the 2012 presidential election, Republican seized on a disemboweled quote from Obama. The President was outlining that no matter how hardworking and intelligent the individual (or individual company) was, it is dependent on basic infrastructure like roads, electricity, building codes and regulations, etc, that is provided by governments. He said 'you didn't build that', and the GOP used those four and half words as proof that Obama is a foe of business, large and small. There is a resistance among elites to government participation in practically any large-scale endeavour, even though mixed market economies are much more stable in the long term. So it's no wonder this system has fallen out a favour at a time when few people are looking long term. The working class is living paycheque to paycheque, and the elites are only interested in the positive quarterly financial reports that will result in their annual bonus. Everyone is existing in short-term economies. Long term investments are suddenly considered too risky, because we're tearing up the present to pieces to get every single dollar and cent out of it. If there are elitists, then even the middle class begins to become irrelevant. There is only the extremely wealthy and powerful, and then everyone else. Elitism as an actual form of governance cannot exist in a democracy. If the elected representatives are not supporting the will of the people (but rather a very, very small segment of people, regardless of how the votes are cast), then there is no democracy. Once again, it has to be stressed that this push for corporate power and deregulation has been terrible for the great masses of people across the globe. In the West there is rising unemployment, less saving, and no job security, and even in other areas in the globe that have absorbed the West's former manufacturing jobs, there is still poverty, exploitation, and non-democratic rule. The notion that the best rise to the top and are better suited to rule would seem much less odious if the results actually benefitted the majority of the people. The self-appointed guardians of capital can't seem to keep their own grubby hands out of the cookie jar, leaving the vast majority of the people with the crumbs. A healthy, long-term democracy has to alternate between egalitarian-focused and elitist-focused periods. Ideally democracy will always be egalitarian-focused, but that does not appear to be feasible, and will have to be considered a theoretical construct rather than a plausible form of governance. There's never going to be an egalitarian utopia and there will never be a ‘1984-like inner/outer party and everyone else’ dystopia. Instead it's always going to be a mix of both, with the scales occasionally leaning more towards inequality and then occasionally towards equality. The last three and a half decades have seen Western democracy become increasingly elitist-focused, and it is necessary for there to be a shift back to egalitarian-focused. This must include the acknowledgement by the elites that there needs to be changes that will shrink the overall size and individual portions of their wealth and power. To say that this will not be a welcomed proposal is an understatement, especially when one considers the fact that any elites see their success as proof that the system isn't broken, that their hard work and abilities are advantages that anyone else would capitalize on if they could. It's not simply a matter of changing a tax code or laws concerning deregulation. It's also (mainly?) a matter of changing people's minds. Even if the United States introduced legislation that heavily taxed the wealthy and strictly regulated financial institutions and corporations, these groups would simply 'relocate' in an economic sense (as many of them have half-accomplished already) to a much more tax-friendly nation, like Panama or the Grand Cayman Islands. And so the next challenge is to get every nation (or even almost every, which is also seemingly impossible) on earth to also agree to these economic rules that are binding and come with criminal charges if violated. While the United States has a massive influence in global economic policy, trying to even make the argument that this is for the best of the global economy in the long run would be missing support for several key nations. The United States' long standing reputation of exploiting the rest of the planet for their own gain (and the level of fairness within this accusation can be debated elsewhere) means some nations will not support it. And some nations who did agree will still be 'soft' on enforcing these rules, and the wealthy will quietly flock there, or created a new kind of financial instrument where they can hide their commas. The goal here is to make avoidance of regulation and taxation more difficult, as eradicating it completely is not possible. The alternate (and more fruitful) goal is to convince the wealthy that paying taxes is in their best interest in the long run. It doesn't take much for these frustrations to come to a boiling point when news like the Panama Papers is revealed. By hiding your money in offshore bank accounts, you are making your own country shittier. How can anyone be okay with that? The problem is that it's becoming more and more apparent that only the extremely wealthy can take the important first step and fix the widening gap of inequality in America (and to lesser degrees, in other Western nations). The rich people have to save the ever growing masses of poor people by giving a lot of their money that they hide in offshore accounts (impossible to know for sure, but conservative estimates have it in the trillions) to the rest of us via government taxation and then government spending. Have the wealthy finance the much-needed upgrade in American infrastructure. And if they're going to be total obstinate assholes about it, give 'em the tolls for bridges and highways for a temporary period. This is not a push for egalitarianism. Oversteering to the opposite concept is no solution at all. The elites can and will always have more, but in the upcoming years they will simply have to settle for not as much.
Notes
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/27/11433650/taxes-rich-people
Populism: Oh yeah, that thing
Don’t look at Donald Trump. We know that’s difficult, as he’s a never-ending car crash you can’t help but rubberneck in the general direction of, but he’s not the real story of the 2016 presidential election. It's not Hillary Clinton, either. Or Bernie Sanders. The 2016 US election isn't about a person. It's about people. Populism is back. Economist (and Bill Clinton’s secretary of labour) Robert Reich predicted a few years back that things would get so difficult in America for the average citizen that there would be an inevitable and basic change as to how the country functions from an economic perspective, led by a groundswell of common sense support for doing whatever it takes to finally rehabilitate the middle class. But he didn’t predict it would take on this form (even if you could, would you really want to?). Donald Trump blames Washington gridlock and anything non-white, non-Christian, and non-Norman Rockwell painting for the current state of America, a fact-free bigoted screed that connects most strongly with lower class whites in blue collar graveyard towns. Bernie Sanders said that over the last several decades Wall Street fat cats have pulled up the socioeconomic ladder after them when they climbed into the tree-house of success, leaving the rest of to fight amongst the scraps, a message that resonated with the disaffected, left-leaning youth. Outspoken New Yorkers out to change America. It’s not just ‘chickens coming home to roost’ for conservatives (the argument that Republicans have stoked the talking points of fear, religion, and neoliberalism among its base for so long that was inevitable that there would be a candidate that exemplifies (or is able to convince people he exemplifies) these traits to an uncomfortably toxic degree). And it's not just a bunch of liberal arts baristas tweeting 'feel the bern' incessantly and think that Clinton has too many ties to energy and financial industry insiders. It’s deeper now because in the last eight years – even with the most left-leaning president since the 1970s – most Americans have seen their economic outlooks go from bad to worse. Unless you’re already wealthy, and the 1% tone deafness on this issue just adds more fuel to the fire of populist anger. And this anger is nothing to scoff at. Anger is a powerful emotion that can get people to ballot box a lot more effectively than any sort of graph or logical argument about policy change can. Sanders on the left, Trump on the right, with the latter saying he even agrees with the former on some things (which is almost certainly just be a ploy to steal any possible votes from still disillusioned Sanders supporters). Together, these so-called ‘fringe’ candidates had almost more support than all the other ‘mainstream’ candidates combined. So what happens? Hillary Clinton is probably going to be the next President of the United States. A landmark step forward for all women, and one taken by a politician who - when looking at the presidential hopefuls from any other party - is far and away the most qualified for the job. Which means she is going to be under criticism from every political side and position from day one. Paradoxically, by being the most qualified Clinton will be seen as everything wrong with the American political system. A power hungry Washington insider who claims to be for the people but will still party around with Wall Street. A centrist that will disappoint the large swaths of people who identify as left or right. An unjustified framing, certainly, so it’s worthwhile to add the reminder that the power of Congress can be even mightier than the power of the President. The mindset that Americans vote for their leaders every four years is rather disingenuous. Every two years you vote for new representatives, and that’s how your political beliefs live and die, not necessarily by who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As much as the presidential election process can seem rigged via super-delegates and media coverage, it's nothing compared to how broken and rigged the system is for pols in the house and Senate. Gerrymandering means only a fraction of the seats can actually switch parties (and the ones that are in the ‘safe’ districts have some of the most extreme views, at least in terms of conservative Tea Partiers), plus just like the presidential race, the amount of money offered up from wealthy donors to each district face off is another reminder how powerless most citizens truly are when it comes to making their voices heard. All this means that, more so than ever before in the last fifty years, this election feels particularly desperate and urgent, based on the rhetoric of both the candidates and the citizens. Language that plays more on the hearts than the minds. Preying on people's fears by saying that the country isn't safe, even though violent crime is down nationwide. Preying on people hopes and dreams by promising free college and better health care plans, even though the ability to push through (and pay for) such legislation is unlikely. But it's these sorts of sweeping statements that embodies populism. It's 'what everyone wants', even if no one gives much thought to its feasibility, or its long-term, wide-ranging effects. The UK's Brexit vote is an excellent example of a referendum done by drunk sledgehammer when surgical tools would be much more effective. Yes, the European Union has become a bureaucratic nightmare that grew too big, too fast and cannot address the major challenges affecting the individual countries within its borders, from economic decline to migration. Despite all this, however, leaving it is much worse in the long term. Following rules and regulations will become more onerous, travel and work between the UK and the EU will become much more difficult, and leaves the future strength of the EU in doubt (from perspective ranging from economic to military). But with the 'Leave' supporters focusing on xenophobic slander and saying they are tired of experts and their facts (a hideous quip from MP Michael Gove), it was a painful reminder that populism can frequently be manipulated, even while there are core truths to the issue at hand that should have people supporting the other viewpoint. Complaining about the economy and how other people who aren't exactly like you are getting handouts and special treatment is a harsh, biter, and bigoted take on a rather simple and straightforward apolitical occurrence in the Western world: The shrinking of the middle class. A glib assessment of the Brexit campaign is that people in England didn’t like people from elsewhere coming and taking their jobs. A glib assessment of the Trump campaign is that his supporters don’t like people from elsewhere coming and taking their jobs. Populism is by nature reductionist. Its strength lies in the simplicity of its message. But economic stagnation is a massive, interdependent problem, and cannot be solved within one country's borders. That several Asian nations manufacture most of what Americans buy means American citizens have a massive say in how this region (and especially China) itself is run (even if they don’t consider it). And with China buying American debt so readily, Chinese corporations and their owner/investors (many in the government) are literally invested in America’s well-being. These are big issues, and the solutions to them are just as complex and unwieldy. Which is why it's hard to talk about them in an election year where tweets and soundbites reign supreme. And because Trump can dominate the news-cycle, Clinton is left to not so much debate the issues but simply acknowledge that she’s the only other choice, the only non-crazy choice. And that’s what necessary to attract the left populist supporters. Not with rational arguments (explaining that she has much more feasible socioeconomic plan than Sanders, and a better track record with compromise, which is necessary), but with holding up the ‘greater of two evils’ as a threat. So how do we discuss an important and nuanced issue like international trade? How do we discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal with the diligence and care it deserves? We cannot simply tear it to shreds like the left wants, and we can’t embrace it fully like the corporate-conservative right wants. Populism makes any sort of debate about this incredibly difficult, but you can't downplay populism. You can ignore it for a while, but not forever. It's what the people want, even if they don't know exactly what they want and it needs articulating, or even if what they want is completely unfeasible. Sound familiar? It's why it is possible for Donald Trump to win the presidency. Inevitable? Of course not. But he can paint Clinton as a criminal beltway insider, and deflect democratic attacks by tilting middle and appealing to undecided voters by toning down the racist and xenophobic rhetoric. ‘Cooler heads prevailing’? There’s enough frustrated people out there (and a cross-section of all voting demographics) which believe that voting for the candidate who will only deliver more of the same is worse than sweeping change. For complicated reasons that populism naturally ignores, conservatives are trying to claim that Obama’s hope and change resulted in middling bureaucracy and partisan sniping that still lets the rich people get richer and everyone else get poorer, and add that Clinton is more of that. If Trump can get this argument across and not put his foot any further into his mouth (still looking unlikely at the moment), he just might win. (What would a Trump presidency look like? No idea. Who knows what Trump actually believes. He’ll say anything to get attention/votes. His policies (such as they are) have huge flaws, from logistics to budgeting to simply being morally repugnant. Best Case Scenario: All that talk about building a wall along Mexico and banning Muslims was just to get attention. He dials all this back, gets a bipartisan team of advisors (to actually represent those that did vote for him, since he will be less beholden to party insiders) and actually tries to get some policies passed that helps keep jobs from leaving America. He still shoots his mouth off, but defers to the Joint Chief of Staff on military issues and therefore does not start WWIII. Lousy Case Scenario: He tries to get the wall built, ban muslims, and create new laws about job security, but congress thwarts him at every turn. And suddenly there is a palpable sense of thankfulness for Washington gridlock. Worst Case scenario: He puts cronies in charge, gets enough support from far right wingers in Congress to pass parts of his ‘three terrible ideas for every one good idea’ agenda, and America finds itself with terrible economic problems that border on isolationist, and then there’s an international crisis that he completely fucks up.) Everyone agrees that there are big, complicated problems facing America/The West/The World, but the agreement ends there. What are the biggest problems? Which are the ones we should tackle first? Once again, populism is that feeling of anger and frustration and desire for change. But these three emotions are not ideal for governance. Populism is a very powerful, clumsy movement. Certainly a bull in a china shop. Even within a democracy where the ideal situation is that everyone has equal share of power via their ballot during an election, electing a person to represent you and your district in Congress (or Parliament) is the tacit acknowledgement that some people now have more power than others, because these politicians are the ones who will actually be making decisions in the capital. And you're supposed to elect the best your voting district has to offer. With the simple reasoning being that a moral, intelligent, and hard-working individual will make the right decisions not only for the people who voted for him or her, but for the nation as a whole. And this is democracy 101, sure. But when this system starts to break down, populism is what people turn to when the mistrust in the current system of governance reaches a no-going-back threshold. It's not a matter of just fringe right and left wingers railing against the problems of Western democracy. Mainstream right and left-leaning people also see the system as completely broken. As do political centrists. Which is why this is most certainly the beginning of a populist movement in the United States that won't dissipate after November 9th. Populism is a movement of the powerless, but inevitably it will gain power as people unify under certain issues, demanding change. But this period of actually having power, of being able to greatly influence legislation, will be extremely short lived. Inevitably this flow of power must manifest itself in very traditional forms. Without a doubt the people who are leading/organizing the movement will be imbibed with the responsibility of negotiating with whatever institution or government entity that they are attempting to change. Any sort of coalescing of power will attract people who are willing to exploit it for their own ends. Populism exists as a spark that forces the shuffling of chairs and desks and job titles. And that spark is difficult to predict. When does a march become a sit-in? When does a protest become a riot? For centuries populism required the physical presence of the masses. From the 'peasant are revolting', to 'let them eat cake', to 'workers of the world unite'. The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are two sides of the disenfranchisement coin, and while both conservative and liberal politicians have tried to harness the political energy of these movements to their own ends, the still unlearned lesson is that lip service to these grievances is only going to have people return years later, in larger numbers, with more anger and energy. Trump and Sanders are the embodiment of The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, and regardless of how this election plays out, neither of these groups will disappear unless there is actual change to the socioeconomic conditions of America. One of the chief dissatisfactions that unite people regardless of their political stripe is the pervasive influence of money in politics (it certainly allows you to hurl accusations at the candidate/party you dislike, while downplaying how big money donations affect the decisions of the candidate/party you support). And how do you maneuver around other people’s money? With your own. Populism can become something as rote and dull as getting a text or tweet from a friend or public figure, asking you to temporarily transfer $500 out of your bank account as a political act. To put pressure on the financial institution to withdraw their support of an oppressive foreign government or an amoral corporation. After enough people have done the same thing, and the bank's assets have shrunken considerably in the space of an hour or two, the financial institution acquiesces, changes its position, and everyone puts their money back in. This sort of shuffling can accomplish what marching in the streets and shouting slogans cannot, consolidate the moment of power much, much more quickly, zeroing in much more efficiently upon the issue at hand, and expressing what the people as a whole demand, and putting pressure exactly where it hurts for corporations: On their quarterly profit earnings. Can it be usurped by the forces it is mean to stop? Of course. Any and all political tools can be, and exploiting methods used by populists is extremely easy, in part because these methods have to be easy, otherwise large segments of the population won't bother with them. But perhaps for the next several cycles of debates and exchanges about large scale initiatives and plans, the masses get their voices heard with the one thing that talks louder than anything else: Money. It can even drown out Donald Trump.
The Public and the Private
Things are getting complicated. In terms of global problems, this is not a startling revelation these days, but some scripts have been flipped in terms of who are the good and bad guys (which is always an 'eye of the beholder' term, anyway). Governments are curtailing free speech and corporations are standing up for the privacy rights of individuals. And they're both doing it for reasons that can be understood and accepted by large swaths of the population as the right thing to do at the moment. Kind of. Depending on the circumstances. It's complicated. So if you lean left, the institution we rely upon (the government) to protect us from corporate power which typical has only one amoral goal (make money) is demanding that a big corporation give them the ability to access all our private data on our phones. To keep us safe from terrorism. Meanwhile, across the globe, countries both democratic and 'democratic' are having a difficult time with letting some people say what they want when it angers some other people (and some of these 'some people' have lots and lots of power). Democracy is seen as something to be achieved, an end, a completion of a journey from tyranny to freedom. Which is why it can be goddamn annoying to find ourselves continually re-examining one of the oldest questions concerning this political system: How much freedom are you willing to give up in exchange for safety?
Puppets vs. Masters
Sticks and stones... But not in India. Now simply shouting 'Long Live Pakistan!" on A New Delhi university campus is enough to get arrested. "While free speech is enshrined in the [Indian] Constitution, it has been undermined by various sections of the penal code, the courts and successive governments, and is not always supported by the public." (Najaf, Gupta) This is where we shrug and acknowledge that democracy and freedom is typically a 'two steps forward, one step back' progression. Where we note that when the West shoves globalization into a region that's not completely industrialized, it means that all the other Western influences - from culture to forms of governance - is going to arrive in bits and pieces and not perfectly fit into the already existing power structure. Where we clear our throats and admit that even if ushering in new reforms and civil rights is going well, financial downturns and political upheavals on the other side of the world can suddenly stop this progression in its tracks (when the price of meat drops in South America, slaughterhouses close in India). Where we look at the numbers and have to admit that a democracy for thirty or three hundred million people that has been able to develop over centuries is so much different than a democracy for over one billion people that's trying to stagger forward out of colonial oppression in only a few decades. But then, being a member of the Communist Party in 1950s America (and shouting about it in public) could probably get you some unwanted attention (from both the authorities and random passersby). And tensions between Indian and Pakistan (both nuclear powers) have long been terrible. But does that mean you put free speech on the shelf because some words are considered dangerous when you're in the middle of a not-quite-hot-not-quite-cold war? How strong do the roots of your democracy have to be before the government is comfortable with protests against it? If that's the ultimate test of democracy maybe too many nations are willing to take the D minus (or, for purists, the F). And if you think you can outsmart the authorities by keeping your mouth shut and simply letting the colour of your clothes do the talking, think again. (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/world/asia/malaysia-bersih-yellow-t-shirts-ban.html) Yes, it looks extremely sad when a country is trying to ban a coloured t-shirt, revealing more about their internal weakness than they want to let on, and you can write this sort of screed on your yellow t-shirt or a slightly mocking protest sign. But it becomes a much less funny sort of ridiculous when you get beaten by a riot cop or dragged into jail without being given any of the rights your country likes to say it gives to all its citizens. But those are just basic rights growing pangs in Southeast Asia, right? Just a bunch of DINOs (Democracies In Name Only), right? If we turn our eye to Europe, certainly we'll be reassured that the rights and freedoms of individuals are being respected, especially in the face of rising hostility towards radical strains of Islam across the continent? Well... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/world/europe/spain-europe-protest-free-speech.html Using puppet witches at a protest to suggest that the government is going on a witch hunt? At worst they should be mocked for nailing the hammer a little too much on the head. Our short term and selective memory means we forget that Spain had a rough go through the twentieth century, with plenty of fascist dictators, rebellions, and civil wars. Spain's been an amazing success story since then, although the financial crisis hit it particularly hard. And that's something that must be considered when we look at these protests and how the government reacts to them. Democracy might be the political system, but capitalism is the economic one. And the world economy is in terrible shape (and any current growth the United States or any other nation likes to trumpet is a fake out. Most of this money is just going into the pockets of the already super-wealthy, exacerbating the rich-everyone else divide). If everyone gets paid, everyone cares a little bit less about words that they might disagree with, no one gets violently angry about being marginalized and impoverished. But when belts get tightened, tempers flare, stress increases, instability rises, and suddenly the authorities are worried about puppets. Free speech means it doesn't matter if you don't like satire, it's got to be allowed. But it does matter a hell of a lot if those applying the laws regarding hate (or threatening/subversive) speech can't understand this particular instance as satire. Weighing freedom against safety is never an easy question, and should be debated vigorously in the halls of power and the most rundown bars, but...puppeteers? Comedians? Musicians? These are the sort of people who will be arrested by the government in fascist countries, not...France. Is Dieudonne getting laughs when he makes fun of Jewish rituals onstage? It doesn't matter, it's ridiculous that doing so should be considered a crime. Or that a tweet he sends sympathizing with one of the terrorists who shot up the Charles Hebdo offices gets him arrested. Offending people is not a crime, and if it becomes a crime 'in specific situations', then that's a very, very slippery slope to letting whoever has a bit of power from placing more and more words and ideas under the ever growing umbrella of 'specific situations'. And those that would defend such restrictions to free speech argue that this is a matter of public safety, that words can inflame people and spur them to action that can have violent consequences. The question, then: If we let people say terrible things, do terrible actions soon follow? (Oh hey, guess what, that is a ridiculously complicated answer that has to take in so many varying social and economic conditions of several individuals, from those doing the saying to those doing the possible doing, with a thick river of government intervention flowing through it) (Food for thought: for all the many, many faults that other Western nations can find in America, the United States has some of most permissive and open free speech protections in the world, but it also has more terribly violent acts (namely, gun deaths) than other developed nations) Because that is the essential argument: A society is to keep it people safe, and if certain words or phrases that create a certain position which regularly instigate certain actions, then those words and phrases are dangerous. But that's always the first step when free speech is curtailed. It begins with the attempt to crackdown on hate speech, which is much more widely supported (especially by the groups that feel threatened by whoever are using such terms) than outright censorship. But frequently the next step (seen in both Spain and South Korea in the last year or so) is the increased difficulty of getting approval to hold peaceful, organized demonstrations in front of government buildings. Those that attend would be subject to arrest and/or fine. And then either the penalties increase, the amount of spots where people are not allowed to congregate increase, or the words and phrases that are suspect increase. If the authorities are given tools that can be applied on a broader scope, it's inevitable that will be applied. Which is why any attempt to curtail free speech - even if done in the interest of public safety - must be considered oh so very carefully. Not because of how it might be applied at the moment because of the current issue/climate, but because of how it might be applied months and years down the road in other situations. This is in part due to constantly nebulous terminology used in passing laws banning hate speech. If words can make a group feel threatened, then those that utter it are subject to persecution. But quickly 'group' can be used to include corporations and the government itself, and 'threat' can also include the idea of a 'perceived threat', and under this slightly bending of words, getting together In a city square to chant about budget cuts can now be an arrestable offence. In Korea, the question became, why take the risk, and protesters sent their avatars: The avatars of law enforcement, politicians, and legal scholars were not available for comment.
Poisoned Apples: Governments vs. Corporations
Aw, yeah. Here we go. 'Member how we're all worried about the government having too much surveillance power, so we were all like, 'boo nsa, keep your nose out of our private lives' (whether you were American or not)? But remember how we're all also kinda concerned about how powerful all these massive tech companies that are controlling more and more of our lives are becoming? Well these two groups are smashing into each other, and the ramifications will be felt far beyond Apple and America, and for many years to come. This should be a huge debate involving everyone, because it involves a very simple, basic concept that we all use and rely on everyday of our lives: Trust. What would you trust the government with? What would you trust the corporations with? The former to keep our community running and the rights and freedoms that dictate how we treat each other, the latter with buying and selling of all the necessary and unnecessary things in the community. But of course that's an oversimplification to the point of being wrong. Governments use corporations to carry out many of its tasks, and frequently they're the corporations' best customers. And since money is tied up (and bursting at the seams) as these two big institutions criss-cross in a passionate-then-dysfunctional marriage, the people involved frequently slip from one institution to the other (former politicians become lobbyists representing corporations, regulatory bodies are ultimately staffed by employees of the industry they're supposed to be regulating). Which is one of the key reasons why the general populace is unlikely to trust both the government or corporations. There's a reluctant to give information to either. The government's problem is that when people suspect them for their overreach, it's for a 1984 style totalitarian agenda, spying on your every move and locking you in a secret prison for the slightest hint of dissent. Meanwhile, people think corporations wants to know more and more about them just so they can hawk their products and services more intrusively. If we're cynical enough to accept that 'lesser of two evils' is how we have to weigh most big decisions that the average person actually has a say in (kinda like Clinton vs. Trump in November), then most people will almost certainly take corporate overlords over government overlords. Better to be in constant debt because you can't afford all the stuff you need/want/think you need because of inter-cranial marketing than be in prison because you held a sign up and blocked traffic to complain about inequality or immigration. Recently courts have ruled that the DoD/NSA cannot demand Apple to unlock the phone, but thinking that this matter is over is as a naive as thinking that everyone understands roaming charges. The single phone in question is the one owned by Syed Farook the terrorist who killed fourteen people in San Bernardino last December, but there's already a lineup of requests by law enforcement across America who have as evidence other devices owned by suspects that they need to get into. But Apple maintains that writing a code that gives the government (or really, 'a' government, since if the US gets the code, it would be inevitable that China and Russia would demand the same programming) access to people's phones, then it would jeopardize every level of security and privacy. So privacy-rights advocates should be cheering that a corporation was protected from the government in court. Which in itself sounds like 1984-esque doublespeak. Cats chasing dogs. Hats on your feet. A company that uses sweatshop labour in countries where there's few rights' for workers is suddenly on the moral high ground. Meanwhile, the approval rating of Congress is hovering in the low teens. Because corporations have a greater visibility in our average lives than the government (whether justified or not, this is appearance), we are less concerned when corporations edge up against our individual rights than when the government does. Not accurate, of course. More often than not these two institutions work in a tandem, a symbiotic relationship that benefits each other. Not to suggest that Apple versus the DoD is mere kabuki theatre, but perhaps the resolution to this is simply going to be that the Department of Defence simply outsources its cyber security apparatus to an Apple/Samsung hybrid corporation (maybe Google will just buy the CIA and be done with it). No matter who wins, we lose. (Thanks, Alien vs. Predator tag line, very apt) Because Silicon Valley isn't nearly as egalitarian as it's made out to be. The 'big five' (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft (never underestimate the power of the Word)) own a ridiculously huge market share of cyberspace's general activities. They are the name brand platforms that any other tech company or startup needs to rely on in one way or another to reach any level of success (which sometimes might just mean being bought/absorbed by one of the five companies). They all want to grow, get bigger, get stronger, offer you whatever you want that much more effectively. They are the corporations of the future. Corporations are the proto-AIs. Just look at their effective, amoral programming. They are always changing. Google restructured to become a subsidiary of Alphabet. (When is 'restructuring' ever a good thing? When you announce that, you're either six months from declaring bankruptcy or declaring that you have a death ray in orbit about to destroy Chicago if your demands aren't met) That we click on Apple's updated terms and conditions without reading it has become late-night/website-article joke fodder, but it's going to be through these changes that our future rights and freedoms are going to be written (much like so many our of current rights and freedoms are (re)written in endless legal jargon that is barely looked over by our elected representatives before they vote on them in congress or parliament). SpaceX is the new NASA. Until SpaceX just buys NASA so the government can trim just a bit more fat from its bloated budgetary problems (except that in terms of benefits of long term funding, NASA is more like a vital organ rather than fat. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration used to be a tech innovator. Now it doesn't have any way of getting to space on its own, having to rely on Russian rockets or whatever Elon Musk is doing). Real dystopia is much more mundane than what's portrayed in popular (and counter) culture. But part of the reason for that is the ability for television, films and books depicting the future in a negative light is that it can be seen as a blaring warning alarm that we aren't careful, what is unfolding in front of your eyes on page and screen might very well come true. Just don't make the parallels too obvious. You might get arrested and have to share a jail cell with a bunch of puppeteers.
Additional Sources
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/apple-fbi-explainer-1.3459952
http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/20/decentralized-or-panopticon-pick-one/
Too much, too much: 2015 review
(Deep breath) This year we've seen how our institutional abilities are beginning to fall short in devastating and catastrophic ways. A violently collapsing Middle East forces millions of migrants towards Europe, which is collapsing economically. And even that's not seeing the full picture. Like the Cold War, the current superpowers are supporting certain factions in greater Persian Gulf region for their own interests, and these interests go far beyond the Middle East. America - supporting a tentative alliance of rebel groups and Kurds fighting against ISIS - has the terrible legacy of the Iraqi War, and a shockingly unyielding support of Saudi Arabia, where much of Islamic extremism (via Wahhabism) is born. Russia - supporting Syrian leader Assad (even after he has been accused of using chemical weapons on his own people) - has been ostracized by the international community since its invasion of the Ukraine. And both these nations have complicated interests in regards to gas and fuel resources, which continue to power the globe. American presence in the Persian Gulf is for a steady supply of it. Russia gains oil reserves in the Eastern Ukraine, and supporting Assad is a snub to the West after it imposed sanctions on Russia for the 2014 invasion (Bonus complication: Much of Europe is reliant on Russian oil and gas exports)`. And China is happy to just stay on the sidelines military-wise, only willing to help out if there's any financial incentive (infrastructure building) for them. But it's not just realpolitik. Scientists have attributed changes in global climate to famines and droughts in impoverished and unstable regions of the world, causing mass starvation and chaos that - in turn - fuels migration. If the option of staying where you are is either possible death by violent conflict or certain death by lack of basic necessities, then you don't stay anymore. And we are fortunate that this is not the case in the West, or even in large sections of what we therefore call the East (without a doubt, the rise out of poverty by almost a billion people in China and India over the last several decades is one of humanity's greatest success stories, although the real cost of this is still being tallied), even though we should really just acknowledge that global capitalism is a greater unifying force than political or religious ideology at a state level, and 'West' and 'East' don't mean much when it comes to international commerce. Certainly the Paris Climate summit was window dressing full of promises no one has to keep, since the bigger environmental news took place as it ended on the other side of the planet, when Beijing had its worst smog alert days of the year. Factories were closed, cars were barred from the streets, to go outside without a breathing mask would be risking your health. There are no high ranking government officials in China who deny that climate change is a clear and present danger (compare that with the US Congress). It's that odd mix of government intervention (when Chinese authorities tell a factory to shut down, they do) and free market capitalism (but not for very long, because things need to be powered, built, and shipped across the world). This dichotomy surprises no one. We are more connected and aware of how this world operates, but appear to be more helpless than ever before when it comes to changing it. As the scope of the problems have grown larger and more unwieldy, so too have the commitments required to address the problems. From a sociocultural perspective, we are unfamiliar with multi-decade solutions that can have many delays and failures in its initial startup stages (think of how difficult it was to get a still-corporate-friendly version of (almost) universal health care passed and introduced in the US). Even with something as universally loathed as terrorism, debates over how to best combat ISIS can rage from heavy military intervention to letting the entire region fall apart on its own, since any sort of engagement from the West will only prolong the struggle as well as swallow up resources from already cash-strapped countries (nation (re)building is never cheap). These matters of (inter)national security can bring out very bad (kneejerk racism based on no facts whatsoever) and very good intentions (people coming together in public spaces to show they are not afraid, supporting the refugees who are fleeing ISIS). But it's numbing to go from asking with a heavy heart how the November shootings in Paris could have happened, to then reading a massive article detailing the Syrian civil war. Because it's not just Paris. Syria, first of foremost. An ongoing humanitarian disaster in a war zone. But because of the instability from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to Lahore, that is only the best known place of constant concern. The day before the Paris attacks, terrorism took the lives of forty five in Beirut (known, before the Lebanese civil war, as the Paris of the Middle East). Just north of this, Turkey is engaged in the bombing of Kurds in northern Iraq (the Kurds had been reliable fighters against ISIS), while also keeping the curfew in place against its own citizens to prevent riots against a government that is become increasingly totalitarian (military attacking peaceful protesters in the wake of elections that were tilted in overwhelmingly in favour of the current regime). Ongoing violence in Palestine-Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It's been so long in Israel and the Palestinian state that it feels uncovered by the media for being redundant. There is nothing to change or add to the reporting, just the names of the dead. Yemen is engaged a civil war that has many different nearby nations offering military support to either rebels or the government (for citizens, 'military support' is a frequent and deadly oxymoron). Afghanistan and Pakistan are in better shape, but only thanks to the amount of money poured into them by the West (mainly America), and no one can possibly say that it's done much more than temporarily avoid even more bloodshed. Corruption is rampant in both nations, with huge regions almost wholly ungovernable by the leaders in the capital. These places are full of much more instability, are closer to the front lines of ISIS and international terrorism, but almost all Western attention goes to Paris (both in January with the Hebdo shooting and more recently in November). It's the hideous and cold acknowledgement that the world can only care/do so much. That we - as Sartre would say - flee responsibility when we feel overwhelmed. The West mourns for Paris because we know Paris. Even if we've never been, there is so much history and culture (to be absorbed in the high and low) that it feels familiar. There is the notion that this sort of tragedy is not supposed to happen in Paris, and that it’s ‘supposed’ to happen –while being no less tragic – in places like Afghanistan and Syria. And when we fall into this mindset, it’s harder to make an attempt to bring peace and stability to those places as well. We arrange our decisions through a mixture of reason, experience, and emotion, culturally primed to arrange things in an order that will eventually deliver expected results. We pat ourselves on the back for a global climate agreement that doesn't mean anything. All empty promises that each nation can completely miss without any sort of fine or punishment (except that the earth becomes less hospitable and more volatile for the many species that call it home). We complain about politicians at coffee shops and in cyber world posts and tweets, even as we acknowledge that nothing substantial would change if we elected in new ones. Because 'we' don't do anything substantial to change this course of our society, our elected officials don't feel pressure to do anything substantial. What's most frustrating is that despite a huge amount of global wealth continually pooling up into the pockets of the ultra-rich, the billions of people across the world still have more combined than they do. But it is extremely difficult to mobilize these assets into actual use. Even in the West, where the middle class has hundreds of billions of dollars to their collective names, there is little effort to make united financial decisions that can dramatically alter the levels of poverty and inequality (in various forms) across the planet. And in the last remaining days of 2015, there might that temptation to face the facts and admit to oneself that perhaps this isn't the way to create change. That Orwell - through 1984's Winston Smith - was wrong when he posited that 'all hope lies with the proles'. Perhaps the expectation that our elected officials represent our best interests (and not the interests of the tiny cabal of wealthy corporations and their owners) is enough, and it's them alone who have failed us. Perhaps we are entitled to having higher expectations to the people we give power to when we vote for them. Perhaps the 1% (or really, the 0.1%) will wake up just time and reluctantly start sharing the wealth and corporations agree to adhere to increased government regulations rather than try to break them. Perhaps this viewpoint is terribly naive. That there is a migration crisis of this magnitude - to a powerful and heavily interconnected economic region that is having a hard time creating a foundation for its own citizens under thirty (to choose a ballpark age) - should be raising huge red flags for how any of our institutions will handle similar sorts of large scale and inevitable challenges of the future. If 2015 was year where so many of our problems came to the forefront, here's hoping that 2016 will be full of solutions. (breathe out)
At Least Some Harmless Culture Happened
Visual Stuff: Stop Me If You've Seen This One Before A 'more of the same' type year. Even the new Star Wars (while all great and fun, which really, was the point of Star Wars all along, even when Vader beating the shit out of his son in Empire Strikes Back) had so many nods to A New Hope that your neck began to hurt after awhile. Full on reboots and remakes were Mad Max, Fantastic Four (remember? No? Whatever), Jurassic World, Terminator: Genisys, Mission Impossible and Point Break. And let's be honest, because so many comic book films exist in part to make you want to see the next, they're all pretty much reboots of the past and future (as far as DC and Marvel are concerned, we only live in the eternal now). In fact, the only totally new and strange big budget movie was Tomorrowland (admittedly taking it's name from a Disney World zone, but nothing else). It got okay reviews and did terrible at the box office. It was about inspiring people to improve the world (there were also robot fights). I'll leave the irony of that on the table. TV, too. What was popular in 2015 was popular in the past. In the cases of 'The Walking Dead' and 'Better Call Saul', you double down and knock out some spin offs. ‘Fargo’ is based on the movie. ‘Game of Thrones’ is based on the books (up until this season, so now even the literary nerds who turned their noses up at the series being made for television have to tune in this spring to find out what happens beyond book five because George RR Martin has been slow to get ahead). But it's all stuff we like and know, and not too different than what came before. In 2015 we wrapped these familiar stories around us like a warm blanket. Streaming Services promoted their own original content hand in hand with bringing back old favourites. Even ‘Fargo's’ creepy quaintness is chock full of escapism. No one wants to be reminded of the world at large (maybe in the future the world will just be a massive movie shoot, and everyone takes part in some way, sometimes acting, sometimes producing, sometimes working at craft services). The best original standout was 'World of Tomorrow', the animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. And to stand apart, there has to be a nice dollop of weirdness alongside the humour and heart (actually it might be fair to say that the short film - concerning a woman from the future visiting her young self and giving rather alarming and dismal revelations of what's to come - is weird and everything else second). Its disarmingly simple style certainly plays into this. Hertzfeldt works in the old fashioned way (traditional hand-drawn animation, no large media conglomerate looming overhead, even a website that's more 1996 than it has any reason to be), but there's no reason to praise 'old fashioned' if the quality doesn't hold up. The stick figure present and future selves in 'World of Tomorrow' have more richness and depth than any other character onscreen this year (although it was really nice seeing Han Solo again, that's for damn sure).
Music See, usually you're supposed to make the cultural your taking about somehow relevant or connect to the events or experiences of the year itself (see above). But screw that. Here's three categories that are probably too broad for their contents. Truth be told, these are just some records we really liked this year:
Relaxing
2814 - Atarashi Ni-Tsu no Tanjo (brilliant Chillwave. Probably the best sonic representation of that compound word. Sleepy? Well it's almost like it's designed for dreams) Jamie xx - In Colour (does it say a lot about us that this sounds like the pop album of the year, even though most people would never associate the word with this stuff? If everything that's popular on YouTube and the radio (remember that thing?) was improved by 33%, it would sound like this) Joanna Newsom - Divers (see? You can still be weird and fun with a band and shorter songs. The pairing of Newsom's vocals and lyrics stand tall over the music (which is still excellent), and that's how you create something unique and timeless, since you don't always considered musical artists as storytellers. She is, and that puts her on a very short list)
Grooving
Wilco - Star Wars (more punch than anything Wilco's done in a decade, and in a lot of ways the songwriting and feel improves immediately) Ought - Sun Coming Down (really nice straightforward stuff. Eight rock tunes that’s just about appreciating being alive)
Manic
Arca - Mutant (certainly from a perpendicular dimension, smashing right into us with cold, collapsing sounds. When it's not hyper-intense all the way through, then it's certainly alien and spider egg sac crunch the rest of the time) Metz - II ("thirty minutes, I just need thirty minutes. To get this done. I'm not fucking around, you can trust me. I'll be in and out there like a fucking ghost on steroids. I'll be the fucking walls and bring myself down. I just need to have this album playing as I do it.") Death Grips - Jenny Death (it's still insane, and it's probably our favourite of the year, if put a gun to our heads. Actually, now that you mention it, the album's kind of like having a gun to your head for 49 minutes. If that doesn't sound appealing, then...you're wrong. We talked more about it HERE, when he covered the music of the first half of the year)
(Also: To Pimp a Butterfly is certainly the most important album of 2015. And cheers to Radiohead for the Christmas present)
Sources
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/04/turkeys-hapless-opposition/
Kenya: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32169080
Baseball and All That
Baseball can really hurt. Baseball can also take you soaring above the clouds on thoughts and feelings of triumphant success, but even to get to that point requires a patience of a thousand saints and a nervous energy that can power a large city. But usually it's a lot staring and waiting. Which is true for any sport that you are a spectator for, instead of a player, but baseball's molecular makeup does something to its fans that differs from every other sport. Baseball sucks up time and space on a level all its own. There is baseball for 162 games, nearly half the year. Over that, if you include the month of pre-season down in Florida and the month of post-season scattered across the United States (and sometimes, if the winds and wishes and Bautistas are right, Canada as well). It's an overload of experience and information that warps the importance of every game. You don't look at how well the team played last night, but how they played for the last ten previous nights. And you look at the pitching rotation and how often and early you had to bring in your relief pitchers whenever one particular pitcher got into trouble. And how you look at this in April is a hell of a lot of different than how you look at this in September. Baseball begins with spring and ends as fall starts up. If you live above the 35th parallel, the sport bookends your two good seasons of warm weather. If there's a baseball game on, there are leaves on the trees. Symbolic of life, until the rise of autumn, when the lesser teams are culled and the best of the best are slowly harvested through the playoffs, leaving fewer and fewer teams standing until you have a World Series Champion (because 'North American Series Champion' really doesn't have much of a ring to it). Which is meant to warm the cockles of that lucky city's heart through the cold, cold winter. Now baseball obviously shares plenty of qualities with many other professional sports, but its pace and positioning is so static, its action so restrained for so much of the time, that the potential energy is held inside so much longer for the spectator. Which means there is always a buildup of edgy nervousness that is begging for kinetic release. Nothing competes with this feeling. Scratch off any sport where there is almost constant action and movement until one team scores or there is a foul (your soccers (sorry for the name, everywhere in the world except North America), your basketballs, your hockeys, etc). As George Carlin, noted - both onstage in his book, Braindroppings - the two major American sports are baseball and football. And while football also has a lack of action most of the time (there's only about 12 minutes of actual play during the sixty minutes), baseball is a slower, grinding crawl than football. 'Anything can happen' is true of pretty much every sport, but usually what happens in football is a play coming apart, full of people running the wrong way, falling down, missing a block, dropping the ball, what have you. Whatever player is able to capitalize on one particular mistake makes the difference between success and failure at that moment, and then both teams have to immediately re-organize. In baseball - a game of margins - the outcomes are much more pre-ordained and predictable. A majority of the time, a player at bat is going to fail, the catch and out is going to be made. The difference between success and failure is much thinner. Their paces and styles are reflected in the different ways you experience elation and devastation. In baseball there are two speeds to feel both of those emotions: ONE: Sharp, shooting of infrequent pain that can paralyze you in an instant. And then instant sudden, relief. These can best be seen in the home run. A dinger for your team in a truckload of orgasms. A homer for your opponent is a handful of bleach in the eyes. TWO: Plodding, crushing despair at the speed of a glacier, as your opponents load the bases and each batter appearance at the plate goes to full count and there's a boatload of fouls and you stop breathing each time your pitcher winds up and you wonder why the hell hasn't the coach brought in a guy from the bullpen. At the same time, it's a romp in the late spring flowers when it's you're side getting hit after hit and running up the score. An endless bounty of success that gets better the longer it goes on. You are untouchable, a god of the earth, the reason this sport was invented. The strategy in baseball is more direct and consequentially devastating than in football. The difference between this success and failure ultimately comes down to a single pitch. And then there’s the people who make these decisions: The head, pitching, and batting coaches. And they never seem to be rushing anywhere or constantly recalculating for the next pitch or play. Meanwhile football has a tiny village behind them, both on the field and in the booth several floors up, scrambling and shouting like the floor of the stock market. The measured preparation for baseball is (hypothetically) all done before the game's even started, so when something goes terribly wrong in the fifth inning, the coach slowly and coolly walks over and makes a call to the bullpen. Because of no time limit, anything can happen. It's just that most often nothing does. But you dwell on - nay, you demand and cling to - the possibility that your team might somehow get out of whatever mess they're in. So you stare down every swing and strike, wishing against wish and promising your future children to the sports gods that they (re)gain the head or hold onto it precipitously through the ninth. And if they do and win, and they keep winning and winning more often than not for weeks and weeks and then months, then they can go on into the playoffs (if your team is really good at the sport, their reward (in addition to the money they make) is playing even more of it). The postseason setup of best-of-five-or-seven works well for players constantly buzzing around a basketball court, soccer field, and hockey rink. More constant, kinetic energy and less careful, exacting strategy. It feels right that it shouldn't come down to one game. Couldn't happen in football because it's physicality would result in so many more injuries if they had to truncate more games into their six weeks of winter playoffs. In addition, football has that finality, that every-game-matter-more-than-anything attitude going for it. Postseason baseball, however, is a test upon the very fabric of the soul. Watching a game when your team being eliminated is on the line is more a chore/obligation than an exciting moment of leisure. You tune in with a heavy sigh and an, 'okay, here we go'. When you're winning by a very small margin, one of the emotions your aware of is how devastated you will feel if (once?) the lead is lost (unless your team is up by five, you can't breathe normally). You watch each game with a relishing of the moment in the near future when you won't feel this weighed down with anticipation, concern, and worry. You actually want it to be over, so you can look over what went right and wrong. If football became the most popular American sport in the latter half of the 20th century because it more aptly symbolized the strength and strategy of American power during that time, then it's baseball's turn for the first half of the 21st. Aggression has run its course for the American Empire. It can't continue to act this way even if it wants to, and has a hard time admitting this is a problem (like the NFL's position on concussions, perhaps). Geopolitically, it's a time for a more nuanced approach to all sorts of problems that have increased in magnitude bit by bit. Subtlety is necessary, and that's the exception in football, and the rule in baseball. An uncertain world needs an unknown amount of time, and an inning baseball is governed by outs, not the winding down of a clock. Even when looking at the big picture, through month of months of playing, it feels like these long stretches of time don't matter, but in fact slowly add up (climate change, anyone?). Uncertainty is at the core of the most important moments in baseball. When the opposing team is in the process of scoring multiple runs, the nature of the sports' rules make the outcome unpredictable both in terms of damage and the speed at which it comes. Some innings can result in a single run, and others can be an unstoppable barrage of hits, walks, and errors, and suddenly nine runs have scored. In football, at least you know when a team is either marching down the field toward the endzone, the worst that can happen is a six point touchdown and a two point conversion. There are so many games in a season of baseball that it's very easy to tune out for several days and maybe even weeks at a time. The length can make it seem like a death march, or an endless Orwellian nightmare ('We've always been at war with the American League'). But as the season winds down, you can look back and see all the ups and downs and twists and turns that led you to this point. With help from an ungodly amount of information. Baseball stats can be broken down to a greater degree than football, and they can be tailored to suit your interest and attention span, depending on the kind of fan you are. Some are so specific that they can't help you appreciate the game any better. They seem to be nothing more than graphics filler and commentator fodder for when the relief pitcher is warming up. And we've had access to more and more information than ever before thanks to the internet. One of the main challenges of even beginning to address the many complicated problems facing the West right now is separating the pertinent information from the irrelevant. Baseball is better suited to the how we interact with the internet than football. It's the perfect sport to experience while holding your phone in your hand, doing absolutely anything else (checking stats, texting, taking a selfie holding a stupidly long hot dog) than watching the field. Depending on the emotional level invested and the status of the game, baseball requires only a glance up every so often. If we are shifting to a more polarized world in many different ways (economically and politically, namely), then it make sense the archetypal sport can be observed by hanging onto every pitch or only looking to the field/TV when the crowd begins to cheer. When it comes to our role in global events, we are more like observers than participants than ever before (how much your vote every few years actually matter is always up for debate), watching millionaires settle outcomes that won't really change our lives in the slightest. In that respect, there is always the concern that we care too much about sport and too little about the many real-world issues that actually affect us. The concern that we turn our backs from complicated issues like poverty and war because they seemed to unwieldy and hopeless, and instead focus our energy on something else. Consequently, we invest a lot of emotional energy in sports. Football is filled with devastating crushings of steady victory or defeat. You can ride high and proud and throw in the towel easier when you watch football. But the gaps between the moments of pleasure/pain are much longer in baseball, and that changes the pace of how you experience them. Baseball sucks up mental energy and when you run out of that it starts taking from your physical energy reserve. You can sit down for three straight hours (not recommended, hit the can at least three times per game), but when it's over, you'll still feel like you've just been jogging the whole time. (hell, maybe if you're in the gym on a treadmill and are watching a tight world series game, you'll just keel over and die during the 7th inning stretch). How much you care and how long you’ve been caring matters as well. Being a bandwagon fan is one thing, but being a bandwagon fan now who was a huge fan in their formative years and was watching the team when they were in the middle of an incredible run of success, that's different. Like growing a Yankees fan in the fifties. There is a the completely unfounded belief that your team is supposed to be good because from your narrow perspective they have 'always' been good. They were good when you first started paying attention, ergo, they are always supposed to be good, and the last several years have been a severe deviation from the norm. When in reality, most teams will be that successful only for a very short period in their history (and yes, there are some impressive and lengthy runs of a handful of teams, but they are clearly the exception this rule). While the issue of whether momentum is real for players (in the sense that they bring the physical and mental energy back to the field after yesterday's win) is up for debate, momentum is certainly real in terms of fan behaviour. Winning streaks means increased media attention, which means higher ticket and merch sales. After all, if there's one thing that all sports and global politics have in common, and why we should pay very careful attention to how we interact with both of them: It all comes down to money.
The 2015 Canadian Federal Election
This really shouldn't be so hard. Stephen Harper's blandness is his most formidable weapon, because without it he probably couldn't have passed such terrible laws and made such pathetically backwards decisions. His yawning-inducing pseudo-pleasantness decreases the likelihood of the citizenry believing that what he's doing on Parliament Hill is anything but middling democracy. His record, however, is a how-to list of oligarchical corporatism. His policies belong in a Central Asian, former Soviet satellite states that has to use the term democracy in quotation marks. First and foremost is Bill (now, sadly, a Law) C51, which is Canada's own version of the Patriot Act, with all the terrible drippings concerning surveillance, an intelligence agency without oversight, and nebulous definitions of what exactly is considered a threat (anything that interrupts the 'financial security' of Canada is up for debate). Hastily created in the tragic aftermath of a mentally ill man who had been in and out of prison shooting a soldier on the outskirts of Parliament Hill, it was framed as a way combat ISIS on the domestic front (ostensibly because the man pledged allegiance to the terrorist organization, even though common sense suggests that finding a way to assist people with mental health issues would have been more useful in this case). Now without a doubt every country needs to have a strong national security apparatus in place. And there needs to be a dialogue amongst politicians and citizens across the political spectrum about how this should be created. But that didn't happen at all. Created in secret, decried by a huge swath of political action groups and lawyers, and barely debated in parliament (and only because the NDP whipped up an impressively big stink about it), the public was generally for it until the media actually started reporting what was in it. Harper is asking us to trust him on this critical issue, when he's shown to be untrustworthy and disappointing on so many other matters of governance. The Omnibus Crime bill was jammed through parliament in terrible pieces throughout late 2011 and early 2012, and it was designed to toughen up our criminal justice system even as crime is on the decline. Based on policies that the United States enacted almost thirty years ago in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act (which now seen to be too draconian and completely ineffective), it introduced mandatory minimum sentences and toughened the Young Offenders Act. In other words, it will help create the career criminal, forever chaining them to prison, probation, menial job opportunities, an unstable family/social life, and more dependent on government assistance than before. Just like America, we'll have for-profit-prisons to hold an inordinately high number of non-violent drug offenders who will find it more and more difficult to re-integrate into society (thanks to cuts in social programs that you can always depend conservatives to support under the banner of 'responsible spending'). And in case you don't like any of these policies, Harper's making sure you can't do much about it by making it harder to vote against him by making it a challenge to vote at all. First off, he's made deep budget cuts in Elections Canada, meaning there are fewer employees to do more work, which increases the chance of errors on registration cards. He's also changed the rules about presenting valid forms of ID to register to vote, and shrinking the time to apply, all under the ridiculous pretence of trying to prevent voter fraud. This means he is confronting a non-existent threat to our democracy by dismantling one of the primary traits of the democratic process. And to make all the more insidious, the changes would mostly affect young adults and lower class citizens, two groups that, from a demographic standpoint, do not typically vote for right-leaning parties. All three of these policies are ones that the Canadian conservatives have cribbed from their American counterparts. Harper is guilty of security overreach, prison state aspirations, rigging elections and - on top of all that - copyright infringement. And the most aggravating part of Harper's America-fixation is that he's bringing in policies that failed spectacularly south of the border. He's importing the worst George W. Bush ideas that has exacerbated the problems in the United States. His claim to being good for the economy by being 'business friendly' means tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, and the tired, stock story attached to that policy is that doing so means companies and their owners have more money to hire more people. But that's rarely the case. They usually just pocket the extra couple million, or put it in an offshore, tax-ignored bank account. Combining the provincial and federal sales taxes was trumpeted as a way to help the average citizen save money, but less money going to the government has an overall negative impact on the standard of living in our country (and once again, big business has benefited the most from this harmonization). For a very (very) long time, our nation's economy has been driven largely by our natural resources. And the Conservatives don't seem to realize that the global bell is finally tolling for the major one. Consequently, Alberta's economy sunk like a stone when oil prices did. And Harper's not only doubling down not only on oil (losing the symbolic battle for the Keystone Pipeline), but the oil sands, the crack cocaine of petroleum. It's not just the Green Party that is running on a platform of renewable and safe energy. Every developed/advanced country on earth has made it a point to say that the oil industry cannot be the future of powering the earth (nor coal, for that matter). But rather than join this consensus of the rational (which includes scientists, politicians, and even giant insurance companies who are paying out more money than ever before because of the increase in natural disasters that can attributed to climate change), Harper and the conservatives are cutting funding to Environment Canada and a host of other scientific research agencies, in part because they keep bringing up pesky facts about how terrible our energy policy is. Our nation's support of the oil industry is similar to how other countries for whom petroleum is a major export. You know, countries of liberty and equality like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran. By barely acknowledging the growing green energy industry, Canada under Harper is no longer a leader, but a follower, and even worse, a follower of old money that only ends up in the pockets of a few already wealthy, too-powerful companies (hell, even supporting giant, greedy, multinational renewable energy companies would be a huge improvement in this case). Then there is baffling changes to the census, where the government has actually requested less information than in the last several decades. Harper has removed the mandatory long form census (renamed it the National Household Survey, and did not promote it much), a series of practical questions that range from whether people in your household have a physical handicap that requires medical attention to how much schooling they've had. Simple, straightforward questions about peoples' employment and the property taxes they pay on their dwelling. Information that can paint a very valuable picture for researchers and statisticians. Harper has a degree in economics, and one would hope that in just using basic common sense you would want to make sound financial decisions based on more information, not less. The result of the census dictates how billions of dollars of government money are spent, and the better we know what is required in certain areas of the country, the less likely this money is going to be wasted or budgeted without proper research and foresight. The conservatives can't claim that by eliminating the long form census is a way to save money, when the end result is that so much more will no be misspent. It is as if having more people have more information is a threat to the Prime Minister. But concentrating power has long been Harper's modus operandi, and it trickles down from policy into campaigning. The Conservatives said that the nation needed a longer election cycle (officially 66 days, instead of the usual 49) because it would give a chance for Canadians to discuss the issues, but the Prime Minister has effectively shut himself off from talking to the public. Campaign events with hand-picked attendees. Not allowing reporters to ask any follow-up questions. If it wasn't for a couple of expressive and direct Newfoundlanders, Harper might not know at all what most Canadians think of him. And this is what's so maddening. It's this immature, tone-deaf chickenshit duplicity. You ask the Department of National Defence about C-51 and how it will handle protests against Canadian corporations, and they respond back with a reminder of how challenging the fight against ISIS is. But that seems to be the pro-hawk attitude infiltrating our military, even after sensibly sitting out America's disastrous invasion of Iraq. Now Harper and the Conservatives are replacing Canada's role as one of the primary participants in UN Peacekeeping missions and instead acting like America's even littler brother by attempting to garner support for an expanded military presence in the Middle East. Then there's the Senate expenses scandal. Which compared to everything mentioned above are tiny drops in a bucket, but is a useful reminder that he can't even keep his well fed supporters in line. But he's still standing. His poll numbers are shockingly close to Trudeau and Mulcair (and it says a lot about the prime minister's record if the entire platforms of his two opponents are pretty much reversing what he's done the last nine years). Harper's like the Teflon Prime Minister. Nothing seems to stick to him because his unassuming, bland demeanour suggests he doesn't do anything, good or bad. But he can't even get his own campaign signs right: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/surveillance-stickers-conservative-campaign-signs-1.3228916 The fact that it's a three way race proves immediately that a majority of Canadians no longer want Stephen Harper as their Prime Minister, that a majority of them are disappointed not only with the policies he's enacted but his style of governance. But this should come as no surprise as most Canadians didn't want him to head the country in the first place. In the 2011 election, Harper and his conservative party received only 39% of the vote, but it was enough to be the dominant party, as the other 61% was divided among the other four left-leaners (along with the Liberal and NDP, there is/was the Parti Quebecois and Green). [while proportional representation and/or ranked balloting would better serve the citizens of Canada instead of the current 'first past the post' system we currently have, the first order of business is to elect a prime minister that would bring our country into the 21st century] Which is why he's had to reduce his campaign to the basest and most idiotic level of fear-mongering. Bringing back the debate over the niqab as if this a threat to the very heart of our nation (the same way the populace has always been 'threatened' with the immigration of the 'other', whether they be Irish, Italian, African, Asian, or any other culture or religion). Bigoted arguments how these new Canadians are supposedly not the same as the people who have been here for generations, and how they'll change the country for the worse. Absolutely ridiculous, considering multiculturalism has always been a great strength for Canada, and reaffirms the fact that this scare-tactic is just being used to deflect conversation from the flailing economy. Radio ads where Harper states that his opponents will let mentally ill killers walk the streets (not even remotely true), and that he's the only one who will get tough on crime. And while negative advertising has that sad fact that they actually work, there's hope that you can't polish or hide the size of the turd Stephen Harper has left on Canada and it's reputation around the world.
A semi-side note on Strategic Voting: -it's looked on derisively by the ideological pure-at-hearts and rightly so, but it's also the citizen's version of the horse-trading and compromising that actually occurs in the halls of power. Just like you want to vote for the candidate that best represents your values, a politician also wants to introduce a bill that will achieve the policy/project/plan as efficiently as possible. But there are plenty of roadblocks and delays to get said bill passed, and the politician has to make concessions to get votes by changing certain statutes and budget amounts or promising to support a different policy down the road that he or she might disagree with. But eventually, with these compromises, the bill is passed. In the same way, voting for a candidate that might not perfectly represent your values is a compromise, but it might be necessary because this candidate might have a better chance at winning and thereby preventing the candidate you strongly disagree with from coming into (or returning to) power. The question for both the citizen and politician, of course, is whether these compromises and concessions are worth it. If the bill that is eventually turned into a law has so many problems with it, the entire process may not have been worth it. Strategic voting might result in a government broken up into parties in such a way that very little is accomplished, at a time when a great many changes must be installed.
