Call for papers… kind of
Nothing that formal, really.
Asking anyone who might be interested to do a movie/tv show review… not a review as much as indulging in some cultural crit.
Several “political” films I’d love to hear decons on (together eventually): Children of Men, Syrianna, The Constant Gardener, Michael Clayton, and The Good Shepherd. Emphases… gender!!! certainly, and also not-so-political content like the characterization of redemption. What do the story or the characters actually hold some mirror to in the ‘real world’? Review-like stuff is cool, too. What about direction, performances, writing, music, photography, et al?
Even good cross-posts. Bound to be this kind of thing already afoot, just disparate.
De and I once talked about someone wrestling the Lord of the Rings film-trilogy.
These things are popular, so they already have peoples’ attention. Might be a way to begin talking to different people.
Another project fantasy… Detailed, attentive, episode-by-episode decons on the Law & Order tv phenomenon… and not just polemical stuff against the most obvious problems… what kind of need is filled by a cultural product like this?
Thoughts?
I just really would like to watch some of these movies with y’all… virtually, as it were.
Stan:
Kathy Miriam brought up Law & Order on FB, and I got carried away with a response… here it is, with drug disclaimer:
Yeah, I think there are around 40 million episodes; and the writers change a lot. L&O reminds me for all the world of Dragnet, the ancient Jack Webb B&W series on 50s tv. More hip, of course, but there’s still that “just the facts, ma’am”… dialogue, and all the non-police are, in each case, a little clueless or deviant. And it tries to be topical, tho quite a few of the writers csan’t concveal their own prejudices. I just wonder what its popularity is telling us about us. The obvious thin-blue-line motif is always there, of course, the Safe World- Dark World trope, wsith these galiant modern-day knights keeping the worlds safely divided. Yet there is also the hook that gets me (guilty confession) and that’s any who-dun-it. I like mysteries, even bad ones sometimes. It’s very easy to get me hooked on a question-mark. And I wonder if these recycling characters, like all tv series, aren’t people’s own safely-separated, well-adjusted, intelligent, witty, and often even philosophically inclined friends. Then there’s the reoccuring convention (a real irritant for me) of the loony actvist. Ridicule is an effective means for policing social behavior… and we learn from that convention that political activism will make us look silly… a source of real dread for some people. On and on. I had a gall bladder flare-up last night, and took a pain pill… still dopey as hell, my excuse for anything that makes no sense.
17 September 2010, 1:37 pmJames M:
Would this fit the bill, marginally?
It’s a review of the film “The White Ribbon” disguised as a paper for my child & adolescent psychology class
Considers topics such as attachment theory, empathy & its enforced suppression, the etiology of psychopathology in childrearing culture … etc. Basically regurgitates a lot of Alice Miller’s work, but maybe a good intro to the subject.
http://adaptationtolife.tumblr.com/post/1113214147/poisonous-pedagogy-child-abuse-and-the-origins-of
17 September 2010, 2:22 pmWm. Terry Leichner, RN:
Stan,
17 September 2010, 3:03 pmLiving here in Denver, which I heard just this morning was the number one city for police brutality complaints, the portrayal of cops being the heroes to protect and serve rings sort of hollow. Several members of the local activist community have been brutalized by the DPD and then charged for assaulting the police who did the brutalizing. Many in the black and Latino communities have had the DPD roust them and assault them routinely.
The Democratic National Convention in ’08 was an example of a city under martial law. Homeless people were swept away from the downtown and convention area, activists were harassed in their homes and, of course, IVAW came within a whisker of getting gassed and beat up following their march to the convention site. Cameras were installed on every corner and are still in use today. But at least they waited until Amy Goodman got to the RNC to falsely arrest her. She would have been in the line of fire with IVAW the night of the stand off, however. She was there mike in hand in the front row. Ron Kovic, standing very close to the front ranks, also took part in the stand off.
I think the Bruckheimer world of television is just the extension of the Ozzy and Harriet world I grew up in during my childhood. The thought of a dysfunctional family was foreign. I always felt something was lacking in my own family because of our constant conflicts.
Now, the family has become the hard working cops who struggle to keep the world on the right and moral path. They don’t tolerate the “bad cop”. He or she is an offense to all the good cops. And maybe they break the rules of the Constitution occasionally but it’s all for the greater good. It gets the bad guys off the street.
And besides, there are “terrorists” and other ghouls just waiting to take away our freedom.
The contrasting reality is seeing a good friend with swollen face and hardly able to move. His crime was asking to see a badge number when being rousted outside his apartment. His dredlocks and dark skin made him a “person of interest” to the cops in the passing patrol car.
Like your suggestion of examining the movie/tv genre. Have to say I’ve seen most of the list. Like you I’m a mystery junkie and I can’t seem to completely distance myself from the John Wayne world I grew up in during the 60′s.
Just read a review on the Pat Tillman movie that came out today. The reviewer mentions a guy by the name of Stan Goff who assisted the family in negotiating the military maze. Check out the Denver Post. Congrats for being part of bringing the truth out.
I’ll see what happens with the reviews and try to join the conversation.
Peace
Terry Leichner (VVAW-Denver)
Stan:
Let the flowers bloom. Thanks. Strongly recommend James’ link.
17 September 2010, 6:02 pmJennifer:
It’s not just the political consciousness-raising films like “Syriana” and “Children of Men” that are apocalyptic. There are Roland Emmerich’s mainstream films like “Day After Tomorrow” and “2012.” Not to mention “Core,” “Armageddon,” and “Deep Impact.” What about “The Matrix”?
Well “Syriana” is not really apocalyptic. It’s just what’s wrong with everything in the world. Big oil, American ambitions, the CIA, young Middle Eastern men with nowhere to go (who of course become terrorists).
In “Children of Men” we get our come-uppance. And again, it’s about all the things we humans are doing wrong. Pollution or chemicals or what, who knows what made everyone infertile? We’re still as ugly and as mean as before infertility struck. And then there’s still hope….
And really the same with a few of the other ones I mention (it’s all our faults): global warming brings a third ice age; we screwed around with a machine that screwed around with the earth’s core, literally stopping it; we build machines and they destroy our world and make us into batteries.
Or we’re doomed for some reason outside of our control: planets align and the sun flares and the earth’s crust starts displacing; a comet strikes us. Nobody says we’re at fault, but we all know it anyway.
And, of course “Lord of the Rings”! A statement against war, against industrialization. Talking trees (well, tree-herders), Orks, Goblins, Dwarves, Elves. The good people love nature. The bad ones destroy nature, all life.
So, we’re still at fault. And that’s it. That’s the truth of it. WE are AT FAULT for pretty much all the ills on this planet. I’ll say it again: the Center for Biodiversity states that the extinction rate of animals now exceeds by 1000 times the extinction rate of ANY prior period, including the mass extinction period of the dinosaurs. And this is caused by human overpopulation and human raping and pillaging of our precious planet.
But in movies, we can watch SOMEONE ELSE be the bad guy and SOMEONE ELSE save the day. We need neither to acknowledge full responsibility nor to muster the courage to do anything about anything. We can just sit and be satisfied at the end that all will be well – that (as Samwise Gamgee says in Lord of the Rings) there is still some good left in the world and it’s worth fighting for (but WE don’t need to get off our seats to do it).
17 September 2010, 6:16 pmElaina:
A couple weeks ago M and I were hanging out in our house and we heard gunshots coming from the end of our street. We went outside to see what was going on, and we’re standing at the edge of our yard and these police-folks roll up.
They automatically started to harass us. I’m sorry. There’s no other description for what was going on. It wasn’t even really that they were asking us anything, just demanding information. M just asked them if she was being held. When they said no, she walked away from them and went in the house. They started hounding me, and one asked me if M “was just some kinda jerk or something” (there were three of them.) The lady cop said “she better be glad SHE didn’t….something something (she turned and walked away and I couldn’t understand the rest.)
Meanwhile, down the street, there were prolly folks with guns just randomly shooting them in the air or something. IDK.
The one guy, who seemed a little closer to having his shit together than the others (but not much) finally asked me “what’s going on? Why are you out here?”
I told him we heard noises. They came from that way (pointing to the end of my street.) Then I went inside.
These are the cops.
Law and Order, I think, serves to give people an idea of something that they’d like to have (competent protectors.) The reality is much more like Reno 911, and that’s only on the good days.
Here are some more cops.
My personal belief is that an organized mafia of people meant to enforce the white man’s law with guns, sticks, and other instruments of torture and murder is not necessary to human organization. People can “protect” themselves. Unfortunately, our need for some kind of protection (which is also a result of epistemological poisoning by the white man’s culture) lets us stay complacent in this. Folks just can’t imagine a world without cops. And so you get this massive, percieved “need” for them- and we’re taught to fucking worship them! But they’re just regular fucked up people applying for jobs, because the police are hiring!!!
Anyway.
18 September 2010, 10:25 amStan:
Nice riff.
The real cops vs the hollywood cops. There’s a lot that the differences tell you. One of the themes that comes through again and again, even when the tv versions end with a certain stylish ambiguity, is that the system works. It works, because most of the people doing these jobs are ethical. The exceptions are covered under the bad apple syndrome… but things ultimately work the way we are taught they ought to.
In noir cop-dramas, there are excpetions… in fact, there us usually a strong plot element involving official corruption, and oftentimes the protagonists are as screwed up as the antagonists. Think Walter Moseley stories (where cops are usually all bad apples), or Chinatown (LA figures heavily into noir).
Another thing I see in L&O is that everyone is well-adjusted. Sure, they have occasional meltdowns, but in the end, ethical bosses and a functional technocracy complete with in-house shrinks, ensures that our heroes will be back next week to model healthy behavior for us. Which involves heavy doses of compartmentalization — loving children one moment, bullying the shit out of some poor suspect the next.
18 September 2010, 2:54 pmJackie:
I know that you did not list Survivor among your topics, but one of the ways to be the first eliminated contestant on that show is to be a woman with an opinion. Male cast members often complain of women being too “chatty” or “bossy”, while they fight to become the alpha male of the tribe through demonstrations of strength and supposed competency. The men usually struggle to show how they are necessary to the tribe by building fires or winning the ridiculous challenges while women seem to try to not be too annoying. Women who have been on the show more than once know that they must stay quiet and usually hold on to gutsy strategic moves until later in the show.
19 September 2010, 9:16 amClearly, I have given this much thought! Perhaps it is too much thought, some sort of excuse to keep watching this guilty pleasure reality TV…
sam:
On a related note, Stan, I have wanted for some time to request that you do a review of the movie “Black Hawk Down”, as it is THE war propaganda film of our day.
Indeed, the military was allowed to be a part of the production process in exchange for training and equipment (couldn’t make the movie without a Black Hawk or two, could they?)
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2002/03/12/sexton
In the book of the same name, soldiers recount horrors like seeing innocent bystanders cut to pieces by helicopter miniguns; having to shoot an armed woman while she was carrying a baby; holding an innocent family hostage in their own home and making them sit in their own feces; and more.
Not surprisingly, such instances were left out of the movie. In fact, never once do we see the characters using force in morally ambiguous circumstances. Every time the trigger is pulled, it is justified and unregrettable.
Many young people, no doubt, join the military based on the way it is portrayed in that film, probably more than any other movie made in the last decade. Obviously it has been critiqued before, but I think your informed opinion might carry more weight with the skeptical than the average film critic. Hope you will consider it.
19 September 2010, 10:38 amLeif:
Hi Stan, coming at you from Facebook.
I’m interested in writing about / discussing the film The Mission, do you know it?
19 September 2010, 12:55 pmKim Sky:
Re: Adaptation to Life
I’ve spoken with Germans and the English about their personal experiences as children in the 40s and 50s. According to their testimonies I got the feeling that the English were just as violent in the home, but that their school system was especially violent. So, England was worse than Germany. My conclusion is not based on any research.
My parents suffered childhood violence (in the 30s), much worse then myself. Raised in the 50s. I believe US-American life for children was generally less violent than that of the folk in Europe.
In talking with a few friends, I was surprised to find out that so many people were fascinated with Hitler and his childhood, a fascination driven by a belief that personal circumstances are the driving force behind madmen and goodmen for that matter, I guess?
After reading a book about the Roma, and getting a glimpse of their history, I concluded that the whole rise of Hitler thing to a large degree was due to cultural norms. That virtually all countries in Europe, before the rise of Hitler had legislation that deemed — To be Roma is illegal.
Interestingly, within Roma history, their coping mechanism as an oppressed sub-group was quite different from that of the Jews. Any of the horrors visited upon them, throughout their long history in Europe are simply forgotten. The historians I’ve been reading state that there were 1 million gypsies before the war and half of them were killed, some 500,000. That they were held in separate camps, apart from the Jews, and treated much worse (hard to imagine). Recently, there has been a small movement to recover that Roma history. And look at France now! Returning to the exact beginning of all that again. Deporting Roma, disassembling Roma camps!
Back to the premise, why are US — troops, Cops, CIA, and corporate bureaucracy types so capable of such horrible atrocities? When we’ve had such a lovely upbringing by comparison?
19 September 2010, 1:24 pmDeAnander:
Deconstructing the blockbuster ‘Avatar’ might be interesting. Its a real babble of cultural messages — some undermining and mocking both male and financial/corporate power, nationalism, militarism, industrialism etc. — some ironically reinforcing well-loved colonialist and masculinist fantasies… it’s also one of the most hauntingly beautiful animated flix I’ve ever seen, must admit. Up there with the best work of Studio Ghibli though in a very different vein.
20 September 2010, 2:26 amDeAnander:
btw I used to do a series of film reviews (mostly obscure/indie films though) for FS. That would be another feature to revive. We had hoped to do one a week (the “Friday Film Review” tradition) but it was never really do-able around the demands of the day job. Now (retired from the carnivorous day job) the demands of other real-world projects also make a weekly review cycle unlikely. Maybe monthly?
A different project from deconstruction of big popular hits like L&O, but reviews and recommendations for subversive/altie media might be a good resource also.
20 September 2010, 2:29 amcabdriver:
I think Syriana is a terrific film. About as thought-provoking as it gets, given the inherent limitations of the medium.
The story of the Arab teenager really resonated with me. At that age, I myself had a very similar mixture of naivete, idealism, need for belonging and validation, dreams of valor and glory, existential confusion, general confusion, and innocence of consequences as the youth portrayed in Syriana. I found the last scene of the boy with his father to be heart-wrenching.
The Constant Gardener was also a very good film, based as it was on a novel by John Le Carre. And as far as that goes: I recommend Le Carre’s work very highly- especially his 2008 book A Most Wanted Man, which I read over the summer.
(I have refrained from linking to Amazon, etc. or to any reviews on purpose. No spoilers here. I recommend simply buying the book, or picking it up at the library.)
20 September 2010, 8:23 amcabdriver:
To describe the book A Most Wanted Man in only the most general terms- it has to do with the deep politics of the Western intelligence services, and some of the moral dilemmas and practical challenges connected to the “post-911 era War On Terrorism”, so to speak.
20 September 2010, 8:27 amMichael Anderson:
@ Kim:
If you’re wondering why Soldiers, Cops, CIA, et al, are capable of atrocities, visit the Stanford Prison Experiment site. It offers a window into the human psyche and obedience to authority.
Milton Mayer said that when he saw the effect of Hitler’s regime on the Germans he befriended, he saw not just German man, but man.
We are all capable of becoming brutes….it’s up to each of us NOT to be.
20 September 2010, 12:57 pmCurt:
We are all capable of becoming brutes…..it is up to each of us NOT to be…..
in inappropriate circumstances. If the order were ever given to attack Iran (or Venezuela, or North Korea) I would hope that some people would become Ray Lewis.
Law and Order, the original. I really liked it. Not so much for the dective first half but for the Courtroom second half, especially when there were disagreements among the prosecuting attorneys. There are probably more than 400 episodes. To critique it episode by episode would really be a big undertaking.
Law and Order SVU. I frequently watch it. It gives me an excuse not to clean the house. A few episodes that I have seen have been very good though.
Law and Order Criminal Intent. Hated it. I hate stories about know it all policemen. They not only know more trivia than I do they know more trivia than anyone that I know.
Law and Order L.A. I have not seen one yet.