DEAR BABY BOOMERS: PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, RETIRE
Our parents gave us everything except a future. The tail end of the gen-x-er's (a generation which covered roughly the early sixties to the early eighties) and all of the millennials are faced with a very different set of choices and scenarios for their adult lives. The spirit is willing, the flesh is not yet weak, but those two factors don’t matter in a hyper-globalized economy when the money’s just not there. Some of it’s been diffused across several continents, thanks to manufacturing jobs packing up from the West and relocating to the cheaper labour markets in (predominantly) Asia (and that alone has some positives and negatives handcuffed to it). Much of it gone into the pockets of the wealthy, thanks to generous tax cuts and rampaging corporate profits. But a lot of it is holed up in the property values, bank accounts and pension payouts of the baby boomers, who semi-passively gamed the system to their favour in their adult years, just so they could have the most relaxing and care-free life possible from cradle to grave. And it’s hard to see a downside to your actions when you aren’t the ones feeling the consequences. The ramifications to this are felt by the people who no longer have access to the same social programs and institutions as they did (or, in the case of post-secondary education, are still accessible, but at a much, much higher cost). Rising health care costs (and government insurance covering fewer expenditures), social assistance offering a pittance of what it takes to live in an urban area, and greater difficult in taking advantage of business grants and/or loans that could lead to financial independence. Jobs (and hopping from one to another) are the norm, a career the exception. Office work that expects/demands unpaid overtime, or shift work with simply not enough shifts in the week to cover the bills (requiring a second job). No rainy day fund if it's always overcast. Making the decision to have a little bit of money saved up in case something in life goes even a little bit wrong. And that means not having a mortgage. Maybe not even having a car, since anything that involves repaying a loan means a financial ball and chain. And that means perma-rent. Or, if times get particularly difficult, moving back home with the parents. Rising housing prices means having at the very least $20,000 in the bank for a down payment, plus an assurance that you can actually make the monthly payments for the next thirty years (which, consequently, means there’s no time to consider a retirement plan when you have to hope the job you have still exists a year from now). This wasn’t the case fifty years ago, when those born in the post-war West began to enter the job market. In an article written by The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente (an admitted baby boomer), she explains how it was easier for their generation than ours: "Here's how I landed my first job after university, with a major book publisher. I saw an ad in The Globe and Mail, picked up the phone and got hired the next day. Three weeks later, someone quit, and I was promoted to head of publicity. I didn't make much money, but I had an office and a secretary and an expense account. I was 22." (although Wente doesn't give her salary, inflation from the seventies means if she was making $15,000 that would be approximately $66,000 in 2015 dollars) As far as real estate goes, Wente elaborates: “Real estate was very good to us. In 1980, I borrowed some money from my mom and paid $95,000 for a decrepit house in Toronto’s up-and-coming Beach. Mortgage rates zoomed to 17 per cent. That was scary. But I got raises every year, and a combination of inflation and soaring house prices did the rest. Between the mid-1980s and 2008, we boomers enjoyed the most prolonged period of prosperity in modern times. By 2010, modest investments in Toronto real estate had made many paper millionaires.” Just as a very specific set of conditions had to occur for certain middle class-enabling policies to be created (the Great Depression and the Second World War, namely), conditions for middle-class destabilizing policies had to be in place as well. The conditions for the creation of the Western middle class of the mid-twentieth century were catastrophic and immediate: Extreme poverty and war. Roosevelt and Mackenzie King ran on the platform that government is the solution. The conditions for the dismantling of the Western middle class of the late twentieth century were simply economic sluggishness and social malaise. Reagan and Mulroney ran on the platform that government is the problem. Growing up in the warmest and generous economic conditions for the average person in the space of all human history, this sense of comfort and entitlement went right to their heads, which means they figured they had the right to keep it in their wallets. As Wente notes: “As for an inheritance, the Millennials shouldn’t count on one. Unlike our own parents, who thought it was immoral to dip into their capital, we boomers would rather spend our savings than preserve them. Whatever money we have left after travelling the world will disappear pretty fast once we check into that upscale assisted-living home, at $7,000 a month. Did I mention that we’ll live forever?” The thirty year dismantling (the 80s onward) of the government social structure they had when they were growing up. Taxes were cut and corporations given greater autonomy and power (which meant shipping jobs overseas, and stuffing profits in offshore tax havens). With less revenue coming in, governments had no choice but to cut back on programs that existed and operated smoothly decades prior (this is informally known as ‘starving the beast’). Even the most basic aspect of public infrastructure – roads, bridges, electrical grids, dams – have had their inspection and maintenance budgets slashed, which means in the coming years, when these structures begin to fail and require emergency repair, the money and manpower will not be there, either. Not so much the sins of the father coming down upon his children, but a large heaping of bureaucratic short-sightedness, selfishness and passing the buck. The Atlantic explains that from an economic perspective, the millennials are the most unluckiest generation since The Great Depression, even when it comes to what is supposed to be the golden ticket to middle class heaven: “Average debt for graduates of public universities doubled between 1996 and 2006. Students chose to take it on because they expected to find a job that paid it off; instead, they found themselves stranded in the worst economy in 80 years. Young people who skipped college altogether have faced something worse: depressed wages in a global economy that finds it easier than ever to replace jobs with technology or to move them overseas.” Now university is a pre-requisite diploma mill that offers little to no advantage because almost everyone has a degree. Technological innovation has replaced thousands of jobs, not supplemented them. There is less money to go around now that more of it is quickly rushing up to the bank accounts of the upper 1% (and actually, the 0.1% coffers have practically exploded), as well as those with pensions who agreements were made decades prior, when the economy was in much better shape. According to The Economist, there are fewer job opportunities than in the past, and most of them can’t match the cost of living today in the Western world: “In America the real wage has hardly budged over the past four decades. Even in places like Britain and Germany, where employment is touching new highs, wages have been flat for a decade. Recent research suggests that this is because substituting capital for labour through automation is increasingly attractive; as a result owners of capital have captured ever more of the world’s income since the 1980s, while the share going to labour has fallen.” And regarding the wealthy owners of said capital, the same magazine notes: “Thomas Piketty, an economist at the Paris School of Economics, argues along similar lines that America may be pioneering a hyper-unequal economic model in which a top 1% of capital-owners and “supermanagers” grab a growing share of national income and accumulate an increasing concentration of national wealth. The rise of the middle-class—a 20th-century innovation—was a hugely important political and social development across the world. The squeezing out of that class could generate a more antagonistic, unstable and potentially dangerous politics.” In response to this, the boomers offer the 'get off my lawn' perspective. The accusation that the millennials expect everything to be handed to them, that they have their noses constantly pointed at their phones, that they refuse to accept any sort of hard work. No statistics bear these beliefs out. The youth of today work longer hours (or limited hours, because their employer cannot afford to pay them for any more) and for less pay in jobs that are more likely to be temporary. Most damning is just how extensive these conditions are. Of course there will always be economic uncertainly, unemployment and financial hardships. But in the past these conditions were the exceptions and not the rule, and in many individuals cases the hardships were temporary. New jobs and careers were found, and security and benefits soon followed. No longer. And a vast majority of boomers will acknowledge that things are more difficult for their children and grandchildren today. They just won't do anything about it. The problems facing the world today are not going to be addressed by the millions of sixty year olds (roughly the average age of the baby boomers), since A: the challenges seem like they'll only be solved once their gone so why bother making any sacrifices themselves (the 'let someone else worry about it' approach); and B: they are more concerned that all their attempts at saving enough for a golden financial parachute will be in vain. So the easiest thing that these individuals can do (leaving legislation and policy changes to the kids) is retire. Just take the already blood sucking pension and open up the job market to the people hurting for any sort of stable employment. Consider the following (thanks again to The Atlantic): “The past 30 years have seen enduring income stagnation capped by an economic collapse. Average household wealth nearly doubled between 1983 and 2010, the Urban Institute recently found, but younger generations shouldn't expect the same.” Congratulations boomers, you were the peak. You had it all, all the way through. You were the first generation where so, so many of you got to experience the stable 50s nuclear family, the counter culture explosion of the 60s, the semi-sobering up of the 70s, the heart-hardening ‘I want it all’ 80s, the ‘I’m not too old to somehow understand and make money off computers’ 90s, and the ‘you’re only as old as you feel now give me money’ of the new millennium. (Sadly, another massive, elephant-in-the-room issue is going to be the medical expenses for the baby boomers as they approaches their eighties and nineties. As they are the healthiest generation of oxygenarians ever, they are going to live longer and put an extremely large burden on an already shaky and over budgeted health care infrastructure) The Boomers didn't just screw it up for the generations that came after them, but by playing the short game in their forties and fifties and supporting economic policies that put as much money in their pockets as quickly as possible, they screwed themselves over as well. It's the 1980's 'Me Generation' attitude coming home to roost. For the late gen-x-ers and millennials who are going to be getting into the driver’s seat of the world over the next decade or so, this is a tinier, more manageable (but still life changing) taste of the 'tightening of the belts' that the greatest generation had thrust upon them, many of them in their youth as they suffered through the Great Depression. There are telltale signs that a healthy, democratically-led change is in the air (when cranky old billionaires who made their money in finance and energy are saying this system can’t last much longer the way it is, you know it’s serious). For a myriad of reasons, from financial to social to psychological, the transition will improve when there is – quite simply – new faces in the halls of power (and in today’s world, the halls can be in front of a computer in an apartment). But to drive the point home, if it was government’s guiding hand that led the West into it’s mid twentieth century golden age, then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t try it again now. So as the first waves of boomers hit the big 7-0, here's a humble request: Now that you've truly hit what is undeniably old age, please live up to the typical senior citizen stereotype and vote in droves. Only this time, think of your children and your grandchildren instead of yourselves.
PS – If you want to see the train wreck predicted back in 2007, here is an amazing lecture video from Professor (now Senator) Elizabeth Warren called "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class", which elaborates on the benefits the boomers had, and the handicaps that the current generation must overcome: (starts at 4:50. It's a full hour)
NOTES:
Overkill, Under Results
[NOTE: This is almost a Charles Hebdo Part 2 piece. But we feel something has to be said about Bill C-51]
We want it to be simple. But it's not. How do you stop radicalization, violence, marginalization, poverty, mental illness? Because all these facets must be addressed to stop terrorism, whether home or abroad (a distinction that is blurring in so many ways because what happens abroad can strongly influence actions at home, and vice versa). To focus narrowly on certain factors and giving only cursory considerations to others has the potential to exacerbate the problem Too vague there? The Conservatives anti-terror bill they're steamrolling through parliament (thanks mainly to the fact that the Liberals and a majority of Canadians support it) is really just a Canadian version of the US Patriot Act, giving intelligence agencies a lot more power, a lot less oversight, and heapings of legal limbo language to define 'threat' and ‘lawful’. Of course we must act to prevent such attacks like the one on Parliament last fall. But to counter such heinous acts with bad policy is an insult to all those who have died at the hands of terrorists across the globe. Excusing paranoia, spying with warrants, and making any sort of arrest without evidence as necessary because a possible attack 'is not worth the risk of doing nothing', means ours rights and freedoms are apparently not worth anything at all. Is this the real tool that is going to make the difference in combating domestic and foreign violent extremism? How has the Patriot Act helped America in the last thirteen and a half years? Too many big picture dichotomies can be applied to the West's relationship to the Middle East and Central Asia. Democracy versus Dictatorships. Secular versus Sectarian. (Post)Industrial versus (Predominantly)Agrarian. Egalitarian versus Hierarchical. Mixed-Market Capitalism (for now) versus Oligarchical Collectivism (fiction has become truth). Shoehorning any of the formers into the latter is unquestionably going to cause serious problems. And the further back we look at history to easily find examples of this, the more emotionally divested and objective we can be about the process, and how certain we are at why these actions failed. But living through the constant instability of the Middle East and the West's complicated and middling attempts to salvage it (and by 'live through it', I mean it the most mundane and sideline-like way possible: reading articles and watching reports of how my respective economic zone is trying to influence another economic zone, through almost any means necessary), you can't help but bring your own hopes, disappointments and confusions to the problem. You are horrified at the constant death and destruction. You wonder how much of this is the responsibility of the interconnected global community that you willingly take part of every day. And when it hits close to home (as it has in the last six months in Canada, Australia, France, Denmark, and other 'safe' countries), you want to see a concerted effort to stop this from happening again. The massacre at Charles Hebdo is still painfully fresh (CLICK), and we are tightening restrictions on free speech. Is this not a sign that the tactics of the terrorists are working? We are removing and dismantling the qualities that made liberal democracy successful in the first placed. Now we're governed by fear and paranoia in one hand and anger and military power in the other. It doesn't help that war is extremely profitable. Oh, it empties the pockets of nations and therefore the citizens within them, but for a small and concentrated cabal of corporations and institutions, 'defence' (which can easily be mistaken for 'offence') spending makes them hundreds of billions of dollars a year (worldwide defence spending in 2013: $1.7 trillion) . Whoever sells the guns really wins the war. American military contractors sell arms to semi-friendly Middle Eastern nations (Qatar, Yemen), who 'inadvertently' misplace/sell the arms to private contractors and enterprising individuals (read: terrorists), which means the weapons the US or coalition troops are using are not necessarily that different from the ones that are being used against them and are trying to destroy. And despite this situation, there can be sufficient justification for sending drones and troops abroad. But both options much be done with great care. The feeling that you can use drones more freely because no troop lives are in the balance means you are less concerned with the evidence you have on the people you are trying to kill (to a hammer everything starts to look like a nail). On the domestic front however, the boards must be trod with a much lighter touch, and nothing that has occurred during Stephen Harper's tenure suggests that he or his cabinet are capable of such care. The Prime Minister is attempting to pass an anti-terrorism bill that is a schizophrenic mix of redundancy and overreach. Outlawing activities that are already illegal (promoting terrorism) and giving intelligence agencies powers they are already using (CSIS will be 'officially' approved to spy on citizens without judicial consent and add them to no-fly lists). The major concern is the hazily defined terms of what constitutes threats to national security, because there's a difference between those who are openly declaring war on Canada and attempting to kill citizens, and those who are trying to promote green energy. The latter is not an exaggeration, as Ottawa has been treating anti-oil environmental activists as national security threats. Why? Because they are now going to be guilty of threatening "the economic and financial stability of Canada", which is no classified as terrorism. Hideous. Does that include writing an article suggesting that taxes should be raised on shell corporations? Does that include Native Canadians who peacefully block a logging road to call attention to First Nations issues? Does that include Canadian companies that shut down their factory in Lethbridge, fire five hundred employees, and set up shop in Southeast Asia? Does that include oil companies when the pipes they own burst and cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to communities? The fact that these questions are not answered within the bill, are not being discussed, and are being waved off with empty platitudes is proof enough that anything resembling proper oversight when these policies are enacted will not be present. When terrorism is redefined to include attacks on money, what does it say about the value of people? Because money isn't valued the same way as people. In a democracy, it's one person, one vote (and we can debate how much that is the case today in some former or latter column). But money isn't so clean cut. You're always going to be one person. Meanwhile, someone with $1,000,000 is going to be protected and treated very differently than a person with $1,000. Corporations will almost certainly benefit from the enactment of this bill. They're 'economic and financial stability’ will be protected very carefully under the free-market assumption that what is good for the corporate world is good for Canada (can the government itself be sued by a corporation because by trying to break the company up because it is violating antitrust laws, the government is committing a terrorist act?). Money and access to constant legal assistance makes a huge difference in what activities you can participate in. A team of lawyers can overwhelm not only individual citizens’ attempts to rein in their powers through the legislative process, but government's as well, holding up public-friendly policy in the courts for years (that’s a last-ditch attempt, since it's still easier just to lobby the changes through politicians than go through the old-fashioned court system). Bill C-51 is bad legislation and it involved taking a half-blind hammer swing to the charter of rights and freedoms. The fact that Harper and the Conservatives are giving limited debate time to the one of the most crucial matters to our democracy proves they either don't know it's terrible or don't care. You wanted expanded national security powers? You've already proven that you can't handle the ones you already have without breaking the law. Even though a 2012 attempt at passing a national security bill failed because of public scrutiny over expanded intelligence agency powers at the expense of civil rights, CSIS has been targeting anti-oil activists with increased scrutiny and surveillance. The ones that peacefully disrupt logging roads and carry banners decrying the tar sands (they only happen to have science and a majority of the Canadian public on their side when it comes to the proposal of using less fossil fuels and expanding green energy projects). Not to mention the dismantling the gun registry program (apparently the Harper government doesn't think tracking the weapons that people can use to commit terrorist attacks is a worthwhile endeavour), and requiring less information on Canadian Census forms (because why base your policy on a wealth of reliable and important statistics? This is especially galling for a leader who has a degree in economics. Shouldn’t one of the key requirements for sound economic policy be having as much information as possible?). You've already broken the public's trust on some many matters regarding information and security, so if your step forward is to get even more invasive with little to no oversight, how can we possibly expect you to use these new powers properly? To a hammer everything starts.... Because not using expanded powers runs an internal risk that everyone who has worked on a project that goes under budget knows. If you don't use up the whole budget, they'll expect you to do it for the same cheaper price next time. Similar: If you finish a task long before the deadline, they'll expect you to finish it in the same amount of time from then on (enter 'padding the schedule'). If you got it, you gotta use it, otherwise they might take it away. And mopping the floor or writing programming code is one thing. National security is quite another. Suddenly you're spying on people with flimsy evidence, detaining people holding slightly insulting signs, and arresting morons who don't know a thing about weapons, let alone what they click when they're online. Casting a wide net because that's what you're given is not a solution. It’s a mess. If you're protecting lives at the cost liberty you're protecting neither. The horrifying reasoning of Dick Cheney's, 'we can't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud', is meant to silence all critics who even try to bring up the notion of legal proceedings and jurisprudence, two concepts that we like to say are part of the foundation of our society. If those in the upper echelons of national security are permitted to act without oversight and recourse, it’s the beginning of the transformation of Canadian society as a whole. Unrestrained and unregulated authority trickles down. In the West's attempts to fight terrorism on the home-front, the blurring roles of the police, military, and intelligence agencies means that people in those institutions are being called on to perform roles that are possibly outside of their expertise (and when we are discussing the matter of national security, we have every right as citizens to demand that all actions are carried out with the highest degree of knowledge, professionalism, and care). No one department can do everything. No one department should do anything. But when given such tasks while at the same time being routinely excused from any terrible (and sometimes fatal) mistakes that can be made - with PR-sounding soundbites like 'decisions made in real-time cannot be made with 100% accuracy' - the institution is able to become something else entirely. A community is not a healthy and free one when its police force has the ability to subvert or avoid legal authority at the same level of the CIA (whether the media is paying attention or not). Police brutality exists when police can get away with being brutal. In Virginia, the shooting of (yet another) unarmed man by an over-armed SWAT team while talking peacefully to the hostage negotiator is only made worse by the banal explanation by the officer who opened fire: He was in a bad mood because he had an argument with his wife. And he is not being indicted or charged. This is not the way forward. When passed in a political kneejerk froth, an extensive and invasive anti-terrorism bill could seem like the only thing that will keep a nation from slipping into violent chaos. An attack on parliament is certainly tragic and deserves a strong response, but we must remember that Zehaf-Bibeau was a violent lunatic who had already been incarcerated and picked up radical Islam like it was a pin on his jacket. President Obama has stressed that he will not label terrorists 'Islamic' even if that is the religion they purportedly follow and in whose name they purportedly created a country. He claims their actions are so at odds with the views of a vast majority of Muslims that of course they don't represent the religion. And this is an excellent step. Vilifying an entire religion is like vilifying an entire race or culture. It's bigotry and not the actions of a free and open society. The West's reaction to terrorist actions and threats both at home and abroad have almost exclusively focused on reactive rather than proactive policies. In the case of Zehaf-Bibeau and the Frenchmen who carried about the attacks on Charles Hedbo, a stronger social system that is devoted to rehabilitation of criminals and people with mental health issues could help much more than hundreds of millions of dollars spent on surveillance equipment that only fosters more distrust and isolation. Economic reforms that actually benefit the lower and middle class (and not just the corporate and wealthy, for whom the current economic system in the West has benefited for the last three decades) is one of the best ways to foster a natural form of social integration, as financial security is easily the best tool in liberal democracy and (mixed market) capitalism's kit. It's why so many people are trying to immigrate to the West in the place (only to find today that economic times are tough here, too). And one could suggest that this appears to be the weaker method, the more preventative, less assertive policy, but that's the difference between a free and civilized society and one governed on fear. Trampling our own liberties is the quickest way to create a dysfunctional and dark society that the terrorists wish to create, and where the seeds of more extremism are sown. But don't just take my word for it. What does Conservative party icon and former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker think about this issue? "Freedom includes the right to say what others may object to and resent... the essence of citizenship is to be tolerant of strong and provocative words." "The reading of history proves that freedom always dies when criticism ends." And one that last point, Harper and his Conservative Party are trying to push Bill C-51 through parliament with as little debate as possible. Apparently we shouldn't be talking about the liberty, freedoms, and national security. Apparently we should just let every law enforcement official define 'lawful' whenever and however they like. Ridiculous. You can't bomb, shoot, or spy your way to victory here. You want it to be simple. You want this to be a simple matter of good versus evil. Everyone wants it to be that. But it's not. And this country needs to, at the very least, talk about it.
NOTES
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/in-fairfax-va-a-different-no-less-scary-police-shooting-1.2960995
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/02/19/whats-happening-to-canada_n_6713434.html
http://www.ggower.com/dief/quote.shtml
2014 Review
The Four Horsemen (death, war, famine, disease) are the symbols of a chaotic, apocalyptic time in civilization, and while they've always been hanging around, they really worked their bony asses off this year. (what a start to this review!) Comparing the events of a twelve month period to the end of the world is pretty strong meat, but that's par for the course when you turn on the news (or check your news feed). The golden age is always right behind you (remember the nineties and the post-Cold War internet alt-rock boom? Ah, memories...), and the moments right in front of you are only three bad turns from The Road (or Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome). We should always be reminding ourselves that there have always been unbelievably shitty times in human history (a great many in the last century alone), as it's a good tempering to the alarmist and depressing news that explodes out of media corporations vying for advertising dollars (news for profit is almost as depressing as health for profit). The most important news of the year is that Ukraine has become a not very surprising front for a new Cold War. Russian military response to the abdication of the pro-Russian Ukrainian leader Yanukovych came not long after the Winter Olympics (the biannual 'we're only competing for sponsors and fun' clash of nations) in Sochi wrapped up. Putin annexes the Crimea and pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels wreak havoc in Eastern regions of the country, with causality numbers rising on both sides. So let's all avoid that and go fight some crazy Islamic militants who are making previously thought impossible headway in a badly defended region overlapping the nonexistent borders of Syria and Iraq. Beheading Western journalists will earn your cause a series of airstrikes by a Western coalition of nations (led by America), directly targeting ISIS leaders. Putin just gets phone calls. Even when he breaks the rules he's breaking the rules in a way that the international community will only wag an extremely disappointed finger in his general direction (at the same time, anyone who takes the position that the West (read: America) is being too light on Russia still will not utter the words 'military' as a form of response). Being limited to suffering financial punishment is one of the perks of playing a key (or even supporting) role in the globalized capitalist/polyarchical economy, and Russian oil and gas supplies more or less keeps Europe's lights on. No such luck for ISIS, who pretty much supplied the world with high quality recruitment videos and hatred, meaning no one really made much of a stink of a renewed American presence in the region (on land and in the air). They rose, were scattered, and inspired the already criminals/disenfranchised in other countries to pick up weapons and kill innocent people. A perpetually unstable region will require a perpetual military presence, which is an observation that sadly can be applied to many countries in the middle east, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. But most of us watch the events mentioned above from a still stable Western or Eastern nation, acknowledging without much reflection that 'everything' - bombings, airstrikes, roving bands of extremists terrorizing citizens and trying to overthrow the government - happens over there. Or almost everything, since this year ebola came to America (and Spain), which got a couple good days of panic after a bit of light ball dropping by health officials in Dallas and New York City. Meanwhile the press covered the horrors of ebola in Africa with the perspective of ‘well of course it’s going to happen there’. The real domestic crisis for America this year (other than the continued economic hardship of the lower and middle classes, which is quickly turning America into a DINO - 'democracy in name only'), was the very public realization that everyone who thought that racial divisions were healing were fooling themselves. In August came the shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri (but actually that very thing has been happening for a very long time, it's just that this was the tragedy that captured the community's and nation's frustration). And the decision to not charge the police officer with a crime meant we get to re-visit the story in late November (along with several other incidents of the law abusing its power to the point of, ahem, getting away with manslaughter). The media coverage of all these events from across the globe are particularly dispiriting, as every new story is broken now like a story that you would read in a novel or watch on TV (well, on a smartphone, tablet, or monitor, most likely), with a beginning, middle and end. Which is terrifying, because life isn't so neat and tidy with credits rolling at the end of the hour. The story, as far as the media is concerned, ends when there's nothing 'new' to add, even if the actual situation on the ground in the Ukraine, Syria or West Africa or any small town in middle America is still unstable. Ukraine was the winter and spring. Ferguson was summer. Ebola was early fall. Ferguson was big enough to get picked up for a second season in November. This the story of the year. 12 chapters, divided into roughly four sub-chapters, then seven sub-sub chapters, etc. If the medium is the message - as McLuhan posited - then all that's really being said here is that all these problems are temporary and they are somebody else's, not the viewers. And if by bad luck lottery the tragedy is befalling upon you, you will (in)voluntary participate in the news cycle, with interviews of people who knew you and commentary by pundits who didn't, and it will all fuse into a beginning, middle and end that doesn't necessarily represent the reality off camera, even though for most viewers there is no 'off camera'. The perspective of what they present is what you accept and use to frame your worldview. It's easy to be fooled that we're supposed to experience and judge the past, present, and future based on this setup. Quickly, in bullet points, and between commercials. You find yourself trying to rationalize in small degrees with the fact that life has always had these terrible catastrophes and tragedies, that a privileged few seem to always win and so many more lose, that we have to temper our grand plans with the known unknowns and 'going to war with the army you have'. But then you start coming across as defeatist, as permanently accepting the presence of these events and rules/regulations. Instability begets further instability. The interconnectedness that is supposed to be an asset quickly becomes a massive, damning hindrance. The problems appear overwhelming. At least the US economy is on the upswing (but only if you're already rich), and the Russian economy is on the downswing (unless you're rich). It's not so much that there's two sides to every story, but that every story quickly begins to sound the same. Cuban ex-pats in America are angry that their adopted country (who tortures people for dubious reasons) is now agreeing to have formal relations with their home country (who jails people for dubious reasons). People in glasshouses shouldn't throw stones, but suddenly you find yourself staring at your phone in one hand, rock in the other, not knowing what to do, the world passing you by very, very quickly. Here's for no re-runs or re-makes - and maybe a bit of a reprieve from the horsemen - in 2015.
Culture There's more stuff made for the purposes of entertainment than ever before, but a lot less money to go around (the disposable income of the previously cherished 18-35 demographic has evaporated). Freddie Gibbs raps about being critically acclaimed but still living like a thug on this year's Piñata, his amazing (but about four songs too long on the back end) collaboration album with Madlib. Everyone is well aware of this when it comes to the music industry (the big labels allowing you to stream new albums on itunes or band websites is there version of 'waving the white flag' to piracy, just as new contracts with artists demanding a cut of touring profits is their way at recouping a sliver of seemingly endless financial losses), but there's still known unknowns when it comes to TV and film, as services like Netflix, (Google) Play and others are conflating the two forms to a degree that waiting for a season to end to binge watch ten episodes or for the film to be released on VOD two or three months after it opens in theatres is a sensible afterthought of a decision. And so while music being released by small labels or the artists has become a familiar situation, the transition for TV and film to exist in the same format is in its larval stages, especially with the fact that it takes a lot more money and resources to make several episodes of a series or a ninety film than an album (certainly having a pitchfork or tiny mix tapes-like website to suss through the material would be helpful). It's wrong to say that everything's got small. Rather, everything seems to be multiplying. There's a lot less stuff that everyone is familiar with, whether it be music, film, and TV. Regardless, here's some cultural bits that floated our boats in 2014.
Music Top Tier Tunes The Body, I Shall Die Here - pummelling, terrifying, epic, dark, twisted. Slow, machinery grind metal covered in probably not human shrieks. Not for the faint of heart, but for those who chew on rusty nails, this is your midnight nirvana. Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2 - like Empire Strikes Back, this one hits you harder than the original. Killer Mike and El-P are in top form here, merging serious political commentary with the funniest and stone cold boasting since the first Wu-Tang album. And El's production isn't slouching either, even though the first record dropped only last year. These dudes are on a roll (and when one of the dudes is Killer Mike, you better get out of the way). Timber Timbre, Hot Dreams - Slightly off kilter country. Taylor Kirk's drawl is a perfect mix of haunting and reassuring, so it makes perfect sense when he describes an airplane crashing (or landing) in the Grand Canyon. The opening track, 'Beat the Drum Slowly' is ominous and crushing and has a great animated music video directed by Chad VanGaalen. They're like Fleet Foxes after an aluminum baseball bat to the head, which makes it all the more interesting (and magnetizing) Liars, Mess - hyper-demented dance music. The first half of this has all the pummelling you would expect from these guys, but now forced through coked-up eighties synths that spent the last few decades in the basement of a haunted house. The second half slows down, as if the synths and drum machines were covered in mayonnaise and left out in the sun. Mess also has the song of the year, the nine-minute slow burner, 'Perpetual Village'. Prime stuff. St. Vincent, self-titled - the best pop of the year, because it's got a good edge to it. She treats her voice like just another instruments, so between the croons and falsettos, V will happily slather on a layer of fuzz just to keep you on your toes (and dancing).
Honourable Mentions Thom Yorke, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes (a bit more consistent and wormy (a good thing) than 2006's The Eraser. Some great inhuman rhythms on here with his steel angel vocals) Aphex Twin, Syro (he's back and it sounds pretty much like he never left. Maybe a bit more mellow, which is welcome in some ways (contrast with the other 'new' Aphex Twin album that snuck out in the summer, which was recorded in 1994 and is seizure-like in its energy)) D'Angelo& The Vanguard, Black Messiah (speaking of 'back', the long gestating follow up to 1999(!)'s Voodoo is funkier, rockier, and soul-ier than anyone could have expected) Dean Blunt, Black Metal. (it's not black metal, though, it's weirdo, electronica fuelled alt rock with hints of hippity-hop that's kinda like Quasimoto's bizzaro 2000 classic 'The Unseen')
Movies Mark Harris for Grantland asked if we've reached peak Superhero films [http://grantland.com/features/comic-book-movies-marvel-x-men-batman-dc-comics/], and while that might not be the case, we've certainly reached the apex of Superhero film-like funding for everything that makes it to theatres. Birdman and Edge of Tomorrow were the only multiplex movies (although not box office smashes, sadly) that's chock full of star-studded weirdness where you can't seen the ending coming miles away (and the performances were incredible from all involved). The former was great for the passionate and laugh-worthy skewering of hollywood, and the latter was great simply for the detournement of Tom Cruise (in it he's a bumbling coward who dies many, many times). Everything else felt like it was made in committee, although a rather hip, edgy, and by-the-fun-numbers committee. Guardians of the Galaxy was certainly the best of those. You could see the action beats and happy endings and loose ends being tied up a mile away, but at least it was funny the whole way through. And let's not forget a great flick of the first quarter, Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel. As far as his films go, this is also rather paint-by-numbers, but P.B.N. Anderson is still miles ahead of most writer-directors going full gonzo (plus you get a hilarious performance by Lord Voldemort himself).
TV True Detective. There. That’s really all you need. And Cohl's redemption works. So does Hart's reunion with his family. They caught the bad guy and healed themselves. That makes them… (wait for it)… true detectives. And the Game of Thrones domination continued unabated (satisfying our not that surprising obsession with sex, violence, and politics oversimplified). Give the people what they want.
Sports Damn it, I love football. The balance between physical power and careful strategy. The importance of preparation in advance and then having to throw it all out the window and fly by the seat of your pants. The certain unpredictability. I can even appreciate Belichick's hoodies (give it up for Bill. Last year, with their o-line practically non-existent for boring to crazy reasons, the Pats still made it to the Conference Championship). But a question remains: Can we still enjoy football? Well, yes. Quite easily in fact. You have to work hard to not enjoy football nowadays, if you've always been a fan. You have to read depressing articles, you have to remember stinging facts, you have to question how you would deal with such issues if it wasn't involving a leisure activity, you have to keep reminding yourself that there are considerable problems with the game (much of which are, admittedly, problems for many other professional sports at the moment) that's filled your life with so many exciting moments. You have to admit to yourself that nothing you find out will be much of a surprise, either. Is it enough that we admit to ourselves that any sort of athletic achievement or competitive triumph is really forever tarnished because the sport involves drug-infused men with subpar educations violently smashing into each other like gladiators for our amusement? How do we reconcile these circumstances? Do we constantly remind the players, prospective players, and ourselves that by playing this game for many years - whether as a pro-bowl linebacker or near-constant benchwarmer who still participates in practices day in day out - you are significantly shortening the length and quality of your life? That you risk horrific brain damage and loss of basic motor skills at a very early ages? Do we tell the teenagers that are beginning to take the game seriously that the chances of injury are high and the chances of making it to the professional leagues where you are finally paid are extremely low? And I put these statements in the form of questions because it's pretty much rhetorical. We don't have to tell anybody this, player or fan. We know all of this. That football is a dangerous game that makes a small selection of athletes rich and the team owners richer. We have made that decision - regardless of how much energy put into deciding - by continuing to support football. The debate? There isn't one. Running into other people as hard as you can is not good for your body. Especially the head. Concussions are like bruises to the brain. Which sounds innocuous until you realize the brain is already protected from injury thanks to the skin and the skull and the fluid the brain sits in. Repeated concussions - or continuing in behaviour that causes all sorts of injuries and trauma - is unquestionably causing terrible damage to the one organ in your body that truly makes you human. Which is why early onset dementia - which affects former football players at a rate much higher than the general populace - is such a tragic medical condition to befall upon somebody. But this shouldn't be surprising. What is surprising is how embarrassing the National Football League's handling of the situation has been. Suppressing medical findings, downplaying the issue, offering a pittance as a settlement for a lawsuit brought on by former football players, some of whom can't tie their shoes or recognizes their wives. When something matters in such a way as football does (in the sense that it doesn't matter much at all, that it's an activity that helps pass the time from cradle to grave a bit more pleasantly, that it's leisure that's grown completely out of proportion when compared to the amount of energy spent on real issues that affect the quality of life on this planet), it's a sign of complete disconnect by those that run and own the league. They think what they do matters too much, and everything else matters too little. There should be NFL-underwritten brain trauma centres in every major hospital across America. They should give monthly or even weekly updates regarding research developments and player health issues. They should not mince words. For how much marketing they do, it's pathetic that they couldn't realize that the best PR move would be the following: “We love football here at the NFL, and we know you do, too. That's why to make sure the game has a future, we are pouring a vast amount of our resources to combat the terrible disease that is plaguing our current and former players. We are using a sizeable percentage of our already healthy profits to build medical research centres devoted to lessening the effects of concussions and long term brain damage. This will benefit not only those people that play football, but millions of people around the world who also find themselves afflicted, regardless of how the injuries occurred. Playing and working for professional football is a privilege, but players remaining healthy and safe - even years after they hang up their helmet - is a right.” There. Instead, should we surprised that short term corporate greed has triumphed over the idea that the league should address challenges that might jeopardize the existence of the game itself in the long run head on? No, we shouldn't be. Which is why performance-enhancing drugs is another issue that's minimized, ignored, and weakly enforced and might also ruin the game (as it's doing to so many other sports, from baseball to cycling). Competitive edges are encouraged in all aspects of civilization, but not when it crosses into what the community agrees is cheating fraudulence and acquiring power through illicit means (insider trading, for example). And just how there are loopholes in the ‘real’ world (incidentally admitting that the world of sports isn't real, since football doesn't matter the same way an economic policy, a construction project, or a kitchen appliance does, where broken rules and regulations can have catastrophic effects on the safety and stability of our society), there are constant attempts to circumvent the rules to be a better athlete than everyone else. There's drugs to hide the drugs, there's fake urine, and there are crooked doctors willing to take the blame. Scandals are now just part of the game, because so many athletes take performance enhancers. Missing a handful games is a risk you're willing to take if you can play the other twelve games like a beast. Performance enhancing drugs are not even a new development. Football and baseball players were popping pills - uppers mainly - since the 1960s, and steroids since the 1970s. Babe Ruth was an alcoholic, and while whisky's not a performance enhancer, having a drinking problem isn't really a good inspiration for the kids or the drinker’s long-term health. So here's a thought: Let them cheat in this respect and it won't be cheating anymore. Whether it's an IV drip (which is typical treatment now for various sporting injuries) or steroids, sport is the area where 'it's going to happen anyway' is an acceptable reason to overturn a rule. If we accept even grudgingly that sports has been tainted for decades with athletes combining natural ability, a strong work ethics, and a reliance on chemicals made in a lab to run faster, jump higher, and tackle harder, then the only thing we lose is our wilful blindness of the problem. The equipment players use already makes them less human. Exoskeleton armour and gloves that are pretty much covered in glue. And this mindset is ingrained in prospective players at such a young age (there are protein diets and weight-gain powders specifically tailored to teenage football players), that erythropoietin and androstenone can become just the next logical, amoral step in reaching your maximum potential. So forget this 'what about the kids' argument for going after cheaters. We shouldn't be deifying multi-million dollar athletes in the first place. Be impressed at how fast they can run down a field, sure. But raise them up as a pillar of the community? Let's hold off on that one. Sure they worked hard to develop the skills of catching a ball and running really fast, but a lot of other people work hard without the same sized paycheque and admiration. Perhaps we should make 'working hard' the role model for the kids, regardless of your profession. And if that sounds naive, so ignoring the fact that professional sports is awash in doping. We obsess over an ultimate frivolity. Fantasy teams (which I myself have), talk radio, a unending sea of swag, and shutting your city down for a parade when your team wins the championship. It's only a sport, but that's not the mindset. In fact, the marketing of all extremely popular professional sports leagues across the world in the last three decades have focused almost exclusively on how football/actually football/basketball/hockey/baseball is more than just a sport. That it's a way of life, a lynchpin to our culture, a grand uniter, a celebration of athletic/human achievement, a religion. Which makes sense from an advertising perspective (it's also how they sell beer, car insurance, toilet paper, and frozen croissant), but is still completely ridiculous, especially since the general populace has gobbled up this angle. Which is not surprising, since more emotional energy is invested in sport more than any other product sold to us. And emotional energy is connected to various acts of physical energy, like opening your wallet and spending thousands on seasons tickets, hundreds on jerseys, and tens on any other sort of swag like a bottle opener, bobble-head, and chewing gum. It's a unqualified success of free market capitalism (even with the socialist-friendly profit sharing among teams). The market decided what the team is worth, and therefore determines what the players are worth. Even cheating is rationalized away in emotionless, morality-nullfying terms. You're not 'lying' or 'breaking the rules'. You're just taking advantage of a 'competitive edge' that's been presented to you. Chomsky famously said that the proof of Americans' ability to memorize and crunch long list of numerical data is seen in sports statistics and the fans' ability to recall and comment upon them virtually at will. People who take little interest in the functioning of the global economy can have very specific and nuanced opinions about salary caps and performance bonuses. And that's reassuring in one way, but depressing in another. So people have a natural intellectual talent, great, but it's still being used primarily on a leisure activity (which involves people with natural athletic talent). And this lament is inevitably tied into the problematic scenario of then trying to define what activities and institutions citizens should be devoting their time and energy into. In a free, democratic state it's certainly an individual's own decision of what is important to them. Even if they focus mainly on what is wholly unimportant as far as the health of the state goes. It's well understood from watching the ads they make (cough) that professional sports provides a wonderful sense of community, fosters human achievement and innovation. Grandiosity aside, it is certainly an economic boon. But it also provides an temporary escape from each person's true daily responsibilities, because sports doesn't matter. The problems begin to arise when this so-called temporary escape because a dominant sanctuary. But fine. Fine. So professional sports just makes the rich richer and provides a diversion for the proles from actually realizing what a sorry state of affairs they live in, and that it's getting worse. Fine. But then let's not pretend to be horrified that athletes are crippling themselves and cheating. Let's not pretend this sullying the 'glory of the game', which is full of drugs, money, and an over the top, crude macho attitude (certainly too much of that, if hazing includes death threats) that undoes any 'role model' aspect it tries to prop up for children. Money will be thrown at the continued problem of concussions and long term brain damage. Maybe this will include better designed, hi-tech helmets, or maybe funding in some way will lead to a medical discovery that benefits not only athletes with neurological injuries, but people in general. Or maybe the NFL which just keep on taking a pinch of its profits and sprinkling it upon the families of forty five year old former players who can't tie their shoelaces. But I'll still tune on Thursday night, excited for the start of yet another football season, forgetting about its problems when I should be thinking about them the most. Because we all need to escape from time to time. We just need to come back as soon as the game ends.
TOO MUCH OF AN
Well, it worked. And it worked too well. The upper 1% sucked up the wealth of the world so quickly that even they weren't prepared. Which is a terrible position to be in. Because... now what? They got 15% richer in 2013 (http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rich-got-14-6-richer-in-2013-1.2672352), the middle class shrank, which means easy street is roomier and more spacious than ever. The ebbing and flowing of value (in this case, capital) is a natural part of civilization, but this speed is unprecedented, especially when it occurs on a global scale. Like the situation with climate change, it's not as if the earth hadn't suffered through storms in the past, but now the extremes of hot to cold weather and flood to drought is the real danger. What is the course of action moving forward to temper and moderate these effects? How do we change? What kind of warning signs are required before we do something? Take automobiles, the mode of transportation that defined rapid technological innovation and signs of personal success in the twentieth century. We have too many of them. There are more cars in the world than people, and a great many of them have never been driven, except to the empty lots where they remain. (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-16/where-worlds-unsold-cars-go-die) Even though we can't sell cars because a great many people can't afford them, we can't afford not to make them, because that's even more people who are out of work, putting greater stress on the already exhausted and maligned social programs of the West. Technological innovation coupled with neoliberal economic policies have made physical human labour less necessary than ever before. Even our superficial showcases are suffering. The costs and extravagance of the Olympics have skyrocketed in the last two decades, to the point where nations can't even afford to waste money on pointless construction projects for athletic competitions like they used to. (http://deadspin.com/nobody-wants-to-host-the-2022-olympics-1582151092) We have to downsize the Olympics. Government bureaucracy has quickly been replaced by a corporate bureaucracy. It's a turnover that began with the rise of lobbyists in the late seventies in halls of power across the Western world. Buying influence became a legitimate and calculated part of running a large corporation. This access - assisted in part by politicians and members of their inner circle becoming lobbyists themselves - began on a small scale (the first paid lobbyists were from the frozen food industry), but is now how politicians shape their ideological positions. Certainly there are instances where a smaller, more efficient private company can do things better than a government department, but these decisions are rarely made with 'better' in mind. Regarding pharmaceutical companies (that are supposed to be closely regulated by government agencies), "as James Surowiecki has noted, given a choice between developing antibiotics that people will take every day for two weeks or antidepressants that people will take every day forever, drug companies not surprisingly opt for the latter. Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn't given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s." (pg.315, Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything) Even something as essential as pensions have overwhelmed the system that designed and guaranteed them. The costs required to pay retired government officials have skyrocketed, and suddenly city, county, state/provincial and federal budgets are breaking everywhere, before they even address their region's actual infrastructure issues. Taken for granted programs and resources are being taken away en masse (closing libraries, cancelling road maintenance, reducing hours for all government employees, and selling off any money making ventures like toll roads and parking meters). Streamlining services to work on micro-budgets have made the services basically inoperable. These actions have long been a tool of private industry, as any way to save money improves the bottom line. Cutting corners has become a more efficient way to do this than innovation and building a positive reputation with customers. Steps like moving factories overseas to take advantage of extremely cheap labour in impoverished nations, putting pressure on regulatory agencies to do fewer and less detailed inspections, and spending less on long term research and development in favour of small meagre adjustments meant to increase immediate profits. The attempt to save money is ultimately costing society much, much more. It's by no means and activity that only the rich desire and pursue, but no can argue that they are the ones who have certainly benefited from these large scale changes in the basic operation of global economy. It seems to ridiculous to think that they believe this trend of squeezing and bleeding government institutions can last forever. The wealthy of the world can't be as tone deaf as they're made out to be in dystopic science fiction films. In real life, boring but honest accountants will tell them about their investments, and hopefully boring reforms will be made, instead of a sort of Elysium/In Time/The Island-like revolution. Speaking of movies, Mark Harris's article on 'The Superhero Movie/TV Bubble' (http://grantland.com/features/comic-book-movies-marvel-x-men-batman-dc-comics/) posits that even escapist entertainment with a hint of social commentary can succumb to the unrestrained desire for success at any cost. Compare this to the growing and popping of the housing/financial bubbles. Both involve large, powerful institutions plowing forward with high hopes and little regard to the ramifications of their failure. After a few initial successes, everyone from competing companies gets into a frenzy and apes one another, with investors from other industries or just independent means flooding the market with additional cash that just inflates the bubble even quicker. The Bat, Iron and Supermans of the world dominate, with several other films rushing out and trying to compete (Green Lantern, Green Hornet, The Punisher, Hulk, Jonah Hex). Driving a particular movie genre into the ground is one thing (Warner Brothers or Disney or any large studio can typically absorb losses thanks to other revenue-generating projects). Even Marvel wasn't foolish enough to go into nine figure movie making budgets without a bigger company behind them (Disney). But the buck stopped there. Disney didn't underwrite these budgets by buying premiums that paid out if the movies flopped. No matter how much of a Friedman/Greenspan acolyte you might be, supporting the continued existence of the shadow market of credit default swaps (CDS) and subprime lending that encourages self-destructive behaviour for short term profits is utterly mad. An insurance policy for your stocks seems like a good idea in proportion, but pushed as far as it could go meant that large investment banks could target publicly traded companies (including other banks) and intentionally sink them and reap the benefits of their collapse. The now-familiar metaphor of buying fire insurance on your neighbours house and then burning it down wasn't far off the mark. CDS's were designed to lower risk, but because so many financial institutions bought into them, it actually increased the amount of risk in the market. Ideally a regulatory body would carefully and fairly intervene. Ideally it would protect the market from itself. Ideally. When everyone complains that today's world is too fast, too overwhelming, too complicated, it's usually through the lens of material (over)consumption or an immediate setback to whatever they were trying to accomplish at the time. Which in itself if a narrow view. The constant problem is (surprise) a complicated one. Too often too many big and risky ideas are implemented too fast. And sometimes them succeeding beyond their creators wildest hopes has more negative effects than when these big ideas crash and burn before they get off the ground. When short terms profits are the most coveted result, it is hard to resist the temptation of the lemming-like behaviour of following the success of a similar idea with only minor adjustments to avoid a lawsuit and/or brand confusion. This process is the constant. It has become the principle feature of global capitalism, and it has infiltrated everything from the energy company behemoths that have greater political power than any politician would ever care to admit to the e-cigarette industry. Not simply an addiction to the new and novel, but a way to capitalize on people's interest on the new and novel. The goal of capitalism is the constant accumulation of wealth, which in turn is supposed to foster further innovation and even more wealth. A perpetual motion machine of value. But we are bound to physical reality, where there is finite resources which is largely what this planet's wealth is dependent upon. Numbers on a spreadsheet can go on forever, but there's only so much oil, trees, and acres of farmable land that we can utilize. And the metrics involved decree that the amount of pollution and waste we are creating accelerates the unsuitability of the remaining resources. Grant Morrison offhandedly queried in The Invisibles, 'have you ever noticed how time is speeding up?' Well time is relative to space and the energy being utilized while traveling through it, and right now the goal is to be as fast and up to date as possible (whether it be your internet speed, or the latest information you can get via said internet speed), because that has become the metric for our success. We've relied too much on 'too fast', setting aside any other sort of innovation that might give anyone a difference sort of competitive edge. While the rise of monopolies have made so many products and services almost indistinguishable from each other, it is too big of a problem to lay the blame squarely on unrestrained free market capitalism. And it's important to acknowledge this, because while bringing in necessary regulations to curtail this type of behaviour is very important, regulations alone will not end this problem. It is also a psychological quandary, one that is linked with our notions of progress, of our belief of how things are always supposed to be getting better. It is so ingrained in Western culture (and one of its chief immaterial exports) that we frequently decry how it's not happening, how things are getting worse. Our sense of timing is off. The speed of advancing technology still has massive consequences that no one has being able to wholly incorporate into modern society. Keynes envisioned a future where people would only have to work three to four hours a day, and thought that one of the problems would be how to pass the time when we were finished. Well, thanks mainly to computers this prediction came true, but instead of diffusing the work over many, one person does the work of three people, and the other two have more menial tasks, and none of them are making a wage where they can save money for the future. For Keynes' world to come to fruition, resources that are of very high value today have become much less valuable tomorrow. Energy and food resources have to exist in bottomless quantities (it is rather horrifying that with tens of millions of people starving every day, many farmers across the globe are paid money to not grow crops). But the only institutions large enough at this point to address these challenges are private corporations, for whom it seems these challenges need to be seen as an 'exciting investment opportunity' before considering whether or not to address them (or even acknowledge that they're worth addressing). In the past, governments were able to bankroll large scale development projects (admittedly for military advances, more often that not), with the internet being developed by the department of defence being a key example, but those days seem to be long past. It's hard to imagine anything getting done right in the capitols of the free world. Is too much bureaucracy the ultimate result of democracy? Meaney and Mounk offer up the lamenting title, 'What was Democracy', for a recent article in The Nation. (http://m.thenation.com/article/179851-what-was-democracy) A glut of confidence, an occurrence of being asleep at the switch because we thought we could afford to be. Reminding us cynically that true democracy requires a constant vigilance that most citizens do not have an interest in, but then reminding us that its debatable how much of a true democracy any nation ever had in the first place. We feel like we've lost something that we had in the past, but it's only a 'feeling' as most evidence suggests that democracy has only existed in our minds, especially something in the past, when we can nostalgically look back at a time when everything supposedly worked better. Meany and Mounk question the feasibility and usefulness of the typical left-leaning prescriptions to 'rescue' democracy, like higher taxes on wealthy citizens and corporate, and more extensive regulations for all industries, ranging from energy to financial. To them, these are mere temporary and limited fixes to a series of practical problem, when in reality democracy's crisis comes from the fact that it gives citizens the freedom to not take part in democracy. 'Too much freedom' seems extremely fascist, but should one be forced to take part in certain legislatives activities (like voting) to make certain that other freedoms are not silently taken away? Meaney and Mounk note that thanks to technological advances, it is actually possible for a great many citizens to participate immediately in the decision making process (namely, the use of the internet), but so far there has be little progress made in using this platform for actual governance (certainly it has been used to great effect in the public relations arms of the political process, but nothing like having people's opinions being reflected in the passage of legislation). When the basic mechanics of democracy doesn't work, taking shortcuts to govern comes off a lot more appealing. In fact, it can be seen as essential, since a broken object/material/institution is no longer that object/material at all. The checks and balance meant to prevent abuse of power by the heads of state has given the elected politicians below the opportunity to abuse these checks and balances for their own gain or ends. Of course, left-leaning individuals who support President Obama's social policies (and, like a lot of like-minded individuals, feels he has not been able to do enough to initiate them because of a defective congress), support his promise to use executive order more forcefully. And those same people would most likely be critics of George W Bush, and therefore deplored his use of executive order to push policies that they disagreed with. And that's - ironically, as it sidesteps the congress/parliament - democracy. Reluctantly accepting policies you oppose when the elected leader is able to enact them, and happily embracing policies that support when the elected leader is able to enact them. This do not make putting these laws and orders into practice any easier. The institutions meant to do so are still bureaucratically muddled and are severely underfunded (or crookedly overfunded, with monies quietly siphoning into a tiny pool of corporate accounts), so that regardless of how legislation is passed - whether through a more participatory method or one through a smaller circle of elected officials - success is by no means guaranteed. Is there an alarm bell for the world economy? It has unquestionably been built up in the last thirty years to achieve a goal of building wealth for its power players and shareholders, but basic economic theory acknowledges the interrelated, symbiotic and complex relationships between all participants across the planet (the definition of globalization is often debated, but certainly its orchestrations are unfairly managed by too few of the people involved). The solution has to be found in a true mixed-market economy, where private industry is allowed to develop new products and services with financial success as a clear goal, but with strong government regulations in place to ensure that this is done with the community or state at large as a clear beneficiary, not an afterthought. This is not as unlikely as it sounds. These were the conditions that existed across the West in the wake of the Second World War, and it played a major role in economic, technological and social advances in the decades after. The solution for too much is not too little. As far as the status quo goes, right now there is too much smoke being blown up our asses, and too little fire being lit under them. Instead, it is the middle of the road that could best suit our future. Slow and steady reforms are always a challenge (because it requires long term commitment), but projects or policies enacted quickly typically have devastating unintended consequences. Even if the plea, 'we don't have time to waste', is accurate, any sort of panic or passionate drive does not guarantee success. Moderation is rarely a romantic prescription, but that's exactly why it's necessary right now. It's not the same thing as 'do nothing'. It's much closer to the notion of 'do it right'.
It's the Stupid, Economy
So who would you like to blame for the economic malaise we all seem to be suffering through? One of the more striking uses of the term ‘the new normal' was when Brian Williams used it to describe the attempt by terrorists to blow up airliners flying out of London's Heathrow Airport using some liquid explosives in August of 2006. Another reminder of the danger of terrorism in the early 21st century. The 'new normal' in this case ultimately meant yet another level of carry-on restrictions on airplanes. Now you couldn't bring any bottles containing more than 50ml of liquid, whether it was shampoo or gatorade. Like a lot of changes to air travel in the wake of September 11th, we grumbled, than got used to it. All part of flying the friendly skies, and as soon as you're through security you can move on to thinking about buying an expensive bag of chips at the convenience store before boarding, and hoping that you don't get a seat next to an infant. Normal. The economic new normal is much different than this slight adjustment in our travel plans. Not a matter of life and death in post industrial society (worst case scenario when it comes to terrorism), but certainly a matter of quality of life. It extends to almost every facet of our daily routines because so many of our routines revolve around economic demands. Work, not working, health, communication, transport purchasing power from massive investments like property to daily purchases like coffee, travel, savings, pension (ha!), leisure. Even the things we define as being 'more important than money' are still defined against the concept of money. And now there is less of it to go around in the West. An entire generation feeling the negative effects of computational technology, which has replaced (or reduced the hours of) millions of jobs. All the easy (illegal) downloading of music, movies and TV - plus whatever else the internet can waste our time with - is scarcely a replacement for a hemorrhaging of expectations that have practically become birthrights for the last three generations. The obviously incomplete list of economic demands above have changed in a myriad of ways for young adults today than the same age group for the past sixty years. The old adage was that you got a college degree, and therefore you will most likely have a reasonable income that will be enough for a car, a mortgage, a pension, and - over time - to raise a child (or children), who in turn will be able to get a college degree... That cycle is winding down. The corporation of universities and colleges means there's a glut of young people with degrees and debt but not enough jobs in their respective fields (supply and demand nods grimly). On top of this (or really, all over this), is the shrinking middle class of Western society. A terrible occurrence that is all the more frustrating when one considers that almost every large-scale economic decision is purportedly being done with the middle class in mind. With such a multifaceted problem, looking at only a few graph or numbers is never going to give you a worthwhile perspective of the problem. The media trumpeting a single figure of job growth or loss in a single month is of little use. The Dow Jones, Nasdaq and every other measure of economic health based on quarterly earnings reports coming out of Manhattan has to be put in its proper context: Considering that 20% of Americans own 80% of the stock, it doesn't mean that much at all. The still skyrocketing wealth of the 1%, which has exploded in the last twenty five or so years, with more and more of the power of the nations ending up in the hands of fewer and fewer people. And these developments are thanks largely in part to legislation pushed forward in congresses and parliaments that are sponsored by lobbyists, representing those that can afford to have their interests represented by lobbyists. Returning tax rates and corporate regulation to what they were forty or fifty years ago is a great start, but the economy abhors a vacuum (no value there), and the West doesn't have the unilateral financial power it once had. The emerging/exploding/cooling/but-only-cooling-compared-to-when-they-were-exploding Asian markets can take a much larger role in their own destinies. The West went from exploiting cheap labour in that region to depending on said cheap labour to now treating them like respectable trading partners full of eager customers. Rich and poor are tumbling down a very strange rabbit hole, going through the motions in an economic system that seems to fail more and more people in the West everyday. Are we at a point where this is too Broken to Fix? Is that defeatist? Nihilist? Or do the numbers just work out that way? Well, there's lots of things to consider (sur-fucking-prise!). First off, as far as the basic rules of economics go (as in 'it doesn't care how many children live in poverty or if the sky is full of poison as long as we're in the black'), some of the outcomes are going along swimmingly. Supply and demand, overabundance and scarcity, all checkmarks. As Larry Summers points out, the stuff made out of stuff (TVs, phones, computers, t-shirts, plastic deck chairs, etc.) has been getting cheaper, but the stuff that is more ethereal or available in limited quantity (education, health care, property in a nice area) has had its prices skyrocket. Land especially, since it's one of the few things China and Southeast Asia can't manufacture and send to North America. And it's land in other senses of the word that can play an important in role in slowly digging ourselves out this mess. American Industry needs to come home. The West needs to come home. They've built up the economies of China and Southeast Asia by taking advantage of cheap labour, but now there are massive economic changes in these regions that is allowing them to slowly apply these leaps in industrialization to their own nations and regions. They no longer have to ship everything to North America and Europe. They can build for their own regions now (although certainly exports will remain a vital part of their economy, like they are/should be for most nations). And so the jobs that have been shipped overseas for over four decades should return. A re-discovery of manufacturing in the West. Making this affordable requires sacrifices up and down the economic ladder. Responsible decision making - by CEO and customer alike - is the goal, but we fall short of this in so many ways. And since laws meant to protect ourselves from our baser nature can be subverted, overturned, or simply ignored, we are constantly going to be faced with an uphill battle to right these incessant wrongs. After three plus decades of Free Market economics, it's time to return to Keynesian economics. These two approaches are not opposites. Keynesianism supports a mixed market economy - that is, capitalism that is regulated to certain degrees by the state - in an attempt to have the best of both worlds: The entrepreneurial vitality of Friedman's Free Market Capitalism and the egalitarian support system of Marx's Communism. Free Market Capitalism and Neoliberalism suffer from the same glaring faults as an economic system completely controlled by the state (Communism): People are not robots. They do not make decisions based strictly on rationality and macroeconomic realities. If FMC and Neoliberalism truly worked, there wouldn't have been a housing/financial crisis. People wouldn't take out mortgages they couldn't afford. Predatory loans, Credit Default Swaps, all of those financial instruments of death would never be introduced because the risks and hazards would be understood immediately, and so these options would never be considered if people acted as FMC expects/demands them to. 'Passing the buck' is an irrational behaviour for FMC and not factored into any of its calculations, which is why a market based on infallible calculations but run by fallible creatures crashed and burned and had to be bailed out by FMC's antithesis, the economic arm of the Federal Government. Laws are in place to protect us from ourselves. The Consumer Protection Bureau is supposed to protect consumers not only from the acts of greedy, amoral corporations, but greedy, amoral acts of their own. It's time that people - regardless of any sort of political affiliation - acknowledge that the mergers that have created mega-corporations in nearly every industry have done more harm than good for the average citizen. Breaking them up seems unthinkable, even though keeping them together or splitting them up is a matter of words on paper (with real world ramifications of jobs disappearing and then reappearing not long after). From an economic standpoint, curtailing corporate power in the West (and the East, although in China this would be an even more daunting task) is imperative for a better working democracy and re-energizing of the middle class. Consequently it will be one of the most difficult to create. It's putting the last thirty years into reverse. It's embracing the opposite of what economics and politics has done for decades. And the powerful people/corporations bound to lose some money and prestige will try to prevent this from happening. Peaceful transitions from one set of laws and statues to another set is always the goal of lawmakers and citizens alike. In a stable state, this should be done via legislation with support from a majority of the people, not the majority of the capital. The rise and fall of one particular ethos that dominates a state's legislative oeuvre for a certain period of time is a natural movement. This goes for bloodless but impactful financial legislation, and erosions of civil liberties by the authorities. Even in a democratic state, there are going to be periods where the rights and privileges of a citizen are jeopardized. Moreover, there are going to be periods where - despite constitutional guarantees concerning equality - some groups of people have much more power than others. All things considered, it's safer and more stable that these inequalities between clusters of citizens (sometimes minority between majority) are manifested mainly in economic terms. When the debate is over representations of value (which are more ethereal than ever, as monetary worth is now more a printed number on a bank statement than stacks of bills in a safe), rather than valuables themselves (food, clothing, safety), then it remains a peaceful one. Not enough people in Western democratic nations are in such dire straights that revolting against the institutions that support the small group of people with a concentration of capital first and everyone else seconds is going to occurring any time soon. [Pressing aside: And thank goodness for that. Revolutions are almost always terribly violent and destructive events that starts off a period of misery and upheaval that lasts for years] Robert Reich sees a populist sea change on the horizon, and envisions it leading to sweeping legislation in the halls of power. The good news is that postindustrial Western nations are stable enough to withstand such reforms. It can adapt to a revamped version of Johnson's 'Great Society'. The economy will change. The economy must change. Explaining the difficulty in addressing these problems from legislative standpoint is easy. Lobbying for change is not. As noted above, those that have the money have been able to prevent any changes to the tax code or antitrust laws. On top of this there is always a sizeable portion of citizens - not a majority by any means, but a dependable voting block - for whom the presence of government in nearly any form appears to be an infringement on their rights and freedoms. Libertarianism is a perfectly reputable political ideology, but it is almost wholly unsuited for the 21st century. Such policies - ending the Federal Reserve, for instance - will simply stop global trade in its tracks. But at least it’s an ethos. In the wake Obama's 2013 victory, Cassidy acknowledged the marginalization of the white conservative vote, their waning influence on politics and how they have rely on legislative loopholes and gerrymandering to cling to power. It's not the end of this voice in politics - which exists in variations on the left as well - but it won't be as loud for a while. Not that any of this will deliver a stinging blow to class struggle in America (or any nation, for that matter). There will always be classes. Hierarchies - both good and bad - are part of human nature/experience and a fully functioning democratic state can only do so much to keep such basic inclinations in check. On top of this, from a practical side, the need for authority to oversee and delegate tasks is inevitable in industrial/post-industrial globalized society. How this world functions is interrelated to the point that no one person - let alone everyone on earth - can have a proper understanding (and therefore the ability to make informed decisions) of it all. Buying an iPhone in Cincinnati pays for road construction in China. And that's a simple way to explain the complexity of a globalized economy. And it's this complexity which makes understanding and tackling these problems daunting for all of us non-economists out (t)here. Even modest, liberal Keynesian reforms will drastically alter the economic playing field of the West (assuming here that America will institute them). What will become of the slightly less rich and slightly less powerful mega-corporations they continue to own? They have already been rebranded as 'job creators' as opposed to simply 'the rich' in conservatives circles (while being pinned as 'fat cats' and 'elites' in liberal ones). They are barely citizens of their own countries, having much of their money hidden in tax havens (which includes both Caribbean Islands and the 'city' of London), storing up for whatever and whenever, not paying their share to keep the finances of the countries they've made their fortunes from solvent. The rich are an easy target. And while they are without a doubt a legitimate one - the people with more power are expected to wield it properly (a butchering of that timeless Spiderman quote) - people up and down the economic ladder must share the responsibility for the situation we finds ourselves in. Abuse of power happens on every income level, regardless of gender, culture, religion, or any other trait that in too many cases divides people. 'Trying to get something for nothing' makes us human. Recognizing that this can cause problems ranging from substandard customer service to an incredible amount of human suffering and enforcing rules to try to stamp it out so we all play fair makes us human as well. But the goal of democracy was to spread the power out, so the effects of abuse would similarly be diffused and mitigated. A healthy middle class is going to game the system in a way the system can withstand, at least withstand the 'gaming' better than when a ridiculously powerful but quantifiably small class starts to do the same. The middle class creates and reinforces the mixed-market, limited-capitalist economy. It is a symbiotic relationship, and when the rules of the latter are drastically altered, then the former suffers. Three decades to go one way, it could possibly take three decades to go back, especially when one considers that the concentration of economic power the West had in the early eighties. With the rapid ascension of China and India since that time, making changes unilaterally will not be possible. The money's been spread out across the globe, to the East's benefit and West's detriment. The money of the Western middle class has gone into the pockets of the Eastern lower class. This is certainly a wonderful development for hundreds of millions of people who have been pulled out of abject poverty, but it's a strange and bitter pill for the people who take a comparatively small downgrade in living standard. The end of the West's sense of self-entitlement is certainly a good thing, as for decades it has typically come at the expense of the rest of the world. This may be the first step in creating an awareness that demands sacrifices from the class that has gained the most despite the 'middle class money flight', the corporate/over class. It's hard to argue with the interconnectedness that is the current global economy, and how it's necessary for all links to remain healthy and robust for the good of the structure itself. Having a huge segment of the world's population become (or remain) disenfranchised is no plan for the 21st century. There needs to be a movement to address this issue head on. Public Good Over Private Gain.
Some sources…
Christmastime is Here... For Now (an ominous title. A tagline for a holiday themed slasher flick)
Christmas has spiralled out of control, and it appears to be taking us with it. A strange conflagration of broken ideologies, so much so that if the road to hell was in fact paved with good intentions, Christmas would have a couple multi-lane expressways all of its own. The theological implications have been taken over by capitalistic impulses, which manifest themselves through rampant commercialism, materialism, and corporatism. This has been the modus operandi in the West for decades (and now ever-increasingly in the East, as the middle classes in China and India swell) regardless of the time of year, but Christmas stands atop the heap as a sort of archetype. A time of stuff. Not just in terms of gifts, but decorations, events, dinners, parties, and charitable donations. And all this stuff requires busier factories (if not here, then somewhere), heavier planes, trains and trucks, and retail stores needing more workers (albeit temporarily) to hype the stuff and take our money. So Christmas is one hell of a jobs creator (although let's be honest, it's more of a corporate bonus creator, with the profits rushing up the ladder, then slightly trickling down). Once a company experiences the Christmas sales bump, they depend on the Christmas sales bump. They need the Christmas sales bump. It has to happen every year, and really, it should be bigger than the last one. Christmas is the manifestation of unfettered capitalism. How nice that saving your soul and saving your bottom line can converge so succinctly. 'Bigger than before', and 'bigger is better' (along with its cousins, 'faster' and 'easier', and its anti-matter duplicate, 'smaller') have been become unofficial mantras for the current notion of progress. Tomorrow is expected to always be better than yesterday. There's money in pushing that idea. We repeat it ad infinitum, and if doesn't work out, and your year hasn't been as good to you as you expect, well don't worry! It's Christmas time, so take out some quick loans and go to Wal-Mart. Too much of a good thing is very real, and when it comes to a lot of Christmas related items and ideas, we've been in the red (and spending green) for several years now. Does it bear reminding that Christmas is meant to celebrate Christ's birth, who came to rid the world of sin and save his followers from death? That this is a holiday which is supposed to acknowledge how much god loves us (by sending us his son) by impregnating a young virgin in Palestine two thousand years ago. Perhaps I can just put in Linus Van Pelt's speech/quotation about the meaning of Christmas and be done with it. Even if you don't adhere to the half-man, half-god redeemer coming to cleanse of the sins of the world, it's still a lot more enriching than fighting for discount televisions on Black Friday. Solemn reflection about the idea of selfless giving, sacrifice, and being thankful for what you have. There's a lot to the Spirit of Christmas. The easiest one to be manipulated is 'giving'. Gifts came with the three wise men, who wasn't there when Christ was born, but arrived a little over a week later (which is why Eastern Orthodox christians celebrate the giving of gifts in early January). Fruit and sweets were the traditional gifts for children in Europe on Christmas Day, as it was a sign of some semblance of wealth. This was because fruits like oranges were out of season in December (making it expensive to store in a cool place since the summer, or to have it shipped in). And regarding sweets and candy - and, god forbid, a toy of any sort - anything but food, clothing, and a roof over your family's head was a luxury (we forget too quickly today that while today a minority of people in the West live in poverty, it wasn't long ago history-wise that a vast majority did). It's easy to be generous when you have much to give. It's easy for reflection to be a calming and serene activity when you have positive things to reflect upon. And if you don't want to address real problems this time of year, don't worry, there's plenty of superficial ones to stomp your feet over. There's 'War on Christmas'-type complaint of stores having 'happy holidays' replacing 'Merry Christmas' as the standard employee greeting throughout December. God forbid you aren't reminded of your messiah's birth when you go buy a Playstation 4, a gallon jar of pickles, and twelve pairs of socks. Government buildings being sued by atheists for putting nativity scenes in the lobby. Nice and easy stories to shake your head at and say 'things were better in the good old days' (unless you were a woman, a minority, a homosexual, had leftist political views, etc.) over. Conveniently forgetting that the person whose birthday we're meant to be celebrating exemplified better than anyone in human history the ideas of tolerance, humility, and goodwill (I think Jesus would prefer you spend your time helping out at a soup kitchen rather than fight to have a depiction of his birth portrayed everywhere). I don't want to sound like a grumpy old man (a Scrooge, if you will). I want to sound like a deeply concerned young man (straddling the nebulous borders of gen-x and the millennials, who's seen the best minds of his generation, etc.). There's no waxing nostalgia here. Lego from seventies, a barbie doll from the forties, a wooden toy train from the twenties, a nutcracker doll from the eighteen nineties, an orange from the early Victorian era. People weren't smarter, or more innocent in the past, but the amount of people and the amount of stuff they used was very different. Buying local wasn't a hip choice, it was the only choice. The industrial revolution begat mass production, and ultimately a global workforce and transportation system (and it's a bizarre and convenient coincidence that the modern concept of Santa Claus - cranking out toys for all the boys and girls with slave-like, half-person employees, and utilizing a perfect method of getting around the world in one night - encapsulates the state of the capitalist global economy perfectly. We're 'inadvertently' brainwashing the kids early. The idea that you can have whatever you want, right away. 'Santa' will take care of it). Capitalism is fighting for phone deals on Black Friday. Communism is everyone chipping in when preparing Christmas dinner. It's the time of year when isms bleed together (maybe fighting for phone deals is really anarchism). The difference with materialism is that it is an ideology that requires finite materials. It's more than just an idea. And that's its main problem. Capitalism and communism are theories about economics, which is the study of value and exchange. Materialism is about stuff. And there's only so much of that. For far too long, the West was the home of much of the world's wealth (even as it had a fraction of the planet's population), and Christmas - a holiday celebrated mainly in the West - was a time of year of when everyone would flaunt it (even the lower classes, who were actually doing pretty well compared to 'lower class' in other regions of the globe). Now the West is sagging economically while halfheartedly trying to do the right thing from an environmentally sound perspective. And everywhere else that is doing slightly or much better is rightfully resentful of North America and Europe suddenly having a 'come to Jesus' (ha!) moment when it comes to coal factories and carbon taxes. It's not fair. Well neither is Christmas morning for more and more families, as the middle class sneaks over to China and India leaving Europe and North America with a blossoming underclass. Ahem. So maybe it's becoming easier than ever to be thankful for what you do have, if you're lucky enough to have it (if millions in the West lose what they have, but tens of millions in the East gain what they've never had before, is it a fair trade?). Friends and family and good food, and the idea that many others are doing the same thing at the same time. A communal activity at a time when community is splintering into stranger and more geographically disparate niches. Which is why its wrong to rail against modern society as a whole, especially toward a time of year where such positive attitudes are being fostered. Of course certain forces are going to try to turn such feelings towards their own (financial) advantage. So even as we might roll our eyes or feel genuinely insulted towards a cell phone company plucking our heartstrings by making an advertisement showing a family bonding over their latest galaxy/iphone deal, we should acknowledge that such an activity actually happens. Not everyone who cares about each other can be in the same room on Christmas Day, but features like Skype and facetime can offer the next best thing. The hottest gifts of the season really can make people happy. A kid can’t fake the excitement of getting the toy they’ve been dreaming of for weeks. And for man-children of all ages, the enjoyment factor of the Playstation 4 has a long-ass shelf life. And while plenty of presents don't, that the consumption of whatever is hyped up can feel a bit unfulfilling not long into the new year, the positive vibes of Christmas that are supposed to exist outside the shopping mall experience doesn't necessarily carry us through the winter, either. Like so many others things in modern life, the idea of Christmas is complicated (or has become complicated), with plenty of clearly good and likely terrible qualities fused to it. Certainly being a bit more conscious of what you're buying it's greater effects on the world as a whole would be a good start (like a nutrition label on food, but one that indicates how much energy was used in creating and transporting the item, how much the people making it were paid, what the parent company is worth, etc.). Perhaps a self-imposed gift limit. Really narrow it to one or two things for the kids of all ages. Because gifts are not the first and last word on this holiday (although it usually is the first). Some of the best moments of Christmas are the little things, the moments that surprise you, because - unless you're eleven and under and exist solely for 7AM December 25th - there's a repetitiveness to the ordeal(s) that can be a touch more grating every year (unless you hit the White Russians early). And while they differ from person to person, here's a quick a lighthearted list of things that make our holiday a bit brighter (and a nice contrast to heavy topical shit hanging over our heads that just slogged through).
Die Hard - the ultimate christmas movie (as well as being the greatest action movie of all time). A reinforcement of traditional family roles via fighting terrorist/bank robbers. Everyone who's in it for the money (Gruber, Ellis, Nakatomi) dies, in it for fame (Thornburg, Robinson) is embarrassed, and everyone doing it for their kids (McClane, Gennaro, Powell) are heroes. It even has wrapping paper and masking tape as the protagonist’s secret weapon.
Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Frost - A lovely little ditty about the quiet majesty of the nature in the middle of winter. Frost's protagonist has the luxury we all wish we had during the holidays: A moment to stop and take it all in. To reflect. But, as the last stanza reveals, he has things to do: promises to keep, miles to go before he sleeps (x2). Ninety years old but still relevant.
Fleet Foxes, self-titled - an anecdote to the endlessly derivative Christmas music, while still holding on to that folky, winterish atmosphere. That said, everyone can go through phases with Christmas music, from pleasant enjoyment to seething hatred to finding yourself humming it around your home despite the seething hatred. Context can make a huge difference. Deciding to put on a Christmas album is one thing, but being forced to suffer through 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' while wandering through a crowded book or clothing store looking for the exact thing that person x wants can make the experience all the more deplorable (for some reason, I'm totally down with Radiohead's cover of 'Winter Wonderland' (no, that's not a type, yes it's a youtube search away, with intentionally grainy video of them performing it live in their studio)).
Christmas Crackers - why yes, they are stupid, but it's not a lingering stupidity. They aren't worth more than the three or four minutes you devote to them right before you starting eating. But the dumb little prizes (a comb, a key chain), the even dumber jokes, and the tissue paper crown is now a mockery of how much crazier gift giving has become, while still being a celebration of it. Plus the snap, which really requires one person on each end of the cracker to do right.
Shrimp - okay, after an essay going on about consumption, I should probably tread carefully when it comes to praising the practice of devouring crustaceans by the ton in the last half of December. But that's usually the only time I snack upon this particular seafood (with healthy globs of 'the sauce'). The excitement of Christmas dinner means you had a light-ish lunch, and because the big meal's always at least a bit late, the first round of appetizers is key to staying energetic throughout the night. And shrimp plays a big part in that. Don't be ashamed if you gorge at the expense of others. Wall Street would understand.
So eat some turkey (but not too much). Drink egg nog and rum (but not too much). Argue with your relatives about politics, Pitchfork's best albums of the year list, and whether the stuffing was better last year (but not too much). Deplete your bank account through acts of charity and goodwill (but not too much). Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (but not too much).
' It Was Finished In Visit Time'
Japanglish can occasionally get very zen. And because that's not the intent, that the translation into another language is meant to be a direct and clear as possible - the words above were supposed to indicate that the temple was now closed - this opportunity to find greater meaning in this failure is in itself a commentary on Japan. 'Closed' means just that. But if the sign was just those six letters, I would not be considering how 'it was finished in visit time' is bordering on haiku-dom. The temple - or the idea of a temple accepting visitors - is reduced to a pronoun, and its role for the day has ended. The temple has a purpose, a temporary one, but one that repeats with every sunrise, when 'visit time' begins again. Temporary and recurring. Contrasts. Like Japan! Where perseverance is not a heroic quality, it's a basic one. And when you still don't succeed, you at least have the reflection of what went wrong, what went at least half-right, and what it means in the greater scheme of life itself If it's not the volatile natural elements (earthquakes, tsunamis) to consider, then it's volatile human elements (financial meltdowns, the horrors of modern war). The recent Tohoku earthquake took over 15,000 lives and is estimated to have cost $235 billion. In World War II more people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than from the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. But it's hard to keep an industrious, reflective, creative, and insightful people down. Going above and beyond the call of duty (practically re-defining what duty can do for you) can be seen when you accidentally drop a 10 yen coin (its worth roughly equal to a dime) on a shinkansen (bullet train) and three passengers plus the train hostess helping you find it, even after you try unsuccessfully to communicate with them that it's okay, it's just 10 yen, I don't need it that badly. Even bypassing the challenge for the visitor of learning three separate alphabets (katakana, hiragana, and the never ending chinese characters of kanji) by having english words scattered across the nation are addressed with a mix of professionalism and enthusiasm. but not always both at the same time. Where it counts most - train stations, maps, toilets - you'll find enough familiar and direct words to get to your locations and not have your ass get sprayed with hot water before you start. Outside of these places, it starts to get really funky. Japanglish is an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons but instead getting some sort of strange thing that looks a lot like orange juice and almost tastes like orange juice. It gets the job done - it's citrus flavoured water - but it's not the same, although not without its own charms. I mean, who wouldn't want to go into the 'Joyful Shop With Liquor'? In some ways, isn't the danger of theft already diffused when the sign beside the construction site entrance reads, 'Be in operation a burglar alarm'? Or how about, 'Welcome to Game Panic Tokyo: Let's Enjoy Everyone! The Highest Space...', where the grammatical error in the second phrase is not that strange, but the trailing off of the third is just great. Was 'highest' supposed to mean 'best'? And why not an exclamation mark? (even signs completely in Japanese are not shy with taking them on) Japanglish is a wonderful way to 'ask' why to the seemingly mundane task of communication. If you know what it means, that's good enough right? The efficiency is replaced with a firing of buckshot words. Grazing your brain is the point, but you wonder if google's translator is playing a joke on the entire nation. Is 'closed' simply considered too curt and disrespectful for a temple? And 'Funiture' is either a marketing campaign, or extremely poor copying job. Then there's just words for the sake of words, like a shoe store called 'Welcome to Pansy Satellite'. I want this to be clear: the shoe store is not called 'Pansy Satellite'. 'Welcome to' is not a greeting, it is part of the name of the store. The inadvertent, generally harmless butchering of the english reminds the visitor that the locals are trying to accommodate you, while reinforcing the notion that you are in a position that requires accommodating. You are outsider, and even if you bury yourself in books and apps to understand katakana, hiragana, and kanji and speak it fluently, that still just the tip of the iceberg. Japan is one of the least multicultural developed nations, with 99% of the populace being of Japanese decent. That means that almost everyone visiting sticks out like a sore thumb. The tourism and service industry will break their back for you, the locals will help in very halting english if you appear lost, but it's all with the knowledge that soon you will be back on a plane to your home country. Your first experience with Japan proper is airport customs, and even there, it's polite, efficient, and slightly invasive. Smiling customs assistants gesture into very specific and short lines, and a smiling customs agent bows slightly behind the counter and goes over your passport and customs card carefully, and then gestures to high tech device that records your fingerprints. And then a mugshot. But by the time you really start to consider whether you just walk into 1984 plus Hello Kitty, the airport train station is right in front of you, and you can get your rail pass, suica card, and make seat reservations, all with enough time before the high speed and high comfort express train rockets off towards Tokyo station. [a note on the suica card: it's a reload-able transit/everything card that is good on every subway line in Japan (and most trams and buses), most vending machines, most convenience stores (the massive chains being 7-11, Lawson's, and Family Mart), and all long distance train food services, meaning you can buy a can of beer from a train stewardess's push cart and slug it back in your seat as you rush towards Aomori at three hundred kilometres an hour] Tokyo could be a country all by itself. It's the least international, international city, and that makes it both familiar and alien at the same time. At least nine separate skylines, and with the exception of a handful of landmarks like the Tokyo Tower or Tokyo Skytree or Gherkin, they all seem identical to each other. You get lost in the city because at first glance everything looks the same, and only by looking a bit closer do specific neighbourhoods, streets, and even alleys begin to stand out. And don't except to find it again a day or two later. Despite a near perfect public transportation system, these moments of discovery are meant to be temporary. And there a plenty of them. The waterfront around Tokyo Bay is so sprawling and extensive and yet the city is rarely seen from any angle. There are bridges that rival the steel and iron links into Manhattan. Canals that borrow deep into the mainland, crisscrossing like streets in Koto and encouraging boat-less fisherman to waste the early morn. Wonderfully maintained public parks, since a person's own private space is typically the size of a two car garage in the West. Incredible museums a block away from an alley full of run-down shacks (some of which probably sell amazing okonomiyaki). It's a place where the numbers can be seen and felt. A station platform at rush hour. A fish market the size of a baseball stadium. Raised rail and expressways carve up the city. Suburbs so crowded they look urban to Western eyes. The spiritual and historical beside the ridiculous and pointless. Fifty year old ticket machines beside cramped little restaurants allowing you to eat the best ramen noodles in the world. Markets that sell anything, including a plastic baby doll covered in yakuza tattoos. [a sad myth to be busted: the incredible range of items available via vending machine. The story was, you could get everything from soft drinks to used schoolgirls underwear in Japanese vending machines. The truth is that it's 97% soft drinks, green tea, and cold coffee, 1% cigarettes, 1% beer, and 1% ice cream. Sure, the smokes and booze are amusing at first (and you need a Japanese ID to actual buy the cigarettes), but the vast, vast majority of these devices offer a couple types of drinks and nothing else. Sure they're at nearly every corner in any city, and sometimes on a random place on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, but the perception that you can do all your shopping through them is greatly exaggerated] Endless food, shopping and attraction choices (Museum of Logistics, anyone?), Tokyo is a place that inadvertently exhausts you, but in such a way that you have no problem with that. Like other major world cities, it absorbs any resentment from the rest of the country for the power it holds and attention it gets. Unlike the other global cities like New York and London, however, the immigrant presence (and therefore immigrant culture) is slight. Japan is an extremely homogeneous nation, even one hundred and fifty odd years after 'opening up' (prior to 1868, any foreigner landing on Japanese shores beyond the Nagasaki trading port could be put to death). No Little Italys or Indian neighbourhoods (although quite a few decent restaurants of both). You never forget that you're in the nation of Japan, and that means - if you're not Japanese - you can be surrounded by millions of people and still feel strangely isolated. A ghost of a person, a permitted visitor (you have to keep your passport on you at all times, as you can be fined if the police ask to see it and it's back at your hotel), a welcome guest, but always a guest. Even if you're here to teach english for a year, you have a visa, not a birth certificate. You may be an employee, but you're mainly a tourist. And regarding that, Tokyo actually doesn't feel touristy, even in the endless markets surrounding Senso-Ji temple. The city is so massive it can effortlessly absorb hundreds of thousands of tourists (many of whom are from all over Japan, rather than all over the world). With thirty two million locals, Tokyo doesn't have to give too much of shit to cater to tourists (which is actually an attraction in itself, getting caught in the human hurricane that is constantly swirling around you). This is not the case with Kyoto. The tour groups descend upon the historic, temple-based attractions, and you have to fight your way through and around them to find a quiet spot of your own. Kyoto's best bits are on the edges of the hills and mountains that ring around the city. The closer to the centre you go, the greater the ratio of boring to interesting buildings. Of course, trying to find the good stuff in Japan usually leads to exciting diversions that can be just as worthwhile as the original destination. Rushing from one attraction written up in your guidebook to the next seems very foreign here (which makes it a trait that Japanese tourists pick up with gusto once they head over to Europe or North America). But then, time is treated strangely in Japan. Trains are ridiculously punctual (where being 36 seconds late on average is not acceptable) and futuristic looking, but machines spit out reserved seat tickets that look like they were made on printers from 1986. This is place where commuting is mayhem, but where 'watching rocks grow' is popular term for just stopping for many moments and just reflecting on your place in society and life in general. Which is something all of us could be doing more often these days, since it's quite clear that certain aspects of Japan's current state will inevitably play huge roles in the West's future. Crowded cities - and a concerted and immediate effort to deal with suddenly overwhelming effects of pollution and resource management in these now crowded cities - is something Japan has been dealing with for several decades now (and not just in Tokyo, but Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, and Yokohama). Huge government investment projects for overhauling infrastructure is required, as well as a focus on green living (reduce the amount of waste produced through reusing and recycling). Even in the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, there is a necessary restructuring of the relationship between the natural world and human civilization. The re-acquisition (and therefore re-imagining) of private space, so that extensive tracts of potentially farmable land can be put to better use. If gaps between rich and poor, between how we lived ten years ago and how we will live ten years from now, are growing in contemporary society, then Japan is the blueprint. They've long had a powerful corporate class that maintains a strong grip on industry and politics. Corporations that have squid-like tentacles in a bizarre assortment of business ventures (the Suntory beverage company owns biotechnology firms across the globe) and have politicians on a short leash are the norm in Japan. But in Japan they are kept in (relative) check thanks to the community-wide acknowledgement of deferring to the communal good. High taxes and strong regulation (as well as the public shame of doing wrong) means that while success is respected, success at the expense of others is not. And in Japan's still sluggish economy (as the West's lost decade continues, Japan is in the middle of decade number two), practical changes, such as expanding employment opportunities by willing to curtail your own works hours, become the norm. In certain situations it feels like Japan is over employed. Three construction workers directing people around truck entrance to the building site (in addition to the signs, pylons, and arrows). There's always one extra person milling behind a service desk, in case a particular issue arises were the 1:1 customer-employee ratio isn't sufficient. The famous line about giving up your liberty referred to getting security in return (with the conclusion being that one deserves neither if they accept this bargain), has been altered (upgraded?) in Japan. Instead you give up a bit of liberty for an incredible level of efficiency. A place where the trains really do run on time, and are sleek, smooth, and filled with helpful employees to boot. By no means is Japan perfect, but they seem to be trying harder than anyone else, Japanglish be damned.
Spying, and Wiretaps, and Privacy, oh my!
No, not 'oh my', really. More like, 'well jesus, why the fuck not?' That's one of the sadder immaterial fallouts from this: It's not that shocking. It's not 1984, either. Even if the Justice Department is pulling out all the stops to get Edward Snowden into the Ministry of Love. It's a bloated 9/11-Patriot Act policy leftover that mainly targets people who call or send emails in or to the Middle East (Program head General Keith Alexander originally coined the unsettling phrase 'collect it all' when trying to information on possible Iraqi insurgents). In other words, this form of spying is practically racial profiling, since most people from America who communicate with the Middle East are from the Middle East (unless you have a relative in the military). And since it's violating the rights of American citizens based on their background, that makes the program unconscionable in and of itself. For a nation built on immigration (from the Asian land bridge to the Mayflower to the waves of lower class Europeans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), this suspension of basic rights in the name of national security is an affront not only to the freedom America wears like a badge of honour, but a besmirching of its history (unless you want to acknowledge that when the immigrants arrived, they were typically treated terribly for generations by whoever was already here). The lack of sustained anger over the program from the general populace suggests a weariness that will only foster more of these defense department projects. Military spending is out of control, but it's one of the few industries that can still proudly wave the 'made in America' banner. In a still-dismal economic climate (unless you're the 1%), being part of the team or support team that spies on your neighbours people around the world means you can still put a roof over your head and food on the table. Ah, yes. The rest of the world. Who were rightly up in arms about the NSA program, since it meant America was violating the rights of Germany, Japan, Afghanistan, etc. in order to mainly protect itself. Perception is a huge factor in international relations, and when Barack Obama took the helm in 2009, it appeared to be a much-needed improvement in American's relationship with the rest of the world after the cowboy-crudeness of the Bush years. And while Obama hadn't done very much to foster global admiration (no green energy policy, Guantanamo is still open, no reigning in of American corporate power), he hadn't done anything to upset them, either. Until now, with the revelations of the NSA program, which shows a startling lack of respect for national sovereignty and the security of every other country and their own citizens. It's the 'world's policeman' overstepping boundaries at a time when there's so many more domestic concerns that it also needs to be addressing. The kneejerk response to protecting the homeland when statistics concerning the middle class, income disparity, and infrastructure show that it is rotting from within. When your country's defense budget dwarfs the next nine highest spending nations combined, you've created a military industrial complex that's addicted to the government handouts, rewarding the already wealthy at the expense of the now quickly expanding poor. But with the exception of a strange hiccup in the mid twentieth century - when the middle class actually expanded - the United States of America has always been about the consolidation of power amongst a small group of wealthy and influential citizens. And this is seen in every facet of its domestic and foreign policies. You don't become the most powerful nation/empire on earth without a might-makes-right-realpolitik-wins-the-day perspective. From Rome to the Mongols to the British, they succeeded because they grew powerful enough to break and then make the rules of international diplomacy/law. And the United States of America was no different when took this role as the 20th century progressed. It could use it's military might wherever it saw fit without fear of sanctions or heavy reprisal, and when there were activities that those in power deemed necessary but knew the public would be critical, they used espionage. The terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 brought the work of security and espionage agencies greater scrutiny in the public eye terms of results and methods, while at the same time giving it a wider field in which to perform its duties. The Patriot Act bureaucratized the shadier aspect of the CIA, and was filled with enough legal jargon and loopholes that actions which would have been crimes twenty years ago are now just another tool in the box. Likewise, if the current NSA scandal was discovered twenty years ago, the congressional hearings might be as impactful as the Iran-Contra scandal (which in effect, went right up to President Reagan). Instead, the heads of programs and departments such as the NSA only have to give carefully hewed talking points to a congressional committee, meaning much of these activities are still not easily understood. How many phone calls do they monitor? How many do they listen to? Who makes the decisions to follow up on a possible lead, and what are the criteria? What would happen if a phone company or website refuses to give them the requested data? What are the protocols that guide these decisions? And how many of them are 'interpretive' enough that such a gross and extensive invasion of privacy can slip through the small print cracks and not break any laws? Does all of this even work? And how often does it work? Or not work? It's understandable that defenders of the program (which includes the President) cannot go into detail about the attacks its prevented and the terrorists its tracked, but it's also convenient for them, as it prevents an open and transparent dialogue of the benefits and costs of the programs. And that means there's likely no end in sight for this program, that it's now entrenched in the bloated national security morass, questions of its effectiveness constantly put aside. It's not that it looks particularly bad on Obama, but that it looks bad for America in a much more general sense. It was a program introduced and utilized under the Bush administration, and Obama has kept it going. So there goes any sort of partisan bickering. Instead it means that this is just going to be part of American policy from this point on, all done in the name of national security. When any sort of law enforcement activity includes surveillance measures to stop the possibility of a crime - even something as heinous as terrorism - then the treatment of innocent civilians as criminals is inevitable. This is a true on the street corner, and it's true in cyberspace. And if the rationalization is that they're only looking for suspicious people, then you may as well throw out the notion of 'innocent until proven guilty', because the NSA certainly have. Even the half-assed spin by government officials to the media is terribly patronizing. They have tried to assure Americans that they were primarily using these tools to spy on foreigners, which is just as shocking, since it means they feel America can wantonly spy (with corporate assistance) on the rest of the world, without the world having anything resembling a say in it. And that they expect most Americans to be okay with this, that as long as it's not happening to them (very much), it's not worth worrying about. In the wake of the US wagging its finger at China for its aggressive military hacking, this is a tragic and telling example of American Exceptionalism. It's troubling that this isn't illegal, and it's disheartening that every time the NSA has clandestinely asked judges to approve the more invasive tapping and searches, it was granted every time, suggesting it's a rubber stamp and nothing more. The most Orwellian aspect of this is the seeming blindness (or healthy indifference) of those running this program to the paradox of privately invading people’s privacy and then maintain that the whole operation is none of the public's business. That the NSA are so incensed at Edward Snowden for revealing this program - which they obviously expected to remain private - to the public for scrutiny suggests they have no sense of irony, either. They'll look at anything suspicious without a care of rights or privacy, but are up in arms when someone studies something suspicious that they might be doing, Would we be more willing to support the program if we knew more about it? Perhaps. But clearly we were never given the opportunity. Like so many power grabs, it's done in secret. It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And you know what? They'll skip the forgiveness part. Transparency is a popular campaign promise for any candidate, mainly because it comes with the idea that if we just saw everything worked in government, then we would be able to see the problems and shortcomings, and consequently be able to fix them. But once in office (or in congress), trying to shed light on certain programs (whether controversial because of the price tag, or the trampling of constitutional rights) means rattling entrenched cages. Since the buck theoretically stops at the president, it's inevitable that Obama's going to get criticism and lowering poll numbers when any sort of scandal hits any part of his administration, even if - quite sensibly - he's not involved in every single decision made by the National Security Agency. (Suddenly I feel slightly bit sympathetic for George W. Bush, who certainly had many scandals and difficulties during his eight years, and was used as a punching bag for lefties like me. Dubya made many terrible and devastating decisions, but he also got a lot of flack for situations that were out of his direct control) So Obama's atrociously high record of prosecuting government whistleblowers (that is, people who are trying to alert the public on the activities of their own country) is unfortunately the chief gauge as to how he feels about transparency now. The only way the average citizen can combat this situation is to take it upon him or herself to learn as much as possible about these programs, which typically means poring over thousands of pages of legal documents and bureaucratic fine print, some of which - as noted above - is able to be interpreted however one wants if they have the ability and authority to do so. Which leaves each one of us in a rather helpless bind. How much of the patriot act has any of us read, and what does it matter if we have, if we aren't in charge of a national security agency? Congress recently voted down a bill that would have curtailed the extent of the NSA wiretapping program (or at least shone a inquiring light upon it), so apparently the American people - since that's whom Congress represents - are actually okay with this. Except for the majority of them, who, in a recent poll, has said they believe that intelligence gathering has finally gone too far. So the thing that really changes the most is the amount of people who dismiss the effectiveness of the government, even if they believe it had at one point the public's best intentions at heart. Their ranks are growing, and the nation - like every nation it has happened to in the past - is weaker for it. I wish I could say that it's the impotency of the presidency that is alarming, where certain policies that seem to defy partisan politics and public outcry (and constitutionality to boot) continue to exist, but instead it's alarming that he supports the NSA program. 'Collect it all' is not a new mantra in the world of espionage and intelligence gathering, but it's never been easier to access vast amounts of information from every phone call or internet search made across the globe. When everything is connected, everything is accessible, and all the rights that your respective country offers you suddenly means very little. There's an unbelievable amount of irrelevant - from a national security standpoint - personal information that is now under the digital lock and key of the government is held in eternity in an endless row of hard drives in Utah. And it's complicated because in a democratic state, everyone is the government in theory, as they vote for politicians to represent their interests in the halls of power. There is not supposed to be 'our' personal information that 'they' have. In democracy, it's supposed to be 'we'. Since this falls apart on a practical level - concentrated capital in the form of corporations and wealthy people have a greater influence on the creation and passage of laws than the average citizen - the real challenge is to keep the gulf between the will of the people and the actions of the government as small as possible. There's clearly been a failure of that here. Former Vice President Cheney's assertion that a terrorist threat that had a 1% chance of succeeding had to be treated with the seriousness as if it was 100% certainty of succeeding was an idealistic soundbyte that all but guaranteed that national security programs would have little to no public oversight, a near-unlimited budget, and few legal barriers, constitution be damned. The Patriot Act has given authority to the state to carry out highly questionable activities that, for decades previously had happened clandestinely (and certainly in a more technologically antiquated form) and illegally, to now be performed clandestinely and legally. It's invasive and violates the constitution and the benefits for such egregious practices are impossible to calculate because those who oversee the program demand it operate in secret. It seems that there is no right that the government won't trample upon to protected its citizens.
Notes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-nsa-collect-it-all
Be Yourself Somewhere Else this Summer The weather's getting warm (if you're in the proper hemisphere), vacation time is looming large, school is either done or almost done for the year, and with no reason to stay where you are until it gets cold again (if you're in the proper hemisphere), at one point you'll probably ask yourself, 'where should I/we go this summer?' And what a luxury it is (compared to the options most people on this planet have), carving perhaps a week out of mind-numbing or backbreaking work and planning on seeing a different part of the world for a few days. And it doesn't matter if you take a city bus or Airbus 390 (patent pending) to get to your destination. Just being somewhere else for a while is pretty much the best thing you can do for yourself right about now. And I don't even know you. But you deserve a break. And even if you don't think you deserve a break, the rest of the world could really use your money. And if you don't have any money, then you really deserve a break. So sell an organ, commit some middling internet fraud, or ramp up even more credit card debt and start packing. After all, it takes money to spend money, and it's through spending money - either directly or indirectly - that we acquire a large amount of our memories. And there's only so many of those you can squeeze out of the same old routine. And as you gain memories and lose any chance of being debt free, someone else - in fact, quite a few people - will gain as you spread the wealth around (even if a lot of it will eventually, after plenty of exchanging, somehow go into some very large and typical pockets). Support your local globalized economy and buy something that's overpriced and has the words of wherever you are emblazoned on it. There's hotel chains, fancy museums (and if the museums happen to be free, then fancy museum shops), restaurants ranging from charming and bad to stupidly expensive and okay to the same restaurants down the street from wherever you actually live but with slight tweaks to the menu, the minutely organized company tours, the half-assed, just trying to make a buck local tours, the shit gift shop, the slightly less shitty gift shop, the store that locals shop at, the store that hip and wealthy locals shop at, the monument to impressive world history, the monument to bland non-world history, that weird fucked up thing wikitravel recommended that is kind of overrated once you see it, and, of course, the fact that the further you go (whether by plane, train, automobile, or ship), the fatter the bottom lines of Exxon-Mobil will grow. It's a passive spread of capitalism! But in the end it's not about the annual bonuses of an already highly paid CEO. It's about you, finding worth in watching the activities of the locals through a carefully orchestrated bastardizations of their traditions for the cultural benefit of your tour group. Or to exploit and/or burn the locals by not tipping, throwing up on their boulevards, and not bothering to learn the language. Or the transit map. And what do you remember more when you get back? The mind-blowing successes, the total fuck ups, the unexpected turn of events good or bad. It's a badge of honour to have the best and worst travel stories. They're the standby icebreakers that are almost always worth telling. Maybe it's just a matter of how much time and money is wasted or saved ("we ended up having to take three buses!", "we just climbed over the fence and there we were!"), but the sympathy and praise from others who have almost always been in similar situations is genuine. So if you can, choose your cohorts carefully. Good friends don't know each other until they miss trains, lose jackets, get lost, and take drugs together in new and exotic locations. And if you're stuck with a family, plan carefully. Because missing trains, losing jackets, and getting lost is not even amusing in retrospective when a tired three year old is involved (taking drugs might be interesting, though). Seeing old things that dead people owned is 'culture building'. Downing three tequila shots on a beach patio then passing out in the public bathroom is 'character building'. Seeing the Mona Lisa in person - in a crowd of about fifty people, behind bulletproof glass, with three or four security guards without anything resembling a sense of humour - is still a unique experience when compared to seeing an image of it on the internet. Just as getting drunk with a group of people - whether you know them or not - is a unique experience when compared to getting drunk on your own in your house. Even travelling alone (which is worth doing at least once, if only to enjoy not having to passively argue with your fellow adventurers that you really don't care where you have dinner) is a social experiment of sorts. You're dependent on the kindness of strangers, and are therefore much more vulnerable when they end up being less than kind. There's strength in numbers, but in some ways that can insulate you from the most immersive experience of travelling, which involves you alone experiencing something novel and unique, throwing yourself headfirst into hanging out with a new group of people, whether from your hotel, tour group, or nearby bar. And all of these experiences can educate and amuse and perhaps even change your worldview, with your word on what your role in this journey will be remain the final one. Pretty fancy talk for getting sunburned on the sands of Cancun for five days and seeing a crumbling old pyramid for fifteen minutes hung-over on an ATV. So let it be known, there are two basic types of travelling: Relaxing/blowing off steam, and absorbing culture/local wildlife (while blowing off steam at night). The reasons for going somewhere else to do these things can depend quite a bit one where you live most of the time. If where you are doesn't offer either of those activities, then you travel just to get a taste of them. If where you are has plenty of opportunities to blow off steam and absorb culture, then you travel to flex and finesse those muscles. Tourism as we know it today is a rather recent phenomena unless you were an extremely powerful person (although they usually travelled to marry someone off, argue over money and land, or learn how to better rule with an iron fist). If it's the distant past and you were going somewhere else, it meant where you living before was no longer accommodating (it was on fire, underwater, plague-ridden, or a bunch of other people were slaughtering your neighbours), or you were part of an army going to slaughter a bunch of other people. The closest there was to going somewhere, checking it out, then coming back, was the pilgrimage, but the reason behind that had more to do with not going to hell (god liked it when you spent days walking to a place where he made a miracle occur) than the architecture or inns along the way. Yes, it took the emergence of the middle (or merchant) class before travelling became something you did for shits, giggles and a chance to catch syphilis in a whorehouse influenced by gothic architecture. The Grand Tour of Europe is as old as the Brits' smug sense of superiority over the continent. It was a chance for sons and daughters (just kidding, pretty much only sons) of the dying nobility and rising industrialists to become men of the world, looking at roman ruins as they lay and catching the aforementioned syphilis in the aforementioned whorehouses. North America and Europe have been cracked open like an exhausted walnut for many decades, and that means getting around has never been easier and the chances of getting the runs are as low as possible. So if you want to be challenged with long bus delays and even longer bathroom lines - in addition to lying on a beach for dirt-cheap - you'll have to look to all the slightly shadier continents. And in regions that are rapidly industrializing and have enough security to embrace and promote tourism, they'll be shades of Western hospitality beside the shantytowns. Certainly there's controversy over the sensibility of having thousands of KFCs dotting Southeast Asia if it's coming at the expense of the respective regions' own cuisines and customs, But then, travelling has always been a clash of cultures. You are a walking advertisement for your home turf's respective government and economic theory (no matter how many left-wing buttons you put on your luggage). And if you're from the West and going elsewhere, there’s some form of capitalism in your every step. The limits of your trip are typically measured in dollar signs, and while that's true at home as well, when you're on the other side of the world, you're more likely to pay for certain experiences that you wouldn't at home (bungee jumping off African bridges, haggling over a carpet in a Turkish market, succumbing to a late night massage in Bangkok). And the locals know this, and they in turn might try to rip you off from time to time. And really, considering the epic rip off that Western nations and corporations perpetrate on these nations en masse every day, maybe you shouldn't kick up too much of a fuss when you find out the ride from the airport to the taxi cab driver's cousin's restaurant was twice as much as initially agreed upon. The role of the responsible traveller requires more than just not loudly complaining that everything is too hot, too slow, too difficult to pronounce and not at all like your life back home. An open mind, tolerance, patience, and a willing to try anything (well, most things) is how you don't get everyone in a country's tourism industry to pigeonhole your nation of origin as a den of assholes. And that comes down to expectation. If you're so hung up on certain customs or luxuries, go to places that have the same ones, or don't bother travelling at all. Besides, things aren't really that different through most of the developed world. With the exception of some rainforest tribes and dangerous areas in Africa and Asia, your food is probably going to be something on rice or noodles or with a side of fries, there's going to be older or newer buildings, it's going to be much more or much less crowded, it's going to be a testament to mankind's ability to cram in as much steel and glass as possible or it's going to be pristine and untouched because of zoning laws and oversight. Of course, like Vincent Vega tell Jules Winfield in Pulp Fiction, 'they've got the same shit over there that we got here, but it's the little differences'. And a Royale with Cheese is just the tip of the little difference iceberg. It's the stuff you can't really prepare for, no matter how many guidebooks or websites you read. It's that time you go through the roundabout the wrong way when driving in Australia (and didn't hit anyone). It's realizing that Musee d'Orsay packs a much better cultural punch than the nearby Louvre. It's walking a little bit further to a more secluded hot springs outside Reykjavik. It's asking a local in extremely halting mandarin where they prefer to eat out and them personally walking you to the restaurant's door. It's bicycling past a giraffe on a dirt road in Kenya. It's taking a risk on that wrong turn off a costal highway or in a small Chilean village that pays off in serenity and quaintness. And just so you never forget these moment that will shape and sooth your future self, there's documentation, which has never been easier. But as much as you can assemble a timeline of the best and weirdest of your trip for yourself, having pics and video and swag is really just bragging rights to the people close to you who profess a similar love of travel (even phrasing it as a question, "you mean you've never been to Prague?" is still a boasting of sorts). Plus there’s the unspoken belief that by having a couple hundred pictures (thanks to your digital camera, which really means your phone) of your recent exploits, you've successfully thwarted any chance of you forgetting that this ever happened. Not only are you there, but you also 'have been there'. For most our lives here to there is extremely repetitive and mundane. But when 'there' is brand spanking new, it's exciting, confusing, and awe-inspiring all rolled into one. What do you do when you get 'there'? You start asserting your abilities, asserting your curiosity, asserting your finances, asserting yourself. And you do that everyday of your life, but now you're doing it in front of a bunch of new people who smile exhaustingly as you butcher their native tongue. And because it's a different place with different people, you can make it up as you go along, becoming a totally different person for two weeks and then high-tailing it back to your usual bland or (possibly) exciting life back home. Because travelling has to be as much about coming back as going somewhere. It's not open-ended, it's a circle, so you're supposed to start back from where you started, a little older, a little wiser, and, unless you got lucky in Vegas, a little poorer. Growing as a person (which sometimes does include becoming a little bit crustier and appreciative of home) is inevitable when you travel, because it's time outside of your routine, even if you spend it lounging on a beach for five days with a mixed drink in hand. From a YOLO perspective, walking around a city you've never seen before and eating the local cuisine is probably one of the safer ways to experience something new. Much more highly recommended than cancer or a hostage situation. So get the fuck out of here for at least a couple days. It'll do you a world of good, in a world that is bursting and breaking at the seams in every possible way. Get some sun, get some stories, and remind the people wherever you end up that it's not your fault, it's the greater economic system at work.
New Concepts of Hell
Ah, hell! The land of eternal damnation! Fire, brimstone, unspeakable torture! Most concepts of this place are based on ancient mythologies, which were then taken and repackaged by major religions (although hey, it should be noted that the ancient mythologies - Egyptian, Greek - were good and proper religions to their adherents way back when). Hell is the bad place. The place of losers (in addition to the most ruthless, power hungry winners). It was deep in the bowels of the earth (Hades), as opposed to the idea of heaven, which was a place for winners (in addition to the most pious and spat upon losers), high in the sky (Mount Olympus). The bible is sketchy on hell, save for the 'lake of fire' line in the Book of Revelation. In fact, it was really up to Italian poet Dante Alighieri to nail the environment of the place with his poem, Inferno (the first part in his not exactly well-titled 'Divine Comedy' trilogy). Floors (circles) of inhumane punishment, proportionally based on the crimes you committed as your heart beat on earth. Some people were caught in cyclones for the rest of time (and beyond that). Others had to eat their own shit. Some were trapped in really bad rain. The worst of the worst were frozen in ice, to be eternally gnawed upon by a giant Satan. While it was a work of fiction and never really adapted by any official church doctrine, a good poem full of striking visuals really captured the public's imagination, and this organized bit of physical pain worked well with the church's official stance of 'do what we say or get sent down there'. Hell is a threat. The very worst threat because it's not for a moment. It's supposed to last for that pesky notion of eternity. And it's bad! Bad! The very worst! Yes, yes, we get it. The painful torture, the excruciating, endless, physical pain. Maybe as an added bonus it includes a wide variety of sexual improprieties. Mutilation of the genitals which are then cooked and served to you, or raped by demons with rotating knives for a shlong. Boring! As if your body is the last word when it comes to the divine exacting vengeance upon you (and in a place where the threat of death - the result of a too-broken body - is irrelevant). The notion of physicality has undergone a odd transformation in the last century. While there are many statistics that show obesity is a problem in the Western world (and malnutrition is a problem in impoverished regions), for the most part people are healthier than they were in the past (increased life expectancy in all corners of the globe can support this). People can take care of themselves through access to healthy foods and exercise, a lot of work available to people are not nearly as physically arduous as they once were (thanks machines!), and advances in health care means that rehabilitation can help inured people regain a vast amount of their prior abilities. This wasn't the case in the past. If you got seriously injured as recently as the late nineteenth century, there was a good chance of you dying not long after, and if you did find a way to live with the affliction (which sometimes came down to money, which few people had enough of), it wouldn't be much of a life. And the further back you go, the greater emphasis there was on the importance of a healthy body. So of course the older notions of hell would dwell on its endless butchering and destruction. On top of this, even the things we value have taken on a more ethereal appearance. With the exception of mementos, trinkets, and jewellery, a lot of what we find important and believe shapes us as individuals has gone digital, held in tinier and tinier little bits of computer stuff (your photos, your music, your bookshelf, your movies, DVDs, your creative bits of expression). While having our brains dumped into the head of a brand new robot body is a long way off, your smartphone has made the physical world that much more irrelevant. In no way am I suggesting that being forced to chew on razor blades on the shores of the lake of fire wouldn't be agonizing, but if hell is supposed to be the very worst the imagination of the divine has to offer, certainly they can be more creative with devastating results (after all, munching on razor blades is a not-uncommon punishment in prison. Certainly hell will be worse than that. After all, a lot of the people who are in prison are supposed to end up going to hell after they die, and it wouldn't be fitting if they find it somewhat similar to the world they just left. They'd almost be the consultants or advisors). Why get medieval on one's ass, when you can psychological on one's mind? (or should that be 'in one's mind?') Perhaps the problem is certainty. When you know you're in hell - the decor and the torture upon your body is a dead give away - there really can't be that much of a surprise. Give or take new ways to do some painful to you, there's a pretty set routine that you'll be sticking to (or that will be stuck upon you) for all eternity. Now depending on how much of your human foibles and abilities come with you from life on earth to the afterlife into the place of the damned, it's possible that you might get used to being tortured all the time, like getting used to a cold shower. Of course, god and the devil could simple turn off that 'switch' inside you, so being disemboweled and fed your own insides for the thousandth time would be as bad as the first. But I doubt that. If too much of 'yourself' is stripped away from whatever body is being tortured, it stops being a torture of you. It's just a body you happen to be stuck in, one that is torn to pieces and then reassembled, over and over again. There has to be a strong mental connection to what's happening. You aren't supposed to 'tune out' your damnation. So if it's you being tortured - and are constantly aware that this going to happen forever and ever - the law of diminishing returns might just come into play (once again, god and the devil can just tinker with the rules and simply have this not come into play). Instead, in order to really make it agonizing for you so you'll really feel the weight of the sins that earned you a place down here for all eternity, they (in some ways, the ultimate 'they') could perhaps dole out the pain between monotonous stretches of averageness, and maybe even pleasantness. Paraphrasing a Far Side cartoon - certain Gary Larson can be regarded as one of the great philosophers when it comes to notions of hell - because the salad has broken glass in it not every day, not every other day, but on random days, that's why it's hell. And once again, that's thinking a wee bit small. Real torture can be elaborate scenarios that mimic living to such a degree that you would not even know you're in hell. Watching your child get run over by a truck because you turned around for a moment to chat with a neighbour. Their blood staining the pavement like a Pollock painting, their entrails draped over the branches like party streamers, and their head rolling down the street to stop right at your feet, their eyes staring up at you in shock and affection. There wasn't even time for them to make some tears. Now that feeling destroys the idea of anything being good and loving in the world, and could permanently blacken your soul. Perfect for hell! Or maybe at a friend's birthday party you make what you thought was just a clever sarcastic joke about the birthday celebrant, and everyone suddenly turns on you and tells you that's not funny and wholly inappropriate, and because you've had a few to drink you try to defend yourself by going a bit too much on the offensive, and in response you have a dozen people telling you what they really think about you, picking mercilessly at your foibles and bringing up every embarrassing moment of yours that they witnessed which until now they've kept respectfully in the vault, so in return you swear like an angry sailor and throw some things around the room and stomp out of there into the cold winter night, having lost a dozen close friends in less than fifteen minutes. Pow! You don't know it's hell. You don't know this isn't real. It's the perfect simulation because it's being run by the creator of everything. In other words, it really can't be any less real that your actual, pre-dead life, but you don't know that. And you could be transferred from 'dead kid' to 'terribly party' to 'war coward' without realizing it. Suddenly you close your eyes, and everything resets itself, you being none the wiser, because that's what the rules are here (none! Want to complain? Fuck you! It's hell!). How could this happen over and over again, without 'diminishing returns' coming into play? Simple. Why not a memory wipe? If you grant that hell has a pretty much the unlimited ability to break your heart and shit on your soul, why can't you experience terrible moments in what appears to be your life after you're dead not knowing that you're dead - you watch your close friends be crucified for something that's your fault - over and over again? And a sort of logical extension from these traits we are giving hell - long stretches of existence that we cannot discern from ordinary life until something traumatically shattering happens - is that we all might be living in it right now. Welcome to the afterlife! We don't need a lake of fire. Seven continents, four oceans, and a semi-successful global civilization might be all we need to experience the sort of existential anguish that is supposedly reserved for the damned. A constant uncertainty of the state of our lives, as we worry so much about what might come next, our imagination has us suffer more in anticipation than the actual results of the eventual decision or event. Death hangs over our heads at every moment (since we don't know we're dead) - whether it comes from an out of control car or a brain haemorrhage - and shapes how we make every single decision. And if you think 'hey, my life's not that bad right now', well that's just the state your supposed to be in before it all goes to shit and you feel greats heaps of terrible being shovelled mercilessly upon you. Just a thought, really. I'll certainly take this comparatively bland, routine-like existence (consisting of work, socializing, and spending too much time on the internet) that might eventually go wrong, instead of certainly being raped by demons over and over. But even such an otherworldly thought of 'raped by demons' has a sort of genesis in human behaviour. If I was wrongfully imprisoned (back to the idea of prison! I guess hell has a lot in common with incarceration. A place you can't escape and are terrified of being treated brutally, even if you do deserve it. Also: it also tries to be a model for deterrence, but people still do wrong), I might experience some of the more dreaded moments of humanity, and think this is absolute worst thing that could ever happen to me. And certainly 'hell' is an extension of the worst on earth (since our imagination can only build and expand out of what is around us). So what's worse upon worse? How many ways can you be physically and/or emotionally be broken? What if you become the torturer, doing unspeakable things to people (chopping off limbs, removing organs, or - just for the hell of it - yanking out muscles and bone and feeding it to dogs) you are told deserve such treatment, only to find out it's your child, mother, father, etc.? That's really what hell is, isn't it? The limits of human imagination, taking a turn for the terrible instead of the transcendent. St. Anselm posited that god was what nothing greater can be conceived, so it makes sense that the hell would be the opposite. Think of the very worst thing, and then crank it up to eleven (apologies to Spinal Tap) to make it even worse. In fact, it's easier than adding something better (which is kind of what god and his crib - heaven - is supposed to be). For hell, add giant bugs. Add cancer. Add fire. Add broken glass. Add painful rectal itch. Add the personal things you care about and have them twisted into betrayal-filled abominations (as illustrated in A Clockwork Orange, just merge the culture you like with the things that make you painfully retch and now even more of things you built your personality upon is forever tainted). In this respect hell is as simple as a Frankenstein observation ('fire bad!'). In terms of morality and theology, the concept of hell is a mite more complicated. Why would an ever-loving god permit its creation, and send millions upon millions of souls there for all eternity because they didn't meet it's expectations (souls that it created and whose actions it always knew ahead of time)? Why not skip the theatrics and have hell be a black pit of feeling sad, no body required? If hell is a pastiche of other religions' views on the afterlife, does it mean hell changes for each epiphany-slash-update, or do we just have a clearer and clear view of hell over time? And if we begin questioning the logistics of such things, what does it say about the millions upon millions of people who accept the existence of hell unflinchingly? Isn't that the most terrifying thought of them all? That people just accept hell's existence as easily as saying the sky is blue? Sounds like the land of the damned to me. Happy holidays!