Without a Trace, I used to watch it now and then but it was very inconsistent.
Cold Case, Nice Music.
Homicide: Life on the Street. Dialoge between the dectives seemed true to life to me. I have really had some of those converstations, some of the wacky ones and some of the deep ones.
Sopranos, I liked the idea of showing a family that has to deal with real issues like what to do with an aging parent, what to do with a son that is extremely so average. Also the wife has a special role in my heart. After all if not all US military members can be compared to Tony they can certianly be compared with his wife, especially the financal people. I always hated Dallas and Falcon Crest and Knots Landing and on and on because the families in these programs were to wealthy. I imagined the Sopranos at a level that is occupied by a lot of people, doctors, lawyers, senior airline pilots, GS 14s and above, Auto Dealers, offensive linemen, the top 5% not the top .2 percent.
The Wire, my favorite program TV of all time. I like the way that the unit starts out as mostly a bunch of misfits then the people in the unit grow up.
Six Feet Under. Interesting- original
Carnivale: I was just really getting interested when the carny moved to another place.
MI5- entertaining
Sleeper Cell- pure anti Muslim propoganda
Deadwood- to much unneccessary profanity. Only watched a few episodes.
Syriana. Did not like it. Why not read Counterpunch instead?
Constant Gardener. Nothing special.
Good Shepard. I thought that I had seen it but when I read a plot summary because I could not remember the film nothing sounded familiar. So I guess that I have not seen it.
Now Compare the movie Children of Heaven with Rocky
20 September 2010, 5:13 pmCompare Legend of a Sigh with Sliding Doors
Compare Maxx with Mad Max.
Charles:
It would seem that the number of cop shows are disproportionately high percentage of all television shows in relation to the proportion of police to other job types in society going back to the Dragnet , beginning of television era. This seems to be a fundamental pro-police brainwashing.
Also, _private_ detectives were featured at one point in television history. This expresses the basic American anti-government , pro-privatization theme.
“Law and Order” was a hot , right-wing political slogan in the period in which Nixon was President. It was targeted on urban riots/rebellions and crime and a way of building the racist right-wing.
21 September 2010, 1:48 pmCharles:
There is a new cop show starting tonight on ABC , “Detroit 1-8-7″ . “187″ is the Detroit police code for a murder (smile)
http://abc.go.com/shows/detroit-1-8-7
http://www.examiner.com/crime-tv-in-detroit/detroit-187-set-to-premiere-tonight-on-abc
http://www.freep.com/article/20100921/COL10/9210367/-Detroit-1-8-7-mostly-does-right-by-Detroit-its-cops
21 September 2010, 2:10 pmCurt:
Cabdriver, I got the book A Most Wanted Man today. I read the first chapter.
21 September 2010, 2:47 pmIt was a good begining. Think I will read somemore tonight.
Curt
Kim Sky:
James M – I read and then commented on you piece earlier — I just wanted to let you know that it was incredibly well written AND thought provoking. Just want to make sure that you know that!
Michael – thanx. One step leads to the next — I always say to myself in all aspects of life.
Stan — yes, this is a good idea. I really enjoyed the Apocalypse Now Series that you did over on Insurgent American!! Deep thinking. Intimidating. I’ve always thought I’d be good at analyzing films — a lot of WORK. Intimidating, my skills are virtually not existent.
I’ll give a small shot here:
SYRIANA — for me was one of the best films I’d seen in a long time. I watched it with some friends and had to explain what was going on constantly. Yahoo Film readers rate the film as a C+. One of the things the film did was to bring in a large number of themes taking place in various parts of the world, for those who have not traveled outside the US and for those who don’t really read the news or read world history — I think they were lost. The film maker assumed that the audience is intelligent, aware of film history, film as an accumulative language. Moving quickly through small, well crafted scenes, each telling a story within a story. For me this was the particular brilliance of the film. Also, in 2005 Bush was still in office and the climate of that particular time where US-america was gripped by fear, what catastrophic thing el-presidente Bush would do next! To see Pakistani oil workers, Arabs, Lebanese, Marbella — on the screen in full color was to fill a craving I’d had since the War on Terror began. What these humans look like in their universe. The plot was entirely plausible. The CIA, CIA, CIA, corporations etcetera, are laced through many US-films. This film presented a couple of innocents, the Pakistanis and the white American family, and the beautiful Saudi prince, all involved in unscrupulous wage making. Some aspects of redemption. What can scrupulous wage making look like? Scrupulous living for that matter? Loved the film.
GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson. I’d suggest reading the series of books, each book is better than the first. Then see the Swedish Films, some crucial aspects are missing, pieces of morality (no spoiling) that were in the book. WSWS did a review: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/lars-s08.shtml They thought the whole series lacked “the blood and sweat of everyday life? Its taste and smell? Nothing.” I disagree. The blood and sweat of everyday life is implied. We know that blood. We know rape, misogyny, injustice, we live it on a daily basis. Any friend(male/female) of mine loves the series, including myself. A remake by US is in the works. As my cousin says, “The books include everything that ever happened to a women.” For me they were empowering. Larsson’s last book begins with a nice tidbit, “An estimated 600 women served during the American Civil War. They had signed up disguised as men. Holly wood has missed a significant chapter of cultural history here …”
OKAY. There went my attempt. Any criticisms, suggestions, thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanx.
21 September 2010, 4:25 pmWm. Terry Leichner, RN:
Back in 1971 (yep, I’m an old geezer) while we were organizing for VVAW here in Denver, the Dalton Trumbo novel JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN was put to film. Like Trumbo was put in asylum by the McCarthy witch hunt, the movie was generally boycotted and only shown in a few local art theatres. Looking back now, I see the public doesn’t want to see the powerful movies that make them uncomfortable where there are no heroes.
21 September 2010, 4:38 pmHollywood’s mainstream directors and producers are notoriously late to the game in opposing illegal and immoral activities of the government. When Michael Moore went on stage with other documentary film makers to accept an Oscar for BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE just a few days after the war in Iraq started, he was soundly booed when he condemned the false premises of the war and admonished Bush.
Now here in 2010 THE HURT LOCKER is the winner of the best movie Oscar just like PLATOON became the alleged definitive Vietnam movie by winning an Oscar.
Thing is, both movies had such ambiguity toward the idea of heroes a large segment of the public missed the condemnation of war. Instead they embraced the heroic actions of our “boys”.
APOCALYPSE NOW was mostly rejected by the public who either didn’t get the allegory or didn’t like the message of brutality and “the horror”.
VALLEY OF ELAH had a short run for lack of paying customers. Once again, the public rejected a movie that called into question a system that has failed the veterans and portrays a negative view of military response to PTSD issues. Unfortunately, THE TILLMAN STORY seems destined for the same fate. It was a good story when a NFL hero became a military hero. It lost the heroic ending when the truth came out. From the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN to the GREAT ESCAPE, Americans want our heroes to die vailantly. They don’t want reality except for the manipulated versions like SURVIVOR.
BLACKHAWK DOWN is shown repeatedly on cable because it is full of American heroes fighting against the black terrorists of Islam in Mogadishu. While the book touched upon factors creating the rage of the people…the killing of tribal elders with a rocket attack…the movie did little to give us an understanding of the Somalian people toward the perceived oppressor.
BLACKHAWK DOWN was John Wayne’s GREEN BERETS rehashed with better acting and special effects. And the director actually knew which direction the sun set. Nevertheless, American soldiers were the heroes fighting against a godless force. The Pakistani Army was portrayed as cowards or part of the bad guys. Only the GI was on the right side of morality.
The UGLY AMERICAN and THE QUIET AMERICAN were two other movies that had limited appeal to American audiences. They failed to wave the flag sufficiently and questioned American imperialism.
In the second version of THE QUIET AMERICAN the use of the Vietnamese mistress of the British journalist (Michael Caine) who falls in love with the CIA agent (Brendan Fraser)is a key part of the movie. The mistress becomes caught in the middle of two imperialistic males trying possess her. The mistress, treated much like a whore, is the analogy of the Vietnam we Americans tried to possess by winning “hearts and minds” Rather than attempt adjusting to the Vietnamese culture, the American expectation was Vietnam adjust to the American “culture”.
I think American cinema and television are clearly the megaphone of the imperialistic American government. I’ve lost count of the FBI and CIA shows on the tube. All of them forget the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover and the Patriot Act and would have us believe these agencies like the FBI, CIA, NSA and Homeland Security only want to protect us. As someone else said, they want to keep us in fear through these programs. Like Machiavelli writes at the end of THE PRINCE…”What door would be closed to him? Who would refuse him obedience? What envy would refuse him homage? The barbarous dominion of the foreigner offends the very nostrils of everybody!”
As long as the masses remain afraid of the foreigner, the commie, the Islamic terrorists, the illegals and ad nauseam, the princes will continue to rule. And, with the mass media so often playing the role of cheerleader and propagandist, the odds remain against those who reject the fear.
In Michael Hedges WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING he talks about the narcosis of war. He talks more about the individual but his thoughts seem to also capture the American nation that has been at war so long we’ve become addicts to the culture of violence.
Just some thoughts from an old grunt who fell for all the bullshit.
Wm. Terry Leichner
Denver VVAW member
Marcilla Elizabeth Smith:
Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s as well (didn’t they go to school together, or something?) are good ones to look back on. The USA is on the cusp of a very similar experiment on a much larger scale, and has been practicing for a long time in many smaller ways (as Kim’s post alludes to). Even if folks in the USA have an overall nicer upbringing (and I’m not convinced of that), I think there’s a wide variation between what any two people get. Of course, it isn’t the transgender womin of color who got gang-raped and physically abused to the point she ran away at 14 that ends up being the perpetrator of the atrocities, it’s the dude from white suburbia whose real trauma is that he never got enough hugs and was ridiculed for wanting to take art in ninth grade when his father clearly had designs that he at least try out for JV football.
It’s like in school when they teach that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but then they turn around and try to indoctrinate you to worship all these presidents and other authoritarians.
21 September 2010, 7:17 pmm.c.:
Usually I avoid TV shows and prefer films because the pressure to write/produce a high quality story every week is too much. Watch City Hall(1996) w/ Al Pacino, a political/crime/police thriller about domestic big city machinations. It’s roughly based on a true story in the 1980′s with Ed Koch as Mayor. (I gave it 4 or 5 stars on amazon.com) the good news is politicians are vulnerable to public opinion.
22 September 2010, 6:24 pmCurt:
m.c.:
Wouldnt you agree the advantage of a good TV show like the Wire, or Oz, which I forgot to mention earlier, is that they have more time to really develope the characters. They also can develope a story line that does not have to come to a conclusion in 2 or 2 and a half hours but can go a season or more.
I do remember that I liked City Hall. It has been so long since I saw it that I do not remember much about it anymore.
Here is my reccomendation for the best movie that was never made.
23 September 2010, 1:05 pmMassacre at Oradour, based on the book by an Englishman whos name I do not remember at the moment. It has a good story with in a good story. It makes the point that history echos in to the future.
(Boer) Tom:
If you want to talk to people, be blunt and honest with them, IMAO. Do US citizens care more about a TV program, or more about ‘dirty bombs’ and Muslims? Give an informal, one-on-one presentation on DU, point out that it’s victims also include non-Muslims, and make the person a little psychologically uncomfortable. Granted that the problem is that most US citizens will run away, but they’ll still run away if you use a TV show as the basis of your argument. I had a pastor once who would make moral arguments based on TV shows, and attendance dwindled slowly – most people try to remind themselves that what they see on TV is a mixture of fact and fiction, and even the police-show enthusiasts, conservative as they tend to be, know better than to trust cops when they run into them. Arguably, if you want to get rid of conservatism, help people to deal with their fear of death.
A little summary of how to work people through their fear of death:
Get the person to sit in a comfortable position (it is easier when sitting than when standing), with their neck supported. (If the situation calls for the person to be standing, then that will have to do.) Get the person to relax his/her neck (use Ex 34:9 if necessary). Ask the person to feel the fear of death, wait about 20 seconds, and ask if (s)he is feeling it – typically, the facial expression will be of a dumbfounded gaze. Once the person feels the fear of death, ask them to find physical (actually, psycho-somatic) discomforts associated with the fear of death. Tell them that these will typically be in the face, head, neck, throat, chest, stomach, or more rarely, elsewhere. Once (s)he finds one or more of these, (s)he must concentrate on this feeling. Tell the person that as (s)he concentrates on it, the muscles in the area will relax, more blood will flow, and (s)he should feel his/her pulse in the place of discomfort. Ask after about 30 seconds whether the pulse has been found.
Once the pulse is found, ask the person to continue concentrating on both the discomfort and the pulsation. Tell the person to expect either a pins-and-needles feeling in the area of the discomfort, or a feeling like a balloon inflating under the skin, in that area. After a minute, ask the person whether either feeling has been found. Once the feeling is found, tell the person to continue concentrating for a minute or more, and that the exercise can be repeated. Wait a week before initiating substantial political discussions, and start by giving substantial facts (e.g. re DU), while letting the person draw his/her own conclusions.
24 September 2010, 8:22 amMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
Der Untergang is prolly my favorite historical drama (and certainly one of my top 5 internet memes). A very “human” story of Hitler bookended by the personal experience of a working class German girl just trying to make ends meet. Really presents the pedestrian nature of the circumstances that lead to mass scale human suffering. Apparently it was quite controversial in Germany, which is not really surprising when one considers how much we like our nice little compartments and dualities as a Western culture.
I recall learning about WWII as a child in the USA and wondering how the German people, if they weren’t all this evil group of others, could have sat back and let Hitler or the Nazi Party with Hitler at its helm lead them down the path they took. It’s a true horror watching this movie and understanding on that level that can’t be easily verbalized how we are witnessing it now in the USA. I can only compare it to the sensation when one is operating a vehicle and there is that split second which stretches on for so long between the moment when one realizes she will not be able to prevent a collision and the moment of actual impact.
As much as I dread it, I can’t help but desire an imminent devaluation of the USD, crash of the global financial markets, and the ensuing plunge into no-holds-barred global fascism. Try as I might, I can’t see a way out of this. Fortunately, I can at least envision a way through, which why my thoughts turn to “bring it on, and let’s get it over with.”
24 September 2010, 9:41 amm.c.:
Most of us have a soft spot for TV shows. I really liked Chicago Hope & currently like House(hospital shows, mostly because of emotion empathy for some or many of the central characters); but as an amateur cultural/film/literary most TV shows do best, if they are any good, in the pilot and possibly the first season. There are exceptions like NYPD Blue & the FX legal drama Damages. Of the latter I really loved the first season but just couldn’t stay motivated by more of the same high treachery.
I’m big on REALITY. A film like A Civil Action w/ John Travolta or Erin Brockovich(PG&E anyone) w/ Julia Roberts are based on real events{ok seen by hollywood}. If I was a h.s. teacher or college prof. I would use them as case studies in the classroom, even with the caveat that they may not be great films and even boring to some viewers. True Colors is another political thriller with John Cusack that wasn’t very good but after watching it, I came away learning something about how Washington works. In my earlier days I’ve worked for three different nonprofits in D.C. all at entry level I admit. Most potential viewers don’t have time to watch hours of season episodes or read Das Capital for example. A hour and a half film(based on real events) or a 1,000-2,000 word essay are quicker ways to edify hopefully. If you want entertainment(like when I watch if House will keep his new girlfriend happy & still liking him this monday night)well that’s a different animal. Maybe where edification and entertainment intersect that’s personal taste. Dunno…?
24 September 2010, 1:27 pmCurt:
cab driver,
28 September 2010, 5:28 pmWell the end of the book is certainly not the end of the story is it?
Stan:
One consistent and consistently disturbing aspect of cop dramas is that cops themselves bully. They bully people, and the audience is invited to rationalize the use of bullying as necessary for the higher good, but also to revel in the sadism of it a bit. Prison rape humor ocmes to mind.
Here’s some stuff about bullying that isn’t so easy to settle down with.