Barack Obama: The Last Good Enough Man (Who Can Possibly Do Something About it)
'It' - as referred to in the title - is the right thing, or the most beneficial thing for the greatest amount of people. This idea is supposed to be the root of modern democracy, where the needs of the majority are addressed and met by men and women elected to represent the citizens' (and therefore the nation's) best interest. This bears repeating, since a vast majority of Americans - and most people in Western democracies - feel that this arrangement in no longer the case, that the interests of corporations and the comparatively small circle of wealthy citizens that own them come first. This means this group of elites have easier access to the halls of power, including tax breaks, the intricacies of the justice system, and the people that make decisions regarding such economic and legal matters. While it would be an exaggeration to say that the middle class throughout the middle of the twentieth century had the same access to the facets of democratic society listed above as the elites, it was definitely a period where there was a genuine attempt to close this gap of disenfranchisement (to say nothing of the attempts to assist the impoverished and lower classes). President Johnson's vision of his 'Great Society' is perhaps the best manifestation of this. Measuring the strengthening of the middle class could be done by looking at the shrinking of the income level gaps, the expansion of social programs meant to break the vicious cycle of poverty before it starts, and the push for any sort of postsecondary education, whether it be college or technical schools, so that the populace was an educated one. From a purely numerical standpoint, politicians have to make appeals to the millions of people still considered the middle class, but the the Republican presidential nominee and the President tread these boards lightly. Both agree that this group of citizens are the backbone of American society and acknowledge wanting to fight for it. But they do so without acknowledging that it has been shrinking for the last thirty years, and with it, the chances for America to find itself grow stronger rather than weaker. Romney simply does not have a policy for the middle class, apparently adhering to a sort of trickle down theory that has not worked in the past (which goes something like, 'if we let the wealthy job creators have more tax cuts and freedom to run a corporation any way they wish, they will give the millions below them jobs'). Obama acknowledges frequently that it's wrong that the elites can live by 'a different set of rules', but his record on fixing this is poor (admittedly in part because of an obstinate congress), and his plan for dealing with this in his prospective second term is currently more platitudes. For the benefit of the 1% and no one else, the essential pillars of the system that has shrunk the middle class over the past three decades remains in place. This is certainly not the only pressing issue facing America at the moment, but energy policy and its unquestionably closely-related cousin environmental reform is the true third rail, as both candidates records on this are even worse. Both pay lip service, make meagre nods or promises regarding investments into green energy, and then let the oil and gas industry dictate actual policy (and receive billions in corporate tax breaks). The more global, long-term, and all encompassing an issue is, the less attention it gets in politics (and therefore in the coverage of politics as well). This is because an open and complex discussion of such issues can quickly clash with the goals of the so-called pillar system mentioned above. President Obama has been a good enough president for the hand he was dealt when entering office, but that's not enough to save the United States from its own bloated, class-divided ruin. If this was a medieval society, he would be the temporary king, trying to give back to the peasants, handcuffed to the demands of the ridiculously powerful nobility (which could be considered the 1%, and while they are incensed at their vilification over the last few years, when that percentage of people own 40% of the nation's wealth, their money and power should be able to drown out the unruly cries of the plebes). While economic issues almost always come first in a bad economy, to blame the sitting President is an extremely narrow minded position. Bush II can hardly be solely blamed for the 2008 financial meltdown, as many of the regulation-loosening policies were put in place before he entered office in 2001. Likewise, Obama has only so many tool available to him to fix a problem in four years that has been growing for decades. 'Weather the storm' is not a particularly inspiring perspective, but that's essentially what the Obama administration has tried to do. Wait it out, since what goes down must come up (uh...right?). Not an easy task when much of the world remains in a recession, the Euro is constantly in danger, and even growth in China is slowing. But even if he gets a bit of a pass on the economy, there are still many legitimate concerns regarding Obama's tenure. Guantanamo Bay is still operating. He signed a law allowing him to indefinitely detention of Americans suspected of terrorism and terror-related activities without trial. The Financial Reform Bill is toothless, in part because it is largely unwritten, and the sections that are completed were done so by financial industry lobbyists. Nothing remotely resembling an energy bill or policy (pushing green energy while expanding offshore drilling is rather schizophrenic). No attempt at reforming gun control laws, even after a series of violent shootings. Even his successes have to be put into proper context. Obamacare is a gift to the health insurance industry first, and socialized medicine for all second. Ending the war in Iraq and shrinking the war in Afghanistan is fraught with danger in the short and long terms. Constant instability in the region (Syria, Iran, Pakistan) can quickly erase any sort of gain or political foothold the US is trying to keep in the region. Even killing Bin Laden had the negative effect of damaging ties with Pakistan somewhat (certainly worth it, but an unstable and unruly Pakistan is a dangerous one). Advancement on social issues (ending don't ask, don't tell, pushing for equal pay in the workplace, since somehow that's still a problem) occasionally came at the cost of uneven compromise. This included extending the Bush tax cuts, deepening the ever expanding deficit catastrophe. But it's become startlingly apparent that this is the best a centre-left president can do. In a nation where the congress tilts centre-right - mainly because the extremely influential corporate sector tilts centre-right - despite a majority of citizens holding centre-left positions, the role of President Obama is to at the very least stem the tide, slow the decay, etc. The idea that a piece of legislation which would reintroduce regulations that could stop giant mergers and break up monopolies, increase income and corporate tax rates to what they were in the fifties, or cut defence spending in half, would pass through both the House of Representatives and the senate is laughable. Too many of these decisions are influenced (which is the most polite word used in modern political language for bribery) by the industries and interests that would have something to lose if these bills passed. So blame Congress? Certainly. That's where democracy is supposed to reside. The idea being that since it's too easy to have a corrupt and greedy king with all the power, if you could defuse the power over scores of citizens it would be that much harder for corruption to take root. Well apparently corrupting scores of greedy elected representatives isn't that hard, either. Democracy had always moved forward in embarrassing fits and spurts (only white men with land could vote in eighteenth century elections, which consisted of about - hey, check this out - 1% of the population). And for much of America's history, the power of the wealthy has usually played the lead role in the governing of nation. Wealthy landowners (nobility, really) drafted and signed the Constitution, and this class ran the predominantly agrarian society that was the United States for most of its first hundred years (with the white poor better off than the black slaves, but there was barely any middle class to speak of). And when the country did industrialize. it was overseen by the Robber Barons of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (your Rockefellers, your Morgans). The breaking up of Standard Oil and other monopolies coincided with the rise of unions and laws protecting the average worker from corporate exploitation. Even the banks were taken to task, as, after risky lending and the creation of complex financial instruments brought the nation's economy to its knees (sound familiar?), regulations were put in place to prevent them from repeating these same mistakes. With this bureaucratic infrastructure in place, the American middle class expanded rapidly, the baby boom did exactly that (boom), and the Civil Rights and Woman's Movements of the 60s finally extended basic rights to all citizens (at least on paper). This began to crash and burn in the seventies, and the onset of the eighties brought at much more conservative slant policy-wise, in terms of both foreign (the Soviet Union became the Evil Empire again, after years of Detente) and domestic (tax cuts good, social programs bad, hooray trickle down economics). Reagan ran on the platform that government was the problem, which is a bit like a vegetarian trying to get hired as the manager of a steakhouse. In terms of the news media and the perception of policy and platform, we are certainly mired the world of 1984, or at least the excellent essay by Orwell that preceded it, 'Politics and the English Language'. The power and importance of the public relations industry - the main benefactor of the billions upon billions of dollars that is being spent this election season - was warily predicted by the Englishman as he noted that those involved in politics frequently spoke, "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". Ronald Reagan might have been the first actor in the White House, but when it came to offering a sunny disposition and wonderful (albeit impossible) promises of the future, he certainly wasn't the last. Clinton was the Southern boy Rhodes scholar who could connect with anyone. Bush II was the guy you'd want to have a beer with. Obama was the youthful idealistic politician who had the simple task of repairing a broken, miserable country that felt terrible after eight years with the guy they chose to have a beer with. But these narratives are purely for show. That the president has a magnetic personality - or embodies such empty slogans as 'hope' or 'change' - matters only in terms of whether it helps or hinders the enacting of his policy proposals. But that immediately means little when it becomes apparent that it's money that sways the votes in the halls of power. The mobilization of the populace behind a populist president is essential, and they must engage all major issues with constant and organized vigilance. Obama has spoken out about corporations that break ever rule and regulation under the sun (from tax laws to environmental impact), and a majority of citizens support him in making changes, but little to nothing has been done in Congress to usher in any measures that could correct this. So far he has only talked big on cracking down on the 1% that 'play by their own set of rules' (in terms of taxation and off-shore bank accounts). It is as if any sort of reforms that would directly affect this small segment of the population is not legislatively possible, which is rather terrifying. If power does not reside in the people, but the few who can place their thumbs on the scales of justice and legislation via elected representatives, is America truly a democracy? To keep up this facade, only certain issues are permitted to be argued over in the light (when the media is not covering the odd mangled meaningless soundbite as an election-transforming gaffe). And when some of them do indeed touch on important subjects, they are done in a very careful way. In debates, candidates are forced to shoehorn complicated matters into a three minute answers that has to avoid sounding 'wonky' so they don't bore/alienate voters who are uninterested in budget details and the banning of credit default swaps. Pundits dismissed the entire third debate of this election because it was on foreign policy, which apparently Americans don't care about. Which is disappointing, as a working foreign policy is pretty important in a globalized economy, practically making many facets of it domestic policy (how America engages with China and the Middle East unquestionably affects jobs and growth at home). Obama has a spotty record with foreign policy. It's less 'fuck you' on the surface (the Bush style), but he's still sending in more military drones over Afghanistan than his predecessor. Sanctions against Iran is only harming the people, not the government in charge. Even the killing of bin Laden involved blowback from Pakistan (and the fact that they did 'invade' that country's airspace really cannot be wholly discounted). And yet this is all seen as a win in the world of presidential decision making. Certainly it's better than his domestic policy, although what Obama could do there, he did admirably. In terms of community social programs, he has done more to fight poverty since Johnson declared war upon it in the mid-sixties. A democratic hallmark of sorts - as opposed to the not-exactly-Christian Republican position of believing that assisting the poor leads to a culture of dependency and abuse of such services - food stamps and unemployment benefits were strengthened at a time when the country needed it the most. For those who received such assistance, it was the most 'change' they could 'hope' for. The struggling middle class didn't see much of those things at all in the last four years. Promises made by candidates should typically be taken with a grain of salt, and Obama offered up some incredible ones in 2008. And even if blaming an obstinate congress is taken in consideration, then running on pipe dreams and getting your supporters high off such idealistic naiveté is a different sort of black mark on your record. The last time there had been a democratic President, Congress did it all it could to thwart his plans. Why would Obama assume he would be treated differently? And when you point out that the Democrats had majorities in the house and the senate up until 2010, his record for enacting the platform he ran looks even worse. In fact, Obama's biggest saving grace this election is the utter shittiness of his opponent's platform, which is so bad Mitt Romney has to be as vague and evasive about it as possible. It's a series of policies which cribs quite a bit from Bush II (although there is little credit given, considering how little people think of the 43rd president and his tenure). More tax cuts (mostly aimed at the wealthy), increased military spending, cuts in health care and social security that won't come into effect for years (which is meant to court seniors votes today, and have the youth pay for such shortsighted pandering tomorrow), and more power and freedom to monolithic corporations. Plus the requisite socially conservative issues (no abortion, no gay marriage) to appeal to the base. It didn't work last time, and that was only four years ago. The lesser of two evils is a terrible perspective on a presidential election - and does a disservice to both candidates - but if we're stuck wallowing in quick, superficial cliches to describe the current state of American politics (thanks in part to electoral public relations), we'll work with what we have, and what message will spread the most effectively. (this is in part why a third party remains an obscurity in the United States. The citizen who would prefer to vote for a further left or right party cannot risk throwing their vote away in case their ideological opponent - even one of that is a watered down version of what would be a true opposite (example: A Green Party supporter would vote for Obama because he would be at least better than a conservative like Romney) - might then win. Even progressives disillusioned with Obama - former Democratic strategist Matt Stoller recently wrote a scathing attack on the president on Salon's website - are only advising third party voting in non-swing states) It's frustrating because I believe that Obama desperately wants to do the right thing. There is a tendency in the criticism of the president to affix his necessary compromises to representing his actual character and position upon the issue, as if he wanted a watered down financial reform bill (he praised it when it passed, yes, but that's because something is better than nothing, and for far too often in this partisan atmosphere, nothing was always a possibility). I believe that he was genuinely dejected when his political opponents on the right voted against practically every major piece of legislation his party introduced into the senate, even after attempting to find a compromise. That his upbringing and experiences in adulthood makes him more adept at understanding the plights and needs of the average American than most politicians (and certainly more than Mitt Romney). But a rags-to-riches narrative and soaring rhetoric does not a strong country make. Perhaps this election is nothing more than a referendum on America's disillusionment on just how much they expected Obama to get done. Which means they have to weigh that against the more hypothetical Romney presidency. And according to pollsters, the only relevant people to make this decision when they vote live in a handful of counties in Ohio. Outside of these areas, the decisions - and the division - is set in stone. It's an apt metaphor for the plight of contemporary America political culture as well. So much is predictable, sluggish and entrenched, and change appears to come in very small pockets. It's not what Obama ran on in 2008, but it's what he's stuck with in 2012. He's certainly the better choice by default, and despite the polls in the aforementioned Ohio counties as deadlocked, I believe he will pull out a victory. Of course, only in sports is a win only a win. In politics it truly is the very beginning, especially if you are a man who genuinely seeks to reverse the flagging fortunes of all Americans. A second Obama term is what America needs. Especially when one considers that it’s in no condition to get the President it simply wants.
Popular Goes the Weasel Opening note that might be of some relevance: Carl Wilson’s musing about taste in of Let’s Talk About Love, from the album review series 33 1/3 initially inspired some of the following:
Okay, I throw a lot of my time/interest into the consumption of music and music culture (which I would say includes listening to the music, reading about musical artists, discussing artists with others – both in person and over the ‘net – and even writing about music). I’d say the same about literature and literary culture, and film and film culture. This means that I have a wider and more in-depth palette than others when it comes to these topics (listen to Comets on Fire, read Trout Fishing in America, and watch The Third Man!). But do I have a ‘better’ palette/taste? More ‘high brow’? I actually don’t see the need to use such hierarchical terms (in fact, even my usage of ‘in-depth’ could be seen as using a word that suggests ‘better’). In terms of music, I would say that people are at the very least ‘missing an opportunity’ to listen to a wider spectrum of artists and genres they just might like, but so be it. If the radio – typically the symbol of middle of the road, Top-40 cookie-cutter music being absorbed passively – is good enough for most people, that’s their business. And this might sound hyper-democratic and perhaps a touch condescending, but it’s the truth and I know it because I’ve been on the other side of this fence when it comes to other sorts of hobbies or pastimes. Take cooking. Yes, eating is a basic human necessity, but cooking with a more recreational focus is a multibillion dollar industry that people spend hours on in their free time. The act of buying certain foods, preparing them (by following the recipe in one of their many cookbooks to a t, or playfully deviating from it), and then properly monitoring three stoves and maybe an oven full of bits of the meal brings people joy, even before the first morsel touches their – or their dining companions’ – tongues. Not me. I don’t care. Frozen pizzas. Great, just toss it in the oven and take it out later. Ramen noodles. Dump the block of dry noodles, soup mix, and dried veggie chunks into boiling water and that’s good enough for me. Of course I make sure I eat healthy, but that level of preparation consists of washing an apple, peeling a banana, or chopping up green pepper into slices. Nice and simple. Am I missing something by not making only slightly more complicated and much more tasty meals? Of course, and I acknowledge that it won’t take much to move me out of my typical routines of the dependable and not-very-adventurous, but exploring that avenue is not an interest of mine. Do I occasionally try something amazing that a friend who does like cooking might prepare (just as a not-very-big-music-fan might hear DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… from a music fan friend and like it), listen to them tell me that it’s easy to make and that I should try to cook it, to which I say I’d consider it and then do nothing? You bet I do that. It’s just not something I’m motivated to do. Sure the food might have been great, but I can go right back to my cheap noodles no problem. Branching out and cooking is always an option, not too hard at all, and maybe I will make the odd interesting dish – just like a not-very-big-music-fan might like one album from Talking Heads or Grizzly Bear – but it’s not going to necessarily lead to a widening of the scope of my palette. It’s a matter of where I’ve put the priorities and interests in my life. I can use shopping as another example. I’m happy with the rush in, try on one thing and bolt. Is there something in another store that might suit me better? Who cares, what I’m trying on right now isn’t hideously neon or cutting off my circulation. Good enough, let me get my wallet. Or cars. If it doesn’t look, smell, or drive like an absolute turd, then it passes the muster. In all these respects, I have taste that’s so middle of the road that anyone who has even a modicum of interest in cooking, fashion, or automobiles will look at me with rolling eyes. Just what I might do when someone tells me that they really like the music of Celine Dion, Black Eyed Peas, or Nickelback (and there are people like that out there. Millions, in fact, if record sales are certainly something to go by). Is it because that there is a difference in that what I am interested in – music, literature – is a wholly less necessary endeavour than compared to what I am not – eating, clothing, transport – that there is a different dialogue given to it? Why is there such condescension given to people who have ‘bad taste’ when it comes to art and culture, and much, much less with other things that have practically become pastimes in the developed world, like eating and wearing clothes? Because art and culture is more disposable? That there is a quality to it beyond, ‘well, we need this to survive, so whether we fancy it up a bit with coriander or a well designed collar doesn’t matter as much’? Advancing technology also plays a factor here, as the basic necessities have become necessities with benefits for a much wider spectrum of people than in the past. But you know what all four of these fields – culture, cooking, clothing, automobiles – have in common? The experts, connoisseurs, and critics all agree that most of what everyone else in these fields experience and embrace is generally mediocre, and that it’s their loss. It’s a vague assertion, and you could find many reasons as to why in more detail and with stronger research than my own personal explanation (‘I don’t care that much’), but at the same time it should be noted that mediocre culture is quite close proximity-wise – conceptually and logically – to actually good culture. At the multiplex there might be ten films playing, and eight of them are most likely derivative half-boiled poop. But then there will be two interesting, engaging, well thought out ones. Same with television. One channel might have ‘Breaking Bad’ or ‘Louie’, but then you start surfing and it’s like everything else is an unremarkable detective program or a terribly annoying reality show (where much of the attraction is the schadenfreude experience). Music’s even harder, since it doesn’t make nearly the same amount of money as it used to, collapsing the promotional arm of the record industry into a white dwarf. Whatever you might hear on the radio is meant to be as inoffensive and bland as possible because that’s what’s less likely to have people turn the dial. Large media corporations own the artists and the radio stations and have agreements with a wealth of other companies that advertise on the radio or sponsor aspects of the artist’s tour or other projects like a clothing line or fragrance (one can say this quite honestly now: I love music, so I don’t listen to the radio). The internet has become a wonderful place to find great new music, but it requires a bit of searching. There’s a lot more effort required on your behalf than just turning a dial and not being deaf. And to put it in proper context, that popular culture is mostly mediocre is an extremely small and insignificant problem compared to other contemporary global concerns (does this go without saying? As a culprit myself of writing and talking for hours about wonderful and not-so-wonderful aspect of culture, I’m occasionally conflicted with not devoting my time to other legitimate societal concerns). But if it is going to take up people’s time, effort, and energy – even as a leisure activity for most and a profession for some – shouldn’t the culture be as good as possible? Perhaps this is what the critics and experts hope to be guarding: A kind of consensus that goes beyond the mere quantitative of tickets and copies sold. And with this justification comes dogma. Both best and worst by a panel of particular voters reveal a democratic process taken too often to be ironclad consensus. If top ten (or one hundred, or five hundred) lists are looked at as loose guides they could fun and informative, and perhaps turn casual listeners into fans (‘one of us! One of us!’). But, not unlike other institutions that start off with the best intentions at heart, rigid adherence to the style (‘we’re right’) and content (‘and this is what we say is right’) can lead schism-level problems. Out of some very general observations come two kneejerk unfair assumptions: - that all modern culture which is popular isn’t very good. - that popular culture was better in the past. These opinions are closely related, and many people who push forth such opinions are really doing a disservice to their own cultural experiences (by believing that there is little culture out there that is worthwhile, it’s less likely they’ll take risks to try and find it) and the notion of culture in the past (by believing things were better in the past, you typically remember only the good stuff and forget the heaps of crap that existed alongside the good stuff whenever this past ‘golden age’ is recollected). Categorization of every sort (from lists to outright dismissals) is meant to save time via the creation of an organized set of rules and regulations. Science sensibly has a much more testable and applicable form of categorization (ground in the scientific method), but cultural categorization also borrows the idea that expert should be trusted above the novice (the title of ‘Doctor’ lends weight to your claims). In ‘culture’ the problem – a term used loosely here - is the idea of who the elites are and how they apparently decide for everyone else. And you can barely get very far in these conversations because ‘elite’ has become the nastiest of terms for something that is good. Moreover, the supposed elite consensus can create an extremely high expectation for the particular bits of culture it effusively praises. Take the frequently asserted best film of all time, Citizen Kane (although it has been dethroned recently by Vertigo on the ‘elitist of elitist’ film list, the ‘Sight and Sound’ Magazine poll). If you're about to watch writer-director-actor Orson Welles’ masterpiece for the first time, it's probably impossible for you to have not come across the idea that it's constantly considered the greatest film of all time. This label has become so ingrained with the seventy one year old film that it can't help but affect your overall impression. Such a title means this film better be pretty damn good, which already means the film has an uphill battle to impress you. You're putting up every thrill, laugh, and cry you've had at the movies against this. Citizen Kane better do all those thing and better. And it won't, but really, it can't. No film can. Or more accurately, no piece of art that is called 'among the greatest ever' is going to get a hugely positive reaction from everyone, critics and non-critics included. Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Sergeant Pepper, and The Wire are going to bore, confuse, or irritate some people. What can you say about Citizen Kane that would make it appealing to the current generation, when it was originally shown to their great-grandparents? How much can you divest it from the time it was made? How much should you divest it from the time it was made? Is it well written, or is it well written for 1941? Is it well acted, or is it well acted before Brando popularized method acting? Is the photography and editing groundbreaking, or just ‘old looking’? The idea is that as own acquires a greater knowledge of culture you will appreciate the work of artistic pioneers whose ideas and techniques we now take for granted. And no doubt that in the future certain qualities in contemporary films we find unique and refreshingly original will appear mundane and painfully obvious. In our postmodern culture - which cannibalizes the past in a more thorough and self-aware process than ever before – it's the successful tweaking of cliches that will be regarded as a sort of definition of current trends and outlooks that receives both critical and commercial attention. Take Superhero films. Good ones like this summer's blockbuster The Avengers hide the strings of archetype and cliché effectively. Even if they run down a checklist of qualities as old as The Iliad and The Odyssey (a noble quest, where action beats replace chapter and scene breaks), you're fooled into seeing it again for the first time. The superhero arriving just in the nick of time to stop the villain from shooting the helpless citizen, for example (in The Avengers, literally getting in the way of the bullet or deflecting the gun at the last second). If enough well crafted scenes lead up to these moments, we conveniently forget the impossibility and overuse of the cliché. Subverting clichés while using them in still recognizable forms (a thoroughly postmodern idea) has become commonplace. Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark/Iron Man character does this faultlessly, which is one of the reasons why the Iron Man films are so successful. He is cynical towards the qualities that we find in a traditional hero, while ultimately embodying these traits (bravery, sacrifice, humility). Archetypal stories from the past that had unbelievable and fantastical scenes are called myths. But we accept this suspension of disbelief within the story. We don't call the story of Ulysses ridiculous or impossible to take seriously because he at one point fights a Cyclops, a creature that doesn't exist. Director Christopher Nolan is the master of the myth's reinvention, by grounding it in a slightly more realistic fashion. In The Dark Knight he has the Joker execute impossible criminal plots that - even if the slightest thing goes wrong, or happens a couple seconds before or after it's intended - really have no chance of succeeding. But because of the acting, dialogue, and narrative pacing surrounding these schemes, we ignore these discrepancies and embrace this new Rube-Goldberg-esque layer of suspension-of-disbelief. This constant re-invention and re-framing is essential for critical acclaim, which - regardless of momentary popularity - can carry the piece of culture in question into an iconic representation of the time in which it was created. Speaking of which, let's talk about The Beatles. For seven years (1963-1970), The Fab Four were simultaneously the most popular and most restlessly experimental, critically acclaimed musical act in the world. This is no small feat, and it has not yet been equaled. And in a way The Beatles themselves created the hipster, critical archetype by following it's narrative trajectory. They started out imitating the more popular songs at the time, learned the songwriting formula themselves, perfected it, and then broke the barriers of what constituted a 'pop' song formula. Similarly, I do not criticize pop culture because I’m a snide, snooty hipster who automatically hates whatever’s popular. It’s because I OD’d on 'the popular formula’ at such a young age that I need to find newer and weirder things to excite and entertain me. The Beatles wrote ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ to feed their cultural appetites, I just had to listen to the song to feed mine. The current pantheon of mainstream Top 40 musical culture includes young attractive pop singers, non (or faux) controversial hip hop artists, a smattering of R&B divas, and the odd easy listening, adult contemporary crooner. It’s not so much that you’ve heard it all before, but a great much of it is an oversimplified and filtered combination of what has come out of the musical fringes in the last twenty years (the biggest change in music production in the last twenty years: music made via computer has gone from the exception to the rule). Even so called ‘indie-rock’ is susceptible to this formula of diminishing returns. Guitar-clutchers like Zac Brown, Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeroes, Yukon Blonde, and Lumineers all sound like pale imitations of what I became overly familiar with in my youth, and without that Elliot Smith flair or fragility. And it wasn’t like I had to gorge on Hootie and the Blowfish to now see the same formula in the bands listed above. Even in the world hard(er) rock, Pearl Jam imitators littered the nineties landscape and continue to do so today. In some ways it’s The Beatles fault for doing many, many things very, very well. Three late-period Beatles songs – ‘Get Back’, ‘Two of Us’, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ – are practically the blueprints for the entire indie-rock-or-folk-emo-singer-songwriter canon. But hey, if you aren’t overly familiar with The Beatles output beyond the #1 collection, certainly its derivatives will seem fresh. People who are more ‘weekend culturalists’ haven’t yet built up the immunity to the Top 40 sound, and that’s absolutely fine. Good on them for having other things to do and can be entertained by stuff that doesn’t require much searching for and experiencing with an attention level of 100%. And perhaps it sounds like I’m disparaging them, but I’m really not. They can make do with x amount of pop culture, meanwhile I/we need x, y, and z (and sometimes y and z are there just to offer a marked contrast to x). The creation of popular culture involves the entertainment industry throwing music, television, and movies at an audience and seeing what sticks (meaning money is made, from album, ticket, or advertising sales). Now some of what they throw has tons of market research behind it, or is building on a previous popular bit of culture and so they can be reasonably sure that what they’re launching is going to work, but it’s never guaranteed. Taking what’s entertaining to a small group of people and spreading it like a happy plague across the land takes hard work, timing, luck, and an unwillingness to consider whether doing so is actually a good idea. To mitigate risk, you stick to proven successful formulas, altering them only slightly as conditions demand. It’s the basis for the scientific method, military strategy, and many other concepts that are much more important than selling someone an MP3 (now more likely an M4A). And in contemporary postmodern culture, formula can be seen in unlikely places. In a long New Yorker article on Bruce Springsteen by David Reminck (late July 2012), he notes how not spontaneous the show is, as it includes teleprompters for the entire band (lyrics and key changes). Also: “Springsteen rehearses deliberately, working out all the spontaneous-seeming moves and postures: the solemn lowered head and raised fist, the hoisted talismanic Fender, the between-songs patter, the look of exultation in a single spotlight that he will enact in front of an audience. (“It’s theatre, you know,” he tells me later. “I’m a theatrical performer. I’m whispering in your ear, and you’re dreaming my dreams, and then I’m getting a feeling for yours. I’ve been doing that for forty years.”) Springsteen has to do so much—lead the band, pace the show, sing, play guitar, command the audience, project to every corner of the hall, including the seats behind the stage—that to wing it completely is asking for disaster.” (Remnick, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/30/120730 fa_fact_remnick#ixzz21mWa51nd) And while this doesn’t bother me at all – legendary bands with deep catalogues and a devoted fanbase need all the help they can get to meet expectations, and it’s not like they’re phoning it in energy-wise – there is something to be said about courting that possible disaster mentioned. Maybe that means you can’t really play in an arena, since possibly pissing off tens of thousands of people by improvising awkwardly too often or making fucked up noises for minutes on end with electronic doo-hickeys and near broken guitars will keep people away in the future, but there’s also the possibility of total enrapture when you do make it all work. And when it works, when everyone gets off on a moment that was been strived for by the band and audience (with no guarantee it would work), it’s better than a pre-planned raised fist or false ending. One of the best qualities of punk is that sometimes it sounded like shit. Some of The Sex Pistols’ shows were a poor sounding mess that ended after the third song. And sometimes they sounded glorious (hell, sometimes it sounded glorious because it was a poor sounding mess). I’ve never seen a Nirvana show, but reading both fan and critic views on fan sites, you get the impression that half the time it didn’t go well, that the chances of seeing a good Nirvana show was 50%, dependent on factors such as the sobriety of the bassist, and the sobriety and mood of the singer-guitarist (drummer Dave Grohl seemed to be completely dependable, which might explain why the band hit it big with him, and definitely explains his solo career, which is ‘completely dependable’). Now that figure of 50% kind of sucks if you had a chance to go and see Nirvana live. From my standpoint as a critic/fan/writer looking back, I can say that this is a marvelous symbol of the unpredictability, instability and spontaneity of this band and genres such as punk and grunge. From someone who just saw the band stink it up in the Amsterdam Paradiso in 1991, it’s just a waste of an evening. Trying to jam, or trying a fucked up new or old song (with the possibility of forgetting chords or lyrics), or suddenly smashing your guitar because the moment’s caught you, can increase the chances of disaster, ultimately ruining the rest of the song and/or show. But ideally some of these risks pay off and the audience can tell this. Computers make performing all the easier, with loops of riffs and bass and drum lines able to be called up with a push of the button. If there’s a live band, they can play along with it, so it looks real and sounds more rich and full. And that’s not necessarily something to shake your head at. In fact, in some instances, an electronic duo (say, Daft Punk) or single person (Four Tet, Girl Talk) hunched over a computer might be taking more risks than a supposed ‘live’ band. At least when one guy in a band screws up it can be covered by others. One wrong button press on a laptop for Four Tet and everything can go dead. And while the following is simply a bit more food for thought when it comes to popular culture, would you like to know the highest position on the billboard Top 200 for a Four Tet album? One hundred and fifty seven.
Is Beauty really Skin Deep?
Opening note: This might come off as a cruel, reductionist essay about the more baser aspects of how people react to beauty in the modern world. In trying to be objective and honest, it might reveal some harsh truths (or apparent truths, which is sometimes what we have to settle for even as we try for objectivity) about attractive and unattractive people, and everyone in-between these slightly subjective extremes. Beauty may ultimately be in the eye of the beholder, but there’s a very small pool of physical qualities that almost everyone has consensus on when it comes to what beauty is, and that’s an important acknowledgement to make, since a lot of human behavior revolves around it.
Second Opening Note: (is it particularly ominous if you need two opening notes?) On the matter of Men and/or/versus Women: When trying to woo a mate, male birds like peacocks and the Birds of Paradise strut and display their ornate and detailed feathers and plumage. The more extravagant or enticing, the better the chance of a female being impressed enough to choose him. Male rams fight by violently butting heads, the victor receiving a harem of females to breed with, who follow him everywhere. In the animal kingdom, this is evolution at its finest. In human society, its equivalent is superficial and slightly chauvinistic. Nowadays the idea that men pursue women more aggressively and largely for sex (at least at first) than women pursuing men in the same way for the same goal has become so ingrained in our understanding of human relationships that it’s left as fodder for standup comedians. Both sexes try to use this acknowledgment to their advantage, each trying to woo the most attractive and able (now measured not in brute strength, but purchasing power), and settling for less when they must. In addition, with men occupying more positions of wealth and power, they are the ones who find themselves with the opportunity to attract women they find attractive with gifts and security, not unlike the peacock and his plumage. For the benefit of humanity at large, we are in the long process of excising aspects of these harsher biological traits by giving women as much autonomy as men, but there is certainly a long way to go. A successful woman who exhibits the same more aggressive qualities of a male might be derisively labeled a ‘man-eater’ or, if she pursues a younger man (not unlike older men pursuing younger women), a ‘cougar’. While we try for equality it should also be noted that we suppress these biological impulses entirely at our peril. We believe in the importance of equality, but we are still animals that need little more than to satisfy our basic urges to survive. Is this acknowledgment and the possible ramifications – much more than the cliché ‘men hunt, women gather’ – fair? ‘Fair’ is an interesting term here, since it doesn’t exist at all in nature and is practically anti-evolutionary (a bird born with a longer beak or wider wingspan than its brethren has an advantage that could eventually spell the other’s doom, which isn’t ‘fair’). Fair also has little to do with the fact that one might grow up (evolve) into an attractive person and reap the benefits without much effort on their behalf. Strangely, it also has a secondary meaning of attractiveness itself.
Sure it’d a lousy intro question (reminder: Is Beauty Really Skin Deep?), but I’m seriously wondering about the comparison between models who go to great lengths – both time consuming and expensive – to earn a living based on their appearance, and the majority of people who go to great lengths – both time consuming and expensive – to earn a living based on their education. If you hit the gym every day for hours and sit in makeup chairs for long periods of time and jet around the world to photo shoots, how different is it from studying for hours, sitting in an office chair for long periods of time, and jetting around the world to conferences? One might cry foul immediately as to societal worth, saying a doctor – or even a cubicle worker – contributes more to society than a model, but even that’s not clear cut. Many professions that have little societal worth – modeling, professional athletics, TV/film/music industry – are among the highest paid, but also have an extensive support staff underneath dependent on the very few at the top making an exorbitant salary. More importantly, there are hierarchies in the leisure industry, just as there are in most industries. Most models don’t make Gisele Bundchen money, just as most businesspeople don’t make Warren Buffett money. And in terms of suddenly becoming obsolete or washed, while models and athletes are particularly vulnerable to this in a more natural way (the aging process), anyone can find themselves out of a job if they cannot adapt to new ways of doing business. Going back to school (for an M.A., perhaps) is an enhancer the same way plastic surgery or certain performance drugs are. And while one might find the lavishing of riches upon the employees of the leisure industry immoral – especially considering the level of poverty that exists both in the developed and developing worlds – it’s also rather hard to claim that, in the last few decades, global business has taken the high road. If we compare a model who gives a sizable chunk of his or her earnings to charity, with some of the bankers who blew up the economy, who has done more for society? In an odd way, that there is a place for models in this world reinforces the ability – for better and for worse – to a form of ingrained elitism that is, in this particular respect, appearance-based. People who are born with particular skills or characteristics – whether it is an ability to crunch number rapidly or have high cheekbones – naturally have an edge in a society that places value on such skills or characteristics. This is a troubling fact in meritocratic system, where your demonstrative abilities are meant to dictate what you are able to accomplish. But why is there such a disconnect between one’s natural ability to speak and debate well, write a persuasive article well, create a antiviral drug well, that much different from looking ‘well’? All of these things take practice, yes, even looking ‘well’. Are we going to trot out a bias that models are less intelligent than people who may have gotten college and university degrees? The vast expansion of college/university enrollment in the last five to six decades means standards have certainly lowered. On top of this, models learn on the job the same way anyone else does. After a bit of work, you do build a repertoire of skills that you can use for the next job. You become better attuned to makeup and fashion the way someone else learns how to use a ratchet set or Microsoft Excel. Are we to be upset or disappointed that they might not know who their local political representative is, or snippets of even the most recent history? Well surveys have shown that most people do pretty poorly when it comes to that type of knowledge, regardless of whether they collect their paycheque by being photographed in dresses, suits, or nothing at all. But this issue – if we can call it that – certainly does not begin and end with the people that make money directly from the fashion industry. Being physically attractive can change absolutely everything for how a person is treated and what they can accomplish. Consequently, there is a bias about beauty the same way there is a bias about graduates from ivy leagues schools. Undeserving, lucky, born into it. The advantages that the people who are physically attractive receive must be weighed against the assumptions that are made about people who look attractive for a living. They are given more positive attention in public, are more likely to be helped when they require it, are given more professional and personal opportunities, and receive more attention from the opposite sex, which itself can mean almost immediate rise in living standards (here I will acknowledge that I am dressing up the fact that rich people of both sexes (but mostly men) lavish gifts and attention on attractive people so that they can have sex with them (or increase the chances)). On the flip side of this, there is the general assumption that these people don’t deserve these advantages because they have not earned them, since their physical appearance was largely the result of genes and chance and not hard work. It should be noted that this opinion can be held by those who still go out of their way to be extra polite and deferential to attractive people. It is as if the ‘dumb’ stereotype is more easily accepted and not seen as an unfair stereotype that must be stamped out because of the advantages attractive people receive in the first place. As if their ‘payment’ – the balance, perhaps – for their benefits is that people will always think less of them behind their backs.
Looks Like Teen Spirit When you realize you’re attractive, does your personality change or develop in a particular way? The assumption is that around puberty and young people start paying attention to those they find physically attractive, there is the realization that there is power in one’s appearance, even in the most basic fashion (people give you more attention, are willing to do things for you). I would be remiss to ignore the basic practical example that this can entail for youth. Attractive people are asked out on dates, are the centre of attention from the more popular cliques (and the envy of those not part of these cliques), and can more easily have favours be done for them, including the old cliché (which is a cliche for a reason, because it happens) of getting others to do your school work for you. A wealth of other factors about how one was (and is) raised at this point in a teenager’s life has to be looked at to see how one might deal with this increased attention. Not only actual intelligence, but the values imposed by their parents, guardians and chosen social circle. These complicated qualities define how they will react to all forms of future interaction, including those based on their exterior appearance. Once again, there are no guarantees in any way, shape or form that a person will act in a particular fashion because of their appearance. When it comes to human behavior, ‘likely’ or ‘most of the time’ is as close as we can come to making conclusions. The younger a person finds himself or herself the object of attention (and/or affection), the more it will shape how they feel about beauty and its power. While a personality cannot exactly be ‘stunted’, the term ‘building character’ is an apt one to describe scenarios that play a vital role in helping youth and young adults understand the realities of life. ‘Sheltered’ people are less likely to find themselves in difficult situations that teach them to go without, explore alternatives, or accept the fact often situations don’t work out the way you’d like them to. And ‘sheltered’ here can mean overprotective parents, a wealthy family, as well as being found attractive, for reasons listed earlier. Being given seemingly unconditional attention and concern softens and makes infrequent the blows that life deals you. Now obviously how a person deals with life’s challenges is not strictly based on how they look, or even how they were raised to consider the impact of their appearance. Just as important – and while it would be nice to say more important, it’s not necessarily true – is the matter of intelligence. A person’s physical appearance says nothing as to the ability of the brain inside their head. Is it possible that a supermodel could have chosen to go to university and over the course of a decade study to become a successful molecular biologist? Certainly. But just as physical attractiveness is chemical chance, so too is intellectual capacity, and receiving a both of those aces in your genetic hand is quite the long shot. In fact – to extend the poker analogy – it’s probably important to note that it’s the case that most people get three-eight off-suit. Statistically, there are more stupid unattractive people than stupid attractive people. I concede right away that one would be hard pressed to find a crueler statement that wasn’t filled with genuine bigotry and hatred. It’s not so much unspoken, but exists in the shadows, always there. Additionally, personality traits beyond intelligence can affect said supermodel and her desire to examine proteins under a microscope. Perseverance and a drive to constantly work hard is required, and if we’re talking about someone who is offered the easier path of modeling or accepting the gifts and advances of a wealthy paramour, the chances of them willing to spend hours in the library years on end begin to lower. Once again, this is not implying that physical attractiveness is linked with laziness, but rather that people in general will frequently choose the easier route over the hard one, the choice that offers definite short term rewards over indefinite long term ones. To be seen as beautiful and smart means overcoming the stereotype that the latter was achieved in part because of the former, which is stereotypically seen as not deserving of much respect at all (even though it automatically receives very valuable forms of respect).
Conclusion The purpose of this article is not to ‘pity the poor attractive person, who in their heart is saddened by the knowledge that their gains may be slightly ill-gotten’. That’s not going to fly, nor should it. One still has the power to choose how to react and engage with the world around them, and that means they are responsible for – if not how people initially and superficially react to them – every moment after that first meeting. Prejudice and stereotypes can come in many forms, and typically the only way to slowly tear them down is to prove that they are not always the case at every opportunity one can get. While beauty may be skin deep, all beautiful people certainly are not as shallow. Sometimes it’s important to simply acknowledge that these are some of the assumptions and thoughts going through people’s heads as they go about their day, and that they do a disservice to the other person they see or interact with and themselves. The challenge is to give everyone the same amount of genuine respect and understanding, even as we find ourselves taken by the exterior characteristics of some of the people around us. If the door seems to swing both ways for the beautiful (more immediate attention, less genuine respect), perhaps its time to take it off its hinges and stare a bit deeper.
2011 Review: This One Was Worse Than the Last
“The arc of the moral universe is nonsensical, and so it bends towards might.” The turning of a MLK phrase
I
wonder how many people who prattle on in their year-in-reviews look back
to their previous one, and then see how their observations – not
necessarily predictions – stack up alongside what happened this year. “So what does all this mean? At this point, not much. It’s like a joke with a near interminable pause before the punch line. An overdose of information and a dearth of action. All talking, no walking.” Well, 2011 saw to it that such unruly, uncertain potential found an outlet. And it didn’t take long. In January we had the revolt in Tunisia, and Egypt soon followed. Quite quickly it took on the name, The Arab Spring. It’s such a glowing title (and y’know, never mind that most of the fireworks – save for Libya’s slow burn – occurred in the winter) that most people applied to it with fully understanding what 1968’s Prague Spring actually entailed. When leader Alexander Dubcek introduced basic freedoms (speech, press, travel) back to Communist Czechoslovakia in January 1968, it was a heady, pro-West utopia that lasted for eight months, until the Soviets sent troops to invade the country and ‘return’ Czechoslovakia to its ‘communist’ state. Easy come, easy go, the people suffer. The recent 2011 revolts seems a like triumph for the people of these nations (at first, anyway), and for democracy itself, but much of the Western leaders found themselves in the rather awkward position of burning the dictators they had for so long supported (constantly: Mubarak and Ben Ali; recently: Gaddafi). So when in preliminary elections Islamist parties take a big chunk of the vote, one can’t exactly be surprised, since the public is repudiating the slightly-more-secular-Western-friendly scourges that brutalized them for so long. The exact form of the relationship between these countries (and the handful of others where violent revolts continue, like in Syria and Yemen) and the West remains to be seen, but it’s going to be one of resentful dependence rather than independence. But this is only because the world is, in some rather important ways, becoming the west – or at least the principles that have governed it for decades. Even if China claims to be communist, it became a superpower by serving capitalism, and if one considers that most of the billionaires in that nation are party members, the precepts of Marx rings pretty hollow. And jailing political dissidents and artists isn’t really in line with anything that the people and governments west, east, north, or south should quietly tolerate. Am I hypocrite for decrying this while typing on a Mac that was mostly like manufactured in Guangzhou? So if the rest of the world is angling for western-style freedom, what are we in the West doing these days? Well, the first flashes of populist anger in North America and Europe took place over sports teams losing and the possibility of window-shattering five finger discounts. In Vancouver and London respectively, the youth took to the streets because the Vancouver Canucks stunk it up in the Stanley Cup, while at least in London their were vestiges of an excuse that this was a reaction against the cut-happy, wealthy-coddling policies of conservative David Cameron (who’s trying to sell the 1984-ish ‘Big Society’ plan on his cash strapped country). So while Canada has to squirm and consider anger management classes while grabbing a broom, at least the UK can at least find a semblance of political purpose behind smashing up stores and stealing cell phones. So starting in the middle of September, Generation Y (and X leftovers and Baby Boomer entrails) tried to redeem itself with Occupy Wall Street. Concocted in part by the editor of the anti-corporate magazine Adbusters, the squatting at Zuccotti Park gained attention the more the overreaching arm of the law and media that tried to contain it. This doesn’t necessarily give added weight to the protesters’ rather superficial and utopian demands, but it did create a talking point, which means Obama will use it carefully in his re-election campaign rhetoric. Anything else? It inspired protests around the world, but no real concrete reforms have come out of the halls of power since the protest was broken up around its two-month anniversary. It’s tempting to say that it’s the thought that counts, but that old timey thinking died in committee about five years ago. Public organization over the internet doesn’t hold a candle to corporate and political organization, if only because one has a more direct ear to those who make (and therefore can no longer break) the laws. Probably the ugliest thing that came out of the protests – not only on Wall Street, but similar ones across America – was the seemingly random and completely unnecessary violence of the police, who were filmed multiple times using pepper spray on kneeling, sedentary protesters. Journalist Matt Taibbi sees this militant and dismissive approach by the law as an example of just how far America has fallen when it comes the limits of state power and the rights of the individual. Coupled with Obama approving the indefinite incarceration of suspected al Qaeda supporters without a trial (key word: suspected), one can’t help but feel particularly uneasy of the dark path American freedom and justice is stumbling down (and the President’s a constitutional law professor, for fucks sake!). If you’re a democratic nation and your strategy for fighting terrorists involve the removal of basic civil rights, it’s safe to say they won. Both the Patriot Act and now the authorization of indefinite detention is a shockingly brazen display of thumbing one’s nose at a hard fought liberties, and it’s all the more hypocritical that is done in the name of ‘defending freedom’ (true Orwellian doublespeak). You should treat the terrorists with much more respect, more justice than they would treat you. That’s proof that you are better than them. Subverting the Geneva convention just because al Qaeda or the Taliban does lowers yourself to their level, and that immediately makes you weaker in the eyes of your own citizens, the rest of the world, and only foster increased hostility from the terrorists, as it’s proof their tactics are working. But perhaps the world’s most powerful nation is doing the only bureaucratic activities it can actually turn into half-functioning legislation, even if they’re terrible ideas. America’s political system is more broken than even before. That is, unless you’re the one percent, then it’s working pretty well. Corporate influence has become the way of conducting ‘business’ in Washington. The incestuous revolving door of politician-lobbyist-board-member means that the power of the nation resides in the hands of the few. It’s a clique that almost anyone can join, provided you go to the right schools and work hard and bury your conscience and hope for the future in the backyard, or simply uninterruptedly kiss the requisite asses. It’s gotten to the point where this isn’t even really happening below the surface. The dysfunction of trying to run on ideology rather than practicality has gone to such ridiculous extremes that almost every citizen in the country and their worth are nothing more than poker chips in the halls of power. In the waning days of this year, The House Republicans relented from their position of not letting Obama do anything (which has otherwise worked well for them and terrible for the country), and passed a bill extending pay-roll tax cuts and unemployment benefits. Ideologies can be hierarchical. For present-day conservatives, not letting your opponent get what he or she wants is one, tax-cuts-always-tax-cuts is two, legislation that might help your constituents vote for you next election is a distant third, and doing whatever your financial backers want supersedes everything. And the lines kind of got crossed over the pay-roll tax cuts. Stopping Obama is good, but by doing so they’re shitting on rules two and three. Do those combined defeat number one? Various Republican leaders/advisers agreed it did, from McCain to Rove. But it wasn’t necessarily because of their desire to help the millions of people out of work, but because they understood that it was bad PR otherwise. The reasons behind supporting or objecting to pieces of legislation is no longer purely whether it benefits the nation, but rather how it fits into a narrative strategy that is sold every two and four years through corporate-political complex. ‘It looks bad if you do/don’t do this’, is the nebulous comment pundits, writers, and professional Beltway-Bots, but it’s never clear who this looks bad to. Is it the American public? Perhaps, since such commentary is usually followed by the reminder that the approval rating of congress has plummeting further, hitting record lows. But this would suggest then that the behaviour of congress is dependent on the support of the American public. Which at first seems like a given, but if one looks at the major pieces of legislation passed for the last several years – bridging several Democrat and Republican administrations and congressional majorities – you would be hard pressed to find a law that benefits the bulk of the citizens first and the special interests and the wealthy second. At least a floundering America has a sympathetic skint friend across the pond. The flailing of the Euro continues, with a shrinking of the amount of countries continuing to use the currency suddenly becoming a best-case scenario, when compared to total collapse. It’s tempting to blame the Greeks, but that’s still one letter off from the true reason: Greed. Too many people wanted something for nothing. An economic system can support a small class of citizen exploiting a larger one (and if the wealthy are careful about it, for quite a long time, too), but there can’t be more exploiters than exploited, and quite quickly in Greece – where income tax was optional, annual government salaries reflected fourteen months of work, and there were bonuses in every sector being given away like candy – it became this untenable situation. And the downside to not only a single continental currency but a global economic system so ridiculously interdependent, is that one crack is enough to make the whole damn dam give way. And these systems – pursuing the latest, most complicated financial instrument –sometimes take on the appearance of a soccer game for seven year olds. A chaotic, haphazard bee lining for the ball without much thought to what it’s doing for the overall game. So France and Germany are throwing money at the problem and, because they are doing so, feel entitled to tell the other countries what’s what and how’s how, which is really blowing a massive hole in this pan-European feel-goodery that’s been building since the end of the Cold War (except in Russia itself, which doesn’t get to use the title ‘Arab Spring’ for the recent spat of anti-Putin protests, in part because it’s too damn cold). Beyond the horrible mismanagement of the people we’ve voted into power, the earth is also showing its disappointment in us. Another big natural disaster, this time in Japan. Although with the Sendai earthquake – as opposed to Haiti’s – the questions are not so much of a general lack of infrastructure, but what kind of infrastructure they are going to replace the old with. It’s tough to spin ‘the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl’ into anything remotely positive, except that it might force the country into seriously developing alternative energy, and suddenly the country is on the forefront of this industry, like it was for electronics in the seventies and eighties. And already it becomes too easy to look at this in a not-exactly-human-cost. That the discussion quickly becomes ‘how is the country going to afford the clean up and bounce back’, and not focus on the tens of thousands of sons, daughters, parents, and grandparents that perished on that day in March. The emotional cost – the true human cost – is such a difficult one to put into words without resorting to clichés, which means, sadly, it’s been told many times before. And it doesn’t have to be something so devastating as an earthquake. Complaining about the politics of job creation and debt relief effortlessly masks the people who suffer under these crises. And I’m not saying the suffering of losing one’s job, or having to sell your car or house to make ends meat is the same as dying in tsunami, but in the world of ‘news’ both of these stories are covered in a way that treats the people very much like a statistic. And perhaps that’s because people put a hell of a lot of stock in cold, bloodless statistics. It’s a more authoritative, objective way to compare things (also the basis for the scientific method). We judge the horrible-ness of things based on people out of work or body count, and can say that almost 16,000 people died in the Sendai Earthquake with 3,500 still missing. Yet those numbers suddenly mean a lot less if your spouse also died. Suddenly that one is all that matters. But because that can’t be applied to the people around the world watching or listening, 16,000 is meant to represent the catastrophe. Such a number made later disasters – Chilean volcano, flooding in southeast Asia, earthquake in Turkey – pale in comparison. And also because of a earthquake’s immediacy and shocking footage, it rather effortlessly takes hold of the average citizen’s attention span over Somalia’s continued famine, whose numbers are much worse (total estimates are not known, but 29,000 children have died since July). And how does the civilized, developed world deal with that? How much money can you throw at the problem to fix it? How do you deal with criminals who are stealing and re-selling basic food supplies which you’re giving away for free? Considering how the powerful take advantage of the situations of the powerless in developed countries, suddenly it doesn’t seem that surprising… At least bin Laden is dead. Of all nations you couldn’t tell ahead of time you were coming in to kill the world’s number one terrorist, it would be Pakistan. It’s the one country that seemed to have solidified out of the craziest conspiracy-paranoid parts of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. They haven nukes, a government held hostage by the military, which is leaned on by the intelligence service, which has deep sympathies for the Islamist rebels trying to bring down the government. And it hates the fast-developing country that people are rooting the most for, India (it’s China with democracy!). If there’s any place in the world where something is going to go horribly wrong and everyone else has to do something about it in 2012, it’s Pakistan. And as for students and youth celebrating the news that Osama is laying at the bottom of the Indian Ocean (where he gets picked at by the worms and weird fishees), well, they’re taking whatever good news they can get these days, and everyone can agree it’s slim pickins. Almost sounds like the future. The opportunity to cling to the old system is fading. It has been seen in already volatile and repressive regions of the world – as they are examples of the very oldest systems, violent totalitarianism – but is moving to other regions, that for much of the previous century were bastions of stability. And like culture, what’s to be done is split in a thousand little pieces across people and power. It’s so easy to forget that we are all in this together, that we can’t break down along old lines of borders, race, or religion, or even class (the easiest and most tempting. 99% versus 1%! How can we lose?) in the same way as before. The wealthy are dependent on the support (even tacit, grumbling support) of the rest of the population, and the rest are dependent on the wealthy and powerful for the global social structure they provide (not because they are wealthy and powerful, mind you, but because they took the jobs that we as a people have created/allowed; you want to change the world, start working in finance, politics, or technology). Is there rampant abuse of this relationship? Fuck yes. From both sides. The greed and indifference of the rich toward others that make us all spit blood are performed by the rest of us on a much smaller scale every day. Case in point: the $700 billion bailout of the banks in fall of 2008 (although only a fraction of what was eventually thrown at the problem) that people thought was crazy? That amount wouldn't cover the combined credit card debit of all Americans, circa June of this year (and that’s after it’s gone done from nearly a trillion in late-2008). And sure, it’s spread out over a greater amount of people, but that’s still a massive amount of ‘spending money they don’t have’, which sounds a lot like what every institution (run by people, may I remind you) does, from government to corporations. Is it still the great recession? What are we going to think about it when we finally make it to the other side? What kind of solutions will we have come up with to get there? Hopefully we can come to our senses quicker rather than later, and through hard work and not sudden shocks. And I’m assuming it gets better. Everyone bets on the future. Both in money – that your investment will be worth more than at the moment you actually invest it in something – and in time – that your hard work for little money at present will be repaid with not-as-hard work and more money down the road. But the future is impossible to know for sure. While there are indicators that can suggest trajectories – both good and bad – nothing is set in stone until the present. And that’s when it can’t be undone. 2011 was a pretty crushing wave. Here’s to getting our heads above water in 2012.
A Notable Person of the Year In 2011 politics/economics/blah, the individual succumbed to the faceless masses. The idea that individual political leaders can efficiently usher in much needed reforms that a great majority of citizens believe need to be enacted immediately has taken incredibly devastating credibility blows. Barack Obama was not ‘The One’. We need a ‘the many’. And they need to be organized. So the choice for A Notable Person of the Year is one far away such things. It’s Louis CK, a comedian-writer-actor-director, who – in addition to releasing a hilarious stand up special and offering another season of hilarious and bizarre scenarios with Louie – brought the world one thing it could always use more of: transparency. When he released Live at the Beacon Theatre three weeks ago for five bucks on the internet (through his own website, avoiding not only media corporations like HBO, but also online sites like YouTube and iTunes), he let the public in on its success, stating how much he was making each step off the way, explaining how he was going to break up the money among his small company, charities, and a new penis ("I'm keeping the old one...I'm gonna have an old one and a new one, right there. It's gonna be nice"). In his letter that he wrote on December 21st, he states: “I never viewed money as being "my money" I always saw it as "The money" It's a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.” It’s kind of sad when some of the most sensible economic advice in years comes from a comedian. Does the world still laugh with you when you laugh?
The Occupation of the Abstract (on the Wall Street Protests) Ah, protest culture! It starts simply as a problem – not difficult to locate, there are plenty of those these days – and as more and more people become informed or aware of the situation (at least as far as they understand it) a subculture grows, in a fashion not unlike subcultures in the world of arts and culture (from Dada to punk). And like any good subculture, ‘protest’ festers and grows, creating/absorbing an incestuous language, style, and knowledge bank. Most people who somehow pass by or interact with these groups ignore them, deride them, or roll their eyes at what is considered just another fad. If it’s Dada you ignore the urinal in the art gallery, if it’s punk you call it a lot of noise coming out from some basement club, and if it’s a bunch of dissenters in some open space, you try to spot a witty sign to tell you all you need to know, then go about your day, silently wishing them good luck, ‘cause boy howdy, they’re gonna need it. This can go on for years, months, or – in an always-depending-on-fresh-meat news cycle – a couple days, until the mainstream finds it, at which point it transforms into something inherently compromised (as emergence into the mainstream is wont to do. Dadaism shot itself or became Salvador Dali, punk tried to go underground, but was found, cleaned up, and sold as grunge). Protests get big money donors, celebrity endorsements (Ted Nugent on the right! Kanye on the left!), and a blunted message. Both these narratives can be applied to the recent ‘fringe’ movements, The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street (even if the former’s namesake was derived from a stock exchange floor rant on a business show on cable). These two campaigns have more in common than either would like to admit – Tea Partiers have condemned Occupy Wall Street – and that is perhaps seen best in that both unite a wealth of citizens from disparate backgrounds against forces that are bloated and entrenched with corruption, but wholly vital for the functioning of a modern global society. The awkward truth about post-industrial and post-modern society is that it is extremely complicated (which is putting it rather simply). Pushing legislation through the bureaucratic and congressional morass is full of compromising, hand-greasing, kowtowing, contradiction, trepidation, and special interests having a bigger last word than one would consider sensible. Same goes for the finance industry. If it were as easy as, ‘Buy low, sell high’, we could all be Wall Street millionaires. But it’s not, it’s complex and convoluted, and not necessarily intentionally so. The Tea Party’s attempt to fix what they saw as the problem – ‘big government’, if we must reduce their argument to almost nothing – involved getting as many of them as possible elected into the congress or senate under the wing of the Republican party, and then saying ‘no’ to pretty much everything that might expand government power or spending (for many, the difference between the two is negligible). What might have seemed to be a good first step in theory, in practice nearly caused America to default on its multi-trillion dollar debt in August, because this group of politicians initially refused to raise the debt ceiling. Even though most economists agree that government spending does more to stimulate the economy than cuts (either spending or tax), this does not sway them. This obstinate position may appeal to the Tea Party base, but the lack of headway in fixing America’s financial crises means that much of the nation has cooled on Tea Party politics, as polls suggest only about 25% of the country supports them. Occupy Wall Street (or OWS, although that makes it sound like some sort of elite military force) should probably take heed of this rise and fall. The Tea Party went from a small series of protests to being carried on the shoulders of cable news pundits and wealthy conservative businessmen to the Washington Mall, carefully courted by those in Republican Party establishment. They were lambasted by their opponents for being vitriolic, uninformed (or under informed, or misinformed), and irrational. OWS is now being faced with same challenges and opportunities. The news media has invaded Zuccotti Park in big enough numbers that the protesters had to erect a communications tent. From that comes a nice fresh pundit debate as to whether the protesters are tapping into an underlying anger in all Americans towards the privileges of the rich or are a bunch of anti-American hippies acting like a mob. So of course the Democrats are looking for ways to – oh, let’s go right out and say it – exploit this energy for the 2012 campaign season (Lichtblau, 2011). Just like the Tea Partiers complaining about a broken government whose processes and actions many of them might not understand like the role the House Committee on Ways and Means has on taxation, the OWS is tackling a series of corporations, financial laws, and economic foundations whose functioning has typically been morally dubious and understood by a woefully small segment of the population (a disappointing notion, considering the role it plays in all our lives). Many books – It Takes a Pillage, Griftopia, The End of Wall Street, The Shock Doctrine – successfully portray greed as almost a blinding force for the CEOs and boards of Wall Street’s biggest financial institutions. These people in positions of power had either limited understanding of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps (CDS’), synthetic derivatives, and structured investment vehicles (SIVs), or knew that they were playing with Greek fire. Either option is inexcusable, and their behaviour since the meltdown of summer and fall 2008 hasn’t endeared them to many people around the world (getting trillions – yes, trillions, that $700 billion was just the iceberg tip – in bailout money, denying it was their fault in front of Congress, giving out ridiculous bonuses while their firms nearly died, claiming they were ‘doing god’s work’, and preventing legislation from being enacted that might rein in their uber-risky behaviour). What is most horrifying to many people – protester or otherwise – is that much of what Wall Street was investing in the last decade or so wasn’t manufacturing companies or energy concerns but Wall Street itself, atop a housing bubble that deflated throughout 2007 and 2008. Banks would invest in a bundle of thousands of mortgages, some reliable but most risky, and then divide them into other bundles and sell them to other banks. Unrestricted credit default swap trading meant that you could buy insurance on these mortgage bundles, and collect when they went kaput. But you didn’t even have to own these mortgage bundles to do this. Anyone could buy insurance on these volatile investments (the popular analogy being that it was like you having the ability to buy insurance on your neighbour’s house, when you happened to notice smoke pouring out of their basement windows). All this added up to trillions of not-exactly-dollars, because much of it existed as the promise to pay, not actual capital. Although Wall Street might not appreciate the reductionism here, it was a massive game of passing the buck, dependent on the person further down the line coughing up the money to the person beside them. When anyone at point in the line doesn’t have enough cash for the next person, everyone else after that guy (or gal) is fucked. Such are the perils of credit, also known as ‘trust’, and Wall Street trusted a lot of people they shouldn’t have, both people who worked on that street and on Main Street. Credit is supposed to grease the wheels of commerce, but too much grease just ruins the smooth functioning of this delicate and complicated machine. To further that analogy (once again proving how difficult these problems can be to understand), everyone was so preoccupied with their own cog or attachment that they never bothered to check that the whole thing was actually working properly. This wasn’t an epic scam by all of Wall Street to let the public on the hook for their losses in the billions of real (and trillions of fake) dollars. It was pathetic shortsightedness based on mindless optimism and endless greed, not that unlike people who thought they could afford a house without any down payment or steady income, even if their mortgage broker told them they could (if it sounds too good to be true…). The difference was that they people running these banks were expected to be smarter than that. All of these risky investments were being made by people who were not looking at the bigger picture around them (except maybe Goldman Sachs, but that’s another (big) story). The goal was to make you and your firm a shitload of money each quarter (the next one be damned until it comes), and everything else was a distant second. A glut of short-term plans can easily beget unintended long-term consequences. Deregulation means a lack of oversight, the very practice necessary to connect these dots that were inadvertently joined in ways few people could understand. The above summation of a slice of the many high finance abuses is a tough thing to march against. It can’t fit on a sign, be chanted, or even be whittled down to a talking point suitable for television viewing. So many things must be changed in this system to make the American financial industry – and with it, the global financial industry – healthy and trustworthy again. The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill was a punch line, dead on arrival, not restricting or regulating any of the risky financial instruments above, or even being written when it was passed into law (a year after Obama signed it, only 38 of its 400 statutes have been written, mostly by the banking industry itself). So yes, if this is one of Occupy Wall Street’s hot buttons, good on them. It seems that they are overflowing with good intentions, and while that’s what the road to hell is paved with, it should be noted that there’s also a bin full of them behind the half-finished condo building everyone in the world seems to somehow own a part of. Without becoming too cynical, I would say that if worldwide protests couldn’t stop a war – a concept that everyone can understand – in 2003, it has little chance of banning (or at least regulating) credit default swaps. If the message from the Tea Party was too inflexible and dogmatic, then the message from OWS is too drippy and unfocused. How exactly does one camping in Zuccotti Park close a corporate tax loophole? Is calling up your local representative or senator and complaining going to do anything if the same person gets thousands in corporate fundraising donations? It is as if the best the OWS folk can hope for is that the idea of corporate, financial, and tax reform – all three targeted at the wealthiest 1% who own 50% of America – remains a talking point for next year’s elections. But that’s no guarantee for success. Both political parties have a penchant for channeling public anger into support for their candidates, but once the voting is over, little gets done regarding the issue. This is truer for Democrats, as both chambers in Congress lean centre-right, meaning most issues labeled ‘liberal’ are heavily water down or compromised. Look at the attempts to end the Iraq War in 2007, health care in 2009 (and into 2010), and how they seem to avoid talking about energy/environmental policy with a ten-foot pole. And I believe OWS is aware of this strong possibility, which is why they are wary to embrace the party closer to their convictions, as they don’t want to get burned yet again. Instead they seem to be trying to keep this as grassroots as possible, which is certainly easier than in the past, thanks to the magic of the internet (invented by those damn socialists in the government-run Defense Department). (INTERLUDE) There is going to be a ‘Wall Street Related’ protest in Toronto on the 15th of this month, the same time there is going to be dozens across cities in the States. I am not sure what to make of this. While showing some level of solidarity towards those protesting south of the border could be appreciated, it seems odd that Canadians would be getting involved, since our financial institutions have thankfully weathered the storm better than almost any other nation on earth. Much of this can be attributed to decades of jurisprudence (Paul Martin is sadly never going to get the credit he deserves for keeping our economic ideas sane throughout the nineties and early 00s.) Even Harper deserves some kudos for keeping it working well during his time at the helm, although I am wary as to what changes he might institute now that he has a majority in parliament. So people shouldn’t necessarily be showing up on the 15th to rage against our federal government (although certainly there can be small examples of pro-business policy that the protesters can focus on, such as HST and the fact that income equality is rising for the first time in many years), but raging against another country’s economic policy should be done with care. Yes, the United States has a massive political and economic influence on the rest of the world and many countries are feeling the pain from a problem that originated in the United States, but what is our role in these protests? Simply reminding the ‘occupy wall street’ folk that we are supporting them in their struggle for stronger financial regulation? Is it comparable to the worldwide protests in the lead up to America going to war in Iraq in 2003? Is it a subtle ‘try to be more like us’ showing? An acknowledgement of how much Canada’s economy is dependent on America’s? Is it just going to be an anti-Harper bitch out? And to play devil’s advocate, the reason Canada can ‘afford’ to have a more conservative financial industry is because we can rely on selling to the world our wealth of natural resources (if we didn’t have that, maybe we would be more tempted to raise cash in such risky, CDO-like ways). And once again, we’re back to the fact that we are peddling oil – and soon, fresh water – to the world, with damages to the environment that can be just as disastrous to the world as massive risk-taking in the financial sector. We should be very wary with any sort of sense of superiority. (END INTERLUDE) Even Obama is not immune from OWS attacks, as there are signs demanding that the man ‘grow a pair’ and ‘walk the walk’. Such anger is not surprising, as the rhetoric that brought Obama the presidency seemed to be made for fixing such problems. The left and even many of those classified as independents want a strong, functioning government. But when it’s neither of those things – while at the same time statistics show that middle class incomes haven’t risen in decades while upper class ones have skyrocketed – a helplessness can overtake people, because it seems like power is no longer in the hands of the many but rather the few. Which is why the Tea Party initially had such wide appeal. If the government isn’t part of the solution, it’s part of the problem and needs to be fixed (read: shrunk). The Tea Party fielded candidates for the 2010 elections and while the label isn’t set in stone, 40 candidates (35 in the House, 5 in the Senate) won. It remains to be seen whether this will be tactic pursued by the OWS folk, but it doesn’t seem likely that a handful of obstinate far leftists in congress will win any major legislative victories. If corporations have soaked up political influence to the point where the act of voting has become akin to – in George Carlin’s – ‘jerking off’, then another form of political expression must be utilized. OWS can remind people that they are not alone in their frustration, but beyond that, it truly is up to the individual to make a difference in the way they live their own lives. One possible solution that I will drum up now is not new, but is one of the few that everyone could try in baby steps, which is really the only way to get a large swath of people to change their behaviour: Vote with your money. If money is power (as the corporations that dictate much of how this world is run certainly believe), use that power every day. Spend wisely. Buy what you need from organizations and stores whose policies you agree with. Yes, it will require a bit of searching on the internet to find out which companies do this or own that, and maybe dumb questions at the supermarket or clothing store when you ask about where the apples were grown or sweatshops in Malaysia. Even when finding answers to these inquiries, it can become quite daunting when you realize how much of your basic needs are met by giant corporations (food, energy) or government institutions in conjunction with giant corporations (insurance, security). Sometimes it will be more expensive to buy local, or support alternate forms of energy, and you will have to compromise (I’m writing this on a MacBook, made by a company that keeps its billions in profits offshore so it doesn’t have to pay corporate taxes in the States). Is that enough? Well it’s a start. We’re already in a financial crisis that seems to slowly be congealing into the new normal, and when people are pinching pennies and tightening budgets, it makes for a particularly bad time to push for solar or invest strictly in ethical stocks and mutual funds. OWS is a blip of frustration, and as long as it stays peaceful, it will remain a respectable reminder that for the last thirty years the corporations and the wealthy people who run them have taken a much bigger slice of the economic pie at the expense of the rest of the American public. That frustrating fact alone will not usher in change, but its acknowledgement is a much-needed step in the right direction. The problem is the next step: Who can possibly break the back of Wall Street, for the good of itself and the world economy? With millions indifferent and Obama ineffective, probably only Wall Street itself. But vampires can’t see themselves when they look in the mirror.
Sources Lichtblau, Eric. “Democrats Try Wary Embrace of the Protests”. The New York Times. October.11.2011.
2011 - Summer of Discontent The early May head-exploding of Osama Bin Laden kept most of the world mentally buoyant for about two month, and only when we actually crossed into the sticky haze of summer did the heat come in full force and get us all hot and bothered once again. With good reason, at least. It would be rather awful to get all in tizzy over nothing. Plenty of problems are plaguing our poor little planet these days, some slow and continually simmering, others like quick and violent snaps of a whip. Together the two make for an unrelenting assault of bad news, sowing seeds of confusion and despondency. The economic crisis is the least exciting but most important problem in terms of the shaky and uncertain future, with giant numbers and terrifying percentage points being thrust in the face of unsuspecting citizens by politicians and journalists alike. This soon-to-be-double-dip-recession is getting hot oil body massages from the American debt crisis, which was solved in little more than name only. President Obama noted that, ‘this is not the deal I would have wanted’, which – considering all the other compromised and watered down bills he signed no problem – tells you how goddamn awful it is. The blame can be distributed quite easily. Poor leadership from the White House, pointless sniping by the entrenched political parties, and obstinate hostage taking by the new and misinformed kids in town, the Tea Party. The gulf between how these supposedly powerful institutions/groups operate and what the populace expects from them is catastrophically huge. If up to three-quarters of your country want tax increases on the wealthiest citizens and the government can’t accomplish this, is one still living in a democracy? If your health care law benefits heath insurance companies first and your citizens second, can it really be said to have been created with the ‘public’s interest’ in mind? How about closing down a military prison holding ‘enemy combatants’ that live in a legal netherworld so that they can be subject to enhanced interrogation techniques (you know, torture)? If a government doesn’t reflect the will of the people? Is it still of the people, by the people, and for the people? America appears to be run by and for the rich to a greater extent than ever before. And rather than waste words blaming the ‘job creators’ alone, it should never be forgotten that this catering to wealthy’s every whim is the fault of everyone in the country. The rich for doing it, and everyone else for letting them. ‘Constant vigilance’ is the price of democracy, and the electorate letting that slip away slowly allows for a host of those who would abuse this power – the euphemistically termed ‘special interests’ – to take a larger chunk of control than they deserve. The sound of uninformed and misinformed voters scribbling jotting an x on their ballot is the first death knells of a democracy (technically it’s the second. The first is abject silence of the non-voter). Getting people to vote against their interests is a terrifying prospect. It is democracy in reverse. How does this happen? Lack of proper information being meted out from the news media. Complicated issues being given a ridiculously simplistic, bullet-pointed explanation. The result of the rising power of the corporation is the weakening of government power, even as the latter bloatedly grows larger and larger. And with government no longer a viable plan A or B, there is little way to alter or replace the corporate structure with something better. One cannot get elected to government without a blessing – read: donation/support – from this facet of the global economy. Matt Taibbi wonders in a recent blog post if the late removal of tax increases from America’s debt ceiling plan was going to happen all along, as the superdelegates that helped give Obama the democratic nomination made it clear that higher taxes on them and their investments and corporations were not going to be tolerated. No one would deny that there are huge faults with the contemporary American political system, but the extremely poor showing at how it attempted to fix the debt ceiling crisis – whether the crisis was inflated or not – was enough to get Standard and Poor’s to knock the nation’s credit rating from AAA to AA+. Suddenly America doesn’t appear to be a safe investment bet. Well that’s been true for most people living there since they’ve lost billions (trillions?) in their retirement plans since 2008. So while this is bad news for the world economy (being the world’s most important and powerful country means we all trip up when they do), it’s not the worst/most shocking news of late. In terms of utter disgust, the UK’s News of the World scandal offers up failure on every level of institution meant to protect the public. The law, the media, and the government, corrupted at every stop along the way for the most pathetic, money-grubbing gains imaginable. Hacking the messages on a murdered girl’s cell phone. Breaking the ‘news’ that the Prime Minister’s child has cystic fibrosis. Following athletes, celebrities and royalty with the intensity that Woodward and Bernstein followed the Watergate leads. Unpleasant connections between political and media industry leaders are the more wide ranging ramifications (and that the police could easily be bought off to look the other way or even help with the phone hacking), but it only boiled over because apparently there is a line in the sand for people willing to absorb the personal and irrelevant information of others. But even before that line is crossed there is something disappointing with the intense microscopic focus of so many upon the lives of so few, regardless of their chosen profession, and it being acceptable. ‘News of the World’ – the now dead weekly – had a print circulation of about three million people, one of the highest in Britain (comparatively, The Guardian has just over a quarter million daily). Sample headline: “F1 Boss Has Sick Nazi Orgy With Hookers” (this was later proven to be false). The drive for profit in the media has forced it to appeal the more superficial concerns of the masses. The history of the media has always been one of presenting and shaping information, with countless instances of press releases and news stories meant to tilt an issue one way or another, but should the issues at least not be pressing? There is a responsibility of giving the public what they need, and not what they want. A position that certainly requires someone to make that exact and daunting decision, but that still a much better plan than the outright and egregious abuse of power that comes when a profit margin makes the call. It seems less of an abuse of public trust when it’s a private corporation, even though it is providing a public service. News International head Rupert Murdoch said, after he found out the Hitler diaries he published in his newspapers were fake, “after all, we’re in the entertainment business”, two words that should really make anyone who works in the gathering of information relevant to the interworkings of a globalized society and attempts to distribute it to the masses shudder. Poor Rupert had to not only had appear in front of a government inquiry where he denied any knowledge of such malfeasance and confessed to be very disappointed with his rotten employees, but in response the British government denied him the chance to buy a sexy satellite company he had his eyes on. But it’s not all doom and gloom for News International because of an ace-in-the-hole they’ve helped create: This was only going to be news for a week or two. Chairs will be kicked over, heads will roll, people will grumble, but then everyone will move on to whatever happens next in the world, which apparently was the debt crisis. Murdoch has the guns of novelty and salaciousness in his pockets, and if one fires them often enough you’ll forget what the earlier shots were over. His corporation just has to weather the storm and wait until it all fades into the background. In the 1994 film The Paper, an exasperated editor says, “we only have to be right for a day”. Well now it doesn’t seem to matter. Right or wrong becomes irrelevant if it’s going to be forgotten tomorrow. The News of the World scandal is particularly aggravating when around the world there are actually several shocking and pressing issues that should be addressed and discussed in greater detail. If you want to see people actually fighting for something important, take a look at that whole Arab spring phenomenon, which in some cases is starting to look like it’s decided to skip the warm glow of summer and move into the bitter cold of late autumn. Uprisings in Syria and Yemen have been violently crushed, the former particularly shocking as Assad has long been a dependable Middle Eastern ally for the West, held up as a moderate and restrained leader. In Yemen the country has actually splintered into fragments, with tribal regions far from the capital simply no longer acknowledging the leadership of Ali Abdullah Saleh, while the government opens fire on protesters that are in Sanaa or Taiz. And it can come off particularly awful considering how Western nations have – and utilize – the luxury of picking and choosing how involved they are going to be in dealing with these regimes. Gaddafi in Libya is carpet bombed, Syria and Yemen get a finger wag. Saudi Arabia, with its deep pockets, pays off the youth to not get unruly, continues treating women as second-class citizens, and no one says boo west of Turkey. Perhaps luxury is not the proper phrasing, as the economic crisis certainly plays a factor in just how far a nation can intervene. Bombs, bullets, and troops cost money. Lots of money. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, both broken and bought at prices never initially imagined. The unspoken attitude seems to be, ‘sorry protesters fighting for freedom, but we’ve bounced too many cheques here at home, whether it be health insurance or education. We can’t spare a platoon or predator drone.’ Who or what comes off worse? The United Nations, that’s who. The UN Charter has been treated like toilet paper for many years, first by superpower nations who could ignore its rules without fear of reprisal, but over time this form of hypocrisy – trumpeting the UN powers while practicing exceptionalism in your own personal and apparently pressing case – has trickled down to the smaller countries that might have previously cowered at the threat of sanctions or a deploying of peacekeeping forces. So we stay out of certain Arab Spring revolutions and the protesters get slaughtered. And even that’s a simplified assessment. Not surprisingly, many of the protesters have a rather love-hate relationship with the West, as even if military intervention was offered, there is no doubt that it would be accepted coolly at best. The West helping you winning your battle gives the old regime an opportunity to convince those on the mushy middle politics-wise that the uprising is not an actual reflection of the citizens, but of foreign meddling (in the 2009 Iranian protests, this is how situation played out, the ‘Green revolution’ eschewing as much public support from other nations as possible). Plus you have a foreign army stuck in your suddenly broken country, not sure if they can hand over the reigns to you just yet. Really, is it the responsibility of a nation’s citizens alone to free themselves from tyranny, real or perceived? Hell, even France assisted the United States in their war with the British way back in the 1770s, and the US reciprocated, by supporting the French revolutionaries of 1789 (kind of spitting in the face of Louis XVI, who helped them years earlier, but hey, that’s politics). Revolutions are huge pains in the ass that might not bear any fruit at all. Thomas Jefferson thought one was necessary every twenty years or so, but he said that only after his generation slogged through one and succeeded. Try a failure on for size and you might rethink such an oft-repeating time frame. If you lose, you get jailed, killed, or exiled (at best), and the leaders you try to dispose tighten their grip to make sure it doesn’t happen again (see: Syria and Yemen). If you succeed in the early twenty-first century, where our Western obsession with quick-fix solutions no matter what the problem has seeped into the Middle East, you have only a couple months to get a provisional government up and running again before the masses who only too recently had your back try to stab you in it with massive counter-protests (see: Egypt). But at least there is noble rhyme and reason behind the actions of those being attacked by government forces. The recent shootings of Norway cannot claim to have such thing, despite the xenophobic ravings of the perpetrator. Nothing discounts your opinions – regardless of what they are – quicker than resorting to violence in a state that already guarantees you freedom of speech. Killing scores of children at an island to ‘make a point’ destroys any notion of a point ever existing, and actually harms the efforts of those that might feel similar (one is certainly free to hold an anti-Islamic, anti-socialist positions), but are still smart enough not to pick up a gun over it. What was later revealed of Anders Behring Breivik only made the case of insanity that much stronger. Pilfering parts of his treatise from the work of Ted ‘The Unabomber’ Kaczynski (while imaging a coming civil war in ‘Eurabia’), building himself up with steroid injections, and calling Richard the Lionheart (the 12th century King of England, best known for fighting in the Crusades) his mentor, it’s hard to call him completely sane. Just because he planned the attack for years doesn’t mean he’s mentally sound. So if he is simply a horrible unstable anomaly – and hopefully full of shit about their being other like-minded cells across Europe – can anything positive be gleaned from these events? Is this what has to happen to start the dialogue over the dangers of extreme anti-Muslim (or anti-anything) sentiment? While reactive endeavours are typically done with more effort and passion, proactive ones are accomplished with more levelheadedness and clarity. Is the solution a marginalizing of such views, or will that only increase the chances of these types of attacks happening again (since those that hold them will feel increasingly persecuted)? And on the other side to bridge a culture gap that is being felt in almost all European nations, is ‘forced’ assimilation permissible, let alone possible? The strongest Europe is a united one, with common goals and freedoms, and that cannot be done if the ever-expanding Muslim communities in large cities are not a part of it. But the expectations of hyper-modern, globally connected society for immediate solutions to complicated issues – which this certainly is, straddling politics, culture, economics, and the personal lives of millions – are particularly unreasonable here. It took several generations for the many waves of immigrants to be assimilated into North American society, where even the vestiges of the original slums have become tourist attractions in large cities (Chinatown, Little Italy). The rush of Muslim immigrants in the last two decades has been coloured by the West’s continual involvement in Middle Eastern politics, meaning it is too easy for people to (erroneously) assume that people from this region now living in London, Paris, or Oslo are associated with the people making the news from this region (namely, terrorists and fundamentalists who, for example, forbid women from going to school). These barriers can only be broken down over a long period of time, with continual outreach and support from both sides, the ‘natives’ and the immigrants. And while it may be difficult, honest and straightforward dialogue has to occur. By understanding both cultures better, it becomes easier to shrink such gulfs between people. And that is the only true way to combat the propaganda and beliefs pushed by Anders Breivik. Perhaps the only thing worse than this senseless massacre is the tens of thousands of people living in the horn of Africa starving to death. One of the worst droughts in decades – coupled with the general political instability of the region – has resulted in a famine consuming Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Twenty nine thousand have died in Somalia alone so far, and a total of twelve million – according to the UN, who, despite their lack of action, is still is one of the best monitors and assessors of crisis situations – are at grave risk in the coming months. The financial woes of the rest of the world mean that the humanitarian response is woefully inadequate. Both governments and citizens are watching their own cheque-books and look upon the darkest part of the dark continent with a helpless shrug. There is little shock to the news of the famine in the West. Since it has happened several times in recent decades, we’ve become immune even from some of the most shocking photographs of malnourished children. Live Aid, Live 8 and numerous world charity advertisements and promotions have given the idea the problem is continually being addressed, that only a couple more years and we should have the problem nipped in the bud. But this simply isn’t true, as droughts, genocide, corruption, a mockery of any sense of democracy and an always-temporary infrastructure has ensured that large portions of the continent remain as unstable as ever. Certainly this is true in Somalia, which has been in a state of civil war since 2009. Almost a million people have simply walked out of the country as refugees to either Ethiopia or Kenya compounding the crisis there. It is a situation that in many ways dwarfs everything else discussed above. These people are abandoning their country because there is no country, only a loose web of armed factions that could cost you your life if they happen to come upon you. There is no support, no infrastructure, no survival. So you leave and you hope not to die on the way to wherever you decide to go. That’s the world in early August 2011. And just for good measure, toss in London riots that are too quickly explained away as the fault of the welfare state (‘culture of dependency!’) or the fault of the erosion of the welfare state (‘austerity cuts help the rich and hurt the poor!’). Knowing that there is a famine in one area of the world while in another youth are smashing up stores for sneakers and cell phones can leave a particularly bad taste in one’s mouth. In these trying times those in the developed world complain and bemoan the luxuries they must now sacrifice. Those in the developing world simply perish in droves, under fascist boot or due to starvation. These are symptoms of both poor institutional decisions many years old and the dark side of humanity. The latter will never fully be corrected, but the former can certainly be improved upon. How bad is it? Well it’s just not good, which is a clearly unsatisfactory answer, which might mean that it’s perfect for this time and place. Waiting out the storm is a Herculean effort in itself. And then the rebuilding begins.
Uh Canada May 4th Edit: Well so much for me having my finger on the pulse of the Canadian populace...
“YOU HAVE NOT BEING PAYING ATTENTION” – Radiohead, 2+2=5
Confession: I am Canadian. Much of my nonfiction writing output focuses on political and cultural theories in general, but I would certainly concede that many of my references and commentary are America-centred. I could chalk this up to a multitude of reasons, ranging from the fact that the influence of American socioeconomic culture and policy has dominated both Canada and the rest of the world for nearly a century, to simply that there are more books and articles concerning America, which means more people will be familiar with such sources, and so when I put forth arguments of political nature, it would be most advantageous to use such sources. One rather shameful reason, however, was simply that Canada – at least in the political sense – seemed happily dull, unimpressively straightforward, and not worth discussing. In some odd way, this is a backhanded compliment of the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ sort. Everything was going swimmingly on the domestic front last time I checked. We had one of the highest living standards in the world, an open and efficient parliament, and one of the best reputations throughout the globe. So I felt comfortable and secure enough to put my own country on the backburner and cluck my tongue at the foreign and domestic boondoggles of the Bush administration and the lackluster attempts to clean up the mess by Obama’s ‘team of rivals’ (who all seem to agree that the corporate beast must be lovingly caressed). With a wary eye I balance China’s incredible economic growth with their continued jailing of political dissidents who push for more freedoms for the average citizen. I worry about the Middle East remaining as simply ruthless petroleum producing states that the West and East have no true interest in changing. I had high hopes for South America, low expectations for Europe, and just hoped for the best in terms of aid and climate for Africa. And I’ve found that I’m not alone in this thinking. Many people I know would be much more at ease lamenting the world’s problems than consider the everyday goings-on upon our own Parliament Hill. Well, complacency is democracy’s enemy, and we’ve all been asleep at the wheel. There’s nothing like the announcement of an upcoming election to yank your mind out of such pleasant and ignorant doldrums. That they can really come out of nowhere – albeit a couple weeks of rumours leading up to the official word – is a huge benefit of the parliamentary system. No ‘twelve months campaigning up to the first Tuesday in November’ like our neighbours to the South (see how easy it is to compare?). Instead our politicians can spend much of their time actually doing stuff in Ottawa, not stumping and fundraising. Of course, the problem has been that we’ve been letting them spend much of their time actually doing stuff in Ottawa, without really looking into what the ‘stuff’ was. And that’s actually what these election cycles mean. We dust ourselves off from our slumber, looks over some platforms and maybe the odd Walrus, Globe & Mail or – god forbid – Toronto Sun article, shake our heads wearily, and shuffle over to the voting booth. Granted, this apathy can certainly be attributed to the fact that we’ve had elections in 2004, 2006, 2008 and now 2011, but that can be seen as a failure of our own collective will as much as is in the uninspiring leadership of the largest party in the minority government. From 2004 to 2006 it was Paul Martin leading the suddenly beleaguered Liberal Party, losing support due to the Quebec sponsorship scandal. Successfully uniting the Conservative Party with the Reform Party – a bizarre offshoot that had little impact on the Liberal Party’s power in the 1990s that’s already become little more than a footnote in the history books – Stephen Harper rode in as an alternative to a centrist-left party that seemed to have grown inefficient due to having no reason to truly exert itself. But as he was not the only alternative – what with the NDP and Bloc Quebecois also stealing the Liberal Party’s seats – Harper found himself with only a minority government, and he has done little in his time as Prime Minister to earn a ‘promotion’ to a majority. So now that we are called up to serve in perhaps the easiest way possible – so easy that a large percentage of us won’t bother doing anything at all – what do we see when we look at our country on the runway, witness stand or operating table? Well just as it was the ethical improprieties that sunk the Liberals after over a decade of near-invincible rule, the biggest threat to the Conservatives is a myriad of flesh wound-like scandals, with Harper just missing the fatal shot to the heart that would certainly sink him. It would be an exaggeration to say that Canadians are policy wonks – even when compared to our neighbours to the south, who are frequently and unfairly caricatured as a nation who votes for their leaders based on whether they would like to have a beer with them or exemplify oversimplified ideas like ‘hope’ and ‘change’ – but I would say that we have insulated ourselves from a level of cynicism that believes the government is inevitably corrupt, and that we hold the opinion that people who abuse their power are no longer fit to have it. There is a proud tradition of this, going all the way back to our first prime minister, when MacDonald was forced to step down due to taking money from certain companies vying for railroad contracts (and perhaps some one of our other qualities are forgiveness, second chances and flightiness, as we voted him again years later). But in 2011, because there is no smoking gun, it’s shaping up to be an election that is going to be promoted and covered like one of miniscule change and passivity (certainly the fact that experts have already weighed in and suggested the likely outcome is another conservative minority government, and maybe, if Harper somehow flubs it, a Liberal minority), when it really is much more than that. It is a federal referendum on the glaring shortcomings of the Stephen Harper government I will go into greater detail on his drawbacks a bit later, but we must consider what we will be getting if we do, in so many words, ‘throw the bum out’. After all, it was fatigue of what was there that brought Harper into power in the first place, not an active desire by Canadians to see him lead. So, not wanting to make the same mistake twice, it’s rather difficult to then honestly and with a wholly clear conscience endorse the only party leader that can beat him: Michael Ignatieff (despite Jack Layton’s late surge). While one shouldn’t see his time away from Canada as a drawback, certainly this fact can be drummed incessantly into campaign rhetoric enough for it to affect some people’s perceptions of the man’s policies. No, the real concern is how much of his platform is not that much different than the current Conservative one. As a way to appeal to the much-needed middle class vote, Ignatieff is stressing health care and education, like any good liberal candidate. But that’s not what we need the most in Canada. Certainly keeping those programs strong, well funded, and out of corporate hands as much as possible is important, but this time it really is a matter of character and conduct. Certainly not in the sense that we want someone who we’d like to have a have a double-double with, but that we have a leader that respects the rules of parliament, and will adopt policies that are supported by the majority of the Canadians, not the industries that employ the majority of Canadians (yes, there is a sizable and essential difference). The Liberal Party platform states that it will increase tax and regulation for large corporations, and with Ignatieff stressing this on the campaign trail, it’s probably the most hopeful sign that the people of Canada will oversee the corporations found therein, and not the other way around. Additionally, this hard line stance on the ever-more powerful global corporate sector is imperative for Canada to reclaim its status on the world stage as a nation that stands up for the average citizen. Certainly how a country is ‘seen’ by the rest of the world is nebulous and divisive thing, depending greatly on the individual or group doing the assessing, but there are both a handful of well-researched and reputable lists based strictly on quantitative criteria and gestures by the international community as a whole that can be utilized as a litmus test. For much of the 1990s Canada consistently ranked first on the United Nations’ Human Development Index. Since 2000, Norway and Iceland have constantly vied for the top spot, with Canada falling to number eight in 2010. On the 2009 Global Integrity Report Index – which measures “the strengths and weaknesses of national level anti-corruption systems” – we were rated ‘moderate’, behind such illustrious nations such as Latvia, Bulgaria, and Romania. While these assessments are occasionally reported in the press, actions by global authorities certainly speak louder than them. We were turned down by the UN for a seat on the Security Council, an unthinkable outcome a decade ago, when we were still considered a leader in advancing freedom and safety across the globe. Now the rejection can be seen as a something of a public scolding. While peacekeeping is still a vital role in ensuring the safety and security for the globe, there remains serious questions as to whether Harper’s military commitment to Afghanistan was (and we can use the past tense as troops are leaving this year) for the benefit of the region or, sadly, an ineffective (and therefore tragic) use of our nation’s soldiers. President Obama’s recently outlining of how America has to pick and choose in which nations to intervene militarily was a back-burner debate in Canada for the last several years. Our international reputation as a beacon of peacekeeping and goodwill has recently been replaced with one of parliamentary malfeasance and big oil calling the shots. While it’s shameful the way nations like Saudi Arabia and Libya have used their the their vast oil fields to manhandle their populace and feed the West’s petroleum addiction, we should never forget that we’re America’s number one dealer, and have been selling them – thanks to the oil sands – some of worst, crack-like crude available (to further the drug metaphor, the crap comes naturally ‘cut’ with other chemicals that we have to excise out before selling, to our detriment and theirs). As for what are goals are within our own borders, the 2006 Clean Air Act proposes a cut of 45 to 65 percent (never a good sign that such a wide result is apparently acceptable) from 2003 greenhouse gas levels by 2050, with a decrease not expected at all until 2020. These weak-kneed proposals meant that according to a Climate Change Performance Index of the top sixty developed countries, Canada ranked 59th in terms of environmental policy, beating only Saudi Arabia. China and America came in at 52nd and 53rd. Would we get better results under the policies of any other party? Certainly yes for the Greens, but we are long way from them being a viable consideration (in fact, the best they can hope for is perhaps a seat or two at most, and in other ridings where the outcome is all-but-certain, a handful of citizens vote for them only so they can persist as a reminder that there’s an alternative to the alternative). Both the Liberals and the NDP are supporters of the oil sands, and both their overall environmental platforms are not as strong as possible, but at the very least they wouldn’t be nearly as dismissive as the current government has been to the idea of environmental reform. In a 2002 letter to party supporters, Harper called the Kyoto protocol a ‘socialist scheme’ meant to funnel money out already successful nations. It is this type of attitude towards any large-scale political issue that Canadians should find upsetting. That one of Harper’s key points of criticism towards Ignatieff is that the Liberal leader is supposedly wasting the Canadian people’s time by forcing this exercise in democracy should speak volumes about the man, who is willingness to portray the act of democracy as a point of attack. An excellent take on Harper’s move not to the right or centre of the political spectrum, but towards a more insular and secretive handling of power is Erna Paris’ April 2011 Walrus article, “The New Solitudes”, which makes a brutally efficient argument that the Harper government is undermining Canada’s reputation as a fair, transparent, modern democratic society. In Paris’ pie e, the allusions to an ‘Americanizing’ style of political discourse are hard to miss. The caricature of Harper on the first page has him sitting down for a haircut, showing a picture of George W. Bush to the wary barber. She opens with her account of attending parliament in November 2009, around the time of Afghan prison detainee scandal, when it was just coming to light that Canadian troops handed over Taliban prisoners to Afghan authorities, knowing that they were to be tortured. Paris found Questions Period in the House of Commons was a ostentatious affair, with opposition MPs demanding that the investigation be expanded and key military figures be questioned, while the Conservatives denied any wrongdoing, promised to cease any inquiries, and accused the other side of politicizing the issue. In handling the issue, Paris concludes that, “the Harper government’s actions called into question the right to free speech; to freedom from obstruction and intimidation; and to institute inquiries, call witnesses, and demand papers — all of them essential to democratic governance.” (Paris, 2010) It should have been a watershed moment for practically everyone involved in Canadian politics. Citizens should have been in uproar, and the oppositional parties should have ridden that populist anger to electoral dominance, if not early in 2010, then certainly today. But that didn’t happen, and it looks like for the first time a scandal is not going to burn the party in power. Which is quite alarming, and Paris wastes no time in getting to the bottom of this transfiguration of Canadian politics: “Errol Mendes, a professor of constitutional and international law at the University of Ottawa, thinks that what drives the prime minister is not traditional libertarianism, which may be socially progressive because of its core commitment to unfettered personal freedom, but rather a version of hard-right, US-style Republican politics that might be termed the modern “Night Watchman.” The Night Watchman is a nineteenth-century theoretical construct in which government assumes only minimal responsibility for the citizenry. Its role is limited to protecting individuals from crime, and the country from foreign aggression: in other words, it is responsible only for the police, the judiciary, prisons, and the military.” (Paris, 2010) But these are not the conditions that the great steps forward in standards of living during the twentieth century took place. A strong, well-financed bureaucratic state that ensured the gap between the rich and poor was a small as possible – practically enforced through progressive taxation – was a key to the post-WWII developments in North America and Europe that championed a limited-market capitalist system (that was certainly watched carefully by those in the government, when regulatory agencies actually meant something). While deregulation has not caught on here like in the States – and Harper trumpeted our much more rigorous banking laws that prevented them from making as risky investments and creating dangerous financial instrument like on Wall Street – there has been a courting of the extending certain aspects of neoliberal economics theories. This can start simply with corporate tax cuts – usually with the explanation that it will jump-start the economy, but this is rarely the case – but can quickly move into altering the regulatory fabric of what corporations are accountable for and how easily they can evade punishment. In fact, the most blatant form of American kowtowing, is the decentralizing of federal powers that should be of most concern for Canadians. When it comes to large-scale government projects like health care in the United States, one of the biggest challenges is dealing with the already existing insurance providers that differ from state to state. Granted their population size requires a more segmented organizing of such institutions, but it doesn’t mean that Canada needs to follows this plan. Yet even this has been put on the chopping block in the last few years: “’Harper is incrementally putting into place this ‘community of communities,’ because he thinks it will enable Quebec to obtain greater autonomy without formally separating from Canada, while allowing Alberta to acquire ever greater independence and taxing powers,’ argues University of Ottawa historian Michael Behiels. ‘On the full range of related constitutional powers — health, social welfare, you name it — the provinces will go their own way. It’s a fine balance between maintaining unity in Canada and losing it. We’re fragile’.” (Paris, 2011) A granting of more autonomy to the provinces could lead to a fragmentation of national programs that for a long time has been the pride of the country. There has been enough debate over the funds given to both Quebec and the Maritimes at the expense of other regions in the country, so it’s particularly audacious that Harper’s plan seems to be fanning these flames by making other provinces vie for federal funds and fend for themselves (forgetting the words of a particularly prescient American politician, who noted that a house divided against itself cannot stand). Not to be outdone by aping the American approach to bureaucracy, we apparently followed our southern neighbour’s approach to letting the threat of terrorism subvert our constitution: “Canadian human rights organizations began to lobby for [Omar] Khadr’s repatriation on grounds of citizenship in 2007. Between 2009 and 2010, three high courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, ruled that the Harper government had breached his constitutional rights under the Charter. Essentially, the prime minister ignored these legal decisions. Canada became the only country to refuse to repatriate a citizen from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay.” (Paris, 2011) Granted, the scandals that ‘rock’ Ottawa would be mere footnotes, and get buried on page 14 of the New York Times, but for too long the indifferent byline by us has been, “well, I’m glad at least I’m not living in the States”. Said so often, with our eyes and ears focused on the problems down below, we failed to noticed that in many respects American political ideologies and discourses we detested came to roost in our own halls of government. Echoing the occasional threat of ‘shutting down the capitol’ in Washington, the twice-proroguing of parliament can be complimented as only as form of excellent use of political sleight-of-hand. Beyond that, it is nothing more than an attempt for the ruling party to avoid the democratic process, and to play for time in hopes that the dissatisfaction of their most recent decisions will cool and be forgotten. The only thing more loathsome is that it seems to have worked. We rely on a healthy and diverse fourth estate to keep us informed and (ideally) help us see the broader pictures of complex issues and not just feed the twenty four hour news cycle. And while the quality of a Canadian news media that has been shaken with closings and corporate mergers galore can always be up for debate, certainly Harper is winning no favours from them thanks to limiting his press conferences all through this campaign to only five questions from reporters. And throughout his prime ministership it has been a common complaint of journalists that Harper’s office releases travel itineraries much too late for them to make corresponding plans, whether travelling across the country or the globe. Apparently Harper is the one politician for whom it is safe to get between him and a camera. Is this the horror-upon-horror, we-have-to-throw-the-tyrant out type problems? Of course not. But evading the press is a just a more acceptable form of proroguing parliament. Avoiding answering questions, refusing to own up and address what it is you’ve done. How can a nation be proud of leaders who do such a thing? A ducking of responsibility should be particularly unwelcome in a country that prides itself on its modesty and a ‘do the right thing’ ethos. There’s just an incredibly large amount of little things rather than a single, Watergate-like scandal to ruin him once and for all. And of course, thank goodness for that, but our supposed reticence shouldn’t prevent us from thinking that we can do better. Ignatieff is portrayed in Conservative Party attack ads as an outsider, who bailed on Canada for Harvard decades ago and is only returning for personal gain, but it is Stephen Harper’s minority government that better embodies actual American policy. Should the Liberal leader stress the danger of what might happen if Harper had an actually majority government? Certainly, but talk of respect for the rule of law and an effort to improve transparency would be much more in accordance of what Canadians would like from their government. The election campaign itself has a Canadian take on the typical political discourse one can come to expect for a Western nation. Superficial yes, but comparatively courteous. The television commercials (whether hyping one candidate or attacking another) have quality production that match those of America, but lack that unmistakable bile. The debates found the party leaders sniping at each other’s shortcomings in the House of Commons, while trying to cram policy platitudes whenever they could. While this writer is aghast that Green party leader Elizabeth May has been excluded from the debates, it’s not hard to see why none of the other parties would want her at the table. Harper doesn’t want to be lectured on his poor environmental record, and Ignatieff, Layton, and Duceppe don’t want to lose precious votes to a party that doesn’t stand a chance in winning and so could actually help Harper (all the other parties also have the problem that they aren’t exactly decrying the oil sands, a fact which May will most likely remind them all of). In other words, it remains unclear whether in this final week whether Harper’s wounds have been sufficiently exposed for voters to decide that we’d have had enough of him. And certainly much of this has to do with the fact that Ignatieff and a late surging Layton hasn’t truly made the case that they would certainly do better. It doesn’t seem like it’s been five year of conservative minority-rule. It felt like something that was awfully easy to tune out. In “The New Solitudes”, Paris observes that, “we have, in other words, a tradition of trying to bridge our differences: promoting unity is as Canadian as backyard hockey and Tim Hortons” (Paris, 2011). Harper’s tenure has fragmented the country in such a way that we haven’t even got the energy to properly to vote him out. We seem to remain in parliamentary limbo, between uninspired realities delivered by the conservatives and the heady promises of the Liberals and NDP that all those angling for the top seat make. Sensibly, we’re not thrilled or hoodwinked by either, but it truly leaves no middle ground. It appears that we either continue down the path we are on until the other shoe finally drops, or we make a shift slowly tip toe towards an alternative that has no clear and definitive target (is a transparent and constitution-abiding majority party possible in the 21st century?). Well, sometimes change for the sake of change is all you can really ask for. Sources Climate Change Performance Index. (http://www.germanwatch.org/ccpi) Paris, Erna. “The New Solitudes”. Walrus.com. March 2011. Accessed March.8.2011. Global Integrity Report. (http://report.globalintegrity.org/) United Nation’s Human Development Index. (http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2010_EN_Table1.pdf)
“Depending on who you are and what’s happening to you during any set period of time, either nothing ever occurs of much importance or one big thing changes the course of life forever. It’s the reconciling of these extremes that much of human progress rests upon.”
2010 was full of missed opportunities, and thank god for that, because it’s unlikely that civilization as we know it could have withstood the true and (in some cases) necessary changes that might have happened. Summing up the twelve months with, “it could have been worse” is just about right, as it is one of the few bland maxims that people from almost anywhere on the sociopolitical spectrum can agree upon. “Weathering the storm” is another middling cliché that seems particularly apt, as no one in their right mind would say that the economic crisis is anywhere near over, even though according to certain statistics it wrapped up nicely in the summer as certain industries (read: financial) began to report record profits and the Dow hit record highs. Which just go to show how irrelevant many of the measures of the economy truly are to the average citizen, regardless of what country you live in. 2010 was yet another year where the gulf between the rich and poor widened, and the powerful wrote the rules to benefit themselves first and everyone else second. Nothing new, to be sure, but the question to ask now is just how much more everyone else can take. What does a Western World clearly in its twilight years do now? Perhaps the most revealing international development is just how much weaker America’s wagging finger at China’s supposed improprieties has become. Yet China can’t gloat too loudly because no one is really sure what bringing half a billion people out of poverty and into a materialist consumer culture is going to do to worldwide resources. Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to a jailed Chinese dissident reinforces an image of an authoritarian superpower that grouchily snubs the rest of the world when things don’t seem to go it’s way (America has apparently taught them well). As for the rest of the world, Europe is cutting spending to plenty of protests, Africa is no more stable than in 2009, South America is just minding its own business, and Antarctica is giving away giant pieces of ice for a song. 2010 was a year of patchwork. The big family that is civilization somehow agreed that a complete overhaul of our one and only house (and the rules that govern it) is out of our budget, so we’re just going to once again buy some wallpaper and WD40 and do a bit of superficial fixing up. The many events of the last twelve months attest to this dismal theory quite nicely. How the world handled the big problems was half-assed rather than head-on. The earthquake in Haiti killed approximately 300,000 people, which unfortunately said more about the infrastructure of the country than the severity of the earthquake. Relief workers were frustrated by entering the country and finding no one in control (doctors coming from other nations to treat the wounded were shocked to find that the only places they could reside in insisted on charging rent) and eleven months later – even after a general election – most of the country remains in ruins. The BP/Transocean/Haliburton oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico set off an epic chain reaction of failures. The corporate push for profit at the expense of safety was initial problem, which manifested itself in the form of an uncontrollable geyser of oil and gas, which caused a series of devastating explosions that took the lives of eleven deck workers on the Deep Water Horizon oil platform. Emergency procedures were not followed exactly to due a reluctance to miss certain production benchmarks, as cutting off the well would mean a waiting period to start drilling again. The Obama administration looked particularly foolish, having extolled the virtues of off-shore deep-water drilling only weeks before the disaster, and introducing only a temporary ban on the practice afterwards. Any notion of a revamping of American energy policy – along the notion that the current extraction method for the current dominant energy source is dangerous and causing incalculable environmental damages – was never seriously considered (the biggest missed opportunity for unquestionably necessary reform this year hands down. Would’ve changed the world if someone actually punched the petroleum trade in the gut). The various multinational corporations involved passed the buck on down the line. The $20 billion dollars set aside for those that lost paychecks and profits due to the spill was set upon by lawyers and opportunists. No charges have been filed against BP, despite running up a record amount of safety violations in the last two years across the globe. The other shoe seems to never want to drop when it comes to the power and reach of corporate culture around the globe. It can get away with practically anything and the worst that might happen is to be hauled in front of a committee or conference and explain with hat in hand that mistakes happen from time to time (see also: financial, real estate, and weapons industries). On the Middle Eastern front, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have just not collapsed completely. That’s all the good news coming out of these regions. Throwing bales of money at a problem won’t solve it, but it will definitely keep enough government-type people protected by enough people with heavy artillery to keep any rebel groups from successfully overthrowing them. Iraq went on for months without a government as internal squabbling between political parties kept anything from being done as violence rose again. Many of the middle class intellectuals who returned after leaving in the years after the invasion are leaving once again. No one wants to call whatever’s happening in Afghanistan a war, which is fine, since that’s not what it is, but no one in any position of authority wants to call it what it really is: an occupation. When tens of thousands of foreign troops are required to prop up a government most of the country’s citizens regard as inefficient and corrupt, you aren’t simply there to hunt out the Taliban; you’re there to keep it from becoming the political opposition. American foreign policy critics like Chomsky, Boggs, and Johnson warn that America is coming to the limits of its power in regards to its empire building. Hundreds of billions of mostly borrowed dollars are propping up flailing Middle Eastern states while on the domestic front economic growth remains stagnant while the middle class – the true measure of a successful society – continues to shrink. Obama is fighting wars in so many different guises that the only way to pay for the required work is to raise the debt ceiling once again. Money woes plagued the rest of the world as well. Canada – least hurt by the financial crisis thanks to a regulated banking industry and with a not very popular minority government – went all deer-in-the-headlights and did absolutely nothing (including ignoring the problems with the extremely toxic oil sands in northern Alberta). Meanwhile, certain European nations only almost failed economically. For most of the eighties and nineties, globalization meant building cheap crap in another country and then sending it to the West. Now globalization means private (big banks) and public (government) economies are interdependent and fused together so tightly that the whole world paid for the bank bailout in the fall of 2008. A global regulatory industry is only as strong as its weakest party, which is why derivative/CDO mad America was able to pulverize more responsible international markets as well. But much of the reform that most sensible people believe must occur didn’t get that much press this year. Instead the media focused on the more nebulous reactions to how lousy things had gotten. Like in 2006 and 2008, when the democrats welcomed the leftists who hated Bush for temporary electoral gains, in 2010 the Republican Party embraced the Tea Party and their spendthrift ways to win back to House. Outside of voting the old-fashioned way, anger in America took the guise of peaceful and aimless protest that rested on mostly empty platitudes. The right meeting behind Glenn Beck in August and demanding a return to Christian principles, the left meeting behind Jon Stewart in October and demanding a return to civility. Good luck with that. Europe, however, remembering 1968 in spirit, took to the streets not to protest war (take your pick of which one) but government austerity measures. The Greeks didn’t like the medicine it was prescribed by the powerhouses of Germany and France and tossed bombs in its own street protesting a government that had been giving itself more than it had. In England, the removal of tuition caps threatened to triple the cost of a university education and the youth who marched in the streets and lit fires were reminded yet again that any political coalition typically means two parties getting together to screw the lowest common denominator, as opposed to one party doing it all by their lonesome. But at least there are different political parties to speak of. China’s attempt to shower it’s citizens with Western style consumption levels to cover up for the fact that the billions living there don’t have a say in government can fall apart any moment. And if we check out the dangling peninsula up in the northern part of that country, we find a truly mad dictator and his probably crackpot sun. After years of stringing them along and being just generally paranoid and schizophrenic, North Korea egged on South Korea to such a point – after sinking a military boat and firing some missiles – that the latter began practicing military drills with assistance from America, but as of yet it has not yet grown into anything more than grave threats, with the North promising to use nuclear weapons if the South attacks. For the hawks who are tired of ‘economic solutions’ for everything that ails the world, it sets the stage for a proxy war of influence between America and China, backing the South and North, respectively. Which won’t happen. Everything blathered about above is a form of exposition or prologue for real change, good or ill. There could have been war, but there wasn’t. There could have been a double-dip recession (or a super-slide into depression), but it just wheezed along. There could have been great reforms to finance or energy policy, but we ducked that, too. The status quo remained steady, and the lucky leaders breathed a sigh of relief and gave themselves a healthy bonus. Most frustrating perhaps, is that we know more about these misdeeds and behind-the-scenes goings on by the people in power than ever before, but nothing seems to change. It’s the sad truth about Wikileaks. You can dump all the he said she said cables that embarrass some government officials, but the reality is that no one trusts the people in power that much, anyway. Confirming out suspicions only proves we’re right to be cynical about such things; it doesn’t necessarily get the masses throwing rocks at city hall. I don’t know what a devastating, life altering ‘news leak’ would look like, but it would have to be more damning than finding out that the leader of Saudi Arabia doesn’t like the leadership of Iran. So what does all this mean? At this point, not much. It’s like a joke with a near interminable pause before the punch line. An overdose of information and a dearth of action. All talking, no walking. Fear was stoked by anyone who wanted a shortcut to a bit of power. The ever-alien ‘them’ still plotted on coming for your jobs, your guns, or your religious paraphernalia, and it didn’t matter if you were talking to people in Alabama, Lyon, Kabul, or Shanghai. One was meant to take shelter in either the state or the collective fighting against the state. The middle ground shrank again 2010, and on occasion when certain political decisions landed there for the sake of expediency, no one on either side walked away happy. The world of art and culture reflected these chaotic-but-not-quite-epochal situations perfectly. The declining relevance of television was seen in the Late Night Talk Show Wars, Part II. The most exciting thing on TV was a behind-and in-front-of-the-scenes fight of what time a long running program would be on, with no one involved really noting that with advent of digital TV and recorders, people now watched television whenever they wanted, 11:35, 12:05 and 12:35 be damned (plus there’s this thing called the internet…). Some of the acclaimed albums of the year didn’t know whether to run towards or away from the madness. The title of LCD Soundsystem’s third album asserted that This Is Happening, but spent all of its runtime on the dance floor, as if it was the most capable location to push out all of the uncertainty. James Murphy sings of how he can change, how his needs are meager and that he just wants to get home. Whatever is happening, he can turn away from it and look for solace in the private life. Just Dance Yrself Clean. Kanye West acknowledges the unrealized with My Dark Twisted Fantasy, and with grand, symphonic musical style spent most of the album wondering why his life – or really, why anybody’s – has become so complicated and, in many ways, so unfulfilling. Not wanting to mince words, the last track – which contains a lengthy snippet of a near-apocalyptic Gil-Scott Heron poem – is titled “Who Will Survive in America?” The best-reviewed films of the year portrayed the corporate culture enveloping youth and innovation (The Social Network), the danger of balancing duplicity in one body (Black Swan), and the importance of superficial concerns of figureheads (The King’s Speech). Documentarian Charles Ferguson simply made a devastating, vitriol-inducing film on the causes behind the financial crisis and names it after a most underhanded crime: Inside Job. Everything is breaking down, going in circles, or void of value and power. And hey, on that note, what Broadway show could better exemplify this year than Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark? A nonsensical title with great hype and high-quality talent coming in, only to be faced with a series of delays, cast injuries, and middling reviews. A complete mess, with no one seemingly too sure who thought a singing superhero would be a good idea. But with so much money invested, there’s no real choice but to aimlessly plod forwards. The expectations of 2010 were minimal to begin with – thanks in part to the unresolved clusterfuck that was the Copenhagen environmental summit in December 2009 – and the boat barely rocked, the whole way through even when many people hoped it would for future benefit (the spill in the gulf wasn’t a come-to-Jesus moment for the energy industry or energy users in the West). On the other hand, it didn’t get that much worse. Never have so many people concerned for the future been so miserably satisfied with the endless holding pattern that was 2010. Another year of ‘successful’ deferral. Let’s hope 2011 blows off all this bottled up steam by heading to the gym instead of the couch or firing range. No reason for all the wrong people to get used to the feel of remote control or steel in their hands once again. Cooler and more sensible heads have to prevail in the next 365 days. All this fucking around can’t be good for the evolutionary process.
Good night 2010, good morning 2011, and good luck to one and all…
The Periodic Table Problem: Einsteinium I call bullshit on that one. Not that I doubt the existence of the actinide series element that does not occur naturally and was first found in 1953 in the remains of the first hydrogen bomb explosion. No, my objection is the name. Poor famous Albert Einstein certainly got the shit end of the stick on this one, but that happens quite frequently when it comes to our attempts at honoring people and their work. We certainly have the best intentions at heart when we name something after someone, but that’s exactly what the road to hell is paved with (soon to be title, I’m sure, the Charles Manson expressway). The nucleus of this idea is an extremely old one. Having a monument or tomb with your name plastered on it was as close as you could get to living forever, as it gave a chance for people to remember you whenever they passed by. For the ancient Egyptians, the pyramids were massive tombs meant for the Pharaohs. Ideally, whenever you walked by one, you’d think about them and how nice it was that they didn’t kill you or your family (the closest thing we have for that today is naming airports after political leaders, except in LA, where they name them after Western stars). Living for a moment in one person’s thoughts is the best thing we can get to conquering death, but clearly this works better for a select group of people than most of us. Roy ‘Pretty Woman’ Orbison was once asked by a reporter how he’d like to be remembered, and the singer confessed that he’d just like to be remembered, ‘nuff said. Which is a nice humble response, but one subject to the fragmented and forgettable minds of the many, many people who are going to live after you kick the bucket. And most of them are going to have no problem reducing your life to a single song, haircut, or felony. In fact, I would but forth the opposite maxim of Roy ‘Only the Lonely’ Orbison: How we remember a person is more important than whether we remember them at all. At my Alma matter, there was an arts and sciences building cleverly called The Sidney Smith Building for Arts and Sciences. I don’t know who Sidney Smith was (it’s an old building, so I assume he is dead), I don’t know if he loved his wife and children, or whether he strangled puppies in his spare time. Other than the rather safe assumption that he gave a lot of money to the university to get his name on a building, he is nothing to me, so I am therefore left with little else to judge him by. My experiences in the building named after him is – on an admittedly superficial level – shaping my opinions of the man.
When I got a disappointing grade on a
paper for a class that occurred in Sid Smith, I projected my hate onto
this mystery benefactor who had the nerve to have building erected in
which my hard work would not be fully appreciated. Everyone in the Arts
and Sciences program had at least one class in this building, so it was
possible for everyone to know exactly what you meant when you bitched
about Sid Smith, and they would offer their heartfelt sympathies for what
this horrible
But we had drugs and The Sidney Smith Building – and almost any small city park or renovated art gallery wing – are desperate grasps for immortality by those on the recognisability D-list who just happened to have deeper pockets and bigger egos than most. To your friends and family you are considered a generous philanthropist committed to the future of postsecondary education or the fine arts. To everyone else you’re steel, glass, and concrete at best, and where dreams go to die at worst. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Albert Einstein are all recognized the world over for their professions and level of success, even if most don’t remember details like the Bay of Pigs, Reaganomics, and marrying your cousin. There’s enough there to remember the person as more than simply a name, and with that, there should be little reason to plaster it onto airports, buildings and chemical elements. In fact, in these special cases of near-universal recognition, it almost cheapens the people’s memories. How many enlightening experiences have you had in an airport? You curse a blue streak when you hear that your flight is going to be late arriving at JFK. Today you don’t even have to call it ‘JFK Airport’. The three letters alone is enough to make the mental connection (unlike your next flight), not to the man, but the place where planes take off and land. It seems below Einstein to have his name attached to any product, service, or thing (his ‘brand’ name recognition is high enough to have a line of educational baby toys with his moniker built into the title). He has his own line of memes, like ‘E=MC2’, ‘theory of relativity’, and ‘veery eenterestink!’ (I piece my history together from discarded sugar packets), that at the very least, reflect the fact that he was an exceptionally brainy German scientist who spoke out against the use of nuclear weapons after the first use of nuclear weapons. So in the case of Einsteinium, we honor him by naming a radioactive metal element after him: ‘Hey, we found some new stuff in the destructive chemical reaction you hate! We’re naming it after you!’ It’s a bit like naming the rifle used by Lee Harvey Oswald the ‘Kennedy’. Uneasy remembrances all around. And just like a gun, Einsteinium – being radioactive – can kill you if you’re not too careful. Behind the public face of the cheery scientist who proved that spacetime is warped are tiny little particles that would love to give you cancer if given half (life) a chance. But this labeling was done by esteemed scientists who were rummaging through atomic debris. It takes a very a special city full of very ‘special’ people to take the idea of the name and fuck up so amazingly in its attempts to have people ‘live forever’. The Hollywood Walk of Fame has made it inevitable for you to physically walk upon the names of the ‘greats’, although even that term might generous for, say, Cliff Arquette. At least a building is large enough to give one pause as you might just glance at the name overhead or beside, but in the harsh wilds of Hollywood Blvd. and Vine Streets, you have the opportunity to not only ignore thousands of dead people but spit, toss garbage, and ask for spare change upon them. If the only time people think about you is when they ask, ‘Who the hell is Gower Champion?’ as they get lost trying to find the Viper room, then it’s clear Roy ‘In Dreams’ Orbison’s humble hopes were misplaced. Being remembered isn’t for everyone, but that’s only the first hurdle that’s need to be jumped regarding how we handle memory and honor. When you’re dealing with the cream of humanity’s crop – an Einstein, a Roosevelt, a Willis – you’re kind of throwing the world a curveball when you name them after near-invisible radioactive poison. If Einsteinium is how we salute our best, it’s a good sign that our exuberance usually gets ahead of our rational thinking. I mean, wouldn’t it be better if we named such a nasty particle after something we hate, and end up with something like, say, ‘Dahmerium’?
The Ascetic Generation The Baby Boomers and Gen-X fucked up. We have to right the world all by our lonesome, millennials…. Well shit. The hottest summer on record. And in one place, the driest, and in another not too far off, the wettest. The dire warnings of those stressing the dangers of climate change aren’t for some nebulous time in the future. The horrible effects of burning insane amounts of CO2 are being felt the world over. It’s just that we here in the west are wealthy enough to literally write off the problems with increased energy bills (and by using more energy in the form of AC and heating, we are amplifying the basic problem, resulting in an ever widening vicious circle) and food prices (crops that die because of drought or flooding costs everyone money). The developing world is falling apart because they don’t have an infrastructure that (so far) can manage with these problems. Food riots, acres upon acres of inhospitable and infertile land, and the spread of disease is the face of climate change, but it’s hard to sell this connection to the public at large because these problems have always been the hallmarks of these regions. Only now it is amplified, and therefore nullifying the effects of decades of aid being pumped into the developing world. What’s to be done? Well, the answers are obvious. They’ve been pushed around and debated over for many years. And if you do any superficial research into alternative energy, you frustratingly find that we have the technology to start up many of these reforms and programs immediately. What there is a lack of is political capital, because the current energy industry that ‘assist’ lawmakers in making decisions isn’t interested in switching horses (coal, oil) midstream (while coal and oil are still around). This is particularly annoying in that if the energy industry invests their vast profits into alternative forms of energy, they can retain their financial stranglehold on us, but at least now we aren’t crippling the planet in the process, meaning their profit making can go on forever. Despite this seeming ‘win-win’ situation, the most essential and influential players in the energy resources world aren’t biting but rather fighting against reforms that would eventually make them rich, so sadly, we cannot legislate our way clean. Corporate lobbying culture has seen to that. But as the director of the excellent documentary Food Inc. reminds us that, in relation to the multibillion-dollar food industry, ‘you vote three time day’. This basic aphorism – that your only real political power is your wallet – has to be applied to a myriad of other sectors in society. If your choice on the election ballot is between Corporately Funded Candidate A and Corporately Funded Candidate B, then it’s clear that voting, elections and the political discourse is not where any real reform is going to emerge. If corporations are the true leaders of our society, then we must stop supporting corporations that make money off such harmful practices. This isn’t, easy, obviously, but many people chipping away at the giant’s armor does have a noticeable effect. And ‘many people’ is the key; that communal aspect of coming together for a common goal. If the leaders, those that we are told are the finest citizens that can possibly represent our democratic ideals can’t pass a worthwhile energy or carbon tax bill, we have to do the equivalent ourselves. And that means changing our lifestyle, in both minute and massive ways, because hitting the corporations in their profit margin is the only way we are going to get necessary change in the twenty-first century. The easy ways are stuff cynics can deride as hippie shit, but if millions of people do it, the cynics can kiss our collective ass. EASY -buy locally grown food, either at the supermarket or a farmer’s co-op (which is definitely fresher and sometimes – if you buy co-op food packages – cheaper, too). -buy energy efficient light bulbs (a bit more expensive at first, yes, but many of them last longer, and then your heating bills go down). -and Captain Obvious recommends that you, uh… don’t leave lights on in rooms you aren’t in, and that you turn them all off when you leave the house. And hey, don’t turn the dishwasher on unless it’s full. Ditto for loads of laundry. -yes, climate change is making the world hotter, and that means the temptation to crank the AC is greater than ever. But resisting is key. Buy a fan and keep your ice cube try well stocked, as both are cheaper than running the air conditioning. And back to Captain Obvious: make sure the air conditioning or heating is off when you leave the house. The Easy ways above are almost nothing more than common sense reminders that can actually save you money. It gets a bit harder now, as some of the most effective ways of cutting your carbon footprint is spending more money, or changing your daily routines. NOT AS EASY -buy energy saving appliances, especially refrigerators. So far, these cost more than traditional appliances, but plenty of government programs offer discounts, rebates, and subsidies to bring the cost for you down. -try not to own a freezer. Obviously a lot of hardworking people don’t have time to cook a meal from scratch every night, and a frozen pizza is an easy dinner shortcut, but even stuff like this can be bought on the way home instead of lying around for days in a not necessarily full or useful freezer in the basement that is sucking up power like a vacuum. -don’t drive when you can walk or bike. Even if you’re going to the store down the street, bring a couple reusable bags and enjoy the walk. Exercise is a nice byproduct of this method of transportation. The tough stuff deals mainly with the most devastating cause of climate change: transportation HARD(ER) -carpool. If a bunch of you are going to the same location, meet at a sensible central location and take one car there. It makes getting there quicker, too, since everyone else is also carpooling. -attached to this is public transportation. It can be incredibly frustrating, as in some cases governments are unwilling to spend massive amounts of money on these construction projects. But if enough people use whatever buses, trains, or streetcars are in place, the greater the chance that the routes will be extended and improved. -ask yourself if you and your partner really need two cars. Or even one car. There are plenty of car membership rental places that can easily provide you with four wheels and an engine once or twice a week when you need it. -and if you do need a car, consider a hybrid. Or anything that isn’t an SUV, because chances are you don’t fucking need an SUV. Admit it: No one does. If you need it for work, you buy a pick up truck or a van. If you need it for leisure, you’re an asshole. A decent sedan can pull your boat. -by far the worst form of pollution is air travel, in part due to the fact that jet exhaust is released at thirty five thousand feet, essentially ruining the ozone layer at its doorstep. So if you can just use the magic of cyberspace for a business meeting, consider that. And if you really need to get up in the air and over land and sea for your vacation – having exhausted all the lovely spots that are bus, train, or driving distance from your house – at least by some carbon offsets. Once again, a drop in the bucket if one person does it, but a worthwhile endeavour if enough people get on board. -the last insanely hard thing is to make your entire house carbon neutral. This is the equivalent of a complete renovation, right down to your foundation. It’s all the rage in many northern European countries, which is why they look at us ruefully most of the time.
A lot of these points are listed in many excellent books on how to make your home and lifestyle more environmentally friendly (try George Monbiot’s Heat, Bill McKibben’s Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, or David Orr’s Down to the Wire), so please don’t take this list as the most authoritative or extensive. The fact that so much of this (mostly) practical information is available to all is what makes it so aggravating that corporations/governments have done so little to push for changes on a wider scale. Now outside of carbon neutralizing your home, none of these recommendations really ‘stick it’ to the giant energy companies. Sure by using less energy by doing simple stuff like turning of all the lights and not blasting the AC we’re very slightly lowering their profits, but it’s through using less of their services they’re offering, not turning our backs on them completely. What does the true switch look like? How much can we really cut out of our energy use to make them change their economic model? How much does the government have to subsidize – which translates to how much do we have to subsidize – alternative forms of energy until the energy industry wholly embraces it? One almost wants to believe that the executives at these energy companies should see these long-term problems and are just trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the old way before making the inevitable switch. No one would argue that oil is either getting harder and harder to access (which results in risky ventures like deep water drilling), or harder and harder to purify and filter (the oil mud in Alberta is so expensive to clean that until the incredible rise in oil prices a few years back, it wasn’t an economically viable choice). This alone comes off as piss-poor long term planning, but it boggles the mind that they are actively distancing themselves from alternative energy – even fighting its introduction by smaller companies – instead of embracing it so it can charge they shit out of us for using their wind turbines and solar panels. But throwing up our hands in disgust at the sluggish reluctance of the powers that be is one of the temptations that have to be avoided. The real problem is our ‘new year’s resolution’ phenomenon. This is the one time where sticking to the new routines is essential. Unlike your decision to diet or quit smoking, the ramifications of going off ‘the program’ three months in is not only going to affect you, but all of us. While I can save a rant against pointless materialism for any other column or article, it goes hand in hand with being more environmentally conscious. If we keep consuming only what we want, we’re going to run out of what we need. We’ve been inundated here in the West that more of everything is the cure for what ails you. Psychologist Barry Schwartz notes that more choice just depresses people because we have that many more options that we can agonize over for not taking. It’s time to start doing more with less not only for ourselves, but our rapidly decaying and unstable blue and green ball. We’ve exhausted the ‘natives used every part of the buffalo’ analogy in terms of how wasteful we are, but it is getting to the point where our novelty obsessed culture will result in a wealth of commodities and products being available almost exclusively to the upper ten percent income earners that before was typically consumed by all. The middle class in some of the most powerful Western nations is shrinking, just when nearly a billion people in China and India are ascending out of poverty. There isn’t enough stuff for everyone, plain and simple. And when supply can’t meet demand at the same time the planet is overheating and costing governments a fortune, we are on the way to a real global financial catastrophe, not just having to bail out banks for trading invisible money. Just giving up certain things, altering the way we live our lives just so, is a good start to taking a step back from the abyss. A doomsday tone is not exactly the best way to get people off the couch, but I’m not asking you to take it to the streets. Instead just get up and make sure the lights are off in your home. ‘Ascetic’ isn’t a primitive, dirty word. It can be considered an opportunity to consider what exactly is important to one’s life. Cut down on space, energy, two of everything, and multinational-made luxuries, and maybe there will be enough for all of us in the decades to come. The question we can ask ourselves with pride twenty years from now might be, ‘what did you give up?’