30 September 2010, 2:26 pmCurt:
I disagree. Cop dramas do not usually show police as bullies, unless the program is attempting to show someone who is a policeman who should not be a policemen. Detective Stabler on SVU is clearly an exception yet what the program shows in Detective Stabler’s case is not bullying but COUNTER bullying. Furthermore SVU has shown on several occasions where the suspected criminal was not really the sought after criminal, which left Stabler with egg on his face. Which clearly makes the point that even counter bullying is a risky strategy for those who think that they are dispensing a little overdue justice.
30 September 2010, 3:47 pmAnother point the SVU should address is whether or not counter bullying is an effective deterrent to bullying. Example, the police are called to a domestic dispute to a home for the second time and find the wife for the second time with a black eye. Would the husbands behavior change if the police take him out in the country and give him a beating and warn him that if he hits his wife again he will be beaten even worse? If giving a man that beats his wife a beating does not change his behavior what will?
Perhaps only death itself. Obviously the chain of (domestic) violence must be broken. It is learned behavior. How does one unlearn the teachers? I think that there is a good reason that police resort to counter bullying. I think that some people have an ingrained idea that if a bad person gets a taste of his own bad medicine that will change his behavior. Do scientific studies show otherwise? If the results do show counter bullying (counter violence) is ineffective in curbing bullying (violence) the results were obviously done by drunken grad students who faked the results just to get a good grade…….is what the response might be.
Curt:
This is the way real policemen in Europe were shown not on a police drama but on news real footage recently. There were unarmed demonstrators lined up on one side of the street. Policemen were lined up on the other side of the street in full riot gear. The police would charge the protestors in groups of 4 seize a protestor and drag them behind police lines and then proceed to beat them with their clubs. I think that it took place in Spain but I saw this after it was already in progress and there was not much commentary.
1 October 2010, 2:23 amStan:
Cop dramas are not meant to represent cops, but a variety-pak of threadbare archetypes, who can deliver pithy lines and action poses.
1 October 2010, 7:28 amMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
First, clearly there are going to a wide range of ideas as far as determining the point at which a cop begins bullying tactics. In my case, for example, it would begin the moment ze dons zir uniform or picks up zir badge, whichever comes first.
I’ve never seen the word “counter-bullying” before, but in my mind it would have to actually counteract the bullying taking place for that word to have any real meaning. For example, if the wife in the scenario depicted were to refuse to accept abuse, beginning when it is (likely) initiated by verbal harassment, I think that could constitute counter-bullying. What you describe, Curt, sounds more like retaliatory bullying. It’s not “I’m not going to take this,” it’s “now *you* are gonna hafta take *this*!”
If authoritarian violence (cops beating up a civilian – even a douchebag spousal abuser) curbs rather than encourages authoritarian violence in the target (the douchebag beating up someone with less power than he has), then targets of childhood physical abuse must be some of the gentlest, most well-adjusted people on Earth. War zones should have very low crime rates. Switzerland should be murder central.
1 October 2010, 7:40 amMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
And the link in case that didn’t work.
1 October 2010, 9:18 amCurt:
Macilla,
1 October 2010, 12:25 pmYes I agree that retaliatory violence is a better word for it.
Your last paragraph makes a lot of sense.
Curt:
Marcilla,
1 October 2010, 2:35 pmbefore my wife and I had a daughter we talked about child rearing. She said that she was oppossed to spanking. I thought that such a concept was unreasonable.
We argued about it for quite some time. I told her that I was spanked as a child and so were all the other children in the nieghborhood and we for the most part turned out all right. I said that every time I was spanked, actually whipped with a belt that left marks on my bady that often lasted a week, I deserved it.
But then my wife asked me if those spankings really did any good. I said of course they did. She said then why was it that I kept on needing to get a spanking?
I then raised the white flag of surrender.
Curt:
part 2
1 October 2010, 3:20 pmI was not quite finished. Does what applies to children apply to adults?
Societies have criminal (in?)justice systems for rehabilitation, restitution, and crime prevention by a: seperating people who have committed crimes from society and b) carrying out acts of ritualized revenge on hehalf of the victims. Both of these measures are supposed to deter crime by creating a level of risk for anyone contemplating a crime. These measures may have an affect on some people making cold calculations but so many crimes are impulsive crimes of passion. Even when a crime is cold blooded the risk of punishment probably does little to prevent that crime because the criminals think that their risk is small to very small.
Despite all of this logic showing the pointlessness of revenge I still support it. A world in which no one ever did anything unfair would be wonderful. I myself would not want to live in a world in which unfairness was always forgiven if there was unfairness. In fact if there was a group that always forgave those who harmed them I would bet that a speicies would evolve just to pray upon them.
I do have to wonder though why the Police always seem so eager to please the State rather than the People. I guess it must be a lack of understaning. Yet it is a lack of understanding that has lasted for hundreds if not thousands of years. I guess when the Police do understand is when the state looses its legitimacy and governments(states) fall. The Police are always the last to know.
James M:
To Kim Sky: I beg your pardon for being weeks late with this reply, but I’ve been traveling. For starters, thanks for the kind words and please know that I would not in the slightest bit begrudge criticism of the paper, which was the last of four I had to hurriedly write before I could skip town for vacation. Had I more time, and more inclination to make it a serious piece, I would’ve included some critical views on Miller, et al. As it was, I was just trying to fulfill a requirement for an undergrad pre-req.
That said ~ I recall Miller anticipating your line of argument – that it was bad in other places, too, so why didn’t those other cultures take such a perverse turn? – in her book, and offering up some explanations. I don’t recall them exactly, but would recommend “For Your Own Good” if you’re interested in her rebuttal. (You’re definitely right about England’s values around corporal punishment, though: indeed, they were horrid. A listen to Pink Floyd’s The Wall can give you the lowdown on that, in rock-operatic form.)
Explicating the precursors / causes of Nazism is a profitable industry, with many competitors to the claim, each placing their emphasis on different arenas – and I think most all of the credible ones are presenting a piece of the puzzle. But the psychological substratum of Nazism, if not necessarily the major determining factor, is at least as telling to me as the history of the fallout from the Versailles Treaty, the failure of the Weimar Republic, etc.
Maybe the most revealing insight I got from Miller’s book is summed up in the italicized portion of this quote from my essay: “Another’s will—particularly that of the autocrat, who shrewdly dons the guise of the all-wise patriarch, as Hitler did—becomes interchangeable with one’s own.” If there’s one resounding impression I’m left with, a year into getting a counseling psych degree, it’s the ridiculous amount of human behavior (maybe even a majority percentage) that constitutes what we call “recapitulating the primary family dynamic” on an unconscious level. We all carry around introjected “parent-objects” – the mommy-object, the daddy-object, etc. – in our heads, and these “objects” are so embedded that they appear indistinguishable from our own thoughts and feelings (thus sayeth the school of Object Relations). And when an external personage sufficiently resembles one’s internal parent-object, a person will tend to regard that external personage with the same kind of attitude held for the parent-object. So if one’s internalized father-object is a figure demanding absolute respect, fear, and idolization, and if we have been trained to surrender all our natural will to this figure, then an outside person (such as a politician) can either naturally possess or manufacture a persona that closely matches it, and capitalize greatly on that resemblance. And this process goes on well below the surface of conscious thought.
These insights – that the German childrearing model emphasized obedience to father and suppression of individuality above all else, and that Hitler all-too-calculatedly designed a public persona that matched with the German patriarch-ideal – among others that Miller expounds, make for a compelling case in my mind for considering her work seriously when trying to get a handle on Nazism’s origins.
7 October 2010, 12:55 amMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
So, if I run on a campaign of breastfeeding my constituency…
8 October 2010, 7:30 amJames M:
… So, if I run on a campaign of breastfeeding my constituency…
Best idea I’ve heard in a long while, Marcilla. Just because we live in the patriarchy, no one should underestimate the persuasive power that mother-object introjects can wield among the voting pool … and of course if infants could vote, you’d be a shoo-in.
You’d still have to play to the punitive father / macho warrior trope, though … if you could somehow make a case for how the power of (weaponized?) breast milk can help us defeat Al Qaeda, there’d be no stopping you.
8 October 2010, 9:00 pmMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
Jesse Ventura/Florence Henderson – 2012
9 October 2010, 9:51 amChange that will leave your bottom freshly-powdered, or bright red
Stan:
MOVIES AGAIN!
Long days around here. (-:
I keep throwing mud at the wall on this cultural crit obsession, just to see if anything sticks. I tryed to model what I’m thinking of, loosely, with a freshman term paper comparing Christian themes in Children of Men and Lord of the Rings. Got some great stuff in reply,and expect to get more.
Now I’m gonna cook up another fuzzy-logic schema for doing movie crit. Leading men in man’s world.
Looking at three films together, with overlapping (and almost archetypic) leading men. All three films are critical of the establishment. All three films are political. All three films have high production values. All three films do something else, too…
Each of them represent the world – realistically, one might say – as a world constructed and run by men. This may be by design, but my impression is that this is an uncritical representation – that is, its accuracy in presenting the world as run by men is because they drive at verisimiltude to (patriarchal) reality, not because the directors are criticizing gendered power.
Each of them, then, without ever driving at it, give an account of how men are to be men in as man’s world – whatever that account is. And each of them tells us something about the world of women as seen by men – by default and omission.
Lots of good stuff, methinks. So here are the movies and leading men: Syriana (George Clooney, Matt Damon); The Good Shepherd (Matt Damon); Michael Clayton (George Clooney).
Syriana is about politics and oil.
The Good Shepherd is about the beginnings of the CIA.
Michael Clayton is about a class action lawsuit against a giant (Monsanto-like) ag-chemical corporation.
Anyone wanna take a crack at them?
PS – These are all films that seem like they would be popular among liberal males (no data) for their male protagonists, and somewhat anti-establishment theses. Women? I dunno.
Damon and Clooney are sex symbols… that’s a whole nuther area to unpack. The role of stars. The vanguards of conformity.
19 October 2010, 11:56 amm.c.:
Mark Twain’s 100th year autobiography is coming out from the Univ. Califoria press. These are the good parts that he didn’t want out when he was still around. Check it out at the booksellers. It’s already on the NYT bestselling list.
29 October 2010, 12:28 pmm.c.:
For anyone who picked up a John Grisham novel and wished he were a better writer, Scott Turow is pretty good. I’m currently reading Personal Injuries and its sequel Limitations. His fictional Kindle County is located somewhere in the midwest, maybe Chicago, maybe Milwaukee, maybe Minneapolis, maybe Detroit, maybe Indianapolis, maybe Cleveland, maybe Pittsburgh, maybe Philadelphia. Who knows exactly but characters in early novels sometimes reappear in later one like William Faulkner. Films based in his books are o.k. but I suggest reading the book first.
29 October 2010, 1:01 pmm.c.:
Bleak House by Charles Dickens is considered one of his best novels. About the Victorian legal system, Dickens, a former law clerk before becoming a freelance reporter has firsthand experience. Cliffsnotes might be helpful like it was with me. The Law, like Economics and Psychiatry maybe are the modern capitalist Priesthood.
2 November 2010, 11:42 amm.c.:
I just borrowed the autobiographic One L by Turow from my local library today. I guess the point I’m trying to make is non-lawyers should teach/train themselves to think like lawyers in many situations, and if you can do it for free you’re getting a pseudo-law school education for free. http://www.findlaw.com is a website I occasionally use as well. Law on the professional level + Big Money = Professional Politics for the most part. Like it or not for better or worse.
5 November 2010, 1:27 pmm.c.:
I had forgotten that Lenin studied law & briefly practiced as a lawyer for a few years….
12 November 2010, 7:17 pmm.c.:
I had to read Jerry Falwell v. Larry Flynt, the First Amendment on Trial by Rodney Smolla, a law school prof. in college. Much better & informative than the film, a free speech issue. I think its taught in many law schools as a case study. Jerry Falwell was considered a public figure.
18 November 2010, 12:44 pmm.c.:
I like this so much I wanted to pass it along:
“The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a national philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free fuctionioning of personality into a capital crime against society.”
19 November 2010, 12:59 pm~H.L. Mencken
m.c.:
Michael Moore was on Countdown last night. Another film I was assigned in college in the early 1990′s was Roger and Me(1989) Michael Moore’s first movie. It describes the economic & social effects of Flint Michigan when GM decided to restructure. Like reading some Noam Chomsky it will get you off the fence if you have a heart & at least half a brain.
23 November 2010, 12:43 pmm.c.:
I’ve been thinking of the Power of Tribalism today. It’s a strong force in the world, even more powerful maybe than Class Consciousness that Marx thought would trump other forces. It is good to realize that the Reactionary Elite are masters of manipulation of Tribalist Instincts.
8 December 2010, 10:21 amCharles:
I’ve been thinking of the Power of Tribalism today. It’s a strong force in the world, even more powerful maybe than Class Consciousness that Marx thought would trump other forces. It is good to realize that the Reactionary Elite are masters of manipulation of Tribalist Instincts.
^^^^^
I urge you to take a look at some anthropological discussions of “tribe”.
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072500506/information_center_view0/about_the_author.html
Conrad Kottak has a fundamental textbook
8 December 2010, 3:48 pmcabdriver:
“Tribe” has two quite opposite sides to it.
The positive sense of Tribe is community, at a level that’s optimally functional- a well-integrated group unit capable of governing itself, providing for one another, and sorting out social difficulties with a minimum of outside interference. As long as there’s an underpinning of trust and mutual cooperation with the larger human community- particularly the neighbors- tribalism can function quite well as an organizing principle. But such an attitude of peaceful and benevolent ethical universalism has only come into play in recent times. It isn’t traditional.
The other side of it is tendency toward the sort of reflexive loyalty that suppresses independent thought, promotes xenophobia, and demands that outsiders fulfill the function of Enemy or “lesser other”, in order to build group solidarity. Unfortunately, that is the typical traditional default position for most tribal societies.
That’s why I view Identity Politics as the natural province of the Right Wing, not the Left. It trends toward providing a bogus, self-limiting definition of “Us” delimited by some sort of tribal affiliation or another, and implicitly demands the hostile framing of an opposition defined by the same narrow criteria of tribal affiliation.
9 December 2010, 11:01 amm.c.:
Akin to the allegory of Fog in Dicken’s Bleak House, London also goes by the nickname The Smoke or Big Smoke. Brendan Behan is one writer who has made reference to this. I wonder in New York and other large cities for example has similar nicknames.
11 December 2010, 3:22 amm.c.:
Also in Heart of Darkness, in the very beginning when they’re on the yacht in the Thames at night in the fog discussing what do do about Kurtz.
11 December 2010, 4:45 amCurt:
I just saw the Movie Rebel with out a cause for the first time. The film that I saw was entirely different from that seen by most people in the world.
1 January 2011, 12:25 pmIn the film that I saw Jim and Judy were trivial figures. In the film that I saw Plato and the Crawford family maid play the main roles.
The film has a cover story that it is about youthful white rebellion.
A deeper story line is about dealing with homosexuality in high school in the 1950s.
Then there is the real plot. I would not be surprised if it has been written about before somewhere since so much has been written about this movie. But the real story has in no way shape or form been emphasised enough. Because as far as I know I have never read anything about the real story.
m.c.:
My local libary has a copy of Martha Gellhorn’s, “The Face of War.” I’ve requsted it be sent to my branch. If only the feminists of today would read more of say her and someone like Germaine Greer and Alice Walker for example, and less Ayn Rand. Well, one can dream….
4 January 2011, 12:43 pmm.c.:
Ha-Joon Chang’s latest book is out.
Android Warehouse Nation
5 January 2011, 3:03 pmAndroid Nation World
m.c.:
Senator Byron Dorgan retired earlier this year. He voted against NAFTA & the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, forsaw much of what followed and was one of the few in power who spoke out about it. He will be missed.
2 February 2011, 3:08 pmm.c.:
I’m trying to get a copy of Gellhorn’s, The View From the Ground. The above mentioned is worth reading imo.
3 February 2011, 1:21 pmm.c.:
This morning flipping through my cable channels on TCM or TMC, I came across Z, a french film in french with english subtitles(1969?) about a greek leftist political figure who is killed in a hit and run in the 60′s. At first it looks like an accident but more digging leads to the greek military govt. in power. Why haven’t I ever heard of this film before? I caught maybe the last 30 minutes, maybe they will run it again next month….