Generation Y: Inheriting the World that Sold the Earth (this text is based on the immediate (or so) reaction to a New York Times article from May 9th, 2010 by A.O. Scott, in the Week in Review Section, concerning Gen X-er’s hitting middle age: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/weekinreview/09aoscott.html) Everyone shut up for a minute. My generation just needs a moment to get its head together. We have got a lot of messes to clean up. Our bank accounts are smaller than the chances of getting an effective global environmental policy instituted. And there’s barely any places left to sneak a cigarette. That’s other people’s fault. Older people’s fault. We’ve got quite the selection of people to blame. Two big, bad horribly over-categorized and overanalyzed generations to choose from. How about the Baby Boomers, having been in power for three decades or so, overseeing the corporatizing of the entire world, and now entering into their Autumn Years having partied in the sixties and seventies, sobered up in the eighties, grown nostalgic yet self-righteous in the nineties, and then completely bitter and insane in the new millennium? Or should we cast the rueful eye at Generation X, those who are just getting comfortable in the corporate/government corner offices, having crawled over their young parent’s stashes, being raised by advertising and finding the internet in college, but never having a reason to live because the Cold War ended with a whimper? A.O. Scott says Gen X (defined as those born between roughly 1962 and 1979) is the one generation that never grew up? That missed the fighting on the other side of the world and only felt the end of communism through the 24 hour news channels and so had to settle ‘the beginning of aggressively marketed nachos’? (itself a quote from Burke’s ‘The Ask’). Well we of Generation Y (say, those born between 1980 to 2000/2001) not only did indeed grow up, but had our midlife crisis by twenty. By the mid nineties, the internet had invaded our homes and the marketed nachos went from aggressive to eat-it-or-risk-social-ostracization - right around when the oldest of us were hitting our teens – and these not-so-subtle changes marked a rapid acceleration in how Western society interacted with itself and the world on a myriad of levels. ‘Accelerated’ might seem like a term every generation uses to describe their distinction from the previous, but it wasn’t just the amount of changes in how we experience the world, but how quickly they came and altered nearly everything. We’ve seen, heard, and done it all in a rapidly shrinking time frame. Cell phone have gone from bricks with an antenna sticking out of them to a video-camera-word-processing-music-playing device the size of your palm. We were given these by high school. Music? Haven’t paid for some or all of it since 2000. And who needs a record label? Or instruments? Just use garageband. Information? Everything is at my fingertips. Seconds away. There’s no reason to live with a question unanswered. Sex/Porn? Seen it all by thirteen. (and I mean, all. Not just some Playboy pictorials or a father’s basement Penthouse. Facials, gloryholes, bestiality, and two girls, one cup. It got to the point where goatse.cx became a popular rick-roll meme) The media? Has been in a hyper drive state with the advent of hundred of cable channels, including a news culture completely reorganized and reoriented since 9/11 as a freakout machine. Oh yeah, that 9/11thing. The first wave of us hit university and high school around the fall of 2001. While this alone is a shocking world changing event on its own, thanks largely in part of that day we’ve grown up with the faint idea of perpetual warfare (a war on ‘terror’, which is a noun also used to describe seeing ghosts and feeling earthquakes) becoming real… into a horribly misguided and mishandled war. And it’s not just the bombs. Outside military conflict, the state of the world has become completely fucked up. Impending environmental disaster. Energy shortages coupled with insane energy prices. The rise of China and India. Loose nukes. Large swaths of the planet still living under oppressive regimes and/or extreme poverty. Absolutely disappointment in the democratic governments who seem to be mired in bureaucratic inefficiency while frolicking in the pockets of special interests. And just to top it off, an epic financial disaster when we first began to grab the reigns and become the up and coming adults. But this is all happening somewhere else. Or maybe down the street. It’s getting hard to tell the difference when you spend so much time in a virtual cyberspace world. We have to talk to our friends. (all seven hundred of them) And keep an eye on our perceived enemies. (Al Qaeda and Goldman Sachs, unless you work for either) And find out what people in LA/London/Tokyo are doing. Right now. Our idea of time has become centered around instant gratification. If there’s an internet connection, the distant between stimulus and response should be zero. Maybe Gen X built it, but we turned it from the work of geeks into gospel. This is how society works now. If television was the technology that defined the baby boomers, and the expansion of it to cable was for Gen X, we got the internet, the television we could talk back to and alter and deconstruct. We became the shitty, shitty stars of our own global television program. This is what is expected. This has changed our DNA. The world has three seconds to fix my problem or I am changing everything about myself on my facebook profile. But the downside to the embracing of this incessant now is that we’re aging faster than you. We’re growing even number than you, at a much younger age. We’ve had to do this, to drown out an incessant buzz and chatter of the technology we’ve embrace too quickly, but only because materialism has widened its message of accessible essentialism. We haven certainly a fuzzy, slippery sense of value, but only part because we’ve come after a generation who was practically defined as not having one. We should aim to do good (whatever that is, since doing good locally is probably killing dozens globally, and doing good in Africa is probably costing people jobs in Germany or America), we should probably be humble (but we’ve had it drilled into us that we’re so fucking special, and we are sometimes called ‘trophy kids’), and we should probably respect our elders (even though we’ve been told that all the problems this world has is the fault of all you greedy, graying, short-sighted jerks who sold our future for a cottage renovation). There’s good reason to take any maxim with suspicion. Postmodernism has overlapped several generations, but we’re the ones who get it in their children’s programming. The media is linked to advertisers, who are linked to corporations, and all of this becomes obvious and being aware of it becomes second nature, but the subculture/underground alternatives last for three months before being swallowed and bought out by something bigger and secretly insidious. There is no truth, just temporary agendas. Chomsky has gone from professor to sage to ‘well, obviously’. With culture splintering, the ability to slip into specific niches of society, politics, theology, what have you, more concepts and ideas of these disciplines have become more tolerated than ever before. Especially since this is a global phenomenon, and the large morass of whatever Western Culture is has become increasingly global. OH, AND THAT BRINGS UP THE OTHER MAJOR CHANGE WE’VE HAD HAMMERED INTO OUR HEADS SINCE WE STARTED SURFING THE NET: We’re on our way out. If not the planet (thanks to this thing called ‘Global Warming’ and ‘Climate Change’. Ask some of us about it) then certainly Western Dominance of the World, thanks to those numerous and hardworking Indians and Chinese. We grew up knowing outsourcing was a way of life. That China became a super power in record time. That it was gobbling up western business, western energy sources, and finally western power. We grew up to hearing Gen X being told that everything was on overdrive and falling apart. Our way of life, our arts and culture, our knowledge of history, the very molecules of our being… Time is of the essence, because it’s slipping away, Great changes are forecast; so smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. And a disappointingly large segment of the population – our generation or not – believes that the world is going to end of December 21st, 2012, which says a lot about how people feel about their place in the world and its overall state. Best for all to go away than grow up in it. What Gen-X grew into accepting through their youth and young adulthood, we began to have drilled into when we were learning to read, and it’s never stopped. Everything is coming at us in shards and pieces, to reiterate a hallmark of postmodernist thought. There are no grand claims or ultimate truths. And maybe we’re all just vibrating strings, if quantum mechanics has anything to say about the makeup of the universe. So much of what we’ve been smacked in the face with culturally has reeked of these ideas: We started watching The Simpsons before hitting double digits, and wondered about all these weird segues into movie images and cultural references we’ve never seen or understood. We became familiar with Apocalypse Now and A Clockwork Orange in ‘sanitized but twisted’ cartoon form before the actual films. Even the fictional real wasn’t real for us. We found that irony and self-referentiality was written into the understanding of the world. We caught grunge in the mid nineties (oldest of us were tweens), meaning we just got the tail end of it. Something about rejection and screaming, but then it blurred into commercial hip-hop (lead partly by Puff Daddy), preteen-girl-marketed boy bands and Madonna clones (lead partly by Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears) and respectable art rock (lead partly by Radiohead). Everything was either slick, artificial, and instantly disposable, or so fucking real and genuine it became an obsession to follow it We’ve seen politics split, splinter, sees the splinters reunify in horribly misbegotten shapes, but the larger split remained. It has hit new level of impotence, irrelevance and corruption. It’s mindboggling to us that the only thing that is staying constant is the power of the business world. Corporations have become the way the world operates. It’s not taking over, it’s taken over. And when it stumbles, we have to band together while screaming at each other over who is to blame, and feed it money until it can back on its feet to dominate us once again. And excising its more damaging tentacles from society will probably destroy us all. We’ve been inundated with the idea that everything is going to get harder, while being told to buy a condo, a prius, an iPhone, a hip t-shirt, and a three-piece career. We’ve had to ‘keep up with Joneses’ since we were twelve. Our ‘grand tour’ our Europe was expected between the last year of high school and the first year of university. We went proverbially grey at eighteen. Saw the drudgery of the nine-to-five as twenty two year old interns. Has it all be done? How the fuck should we know? Apparently knowledge is based on subjective, cause-and-effect, meta-narratives, and a bunch of other gibberish passed off as an excuse to show how complex the world is and why things aren’t easier. We were the generation that felt and saw the entire processes of the technology revolution. We saw the rise and fall of new inventions in five-year period. The life spans of our goods and service has given us the belief that nothing lasts. Ideas and techniques are expected to be temporary, with something newer and better coming to replace it. Sure, gen x matured to these changes, but we – their younger brothers and sisters or their children – were reared on them. I [do you want a first person reference?] remember learning how to put on Sesame Street LP’s on my parents record player. Then it became CD’s, and my Dad repurchased all his old Rolling Stones, Beatles, and Dylan albums. But by my waning years of high school, the compressed MP3 and the transition from modem to cable, made this new disc obsolete. I remember computers with only one colour. I remember having to ask my father repeatedly for help whenever MS-DOS fucked up, I remember the switch to windows, windows 95, and America Online. I remember printer paper with the perforated sides. I remember 5.5 floppy discs for my reader rabbit game. Now I can order a pizza online while mashing up Quasimoto/My Bloody Valentine samples for my powerpoint presentation on third quarter earnings. The speed at which these older ways of doing things become useless – not even getting a chance to be retro – is extraordinary, and certainly gave rise to an obsession with novelty. Not just in our personal lives, but how we expect the world to operate. And the transfer of these expectations from personal activities to public interactions is a shaky one. After easing into the world of politics with a sex scandal (the definition of ‘is’? That’s what the government did?), and then eight years of a moron cowboy manager, we catch Obama-mania (not just in America, but the world), and then tune out when he acts like the centrist politician he has to be (which we kind of knew was going to happen, deep in our cracked, disenchanted hearts). Our comedy guru, Conan O’Brien – despite being decidedly in the gen-x camp, his Harvard background coupled with off-the-wall self-deprecating antics fits the serious/silly dichotomy we look for to a tee – asked on his final night as host in of The Tonight Show (after seven months! How’s that for demonstrating to us that all hope is fleeting?) for us not to become cynical. Too late, Conan, but we can assure you, it’s not ‘cause baby boomer executives squeezed you out of a job. Being cynical and cautious has been ingrained for us. We don’t know how to fix it. The problems you’ve (not you specifically, Coco, but the generations before) left for us are massive. The baby boomers are being unwillingly dragged from their positions of power with their fingernails dug deep into their desks by the gen x-er’s, and we don’ t know how to and if we can wait. We don’t know if they have the right answers and the ability, and we don’t know if we have those two things, either. But whatever we decide needs to be done, we know every step is going to be laced with epic red tape. Fuck. Sorry for swearing. But can you blame us?
February 21st - New York Minutes Probably the most blog-like thing ever dumped onto this sacred ground. But hey, it's a busy time of year, so this raw, uncut, meandering will have to do. Mazel tov! Making lemonade out of a tall bold pick of the day and mallorca sweetbread at a starbucks at 7th and west 28th street in Manhattan. The fashion institute of technology just across the street. I am fresh off the bus. The two hours late and completely unremarkable Megabus. Doesn’t even have it’s own spot at Penn Station/Port Authority bus terminal. Just pull over on seventh avenue, crank up the local radio station to jolt awake anyone still dozing, toss the ‘check in’ bags onto the sidewalk and you can all go fuck yourselves. I was lucky my bag was tossed out first. Why? Because I was the second-to-last passenger back on after the full customs disembarkment at the border, where I was grilled by a chip-on-the-shoulder-the-size-of-a-boulder type officer who wanted to know which band I’m seeing, how long I’m staying, where’s my return ticket, why are my hands in my pockets, why my hands are shaking (12AM in February, anyone?) , what I do for a living, how I afford graduate school, will I pull up my pants legs for sock inspection, do I have anything in my bags he might not like, and what’s in that bag over there? The French backpackers and a couple other cash-strapped Europeans had it worse. At least I didn’t have to put my fingertips on the pad and be sucked into the American Identification System. Doesn’t matter now. I’m here. Here. After a blizzard through most of New York state. Stopping for agonizing minutes in the shithole of downtown Buffalo and the aerial gateway to said shithole, the Buffalo airport. The passenger behind me fell asleep with his crappy hip-hop blasting from his headphones. Another snored epically. We stopped by at some of the most identical rest stops one can imagine. My particular window was a section that was ‘painted over’ on the outside, so I could only see through thousands of tiny holes, making signs just blurry enough to always be impossible to read, meaning I never knew exactly where I was until I was fortunate enough to catch a glance from the other direction of a ‘Lincoln Tunnel’ sign. And the AC power outlet didn’t work. And the wireless barely did. New York. Alone. I will finally absorb it all. Is that what is required to feel the vibes of the city? Isolation of sorts? No one else’s whims or ideas for direction or dinner getting in the way? Metropolitan museum of art I’m very nearly breaking a rule writing this here Surrounded first by chipped Greco-roman statues And now finally ensconced in cubism, surrealism, and oodles of early twentieth century goodies With the advent of the photograph painting lost its interest in mimesis and thank god for that Painting an idea a possibility of an object instead of the object itself It’s how we remember anyway Photographs don’t change over time Challenging art does nothing else I just changed the font for the location heading at the top of this page and I must say I think it’s excellent Battery is low on camera and manageable on laptop These practical concerns seep into everything I am not running on very much sleep Expected The art is art I am moved slowly but surely towards the desire to ape the works badly in my own particular… ‘idiom, sir?’ Hands up or the clown dies This was a way to get through the days and nights Through falling bombs howling winds and broken hearts Doing something on a canvas or blood soaked rag What happens when it goes into a museum What kind of different inspirations would it inspire in a more private location? Fewer people but strong like bull I am listening to ‘Boards of Canada’ And am able to forget it’s on from time to time Not sure if I should head to tickets booth for Fela! for 2pm Or 3pm And whether I should stay down in the times square area for dinner and showtime Decisions decisions They will stand over me until their moments pass (later) a Pollock is bearing down on me black white grey on beige splotches and streaks Already a mess but prepared to go that extra mile in the blink of an eye There is creativity here And maybe I’ll decide not to find it Sometimes that’s when it sneaks up on you Gloriously (even later in museum library) I’ve been murdering time in the basement library, which kind of doubles as a daycare as there are computer games and arts-based toys in the first section of the library before it becomes more academic and book filled. All I’ve been doing is surfing the net listlessly, the stack of books I should be flipping through beside me. I’ll sleep like a rock tonight, but still need a coffee to get through the evening. And I’ve just finished the bottle of pepsi I snuck in via my water bottle, which cost $2 at a hot dog vendor outside the met Mental tiredness is floating around with physical tiredness I’m going to rush through 20th century European art on the second floor, cut back through central park to the hostel, rest for a brief period then zip down to try and get box office tix for fela at the Eugene o’neil theatre I am writing this out both for posterity’s sake and so I won’t forget in an hour. 10PM – return from ‘Fela!’ Fela was exactly what I suspected and that’s…a good thing- no, a great thing for $27.00. Excellent chance to see a first run broadway show. Camera died before I could take a picture of the room (At least I got a good day of photography in central park and the met). Looks like I’m going to be forced to use my words. The room. More has been written in less. 10x7. Three walls white, one red. The red has a framed painting of a flower – Andy Warhol-print style – hanging in the middle of it. Below the painting is the single bed. At the foot of the single bed is an end table. At the end of the end table is a small radiator and the wall. At the head of the bed is the other wall, with the door – traditionally used for entering and exiting. On the wall facing the painting is a rectangular mirror. Beside and below the mirror is a small chest of drawers, and on top of that is a television with a diameter no more than a foot. It is not a flat screen. The wall facing the door is mostly window. It looks out over this building’s fire escape, a white non-descript building whose roof is not much higher than the window (even though I’m on my building’s first floor) and a basement alley of an apartment building not directly behind it, but slightly to the right. Small but distant. Not at all cozy. Functional. I’m sitting cross legged on the bed, laptop on the expected lap, watching my battery slowly drain because the room (despite the hostel’s website claim that they have been refurbished) only offers two pronged outlets, which isn’t enough for my highly advanced, three pronged Macbook charger. At Brooklyn Museum: Girl on a Chair (1970) – George Segal (not the actor) (in a black box is part of a red chair and woman sitting on it) Fallen Bierstadt (2007) – Valerie Hegarty (a destroyed landscape painting and frame, the pieces piled onto the floor) God, kids are so very annoying. Why are you taking them to museums, you’re lucky if one thing isn’t boring them to tears. Now, this is quite the generalization, and I’m sure a handful of kids would get a real kick out of portraits of wealthy merchants, Victorian furniture, and impressionist landscapes. But I am near-certain most kids won’t give a rats ass. So please, leave them in the playground at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and out of the nearby Brooklyn Museum. Which was excellent. Just plain excellent. Well, the building was excellent. The collection was rather underwhelming. But it was mostly empty (save for the children), so it takes its place alongside the Bavarian History Museum in Munich as ‘great museum experience’ instead of ‘great museum’ (which the met certainly is). My back hurts. The Four Tet show’s gonna kill me. It’s Starbucks at 8:36PM, at 8th Street and 4th Avenue. I’ve been bombing the area with my precious few copies of TDD, and fear for the single one I left out in the cold on top of a newspaper box beside the Strand, and I may ‘rescue’ one that I put in a newspaper box that apparently has run out of the Asian newspaper it’s supposed to offer. (I thought it would be cool to put it there, but no one I would imagine liking the magazine would open that particular box and hope for a counterculture newsletter instead of the Chinese (?) paper that’s supposed to be there). My laptop battery is still kicking my ass. Brooklyn library was nice – lovely building – but too loud. With few reading rooms. I’d still go back. Walking around Brooklyn was like walking around the 1974 with imposing apartment buildings taking up so much more space than anything else. On and on. The slowest McDonald’s service in the world. First time I felt ill finishing a burger (Angus bacon and cheese). Four Tet’s Rounds is an excellent album for walking the streets around Soho, when it’s dark and the shops are closed. I forget the name of the pizza place at the corner of Thompson and Spring Streets, but it was excellent, despite the gruff manners of the dude who tossed my two pepperoni slices in the oven. I didn’t have to pay for this Starbucks coffee, as I should have done the online survey to get a free one. I’ll try to get the access code tonight to get a free cup tomorrow before I get on da bus. Sign on NY 17: ‘Rockland House Restaurant: Eat here or we’ll both starve’ So that means I have left the city. The true and only city. The city of the present and with fingers crossed the future. Birdshow/Nathan Fake/Four Tet was just lovely. Just a great stress exploder. Strange how pounding beats, rising and falling for hours, can be so soothing. I left the show in a state of content euphoria, despite the slight buzzing of the ears. I sweated out the three pints of beer. The dropping went as well as I could have hoped. The same Toronto indifference, as opposed to the possible New York ‘what the fuck are you doing?’ type attitude. The ‘morning’ bus is nice and empty. Maybe twenty people in total. Hopefully we won’t pick up many in Syracuse so us NYC passengers can keep up this luxurious living. Also nice is working power outlets. Pity the internet is completely down in the Catskills – I’m surprised to find us taking the extremely scenic NY 17 instead of the interstate – and is slow on the streaming video no matter where we are. The fear of forgetting is a strange one. I’m doing it now on a rather simplistic level. Try to write down events – nuanced or not – that occurred during this sojourn that may fade from memory or get twisted while residing there. But we are doomed to forget. Not everything, but time twists and distorts all. I may look back on these notes and think that I was wrong or mistaken when originally written. But it was true then/now, even if it might not be so in the months and years in the future when I read this again. If certain truths (most truths) are dependent on temporality, how do we as a society operate within such a daunting challenge to reality? Animal Collective telling me no more runnin’ about ten miles outside of Binghampton. The audience at the red fish were not particularly more animated than most concerts, which is a nice thing. And the beer - $7 for a pint, or close to a pint in a large plastic cup – was fair, especially considering the ticket price. Only rip off was the three dollar coat check (six for me cause my backpack was considerate a separate attachment. They played Floyd’s Dark Side after the show, and one dude ragged on Floyd with vigour bordering on violence. The guy in front of me tried to argue the connection to electronic music, but ‘dude’ was having none of it, and started spouting about taking acid. Cold but tasty apple from a fruit seller on the street corner near those…uh… apartment blocks whose names escape me. It’s south of Washington Square Park and almost fused to the hip of NYC Brooklyn Botanical Gardens needs some entrances on Flatbush Avenue. That was a long and pointless walk, it was. Bleecker Street feels like a series of commitment bars. If you’re going to pay $5 cover to see a band or artist, you’ve kind of attached yourself to that location for the evening. Bar hopping doesn’t work as well as one would hope. Although I’m sure there are plenty of ‘regular’ bars, it feels that the pay-to-pound-pilsner attitude is dominant here. -sign on I-81 North, twenty miles or so outside of Syracuse: ‘Next Area: 80 Miles”
January 20 - “Before man was, war waited for him.” -Blood Meridian If you lose your humanity, can you ever get it back again? And what kind of question is that, really? Who decides what ‘human’ values are? For centuries they were believed to be absolutes, handed down from the divine, with men doing their best to ape the ever-perfect gods. And when disaster still struck, the fault fell on the shoulders on man’s own imperfections, not the laws and ideals themselves. Only recently – when compared to the long thread that is civilization – has the authoritative power of the laws themselves been questioned. How real are they? Because we have decided them to be sacred and essential, does that make them so? After all, if they are in fact artificial, that means they are malleable and subject to the horrors of context and fallibility, so of course they can be shunted aside momentarily and re-appropriated when the danger has passed. Ethics/morality/what-makes-us-human is a notion that can be best understood as a tool, something that can be picked up and put down whenever the need for its use arises. When we decide we must act like animals or economic automatons – slaughtering a neighbouring culture, exploiting impoverished nation states on the other side of the planet – we can and do. Looking over human history, one finds this form of action more common than any form of peaceful or diplomatic means. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is an atrocious ethos for a species that deems itself above the brutish theatre that is nature, but it doesn’t take many glances at twentieth century history to see that brief screed be employed in a number of momentous events. (Nazi policies, the overthrowing of leaders in politically unstable countries by both America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the economic castrating of South Asia and Africa) Chomsky notes that every US president since World War II have broken laws that would have sent them to the gallows if the verdicts of the Nuremberg trials were applied to them. Along with dozens of other heads of state across the globe. It’s not mentioned much - or is spun with euphemisms to seem less shocking and immoral when it is – because, hey, who wants to admit that there’s a gaping hole in our ethical logic? That the victors are exempt from the laws they enforce and push upon the losers. The challenge then is to essentially practice what you preach. One of the judges at Nuremberg said they – that would be the victorious and righteous allies – were creating a poisoned chalice for the defendants that they the winners dare not sip from. If similar crimes are committed, are the leaders of America, the UK, Russia, and France going to be subject to the same justice? ‘Protecting one’s country’ is always supposed to be ultimate argument, one that can ignore the peripheral and supposedly incidental atrocities, even if the stated goal is not even met. (see: Vietnam) But then, even the losers of battles – whether they be on a battlefield or in the halls of government – cling to the same reasons behind their actions as the victors. Claiming the moral high ground, even if it took immoral activities in the attempt to preserve said ground. And out of this double standard comes revolting and burning hypocrisy. Winners don’t commit genocides. Only losers do that. Hypocrisy is one of the most vile and pernicious vices, the only one that – for all you leaders wrapped in the cloak of Christianity – Jesus specifically noted as being the one that would lead to the pits of hell. And for those that believe in the concept of eternal damnation, how soothing an idea it can be that all those who take part in such practices shall receive their comeuppance. But what if there isn’t a hell? What if there isn’t a final judgment? What if this is all there is? What happens to the tyrants who explain away their transgressions with, ‘I had to do it for the good of my country’? Did Pinochet, Amin, Pot, and ‘American Foreign Policy’ beat the system? How do we account for travesties after the fact? A shrug of the shoulders and a try-better-next-time attitude? A Truth and Reconciliation commission? A couple thousand dollars for the families of victims who died in the name of ‘freedom’? Is that supposed to make up for the temporary jettisoning of human civility? The idea that some people are above the law punctures these egalitarian notions of community. After all, crucified in the court of public opinion is not the same as facing the pulleys and weights of the justice system. In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, President Obama stressed our fallibility as a species, claiming that humankind’s brutal and bloody history speaks for itself. Certainly true, but then are we fooling ourselves – even harming ourselves – by clinging to this idealistic world of peacefulness and unshakable integrity? We have many terms for the glorious virtues that humankind has deemed the most noble and essential. And all of them seem to exist in a utopia we are continually striving for but never getting closer to. We know what peace looks like, so where is it? How does it happen? Is the concept impossible in a world where the economic system is based on scarcity and inequality? Is it because ‘peace’ is not real enough in the same way that bread is? Much is talked about democratic countries bestowing wondrous rights upon their citizens, but if inalienable rights were real like, say, molecules, then there would no way for them to be taken away, or not given in the first place. They would simply be in the air. The notion of someone not having them or having to be granted them by another would be as foreign as the concern of gravity suddenly cutting out and all of us suddenly floating into space because the UN Security Council refused to recognize its existence. But this is not the case, as virtuous ideals and the rights drawn from them always exist in a tenuous position, and it’s disconcerting that this really isn’t acknowledged more often. Political lip service has been paid to these terms so often that they’ve become like wallpaper. You have the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness because we told you that you do. The ignorant disconnect between the states that are able to offer those three high concepts and those that aren’t can be seen in the long-standing history of exploiter and exploited. Where the citizens in a developed country do not associate their standard of living with the fact that it only exists because citizens of a developing country are forced to do with less. If we truly cherish our virtues of fairness and civility, then to not be aware of this dichotomy every moment of your waking life is akin to sitting on the World Bank’s board of directors and deciding to put economic and corporate interests above human decency. At the furthest end of this spectrum, the not-so-subtle elephant in the room – war – has been justified as often as its been vilified as the lowest and most base form of human interaction. The ‘spoils of war’ has nothing on the true reward of victory: Writing the history books. Justification. Rationalization. Either a gentle massaging of the truth or a complete rewriting of the lead up to the conflict. The victory makes the victors right. A very old notion, which was the reasoning behind duels to determine the guilty and innocent. For many millennia it defined the social hierarchy. With kings – and a handy dandy all-powerful god looking out for said king – the justification of power was absolute. Until it wasn’t and he had his head cut off. Everything twists, rattles, and falls apart in the tempestuous winds of change. Whether it be deposing monarchs, or having to watch what you say in the land of the free. Skimming on virtue inevitably leads to vice, and this skimming seems to be an essential human condition. And until we acknowledge that in some functional way, there doesn’t seem to be much hope for a foreign policy that isn’t based on exploiting another, whether it be socially, militarily, economically, politically or culturally. Which is certainly not an easy task. On first glance, saying that all moral codes are completely arbitrary seems to be an advocating of anarchy, or at least a license for the people and nations of the world to continue as they are. The difficulty is stressing that the virtues we have – while artificially constructed by our fevered egos and are as strong as a house of cards without our constant practicing of them – have truly done much to create a stable society. That we have climbed out of the muck and live in a house with heating is proof in the idea of civilized, peaceful progress truly works. Of course, that’s an easy defense of a particular form of morality if you believe the simplicity of this story. It’s also an easy argument to make that the ‘stable’ ‘Western’ society we have is built on the backs of the billions of poor and oppressed around the world. Has there ever been a time when everything was equal? When greed and manipulation was not part of human civilization? Well, no. Not even close. Science has never been as cold and impersonal as when it espoused the notion of ‘survival of the fittest’, but it may never have summed up the true nature of life on earth so succinctly, either. The strong rule over the weak. Despite our big brains, we are still animals, and whether you’re a human, mountain goat, or dung beetle, your size and power dictate your position in your species hierarchy, regardless of whether you believe in fair trade practices or political amnesty. But perhaps what’s shocking is when our faults become political jargon and are adapted as government policy. Personal vices are one thing that humanity will always have to deal with, but when a state introduces measures to curb liberties for the sake of security or introduces changes that benefit the few at the expense of the many, it’s another sign that belief systems are subject to massive tweaking, depending on factors that have nothing to do with ‘doing the right thing’. How is this done? How do the leaders continue to get away with it in a time of unprecedented dissemination of information across the globe? Foucault talks of the powers-that-be reducing the body to a cog in elaborate machine or superstructure, where the value of life is in direct relation to the functioning of the machine. Anything can be manipulated into a tool for meeting the goal of power retention. Including morals. Bombing other countries can be excused in a myriad of ways. People who lose their lives in these military endeavours – regardless of how they began – are lionized as heroes, sacrificing their lives for the greater good. Nobility and virtue is fused to their death, and therefore to the larger reasons of their death. Because these people were sacrificed, then the war must be virtuous. Deceased soldiers play a role in legitimatizing the war after its beginning. They add emotional weight to the power structure, which can be used for further manipulation. Suddenly expenditure is no longer for just objects, but those that use these objects. People as an extension of production. Right and wrong blurs into temporary irrelevance. After hostilities have ceased, the finger pointing and denials of knowledge can begin, the morals of the leaders placed back upon their sleeves, but the damage – whether it be physical, mental, cultural, or economic – has been done. The short-term suspension of ‘true’ virtue has done its job. How do we get out of this mess? Is it reasonable to believe that technology will eradicate the lack of basic human necessities – food, clothing, shelter – which should be able to go to great lengths to closing the gap between what we believe are inalienable rights and the reality of the world today? And if so much of this is rooted in human nature – in human fallibility – are we insane to even try to remove it from ourselves, as if it could be extracted like an organ or through a genetically altered strand of our DNA? This horrible, horrible flaw makes us different from each other as we are shaped by our needs and wants that alter our views and ideas about life and everything else in grossly unique ways. What happens when everyone is truly equal? Do we gain virtue and peace but lose a part of ourselves? And is it a worthwhile trade? The answer to the question/title of this essay then is certainly yes, at least today, on the cusp of a new decade. You can call yourself a great and virtuous person/leader/state/corporation, then put these ideals of humanity on the shelf as you conduct your unpleasant business, and then put them back on. However, what these ideals are worth now after the fact is a different matter entirely. History may be your final judge, but you’re rarely around to hear the verdict.
Dec.8 - It's a long way to go, before we can rest, but it's all for... My/Our Favourite Things I don’t really know what I like the best, and I think that’s a good thing. Someone recently heard that I liked reading books, and asked me what my favourite one was. And I couldn’t really think of one that stood head and shoulders above the rest. I thought of the authors I liked and some of my favourite books of theirs, but I found it difficult to pick the number ones out of these smaller categories and have them fight it out for the undisputed top spot. I mean, I really don’t know how to properly compare book A and, say, book B. Oh, I could write you an essay on their stylistic and thematic similarities and differences, and how one might be more effective in this or that respect, but personal favourite means going beyond all that. Beyond rational argument, because that’s what it means to have a personal favourite, not a professional one. It doesn’t have to be defensible. You don’t have to convince someone of why it’s the best to be right. Everyone in the world can disagree with your choice, but you cannot be wrong. It’s the only time where, ‘fuck you, I like it’, can make perfect sense. You have a dangerously fragile psyche if someone can talk you out of what your favourite book is. So it should be easy to answer then. Effortless, even. The question is simple: What do you like the best? But it should be noted that this isn’t only an icebreaker, we-have-nothing-else-to-talk-about-over-dip-at-a-party type question. Discovering the best and the sometimes interchangeable term ‘favourite’ in today’s society are cherished by a milieu of disparate forces. The corporate world goes to great lengths to ensure that the best product or service is known and properly offered to the masses, however arbitrarily the best is decided. It’s a bizarre circuit of finding out via test groups what the public likes and then spending millions of dollars on advertising to convince them that they should like it. The act of cobbling together what the ‘they’ are pushing on us all as the best – whether it be pasta sauce, book, airline, vacuum or supermodel – is paradoxically in and out of our own hands. Somewhere in this transmission of ideas there is personal preference being analyzed with as much detail as possible, which is filtered into a single concept or unit that is to have as broad appeal as possible. So there’s no sense in being vague or abstract as to what you like just because something is being fashioned for you. Detail is a good! And they want as much as possible. Market research has essentially proven that when it comes to designing new products, people don’t know what they want until they have it. Well, how about categorizing what you’ve already consumed? Don’t think about it. Just say it. Favourite book. Or movie. Or album. Go. But when asked, my mouth opens but nothing comes out right away. Sometimes it comes in a moment of two. Sometimes it doesn’t at all. Why do I like something? How much of it is informed or shaped by the cultural forces that swirl around me in a haze? Do I really like band a, or has it been drilled into me that I should like it by popular music culture, and if so, how much? Do I listen to album and think, ‘this is album is Rolling Stone magazine’s in the top 5’? How can I separate these influences from myself? Not knowing about them? Is tabula rasa – the clean slate – the only way to properly judge art? Judge anything? What are my own criteria, and how often does it intersect with other people’s criteria? Can these common threads mean ‘favourite’ as universal term can be applied? That’s a lot of questions. And a lot of the answers are spotty at best. A book that entertains me and tells me something about the world I live in and how to operate within it. Is that favourite? Something ‘I can’t put down’, to use a clichéd blurb? There is danger of using units of measurement here – ‘on a can’t-put-it-down scale, this book is definitely an eight!’ – which is a universal criterion. It’s beyond that. Just because shitty band g sold millions of records doesn’t make it that many times better than shitty band j that only sold hundreds. And who am I to call a band shitty if at least one person out there claim it’s their favourite? Is living in a ‘democracy’ forcing us to democratize things that could clearly exist in a more fascist form, namely, people’s favourite chunks of culture? Saying the first thing that comes to your head reeks of the word association test armchair psychiatrists use: kneejerk. Besides, three seconds after book c or book d reaches the tip of my tongue I think of three or four others. Is a carefully thought out answer more genuine and honest than one spouted at first thought? People are different in how they process and present information. A single form of evaluation – the first words out of the mouth – is incredibly arbitrary. Which leads to the problem of supposed individualization: What are we, beyond our temperament? We are processers of information, and each of us does this in a different way, and through our experiences in the world – whether it be your job, your diet, or your internet surfing habits – we will arrange and categorize these bits in a unique fashion, and that’s what others see when they interact with you. So with that in mind, is so surprising that I should hum and haw when someone asks me my favourite book? Aren’t they really asking me to tell them about myself, my outlook on life and possible future goals? What are we to make of the people that answer with steely-eyed convention a half-second after the question is poised? Are they the people that wear their heart and best of lists on the sleeve, who are so sure in themselves and their goals that they proudly with confidence? Or are they illiterate morons who watch Gossip Girl and listen to Top 40 radio? And of course, is that so much worse than the people who buy/steal music according to Stereogum, read a single issue of Vice and model their life and tastes on whatever is the hipster flavour of the month? We are afraid that our tastes tell us more about ourselves than we might like to admit so quickly. ‘Favourites’ are supposed to be condensed versions of your likes and views. If Waiting for Godot is your favourite play, it suggests a hell of a lot about your worldview (bleak, absurd, darkly comical, philosophical), especially when comparing it to someone who might answer Mama Mia! (I checked. Yes, the title does have an exclamation mark in it). Is this slightly insincere, you yourself being judged in some way on someone else’s work? Well, yeah, but life is full of social shortcuts. Icebreakers and small talk are based on the grand, overarching cultural commodities that we ‘might’ share. That’s how you meet people, and finding out that someone like x, y, and z can tell you a lot as to whether you want to spend the next ten minutes shooting the shit over bottles of beer. You don’t come right and tell someone you have difficulty with expressing yourself to people when they are going through a traumatic period in their life. Instead you talk about sports or something in the news, or what’s playing in theatres this week. And that eases into what you like to watch, read, or listen to. Favourites. And suddenly, you’re talking about yourself while talking about someone else’s creations. In this the world is a more complex and convoluted web than we can ever hope to understand fully. Science is nothing more than a form of categorization, so if they’re scratching their heads with the mysteries of string theory, what hope do we have in coming up with a top 100 movies list that won’t have vitriolic bloggers making comments in scathing capital letters? Even the most popular ‘best’ movies that film critics and theorists attest are the greatest have contextual relationships with these experts that are affecting them. And music is even more insane, because it’s so much more universal and easily consumed. Books can takes hours or days to read. Movies take about ninety minutes to two hours of your time. But music? Shit, you can listen to twenty different songs by twenty different artists in twenty different subgenres in the time it takes to watch one film. It is so easy to go ‘off the beaten path’ with music that there is no ‘independent music scene’ anymore. It’s all independent. The concept of favourite in the world of music can no longer apply because it’s gotten too big. Music accessibility – for both creators and fans – has made it the social measuring stick from hell. We don’t have to look any further for proof of this than ‘best of’ lists. There’s so many of them that you don’t have to argue about the choices on the lists, but the lists themselves. What’s your favourite ‘best of the zeros’ list? Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Guardian The A.V. Club? Do numbers 33-16 really reflect you the best? And how many of the songs/albums do you own, let alone recognize? It’s become a common assumption that the more culture you consume the better position you are to make objective judgments on the term ‘best’ and more respected calls on ‘favourite’. Suddenly qualitative properties lead to qualitative ones. Which is great in one way, but an expert isn’t going to convince person A that person A’s choice for favourite album is utter shit. There needs to be the awareness that all the expertise in the world is still arbitrary when referring to the term ‘favourite’ and ‘best’. At least in terms of popular culture. (clearly the best way to build an energy efficient power grid should be left to the experts) So you like what you like, right? You’ve gotten over the possible frown or eye rolls that might come from strangers or friends when you tell them that band b are the greatest band on the planet. Does the defiance count as another impetus? Is trying to avoid outside influence another form of relating to outside influence? Do all these factors fester and pop in the back of your mind as you think about favourite? Are you aware of them or are they shaping us all in our own shadows? As much as these conversations and articles and ideas of favourite can enlighten and entertain us, they are simply another form of the individual trying to make his or her unique stamp on the world. Everyone does the same thing but in slightly different ways, and there’s constant pressure to keep absorbing more culture, to change views, adapt. I don’t want to be labeled. Maybe that’s why I always have a couple favourite books simmering around the top, but no definite favourite. I really, really like movie a, but I don’t want movie b to always be the bridesmaid and never the bride. And movie c is looking pretty damn sweet in the second row. All of these bits of information are a part of me and a part of the world. The relationship between these two objects is always going to subjective and shifting, the meaning of all three components existing in a state of uncertainty, like particles surrounding the nucleus of an atom like a cloud. Our concepts and ideologies of categorization and difference tumble down like a house of cards on a windy day after a brief examining of their foundations. Or maybe I’m full of shit. After all, my favourite album of all time is OK Computer hands down, no questions asked. And I know I’m right.
October 5 - Turn and face the strange... Pieces of Green An environmental movement intent on strong relations with big business? It’s not pretty, but it’ll have to do… A long, long time ago (2006) I wrote a little missive titled ‘An Open Letter to Oil and Chemical Companies’, asking them to, y’know, cut out all the polluting that came from them trying to power the planet. Not for our – the human citizens and other animal species – sake, but for the sake of their own bottom-line. After all, profit margins tend to shrink when the people you hawk your products to are ten feet underwater or choking on poisonous smog (two likely scenarios with melting polar ice caps and no decrease in the amount of air pollution entering into the atmosphere). Surprisingly, I have not yet been awarded a single prize or honour for my valiant effort to save the world (heh…). It appears that turning a blind eye to the many climate related problems that are now occurring (it’s just been reported that Mexico is suffering its worse drought in decades, as well as the city of Sydney having to deal with a massive dust storm because Australia is also choking on a lack of precipitation) is considered a better long-term financial plan than to do anything at all. But hey, it’s no shock that private enterprise is reluctant to cut down on anything – while eying the short term or long term – if it’s going to get in the way of profits. With the economic collapse of 2008, we all know these morons can’t police themselves. After all, that’s what we have a government for, right? The power of the public, which can create mandates and regulations that the private companies must follow, right? Well, looking on the very dim bright side, the halls of government are not necessarily where good ideas go to die, but instead they are simply where good ideas are held down on a cold steel table and are neutered, amputated, and heavily sedated. Environmental groups in the United States are demanding that there needs to be a 40% cut in future carbon emissions as just a start to combat climate change. The latest bill that is slowly trudging through the American bureaucratic system is pushing for a cut of 4%. Yikes. And of course, it won’t be astounding to anyone that this reduction of goals occurred because of the direct influence of major corporations upon the elected members of the government, either in the form of fundraising during the election season, or the general practice of lobbying. Other disappointing developments involve a watered down miles-per-gallon standard that doesn’t have to be in place for another seven years, and an outright admission by the US government that they’ll be too tied up with the health care mess to address any huge climate change reforms in time for the global environmental talks in Copenhagen in December. Therefore, the conclusion (at least until the great toxic concavity Wallace writes about in Infinite Jest becomes a reality): It’s unwinnable. The corporations have triumphed. The concept of profit via unrestrained capitalism has forced its way into every aspect of not only Western but global society that we cannot excise it without destroying the very fabric of our civilization. We cannot defeat the monster, because we live in its belly. It’s not that certain ventures are too big to fail, it’s that there is only one true venture – the almighty dollar (soon to be yen, probably) – and all of us play a consensual role within it, whether we are aware of it or not.
So, with that in mind, we will have to get creative, and start talking to the corporate behemoth in language it understands. And words it likes to hear. Like: Profit, share (not the generosity thing), investment, profit, return, fiscal growth, margin, diverse buyer segment, and profit. And once we become fluid and natural with these terms, it would be time to execute a coup of feasible proportions. The plan is called ‘Pieces of Green’, for rather obvious reasons. Money has to be the dominant factor, otherwise no one with a lick of power is going to listen to you (oh, the crushing truths of modern, capitalist society!). You will note that is a disemboweling of the name of one of the earliest and largest environmental movements. But it’s pretty clear (and unfortunate, certainly) that Greenpeace has no tread anymore. Their goals are admirable, their drive is passionate and genuine, but the people who run this world see them as nothing more than animal loving hippies. I suppose stopping whale fishing boats is one of the most exciting and spiritually rewarding green jobs out there, but the decisions that are going to destroy or save the planet are being made in the board rooms in skyscrapers in New York, London, and Shanghai. So I’m flipping the compound word a bit so it sounds a bit more like something to do with money, the language of business (‘The world is a business, Mr. Beale’ – Network). It’s something a pirate’s parrot would squawk while perched on the man’s shoulder. Pieces of Green will offer oodles of cash to some of the world’s largest corporations. Not solely my cash, mind you (I don’t really have …any…in the grand scheme of things), but everyone’s cash. We’re gonna foot yet another bill for the greedy, obstinate and all-together asshole-ish global corporations like Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon to finally step in line and join the 21st century. And we’re gonna groan and grumble at the costs, and they’re gonna fuck up several times along the way, but the alternative (floods, drought, food shortages, disease, etc.) will always be three shades uglier. Of course, giving money to any organization whose sole goal is to make money regardless of the human cost is rife with challenges. What we have to avoid is the rampant corruption that is found in any other government plan that ‘outsources’ the work to private enterprise. And it’s not only in America where this is a problem. In the UK, a construction job to widen the M25 was estimated by an independent organization to cost approximately 478 million pounds. The government is paying 6.2 billion for the job to be done. This has been the subject of a George Monibot column, and he notes that the rest of the money goes to the banks, construction companies, and other service industries, with the taxpayer picking up the tab. But it should come as no surprise that where blank cheques are issued without much of a background check or follow-up there is going to be a system rife with problems. Rolling Stone political journalist Matt Taibbi notes that this same type of corporate corruption is certainly going to come into play when carbon credits are finally introduced to G8 countries. This is strongest move yet to create a financial incentive to curb harmful emissions. Now that there will be a dollar amount set to the units of carbon released into the atmosphere, those companies that go over the prescribed limits will have to pay x amount as a form of penalty. Companies that can stay under the limit can ‘sell off’ the difference to companies that can’t. Taibbi notes that a rather unusual player is going to be entering into the carbon credit market, one that has absolutely nothing to do with pollution, but a lot to do with buying and selling pieces of paper, or the promise of pieces of paper: Goldman Sachs, the same banking organization that towers over wall street and whose alumni holds several top economic posts in the American government. That’s right, carbon credits – the stock meant to save the planet – are going to be in the hands of the people who helped pioneer the credit default swap and algorithmic trading (look it up, it’s crazy), which were instrumental in steering the global economy into a ditch. What could possibly go wrong? Of course, it might not even have to become so nefariously complicated that a corporation will have to buy credits from a superbank for permission to release chemicals in the air that will slowly kill us. If you’re an oil company whose profits are in the billions, a couple carbon fines may not be anything more than flies easily swatted away. If the fines are in the millions of dollars (unlikely to be that high at the start) and it would cost hundreds of millions in upgrades to get back under the limit, what’s your incentive to change? Just pay the fines as go on your horrible, earth-killing way. Which is why my ‘here you go, you fuckers, we’ll kill you if you screw this up’ environmental stimulus package is clearly superior. Load it with regulatory strings that will promise them future profits, as the money we’re giving them now should fulfill their ravenous desire for present day profits as they get the nuts and bolts for renewable energy sources that already exist in order. If they fail to change, we all fail and civilization takes a thousand year step backwards. And if they succeed, we all succeed (even if they succeed and get even fucking richer thanks to our initial ‘investment’, that’s fine, once we get the environment under control we can work on the much-needed overhaul of capitalism and global equality…heh). Sure my three page Pieces of Green plan of giving large corporations shitloads of money for environmental reform seems ridiculous, reductionist, and unfeasible, but hey, Hank Paulson’s three page request for $700 billion dollars for his Wall Street pals passed, so what another, oh let’s say, $300 billion or so amongst friends?
Aug. 18 - We Are the Dollars and Cents... Corporations as countries as corporations Leave it to a James Bond satire to teach the teenage/adult me the truth about 21st century politics and economics: Number #2: Dr. Evil, you say you want to take over the world, but there is no world anymore! There are only corporations. You tell ‘em, Robert Wagner! Newsflash, folks: Privatization is no longer slowly taking over the world. Now it is taking over very, very quickly. We have to get used to it. I’ll repeat it: We have to get used to it. It’s a bitter pill to take, and we can certainly skewer the odds in our favour ever so slightly so that these private institutions will at least look after us some of the time, but we have to start seeing ourselves as commodities, as part of an economic equation, nothing more, at least in terms of how we consume good and services. Sorry, Naomi Klein. We lost. Not that I myself was particularly heartbroken. ‘Hope for the best, prepare for the worst’ is a great motto, but considering most people are lazy, ignorant (which is worse than being dumb, as it’s choosing to be dumb) and will take what is easy over what is ethically right nine times out of ten, I was ready for all of us to go ahead and fail ourselves without too much fanfare. Maybe I’m being cynical about the human condition, but seeing the world overact to Michael Jackson’s death and allowing only a minute or two in the news for the passing of Robert McNamara – the man that saved Ford, oversaw most of the Vietnam War, and was president of the World Bank – made me throw in the towel. The insipid and childish debate over health care in America hasn’t allayed my fears much, either. And note that the much vaunted ‘public option’ is being tossed to the wolves in favour of…well, no one seems to be one hundred percent sure, but I’m sure Blue Cross and Aetna are somehow going to get by just fine… And just to be clear, I don’t feel that I’ve become a broken hearted liberal or anything. I don’t have the time or temperance for that. No, it’s a buyers and sellers market now for absolutely anything, no matter what your political stripe or bent. Look at Blackwater (now called Xe): Now even war is fought for corporate profit. Of course, maybe it’s always been this way since we climbed out of the muck, where money talks and everything else stumbles lemming-like behind it. The only difference now is that we are going to acknowledge it openly and with a healthy dose of suspicion and cynicism. When we hear a corporation’s PR machine claim that the customer is always right, we must now snort loudly and demand that they prove it by showing us the numbers. Adopt, adapt, and improve. To operate in this new paradigm, you have to remember some new and basic rules about the world of today and tomorrow. You may not like them – I sure as hell don’t – but you’re definitely going to have to get used to them:
-Privatization puts profit before people. End of story. Nasty? Immoral? Will possibly destroy civilization in the end? Yes, yes, and…mmm… yes. But to consider that nasty and immoral tendencies are entering the world commerce for the first time is to forget the history of the world. Slavery is as old as civilization itself, and has powered many of the greatest ones (Egyptian, Greek, Roman). And as for the excuse, ‘we don’t do that any more’, well, we certainly don’t have any problem with polluting the shit out of this planet. Or letting billions of fellow humans live in impoverished squalor. Or have many of those same billions manufacture trinkets and toys for the lucky several hundred million of us who live in the developed world. So let’s put aside the idea that either then or now there was ever a moral high ground in the world of business. Good old fashioned greed is at the heart of profit, and the Western World has been insanely fortunate that we’ve exploited technology and other cultures to the point where it’s not only kings, queens, and heads of state and companies who benefit. Oh, the usual lot get the biggest slices of pie, but with the vast economic gulf between how 1/3 of the world lives and the other 2/3, you realize that we have been feeding on a parasitical system that we supposedly detest for centuries. Americans got quite upset at wall street bankers getting huge bonuses even though they were responsible for an economic clusterfuck, but that only makes sense if you frame it so that the average American is on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. And that means a lot of ignorance as to how the rest of the world lives (ignorance again? A pattern is emerging…). We can’t destroy the power of profit, but if we can twist it ever so slightly by promising a profit after [CORPORATION] has sold us a functioning and dependable product or service, then all the better. Awarding failure is the death of capitalism and corporatism. Nothing is too big to fail. If you’re not posting profits, fuck off and die. But if you’re going to post a profit by cutting corners on your products’ safety standards, people will start dying, meaning people will stop buying, which means you’re not posting profits, so fuck off and die.
-If profit is god, then you have a price on your head Money is power. But you knew that already. A big bank account means you can have very special friends who also have big bank accounts as well as very impressive strings that can be pulled for you from time to time. In the future, we won’t have to use visual cues such as clothing or vehicles to determine the size of people’s wealth. Products will be based solely on their function and aesthetic quality. No one will buy something to keep up with Joneses’, because everyone will know the exact worth of the Joneses’ assets, just as they will know yours. Finally you won’t be judged on the colour of your skin, your religion, or your clothes. It will just be a simple number, with two decimals tacked on the end, to be exact. The bigger the number that sits in your bank account defines the totality of your life on earth as far as the important institutions are concerned. The more you’re worth, the more you can do, in every sense of the word. It’s better than a passport. In fact, if you reach a certain level of power it can completely replace one. Incidentally, that’s also the level where you are able to make whatever you want to do suddenly legal (by tweaking laws and statutes), or if not that, are able to get someone else to do your dirty business with enough distance in between that it’s never traced back to you. We are on the cusp of a vast form of dehumanization. One of the consequences of globalization and unrestrained corporate mergers is that the economy has become so complex and interdependent that many facets of it ARE too big to fail (contradicting what I said above, but corporations care not a whit for paradoxes). Not everyone may actively participate in the stock market, but you can be damn sure that anyone with a pulse has a share in this thing we call human civilization, and boy howdy are we hoping for it to inch ever higher so we can all afford that plasma TV and ivory backscratcher!
-Borders will be replaced with consumer zones One day you will stand up at the beginning of a sports event and praises the virtues and economic reach of [your country in question], brought to you by Dow Chemical. Nostalgia is a very powerful force, and marketers know this. Despite the fact that corporations have a greater say most of the time in the direction of a nation than it’s citizens, eradicating the structure of the government itself is bad for business. People like the idea of nations, and what they are supposed to represent (American hegemony! German beer! Japanese friendliness!), so there’s no reason to dismantle a comforting mask that soothes the general populace. But these symbols will be empty symbols, with no real power to back them up. Borders will melt away, much like they have in the European Union. But instead of a political body representing the populace, it will be a corporate body representing the needs and wants of consumers in that prescribed zone. What is available in these zones – whether it be a product, service, or bureaucratic system – will be determined by the corporations examining their bottom lines for that particular quarter with limited feedback from the customer base (for old times’ sake, it will still be called ‘voting’). ‘What’s your poison’, they’ll ask, and depending on how you answered the fifty questions they will offer up Northern California as brought to you by Ben & Jerry’s and Google, The National Council of Evangelical’s Cola-NORAD-o, or maybe the Peugeot-Socialist Zone of France. Think I’m crazy? Go visit Atlanta – home of Coca-Cola – and try asking for a Pepsi.
Corporate Interest is the new Law People don’t own corporations, we’re slaves to them. Corporations have become the new conquering nation, perpetually expanding its reach, and diversifying when market research suggests it has reached saturation with its original product. The laws we were bound to follow and uphold for the good of civil society have been replaced by the fine print found in new, corporation-friendly laws that allow Mosanto to patent genetically modified food (like seeds that are resistant to Mosanto-manufactured pesticides) and for Dow to dismiss charges of negligent homicide with a big fat check that doesn’t put a dent in their overall profits. Let’s lay it out, shall we? Haliburton is a more powerful and relevant foreign policy arm of the United States than its military. Haliburton controls energy the way the mob control southern Italy. They have become so large that the services they offer are frequently surmised in corporate doublespeak. I mean, what exactly is ‘production volume optimization’? How much easier it must be to do absolutely anything when you can call it absolutely nothing. But just as the previous administration had dozens of ex-oil executives running the show, it seems fitting then that in the middle of financial disaster that the current administration has its halls chock full of Goldman Sachs alumni. It’s not a conspiracy, folks, it’s just good business. Remember the wall street banker bonuses that came out of the bailout money? Don’t look at it as the government – and therefore the American taxpayer – getting screwed. These corporations own/manipulate the government for all intensive purposes, so it’s really the same people moving the money from one pocket of theirs to another. If you think about it for a moment – and leave morals at the door, which we’ve already agreed is the best way to understand international politics and finance – you’ll realize it’s easier this way. And what’s wrong with a little Occam’s Razor in the early years of the twenty first century?
I think the picture is becoming clearer. Nothing much is going to change, because so much of how the world works is already like this. In fact, the only difference is that we’re going to admit to ourselves the unpleasant truths, and maybe it’s just me looking for anything resembling a silver lining, but I think that’s a pretty big and important step, all things considered. Perhaps it seems like I’m selling the positive side of the human spirit short (hell, I used the ever-spooky term ‘dehumanization’), but there’s still plenty of room for the soul. There’s been art, creativity, and desire for endless novelty and unbridled chaos in both the most oppressive and open societies on earth. A world where everyone has (or is) a number isn’t much different from a world than what we have now. A full and well-lived life won’t be squelched under the iron fist of political corporatism. It will still be a personal journey full of friends and family and unique human experiences. The obstacles will be the same, just sponsored by a shoe companies. It will be a better ordered world, but definitely not a dystopian world hiding behind the veneer of a fake utopian one. After all, let’s not think everything was completely rosy and perfect once. Let’s not nostalgize our past, because by doing so we will be both naïve and bitter about the future.
So…meet the new world. Same as the old world. Hopefully we’ll just know the difference this time.
June 21 - There Goes Your Corpse Again... America DOA: Money Talks, but only Real Money I
Sob stories of superrich losing millions frequently overshadow the more common stories of the middle class losing everything. It's the eternal struggle: the few rich versus the mostly poor. For thousands of years it was kings and emperors, then it was kings and advisors, and then it was politicians. Throw in the odd medicine man turned priest and you’ve got human history wrapped up in a couple sentences. But surely now in the 21st century, with our fingers burnt once again with dizzyingly bizarre economic concepts like credit default swaps and eight years of uninspired leadership, we’ve moved on, right?
Well unfortunately, the dumbfuckery never ends. Lawrence
Summers is a chief economic advisor to President Obama and was the
Treasury Secretary under President Clinton. His take on the economy just
before the bottom fell out:
But as tempting as it is, you can't make too many comparisons
with Europe, as America is almost four times the size of the largest
European country. To offer the same amount of services to the United
States, the size of the bureaucracy that would be required is
mind-boggling. Perhaps technology will exist decades from now that could
permit such a society, but certainly not right now.
But the problem isn’t just the broken
state of economy, and whether the president can get the banks simply
lending again. The question to ask is whether what Obama is offering is
nothing more than just a couple chemo blasts of radiation when what
America needs is emergency surgery on its entire financial superstructure.