9 February 2011, 9:39 pmm.c.:
I’m about halfway through The View From the Ground. It should be read together with The Face of War. I don’t agree with Gellhorn 100% but she’s a good writer/observer. I didn’t know she got invited to the White House when working for Harry Hopkins in the 1930′s; as well as her ideas about Joseph McCarthy, “he ruled(by fear)the United States for four years like a Devil King.” Germaine Greer’s, The Madwoman’s Underclothes: Essay & Occasional Writings is worth reading too. You get more analysis with Greer(she has a PhD) but both kinds of writing are valuable.
27 February 2011, 4:45 pmm.c.:
It would appear that without Fear & Coercion the Ghost in the Machine doesn’t work very well.
27 February 2011, 5:47 pmm.c.:
Imagine you saw the top part of an iceberg, but didn’t know that ~90% is below the waterline out of sight. What would your concept of reality be?
1 March 2011, 12:33 pmm.c.:
I wanted to pass this along before but forgot. Something I didn’t know. According to Ha-Joon Chang’s new book, Economics wasn’t one of the original prizes given by the Nobel Committee. It was an add-on given by the Swedish Central Bank using the Nobel name. The Nobel Committee even considered suing the Bank for infringment or intellectual property theft or something. No wonder so many Chicago School & Austrian School FreeMarketers have been the winners.
13 March 2011, 3:07 pmCurt:
I just saw the movie Old Country for No Men for the first Time. I saw it first a week ago alone. Then a few days later with my nephew. Then again yesterday with my wife and daughter. It took me three times to really figure out the point of the movie. In my opinion it was the world (universe) is a dark and cold place. Only humans can give it light.
19 March 2011, 5:01 pmBut my wife leveled what I think is a very disturbing criticims of the movie. She said that most people do not think like I do and what most people will learn from this film is that psychopaths are the only smart people here. That they will prosper or at least survive while the rest of us suffer and then perish. I think that she is correct in her understanding of how this film will be understood by many of the masses. Should directors be discouraged from making films that have such potentially negative influences on young minds. Did the directors know or suspect that this film could be understood in this way by many people? Can they get away with saying look any time anyone says anything it will be interpreted by different people in different ways so we can not be held accountable for how our movie influences the thinking of those people who see it.
If we look at just this movie in a vacum that sounds reasonable. But if we can not hold the Cohen brothers responsible for anything can we hold someone else in Hollywood or the media responsible for a camapaign of movies and media that erode civilized values?
m.c.:
The most left of the major U.S. cable channels MSNBC, is tethered to the Political Center, CNN is on slightly shorter leash(Fox News on the right is the junkyard dog that doesn’t need a chain), and to borrow Germaine Greer’s phrase, Centers of Organized Tyranny.
20 March 2011, 3:13 pmCurt:
I would like to raise two questions concerning the film Shaking Up the Universe that I watched last night.
24 March 2011, 2:53 pmThe first queation deals with the Attic Prison massacre. I have made the statement in the past that we are all innocent. We are all guilty. Some of us are much more guilty than others. Somethng that I learned from this film seems to provide a good example of my statement. I learned from the film that the armed men who stormed the prison were told that the rioters had slit the throats of the hostages. Who was responsible for this flamitory accusation? Is it possible that this claim that the rioters had slit the throats of the hostages was made by mistake and not be the result of a diliberate decsion to enrage the people taking back the prison before they did so?
I will admit I think that I am capable of being an unscrupolus treacherous preson who would celebrate at a lynching if I thought the person being lynched was getting what he deserved.** But in my playbook the ends have to justify the means. I see no ends in the prison riot that would justify such treachory. If this accuastion was not the result of a mistake some people are very guilty of mass murder. If that is true I think that someone like William Kunstler should help the families of those shot at Attica bring a civil suit against the Rockefeller estate. It may set a precedent to sue the estate of a dead guy but I think that it should go forward.
The second question is about the assissnation of Fred Hampton. He was killed becasue he was a black revolutionary. What I do not understand was why the government did not kill Kunstler. Kunstler was far far more dangerous to the system than Hampton. Kunstler even managed to deprogram a federal judge in the AIM trial.
Now at first I thought that it was because he was white and to kill him might be seen as causing a backlash which would lead to more white people seeing the system as illegitimate even if it does hold elections. But then I thought wait a second, these rulers indirectly killed JFK and seem to have directly killed RFK and they were white and rich to boot. Even if I am wrong about that there is a large number of Americans that see it that way yet the rulers took precautions to make sure that there would not be a backlash by not saying how these events came to pass. They could have done the same with Kunstler.
So now I can only think of a few possibitles. The leadership values its white enemies more than its black ones. This seems plausible but it would mean that the people who make up the ruling junta are more illogical than I had thought. It values its Jewsih enemies more than its other enemies. Same story. Or that Kunstler wittingly or unwittingly was somehow serving the intrests of the ruling junta. My guess is that he was unwittingly serving their intrests. But, I can not imagine how. If anyone else has any thoughts on this I would be glad to hear them.
m.c.:
The word of the day: POLYMORPHOUS
I rented Hannah and Her Sisters last week and Woody Allen used this word in one of his monologues. Its great when you write, direct and act in the same film.
25 March 2011, 12:14 pmm.c.:
I lost track of my Mark Green thread. He didn’t campaign in person in Staten Island in the 2001 NYC Mayor’s Race. Staten Island & Queens were the two burroughs that he lost, the former badly(SI); not the Bronx and Brooklyn.
RIP: Joe Bageant
1 April 2011, 11:52 amm.c.:
Next on my reading list is Politics as a Vocation by Max Weber. In college I had to read some of his stuff for a Sociology course but this missed my radar. Any useful points I’ll pass along.
12 August 2011, 6:17 pmm.c.:
Paraphrase of Weber:
15 August 2011, 5:31 pmIn 16th/17th/18th(~1680′s-1850′s)Century Great Britain, the Conservative Party was that of the Anglican Parson, the Schoolmaster, and the Landlord; The Whig Party of the Non-Conformist Clergy(when there was one), the Postmaster, the Tailor, the Blacksmith. These were occupations by their very nature put them in contact with many people and made them natural positions of leadership.
m.c.:
17th/18th/19th(correction)
15 August 2011, 6:57 pmm.c.:
“It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.”
~~ Jonathan Swift (1667-1745; political phampleteer, first for Whigs, then later Tories).
Interesting quote, maybe partially true. Any thoughts from anyone? Has anyone guessed yet that the American Revolution was an offshoot of the ideals of the British Whig Party, with luminaries like Edmund Burke offering support? He later broke with the “New Whigs” led by Charles James Fox who supported, in least in some measure, the French Revolution. We could call Burke a Conservative Whig.
19 August 2011, 1:16 pmm.c.:
I lost track of my Glass-Steagall(1933) & Commodity Exchange Act(1936) repeals late in the Clinton Admin(1999-2000) as he was heading out the door. Interesting that NAFTA(1993) was passed in his first year in the WH. I gather Wall Street gets their best stuff very early & very late from their favorite puppets.
Blue Sky Laws(see Wiki) were State laws in the early 20th century regulating the offering and sales of Securities to protect the public from fraud. These were legal tools which acted like breaks to casino-like “fly-by-night” finiancial spectulation on unsuspecting investers.
16 September 2011, 12:20 pmm.c.:
Bear with me here. I’m going to use a crappy movie to make a useful point. Last night, Top Gun was on cable tv for the umpteenth time. Bored, I paused while flipping through the channels.
On the first day of Top Gun School, the top instructor tells the students/participants that they are the top 1% of aviators chosen from their prospective Squadrons/Units. The top pilot in each class has the option of returning to Top Gun School as an instructor if they wish. What he doesn’t say is intuitive. The rest of the pilots are encouraged to take the advanced skills they have learned during this 5 week period and return to their Squadrons/Units to help improve the other 99% get better. It doesn’t make much sense to have 1% be very good at something and everyone else average or mediocre.
19 September 2011, 7:02 pmMichael Anderson:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/prophecy-of-machines/?pagemode=print
Prophecy of Machines
By FREDERIC RZEWSKI
In The Score, American composers on creating “classical” music in the 21st century.
Is music technology?
Max Weber, in his last book, “The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, ” published in 1921, a year after his death, says, basically, yes. Like every other aspect of civilization, music is subject to a relentless and irreversible process of rationalization, culminating (for him) in the organization of the symphony orchestra. This was at a time when the recording industry was in its infancy, and radio had only just launched the new technique of broadcasting. Weber could not have foreseen the effect of these two things on the art of music, but he might well have imagined it.
It was a revolutionary time, full of explosions: you can hear them in the recordings of Marinetti reciting his poetry; you can see them in Tatlin’s designs for enormous skyscrapers. It reeked of the future. Artists (like Schoenberg) thought of themselves as prophets. They imagined things that one could do with technology, liberating people from older forms. Some of these visions became reality decades later.
Whatever prophetic aspirations artists may have had 100 years ago, however, today they belong to the past. This world has been abandoned by its gods— among them the notion of the artist as a kind of shaman or wise man. Today artists are proletarians with privileges: workers in the culture industry, like the writers in Fitzgerald’s “The Last Tycoon,” well paid sometimes, but servants nonetheless.
19 October 2011, 11:08 amm.c.:
My current reading list:
Boomerang by Michael Lewis(Liar’s Poker, Moneyball)
23 October 2011, 3:07 pmRepublic Lost by Lawrence Lessig(famous law school prof.)
Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius by Sylvia Nasar(she wrote the John Nash book)
m.c.:
With respect to Dunbar’s Number, a planet with 6-7 billion people needs at least some specialization to function(although it would be nice for everyone to be required to grow their own food); this creates a need for Intermediaries(middle-men & middle-women if you wish)to explain Complex-ish Issues to the rest of us who don’t spent a lot of time on Economics/Finance/International Relations/Political-Military Relations, etc…
Journalism, like pamphleteering, and internet blogging is the attempt to fill the role of Intermediary.
23 October 2011, 5:38 pmMichael Anderson:
Cultural crit from one of the cultural critters himself. I have to admit, I enjoyed the book (did not see the movie). I think it shows how people can create their own meanings from stuff—like from Bob Dylan’s lyrics, for example (that ought to get me some hell from someone!). PS—I like Dylan.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/25/catch-22-author-enjoyed-war/print
Catch-22 author Joseph Heller: ‘How did I feel about the war? I enjoyed it?’
Letter by writer of famous anti-war novel reveals that, unlike the book’s protagonist, he found his military service full of ‘glamour’
Stephen Bates
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 October 2011 14.17 EDT
Alan Arkin in the 1970 film of ‘Catch-22′
Catch-22 author Joseph Heller saw his book made into a film in 1970, starring Alan Arkin, pictured, as Captain Yossarian. Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Feature
Fans of Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 may be surprised to learn that the American author actually enjoyed his military service during the second world war – at least according to a letter about to be auctioned in the US.
The 1961 novel, a powerful satire of military bureaucracy and official doublethink, features on lists of the best works of 20th-century fiction and made its author a millionaire, but the three-page-long typed letter, written in 1974, contrasts his experience with that of Catch-22′s central character, John Yossarian.
“How did I feel about the war when I was in it?” Heller wrote in the letter to an academic preparing a collection of essays about the book. “Much differently than Yossarian felt and much differently than I felt when I wrote the novel … In truth I enjoyed it and so did just about everyone else I served with, in training and even in combat.
“I was young, it was adventurous, there was much hoopla and glamour; in addition, and this too is hard to get across to college students today, for me and for most others, going into the army resulted immediately in a vast improvement in my standard of living.”
Heller says he made $65 or $75 a month while in the US military – more than the $60 he received as a filing clerk – “and all food, lodging, clothing and medical expenses paid. There was the prospect of travel and a general feeling of a more exciting and eventful period ahead … more freedom than I enjoyed in the long years afterwards.”
The author enlisted in the US army air corps in 1942 at 19 and subsequently served, like Yossarian, on the Italian front, flying on 60 combat missions as a B25 bombardier.
He spent much of the 1950s writing Catch-22, having gained a contract with the publisher Simon & Schuster on the basis of the first chapter. In a letter to James Nagel, then an English professor at Northeastern University in Boston, Heller explained: “I knew [the book] would be published. I knew I worked slowly. I took my time and tried to make it the best book I could possibly write on that subject at that time.”
Two of his letters to Nagel are being auctioned by the Nate D Sanders online auction house over the next fortnight – and are expected to fetch between $2,000 (£1,253) and $3,000. The 1974 letter cites Heller’s inspirations: Céline, Nabokov, Faulkner and – “always present in my awareness” – TS Eliot’s The Waste Land.
In another letter, Heller states: “Yossarian isn’t Jewish and was not intended to be; on the other hand, no effort was expended to make him anything else.”
A further letter to Nagel, handwritten 10 years later in January 1984, indicates, perhaps, a certain level of exasperation: “About Catch-22 I doubt very much that I can give you any more in the way of knowledge … you undoubtedly know more about [it] than I do.”
Catch-22 was made into a film, released in 1970, starring Alan Arkin as Captain Yossarian.
26 October 2011, 10:58 amm.c.:
Paraphrase of Keynes:
Economic Efficiency, Social Justice, and Individual Liberty must be juggled by the modern Political Economist.
28 October 2011, 12:21 pmm.c.:
Added Reading List: Confidence Men by Ron Suskind(The One Percent Doctrine)
Bill Clinton gave a speech last Friday at Georgetown Univ.(it was played on C-SPAN a few days later) defending his Economic Policies when he was President. What disappoints me about Clinton defending Neo-Liberal policy is he is a far from stupid man and is very capable as a Politician/Communicator/Actor.
btw– I’m working on an Essay whose working title is, Waiting For The ArchDruids.
2 November 2011, 11:00 amm.c.:
I mean Actor more in the Showman sense than say Jeff Bridges for example winning an Oscar/Academy Award, although both meanings will work.
2 November 2011, 5:42 pmm.c.:
I thin I’ve mentioned Doug Heye former RNC Communications Director under Michael Steele, as a 1994 UNC-CH grad. Whit Ayres, prominent GOP pollster, has a M.A. & Ph.D. in Political Science from UNC-CH.
7 November 2011, 5:55 pmm.c.:
Did anyone else watch Steve Kroft’s 60 Minutes story last night about Members of Congress engaged in Insider Trading(Soft Corruption)? Congress writes this nation’s federal laws and have carved out an exception for themselves that anyone of the rest of the 310 million souls in this country would go to jail for if they were caught doing. Other nations have placed an elected politician’s Financial Investments & Stocks into what is called a Blind Trust when they assume office. This prevents them from profitting unfairly from their knowledge as an officeholder. This is done for all other Government Officials, Judges, Police Chiefs, Sheriffs, etc…. This is what 3rd world juntas allow.
14 November 2011, 6:54 pmm.c.:
Vulture’s Picnic, Greg Palast’s new book is out. He’s giving readings out West this week.
“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”
–Plato
“Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.”
–Eugene McCarthy
“Public Opinion is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and elevate it to the dignity of physical force.”
16 November 2011, 6:53 pm–Oscar Wilde
Michael Anderson:
Ordered the book…should be here Friday. Worked on a lecture he gave @ U of O in ’03. He’s not a Peak Oiler, but his investigative work is part of the solution…an intense cat!
17 November 2011, 2:28 amMichael Anderson:
Something from the Guardian….commodity fetishization, racism, sexism all mixed together. We live in a dead, violent culture.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/27/new-york-gangs-ralph-lauren?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355%%__AdditionalEmailAttribute1%%
The New York gang that only wears Ralph Lauren
How did the Lo-Lifes gang come to dress exclusively in a clothing brand associated with the American high life?
28 November 2011, 9:28 amm.c.:
The Congress Insider Trading Story has got some legs. Of course Insider Trading happens all the time to some degree. The SEC at their best catch the biggest most obvious violators. Congress held hearings last week and this week on the subject. On Dylan Ratigan’s show a few days ago,(Dyligan) Dylan said when he was a reporter on CNBC’s Money Show, GE/NBC had strict guidelines on what their employees could trade their own stocks on non-Public Information. At the very least he would have been fired and possibly referred to the SEC for civil and/or criminal liability.