Getting the economy out of the wheelchair and onto crutches is great, but
what do you when social security and medicare collapse in the next two
decades? China and the middle east have billions and billions invested in
America, and what do you do when they begin saber rattling for their
trunks of cash to be returned with interest? II But I would posit that all of these problems that America has to address are symptoms of an even larger one. And this overarching problem can be condensed to one word: Size. There has never been a country as rich and as powerful as America. A democratically elected government for over 300 million people, where, despite obvious class divisions, are guaranteed protection under the law (taking into consideration human fallibility), education (up to the age of eighteen), offered quality emergency health care (granted, the bill eventually becomes your problem in many cases), and basic levels of infrastructure that allows for safe transport and purchase of a wide selection of goods (although the higher you are on the economic ladder, the more choices are available to you). No country with such a large population is able to offer its people so much. And while it can be argued with little effort that much of these advantages are available to every citizen at the expense of American foreign policy throwing its weight around in international affairs, this reckless ‘self exemption’ of certain international laws and treaties are also nothing more than a symptom of America’s size. The massive bureaucracy that gives America its armed forces, its roadways and bridges, and its social security and welfare cheques is subject to every negative stereotype about any government program you could think of. It can be slow, corrupt, ineffective, confusing, and – depending on where you stand on the political spectrum – completely unconstitutional. But despite this, it works more often than it doesn’t for now, the proof being the fact that everything hasn’t fallen apart yet. The American military is the world greatest (give or take some body armour), the bridges don’t fall down (very often), and the cheques arrive in the mail (oh yeah, the post office is also under their control, which nothing to scoff at it considering America’s physical size is impressive as well). When size becomes too much to deal with for one institution, it seems like the sensible thing to do would be to pawn off certain tasks to other groups, but only if said groups are as dependable as the original single institution. The attempt of the Bush administration to privatize as many government services as possible came under fire from a wide swath of America, and the criticism was certainly not without merit. Corporations which put profit ahead of the services they provide become an abhorrent thought when the service in question is people’s health and safety. It is no wonder that most would hope for the government to take this matter into its own hands, as, despite rampant and unending corruption, at its very core it is a body dedicated to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness for its citizens. But in the big institution known as the Federal Government, it’s unwieldy size makes it easy for backdoor dealings and greased palms to go by undetected. For a long time corporate America had its hands tied with regulation, meant to keep it from becoming too large and powerful. But the defense of corporate interest still continues unabated, of course, because of the massive influx of cash these companies float down the Potomac, which is eagerly snatched up by helpless senators and congressmen. Even the upstanding, heroic, historic and current president did not resist the lure of the megabucks in his 2008 campaign. Obama promised that changed had come to Washington, but some of his biggest financial supporters were from banks that were quickly imploding in the fall of last year. Money talks more than votes, and that’s always been the case, but today it’s as if money doesn’t talk, it demands (or swears, for all you Zimmy fans out there). Just what going to be the result of, ‘stemming corruption, earmarks, and vanity projects’ that linger in the small print and margins of legislation? Are we to believe that this is the sole impetus from keeping America from reaching the promised land? Earmarks may be insidiously inserted into annual government budgets, but their eventual resting place is a construction project that provides jobs and requires resources that stimulate the local economy. This is business as usual in America, for better or for worse. Sure a stamp museum in Wisconsin may not be the wisest spending of taxpayer money, but have you got a load of the defense budget? And beyond the nonexistent intellectual discussion of the pros and cons of a couple billions dollars worth of earmarks stuck inside of a three trillion dollar budget, what is most dangerous about ‘business as usual’ politics is the difficulty in excising all these supposed negative qualities from the governmental process. Kind of like trying to remove a tumor from the brain. There is a good chance that in trying to save patient you’ll kill them. The United States government has never existed without a twisted, money loving relationship with private enterprise – George Washington was both the richest American and its largest landowner when he was president – and are we just assuming that trying to do so now would be… better? Amazing? Worth a try? I’ll take anything for a spin around the block, but what are the chances of honest governance being given a far shake in Washington? ‘Honest’, I suppose means greater transparency in it’s dealings, as ideally citizens would cry foul whenever they see something in a budget or bill that seems wrong or unfair. But bringing the equivalent of a watchdog to Washington is just adding another office that stares at paper and computer screens all day. Despite its good intentions, it quickly becomes a legislative speed bump. A streamlining of the bureaucracy is simply not possible, especially considering that even after massive budget amputations (‘cuts’ just don’t do it justice), Washington seems to be mired in papers and pending approvals for everything save the military, which gets the royal treatment to keep the country safe, by any – and as many costly – means necessary. But a country that focuses solely on the strength of its ability to defend itself from the outside is more susceptible to rot from within, and that’s true of a country no matter what its size. America just happens to be in the unenviable position that simply because of its size every country is to some degree dependent on its actions, and when the big dog get sick like it is right now, everyone in the pound suffers. III The problem is that everyone knows change is needed – that’s the slogan that won the presidency last fall – but no one wants to get their hands too dirty and spend political capital, namely because there isn’t any actual capital to spend. It is absolutely ridiculous that in this environment – of a three trillion dollar budget – that Obama is trying to push a health care initiative. Don’t get me wrong, universal health care should be the staple of every nation – and especially the wealthiest nation on earth – but trying for it now is like shopping for skis after becoming paralyzed. Beyond the most basic problem of not being able to afford the estimated one trillion dollar price tag (Iraq costs $10 billion per month, a deficit that is once again increasing, foreign investment taking a bigger and bigger bite out of what American corporations ‘own’), the creation of such a department that co-exists with current health insurance companies and their own plans would take an incredibly long time to set up, go over budget in its infancy, either offer good service to few Americans, or poor service to many Americans, and would be a perfect piñata for financial conservatives criticizing government programs of any kind. This isn’t a single term process, either. If the administration in power that is pushing for these reforms is booted out in four years time and the plan barely has time to take root on the national stage, the next president can easily dismantle the program, decry its difficulty, and with that, universal health care becomes a dirty word for another decade or so. Size challenged problems in a size challenged nation have to hit the ground running and sprint to the finish in record time to be considered a success. Anything less would be labeled a failure, whether warranted or not. This is the peril of government programs in the early twenty first century. The stock saying is that Democrats want to make the government bigger, and I suppose that is true, but if the Dem’s were better at selling ideas, they’d simply say they’d prefer to make the government smarter (yeah, a hack clichéd phrase, but the uber-simplistic lines, ‘it’s the economy stupid’ and ‘you’re either with us or against us’ have won elections, so go with what works). But the Democrat’s base is so much more widely diverse than the Republican’s that no matter what the president does or how he sells it, some of his most ardent supporters during the election are going to be pissed at him. Obama treading the boards lightly on the Guantanimo closing and how to handle the detainees has upset a large portion of his base, which makes sense, as the closing is supposed to represent a complete eradication of the Bush-era policies of pre-emptive extraction of suspected terrorists. Obama hasn’t really done this yet, only closing the base itself. Grabbing suspects in the middle east in complete secrecy and whisking them to god knows where to do god knows what to them is still permitted in the Obama administration. Take that, lefties! But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Not wanting to shit all over the rich industrialists how helped get him elected, he is also being careful with the implementation of new and stricter environmental policies. And this could be the nail in the coffin that no one is aware they are currently lying in. I hate to be Greenboy McHippiebottom for a moment, but Washington DC is going to have a lot problems making any changes at all if it’s under several feet of water, which is what experts estimate will be the scenario if the polar ice caps keep melting like they are. Weaning the country off of foreign oil is usually cited as the perfect marriage of national security and environmental policy, but electric cars and better MPG is just a drop in the bucket compared to the effects of domestic coal plants and the prevalence of non-biodegradable plastic. America has been so busy since the end of World War II playing policeman – for good or ill – to the nations of the world that it never bothered taking much interest in the quality of the physical land these nations sat upon, and in the next decade or so, it is going to have to reap what it has sown in that respect. So when you look at it in those doomsday terms, the only thing that will save America from imminent financial and social disaster is the invention of a cheap, clean renewable resource that they can market to the rest of the world. Perhaps much more efficient solar panels. Or clean coal, which is clean but incredibly expensive. Or how about that crazy cold fusion shit? Maybe that’s just kooky with a capital ‘k’. But hey desperate times call for desperate, crazy measures. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman – while having a hit-and-miss record on his support for the Iraq war and an annoyingly sanctimonious yet pedestrian writing style – has hit the nail squarely on the head in this instance, repeating ad nauseum in his writings that America needs to lead the world in this emerging industry or suffer the possibility of becoming a second tier nation. I guess you could say size matters…until it doesn’t. Of course, it’s hard to be naively optimistic about this future. Bureaucracy and the already dominant industries will certainly put up barriers to radical changes in energy policy, or any legislation that may curtail profits. We know this because it has happened as is still happening (the death of the electric car, revising EPA reports, tax benefits to oil companies). What is maddening to many about the need for alternative energy is that most proposals and plans are not pipe dreams. The technology is there, ready to be developed on mass scale. In a world that is always moving faster and faster, only atrophy is the true killer. IV In conclusion, America is hanging onto the side of the cliff, fingertips dug in tight. It’s the economic reality that nobody is really talking about – all this stimulus money is being borrowed from China and other countries – that is the very real threat on political terms. On general shit terms, the environment is the sick elephant in the room, barfing on everybody. The only good news for America is that most likely the effects of pollution will wallop China first, and so proper – and revolutionary – legislation will pass in other countries soon after, hoping to avoid the fate of two hundred million Chinese who died inhaling poisoned air. Either way, we’ve got great depression sized problems to deal with the world over, and we’re certainly not out of the woods yet. Just as people have made the same types of mistakes getting the world into this economic mess, they are now making the same types of mistakes that the experts during the depression made one year in. Namely, saying that the worst was over, and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. What actually happened was that the markets bottomed out in 1931, two years after the great fall crash. Yikes. Still, Obama’s got a smile so shiny it can bring down a plane, so who knows what the future has in store. The human element is the most unpredictable one, and flipping coins is sadly the best thing we have as to the direction of our future. Hopefully our civilized good can outpace our tendency to embrace the absurdly awful. And don’t forget our inexhaustible charm as a species. As Jules Winfield tells us in Pulp Fiction, perhaps in anticipation of our cool as a cucumber 44th president: ‘Personality goes a long way.’
April. 8 - Whatever you Do, Don't Tell Anyone... (Oh Zeitgeist, my Zeitgeist…) Remember the old X-Files tagline, ‘I Want to Believe’? So many people do. Oh god, how they want to. And it’s not aliens anymore. The Roswell cover up? That’s so pre 9/11. Flying saucers, rectal probes, area 51, what a load of shit. The real murmurs ‘round the darting-eyes water cooler now concerns controlled demolition, the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, and throwing body parts onto the lawn of the Pentagon. And the size of this allegorical water cooler is growing. In the past the fringe elements of society that called the moon landing a fake and the JFK assassination a grassy-knoll omitting bullshit story were confined to meeting in leaky basements and handing out poorly spelled pamphlets on street corners. But that’s all changed thanks to the infotainment superhighway. The internet has made it easier to do…well, almost everything. Including putting together a conspiracy film that can be viewed by millions of bored, average joes and janes that would rather delve deep into poorly argued political conspiracy than watch another rerun of CSI. The template is Loose Change, a documentary that suggests not only that the government explanation for 9/11 a bunch of crap, but that there is a cover up of epic proportions involving pretty much everyone who doesn’t believe that 9/11 was an inside job. In a big ass nutshell, the argument is that the United States government – with a heck of a lot of help from most branches of the CIA – had jet airplanes fly into the World Trade Centre, a missile fly into the Pentagon ‘pretending’ it was a plane, and ‘pretended’ another plane crashed in field in Pennsylvania that was also headed towards Washington. Additionally, this group also hid explosives in both Trade Centres and World Trade Centre Seven, detonating them not long after the planes hit (WTC 7’s bomb went off later in the day). Also, the planes that didn’t crash into the Pentagon or a field outside Pittsburgh landed safely in secret the morning of September 11th. The people on them were either killed or remain hidden by the government. Take your pick. Why was this done? Simple. To rule over America with fear, spend a shitload of money on defense and security, and then blame it on the Middle East so America can go in and shape the region like it was made of silly putty. A real doozey, eh? Loose Change has the flashy edits, damning news clips, and a commanding-yet-nerdy voice that makes everything sound so clear and obvious. In other words, it’s the type of propaganda that the people they accuse of being involved in this vile conspiracy would be proud of. The official website trumpets that fifty million people have watched the film, but I wouldn't advise taking it for a spin. Loose Change is a bit on the long side, to be honest. A file footage compilation more than anything else. Maybe it would work better if Michael Moore had a chance to do a snappier edit. For those that squirm in their seats and check their watch as we hear yet another witness claim they heard ‘strange bangs’ in lower Manhattan on September 11th, I recommend the readers digest version plus more crazy theories in Peter Joseph’s own crack kook doc, Zeitgeist. It’s much more entertaining, complete sound bites from Bill Hicks and George Carlin (always the hallmark of a serous documentary film uncovering history-altering government crime). Instead of focusing its two hour run time on one particular untruth, Zeitgeist cheats, and offers up three forty minute conspiracy summations that are tied together very loosely. To wit: Jesus is a sham cobbled together from other religions, 9/11 was an inside job, and the Federal Reserve has the world’s balls in a vice. The end. Points 1 and 3 are pretty much on the money in the ‘well, probably, but so what?’ realm, just amped up with ‘too good to be true’ damning facts. When it comes to debunking Christianity’s saviour, it’s a simple matter of plagiarism. Apparently every messiah was a sun god born on December 25th and crucified, and the three days Jesus was dead for represents the three days between the winter solstice (the day with the least sun of the year) and his constant rebirth on December 25th. It’s a bit watery and doesn’t hold together that well – especially when you go online and find he’s exaggerated some of the ‘other god’ similarities for Horus and some Hindu deities – but the overarching point of Jesus being a run-of-the-mill messiah with characteristics found in a great many other world religions comes through loud and clear. More important, of course, were the religious/political decrees that were done in his name, many of which that seem to diverge sharply from a man who asked everyone to ‘turn the other cheek’. The third part is an interesting expose about the Federal Reserve and how it’s in cahoots with the IMF and the World Bank in controlling the flow of money around the world. In some ways it’s the least jaw dropping and full of math, so it probably means it’s more factually correct than the other two segments. I mean, a small group of bankers control the world? No surprise there. Sure, they don’t sit in a supervillain lair inside a volcano and cackle about world domination, but they do tell over half the world’s countries how and when they can spend their money, and use the developed countries’ political and military clout to enforce these decrees. The problem is that this is boring ass-shit to your average conspiracy buff. Wading through pages of banking loan applications and neo-liberalist economic tracts that you can pick up in any government office or textbook. Even if you find some secret, buried document, what’s their big crime? Giving contracts to their friends in other industries at Davos or Sun Valley. Yaaaaaaawn. Remember ‘the’ conspiracy of the seventies, Watergate? The one that turned out to be true and is more or less responsible for people trying to dig up proof on other crackpot theories in hopes of finding a Deep Throat-like helper or a tape with eighteen minutes missing? FBI associate director Mark ‘Deep Throat’ Felt gave journalists Woodward and Bernstein the cryptic line, ‘Follow the Money’, which eventually led to the conspiracy being blown wide open and Nixon giving the peace sign in disgrace. It’s a good thing to keep in mind when looking at the Federal Reserve, an organization that lends money out to the American government. Not gives, lends. The American people are eternally in debt to this organization that gives them the cash for houses, candy bars, and glass bongs. The real conspiracies are the one’s that aren’t even conspiracies, but rather forms of public legislation that grants an insane amount of power on small groups of people. Take the bailout, for example. A swindling on a grand scale. Without really notifying the public, the Federal Reserve has directly given billions of dollars to the ailing banking system on the public’s eventual tab. Just because they can. But instead of focusing on these genuine crises, we are stuck with thousands of people who dream much bigger than augmenting the legislative process through democratic means. Accepting the truth about 9/11 is the non-Matrix equivalent of ‘taking the red pill’. It grants you access to a bunch of pissed off nobodies that lack basic organizational skills, as reporter Matt Taibbi found out when he went to one of their meetings. One of their resolutions was to create a new form of media, as all other forms – TV, papers, internet – have been corrupted by the rulers of the American empire. Then it was on to the name calling (‘Bush and Cheney are a bunch of gangsters!’). It’s a tough gig. While a majority of Americans believe that the US government hasn’t been completely up front and honest about their knowledge of the events of September 11th – considering how the intelligence community and the Bush administration dropped the ball that day, it’s no surprise seeing them try to keep their ineptitude under wraps – that assessment is a far cry from swallowing some of the horseshit that the 9/11 Truthers believe, like that Popular Mechanics magazine is in on the conspiracy because they concluded that the Towers fell down only because jet aircraft smashed into them. In other words, truthers, don’t give us that controlled demolition stuff. Watching 9/11 highlights on a loop and calling a university’s physics department does not make you an expert at what happens when an airplane smashes into a twenty seven year old building. Suggesting that the ‘missile’ hitting the Pentagon was designed to look like a plane crash by having soldiers litter body parts on the ground is disgusting, insensitive, and desperate. Know what the cure for all this shit is? Legitimate research. The one thing that stuck in my craw was World Trade Centre 7 seemingly imploding for no apparent reason, as it wasn’t hit by an airplane and very little falling debris. Truthers believe the building housed a secret CIA office which had to be destroyed, so the whole building was leveled. In actuality, because two massive superstructures collapsed in a heap of debris, much of the underground piping systems in close proximity collapsed, leading to gas leaks that essentially started a massive diesel fire in the basement of WTC7, allowing it to implode in a very ‘ordered’ manner. How did I find that out? I read an article by a respected journalist – George Monbiot – who quoted it from a report from a Popular Mechanics journal article. (the same one that disproved the controlled demolition theory) And sure, maybe the first reaction from the conspiracy theorist is claiming that a British essayist focused on global warming and an unremarkable American science magazine are in on it, but when you start throwing accusations of compliance and ‘political whore of the biggest conspiracy of them all’ (as Monibot was accused of being), you start to sound, well, paranoid. Bugs on your skin paranoid. 1984-everyone-is-watching-you paranoid. When disagreement is viewed as insubordination and ‘them vs. us’, you are quickly becoming just like the people you’ve accused of being dictatorial masterminds. Although it must be said that despite every scientifically disproved fact that the Truthers mindlessly cling to, the only nagging point about 9/11 for me is historical precedent. While the details of the government involvement vary from conspiracy theorist to conspiracy theorist, the basic belief is that certain clandestine government officials knew this was about to happen and did nothing to stop it, or actively (but covertly) took a part in the planning and executing of the attacks. At face value this seems, well, evil to the very core, and something that no country would ever do its own citizens. Not true, of course. Going back only fifty years we have governments turning on huge segments of it’s own populace in the Sudan, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, El Salvador, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Cambodia, East Timor, and China (oh great leap forward! Has irony ever been so monumentally bitter?), to name a few. Well, those are unstable countries, you may argue, America is a different kettle of fish altogether. You’re right. America’s usually too busy helping the aforementioned genocides to go against their own people in any way. The clandestine forces of the US government have a nasty habit of meddling in other countries affairs, and that included plenty of blood – if not on their hands – then on the hands of the people they got to do their dirty work. Supporting foreign military dictators that will go along with American economic policy with weapons and cash is a typical play. In 1973, democratically elected Chilean leader Allende is overthrown and killed by American-endorsed General Pinochet, who goes onto the rule with an iron fist and kill hundreds of thousands of people (conservative estimate). They also overthrew the Prince of Cambodia in 1970 and gave the keys to Pol Pot after he agreed to help them fight the Vietcong. A swell movie called The Killing Fields resulted. There was also funding and training the Contras in Nicaragua in the 80’s, and the CIA booted (read: shot, cut up, burned in acid) the elected leader of Congo in 1961, letting crazy dictator Mobutu loot, pillage, and murder for three decades. Oh, and hey, remember how the US supported Saddam Hussein and gave him biological weapons in the eighties before calling him a threat a couple years later because he gassed his own people while the US backed him? Yeah, that thing. If they’re willing to have hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans and Africans continuously die for decades for – ultimately – their own financial gain, is it that crazy to imagine 9/11 as something beyond a bunch of pissed off terrorists living in the Afghan wilderness? Crazy doesn’t look so crazy when you flip through the history books. After all, if Germany won WWII, it would be common knowledge that Poland invaded Germany in September 1939. But even just considering all this is a fair cry from the controlled demolition crap (and historically accurate!), as punching holes in one official theory does not a new crazy theory make. And just because horrendous things that have happened in the past had a particular imprint from one organization doesn’t mean that every horrible event has something to do with that same organization. Occam’s Razor is a great little argument that simply states in so many words that the simplest explanation for a problem or situation is most likely the correct one. Obviously this is not a popular position for Conspiracy Theorists, but looking at the events of September 11th and the people in charge of America at the time, the official story of a couple Middle Eastern terrorists catching the country’s security force asleep at the switch sounds pretty damn sensible. It’s especially welcoming when you start to realize how far the net the Truthers are willing to cast over society. Hundreds of employees at the CIA and the Department of Defense and The White House, thousands of soldiers and other military commanders, and tens of thousands of experts and professional in mainstream America that confirm the government’s findings are all involved in this conspiracy. And not one of them is willing to break down and tell the truth. If you believe all this, then you truly believe that the men who created these events are supermen. Some sort of all knowing, high priests of the earth. They control not only the government and the devastating events that change the course of national policy, but how the public reacts to said devastating events. If you cease to believe in accidents – including horribly big ones – then everything is intentional, even failure. George Monibot received a great wave of hate mail when he criticized the 9/11 truth movement, and in a response column he makes the important point that the 9/11 movement – while good natured in at least it’s original intention of seeking truth – is taking a lot of energy out more pressing and legitimate problems, like globalization and climate change. Moreover, he notes that the conspiracy theories actually encourage antipathy, by painting the adversaries as supermen that cannot be brought down or overthrown. One who buys into these theories are suddenly free to do…what? What does ‘swallowing the red pill’ of 9/11 allow one to do? Meet in recreation centre basements and rage against the machine? Sit smugly in front of their televisions knowing that they are through the looking glass? What is the next step to overthrow a massive multifaceted organization when you and a handful of people find out what they’ve allegedly been up to? Run for office? Hire a lawyer? Buy a gun? Here's a tip: If your conspiracy sounds like a bad action movie, it's probably full of shit. If it makes you fall asleep as you try to run through pages of legal documents and convoluted economic equations, you might be onto something. The truth may very well be out there, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to like what they find, as it could dash either your belief in government or your belief in a super secret global government. Bitter pills are overwhelming evidence and detailed reports. Red pills may taste better going down, but are delusional flights of fancy.
Feb. 13 – City of Tiny Lights, Don’t You Want to…
Even though it’s getting brighter day by day it’s still the dead of winter. Shoveling. Mittens. Slush. Funny hats. It’s the same old shit if you’re used to it. The story of the world, I suppose. But for some places on our blue and green globe, a little bit of winter can be catastrophic. London was paralyzed with snow recently. Apparently there’s not a single snow plow truck in the entire city. That somehow seems irresponsible to me. Any city that is above 50 degrees north latitude should probably have something to keep freak snowstorms from turning one of the most important financial centers in the world to a temporary white apocalypse. So it’s global warming, three wars in the Middle East, economic meltdown, and there’s still nothing good on television. Leave to CNN and Fox News to cover anything remotely interesting and complex with superficial analysis repeated ad infinitum. Elections are dull and boring, so it makes sense that the coverage of them are dull and boring, but somehow they’ve turned coverage of a financial meltdown into a series of manage-your-money-better segments, apparently aimed at preschoolers (how do you look for a new job? By going to a job centre!). I’ve already bitched about the media too much (and they don’t seem to be listening). I’m not out of material, just out of patience. With Obama elected I’ve pretty much left television news entirely. It’s the information superhighway or nothing. I’m finally riding the wave, which is to take me to the city of the future. A virtual city, but a city nonetheless. With work, play, mail, commerce, sex, and tolls. Your commute is your computer start up and at the ‘office’ you never have to wear pants. Most of the shit is free, but the best stuff you have to pay for (music, premium news, porn), unless you have no problem with stealing it (torrents!). And no need to worry about not having a fleet of snowplows. But stupidity is coming to the net, too (right, because it was an astrophysicist’s paradise before). The new banner ads – from the sides of buses to the centre of my monitor – peppering the cyber landscape are asking me if I’m smarter than George Bush, Miley Cyrus, Alicia Keys, or the average football fan (who apparently has an IQ of 118). I have some friends in the internet advertising world, and they swear to me these things work, and I find myself hoping that they’re lying or delusional. I’ve been using thedailybeast.com for a unique perspective on daily events, but more and more of it is becoming mindless entertainment gossip. An interview with a guy who wrote a book about a criminal who nailed Paris Hilton. Why Jessica Simpson gaining weight is good for her career. R&B artist Chris Brown beating up R&B artist Rihanna. And according to the site these are some of the most popular articles. It seems we are addicted to a side dish of lighter fare. Beside the bailout stories and updates on the Afghan conflict, here’s a quick article about female orgasms to make the bad news go down easier. And yeah, it’s a cop out. Chomsky didn’t insert knock-knock jokes between chapters of Hegemony or Survival. Marx didn’t interrupt Das Kapital with, ‘so what’s the deal with class warfare? Are we supposed to be fighting with pencils and erasers?’ The palette cleanser is just another way of using the carrot to get the people’s interest instead of the stick. Nothing wrong with that, but there’s always the danger that people just gorge on the carrot and ignore the reason why the carrot was placed there in the first place (and even the carrot metaphor isn’t accurate. A healthy vegetable shouldn’t represent celebrity gossip. Maybe a proverbial big mac would be better). You can’t force people to care about the economy or the environment. Even promising pics of Brad and Angelina arguing on the next page won’t make ‘em read it if they don’t want to. Woe betide us all for the segment of the population that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about politics. I’ve been reading about the rise of fascism in Italy in the early nineteen twenties, and much of its initial support came from the near-illiterate rural areas that had little interest in both participating in the young Italian democracy and understanding how it worked. Ignorance won’t bring down a nation, but it will certainly bust a kneecap or two. And cities (preferably non-cyber) are one of the best ways to combat this ignorance. Cities force people to address new ways of thinking because there are so many unique opinions flying around the streets at all times. Problems with societal growth, poverty, pollution, social acceptance, and culture exist across every nation, but in the cities they can be condensed into a single neighborhood or block. You are overwhelmed with different ways of living a life. The poor beg outside some of the tallest skyscrapers that house the richest companies. Various races and creeds bring their culture from countries on the other side of the earth set up shop beside each other. Gridlock roars alongside framed park spaces. Flyers and sidewalk preachers clamoring for socio-political-religious attention. Like I wrote earlier, a government can’t force people to care, so the city is the closest thing to make people aware of situations they would have otherwise never thought about. Of course, not all cities are bastions of discovery. Some are smoldering holes in the ground. Take Gaza City, for example, on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean Sea (ya know it’s a city ‘cause of the second word in its title). Nothing like starting the New Year off with a carpet bombing followed by a ground invasion, am I right? Most cities get to deal with diversity by having mindless summer cultural festivals. In Gaza City, you celebrate diversity with a tank vs. rock fight. And how about Jerusalem – just down the road from Gaza City – as one serious clusterfuck of a city? A holy place for three major world religions, fought over for more than two thousand years. The Christians eventually moved onto Rome (the crusades were just a spring fling or summer romance), but Muslims dug in their heels and the Jews took another swing after WWII. But it’s not really about religion any more. Calling one group ‘Jewish’ and the other ‘Muslim’ is just denigrating the religions themselves. The fate of human souls shouldn’t have anything to do with squabbles over land, even if one side believes god ‘gave’ them the land thousands of years ago (how the hell does mean anything? Ask Native Americans how their gods giving them the North American continent worked out). Today it’s a fight between nationalities. The Israelis versus the Palestinians. Making it any more complicated than doesn’t help one bit. Not that this term distinction makes much of a difference. There won’t be peace in Israel-Palestine because of the Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, which the settlers won’t give up without a fight. The Israeli government seems to be bipolar, first allowing their citizens to encroach on Palestinian land, then telling them to move back. The latter hasn’t worked out well. The Israeli army tried to move some families out awhile back and met stiff resistance from fellow Israelis. And while that’s the biggest problem, even if it is miraculously solved – with all of Israel, not just handfuls, telling the settlers to hightail it out of there – the Palestinian militant group Hamas is going to make sure it can piss in the party punch every chance it gets and still send rocks and rockets flying into Israel (fun fact: during the January air strikes, Hamas members would go into Gaza hospitals and kill the injured adult males who were critics of the group). Bah. Current events are so close to last year’s events. Or decades ago events. The only thing that ever changes is the quality of the TV graphics. Is chaos supposed to be this dull? Many exciting and dangerous events occurring the world over and I’m sitting on my sofa, trying not to spill the chip dip. I’m sure I’ll eat those words someday. In some bizarre forty eight hour period in a hopefully distant future my world will turn upside down and I’ll end up being struck by a car whilst trying to head for the hills on bike to avoid the plague and then die in a ditch. Days later maybe some stragglers will pilfer my backpack for food and possible weapons. And that will be it. I’d miss the fireworks on TV because of my chickenshit escape to the pastoral safety of the country. It reminds me of the concept of city versus country in the Elizabethan period. At least on stage. The city was a place of filth and corruption, and young lovers would flee to the harmonious paradise of the lush forests, tiny villages, and rolling fields. There they would throw off the shackles of the ruling dukes and fathers and rhyme in iambic pentameter to their hearts’ content (see As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Sad Shepherd). Are cities worse than the country? The city is dangerous because of money. The country is dangerous because of the lack of it. And I’m stuck in the limbo between them – the suburbs – but am still part of a five million-plus metropolitan area. Am I the city? Where exactly does it end? Some invisible border? Shoulders on the roads? The first sign of farmland? When full sets of teeth among the populace falls below 70%? That was a dumb joke (I seem to be good at those). And a stereotype. But the stereotypes city dwellers have concerning country folk aren’t all that different than the ones country folk have concerning city dwellers. Perverts and drugs versus incest and moonshine. ‘Fuck the pigs!’ vs. ‘Fuck the pigs!’. A friend of mine, her cousin’s family came in from the boonies because one their sick children were taken to a distinguished city hospital, and they refused to walk the streets at night, even for just four or five blocks. They’d hail a cab and be ready to fight a homeless person to get to it. It seemed crazy to me. But hey, I don’t know how to properly neuter a horse, so why should I look down on anyone from the country. All I know is you can’t get good California rolls in a town with a one room schoolhouse.
Oct 29 - The Last Week (This is the end, my friends, of our elaborate plans, the end...) Finally. It’s telling that you only have to watch thirty seconds of network or cable news before becoming an expert on the current state of the 2008 presidential campaign. ‘Now we are talking about negative ads.’ ‘Now we are talking about expensive clothing.’ ‘Now we are talking about how McCain is the underdog.’ ‘Breaking news: McCain says he is ‘comfortable’ in underdog position.’ ‘More breaking news: Palin 2012!’ I’ve exhausted all my rhetoric of comparing election campaigns to sports coverage, so let me just say it’s a shame CNN is pulling in record ratings this year, because it will only encourage them further. Only a ‘new’ piece of technology will force me to make one more comment on the media. During all four debates, CNN had undecided Ohio voters rate their feelings raging from agree to disagree on whatever was being said IN REAL TIME on a creeping line on a graph at the bottom of the TV screen. I’m not sure what the appropriate insulting comparison is. Is it like a heart monitor, meaning I am watching the last moments of in-depth political discourse on its deathbed? Or is it akin to the laugh track on a sitcom, as I am finally being instructed how to feel at certain times when the hero or villain appears onscreen? The debates were as exciting as a debate can possibly be. Old man McCain punched like an old man, and the youthful Obama dodged the shots like a pro, not bothering to throw any himself. We’re only seeing shadows of these men, anyway. They’re true selves retreated into their respective body cavities months ago. They had to save their minds for the few moments that were permitted to be their own. When in front of the cameras or the adoring public, the 2D man-of-platitudes must step forward. Handshakes, small talk, bowling, ‘my friends’, choking down greasy spoon shit. I am so determined to be president I will talk like a parrot for months on end. Listening to both candidates now, you’d never think that McCain pretty much earned his cred thanks to speaking like an actually interesting human being on the straight talk express and that Obama was a professor of constitutional law. I guess one thousand stump speeches will do that to a person. What a sacrifice both these men have made. To become political parody that isn’t funny. Regardless whether they thirst for ultimate power or a chance to fix their broken country, you have to give credit where credit is due. These men have put every chip they have on the table – from seven houses to crazy inner-city pastors – all for a crack at the big job. So now, a quiet moment for John McCain and his campaign, since his only hope now lies in some crazy event that puts national security back at the forefront. Funny, since that’s exactly what one of his campaign aides suggested a couple months back: That a terrorist attack would be a huge plus for the Arizona senator. Some bloggers speculate that Bush is trying to help out McCain (since he’s been nothing but poison) by being especially aggressive right now on the Afghan-Pakistani border in a last ditch effort to capture Bin Laden. So, barring the above, Obama will take it thanks in part to a crappy veep choice by McCain but more because of an imploding economy that is that people are naturally associating with the ruling party which McCain (unfortunately for him) represents. There. The summation of the 2008 presidential campaign in three lines. Granted, these two factors didn’t coalesce until August-September, but how much of what happened before will be relevant and pondered when it’s time to write the history? Christ, it seems like years have passed since Hillary bowed out. Remember when Rudy was the Republican frontrunner in December of 2007? But maybe I’m already jinxing it for the Democrats. Despite huge leads in swing states, they are guarding their joy with shotguns they don’t want anyone else to be able to own. After the last two presidential elections, you can’t blame them for expecting victory to be snatched from them and crammed up their collective assholes. They won’t believe they’ve won until Obama kicks up his feet on the Oval Office’s desk. And then lick it so everyone knows it’s his and won’t want to take it from him. Yet it really is important to remember that no matter who wins on November 4th, there won’t be that much difference come January. Oh sure, taxes will go up for the rich and that will strengthen some social programs that have been starving over the last eight years of budget cuts with a chainsaw, but as far as foreign, economic/corporate, and cultural policy goes, in the stadium of political diversity, the democratic ticket is only a couple seats away from the republican one. The media hype – which has to exist for the sake interesting television for the sake of advertising revenue – calls this the most important election of this generation. And in terms of bridging racial and social differences on a superficial level, it is. The election of Barack Obama would be a huge symbol of hope for disenfranchised minorities not only in America but across the world. And while this crosses a divide that would be unheard of forty years ago – a black President – expecting immediate change in some of the poorest neighbourhoods in large American cities is unreasonable. Expecting immediate change in the hearts and minds of bouth rural and suburban racists is unreasonable. A symbol’s effects can take years to actually be felt. While certain figures can crystallize the great social changes in society at a given moment, seeing top-to-bottom results in said society can still take decades. In terms of the current and future perception of America as a place where every individual can be truly free and succeed, regardless of race, creed, or culture, the importance of Obama’s election to the Oval Office cannot be understated. And while this certainly a huge accomplishment, it comes at a time where Obama cannot just make history by winning, he also has to make history by being an incredible president, ‘saving’ a fading superpower that is fighting two wars during a global economic crisis. The ramifications of being the first black president and also a political disaster will only re-enforce racist mutterings and erode many of the gains the minorities of all kinds (visible or not) seek to make with Obama. And it will be tough going from day one. The economic disasters of the last two months have rendered both candidates platforms to ash and cinder. Campaign promises will have to be tossed overboard as the government just tries to keep the ship from taking on any more deadweight. The Illinois senator is said to be a figure akin to John F. Kennedy, so it’s only fair that I should quote the latter, since when he stepped into the White House in January of 1961 he noted that: ‘the one thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.’ Obama’s going to be criticized from day one from both sides. Leftists who complain he isn’t liberal enough and conservatives who will insist he’s destroying the fabric of America just because he’s a liberal in the broadest sense possible. Fortunately, if how Obama’s campaign has been run is any indication, the United States is about to take a four year degree in ‘Grace Under Pressure’. Both Hillary and McCain tried to raise his ire, but it seems that Barack runs on some sort of advanced cooling system that should be studied and applied to climate change research. He’s got the attitude, he’s got the liberal policies to assist and delight the masses, and the only thing beyond his control is the tempestuous world at large, which has been known to thrash administrations from one place on the opinion polls to the other (see 9/11, but then see a prolonged middle eastern war, devastating Hurricanes, hostile countries developing nuclear weapons, etc). So in conclusion: For what you’re about to take on, kid, there’s no shame in picking up smoking again, even if it’s on the sly.
Sept 1 - Veep! Veep! McCain chose a lady as his veep. So fucking what? Who cares if either winner will now ‘make history’? If McCain wins, it’ll be more likely to be shitty history (don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Obama can’t fuck it up, either, but isn’t it time to tax the rich motherfuckers who made off like bandits in these last seven years?). Of course, some people do care about McCain’s backup. Lotsa people. And if they don’t care yet, the media will beat them over the head demanding they should care. McCain chose Palin because he crunched the numbers and found that a Christian woman would drag in more overall votes than another dose of wrinkled white experience to the ticket (apparently McCain was really considering the pro-choice independent, Lieberman). And that’s a damn shame. Skin colour and private parts, and a knocked up seventeen year old shouldn’t be the defining issue in this election. Tax, energy, and foreign policy should be at the forefront. Actually, maybe with McCain choosing a girl the ‘history’ aspect of this election will become null and void and it will become an ‘issues-driven’ race (ha!). So maybe it’s a good thing that Obama chose someone so…bland. With Biden he covers the experience/foreign policy issue. Great. Watch me yawn. Regardless of who wins, the day after the inauguration, it’ll become business as usual. ‘History’ will be pushed aside for lobbyists demanding their cut for funneling campaign donations to the winner (a recent Rolling Store article showed Obama and McCain getting the same mega donations from the same rich, scratch-my-back corporations and rich assholes that give to all campaigns). In a good sense, we’ll suddenly have the same expectations with these new officials – whether they be black or white, man or woman- as we had with previous elected officials. On the other hand, the previous president was a complete fucking disaster for everyone unless you were on the board of directors for Haliburton or Blackwater, and the one before that was impeached for lying about giving an intern a rim job. And I’ll go right out and say it: ‘Daaaaaaaaaamn, that Sarah Palin is fine!’ She’s the first candidate in the history of America with the sexy librarian/hockey Mom look and all that. Take off the glasses, unbutton the blouse, have a glass of red wine, maybe quote a couple sexy Psalms, and it'll be hotter than hunting moose from a helicopter if Juneau what I mean…
July 6 - 'Meet the new boss, same as the...' Obama: Honeymoon over? Has the shining star become just another Democratic presidential nominee? Wait, was he ever anything else? The media had a great time pushing up Obama as the glorious, shining underdog while they kicking Hillary in the shins. But now that she’s exited stage right, the hounds are out for blood, and McCain’s seventy two year old plasma is too damn thin. Some of the stuff they’re rustling up on Obama is laughable (‘terrorist jab’? It’s like Fox News is thinking, ‘well, they all expect us to come up with dumb shit…’), but it’s more alarming that they aren’t taking more shots at his actual policies. I mean, are they that damn good that they’re critic proof? Or am I once again being my naïve self, expecting for heavy policy coverage on CNN or Fox News? I suppose if you’re against basic democratic party policies there isn’t much of a reason to debate them, as you can just label them ‘socialist’ and move back to convincing people that Obama is a secret Muslim (wait, is this the same Obama whose recent pastor made controversial remarks at his church? Oh yeah, that was months ago. Never happened, really). ‘A
change you can believe in’; so say the signs. Why? Will he close
Guantanamo? Will he repeal large chunks of the patriot act that permits
the government to spy on citizens without any regulation or legality? Is
he going to sign the Kyoto accord? Shit, will he at least shut down the
practice of earmarks, since the last budget was still bursting with them?
What can we expect from this guy? And I’ll totally understand that maybe
he can’t do a lot of these things because the democrats in the house and
the senate will still buckle to republican pressures even if they still
hold the majority, but I’m even curious about Obama’s dream scenario. If
you have 60 seats in the senate and a strong majority in the house, will
Americans have subsidized health care by 2010? How good will Obama be? Patriot Act
– I can’t believe I’ve never heard Obama say he’d weaken this piece of
legislation. It makes me think that while he may not be for it, he
realizes he can’t neuter it without being seen as ‘soft on terrorism’
(yep, those three words are still worth something 2008). But really,
letting telecommunication companies give private phone and internet
records to the government at the drop of a hat reeks so much of fascism
you’d think Mussolini’s ghost has been farting in the oval office. How do
the conservatives who praise the virtues of the constitution possibly
defend this gross invasion of privacy? Oh yeah, there’s a ‘war on terror’
going on, and as long as you’re blindly pro-war-on-terror, no one’s going
to be eavesdropping on you. Now Obama’s multicultural background should come in handy when it comes to foreign policy (compared to other president’s I could name, he is certainly aware of the rest of the world having been raised for a while on the other side of it), but it’s been twisted into becoming a liability. He’s had to downplay the fact that his father was raised Muslim, which is ridiculous, as any association to Islam is a clear advantage when it comes to having to deal with the Middle East. Of course, conservatives are trying to paint this as a horribly negative thing, which is easy to do as The Bush administration has tried to keep the public as confused as possible when it comes to that area of the world. To them, it’s full of America’s enemies like al-Qaeda and Iran, but also full of friends who sell us oil (in the end, Bush’s take on the Middle East for the average American: shut up and let us deal with it). So to keep from having to defend his patriotism at every turn, Obama has had to keep Muslim supporters away from photo-ops, never be even remotely open minded when talking about Iran, and love that Christian god ‘til the cows come home. So instead, when it comes to rounding up vice presidential choices, Obama has to balance it out with a more typical candidate: old white man with military experience. Retired General Wesley Clark seems like a grade-A cut, but then he went on Face the Nation and spoke his mind instead of in talking points, and said that getting shot down in Vietnam and tortured for six years doesn’t make John McCain an authority on military matters. Furor erupted, even if Clark happened to be right. I mean, being tortured on behalf of you not selling out your country makes you a hero, but it’s not much practice for being president. Not surprisingly, certain conservative pundits twisted Clark’s words and started to claim he was outright disrespecting McCain’s war record. The Arizona senator didn’t say anything himself, because he’s above that. He doesn’t take the usual potshots that have come to define the Republican Party. He’s a maverick, right? Right? Do people still buy that? McCain stopped being a maverick when he realized how many conservative voters loathed him. So to get in their good books he kissed Falwell’s ass before the fat man died and is currently kissing the oil company’s puddles before they dry up completely. The straight talker accidentally said he didn’t understand how the economy worked back in the fall of 2007. Republicans seem to forget that as long as America isn’t constantly being attacked with suicidal jet hijackings, that it’s the economy, stupid (actually they do know that. On of McCain’s staffers said it would be a boon for his boss if another terrorist attack happens before November). Unfortunately, despite all his hard work, it looks like John McCain can’t read. The Republican nominee doesn’t have to fear the elite black man, only teleprompters. He comes off wooden giving speeches and has messed up pronouncing the name of his energy policy three times. McCain seems more animated and thrives in a looser town hall meeting-like environment, with Q and A’s instead of one long scripted A. Thing is, off the cuff remarks and party lines rarely go together. Claiming dumb on the economy is one example, but he’s also said that the US might be in Iraq for up to one hundred years. Both of these remarks had to be cleaned up and fixed in a dull speech. I wonder how soon it will be until McCain is gonna get all Jesus-friendly and pro-life to get back some of that tasty fundamentalist Christian vote. He was told last week by advisers he can’t win the presidency with his current campaign, and he took it to heart by shaking his staff up again. A real pickle for McCain. He has to get the 2000 and 2004 Bush votes without being associated in any way to George W. Bush. His new campaign head helped Bush get re-elected in 2004. Maverick, indeed. But even Obama – whose bread and butter have been his stirring rhetoric for change – has been toning down his leftist talk. Suddenly ‘troops out of Iraq in sixteen months’ is ‘but only if the ground commanders say it’s a good idea’ (I kind of expected it, but it certainly pissed off the anti-war pack). He’s even come out in favor of government funding for religious groups (a Bush program! Imagine that!), which most analysts have come to agree as a ploy to woo Christian voters. The maverick and the symbol for change slowly shedding their excess ideas and personalities to become the one dimensional candidates all presidential hopefuls become. Should we have expected anything different? Naomi Wolf’s The End of America would have made a better essay than a book, but she brings up a great point about candidates: ‘Politicians are not bland and inhibited because they are naturally boring; they are bland and inhibited because they know they are being watched. So they censor themselves.’ (Wolf, pg. 84) Soon it becomes like any other two party election. Vague liberal promises versus vague conservative promises. Can’t believe I am about to say this, but where’s Ralph Nader when you need him?
May 1 - ‘Your mouth only moves with someone’s hand up your…’ Fallout from the Transylvania Primary I
stopped writing about politics for two months and it felt great. It was
getting too aggravating. Reading about the campaign was fine, I could deal
with that. Even discussing with friends over its irrelevance and how the
media was twisting the latest mindless sound bite slip up into 'breaking
news' was okay. But writing about it? I’d get a coronary. Shaping my
opinions on the news of the day into manageable sentences comes off
ridiculous: 'Wait...we're back on the flag pins thing?' 'We're surprised a
pastor from a poor neighborhood who wouldn’t have had equal rights fifty
years ago said some things questioning America's values?' 'A candidate is
labeled an ‘Elitist’? So fucking what? Look what happens when you vote for
a guy you'd rather have a beer with.' The problem with the news coverage is that it’s all character buildup and assassination. It’s hammered into anyone who even tries to follow this race only superficially. Ideally the media should ask a gaggle of supporters what their candidate feels about NAFTA. Or NATO. Or anything with a series of initials. Let’s see if anyone really knows what these candidates stand for beyond meaningless sound bytes (‘I’m for the American worker.’ No shit!). It is called policy, and right now we’re all supposed to be getting fancy promotional trailers from the candidates and the media of what the next four years would look like. Instead, we get reports on the recipes of the future first wives and an obsessive analysis of the delegate count, as if it was an unending basketball game. It’s nice to think you’re only voting based on character. People understand character. Their friends have character, as do their enemies. They can analyze and engage with the people around them based on these things called personalities. But politics is just a popularity contest in the end, and sometimes you ‘portray’ your character as a good ol’ straight talkin’ boy from Texas to mask the fact that you are promoting a quasi-free market economic policy that aims to get your business friends even richer at the expensive of the working class. Or you ‘portray your character as a good ol’ straight talkin’ boy from Arkansas to mask that fact that you are promoting a quasi-free market economic policy that aims to get everyone in America, rich, but mainly your campaign donors and friends (ah, the subtle differences between Republicans and Democrats). It’s a cheap sleight-of-hand that the candidates put forth and the media encourages without much question. And then blows completely out of proportion. Hey, talking about Barack shooting his mouth off is a lot easier than talking about his ideas on education reform! What's disappointing on top of this is that CNN's ratings are up. Don't get me wrong, it's nice that people are interested in politics in some fashion and it’s great that this increase means less people are watching the ever-laughable FoxNews, but it's a pretty weak introduction to politics. I remember the democratic filibuster debacle of spring 2005, and there was a nightly news report lamenting the fact that the average American didn't know what it was. Well how about informing people of the political process more often, dickheads? The only candidate trying to push people beyond this form of political coverage is Barack Obama. Which might sound like an endorsement from me, but in truth his policies don’t differ that much from Hillary. In one of the few debates where policies were actually discussed, Obama and Clinton quibbled over the difficulty in filling forms for each other’s health care plans. It was breathtakingly dull, but it was something that would actually matter to Americans. But instead we get round-the-clock coverage of Obama telling Californians that the working class in Pennsylvania ‘clings’. Gasp! Oh come on. People have always clung. And they aren't even such 'noble' pursuits such as religion, firearms, and…uh… bigotry. Sometimes it's just crystal meth. Even affluent suburban white collar people cling. Sometimes it’s to redecorating the kitchen ever three years. So how's that for a slogan that encompasses 2008: 'What are you clinging to?' It’s perfect for an economy going belly up. But
instead Barack had to defend himself by feeding a bottle of milk to a calf
in rural Pennsylvania. Congratulations, Obama! I'm sick of you now, too!
Nice to see you move beyond the superficial bullshit that is contemporary
American politics! Maybe Barack needs to break out some James Brown dance
moves. It’s a bizarre question with no real answer yet: How does a black
senator educated at Harvard connect to the common people? How
much you want to bet that if the situation was reversed, Obama would have
asked/forced to bow out looooooong ago.
Christ, is it true you have to lower yourself to the level of the mob to
be allowed to completely fuck with their lives in Washington? I mean, both
the idealistic and power hungry would say it's worth it, but doesn’t it do
something to your conscience? And yeah, we’re talking about politicians
here, but I think all three of them have some semblance of right and
wrong, and certainly the alarm bells of ‘what the fuck am I doing/saying?’
should have gone off several times this year. I guess absolute power can
preemptively corrupt absolutely.
March.30 - All I want to do, is to get back to you, Connection, I just can’t make no- Six Degrees of Wikipedia It’s the newest craze that’s sweeping the nation. It’s the ultimate bored-at-work game (provided your IT department hasn’t blocked the website). It’s trivial pursuit for the 21st century. You can finally close that solitaire window and maybe even learn something at the same time. It is called Six Degrees of Wikipedia, and all you need is an internet connection and two nouns. A brief recap: Aside from being a movie star, Kevin Bacon holds an unusual place in the public consciousness as he embodies the interdependency of the movie industry that is manifested through a parlor game. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (strangely, the title taken from the movie Six Degrees of Separation which he does not star in) challenges players to link movie stars together via films that they both starred in, ideally ending on Kevin Bacon in less than seven film links. Wikipedia is an information website of over nine million articles in BLAH languages (two million in English alone). To play this game you take your standard Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, but apply it to the cyber warehouse that is wikipedia. Where one used movies to get from, say, Richard Burton to Mr. Bacon (Burton was in Cleopatra with Martin Landau who was in Ed Wood with Bill Murray who was in Wild Things with Kevin Bacon), one uses links found in articles on everyone’s favorite settler of disputed knowledge to travel from a predetermined beginning article to a predetermined ending one. Like any good thinking game, a time limit (say, two minutes for beginners) can add to the excitement. Example: Stone à Blood in less than six steps: Stone (there are several references, but let’s go with rock) à Homo Sapiens (human) à Human anatomy à Blood Kevin Bacon à Bacon in less than six steps: Kevin Bacon à [Great] Depression à New Deal à Farmers (agriculture) à Livestock à Bacon Coming up with good rounds is more difficult than it may at first seem. Sometimes one forgets just how interdependent wikipedia is. Linking geographic locations is almost as easy as opening an atlas. Any two articles even remotely similar like ‘battleship’ and ‘war’ can be linked with a single click of the mouse. The more random, the better. In terms organization, simplicity is the goal here. Have ten rounds, each player plays in every round (although they will all need different starting and ending articles each time), count up the amount of steps each player used per round, and the one with the lowest score is the winner. It’s simple, fun, and there’s no board to lug around or game pieces to lose. Plus, you might learn something you never knew about blood. Or bacon. As an added bonus, like all good games, this one can also involve drinking. Establish an amount of steps. Once the round is complete, the player must drink the amount he or she used, and is permitted to dole out to others any steps remaining. Strategy All the best games have some form of shortcut, or at least offer them to people with a sharp mind and a bit of luck. For the Kevin Bacon game, using a movie jam packed with popular actors (A Few Good Men, Glengarry Glenross, Oceans 11, and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World if you want to kick it old school) is a great way to cross generations of celebrities in one swift move. For Wikipedia, there are certain cultural memes that make linking up seemingly unrelated articles that much easier. Obviously some key traits of these ‘hub’ articles are length (the seemingly unending article on The Beatles covers all the highlights of sixties music and culture) and content (some articles are nothing more than lists of, say, various New York City neighborhoods). At the same time, there are a handful of anomaly articles that, while short on total information, may hold the exact the two items you are looking for. Many of these happen to be Simpsons episodes, as it allows one to get from an obscure 70’s television show (Sheriff Lobo) to William Randolph Hearst in one go (this would be obviously be the one titled Rosebud, from season five). Themes and Variations Unlike the Kevin Bacon game, which because of its very nature is mostly focused on a handful of above average films from the mid eighties to the present, the two million English language articles on wikipedia allows for a host of variations. Just like Trivial Pursuit had its categories, so too can Six Degrees of Wikipedia: And they can be as broad or narrow as you so choose. Examples: Sports Wilt Chamberlain à Buffalo Bills Politics Donald Rumsfeld à Pitt the Elder Popular culture Cocaine à Cocoa Puffs Ironic Commentary on Music Trout Mask Replica à Platinum Popular 21st century writers and their pastimes Chuck Klosterman à mixtape Analysis
Perhaps, like the Six Degrees game itself, Wikipedia should really be
looked at not as a compendium of knowledge but a cultural project of epic
proportions. An art exhibit that is constantly redefining how 'we' see the
world. We’re hypnotized by it’s size and simplicity that we’ve forgotten
that it’s just an encyclopedia. You know, those volume of dry, dull books
published every ten years that gather dust in libraries and are the butt
of jokes for door-to-door salesmen the world over.
Dec.31 - But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now… 2007 Year in Review Oh yeah, this year is done. Like dinner. I stopped caring in May, I think. 2007 is like a big fake number. I didn’t believe it was coming when it was 1998. Then, the whole 21st century seemed implausible. All these new numbers starting with ‘200’. They don’t seem real, they seem to be eternally in the future, even as we deal with them every single day. We’re living in a science fiction movie without any funding. Stanley Kubrick promised us moon colonies, homicidal robots, and spooky black monoliths. I’ve been patient for the last seven years, waiting. But space travel isn’t the only thing that’s been fucked up. No interesting invention to cure our increasing environmental and natural resource ills, either. For the third of their 40th anniversary issues, Rolling Stone asked a plethora of artistic and political luminaries what they expected from the year around 2007 (or the time around it) when they were children. A lot answered simply, ‘flying cars’. Flying cars! We don’t even have electric or solar powered cars! We still have gasoline, which is slowly choking us to death (which is why it’s a positive and negative that it’s a finite resource). A couple periodicals have bequeathed 2007 as the year ‘going green went global’. Why, because of the mundane afternoon that was Live Earth? Al Gore winning an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize was nothing bit preaching to the choir, a choir who doesn’t make billions of dollars from oil and coal and doesn’t have the ear of government (either its ear, or its balls in a vice). Just like in 2006. And 2005. Ditto 2004. A pattern is emerging. In terms of politics: Forgettable. Completely. Darfur, Iraq, and Palestine are still steaming piles of shit no one has the time or money to properly clean up. We all weathered a crap year of bullshit exhibition games for the official US presidential campaign season. A campaign that everyone is already sick of. As for the current government in Washington: Toothless democrats and whiney republicans and the lamest of the lame ducks. Democracy is steady where it’s always been steady, tenuous where it’s always been tenuous, and a sick fascist joke in countries where it’s always been a cardboard prop for the military dictatorship. And how’s Africa doing? Oh. I see. Well, here’s to a better 2008. No, no! Don’t toast with me! Save that champagne for when the drought hits! I don’t think I can stress enough how little happened this year in terms of world politics. I suppose it comes off quite glib and ignorant, but it was a bland, featureless desert until Bhutto was killed in this last week of the year (James Brown in the end of ’06, Bhutto now, look out…uh…well, I guess that’s not much of pattern…Tom Wolfe, perhaps?). And sure, Pakistan suspended some civil liberties this fall, but ragging on that seems to suggest that Pakistan was paradise in 2006, which isn’t really true, either. Art: A couple good movies (No Country for Old Men, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, The Bourne Supremacy). Some nice music, mainly electronic in nature (MIA, LCD Soundsystem, Burial), according to the oh-so-wise indie media. Amy Winehouse was okay. Queens of the Stone Age still rock with Era Vulgaris. Radiohead gave us four years of work with In Rainbows. Oh yeah, that Radiohead thing. Radiohead shat out In Rainbows for free, which finally told the record industry point blank that not many people are buying music anymore. Not the chief demographic, anyway. And if the rest of the entertainment industry had any sense, they’d take heed, as music is the first domino to fall, with TV going next, followed by movies. We see this already online. A bunch of black market websites exist for a few weeks that have every season of all your favourite series, and as soon as it’s shut down another one with the exact same listing pops up in it’s place. TV is becoming free. Watch out, movies. 2007: The year the public realized that paying for anything you can’t hold in your hand is for suckers. Sports: The music industry is dying because it’s becoming ‘free’. The sports industry is alive and kicking, but at least 23% of the credit should go to good ol’ steroids. From ‘who is using?’ in 2006 to ‘well, okay, then who isn’t using?’ in 2007. If a record in baseball has been broken in the last decade, you can be pretty sure an extra special asterisk will be there beside the name in the history books. Olympic medals from decades past being stripped from sprinters and the relay teams they were on (a bitter, bitter pill to swallow for all those teammates). And while football’s hard line stance against banned substances is great, a new problem emerged for them this year. Apparently being repeatedly attacked and piled upon on the field for decades is not good for one’s brain. Ex-players in their fifties are exhibiting symptoms of dementia that you only see from eighty year old Alzheimer’s patients. Sports: Millions of dollars at your powerful fingertips, as long as you’re willing to trade it for shame and crippling physical disabilities. Over six years since 9/11 and we’re already back mental autopilot. This year, Paris Hilton in jail and Britney Spears becoming a trailer trash icon got more press than all the world's ills. Those are ‘downer’ stories! Let’s see Lindsay Lohan passed out in a car! And Bush is even a bigger loser now than before September 2001. It seems like the same things are happening but they are happening faster than before. 2007 was a year of vague, boring, déjà vu. Kudos to it going out not with a bang, but a whisper. Anyway, it’s done with and 2008 is coming. First thought: It’s an even number, meaning we’re getting the Olympics. Pollution, steroids, and crappy governance will come to a head in Beijing this summer. August is going to be a month full of fireworks, and hopefully only literal ones (and the Democrats have their convention that month! Yawn!).
With the world they way it is today, it's tempting to say find
happiness in your own life, turn inward, get spiritual, but the reality is
that we are material beings that exist in a tangible world. To quote the
Good Doctor, 'Kill the body and the head will die'. We need our earth
healthy to keep ourselves healthy, both physically and spiritually. The
Buddhists acknowledgement that all desire leads to suffering is pretty damn
worthless when all you desire is a piece of bread to stave off death. And
those who feel transcendental meditation can get us beyond the need to
replenish our body with nutrients, well, that's always the dream, isn't
it? Drop me a line telepathically when you make headway on this.
Nov. 30 - It’s gettin’ dark, too dark to see, feel like I’m… Thanks to the onset of winter it’s getting darker and colder ‘round these parts, but at the same time, if you look at the big picture – the only picture that matters* – it’s getting warmer. This is because of either global warming or the oncoming hellfire of eternal damnation. Many people believe we are approaching the end times, but as to the suggestions of just what is causing it can divided into two separate camps. Al Gore and Thom Yorke blame car exhaust. Pat Robertson and Kirk Cameron blame gay butt sex (and, to a lesser degree, straight butt sex). Isn’t it nice that people who read books can blame the downfall of civilization on one thing and the people who read one book can blame it on something completely different? It’s win-win, baby. *-Go Clash! The end of the world. Predicted for millennia, allegedly finally here as 25% of America expect Jesus to return before 2008, but why? Too many SUV’s or too many abortions? Dwindling natural resources or dwindling moral integrity*? I don’t mind civilization grinding to a halt and everyone feasting on each other’s remains in a crazed frenzy as the nukes anointed with holy oil are launched, but I sure would like to know why. I mean, yeah, I think it’s because we’re sucking the life and abundance out of this little green and blue planet with a vacuum cleaner and not caring about the consequences, but at the same time, the idea of benevolent/malevolent force from beyond our universe coming down to sort us out in a series of climactic battles is just so much more…what’s the world I’m looking for…Hollywood! It’s exciting! I mean, what’s the average joe gonna want to pay attention to? Climate reports and proposals to lower the amount of greenhouse gases in the air or the final battle between good and evil on the battlefields of Mediggo? It’s a choice between going to school and going to a movie. Now wonder so many people look forward to the end of the world. It seems a lot more exciting than what happens in most people’s lives. *-as defined by various organized religions, anyway, who are lax some things (poverty) and come on a bit strong with others (evolution). Check your own particular holy book (or television show 1-800 number) for additional info. Damn book of revelation. That’s what’s got all the fundamentalists rubbing their hands in anticipation, ready to burn down California (San Francisco in the North, Los Angeles in the South, its Sodom and Gomorrah with Interstate 5 running through the middle). The book is a psychedelic vision of the apocalypse meant to buck up the thousands of Christians being persecuted by the Roman empire at the end of the first century AD (don’t worry about being tortured and killed! Jesus is coming back…eventually!). It pits the true believers against a giant heretical empire, but unbeknownst to the books author (being dead and all not long after he penned it), the whole matter resolved itself rather peacefully in the 5th century when the true believers essentially inherited and took over the giant (albeit crumbling) heretical empire. Yes, Emperor Theodosius I ruined a real mindfuck of a book by rendering the struggles of the Christians moot when he made Christianity the official religion of the empire in 391AD. And it didn’t take long for the newly powerful Catholic Church to become the corrupt, tyrannical empire it despised years before. Something about suddenly wielding power over millions of people and an entire continent makes one forget about their faith’s central tenets of charity, humility, and poverty. For centuries the papal seat was in complete control of whoever had a big army close to Rome and a big pocketbook. The youngest pope ever elected was eighteen way back in 955AD (make your stocking shelves job at that age look even more pathetic, eh?), almost all of them brokered deals with every emperor and king around for plots of land, and some other early ones were known to get their grove on with widows, family members, and animals. And to think some people were suspicious of Benedict XVI brief tenure in the Hitler Youth. So despite this major ‘win’ for the Christians, Revelation wasn’t pushed out of the picture. In fact, in of the best ironies in history, many people across the European continent in the medieval period started to see the bloated, corrupt, ‘donkey-blowing’ Catholic Church as the giant heretical empire that most be overthrown by the pious multitudes (it wasn’t hard to find tracts and illustrations of the Pope described as the anti-Christ). And with the second millennium approaching, much of European serfdom worked itself into a froth over leaving the fields and entering god’s heaving bosom. The good news was that the apocalypse has not occurred anytime in the last two thousand years, and the bad news was the poor masses across Europe kept preparing for such an event by frequently burning down Jewish neighbourhoods and killing their inhabitants to prove their piety. How could people suddenly interpret a prophetic vision in the exact opposite way that it was originally intended? Simple. Revelation gets a kick out of being very, very, ambiguous. Kind of like prototype Nostradamus. Perhaps to make the book more, shall we say, timeless… the Roman Empire isn’t mentioned by name. Taking a page from Jesus’ parables where you dance around the message with analogies, the writer (John, perhaps the apostle, perhaps not) refers the big bad empire as the long since crumbled (and one time enemy of the Israelites) Babylon. Remember? The infamous whore from that place, who makes it with a seven headed dragon over the city of 7 hills?* No? Well, don’t worry about it. It’s a tough book to get into. The first half of the vision is John hanging around in heaven, watching nothing happening. So here are the crib notes: God punishes the evil empire on earth with bowls, trumpets, and scrolls full of wrath. Enter the four horseman. Then Jesus comes and saves the faithful, throwing the dragon into the lake of fire. The end. To clarify: Famous city of 7 hills in 1st century AD? Rome. And regarding the seven headed dragon: It’s a rather unremarkable manifestation of pure evil, but John does note that one of the heads ‘appeared to be slain’, which is a reference to Emperor Nero, who so enjoyed persecuting Christians he promised to continue the practice beyond the grave. Oh, and that 666 stuff? The mark of the beast? I’m not a rabbi so I can’t do the math, but using the Jewish numerical-alphabet combination of gematria, those numbers ‘spell’ Nero in Aramaic. *- damn, john! What were you smoking? Of course, because these analogies to real situations are not literally spelled out in the text, the book of revelation has been able to take on a life of its own and still seem relevant to each passing generation of fundamentalist Christian. Until people see a slut getting it on with a dragon, and watch bowls and trumpets full of death and pestilence be poured out over the land, it can be said that the prophesies have not yet been fulfilled, so we need to have constant vigilance so we’re all prepared! Some Christian hardliners are trying to look at the book with a slightly more open mind, as some modern day literalists claim the mark of the beast are UPC codes. And for decades the godless Soviet Union made a great stand in for the evil empire (Stalin would have made a great whore of Babylon). But at least they’re trying to ‘modernize’ the mythological aspects of the book. Imagine actually believing in dragons and talking lambs and the four horseman spreading evil across the land?* *-some do. To them, the end of the world will look like the Evil Dead films, with scripture quotations instead of hack catchphrases. What are signs that we’re living in the end times? Pamphlets handed out to me on busy street corners say we should keep our eyes out for one or all of the following: war, famine, disease, pestilence, floods, fires, and, to some degree, rampant immorality. Okay, but that sounds like stuff that’s been going since the onset of recorded human history, so I suppose we’ve always been living in the end times (woah, man. How very zen). Of course, that doesn’t mean that fundamentalists of any stripe won’t claim the wrath of god is here when we get the melting of the big glacier melting, or when the bombs get launched. Especially since it’s so popular nowadays to say that god is working through us. And this is where things get all muddled up. What’s the difference between god causing natural disasters him or herself and natural disasters caused by our own actions that many people believe are the work of god? If we’re all dead in the end, there isn’t a difference. Except, of course, our legacy. How sad it would be that if in the face of global warming chaos that a majority of the earth turns to religion and the concept of divine wrath, which means that suddenly our civilization’s lasting legacy is that the human race ended with us believing that we were squashed by an almighty force because of gay marriage. Ouch. How embarrassing for us when super-intelligent apes start digging through the rubble five centuries from now. So if we are doomed, let us spend our remaining time on this planet calmly teaching religious fundamentalists that greenhouse gases are the culprit before they string us heathens up. And if there is a benevolent/malevolent force beyond our universe ‘up there’, you know it’s rolling it’s eyes as us this whole time…
Aug 18 - Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do, 'cause there ain't no cure for...