4 December 2011, 5:19 pmBrian Baird is the former U.S. Rep. from Washington State(D), who has been pushing this for years. Congress has to pass a Law to regulate itself here. One of Dylan’s guests said THIS IS AN IMPORTANT TEST CASE. IF CONGRESS CAN’T REGULATE ITS OWN BEHAVIOR, THERE IS VERY LITTLE CHANCE IT WILL CURB THE BANKS & WALL STREET AND THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY(FIRE) AT LARGE.
m.c.:
I’m almost done with Greg Palast’s new book.
I Think the Oil Companies are the most Evil Institutions on Earth(O.K., throw in the Nuclear Power Operators.) IMO, Bill Clinton being elected Pres. in 1992 & 96; if Al Gore hadn’t been robbed in 2000; if John Kerry hadn’t been in 2004; Obama over John McCain(whose dad & granddad were both 4-star admirals) in 2008; are small blessings just for the fact the the Big Oil Boys are just slightly farther out from the Nexus of Power. When both Bushes were In, the Big Oil Boys were At The Center….
Any Comments or Criticism?
9 December 2011, 1:35 pmm.c.:
Two more UNC-CH neocons:
Thanassis Cambanis is a journalist who has covered the Middle East for nearly a decade. His first book, A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, was published in 2010. He writes “The Internationalist” column for The Boston Globe Ideas section, and is a correspondent for The Atlantic. Thanassis regularly contributes to The New York Times, The Boston Globe (where he served as a foreign correspondent in Iraq and the Middle East), and other publications. He is currently working on a book about the efforts of Egyptian revolutionaries to create a new political order after Mubarak.
He teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs in New York City, where he lives with his family. In 2009 Cambanis served as a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Thanassis got his master’s in public affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. He studied history and creative writing for his bachelor’s at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Robert Spencer, buddy of Pamela Geller, and has been an Ayn Rand Institute speaker.(from wiki) Spencer received a B.A. in 1983 and an M.A. in 1986 in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His masters thesis was on a Catholic history topic. He has said he has been studying Islamic theology, law, and history on his own since 1980.He worked in think tanks for more than 20 years, and in 2002–2003 did a stint as an adjunct fellow with the Free Congress Foundation, an arm of the Heritage Foundation.
9 December 2011, 7:51 pmm.c.:
“Corporations have neither bodies to be kicked nor souls to be damned.”
–Andrew Jackson
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”
–Joan Robinson
* * * * * * *
I’m not interested in Human Nature, I’m interested in Human Behavior.
11 December 2011, 4:30 pmm.c.:
If you read the chapter in Palast’s book where Piers Morgan, then Editor of the Daily Mirror helps Peter Mandelson(who’s got more scandals than a cat’s got lives and keeps potting back up to the top) & New Labour do a number on Palast, here’s a little info about Morgan who replaced Larry King as the “King” of CNN’s Evening Talk Shows.
He got his big start working for the Sun/News of the World where he was eventually appointed Editor by Rupert Murdoch. He later moved to the Mirror.(from wiki) Morgan was fired from the Mirror on 14 May 2004 after authorising the newspaper’s publication of photographs allegedly showing Iraqi prisoners being abused by British Army soldiers from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. Within days the photographs were shown to be crude fakes. Under the headline “SORRY.. WE WERE HOAXED”, the Mirror responded that it had fallen victim to a “calculated and malicious hoax” and apologised for the publication of the photographs.
In May 2005, in partnership with Matthew Freud, he gained ownership of Press Gazette, a media trade publication together with its ‘cash cow’ the British Press Awards, in a deal worth £1 million. This ownership was cited as one of the reasons many major newspapers boycotted the 2006 awards. Press Gazette entered administrative receivership toward the end of 2006, before being sold to a trade buyer.
His father-in-law is a former Conservative MP & Party Bigwig. Piers brother, I believe is a Colonel in the British Army.
16 December 2011, 1:19 pmm.c.:
Brendan Behan says in his best known(autobiographical) work that most of the Lumpen Proletariat petty crimials he came across in reform school(usually London-centric) were Tory in their outlook. They admired the Advertising of the day and tried to emulate that class which is typified by Winston Churchill.(For anyone who thinks he was a military genius, the Gallipoli Campaign was largely his idea. Both the Admirals & Generals expressed deep concern. The former because they knew what Turkish heavy artillery could do to their warships as well as the water straights being heavily mined & torpedoed. The Generals because they knew what a narrow hilly front with little cover and poor chance for resupply.)
23 December 2011, 2:44 pmThe Spivs had a lot in common with the Modern Yuppie.
m.c.:
“When you go with your adversary to the magistrate, make every effort along the way to settle with him, lest he drag you to the judge, the judge deliver you to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison.” ~~ Luke 12:58
I guess by the time Charles Dickens got around to writing Bleak House, it was a fairly old story….
27 December 2011, 12:36 pmm.c.:
Today, I tried to turn around mentally and ask myself, “So What? I can’t do anything.”
My answer is that unlike many things in the universe, say like a rock in your backyard, homo sapiens are cabable of change. we have relatively large brains, and are able to manipulate symbols better than most other animals. Another thing is that it is Powerful Medicine to know that people in other parts of the world understand things better & wiser than we do(The Guardian newspaper[it started out as a Manchester paper but is headquarted in London now], and BBC america come to mind; and in english too.) Small things udd up like you wouldn’t believe. Just knowing what’s going on is a great tool. Helping your neighbors & coworkers navigate away from Fox News & the Wall St. Journal is but a step.
28 December 2011, 8:49 pmm.c.:
Dylan Ratigan’s new book, Greedy Bastards(subtle ain’t it) is due out Jan. 10th, 2012. A good X-mas present(kindle too) to pre-order…. My local library has copies on order.
30 December 2011, 1:08 pmm.c.:
My general heading here is: Social/Cultural Groups who punch above their weight Politically in U.S. Society. The subgroup here is the Church of LDS. Wikipedia says there are 14 million Mormons worldwide with 6.1 million in the U.S.(~5% of the population.) Mexico also has a high percentage.
I’ve highly recommended here an Essay by Norman Mailer, A Harlot High and Low. It’s included in a book(s) of his, entitled, “Pieces and Pontifications”[1988] or “Pieces.”[1982] It covers a lot more, but is worth reading just for this subject alone.
Mitt Romney is LDS. His brother George Scott Romney is also a HLS grad. Their father George Romney, former Governor of Michigan & presidential candidate(1968) also. Harry Reid, is current Senate Majority Leader. We think of Utah being mostly LDS, but forget the surrounding states. Nevada, eastern Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, western Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico.
5 January 2012, 1:07 pmm.c.:
For those who can’t get the Essay via book, the August 16, 1976 New York magazine has the full version. My library has it on microfilm. There’s a simplified handy diagram with lines & arrows on the first page which the book doesn’t have. It’s worth noting that the quality of journalism in the magazine has gone way down.
accompanying film recommended:
5 January 2012, 3:20 pmThe Good Shepherd
JFK
Nixon
All the President’s Men
The Aviator
The Hoax
Tucker
m.c.:
For years I’ve heard the expression, ” A Conservative is a Liberal who has been mugged or mugged by Reality.” Many Neo-Cons from the 1960′s former civil rights movement have jokingly claimed this.
8 January 2012, 4:23 pmWhat if Socio-Economics conditions are intentionally controlled to actually increase both crime(street) & the impression of the increase of crime to create a Reactionary mindset to create greater Conservatism through fear?
Curt:
M.C.:
9 January 2012, 12:48 pmIt would take an explicit centrally controlled conpiracy for that to be the case.
m.c.:
Curt, I read somewhere today that from 1790-1945; the U.S. was formally at war for something like a total of 22 years.(My numbers may not be exact.) From 1945-2012; the U.S. has been at war for >20 years. Not counting the American Revolution & the War of 1812(we were invaded) the first figure is even lower than 22. I thought Republican forms of governing were to avoid perpetual war…. Just a thought. Can’t have War without being afraid of Someone or Something.
9 January 2012, 8:23 pmCurt:
M.C,,
10 January 2012, 10:08 amIt would take an explicit centrally controlled conspiracy for that to be the case:?
m.c.:
???
10 January 2012, 12:36 pm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Civil War years shouldn’t count. It was an internal armed conflict although outside actors like Britain & France played a role. Counting the Barbary Wars(first 1801-05; second 1815): I’m not great at math, what’s the total?
m.c.:
No coffee yet today.
Not counting the Indian Wars, which is a topic in itself, 17 years up to 1945. Since then what like close to 30 years?
10 January 2012, 1:01 pmm.c.:
“Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of that choice.”
11 January 2012, 6:51 pm–Unknown
askod:
Feral Scholar » Blog Archive » Call for papers… kind of
I think it is much easier to create the impression of an increase in crime then to control crime itself. After all, most of us gets the news from mainstream media.
15 January 2012, 5:05 amm.c.:
A friend of mine about 20 years ago said while sitting on his couch smoking listening to a Rush album CD( I forget which one), “TV didn’t create Violence, Violence created TV.”
15 January 2012, 5:40 pmm.c.:
Note(1): Counting minor characters, Charles Dickins created roughly 13,000 characters in his writing!
Note(2): Bill Clinton had six full time Speechwriters on staff in the WH. This doesn’t include the Communication Director’s & Press Secretary’s Offices. Even Shows like the West Wing simplify matters.
29 January 2012, 4:06 pmm.c.:
Dispatches by Michael Herr, is on my immediate reading list. Amazon gives it 4&1/2 out of 5 stars. Sadly I’ve never read it before.
31 January 2012, 6:36 pmm.c.:
Plato’s Types of Government:
Aristocracy/Meritocracy{Gold}, Rule by Philosophers
Timocracy{Silver}, Rule by Gentlemen, Honor, some Wealth
Oligarchy/Plutocracy{Brass}, Rule by Wealthy usually Tradespeople
Democracy/Anarchy{Iron}, which degenerates into Mob Rule into
Tyranny/possibly Monarchy
As we can clearly see Leo Strauss wasn’t very original. His Auxiliaries are made of the Timocracy/Gentlemen, Honor Class who keep the forms of Virtue & Nobility but are still required to be lead by the Noble Lie.
3 February 2012, 1:07 pmm.c.:
I’m almost halfway though Daniel Boorstin’s The Discoverers, the first & best of his famous trilogy(The Creators, The Seekers). He’s accomplished, A Rhodes Scholar and professor of History at the University of Chicago from 1944 to 1970. He’s not stupid but but suffers from Great Man Theory & Manifest Destiny IMO(see wikipedia for both). Jerry Ford appointed him Librarian of Congress 1975-1987, along with Edward Levi, 1975-77 Attorney General from Univ. Chicago. BTW, Don Rumsfeld was Ford’s WH Chief of Staff 1974-75. His Deputy was Dick Cheney who replaced him at that job 1975-77. I don’t agree with Alex. Cockburn that Ford was the best and most liberal president since Roosevelt. Ford was on the Warren Commision for those who don’t remember.
8 February 2012, 2:31 pmm.c.:
The core of why we still study Plato and his successors is that besides the Noble Lie for the non-Philosophers, he wished a Police State maybe along the lines of ancient Sparta or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The upper levels of his Timocracy are Political & Social Leaders, i.e. the Gentlemen, but the lower levels, the Auxiliaries are Military & Police(Duty, Honor, Bravery, Patriotism, Sacrifice for the State etc.) He’s not for an open society. Only on the surface is it supposed to look so. A particular kind of Fascism.
9 February 2012, 7:45 pmm.c.:
Loyalty to the State too,
10 February 2012, 7:29 amm.c.:
Switching topics slightly again, Trainspotting(1996) is a film I’ve reviewed on Amazon before. It’s based on a Scottish novel(which I’ve tried but couldn’t understand or finish.) I don’t know how true the movie is to the book.
11 February 2012, 9:06 amAnyway, the narrator is a character named Mark Renton “Rents” or “Rent Boy”, played by Ewan Mcgregor. He’s one of the half dozen or so central characters. Sometimes the POV, who the narrator is determines the style and essence of the story. Had the narrator been one of Renton’s slightly psychologically darker friends/rivals Sick Boy, it may have come across more like A Clockwork Orange. Had the narrator been Franco Begbie the outright psycho, another collegue/rival but useful in some situations, it may have come across more like a Scottish/British Taxi Driver.
m.c.:
I checked out Urban Cowboy from my library on VHS again and watched it last night. I’m a sucker for Debra Winger I guess. One of the songs is Cherokee Fiddle by Johnny Lee. Today I googled it; You Tube has the entire 4 minute or so song on audio. I like the lyrics where the Indians are dressing up like Cowboys and the Cowboys are putting turquoise and leather on.
26 February 2012, 5:57 pmm.c.:
I find it interesting that Daniel Boorstin didn’t mention Jethro Tull once in The Discoverers, The Creators, The Seekers. Balliol & St. John’s colleges are right next to each other. Funny that he wouldn’t have heard of Tull….
********
The other thing someone on MSNBC said yesterday: every President after Eisenhower starting with Kennedy has had at least one daughter. Eleven in a row? The politics of womanhood?
7 March 2012, 6:09 pmm.c.:
The Counter Attack on the former Goldman Sach’s executive who was critical of his old Corp. written last week in an Op-Ed in the New York Times.
Ftriday night David Brooks called him a Narcissist on the PBS NewsHour; also an Op-Ed writer in this weekend’s Wall St. Journal ( Sat./Sun. print edition.) I wonder if Daniel Ellsberg was called a Narcissist or Crazy?
18 March 2012, 3:06 pmm.c.:
Almost every metro area in the U.S./Canada has at least one Alternative Free Weekly/Monthly. Some have quite substancial readerships. The Village Voice has a circulation of almost 200,000. How many of us or people we know have tried to publish articles or LTE’s in our local Alternative Press?
5 April 2012, 11:35 amm.c.:
I just came across the tidbit that the inventor of the diesel engine, Rudolf Diesel, he had designed it to run on vegetable oil, not petroleum. This technology has been around what? over 100 years…?
18 April 2012, 8:31 pmMichael Anderson:
@ m.c.—-you are correct….it was designed to run on Peanut Oil. I also read recently (and I have looked for this reference now and cannot find it, so bear with me) that diesel engines were marketed in some places in the early 20th century as “household engines”—-appliances. I believe the Amish people make use of them in that capacity.
19 April 2012, 9:17 amm.c.:
Economic Externalities like Pollution don’t abide by national boundaries. Germany & Switzerland are phasing out Nuclear energy. But if a nuclear reactor in France has an accident and releases air pollution with the wind say blowing to the east, can Germany & Switzerland sue the French Utility Corporation and send them a bill for damages?
20 April 2012, 12:22 pmm.c.:
If you mean the Mad Men character, I really haven’t watched it at all. I know a couple people who watch the show though.
26 April 2012, 12:36 pmm.c.:
In reference to Alex. Cockburn’s weekend Essay today, there are two elections in the next week or two that are worth watching. The French Presidential Race & the London Mayoral Race. Two new datapoints on 2012 social history.
27 April 2012, 6:51 pmm.c.:
I’m sure most of you have heard this before. Norman Mailer and others once referred to this idea as “creating a People’s CIA.” (I’m confident he meant this in the best sense.)
1 May 2012, 12:17 pmm.c.:
More Generalization:
Harvard, being the oldest institution of higher education in the U.S. has produced Political Activists on both the Left & Right. Notable are John Reed(1887-1920) Journalist & Marxist writer.
8 May 2012, 12:00 pmOn the Right we have the founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Welch Jr.(1899-1985), who attended HLS. He founded the organization in 1958.
In 1962, a Centrist Republican group, The Ripon Society which supported the Civil Rights Act of the 1960′s, in the early 1970′s it supported normalization of relations with China, and the abolition of the military draft was founded at Harvard.
Lastly, we have the Federalist Society started in 1982 at HLS, YLS, and the Univ. Chicago LS(mentioned before in another thread.)
Grover Norquist, the anti-tax zealot, is also a Harvard & Harvard MBA product.
m.c.:
Approximately 25-30% of Americans have a passport and have traveled to at least one other country. How to reach the other 70-75%, many who get their news from Fox, listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc.???
8 May 2012, 5:14 pmm.c.:
Viet Dinh, currently on of the board of directors of News Corp., was the primary architect of the Patriot Act in 2001. He’s a Harvard & HLS product.
8 May 2012, 5:44 pmCurrent News Corp. executive VP Joel Klein, is another HLS product overseeing the current legal mess over phone hacking with Viet.
m.c.:
Not to make too fine a point of it, but the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it a violation of U.S. Law for a U.S. based Corporation to bribe officials of another country. Just ask Walmart in Mexico…. Rupert might end up like his old buddie Conrad Black.
9 May 2012, 5:35 pmm.c.:
According to Andrew Delbanco’s new book, Charles Dickins visited the U.S. for the first time in 1842. He was disapointed be slavery but I gather gave a reading in Cambridge/Boston at Harvard College. I don’t have a copy of the book for a direct quote but, he said something like, Harvard is one place where the God of Money subsides among the other Gods, unlike everywhere else it dominates.
10 May 2012, 12:09 pmHarvard is named after John Harvard(1607-1638), an English cleryman who moved to the Colonies. He donated half his estate & his library to the new college. He was the son of a wealthy Southwark(south London) Butcher and Tavern Owner; part of the relatively new London shopkeeper middle-class who provided much support(economic & ideological) to Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians/Puritans during the English Civil War. One grievance of the Puritans was that the Church of England was too hierarchical and too elaborate in their ceremonies(basically too much like the Roman Catholic Church which the CofE was patterned after.) They were an early political manifestation of the Protestant Work Ethic(just keep it simple thank you, I’ve got money to make!) In the 1700′s & 1800′s, they mostly morphed into the British Whig Party.
Anyway Harvard is named after an oxbridge product, the name of the town it’s in has an oxbridge name, and from what I can research on google & wikipedia, the college’s first four schoolmasters were oxbridge graduates. Harvard has the lowest undergraduate acceptance rate[hardest to get into] in the U.S. and has produced the most Rhodes & Marshall Scholarships[the pinnicle of U.S.-Anglo academic prestige.] For better or worse most university students in the U.S. read textbooks/study guides written by professors from or professors taught by those who went through the Harvard pipeline.
m.c.:
Rebekah Brooks husband Charlie is an old Etonian frild of the PM, David Cameron. They both were just arrested earlier today for perverting the course of justice.
15 May 2012, 4:19 pmm.c.:
Mixing a few topics here. There has been a lot of quality scholarship written about the origins of the English Civil War. I don’t claim to be an expert but the London shopkeeper middle-class support of the Parliamentarians/Puritans was a major factor in defeating the Royalists. A bunch of religious nut anti Catholic 2-bit farmers from East Anglia & Lincolnshire couldn’t force Charles I to flee London and take up temporary residence in Oxford before ultimate defeat even if they did have a well trained militia & calvary. This part of England is probably among the most religious, rural and provided a large percentage of the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. When we look ahead to the Salem witch trials there is a strain of intolerance in this type of christianity, the other side of plucky self-reliant work ethic.
16 May 2012, 8:50 pmm.c.:
fyi: Cambridge is to East Anglia/Lincolnshire roughly what Austin is to Texas; a mostly Liberal Democratic town politically in a sea of Margaret Thatcher Country. Thatcher was born & grew up in southern Lincolnshire. The original Boston is a port town in southern Lincolnshire as well where many early Massachusett Bay Colony settlers came from.
17 May 2012, 11:41 amm.c.:
It was this Puritan Intolerant Orthodoxy that Roger Williams bucked when he took off for the wilderness of what is now Rhode Island. This is one reason why Rhode Island & Brown Univ. have reputations for religious, social, and academic tolerance. On the other hand the founders of Yale College doubled down on the Orthodoxy of the day. In Andrew Delbanco’s book, in the 1700′s & 1800′s, Chapel Attendence was a requirement 16 times per week at for students at Yale.(I’m guessing twice per day & 4 times on Sunday) Otherwise there were disciplinary consequences.
18 May 2012, 12:19 pmm.c.:
This is one of my favorite Norman Mailer quotes from The Armies of the Night.
“A good half of writing consists of being sufficiently sensitive to the moment to reach for the next promise which is usually hidden in some word or phrase just a shift to the side of one’s conscious intent.”
20 May 2012, 3:13 pmm.c.:
“Thus Yale was founded in part because Cotton Mather(he played a role during the Salem witch trials, btw), a member of Harvard’s governing board, became so unhappy with the fall from orthodoxy in Cambridge(Massachusetts) that he encouraged the formation of a new college a hundred miles south, at New Haven, that would cleave more closely to the faith.”[Delbanco p. 68]
“Nineteenth-century Harvard impressed Charles Dickens as a place where ‘the almighty dollar sinks into something comparatively insignificant, amidst a whole Pantheon of better gods.’”[Delbanco p. 140] during a 1842 visit.
23 May 2012, 5:18 pmm.c.:
I’m well into Michael Herr’s Dispatches. He writes with a unique style. If his name sounds familiar its because he wrote Michael Sheen’s voiceover narration in the film Apocalypse Now. I hope someone in the near future, civilian or military, like former Vietnam GI Oliver Stone writes a good book, even a short one or stories, about the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan.
From Dispatches: “The Puritan belief that Satan dwelt in Nature….”[p. 87] {Now that’s why Napalm & Agent Orange are good for us.}
24 May 2012, 4:41 pmm.c.:
Let’s apply the Peter Principle provisionally to 3 famous Pols & match former jobs to their correct highest aptitude level:
R. Reagan- ran SAG
25 May 2012, 12:08 pmG. Bush- ran Texas Rangers baseball club
M. Romney- ran the Olympics?
Michael Anderson:
Back in 1998, my daughter and her friends rented a movie called “Independence Day”, about an alien invasion of Earth. A pretty destructive invasion, in terms of the “Kojak Bang-Bang” factor. Won an Oscar for Special FX, I guess.
There was a scene later in the movie from (where else?) Area 51, where a captured Cthulhu-like alien goes berserk in a sealed room and kills Brent Spiner, who plays a scientist. We then find that these fearsome-looking critters are bio-shells for a rather fragile-looking humanoid inside. One of the characters outside the room tells the assembled group postmortem that he got a mental image from the alien as it thrashed around and killed Spiner. He said the aliens were a rapacious, predatory race, traveling from planet to planet consuming everything in their path, like locusts.
I thought the movie was pretty silly then, but…..Can be said about us, too, in our present (last 500 years) state…wonder if there was a turnaround message there?
@ m.c.: Funny! Obama was a “community organizer” in Chicago. I guess you could say Al Capone was a “community organizer” in Chicago….in a way.
26 May 2012, 12:31 pmm.c.:
Human Events is an influencial Conservative weekly magazine founded in 1944. Ronald Reagan supposedly read it a lot. From wikipedia:
Thomas S. Winter serves as the president and editor-in-chief of Human Events.[1][2][3][4]Thomas Winter earned a bachelor’s degree in 1959 and an MBA in 1961, both from Harvard University.[1][2] He joined Human Events in 1961 at the age of 24 as an assistant editor.[1][2] In 1964, he took over the paper as its editor, and in 1966 he became co-owner and president.[1][2][5] He assumed the title editor-in-chief in 1996.[1][2]
31 May 2012, 12:02 pmHe also serves as Vice Chairman of the American Conservative Union and treasurer of the Conservative Victory Fund.[1][2][6] In 2010, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award by The Phillips Foundation.[7]
m.c.:
One time Sec. Defense Robert McNamara had an MBA from Harvard.
from wikipedia about Gen. William Westmoreland: After the war(wwii) he completed a three month management program at Harvard Business School. As Stanley Karnow noted, “Westy was a corporation executive in uniform.”[5]
Sometimes the best in conventional education, knowledge & training just isn’t good enough.
1 June 2012, 1:08 pmm.c.:
One of the dirty little secrets about Social Science is that LIFE is always more complex/nuanced/varied than any Hypothesis/Theory can make of it. Social Science, even at its best, is about Simplifying Life, making it Explainable, Manageable. This is probably true also of History. Othrwise the dense mass of Data would simply overwhelm us.
5 June 2012, 5:11 pmm.c.:
L. Paul Bremer, the first Viceroy of Iraq, has a MBA from Harvard too.
6 June 2012, 4:36 pmm.c.:
Switching topics again. If you’ve gotten around to reading Norman Mailer’s 1976 New York magazine essay, reading between the lines and making a semi-educated guess; Hunt & Sturgis were prolly the 2 men at the grassy knoll??? marine=shooter?, oss/navy=spotter/radio man? If so, was it official policy or a rogue operation?
6 June 2012, 9:37 pmCoincidence that Hunt was former college buddies w/ Nixon Special Counsel Chuck Colson(a fancy term meaning the President’s main WH lawyer & one of Nixon’s main hatchet men.) The fact that the mayor of Dallas in 1963 Earle Cabell was the brother of one of the big 3 that Kennedy fired a year earlier in the Bay of Pigs failure aftermath.
m.c.:
Lyndon Johnson, as a longtime Texas Pol, almost certainly knew the Cabell brothers fairly well. He & Richard Nixon also had a mutual friend in John Connally(he was in the 2nd car with Johnson), who Nixon wanted to become VP when Spiro Agnew resigned.
7 June 2012, 12:14 pmOne of Oliver Stone’s central themes in the movies JFK & Nixon, was that Johnson never dared to stand in the way of the Vietnam War and the Military Security Foreign Policy Establishment. OK, during the 1964 presidential election he wasn’t as hawkish as Barry Goldwater and later George Wallace/Curtis LeMay in 1968.
Looking at the Warren Commission, Earl Warren made an upstanding Front Man. How did Allen Dulles though, who Kennedy fired get on there? Gerald Ford was also on the team, and also young prosecutor Arlen Specter was one of the asst. lawyers.
m.c.:
I thinks its important that Lyndon Johnson & Richard Nixon had a mutual friend in John Connally.He was LBJ’s campaign chair in 1960.
8 June 2012, 12:02 pmm.c.:
This is an old New York City intellectual joke probably no longer entirely true. Henry Luce after he founded Time magazine liked to hire many ex-yalies like himself. The joke was the Yale Club of NYC located in midtown had an underground passage to the Time building a few blocks away so all the hale fellow ex-bulldogs could walk over there for lunch and a couple of martinis in the middle of their day. Being in skull & bones was an added bonus. So, Time was a career path for the gentleman-C dummies who couldn’t get jobs at real papers like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal…. In the opening chapter of The Armies of the Night, this is basically what Norman Mailer is making fun of.
15 June 2012, 1:22 pmm.c.:
The Henry Luce Empire inculded:(the anti-Communist Rupert Murdoch of his day???)
Time magazine-1923
17 June 2012, 4:54 pmFortune magazine-1930
Life magazine-1934
Sports Illustrated magazine-1954
m.c.:
The first Fortune 500 list was in 1955 by the magazine.
19 June 2012, 11:44 amm.c.:
google Edgar Smith + Fortune magazine:
NYT obituary Oct. 12, 1989
Edgar Smith, 69, Dies; Retired Time Executive
19 June 2012, 12:13 pmPublished: October 12, 1989
Edgar P. Smith, a magazine and broadcast executive with Time Inc. who originated the ”Fortune 500” list of the country’s largest businesses,…. Mr. Smith, who joined Time in 1946, was assistant managing editor of Fortune in 1955, when he conceived the ”500” listing, which became an annual feature of the magazine.
He went on to become managing editor of Architectural Forum, another Time publication, and in 1962 he was named vice president of Time-Life Broadcasting. After the broadcasting stations were sold, he laid the groundwork for Time’s entry into cable television. He retired in 1975 but remained a consultant to the company until 1987.
Mr. Smith was born in Brooklyn and was a graduate of Princeton. In World War II, he was a field artillery captain in the Army and was awarded a Croix de Guerre by France. In the Korean War, he was recalled to serve with the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps.
m.c.:
A while ago, maybe a couple years, the Guardian(UK) newspaper had a story about how Germany was the world’s leader in Solar generated electricity. People & Communities who could produce surplus electricity could sell it back onto the grid for profit.
I forgot which thread I posted that article but on today’s Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, there was a segment on Germany’s world leading renewable energy status. Germany receives about the same Solar Radiation as Alaska and is still the best in the world. What if places like the deserts of Arizona & Nevada could be utilized likewise? The sky’s the limit….
22 June 2012, 4:36 pmm.c.:
MOVIE TRIVIA QUESTION:(I don’t have Pause/Slow on my VHS Player)
In Sliding Doors in the opening scene, seconds into the movie, Helen’s character(Gywneth Paltrow) spills a mug of cofee/tea onto a paperback book. She quickly wipes it off before stuffing it into her bag. I think the title on the cover & spine are clearly visible but can’t make it out. I couldn’t find the answer via google.
27 June 2012, 4:25 pmm.c.:
I just started Thomas Frank’s newest book. [From p. 19, quoting Keynes in his 1933 National Self-Sufficiency]
28 June 2012, 3:36 pm“The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war{wwi}, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous–and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it.”
m.c.:
When Charles I was forced to evacuate London in 1642, he first made Nottingham and then Oxford his headquarters. Oxford was the Royalist Capital from 1642-46. The last major battle of the first English Civil War took place at Naseby(in north Northamptonshire, south of Leicester in 1645.) This gives some idea of the geographic divide between the Royalists//Parliamentarians-Puritans; a dividing line running Northeast from Oxford to Nottingham, with the west and north generally supporting Charles at least for a while. Cromwell eventually conquered Scotland & Ireland.
29 June 2012, 12:17 pmm.c.:
The new Nation magazine July 2/9 2012 has a whole series of stories about the growth/funding of Islamophobia. Worth reading.
Also the new Newsweek has an article about Ray Kelly the Commisioner of the NYPD. His son, a Fox News contributer was recently in the news for sexual assualt. Kelly has built the NYPD’s Intel Division to 500 detectives, who travel outside of NYC & even overseas. One mid-level FBI agent is quoted as saying,”they do a lot of sneeky bull—t.” In theory, FBI agents are responsible to their field office supervisors, who answer to the U.S. Attorney in their state/area, who answer to the Justice Dept. in Washington D.C. Some undercover NYPD agent say in Phoenix is answerable to who? Ray Kelly? The mayor of NYC? Donald Duck?
29 June 2012, 3:50 pmm.c.:
Historians like Howard Zinn who wrote the People’s History of the United States are very valuable. Bottom-Up History.
The other type, Top-Down; Plato, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Cecil Rhodes, Modern Political Science etc. needs to be studied too, because in Authoritarian Societies the People need to understand the mechanisms that control them. Understanding the 20th century History of the OSS/CIA, for example gives us a peek behind the curtain. It doesn’t have to be a fetish-like curiosity to Not want to be taken for a Sucker all the time.
12 July 2012, 12:28 pmm.c.:
Yesterday on CNN, Fareed Zakaria mentioned the following point. In Germany the Tax Code is 500 pages. In France its 1,000. In the U.S. by comparison its 72,000-73,000 pages. In 1913 it was only 400 pages.
16 July 2012, 3:33 pmm.c.:
Re-reading Chapter 1 of Howard Zinn’s book; Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress. From pp. 13-17 covering the Pequot War of 1636 and the Wampanoag War/King Philips War of 1676 by Milita of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in what is now Conn. Rhode Island, and Mass. I keep thinking of Michael Herr’s Dispatches and setting fire to villages in Vietnam. Robert “Blowtorch Bob” Komer as a 20th century Cotton Mather.
18 July 2012, 3:08 pmm.c.:
Some Bertrand Russell common-sense:
“Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.” from An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish in Unpopular Essays(1950)
Machiavelli’s The Prince is “a handbook for gangsters.” from Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current(1955) p. 35.
19 July 2012, 12:09 pmMichael Anderson:
There’s a new one out for aspiring gangsters (and the women who love them):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_48_Laws_of_Power
I have that one, too—quite a read in courtier politics, absence of empathy and conscience.