It’s seem like the not very old political saying is true: ‘From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August’. Rather than risk putting a foot in their mouth or invade another country, no elected official says or does anything of value, and they all flee from the shores of the Potomac like rats on a sinking ship. Nothing is really happening in Washington. The president takes his regular August vacation so he can be well rested for the string of September 11th memorials/reminders at the beginning of next month. Any politician with even a hint of personality is certainly running for president, which means they are hundreds of miles away from the capital, forcing down their third Denny’s breakfast of the week while having an awkward conversation about health insurance with the waitress. All the rest of the senators and representatives are tearfully breaking up with their personal gang of lobbyists, I suppose. Hell, even the pseudo-government of the constantly exploding state of Iraq is successfully applying the bloated bureaucracy tactics of this country and taking the month off. (Tony Snow kindly reminded us that it was needed because it’s darn hot in Iraq in August). The only news nugget from Washington was that Turd Blossom has voluntarily flushed himself into the private sector. Most likely as to not completely besmirch the White House when he is finally dragged kicking and screaming in front of a senate committee investigating, well, pretty much anything and everything this administration has done (but most likely it’ll be for the US attorney firings. Even though the country doesn’t seem to care, any democracy scholar knows you can’t let this sleeping dog lie. The Justice Department is the justice department is the justice department. It’s not a strong arm for the White House. Even crazy ol’ John Ashcroft knew that). So until Karl Rove is raked over hot coals for an afternoon, it means a slow news month. You knew it was going to be a long, plodding crawl when the big news for an entire week is a collapsing bridge in Minneapolis. The big three anchors were all there, interviewing witnesses and survivors, trying to make a big traffic accident sound as tragic as possible. Even Bush went to see it, since it’s a PR move with no downside (other than having to go to Minnesota). Of course, leave it to the president to still screw it up by pledging to NOT increase funding to the department of transportation for structural upkeep on older bridges and highways. That was a freebie, Mr. President! Give money in the general direction of a disaster! It’s common-fucking sense! If you can give hundreds of millions of dollars to NASA after a space shuttle explodes, how about doling out some money for potholes and girders? No wonder over two thirds of Americans would be happy to see George Bush’s presidency end immediately (I would imagine they mean it in the theoretical, he-suddenly-disappears way, not the practical, fingers-crossed-for-assassination way). Fortunately, as mentioned earlier, it’s presidential campaign season, and there’s a whole group of candidates you can follow who haven’t yet sold off every personal value and opinion they hold in order to appeal in any and every way to the base of undecided voters. ‘Did saying that I’m willing to hold an open dialogue with countries that have questionable, authoritarian leaders make me look weak? Then tomorrow I’ll say that I’m willing to use nukes on Iran.’ (in case you’re deaf, blind, dumb, friendless, and have been camping for the last couple weeks, the previously noted ‘blunder’ was committed by Barack Obama). And
sadly, the media doesn’t really weigh the positives and negatives of
Obama’s decision, but simply questions whether this ‘stance’ will help or
hinder him on the road to the White House. The focus on style and strategy
over substance and policy in today’s media – especially when covering
politics of any sort – is completely mind boggling. Actually, it’s 50%
mind boggling, 49% pathetic, and 1% giant media conspiracy. The excuse
‘we’re only giving the people what they want’ is insulting. You’re the
‘news’. You don’t give the public what it wants, you give it what it
goddamn needs. Obama’s choice to have meetings with countries like Iran,
North Korea, and Venezuela might be one of the best diplomatic moves
America can make on it’s ‘war on terror’. If you’re going to declare a war
on a word, you may as well try fighting using words instead of guns.
Winston Churchill himself – who neo-cons love to embrace as the original
pre-emptive strike, pro-military hawk – said that, ‘talk, talk is better
than war, war’. Republicans have always been able to attack the Democrats
for being soft on terror, so it comes off pretty disappointing to see
other Democratic candidates gang up on Obama in the same fashion. Then
again, the democratic race is the only one worth watching, as it looks
like the Republicans are just lethargically preparing a loser for 2008.
Romney? Giuliani? That’s the top of the heap? Of course, who’d have
guessed in 1999 that W. would end up being president, let alone for two
terms? In the Financial Times, squinty bald strategist James Carville
recently put forth the idea that the last seven years of Bush has turned
off an entire generation to the Republican party. That's wishful thinking,
as it only takes a bit of down home charm plus a real loser of an opponent
to win an election (see 2004). There.
I’ve just hammered into shape the next year of the American Presidential
Campaign. How? By oversimplifying all the candidate’s policies and
summarizing them in a single sentence, like almost every media outlet does
everyday. Potential leaders of the free world reduced to factoids. Three
twenty four hour news channels, covering the shit out of the upcoming
election, and they still aren’t able to tell us anything about the
candidates’ domestic and foreign policies beyond a sound bite. No wonder
they love it when a bridge collapses or Paris Hilton is sent back to
prison. Covering that is easy work. Keep holding onto your hats, the ride’s not going to get any less bumpier any time soon…
‘Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos!’ – Homer Simpson
May 26 - I go forward, you go backward and somewhere... Politics as Entertainment Noam Chomsky once said that the proof that Americans can absorb and analyze large amounts of complex information is seen in their obsession with organized sports. And he certainly has a point. Saying that the average American cannot possibly understand a filibuster or the tax code doesn’t carry much weight if you actually consider the mental dexterity that is required to compute a pitcher’s ERA, decide when to employ cut blocking, and catalogue and reflect upon the amount of triple-doubles held by Wilt Chamberlain. Now Chomsky made this comment with the intention that it would provide hope for the disillusioned masses that believe the government is infected with a corrupt, bloated inefficient bureaucracy that does not have the citizen’s best interests at heart. An important point of Chomsky’s is that the powers that be try to dissuade the average American from participating in politics because it is too complicated for them, and that it’s best to just trust the people in charge and not ask any nagging, troublesome questions. For Chomsky, it is important that the Yankee prole doesn’t get suckered into this type of thinking, and he cites sport statistics and analysis as proof that abstract thought is within everyone’s grasp. If the average American can care so much about and devote so much time and effort to the movement of a ball up and down an outlined space, surely they can understand and fix the problems with the nation when the times comes.
Well, the bad news
is that we’re still waiting for Joe Six-pack to replace Sports Illustrated
with Mill’s On Liberty, but the worse news is that the media has seemingly
taken Chomsky’s quote as something akin to an epiphany and has attempted
to make the delivery of the news as sports-like as possible.
Strategy became the new paradigm. Everyone loves strategy. It’s the hallmark of games from football to monopoly. Forget what you are doing, that’s obvious (trying to win), what is more important now is how you’re going to do it. And this is fine in sports, because sports don’t really matter. You can’t say, ‘well there’s always next year’ when it comes to fixing health care. Actually, not only can you, but many frequently do. With the democrats coming back to power in 2006 elections, it was treated as if Washington got a whole new roster, that there are new things to focus on. The flailing 109th congress just got some new heavy hitting recruits! It seems that everyone is conveniently forgetting the dangers of being so glib and carefree when it comes to analyzing and discussing pressing political issues. Pundits and politicians today - when they discuss the Iraq situations, illegal immigration, or health care - sound as if they may as well talking about how to get their local team above .500. They take issue with their opponents as if they think the best thing to do is get a stronger relief pitcher, while the other side chooses to strengthen the lower batting order. Some of the most blatant tweaking of the nightly news has been to its studio environment, the goal of which seems to be to make it look like a set for ESPN’s Sportscenter. Hell, CNN has Wolf Blitzer eternally stationed in the ‘Situation Room’, which is covered with wall to wall monitors, so they can cover as many ‘issues/games’ at once. Political experts and party analysts come on to discuss how politicians are dealing with the public perception of issues: 'They have to adjust this, convince people of that, and then wait to see if it works.’ Headlines on the cable news networks usually go something like, 'What will it take for Bush to get out of his slump?' which completely skirts the issue of why the president may be in a slump in the first place. The disconnection between the importance of politics and sports should have been obvious from the onset of making news a series of rapid-fire factoid reporting done by attractive talking heads. No one asks, 'is it right to play baseball?' on sports shows, but that's exactly the type of question that is avoided when it comes to important issues like Iraq. The question: 'Is it right to be in Iraq?' is never directly addressed. It's always brought up in a political context, as if holding a certain position on Iraq is only part of a larger strategy for one side to 'win' the debate over the issue, the congress/senate vote, or the election. And that’s what politics has become in the media: Winning. The media has groomed politics for its close up, and has smoothed over any challenges to its game-like presentation. First you have to build the two teams, which is convenient, as America currently has a two party political system, the Democrats (liberals) and the Republicans (conservatives). Third party? Tough shit, you have to be one or the other for the sake of the game. People are lumped (sometimes hammered) into these two groups, because who ever heard of a three way game? it's too hard to imagine. Keep it simple. Move those on the fringes into the middle as much as possible. Gray is confusing, black and white is nice and easy. Wear this label, this 'uniform'. The fans need to know what team you're on when you go on the air. Then there’s the actual ‘game’, the fighting over the two sides of the issue. Depending on your turn (did you make the bonehead decision to invade ‘country x’? Or did your opponent make it?), you either go on the offense or defensive, or sometimes you utilize both at the same time. Among the equipment at your disposal: attack ads, responses to attack ads, incessant polling, discussing the strategy of delivering new ideas/accusations/positions at pancake breakfasts, rewriting parts of the playbook with billionaire investors, etc. All this ‘strategy’ completely overshadows the ‘goal’ of the issue. In sports you can dance around the ‘issue’ (winning the game by running around the bases more often than your opponent), because everyone can pretty much agree on it and can therefore focus on and squabble over strategy (where to put the DH in the batting over, when to bring in a southpaw reliever, etc.). Unfortunately, the media is trying to bring that archetype to politics, which is why everyone seems to be so obsessed with whether Bill Clinton is a help or hindrance to Hillary’s presidential run, instead of discussing the feasibility of her universal healthcare plan.
Worst of all is the
concept of ‘winning’ in politics. Sure, you ‘win’ elections and that’s a
reason for celebration, but after you are in office, ideally, there is no
‘winning’. Everyone is there to make the country a better place (how
idealistic I suddenly am!). When the Republicans or Democrats get a bill
passed, the winners are supposed to be the American people. To make
government appear to be more like sports, the media has essentially turned
the political parties against each other and into rottweiliers that are
trained to hate the other based solely on principle. Nobody ‘wins’ when
you pass a spending appropriation bill, or a troop increase, and as long
as it’s portrayed as such politics in America will remain as divisive as
ever. Considering Chomsky sounded off the alarms to the sinister simplicity of the media conglomerates decades ago, I wonder if he wishes he was dead just so he would able to spin in his grave.
April 1 - God is concept, by which we measure our... I didn't go to missionfest because it was snowing out. Forgive me? Since even the post office has a slogan about how they won't let precipitation slow them down, I can't imagine god would tolerate such an excuse (I had to get all this info via newspaper articles). Certainly I would be a pariah to the 500 or so people who braved the weather to make it to convention centre near the airport. ‘It’s no surprise to god. He knew the storm would take place this evening,’ claimed speaker Reynold Mainse. I should certainly hope so. In fact, I would take it a step further and hope that god created the storm. Not because I have anything against missionfest, but because I don’t like the idea that there are possible storms out there that god is not aware of and has no control over. Mainse quickly moved on to asking the congregation for money ($40k), and started passing out collection buckets.
Buckets? I remember
when they were just plates at my church. And just why exactly do they need
money these days? Because there might not be many more days left. A
popular theme at this year’s missionfest was the approaching apocalypse,
known to fans as the greatest show on earth, and to scholars as the
unfolding of events described in the controversial final book of the
bible, The Revelation of/to John. Apparently the organizers feel that this
time, the final change really is in the air, and point out that increased
persecution of missionaries in non-Christian nations is proof that a hard
rain’s gonna fall. Also, the fall of the godless Soviets, and the rise of
god-incorrect Middle East somehow enters into the realm of fulfilling
biblical prophesy (Jesus hates commies).
This is a shame, because at the same time missionary work is
probably one of the most important, difficult, and unrewarding professions
that is available to absolutely anyone. To become a priest it takes years
of study at a seminary, but to sign up for preaching the word of god to
heathens on the other side of the world, all you need is to walk into a
agency such as Light of the World, Believers World Outreach, the
Association of Christian Dental Technicians (really), and the American
Leprosy Missions (swear to god). Tell them you found god and want to help
others find him, and sign up. In fact, you don’t even have to leave your
house and convince anyone of your religious fervor. Most of these groups
allow you to sign up over the internet. Unfortunately around the time of the Industrial Revolution, many people’s lives got better, and Christian influence over the world tapered down to the point where the Pope Pius IX issued an edict outlawing liberalism and rational thinking (listen for the slow, sarcastic applause). So the church went back to square one, and decided to spread the word of god to the poor, sick, hungry, and uneducated. Which meant every European colony the homeland had fucked over for the last century or so. Namely, Africa. Which, depending on who you talk to today, has stayed shitty, gotten worse, but certainly hasn’t gotten any better. An eternally broken axle, Africa is the poster child for man’s desire to do good and still fuck up completely. While many would suggest the key to reviving Africa is a complex formula of investment, education, and ending government corruption, most Christian missionary groups try to bypass all that with a nice, thick, blanket of conversions. All you need is love. Specifically, god’s eternal love. Once you see that, poor African child, then you can have some cookies and clean clothes. Or that malaria shot you’ve been hankering for. And herein lies the rub. Regardless of how you feel about Christian dogma, the fact that these missionaries are coming in as a spiritual savior with supplies kind of destroys any possibility of these poor people having a genuine religious epiphany. When does preaching become proselytizing? When you won’t give a piece of bread to someone until they acknowledge it is in fact the body of the lord Jesus Christ? Religion may be the opium/opiate of the masses, but for the millions of poor starving around the world, the analogy need not be a drug. It doesn’t even have to be an analogy. It can just be a bowl of rice. When you and you’re family haven’t eaten in days, you’d almost surely say that you believe whatever the person dispensing the food wants you to believe. And what kind of religion conversion is that? You have to find god in your heart, not your stomach. If you have to stand in a dilapidated shack for an hour and listen to a man read from a book you’ve never heard of for clothing and food, why not? What do you have to lose? It would seem, then, that the joke is really on the missionaries. And of course, the missionaries realize this. It’s not over a single meal that a poor Indian or African becomes a Christian. It takes a good month of bible class and tearing down the local beliefs in spirits and medicine men before they get results. Sometimes this backfires completely and the locals run the missionaries out of town, or into the ground. Yes, as the folks at missionfest mentioned, attacks on those spreading the word of god have gone up, especially in India, where those no-good Christians have begun approaching the Untouchables (Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, 1987) and telling them they shouldn’t spend their lives (literally) in the gutter. Now dying for god is nothing new. Sure, most missionaries would prefer to just doing good work and dying peacefully at a ripe old age rather than be painfully martyred, but there are always a couple rotten apples in any group. Some people who want to get on to that express lane for the great gig in the sky. Early Christian missionaries to North America were known for remaining remarkably calm while being tortured and killed. Some of them even accomplished their missions through their deaths (a true nod to their messiah if there ever was one). Native Americans were impressed by the way these strange, pale, non-combative men willing accepted such extreme pain, that they willingly converted in hopes they would have the same strength in battle. Sadly, the courage they may have found for battle was no match for taking on their real eventual enemy, smallpox. In the end, missionfest seemed to be exactly what I would have expected. A lot if cheap kiosks, a bunch of identical speeches, and a guy sat in a makeshift jail cell on the convention floor to protest the persecution of women teaching Sunday school in Indonesia. He represented a group called Open Doors International, and from his cell gave a rather closed minded statement, putting forth the idea that the devil is using other religions to bring down Christianity. He added: ‘[Satan]’s a defeated for, but he hasn’t given up.’ Gotta hand it to Satan. Even when the odds are against him, he doesn’t go down without a fight. He would have made a great missionary.
Jan. 22 - My hands are turnin’ red, and I found out my baby was… Announcer: Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the nineteenth annual Cleveland Monster Truck Supershow, here at the Modell Coliseum right on the shores of beautiful Lake Erie. We’ve got a whole evening of action ready for you with machines having a combined roar of well over 286,491 horsepower. We’ve got them all here tonight, like the Gouger, the Trouncer, the American Masher, the Yankee Grizzly, the Confederate Lemme-at-‘em, the Bandit, the Burglar, the slicer, the dicer, the car-zilla, the T-Wrecks, spelt W-R-E-C-K-S, the crusher, the metal head, Jeffery Paul’s truck the Paulverizer, spelt P-A-U-L-V-E-R-I-Z-E-R, the Lion, the Witch, the Warrior, the Medusa, named after the famous mythological Greek hag who could turn all those who looked upon her into stone, yet no word or not whether her driver, Steve Johnson, will have the same power tonight. We also have the mangler, the ravager, the omniscient narrator, that truck, I’m led to understand is named after the literary device in which the voice of the novel is everywhere, reading the minds of the characters while speaking in the third person. That driver, Jerry Harnel, is racing tonight in memory of his brother Wendel, who died when his vehicle, the focalizer, that is, whoever’s point of view the narrator continually focuses on, usually the protagonist, burst into flames while battling the Philosopher’s Stone, named after the mythical substance that turns all matter into gold and can create an elixir that renders the drinker immortal. I understand that Alfred Farnsworth III, driver of the Philosopher’s Stone, is driving for his father, Zeke Abrams, who was critically injured at the pig rendering plant where he works. Tonight we’re also proud to bring you the Psychotic Sixteen Tournament, where the best drivers we have face off in a no holds barred demolition derby. Involved in this mind blowing dance of death is the Iron Maiden, the Widowmaker, the Theory of Relativity, that is the general principles of the universe, energy equals matter combined squared, driven by Hank Einstein, we also found time on the card for the Bruiser, the Gravedigger, the Grave preparer, and Little Boots, which happens to be the nickname of famed Roman emperor and tyrant Caligula, who eccentricities made him legendary. (pause) Besides appointing his favorite horse a senator, he slept with his sister, killed his mother, massacred thousands of Christians, and had hundreds of mistresses, many of which were executed after he tired of them. (pause) Cleveland, are you ready to make some noise?!!!
Does Nascar seem too much like astrophysics to you? Do crashes involving
regular sized cars elicit nothing from you but a shrug and a yawn? Do you
want to go deaf before you go grey?
And despite all this, the one guy you really feel sorry for is the commentator. You know he's waiting for a chance to call some real sporting event, and sit by the phone every night in case ESPN calls, but is instead stuck here, spending half his time flogging the souvenir stand. Every fifteen minutes we were cheerfully remind that if you do not have a ‘Gravedigger’ pennant, you are nothing, you are worthless, you are a rotten, scum sucking, Koran-reading, commie atheist hippie pig…unless you buy your own right now. It’s also the commentator’s sacred duty to interview the winner of the racing tournament. In out case, it was the legendary (as far monster trucks can be, I suppose) ‘Gravedigger’. Which although seems to be a pretty cliché name, considering one of the trucks there was called 'the Broker', is still a rather catchy one. And the interview: With these shows going on almost daily with only about sixteen trucks competing, pretty much every driver has spent at least time on the winner’s podium. And you have not heard a stump speech until you've heard one from a man who drives a vehicle with wheels bigger than a corner office. Key things to remember: -It felt good out there. -He just had to blah, blah, blah at the something, something, something and it was all smooth riding after that. -The other drivers are all great athletes, especially the one who just lost to him. -hi mom!
He even got to open a bottle of champagne and spray it everywhere, which
is clearly the sign of any classy sporting event these days.
If anything goes wrong, or the nightly schedule is put in
jeopardy thanks to a wheel falling off, there is only one solution: free
t-shirts. Like clockwork, some random guy with a handheld air cannon shows
with a rather attractive but conservatively dressed young woman at his
side, firing rolled up t-shirts into the crowd. The commentator asks with
as much fake enthusiasm as possible if anyone wants a free t-shirt. If the
response is anything less than a deafening roar, he tells the crowd that
he can't hear them (considering he's down on the stadium floor the whole
time, he might be telling the truth), and asks the question again. I’m not
sure if the overall desire for t-shirts had increased in that moment or
whether the congregation just wants the commentator to shut up, but they
oblige by yelling their prepubescent or drunken heads off.
Dec. 24 - So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Know what’s great about the holidays? Throwing up egg nog. It doesn’t have that acidy aftertaste, it’s nice and creamy. Just toss your cookies in the toilet, wipe your mouth, and head back out to the party. Most of the staff here at the station swear by it, as long as rum is included (otherwise, what’s the point?). But festive puking is only one of the ornaments on the holiday tree (we’ve got a kwanza covert on staff, so ‘christmas’ is kind of a dirty word in the office). There’s also presents, mistletoe, annoying carols, and awkward conversation with rarely seen family members (‘Uncle Ryan?! I can’t believe you’re not dead!’). Of course, it’s not all tinsel and turkey. Apparently there’s a war on. No, not the boring ol’ Iraq war, silly! The war on Christmas! The war that really affects us these days (remember, if you say, ‘Seasons Greetings’, the terrorists and Hanukah Harry win). See, America used to balance Christmas perfectly, with the star of Bethlehem shining happily over the local shopping centre and no one minded a single bit. But now those godless politicians and money grubbing department store owners are banning Christmas trees in government buildings and welcoming us to buy cheap shirts and vacuum cleaners with Satan-inspired hellos. What’s next, banning Christmas altogether? (like, um, the Christians did in England in the 17th century) But maybe that’s excessive. Perhaps we just need to do a bit of housecleaning. Here’s an idea. Let give the Jews and Muslims Santa Claus. And I don’t mean that Christian nations should dump the jolly old elf, I’m just saying Santa has shit all to do with the birth of Jesus, so everyone may as well welcome him in their homes at the end of December. And let’s not get into this ‘St. Nick’ argument. Saint Nicholas was a fourth century bishop on the island of Myra. One of the miracles attributed to him was that he resurrected three boys killed by a butcher who planned to sell their flesh as ham (thanks, wikipedia). He also gave money anonymously to a poor man so he could have dowries to give away with his three daughters (this doesn’t seem as miraculous, but that doesn’t matter since it might have actually been St. Basil, anyway). Santa Claus was created by the coca cola beverage company in a marketing campaign, was fleshed out in a mediocre 19th century poem that even the author disavowed, and etched into our collective consciousness via cheesy but classic Hollywood films (Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, Toys). The whole world should embrace Santa Claus. What a great way to put a friendly face on the America-dominated globalization of the planet. A happy fat man who seems willfully ignorant of the great humanitarian disasters across the world (I’m waiting on the edge of my seat to hear these fateful words: ‘How could Santa allow this to happen?’). Santa and his liberty deer, soaring across the skies, giving away toys to all the good little nations that embrace democracy and free markets (I wonder if Santa will have to move his workshop to the South Pole in the next ten years due to global warming). And of course there’s the terrifying aspect of Santa (best documented in a slew of appallingly bad horror films), since he is essentially a benevolent-yet-disturbed individual who breaks into millions (or billions) of houses in the middle of the night. Plus his criteria for good and bad children remain a closely guarded secret, and god knows how he pays his elves, or how he obtains copyright from a whole host of toy manufacturers, and why he seems to boycott almost all of Africa. So yeah, there are more holes in Santa’s story than in a well planned gangbang. Some people doubt his existence completely. And to them I say, ‘You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time. But you can fool all the children all of time, so you may as well do it.’ I mean if you need proof that large groups of people can be manipulated into believing a massive secret by carefully controlling the information they have access to, look no further than Santa Claus. Sure, they’re only kids but that’s the whole point. A group of people who don’t ask questions because asking them doesn’t seem to make much of a difference to how they live their lives (‘Why do I have to eat all my vegetables?’ ‘Because I said so’ ‘Why do I have to go to school?’ ‘Because you have to’ ‘How does Santa fly around the world in just one night?’ ‘Magic. Finish your vegetables’). And from there it’s only a small hop, skip, and jump to what happens with older segments of the population. Really. There are far too many people in this world who are nothing more than big children with driver’s licenses. Parenting is essentially just telling a small person you have complete power over to, ‘trust me’. And they do. Just like government is just telling every person they have complete power over to, ‘trust us’. And we do, rarely asking any questions (and when we do, we get answers akin to, ‘Magic’). Children are living under a massive illusion, and the rest of us are not too much further up the road. But it’s not that there is a massive conspiracy that most of don’t know about. There is no conspiracy. The secrets are right in front of us (the government cares more about the welfare of the corporations that put them in power than the welfare of the citizens… but at least we’re second). We just choose not to look at these things. It becomes an inconvenience to think about. We’ll let others worry about problems with the government (unfortunately we usually let the government try to solve the problems with the government). To go back to the Santa Claus example. Resourceful young children can easily find contrary positions on the existence of Santa Claus (older siblings, the internet, the newspaper, certain channels on TV), but why should they bother? They just want the presents, and to hell with the logistics. In fact, what if asking too many questions means no presents at all? Why risk that? Just keep your mouth shut, sit on Santa’s lap, and wait for the tickle me elmo. And for us, we can end world hunger. We can find cheap, renewable resources. We just don’t care enough to seriously look for the answers. After all, they might be unsettling, and require – shock! Horror! – changes and sacrifices on our behalf. It’s a damn shame that it will take the problems to hit home before we will do something about them. I guess this is kind of a downer way to end the year, so try to focus on the sugarplums that are supposed to be dancing in your heads (what is a sugarplum? Just a sugared plum?). Just remember that before we can all take DMT and ascend to the higher plane of existence we have to make sure we’re all well fed and warm. Merry Christmas and/or happy holidays, and good luck with 2007. We’re all gonna need it.
Nov. 29 - Protected by a silver spoon... I’ve just noticed something. We haven’t had a well-publicized defenestrating case for quite a long time. Defenestrating is, of course, the act (or art, depending on where you spend your Saturday nights, I suppose) of throwing people out of windows. Preferably high ones. It wouldn’t do much good throwing somebody out of a first floor window unless your real goal was to just ruin the flower bush out front. Like all cultured historians, the first thing I think of when it comes to famous defenestrating is the Mel Gibson movie, Braveheart. Remember that scene when the evil King of England tosses his son’s ‘friend’ out the window? I think it was a good fifty feet up. Anyway, the guy lands hard, and three soldiers come to investigate, probably thinking, “Murder! Oh my god!” Then they look up and see that the King did it. Then they run away. ‘Cause hey, what are you going to do? It’s the King. He can throw anybody he wants out of a window. I bet that’s the one thing Prince Charles really wished he could still do. Can’t make laws, fine. Aren’t in charge of the army, hey, it happens. But please, don’t take away a royal person’s god given right to toss other men and women out (or off) of high places. That brings up another good point. I’m willing to bet only wealthy, powerful people would go to the trouble defenestrating someone else. I can’t see them getting down a dirty and using something like a gun or a knife. They’d go for something devious like this. Something that won’t crease their pants or skirt. Just a slight nudge, and there goes your competition for the new senior VP opening. Defenestration is frequently linked with civil unrest and political upheaval, at least in the medieval and renaissance periods. This probably has something to do with the fact that they didn’t have many guns, couldn’t read, were in the clutches of a feudal system, the rats were really in control, etc. Back then, corrupt leaders and officials were brutally murdered along with their families and tossed out of windows to be torn apart by an angry mob. Today, disgraced political leaders are given high-level consulting positions with government defense contractors and the angry mob has been replaced by gun show enthusiasts and NASCAR dads. We have to leave it to the last bastion of tradition these days – organized crime – to find defenestration in the twentieth century. In the early forties, a mob informant went missing from his hotel room in New York City and was found on the ground below the day before he testified in court (one day before? That’s cutting it close). I assume this was because WWII was starting up, and the mafia wanted to do its part to save scrap metal by not using bullets, cement, piano wire, or a meat hook. Yeah, I can’t really think of a good reason why defenestrating got out of style. It’s quick, you don’t have to be really strong, and it can easily be fixed to look like an accident. I mean, most murders, you have to have an alibi, you don’t want to be anywhere near the crime scene, and of course there’s evidence… it’s hard to make certain deaths look like an accident (“He was cleaning his gun, when it went off…uh… right between his forehead”, “He fell backwards onto the knife…seventeen times”). But with defenestrating it’s different. You should be there. You’re the one that tells the police that your friend “was just trying to get a better view of a blond down on the street when he leaned to far out and…” I mean, what are the police going to do? They have no reason to suspect you. Hell, you were his friend. You went into the building together. They realize that people are generally klutzy. I know I am. That’s why avoid any invitation to high buildings. ‘Cause if I got bumped off, there wouldn’t even be an investigation. That’s how much of a stumblebum I am. The cops might call my parents, and my father would probably tell them he was surprised I made it this far. Then there’s self-defenestrating. Not to be confused, though, with suicide via tall building. You see there’s really only one case of someone unintentionally throwing him or herself through a window. As it so happens, it took place a couple years ago in some city that I can’t recall at the moment. See, a young executive was in his office of some large downtown skyscraper, showing off to a couple of women he invited up the strength of the ceiling-to-floor glass window. And how did he show this off, you ask? Simple. By throwing himself against it. Several times (I think you can guess how this ends). Sure enough, he did one body check too many, and went flying through the window. Unfortunately, the flying quickly became falling, and the sidewalk below never knew what hit it (although I’m sure it had a good idea). Cruel, yes, but as Homer Simpson said while watching a gruesome movie about car accidents as punishment for driving drunk: “It’s funny ‘cause I don’t know him”. Then there are the cliff jumper types who dive out of windows with parachutes, which is only defenestration if you remove the rule that the person in question must be a splattery piece of muck at the end. Unfortunately, the ‘person-muck’ is pretty much the key to defenestration (without it, you’re pretty much just doing an eighth grade science project). After all, it’s not the fall that kills you and makes the gods giggle like schoolgirls, but the sudden stop. Of course, just because it’s easy, and you have a good chance of staying out of jail, doesn’t mean the act of defenestrating is as innocent and pure as freshly fallen snow. There are many ethical and moral questions that one must consider: ‘Is murder ever right?’, ‘Can I live with myself if I do this?’, ‘Will the person land on anything I own?’, and ‘Is it wrong to serve dip at the wake?’
Sept. 10 - I can’t even touch the books you’ve read… This column is about good ol’ idiots. They span the globe, transcending race, creed, culture, and sex. Many people rag on idiots (me included), and with good reason. But it’s not all bad. Idiots are able to play valuable roles in a society that accepts mediocrity from so many of its traditions and institutions. Now while this is a obviously a bad thing, and makes even the most bluest liberals wish for some form of despotism, for people like me who have written off the world as a dying cocktail party, it is a source of much amusement. Idiots, through no real fault of their own, have their own kind of silver lining for their clouded, tiny minds. First off, idiots make other people feel better about themselves. When someone says, ‘I’m sorry for acting like such an idiot’, it’s really them pointing out that there are people who act that stupid all the time. And the problem is, these people don’t exist. If you screwed up 100% of the time, you probably didn’t make it to toilet training. You probably choked on marbles one too many times and are reading this column in heaven or hell right now (heaven has DSL, and hell has dial up, but you’re allowed to surf for porn in the latter). No, the people who are labeled as idiots are those who screw up about 60-70% of the time. Now, this has nothing to do with intelligence quotient or mental handicaps. Real idiocy flies under the scientific radar. These people can hold jobs, finds spouses, even (horror upon horror) mate with alarming frequency. This last observation is particularly important, as it reminds us how valuable it is to not be an idiot. Hardworking, intelligent people like you or I can walk with an extra spring in their step knowing the chances of us getting our hands caught in a vending machine or snowblower is astronomically low. Idiots cannot be so sure of this, but being idiots they aren’t even aware that it’s possible to be so sure (hence why they are more likely to get involved with said vending machine or snowblower). For idiots, absolutely anything is possible in the course of an average day, but being an idiot means to be totally unaware of this. ‘Be prepared’ means nothing to an idiot, even those that were in boy scouts (they were the ones who burnt their tongues when roasting marshmallows, and somehow started a fire while wood carving). Idiots make life worthwhile provided that we are bystanders to their tomfoolery, not victims of it. Standing in line behind an idiot may be one of the most nerve-racking, murder-suppressing ordeals there is, but watching a fat oaf trying to open a bag of M&M’s on a bumpy, crowded bus makes even that worthwhile. Arguing with an idiot is damn near impossible, as they don’t let small things like logic or facts get in the way of their point. An idiot’s sole weapon in an argument is reiterating their point in as many different ways as possible until their opponent just gets fed up and concedes with, ‘Ah fuck this, I’m going to get another drink’. And yet on the other side of this coin, confusing or convincing an idiot of something that just isn’t true is as easy as, well, convincing an idiot of something that just isn’t true. If there’s something an idiot isn’t sure of, but wants to believe, a simple anecdote that supports their hopes is good enough for them (‘oh yeah, gravity is a lot weaker on the second floor of a house. Once my cousin jumped up in a condo on the twelfth floor and hit his head on the ceiling.’). Convincing idiots of the inherent safety in dangerous activities can be one’s own personal eugenics program (‘no, no, no. Inflammable and flammable don’t really mean anything. It’s unflammable that you have to worry about’). Idiots give us television that we can hate. Television that we can watch with ironic detachment. Television with see-it-coming-three-miles-away clichés and two dimensional characters to remind us all that the good guys always win and there’s a discount on wax paper at the local grocery store (really, you shouldn’t be spending more than ninety-nine cents a roll). Happy endings, car chases, and all the PG-approved titties you can imagine. Now all three of these things are not cultivated solely by the idiot (perhaps the intelligent bohemian prefers R-rated titties, but we’re splitting heirs here), but these three ingredients are presented in such a regular, poorly scripted fashion (first titties, then the car chase, and finally the happy ending…possibly with a titty reprise) that it becomes teeth-grindingly awful to anyone who is not an idiot. For example, CSI: Whatever is the idiot’s Law & Order. Fortunately television has nothing resembling scruples, and will gladly mock and deride the very people it relies on for its existence. ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ gives viewers a glimpse of the idiot in his or her natural habitat. Oh sure, many of the videos display harmless, innocent activities that go hilariously wrong, but the ones that involve people doing asinine behavior right off the bat are of much more value to the amateur sociologist. The outcome is predictable (pain), but the journey is fresh and open-ended. Is the idiot in question acknowledging the camera with a shit eating grin and waving before he tries to light his barbeque for the first time since last summer? Excellent. Is his whiny five year old with ice cream on his face wandering aimlessly nearby? Even better. So yes, the idiots have taken over, whether it is in the halls of government or the world of television programming (and maybe it’s just me, but even the internet feels stupider these days. Everything is either a link to celebrity gossip or an ad banner which asks you to shoot a gopher to win an iPod). But don’t despair. We can rest comfortable at night knowing that we know what’s going on, and how to do all the card tricks that will enthrall the masses (go sheepdogs, go!). Besides, when the revolution finally comes my fellow witty and well-read friends, think of all the slaves we’ll have!
August 8 - The House Party: An Analysis Another old one. Summer reruns and all that. I'm sure you understand...
July 24 - Anatomy of a Night Out This was written a long time ago in place far, far away.
May 27 - Riding along in my automobile... It's car season again, and all the cool people have 'em and are payin' an arm and a leg and any other spare body parts for gasoline. Who knows, this may be the last summer where a road trip actually involves a car (next summer: get on the Harleys and tail the last remaining gas truck across a desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland!). Lucky for me, I get carsick nowadays, so I walk or fly or get carried everywhere, but for the rest of you who are forced to pound asphalt, I offer these suggestions to make your journey a tad more bearable (not too much more bearable, though. Some parts of the road trip should be a tremendous pain in the ass. Like eating Burger King for the sixth time in five days). So take out a couple loans to pay for fuel and get behind the wheel. Nervous? Pound back a few (know your limit, both alcohol and speed). Balance the booze buzz out with some pep pills and as long as your car can outrun the average cruiser, you're all set. After all, getting there is half the fun, and driving fast adds an extra quarter. Remember to indulge in all type of diversions (punch buggy game, truck honk fist pump, road head, Spam Museum in Minnesota), and don't be afraid to talk to the locals (to break the ice, try something along the likes of, 'I'd like a burger and fries with a can of root beer. To go'). Also, since you’re spending money like a drunken sailor at a discount whore and gambling emporium, you may as well buy a durable but useless souvenir, like a paperweight with the name of the town or attraction you've just visited (what a great conversation starter: 'Nice rock' 'I got it in Fresno'), or an extra-large t-shirt bought in a rush that won't fit until you're twenty years older and forty pounds heavier. In the end, though, it’s all about the destination (unless you’re the type of sick freak who gets off on spending their two week vacation traveling the entire route of Interstate 90*), and unless you’re a dentist, where you end up when you turn off the ignition should have some fleeting concept of ‘fun’. *- I’m not joking. They’re called ‘road geeks’. There’s even an entry on them on Wikipedia. See, recreational travel is somewhat of a new phenomenon. In the past, people used to travel long distances only for the purposes of killing and persecution (crusades), fleeing from killing and persecution (pilgrims), or money (the colonization of every continent that wasn't Europe). It was only thanks to the emerging merchant class in the Renaissance that 'Kids Stay and Eat Free' billboards now dot the landscape. And the child factor is pretty influential. For couples, a vacation usually revolves around the idea of a new place to have sex - since all the rooms in the apartment have long since been christened - and that’s about it. And since sex with the offspring isn’t an option for parents (unless you’re from a close-knit religious community), you better hope the hotel pool has a slide, or a balcony you can lock the kids out on while you get busy (at least draw the curtains. Save on future therapy bills). But ideally, you don’t have children, and can travel wherever you want and not have to worry about who stumbles across the porn on the motel TV or who falls into the gorilla habitat at the zoo. So round up a couple acquaintances, bestow upon them the honorary title of best friend, and getting going. Just bring some Tylenol threes, quality headphones, and don’t be afraid to bail out if you find your true love while pissing on the side of the road outside of Lubbock, Texas. While the
highlights of a vacation usually come down to throwing up in a completely
new alley and quietly screwing on a hostel bed, traveling can also be full
of learning and make you a more open minded person (another reason I don't
do it), and you can't do that if you don't get out of your car and push
over a cow every so often. Seeing how other people plod through their
miserable little lives really lets you appreciate how much shit you don’t
have to put up with. City dwellers should always try and visit rural
communities to see an actual conservative voter, and those from
nowhereville, Iowa should put down their cousin and check out all the
wonders a modern city has to offer (drugs, strip clubs, upscale shopping,
and poorly hidden racial intolerance). Traveling off-continent can be nice
too, but it helps to know which countries still shit in holes before you
leave (for the record, in America, it is customary to leave shit in a
toilet or on the Saturday evening TV schedule).
May 2 - You Had to Piss on Our Parade... What rotten luck sometimes, I swear. Every so often I feel the need to write down a list of people that have interfered with my perfect plans, but I know so few of their names and aren’t even motivated enough to write these column more than once a month (I was hoping for a biweekly thing when this website climbed out of the swamp, but c’est la vie…), so nuts to that. Big swift kicks to the nuts, to be more exact. Having a schedule quite unlike most people on the planet, I aware that I must make some immediate concessions (sunlight, fresh bread at the store, less aggressive bums), but really, should I be made to suffer mad hours – on a weekend, no less – to be able to purchase Radiohead tickets? And hey, I don’t go to or even like McDonald’s, but what kind of breakfast hours are they pedaling at the Krocateria*? Don’t they know how much more money they’d rake in if they ran a second breakfast period starting at ten PM? *- Don’t waste too much time on this one. It’s not too funny And it’s not just faceless corporations on this continent, either. People on the other side of the globe are somehow affecting the way I conduct my business (although the term ‘business’ really does sound formal for lying around). Globalization sucks. I’ve had to share the sweet fruits of the first world with way too many Westerners, and all of a sudden I’m fighting for attention in myspace and Halo 2 with millions of Chinese and Indians. Now I’m not even the least bit racist (stupidity transcends race, creed, culture, and sex), I’m just all-around selfish. I don’t care who you are, what you want, or whether you think America is the last bastion of freedom or the great satan, don’t suck up my precious bandwith. Two billion more people are slowly entering into industrialized society, and even if the environment can take the hit (it can’t), and the natural resources hold out (they won’t), we still have to accept the same majority of them are going to be as useless, ignorant and lazy as in North America and Europe (we might have the edge at first, having had so much more practice). I wonder who’s going to make all our cheap shit now. Maybe Africa or South America. You know, I think I may have stumbled the real way we spread democracy and capitalism. Get the freedom-challenged governments to make spongebob squarepants t-shirts and plastic watering cans until they scrape together some real cash and start buying the crap themselves (Hellooo, Kitty!*). So then it costs too much to make stuff there and the world’s richest sniff out another dirt poor, bribe-friendly country where they can build another factory that ignores health and safety regulations. It’s called the Wal-Mart Domino theory. *- Japanese, I know. But aside from secret police, chow mein, and the occasional basketball player, what does modern Chinese culture consist of? But at least I can’t see the people who are causing all this traffic on the information superhighway. It makes it that much easier to imagine them as malicious robot demons on every other computer in the world, going to all the websites I’m visiting (friendster, facebook, dumpstersluts) five seconds before me. I can accept that it’s forces beyond my control (Clapton, Crowley) giving me the royal screwjob, since I have to burn off all the bad karma somehow. It just becomes particularly worse when you can put a voice or face to these creatures. And I don’t mean the obvious crap, either, like the people who buy all the toilet paper at each supermarket, or the guy on the subway who keeps touching himself while staring at you, or the violent mob that attacks you because of your humorous and ironic pro-war protest sign and leave you for dead. It’s the ordinary stuff – the invisible (or near-invisible) stuff – that gets my goat. Now I don’t want to steal Dennis Miller’s typical opening line here, but people cannot walk properly anymore. First off, I give fat people a free pass on this one, as I’m sure a 300 pound spherical object is treated more like a satellite than a person, but there are too many cripple free thin people walking like slugs or drunken slugs. And goddamn it, a busy city sidewalk is no place to stop…completely… on a dime. You do not need to test your braking in the middle of the day. Walk around in your kitchen before you leave your house to see if you will stop moving when your feet do. And I feel bad for hating these people for those few seconds that I’m forced to maneuver around them. They seem like regular people who are just getting on with their day, but my god, do they have to do it so slowly? And are they the exact same people who clog up the lines at supermarkets by purchasing an Oh Henry with a credit card? Now I’m not mister swift and punctual, but I do my very best to make sure my laziness doesn’t interfere with others. It’s an individual’s vital contribution to society, trying to stay out of other people’s hair as much as possible (how’s that for a public service announcement during Saturday Morning Cartoons? ‘Don’t dawdle kids, and always use bank machines quickly and efficiently. When there’s a line, don’t deposit cheques or print out lengthy statements. Otherwise the terrorists win’). As a particularly eloquent and diminutive French philosopher once said: ‘Hell is other people’. Of course, that’s marking heaven as being pretty damn lonely, if you think about it. Oh well…let’s get on with it.
April 6 - Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather... It’s hard to find good leather shops in this town. Oh, I’m not into that kind of thing (I’m rather conservative when it comes to sex, I’m afraid. Just the boring ol’ insatiable lesbian supermodel twins fantasy for me, thanks); we need it for a bit that’s not yet written. We don’t know who we’re going to hand the job to. Duke doesn’t usually start getting good ideas until he can hold the topic of the skit in his hands (he’s forbidden to write penis jokes in front of us). It’ll probably have something to do with sex. Or a skit that completely avoid sex (which would make it funny, see, ‘cause everyone in this one would be wearing S&M attire but no one acknowledges it, so that’s funny… see, that’s juxtaposition… it’s when two opposite…a literary device…okay, now I’m giving our secrets away…). Right. Leather. Maybe we’ll just find a riding crop. Compared to other devices, a perfectly PC S&M toy. And what a great sound when you try to whip the air (although these days we seem to be punishing oxygen enough…). I can see the riding crop being the gateway toy to the world of sadism and masochism (like weed is the evil gateway drug to the five star powders). You don’t have to walk into a store adorned with mannequins wearing ball gags called the ‘Gothic Castle’ to buy one, just stop by your local equestrian shop (it would be in the good part of town, or, if you’re from Montana, any part of town). If the clerk strikes up conversation, tell them you plan to use it on an ornery one hundred and twenty pound female (make sure you’ve paid and have the bag in your hand during this comment). Now you go home, have a couple glasses of wine and laugh your ass off at the idea (maybe it was a gag gift first), but you give it try. So you take spanking to the next level, then get good enough with it to raise welts, and then it’s a quick and slippery slope to vibrators, rusty trombones, pegging, golden showers, Monroe transfers, and the Dirty Sanchez. Soon trash TV looks like the 700 club, and you don’t even get in the mood until you’ve had a half hour of extreme rough ball play. Nothing seems to float your boat anymore. When you see sex everywhere, you don’t really see it at all. Even words that used to make you titter, like panties, boobs, erect, wank, and erogenous zone, are render valueless (for the last one, picture alarms going off in a giant desert army base, soldiers running everywhere under a dark night sky, and from a loudspeaker booms, ‘WARNING! WARNING! BASE ON HIGH ALERT! THE ENEMY HAS BREACHED THE…‘). Finding time for your usual sexual experience requires you to leave work several hours early. You doodle possible sexual positions on bar napkins not out of interest but bored necessity. One time you even fall asleep while being fisted. But that mind of yours keeps spinning, flying ever higher on sexual fumes until you drive past someone walking their dog and you spend more time thinking about the one on the leash than the one holding it. And then suddenly you’re back where you started…at the equestrian store… At least that’s what I assume happens. Hell, if half of the above is an accurate portrayal of the mad descent into sexual perversion, it would make a mesmerizing graduate thesis, or at the very least, a three star movie of the week, with an option for a spinoff series on basic cable. We ourselves could never film the sordid but alluring tale above, though. Not without some sort of members area that requires a monthly subscription fee (that’s the sad truth about having a website. It’s a quick, slippery slope from listing stuff you like to comedy/satire bits to bizarre videos to having five gigs worth of streaming XXX action). And of course it’s not really the same once it’s being done for money, regardless if one or all parties get a cut of the check. All that disgusting stuff that requires you to lay a tarp on your bed should come from the heart. It’s not my place to question the legitimate motives behind every successful professional dominatrix (the amateur dominatrix is usually wanted by the police), and I know they need to pay the electricity bill like everyone else (probably less for them, because of the atmosphere), but it would be nice to know that after a particularly enjoyable session (or un-enjoyable, depending on your position…er, point of view), they would tell their captor that tonight was free of charge and spit in their face. See, that’s where the slave-master relationship fails for me. For DeSade and Nietzsche, the relationship was not a choice or an hourly session, and did not take place in some aging goth chick’s basement. It was real, and something that must be fought against, for the good of one’s own individuality (and in DeSade’s case, sex itself was the weapon, not just the way to spend a Friday night). How can one put a price on defying societal conventions to remind themselves that they are not necessarily bound to them? Maybe its proof that this supposedly fringe activity has entered mainstream society. That a world of complete submission can be sought out in the want ads and achieved via regularly scheduled appointments. Hell, that must be the case. I’m trying to eke out a living making fun of it, after all. So how much further can we go? What’s left to be packaged and commoditized? Last year it was that murder case in Germany concerning one man who let another guy kill and eat him with the promise that doing so in such a fashion would result in the most mindblowing orgasm ever (good thing he’s dead. It would have been an embarrassing breach-of-contract lawsuit if the big moment wasn’t up to snuff). Since the time this was first reported, other people across the globe have sought out this guy (currently in prison) asking to do the same to them. Suddenly a trip to the equestrian store doesn’t sound so strange, does it?
March 19 - I...don't know...just where I'm going... I haven't
written for awhile. It's hard to when inspiration is as dead as the
democrats (I have just been topical. I promise you it won't happen again).
The only
real boon of axing the twenty eight channels (yeah, it was just a basic
cable package. Some people probably count that as living like a hermit
these days, anyway) was getting rid of the 24 hour news networks. Don’t
get me wrong, I suck that shit up like a sponge on the net (and the blogs!
All those lovely, topical blogs!), but at least I can read it faster than
some empty, talking head who just escaped the local Wichita station by
ditching all trace of the okie accent and climbing to the all powerful
post of Headline News at 2:46 AM can spout it. With the internet I can be
terrified of the Muslims, the young black males, and the secular humanists
when I see fit (usually after learning how to ADD YEARS TO MY SEX LIFE!!
TRY IT FOR FREE FOR TWO WEEKS!!), and can conveniently ignore the human
interest stories that tend to be shat out at the end of every half-hour
television newscast. * -“14 karat gold!”
March 1 - Always took candy from strangers, didn't wanna get me no trade... There’s tension down at the ol’ writers table because there’s an increasing tendency to pitch ideas that require more financial resources (‘okay, we’re gonna get a horse, right? And feed it a whole bunch of ex-lax…’). Personally, I’ve always been an advocate of less is more (although that horse shitting thing really does become some clever political satire…), so my stuff tends to revolve around two people arguing over a small item in an empty room and ends with the stronger killing and eating the weaker (I’m a Nietzschean at heart). There’s talk of robbing banks or, at the very least, dealing drugs, but beyond vague promises and shady contacts, there’s little initiative, and we’ve all seen Oz so we’re kinda worried about breaking the law. Besides, we’re a bunch of weirdo writers. We’ll probably just spend it all on DVD boxed sets of cult sixties TV shows. Lousy nostalgic commercialism. Next week I’ll probably blow half my paycheck on lego or a swing set. But I shouldn’t be so negative about money. I’ll probably bitch even more if I ever actually have any. At least things are finally getting accomplished. No one knows whether we’ll all end up on the cover of Rolling Stone or in some Peruvian jail, but the open possibilities makes each day a bit more interesting. Hell, the last time I felt like this was when I was in high school, and that’s particularly important for me because I don’t remember much from high school (and it wasn’t all because of pot. A lot was alcohol poisoning). I’m sure it helps that we aren’t expecting much in the long run (in fact, that’s probably the main reason we’re not sullen and grumpy). Having vague goals make the day so much easier. I’d much rather promise myself that I would eat something than write something in the course of a day (and I’d count the questionable molecules in tap water as ‘food’. Tap water: a great source of refreshment and mercury). Then if I do end up scribbling some lame idea down (usually something about what I ate), I’m ahead of the game. Of course, with an attitude like this, meeting so-called accomplished people is not conducive to a healthy mental state (especially if you’re meeting them before noon, in an old Animaniacs t-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms). Case in point: Once I was in this bar in Houston with some friends, and it was just my luck to be at the end stool of our group, making myself susceptible to any drunken yahoo feeling just lonely and desperate enough to talk to someone who clearly wasn’t from Texas. Bracing myself for the possibility of actually having some grizzled ranch hand say, ‘I don’t like your face’ (and regardless whether it comes from a straight or gay man, it would definitely be a bit of a blow to the self esteem), or even worse, ‘You got real purty eyes’, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself talking to some businessman from LA who sold cleaning solvents to corporate farms. Fortunately he didn’t delve into the details of his profession, and instead focused on telling me about the three homeless guys he killed. Now I’m a cynic if nothing else, and part of me still doesn’t believe it, but just the matter-of-fact tone in his voice seemed to suggest a mixture of pride on his behalf and indifference towards me if I thought him a liar. And he didn’t look crazy. It’s not like the TV’s in his hotel rooms were secretly telling him to gather blood for the coming of Baal. He didn’t even use the term bloodlust once. Without prying too much into his private life, I think I can safely say he did it because he knew he could get away with it (or maybe he wasn’t so sure he could and was just looking for a thrill. He sells barrels of Ajax for a living, after all). I won’t lie. I lost just the tiniest iota of respect for him when he told me he choked sleeping ones to death with his belt, but the point remains: I’m not doing anything about the problem of homelessness in our cities. I mean, in this case, most people would feel that my complete indifference to the problem is preferable to his pro-active approach, but from a more general, ideological standpoint, it’s pretty clear Americans have no problem taking someone with action-packed bad ideas over someone with passive, good/mediocre ideas. So for the sake of the argument as far as I see it, the murder charge is pretty much moot. The point is…don’t become homeless. Okay, the point is really that this man had successfully juggled his job, his family, his leisure time, and his occasional blood thirst, while most of us can’t hold a job for six months and a girl for more than six minutes (even if you try to think about dull shit like taxes or bus schedules in the middle of getting funky). In this increasingly impersonal, fast paced, prescription drug addicted society, there has to be some sort of admiration for this man (and for serial killers who bring their victims home with them! I can barely keep my room clean and I don’t have to worry about blood on the walls or dissolving body parts in acid). After the man paid his bill and left (run hobos, run!), I mentioned it to my drinking compatriots. First they thought I was a liar, and then they thought he was a liar and that I was an idiot. No one said anything about calling the cops, and when I pointed this out we all went silent. Regardless whether this man did/does the things he said, we weren’t going to do anything about it, so suddenly it didn’t matter if he killed hobos or not. He could, because no one would believe him, and therefore no one would stop him. SO now the new point is that the biggest crimes and conspiracies can go on right under our noses because they’re too unbelievable, too crazy. Respectable men kill hobos, the moon landing was a fake, aliens caused 9/11, and politics can be reduced to a bunch of horseshit.
Feb.19 - People just get uglier, and I have no sense of… Timing is of every essence. Time changes faster than space, as far as the philosopher is concerned (I make no money from my college degree, so I may as well be a philosopher). I don’t remember how old I was when I got my first watch. It takes a special kind of kid to always care about the time (‘Quarter to four? Oh man, I should have been on the swings ten minutes ago!’). You could rely on parents and school bells for that, and when they weren’t around the day could easily be divided into light and dark, the former of which was occasionally punctuated by food. The argument that ignorance truly is bliss is never more apparent than when one considers childhood. The fact that a couple hundred pieces of Lego can entertain a child all day (or for toddlers, a plastic rattle or even simply bubble wrap) demonstrates that a fully functioning, developed brain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Before this rambling, poor excuse for a column becomes nostalgic, allow me to pour cynicism into the wounds of my childhood (hydrochloric cynicism…into festering, bloody gashes of the past*). The kids having fun didn’t care what time it was, but the long lunch recess was a period of constant mental anguish for me. I never knew how much longer I had left, and it gnawed at the very core of my undeveloped soul (is this my last tumble down the hill? Will I ever stop being ‘it’?). So when I did get the watch – a cheap Timex digital – I was the pseudo-popular kid all of a sudden. Every recess I’d be approached by some kid asking me how long they have left to play football, ball tag, red ass, etc. (for a while, my life seemed to suggest a career as a railway timetable brochure). *-sounds like Sylvia Plath, with a touch of chemistry student. But as one stumbles further into the darkness that is the teenage years, time becomes much more precious (especially if you’re on probation, either academic or bona fide). And by the time you’ve graduated you’ve exhausted your ‘fuck around’ time, so you’re ripe for the picking when it comes to the job market (which is why people go to grad school, to receive a piece of paper that is really just an authorization to ‘fuck around’ professionally. That’s why it costs so much). In some sense, school and jobs just exist to keep all of us off the streets at the same time (imagine how crowded it would always be!). And after a couple weeks, months, and years, you enter into such a routine that time suddenly doesn’t mean anything at all because you’re doing everything at the same moment every day (when it comes to the rhythm of showering, eating breakfast and commuting, people are as malleable as play-doh). In my case, working 925 should be ideal for a person who finds endless fascination in the trivial fact that Immanuel Kant was so punctual on his walks that his neighbors set their clocks to his passing by (I bet he even knew when he was going to bust his nut before the girl even started), but that’s only true if you’re doing a job that enriches your soul, or, at the very least, pays well. Most of us cobbling together this ramshackle site have neither of the above, which explains why this feels like a late night science experiment put together by a bunch of cynical alcoholics and cynical potheads and cynical alcoholic potheads. Or maybe that’s exactly what this site should be. Ignore the flashy, regularly updated websites run by THE MAN. Choose the underground, down to earth, honest websites run by the people destined to become THE MAN*. *- ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss’. So this site is updated in the cracks and crevices of rigid daily schedules that involves cutting grapefruit, entering data, answering phones, licking envelopes, watching Simpsons episodes and ingesting copious amounts of narcotics (busy, busy, busy!). Everything is all talk for so long you’re never prepared for when your life actually starts to unfold. A couple practice semesters would be grand (cynics would argue high school is just that, but dealing with newly sprouted hair and body parts takes up much of that time), or at least having a chance to do second takes at some important event in one life (“on second thought, I…um… don’t take this man/woman to be my lawfully wedded...”, or that crazy woman in Texas could not drown her children in a bathtub because god told her to. What a difference!). Unfortunately, punctuality is a personality trait that, for many people, is the sole determinant of whether you are an upstanding, first class citizen or a steaming pile of heroin-addicted, mind-fucked dogshit. To them, being on time builds character. Being late gives power to the enemy. Loose lips sink ships while broken clocks destroy blocks (I bet propaganda is great fun to write). So now we start gumming up the cultural landscape with this little cabin in the vast wilderness of cyberspace and wait for the world to knock down our door with offers of x, y, and z. Waiting. Letting time pass by with nothing happening. It moves ahead, you remain inert. Saying to time, ‘no, no, after you…’ And suddenly you look up at the wall and it’s only then that you realize that you’ve lost track of it all.
? - This is not how you get healthy... Everyone is telling me that I should tie up my dog but he's so much bigger than me and I really don't like getting too close to his neck. I've seen the video of that TV presenter who was interviewing this cop with his K9 dog. The guy inadvertently got his hand too close to the dog's throat and the animal in a flash sunk it's jaws into his head. I'm not stupid. That only happened to me twice. I shouldn't be drinking so much. Everyone tells me that, but these days, I only listen to doctors and judges. And even then, only federal judges.
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oh! my hair's getting good in the back!
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