“…The 48 Laws of Power is a 1998 book by Robert Greene. Greene takes elements from writers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Sun Tzu, as well as historical examples from such figures as FDR, Winston Churchill, Elizabeth I of England, Ivan the Terrible, P. T. Barnum, Otto von Bismarck, Michelangelo, Napoleon, Talleyrand, Louis XIV, Casanova, Henry Kissinger, Yellow Kid Weil, Al Capone, Cao Cao, Lola Montez, Chuko Liang, Baltasar Gracián, Mata Hari, Mao Tse-tung, Madame de Pompadour, Joseph Duveen, Henry Kissinger, Cesare Borgia, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Pancho Villa, Liu Pang, and Ninon de Lenclos…”
21 July 2012, 1:03 pmm.c.:
Bill Frenzel is a former Congressman from MN(R). from wikipedia: See Above for the Creation of the Ripon Society.
Frenzel was chairman of the Ripon Society, a Republican think-tank, from the 1990s until March 2004.[3] He has been a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, since January 1991, and was named director of the Brookings Governmental Affairs Institute on July 18, 1997.
22 July 2012, 4:59 pmPresident William J. Clinton appointed Frenzel (1993) to help sell NAFTA.[4][5]
m.c.:
In univ. political science class I had to read some of the Federalist Papers of the early founders period(they are the working papers of the U.S. Constitution) The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalists are more obscure to the general public though. Thomas Jefferson is probably the closest big name politician of the time to express agreement with the Anti-Federalists.
The Anti-Federalists did not want to ratify the Constitution. Basically, they argue that:
It gave too much power to the national government at the expense of the state governments.
There was no bill of rights.
The national government could maintain an army in peacetime.
Congress, because of the `necessary and proper clause,’ wielded too much power.
The executive branch held too much power. They worried that a Monarchy might evolve.
24 July 2012, 11:41 amm.c.:
More English Civil War history:
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
Areopagitica(1644) is probably John Milton’s most important political Speech/Essay. A member of the anti-Royalist/Parliamentarian Inner Circle(he was Oliver Cromwell’s Secretary), he was dismayed at Parliament’s requirement of a Publishing/Printing License. Areopagitica is a direct ancestor of The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. I wonder if modern day Political Correctness is but a furtive attempt of backdoor Censorship.
25 July 2012, 3:09 pmm.c.:
Generally Speaking the English Civil War, The Massachusetts Bay Colony & subsequent Colonization, the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist & Anti-Federalist Papers and the U.S. Constitution can be labeled Whig History(or pre-Marxist History if you will, the French Revolution might be the beginning of Marxist History.) One of my comments about Marxist viewpoints is that although Whig Politics is Not the end all and be all, it took a long time to reach that far, maybe starting with the Magna Carta for example. Narrow Viewed Marxists who come along and proclaim that Life didn’t exist before Das Capital. The Whig is that which opposed Ultimate Authority/Rule in the Hand of King/Emperor/Sultan what have you. Adam Smith could not have forseen Global Capitalism on the scale which now exists, IMO.
30 July 2012, 7:58 pmm.c.:
I might have thought that the term NeoLiberalism was coined by Adam Smith or even Karl Marx. But it was later. [from wikipedia] Note that Laissez-Faire Liberalism is not enough. A strong state means Authoritarian Rule(the Impartial bit is an outright falsehood IMO.)
The term “neoliberalism” was coined in 1938 by the German scholar Alexander Rüstow at the Colloque Walter Lippmann.[25][26][27] The colloquium defined the concept of neoliberalism as “the priority of the price mechanism, the free enterprise, the system of competition and a strong and impartial state.”[28] To be “neoliberal” meant that “laissez-faire” liberalism is not enough and that – in the name of liberalism – a modern economic policy is required.[29] After the colloquium “neoliberalism” became a label for several academical approaches such as the Freiburg school, the Austrian School, and the Chicago school of economics.[30]
31 July 2012, 12:29 pmm.c.:
I just started an English edition of Alexander Rustow’s Freedom & Domination(1949). Let me be potentially generous and give him the benefit of the doubt. A strong Impartial State maybe is naive not a falsehood. His version of NeoLiberal Economics was distinct from Laissez-Faire in that it must be free from market-distorting government intervention(such as tariffs & subsidies) but also from no less distorting influences of private monopoly & oligopoly. This inplies a strong(I used the term Authoritarian Rule) rather than an inactive government, one that can interfere systematically to preserve a fully competitive market.
But a perfectly competititve market in the real world is utopian. Maybe in theory but when you have large amounts of Money slushing around in the political system, how can a political system remain Impartial? Again theoretically, Rustow, like Keynes, Marx, and before them Adam Smith, lived before the nuclear age with supersonic jet fighter aircraft, nuclear powered & equiped submarines, space age weaponry and surveillance, what Eisenhower going out the door called the military-industrial complex. More like a national security state without transparency. And the government is Strong & Impartial? Soft fascism…
1 August 2012, 8:32 pmm.c.:
Its slightly ironic to use aquote from a film crime drama to illustrate a Political Mechanism, from Plato to Machiavelli on down.
“And here was the perfect Front Man… He didn’t know too much, he didn’t wanna know too much. Especally that the bosses made the teamsters lend him the money. He wanted to believe the teamsters gave him all that money because he was smart. And where they got Green from? Who knows? All I know is that Green was an Arizona real estate hustler who barely had enough gas money to come and pick up his check. And of course it was the bosses man, Andy Stone who gave all the orders, not the chairman of the board, Philip Green.”
3 August 2012, 11:52 am~~ Casino(1995)
m.c.:
Reading Rustow’s book. Rustow was a leading figure in trying to keep Hitler from becoming Chancellor in 1933 to Hindenburg’s President. Hindenberg died of old age shortly later, making Hitler boss. Rustow would have been probably Finance Minister in an alternative Conservative Government. Afterward the Gestapo searched Rustow’s home which prompted him to move first to Switzerland then Turkey where he got a teaching job at the University of Istanbul until 1949. He was also friends with Alfred Weber, Max’s younger brother.
7 August 2012, 11:54 amWe think of Hitler’s Germany as a Totalitarian State. [From Freedom and Domination, pp. 633-34] Count Clemens von Galen(1878-1946 was a German Cardinal & Bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. A Conservative & anti-Communist who did not support the Weimar Republic he was a public critic of Hitler’s regime from the right. They left him alone because of his status. Count is a Continental European equal to a British Earl.
Also, Erich Ludendorff(1965-1937) was another Conservative personality the Nazi regime didn’t dare criticize publically. Germany’s leading General in wwi, and probably wwi’s most capable military leader. He was an early supporter of Hitler who later changed his mind. In Leninist History, Ludendorff is known for allowing Lenin, Trotsky and their supporter cross Germany on a sealed train on their way to Russia on 3 April 1917 when the Russian Armies were at a stalemate.[Freedom and Domination p. 570]
m.c.:
“In Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the personal safety of the citizens.”
—Benito Mussolini,[184] 1929
“As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field.”
—Benito Mussolini,[185] 1932
References
[[184] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” p. 21.
[185] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” Enciclopedia Italiana, 1932. Reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, p. 18.
9 August 2012, 12:28 pmMichael Anderson:
Which citizens, M.C.?
12 August 2012, 4:38 pmm.c.:
Traditional European Socialism/Parliamentarian Social Democracy differs in that it offers moderate Political, Legal, and Social Liberalism; mixed with State Intervention in Commerce & Economic Policy(traditional Keynesianism): and an absence of Plutocratic Ideology in Government Affairs(i.e. Non-Profit Motivated Elections, Education, Healthcare, Housing, Transportation,and Energy.)
13 August 2012, 2:08 pmMichael Anderson:
So, in a “practicing” fascist society, the financial and military elite, I.e. people with status and power, who have derived said status and power from the system, still get a free pass on criticism, because they are still , despite their criticism, heavily embedded in the structure of the regime. Their MONEY still goes to the top, whatever happens. The teacher (academic) has to, when push comes to shove, take a hike or face censure and/or death.
Sounds eerily familiar here. When will THAT particular shoe drop en masse? Scott Nearing, who started his career as a teacher at the Wharton business school in the teens of the 20th century, was the first person arrested and jailed under the Espionage Act after WW1, because of his opposition to the war, and his opposition to child labor, which at that time was considered a solution by the reptile capitalists of the era, not a problem. He wrote “Oil And The Germs Of War” in 1921…a good read with heavy foreshadowing.
17 August 2012, 12:24 pmm.c.:
I’m reading more about the prosess/ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1786-1791.
Another right many Anti-Federalists wanted was the right to Hunt & Fish on Public Lands.
Remember Shays’ Rebellion(1786-87) in Massachusetts; and the Whiskey Rebellion(1791)in Pennslyvania were major events of the time. Mostly former colonial army veterans who wanted local and/or limited government.
9 October 2012, 12:06 pmm.c.:
Well before the Anti-Federalist concerns about having Standing Armies in Peace Time the thought goes at least back to the 1660s. Remember before the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660, Britain had been ruled briefly by a Military Dicatatorship, i.e. the Rule of the Major-Generals. From 1655-1657 England and Wales had been divided into 10 Military Districts each commanded by a MG who reported directly to the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. Ireland & Scotland each also was ruled by a MG bringing the total to 12. Parliament had been desolved.
(from) The Jefferson Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology by Lance Banning; 1978 Cornell University Press pp.49-50.
Note: The concept of a Permanent State of War to justify perpetual Standing Armies & a perpetual martial legal system.
“The critics of the 1670s saw cause to fear direct attempts against free government, because they were convinced that English freedom had already been impaired. A Standing Army, in their view, had been the classic instrument for ultimate destruction of mixed states(divided government; Ministry, Lords, and Commons). It was also one of several agencies of influence. It posed more distant dangers because it was already part of a design by which the Ministry(Monarch, Prime Minister[appointed by Monarch], and Subordinate Ministers) intended to control all parts of government and reduce the balanced constitution to a sham. Parliament(Houses of Lords & Commons) was filled with Army Officers and Others who held governmental posts or pensions. These pensioners and placemen(someone who received a paid government position due to their making financial contributions to a political figure) would not jeopardize their livelihoods by voting against the wishes of the Crown(Monarch, Prime Minister, and Subordinate Ministers) Through them, accordingly, the Ministry had found a way to weaken the resistance of the other parts of governmet to its designs. Rather than encroach directly on the powers of the Commons or the Lords, it would determine their decisions. Given a sufficient number of its creatures, the Court(Banning here uses it as another term for Ministry; Monarch, Prime Minister, and Subordinate Ministers) could clearly rule without effective checks. Three heads(Ministry, House of Lords, House of Commons led by the Speaker, a constitutional mandated position) would be reduced to one.”
19 October 2012, 3:36 pmm.c.:
Correction: A placeman is someone who recieves a position in government or out, due to political support to a political figure. The support doesn’t have to be financial.
19 October 2012, 3:40 pmm.c.:
From Edward Gibbon’s Autobiography. Gibbon was a active duty captain in the Hampshire militia from 1760-62. In response to the Seven Years’ War/French & Indian War(1756-63) between the British and the French, the British government fearful of an invasion by France, passed the Militia Act of 1757 which created County militias who would serve three year terms of service but would not leave their County except in the event of invasion.
George Washington served in the Virginia militia during the same war. When Thomas Jefferson put the following phrase he knew the history of British local governments to provide for their local defense without having having to quarter large numbers of permanent troops.
“He(The King) has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power….
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:”
22 October 2012, 3:30 pmm.c.:
This is the 1689 British Bill of Rights(from wiki):
The Bill of Rights laid out certain basic rights for (at the time) all Englishmen. The Act set out that there should be:
no royal interference with the law. Though the sovereign remains the fount of justice, he or she cannot unilaterally establish new courts or act as a judge.
no taxation by Royal Prerogative. The agreement of the parliament became necessary for the implementation of any new taxes.
freedom to petition the monarch without fear of retribution.
no standing army may be maintained during a time of peace without the consent of parliament.[8]
no royal interference in the freedom of the people to have arms for their own defence as suitable to their class and as allowed by law (simultaneously restoring rights previously taken from Protestants by James II.)
no royal interference in the election of members of parliament.
the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.
“grants and promises of fines or forfeitures” before conviction are void(you have to be found guilty in court first.)
no excessive bail or “cruel and unusual” punishments may be imposed.
22 October 2012, 9:28 pmm.c.:
Reconnecting a thread from earlier above: Another Harvard guy.
Walter Lippmann(1889-1974)
One of the founding editors of the New Republic magazine in 1913. Presidential advisor & speachwriter to Woodrow Wilson.
He’s most famous though for coining/creating the term Stereotype. He didn’t coin Cold War(George Orwell did) but a Lippmann titled book the Cold War(1947) made this phrase popular & common vernacular.
28 October 2012, 3:14 pmm.c.:
from Red Plenty by Francis Spufford. 2010; p. 81.
“The problem was that Marx had predicted the wrong revolution. He had said that socialism would come, not in backward agricultural Russia but in the most developed and advanced industrial countries: in England, or Germany, or the United States.”
from Red Plenty by Francis Spufford. 2010; pp. 269-272.
“Baggy two-piece suits are not the obvious costume for philosopher kings: but that, in theory, was what the apparatchiks who ruled the Soviet Union in the 1960s were supposed to be. Lenin’s state made the same bet that Plato had twenty-five centuries earlier, when he proposed that enlightened intelligence given absolute powers would serve the public good better than the grubby politicking of republics. On paper the USSR was a republic, a grand multi-ethnic federation of republics indeed, and its constitutions (there were several) guaranteed its citizens all manner of civil rights. But in truth the Soviet system was utterly unsympathetic to the idea of rights, if you meant by them any suggestion that the two hundred million men, women and children who inhabited the Soviet Union should be autonomously fixing on two hundred million separate directions in which to pursue happiness. This was a society with just one programme for happiness, which had been declared to be scientific and therefore — the people were told — was as factual as gravity. It had originated in a profound discovery, the programme: an unveiling of the entire logic of human history. Then it had been clarified, codified, simplified and finally brought down to a headful of maxims, all without losing its completeness or its authority.
To carry it out, those in whom the knowledge was installed were authorised to act on it directly, unrestrained by laws or by any moral code of the old style. So, alongside the nominal structures of state and society in the USSR, the Party existed, its hierarchy shadowing all other hierarchies, its organisation chart mapping the true nervous system for the country. Every factory, every army unit, every university faculty, every town council, had its corresponding Party committee, staffed with people who might not, on paper, outrank the soldiers or professors or managers or functionaries they worked among; but who possessed, in fact, an unlimited authority to guide, nudge, cajole, threaten, intervene, overrule. Up at the top the arrangement became explicit. The Presidium which ruled the Soviet Union was not the cabinet of the Soviet state. It was the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Party; it was the court of the First Secretary, chief and principal among all the philosophical kings of the USSR. Sometimes the First Secretary was also prime minister of the Soviet Union, sometimes he wasn’t. It didn’t matter much. The notional premiership was a second-order position, a nice bauble to hang around the neck of real power.
The ordinary apparatchiks were not, of course, allowed to do freelance philosophy on their own account. Ideological direction was set at the top, and passed down, by conference resolutions and newspaper editorials, as a ‘Party line’ which only needed to be applied. But on the kingside of things, even junior apparatchiks had considerable discretion — or perhaps it would be better to say, they were obliged to improvise. They had to make endless, quick, unappealable decisions about the fate of the human beings in front of them. The theory in their heads was universal in its reach, and their expertise was supposed to be universal too. They were the agents of humanity’s future, which they were to manufacture by being, in the present, experts in human nature. In this sense, even the grimmest of them was, professionally, a people person. They acted as progress-chasers, fixers, censors, seducers, talent-scouts, comedians, therapists, judges, executioners, inspirational speakers, coaches, and even from time to time as politicians of the representative variety, carrying a concern of their constituents to the centre for attention. It was a quality deliberately designed into their power that it should be unlimited, that it should have the weight of the whole project behind it, in whatever unforeseeable situation the little monarchs found themselves. There had been a period, under Stalin, when the security police seemed to be supplanting them, but Khrushchev had restored the supremacy of the apparat. Here was another reason for the baggy suits. Earlier, at the turbulent beginning of Lenin’s state, the Party’s operatives had signified their power by using the direct iconography of force. They wore leather jackets and cavalry coats, they carried visible revolvers. Stalin’s Party, later, dressed with a vaguely military austerity. Stalin himself had favoured plain tunics, unlimited by badges of rank; at the very end of his life, when he was being hailed as the strategic genius of the Great Patriotic War, he enjoyed wearing the fantasy uniforms of an ice-cream generalissimo. Now, by contrast, the symbolism was emphatically civil, managerial. The Party suit of the 1960s declared that the wearer was not a soldier, not a policeman. He was the person who could give the soldier and the policeman orders. The philosopher kings were back on top.
But the Soviet experiment had run into exactly the difficulty that Plato’s admirers encountered, back in the fifth century BC, when they attempted to mould philosophical monarchies for Syracuse and Macedonia. The recipe called for rule by heavily-armed virtue — or in the Leninist case, not exactly virtue, but a sort of intentionally post-ethical counterpart to it, self-righteously brutal. Wisdom was to be set where it could be ruthless. Once such a system existed, though, the qualities required to rise in it had much more to do with ruthlessness than with wisdom. Lenin’s core of original Bolsheviks, and the socialists like Trotsky who joined them, were many of them highly educated people, literate in multiple European languages, learned in the scholastic traditions of Marxism; and they preserved these attributes even as they murdered and lied and tortured and terrorised. They were social scientists who thought principle required them to behave like gangsters. But their successors — the vydvizhentsy (promotees) who refilled the Central Committee in the thirties — were not the most selfless people in Soviet society, or the most principled, or the most scrupulous. They were the most ambitious, the most domineering, the most manipulative, the most greedy, the most sycophantic; people whose adherence to Bolshevik ideas was inseparable from the power that came with them. Gradually their loyalty to the ideas became more and more instrumental, more and more a matter of what the ideas would let them grip in their two hands. High-level Party meetings became extravagantly foulmouthed from the 1930s on, as a way of signalling that practical people were now in charge, down-to-earth people: and honest Russians too, not those dubious Balzac-readers with funny foreign names. ‘Ladies, cover your ears!’ became the traditional start-of-meeting announcement.”
29 November 2012, 5:55 pmm.c.:
FYI: Last week the UN overwhelmingly voted(138-9; 41 abstaining) to grant the Palestinian Territory Non-Voting Observer Status. Like the only other Non-Voting Member, the Vatican, their UN ambassador can now give speeches, and debate but cannot vote. Palestine is also now a member of the International Criminal Court(ICC) and can bring legal cases for review.
Votes of some notable Nations:
6 December 2012, 5:03 pmNO: Israel, USA, Canada, Panama, Czech Republic
ABSTAIN: UK, Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Columbia, S. Korea
YES: Mexico, Brasil, Argentina, Chile, S. Africa, China, India, Japan, Russia, New Zealand, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia
m.c.:
In an attempt to step back and give a more theoretical view; the term that was used back in the 1960s & 1970s was called New Journalism. Michael Herr’s Dispatches, Mailer’s Armies of the Night & his 1976 New York magazine essay, Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Germaine Greer’s political and cultural essays etc. to describe the Vietnam War, Cold War, and CounterCulture.
More recently, Francis Spufford’s book about the Soviet Union, Andrew Nagorski’s Hitlerland to describe how Americans saw Germany in the 1920s & 1930s, my own threads about how the English Civil War shaped the British Whig Political Party, Adam Smith, the rise of Commerce and subsequently the American Revolution…,
That is, Orthodox or Traditional Journalism just wasn’t(isn’t) cutting the Mustard so to speak. Its not getting under the surface to reveal/describe the Real Power structures. Most Film & TV also, even when its OK or not complete crap is usually in this Orthodox or Traditional Journalism style. This recent past UN vote on the right of the Palestinian Territory give a glimpse of why so many people are so frustrated. Their frustration isn’t pathological, its human.
14 December 2012, 2:22 pmMichael Anderson:
Don’t forget Hunter Thompson’s early “Fear and Loathing” works. Drug-addled they may be, but they are describing a sick, addicted culture… If we would glorify it by that name.
15 December 2012, 12:51 pmm.c.:
One characteristic of New Journalism is the use of Comedy, Humor, and Satire as a literary style to depict the absurdity of modern politics. J.D. Lorenz does just this in his 1978 The Man on the White Horse. He had worked as a high ranking official in California state govt. in the 1970s, and as a former insider writes to inform and make his readers laugh at the same time.
18 December 2012, 4:43 pmm.c.:
More UK geographical history(with a Marxist tie-in):
Manchester can be said to be the birthplace of both the Industrial Revolution & the Railroad. It remains a major rail hub today. As such, it attracted workers from afar. It drew Irish,(Liverpool, the nearest port city to Manchester was/is about 50% Irish, being the closest British city to Ireland), Italians, the largest Italian population besides London, and many others. Friedrich Engel’s(1820-1895) cotton mills were in Manchester. Engels was a wealthy minor aristocrat/gentry industrialist having served as an officer in the Prussian Army.
Thus, Manchester grew as the banking center of the Midlands & North, with accounting houses, solicitor firms, famous newspapers(i.e. The Manchester Guardian 1821), art galleries, theatres, museums, etc. to go along with its slums. Only Edinburgh to the north, the political, social, cultural, and educational capital of Scotland could match Manchester outside of London. BTW, Glasgow as Scotland’s major port served as Edinburgh’s blue collar partner, as Liverpool to Manchester.
23 December 2012, 4:18 pmm.c.:
Another Economics book. The Global Minotaur by Greek-Australian economist Yanis Varoufakis. The first 11 pages of the Introduction are available for free from amazon.com. Just click on the image of the book at the top of the page.
28 December 2012, 5:25 pmHe was on C-SPAN this past week giving a public lecture in Seattle. I missed the beginning but he gave a very understandable but not simplified account of Feudalism with the lord/landlord/landowner as lender/merchant to Capitalism with lenders/markets/holders of debt more remote to the farm/land. Capitalism also put Debt as an Economic/Market driver, i.e. Debt as an integral part of Capitalism playing into the future of growth.
m.c.:
If you go to the C-SPAN website library, do a search by Name, the Seattle audio/video is available. Just over one hour.
FYI:
1) Norman Schwarzkopf(1934-2012). His dad, Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf(1895-1958) was also a West Pointer, Major General, from 1921-1936 Founder & Superintendent of the NJ State Police. Returning to the Army he was sent to Iran in 1942 where he was active in Operation Ajax.
2) 1983 Reagan-Era film, Risky Business, Tom Cruise’s first big role as a wealthy Chicago high schooler Free Market pimp. Wiki says the writer & director Paul Brickman, a native Chicagoan went to college at Claremont McKenna(Univ. Chicago back-up school.)
3) My scant two cents about US Navy sociology.> I know much less about other military services. The jump in rank from e-6 to e-7 is sometimes a political one. That is, many first class petty officers are qualified to serve as chief petty officers(senior nco’s) but politics comes into play.
29 December 2012, 1:05 pmm.c.:
More Books; for anyone who has the time and inclination of diving down into the rabbit hole of history. Both cover the English Civil War & Puritan religious views.
Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America(1989), by David Hackett Fischer is a sociology book about the influence of British culture in the U.S.
The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America(1999), by Kevin Phillips. Wikipedia claims Phillips is the person who coined the term, “Sunbelt.” Sam Rayburn is also credited with the term.
31 December 2012, 5:42 pmm.c.:
I sort of thought this was a problem of the U.S. Left but didn’t realize how big a deal.
(from today on MSNBC)
In the 1988 Presidential election, Dukakis won ~800/3,000 counties nationwide and lost.
In the 2008 & 2012 Presidential elections, Obama won ~700/3,000 counties nationwide and won.
Large Urban counties have more voters. Most counties are Rural, lighter populated and tend to vote Republican & watch Fox News. The local politics/politicians in these areas tend to be Republican/more conservative too. Think of some rural county republican county chair, sheriff, county judge, county d.a., who have been around forever…
2 January 2013, 4:55 pmm.c.:
My local public library has a copy of The Contender(2000). Joan Allen(Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone’s Nixon) plays a U.S. senator who is nominated to become Vice President after the sudden death of the current VP. Jeff Bridges does a good job as the President. Good film for sexual/gender politics. Otherwise shallow on the West Wing tv show kind of level but with some positive aspects. I thought of Hilary Clinton through the movie.
3 January 2013, 1:00 pmm.c.:
I rewatched the MSNBC Video. Based on a National Journal story by David Wasserman.
1988 Presidential Election: Dukakis won only 10 states + DC but won 819 counties.
2012 Presidential Election: Obama won 26 states + DC but won 690 counties.
3 January 2013, 2:17 pmm.c.:
I like this quote from Paul Fussell.
“What someone doesn’t want you to publish is journalism, all else is publicity.”
4 January 2013, 5:55 pmm.c.:
Last night, Turner Classic Movies(TCM) showed The Spirit of the Beehive, a 1973 Spanish film with English subtitles. It takes place in 1940 in a Spanish village during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. 1973 was in the waning years of the Franco regime so its subltly an anti-fascist movie.
Its an example of how crappy most U.S. tv & movies are compared with a masterpiece like this.
btw– Francisco Franco was born in/came from and was politically strongest in Galicia the far NW corner of Spain, above Portugal. Kind of a remote region of the country.
8 January 2013, 12:59 pmm.c.:
A bit more academic inside baseball:
10 January 2013, 12:55 pmA while ago, I believe on this thread I mentioned that during wwii, Peterhouse Cambridge became the temporary home of the London School of Economics(A free market pro Empire thorn in the side of Keynes right down the street about 300 metres from Keynes at Kings College.) A few months ago on Counterpunch, one of their regular contributors mentioned that Kings College Cambridge is/was the academic centre of the Communist Party of the Uk. This is rather overstated. Kings was/is? the birthplace/home of Keynesian Economics. Keynes spent his whole career there when it had a bohemian reputation before he got there.
More recently, Bill Buford(I might be wrong on this one) wrote somewhere in the 1960′s the Middle Common Room(MCR, grad student lounge in regular language) at Kings was the original meeting place for what became The Open University. Buford said they had a jar of instant coffee, some paper cups and folding chairs.
Kings has produced some right wingers to be sure. Another American who was at Kings roughly the same time as Buford is David Ignatius, currently at the Washington Post. He’s a creature of the Washington Establishment. His dad was Paul Robert Ignatius, Under Sec. Army 1964, Sec. Navy (1967-69), pres. Washington Post, & pres. Air Transport Assoc. His mom, according to wikipedia is a descendant of Puritan minister Cotton Mather.
m.c.:
I forgot. Kings was one of three formerly traditionally men-only Oxbridge colleges to admit women in 1972.(Clare & Churchill Cambridge the other two.) Oxford didn’t admit women until two years later in its traditional men-only colleges.
10 January 2013, 4:46 pmJoan Robinson became the first woman professor at Kings in 1979.
m.c.:
The most notorious person recognizeable to U.S. readers to have studied at Kings is Daniel Ellsberg. If you look him up on wikipedia, underneath his photo in the upper right hand corner click on his website link. Click on his bio at the top of the page.
Another Kings guy was Sir John Harington(1561-1612), inventor of the modern flush toilet in roughly 1596. That’s why some people still refer to the toilet as the “John” according to some word folks.
11 January 2013, 2:26 pmm.c.:
“Anyway, you can’t get draft Bass in Canada.”
(one of the all-time great movie lines)
20 January 2013, 4:06 pmm.c.:
One test of what constitutes an Open & Pluralistic Society(Liberal Society in the classic sense perhaps.)
William Blackstone(1723-1780) famous Jurist & Legal Scholar, wrote the following;
8 February 2013, 6:25 pm“It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”
m.c.:
“You felt yourself to be superior to the general mob, did you?”
(another all-time great movie line from one of my amazon favorites)
10 February 2013, 5:54 pmMichael Anderson:
“Wag The Dog”, from 1997. Great movie which managed to eerily coincide with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in subject matter. Billed as a comedy, it’s more of a very DARK comedy (in lieu of the reality we now know) about starting a war to cover up a presidential sex scandal. The creation of a public “myth”, a diversion. Robert DeNiro is the spin doctor overseeing the operation who operates with a sort of “nudge nudge wink wink” persona.
One interesting thing about this movie, in today’s context, is that Dustin Hoffman, who stars as a Hollywood producer who fabricates the “news film footage” of the start of the fake war, & who is snuffed at the end of the movie of a “heart attack”, recently came out and said Hollywood discriminates against actors (and actresses, I assume) who won’t carry guns on film. You don’t act with a piece and you get passed over for roles.
12 February 2013, 4:19 amm.c.:
Asteroid 2012 DA14, which just zipped past yesterday about 17,000 miles from Earth(closer than some of our weather/navigation satellites; about 1/10th the distance that the Moon is from us.) Good for humans it was discovered in Feb. 2012 by Spanish Astronomers and they correctly calculated that it wouldn’t hit Earth.
16 February 2013, 3:26 pmm.c.:
“This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions,… is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”
Adam Smith(1723-1790) from The Theory of Moral Sentiments(1759) his book before Wealth of Nations(1776) This from a pro-Commerce Brittish Whig.
20 February 2013, 1:27 pmm.c.:
“He’s pre-capitalist, a figure of the Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits.”
Noam Chomsky, Class Warfare(1995-96), p. 19-23, http://www.chomsky.info/books/warfare02.htm
22 February 2013, 1:08 pmm.c.:
George Gilder. Another Harvard, Ripon Society guy. Considered by many Conservatives to be an Expert on Futurology & Technology. Like minded Economic beliefs of Arthur Laffer, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand & other Supply Siders. Started out in the 1960s as Speechwriter for Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and Richard Nixon.[wiki]
3 April 2013, 2:12 pmm.c.:
Jonathan Franzen(I think?) in an article a few years ago in something like Harpers or the Atlantic, mentioned that in the U.S. due to TV/Reality Show/Celebrity Culture; there is a Trilogy/Triumvirate of SuperStars, Stars, and NoBodies. Whereas, in the Real World=Reality, there are plenty of People who while they may not be Stars are certainly not NoBodies either. SomeBodies I guess. One example of how TV warps Society.
10 April 2013, 2:43 pmm.c.:
You might be wondering why I put The Good Shepherd(2006) on my movie list from way above. James Jesus Angleton(played by Matt Damon) was head of CI during the Bay of Pigs & Kennedy shooting.
Dulles, Bissell, and Cabell(remember his brother was mayor of Dallas in 1963) had motive from a prosecuting attorney’s perspective. In a Perfect World if I was Jim Garrison in a Time Machine; I would have wanted to interview Howard Hunt & James Angleton.
23 April 2013, 12:17 pmm.c.:
“I think it’s very true when you’re a writer and you sometimes have to spend time poking at part of yourself that normal, sane people leave alone.”
24 April 2013, 4:54 pm~ Vikram Chandra
m.c.:
“Aim above Morality. Be not simply Good: be Good for Something.”
25 April 2013, 4:04 pm~ David Henry Thoreau(1817-1862)
m.c.:
{See Above}
“The first proper paying passenger railway–the Liverpool & Manchester Railway– opened in 1830, and from then on railway progress was phenomenal. In just 20 years, 9,700km of track was laid and by 1850 the largest railway company, London & Northwestern employed 15,000 people. Nothing on this financial scale had been seen before.”
(Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance; 2011 by Jane Gleeson-White p. 141.)
12 May 2013, 3:09 pmMichael Anderson:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/may/13/cornel-west-they-say-i-am-unamerican
“…I would rather have a white president fundamentally dedicated to eradicating poverty and enhancing the plight of working people than a black president tied to Wall Street and drones.”
13 May 2013, 1:08 pmm.c.:
The cuurent president can make a good sounding speach; but I wonder about the machinery of government in the background….
15 May 2013, 4:56 pmm.c.:
On my previous point. Bookkeepers/Recordkeepers probably have been around since the days of ancient Egypt maybe. Only relatively recently(a few hundred years) have they been superceeded by a profession called Accounting.
Same with Cooks. They have been around for thousands of years. But now we have a profession called Chefs, which has been around since the 1700/1800s in Europe?
17 May 2013, 1:00 pm