Ideological Civil War

A colleague forwarded this to me this morning. The caption provided read: "Alright liberals, guessing you're gonna call this freedom of speech. If I see this I will have the freedom to place boot in teeth." And a long string of invective followed in the comment section. The first obvious observation has to be, this is not in the United States. Until we start conquering/annexing African muslim countries and extending the constitutional protections to our colonies the idea that the whole world enjoys freedom of speech is somewhat moot. Americans do not really have freedom of expression either, Congress passes laws all the time restricting what we little people can say or do. Freedom of speech by definition is the unfettered ability to say what others disagree with. Now, the guy posting it and many commenting on it are veterans of our colonial wars, so it is unsuprizing that after mixing with locals who don't like what "we" are doing over there, their hearts are a little hardened. But what the heck does this have to do with Liberals? I guess we didn't cheer loud enough when our Democratic black President assassinated bin laden?

Well, ask a Korean war vet what they think of Koreans. Ask a Vietnam vet what they think of Vietnamese. Dehumanizing epithets are something our soldiers are pretty good at inventing. But again, what does this have to do with American Liberals? What makes a "real american" want to bully and badger fellow Americans into defending this shirt? It is an old trick and something that seems to come naturally to them, but really the manichean duelism that informs it is the hallmark of a small mind. If I like something, then you who disagrees with me must automatically dislike it. If I hate something, then you must automatically defend it. And too many people of whatever stripe fall into the trap in a kneejerk fashion.

Conversely, if I or someone like me says "uh, go to hell you fascist pig this has nothing to do with me" that reaction plays right into the other extreme where the hotheaded bully becomes a helpless victim, terrorized by the all-powerful liberal elite. The whole game is a silly illustration of how hellbent a certain faction of "real americans" are on starting a Civil War based on ideology. I guess Jello Biafra was right when he said the tapestry of factions is weaved throughout the American fabric with no clear place to draw the battle lines. Of course if you started this kind of argument in downtown Madison or some other liberal area, you'd probably get a "get away from me" kind of response. While in the south, they would kill your cat at the very least if you fell into the trap of defending the bloody shirt.

Hypocrisy and incompetence

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/23/the-main-but-not-the-only-reason-to-vote-democratic-the-current-gop-sucks-heres-proof/

I love this quote:
"This country has plenty of money. We’re still the richest single country, by far. But under 32 years of neocon Republican guidance, our government can’t pay its bills, because they operate under the theory that, if you starve the government of money, it can’t spend any. They’ve even gone so far as to refuse to create jobs, which would create more taxpayers, and increase revenues without necessarily raising tax rates. In other words, they don’t want to raise taxes on the rich, but they also won’t create jobs and taxpayers. Yet, they whine about the deficit?
If that’s not basic incompetence, what is?"

This one's pretty good too:
"When Bush Junior was appointed president by the Supreme Court, he immediately enacted the least necessary tax cuts in the history of the republic, and appointed cronies and crooks to fail to oversee the financial system, resulting in immediate return to record deficit spending, even before the economic collapse he caused, by ignoring warnings given to him as early as 2003."

"Unregulated free markets are what keep drug kingpins in business.
Why are we forced to listen to these people? Why are they allowed to have a forum that is at least equal to everyone else, and why doesn’t anyone call them on their rhetoric?"

Vulture capitalism and the gop perfect storm

It is a crazy year when republican candidates even somewhat make the case of what is really killing American society. Of course, primaries are a different animal but usually the gop nominating process does not even get this far before the fanatic right-wing base falls into line behind some would-be mussolini or another. I am still scratching my head over the decision to change the process. Until this year, the republican primary system was winner-take-all so only a few contests were needed before one candidate developed an insurmountable lead. But, maybe for the only time, the delegates a candidate wins are apportioned proportionately. An odd experiment in pluralist democracy from a fantastically anti-democratic organization that usually prizes rigid hierarchy.

It is this change that I would argue is behind the unusually rabid infighting. Especially when each candidate is very flawed and unappealing in various ways to conservatives. To all of us outside the republican party, mitt and newt are simply posterchildren for "the inside." A lot of non-gopers may not quite be able to put a finger on exactly why these very rich and hypocritical men are unsettling. Nor can we count on the Democrats and President Obama to explain it. The opposition party that all-too-often is on the inside or too closely aligned with it will far more likely they go after racism or sexism or gay-bashing/baiting. The social issues that hopelessly divide us are almost comical in comparison to the too-often buried economic issues that can hurt or are hurting just about everyone in America.

That is why it is almost jaw-dropping to see a republican candidate actually let the cat out of the bag. Even if it is a self-centered attempt to tar a single opponent with actual, empirical facts to get the nomination. Newt's documentary "When Mitt Romney Came To Town," however it was made it is "his" baby, is really dangerous to the inside. I guess Newt is at least an example that ego and power, or the pursuit of it, can actually trump the blind obedience to money that usually characterizes the inside.

Here is it is in case you haven't seen it:

Joshua Holland at alternet made a pretty concise summation of how the inside/haves/1%/establishment works in this article. I wish I could add to it, but the best I can do is offer an historical comparison. What leveraged buyout/corporate raiders do, now they are called "private equity firms" is very similar to how the populists understood the economy. There is a famous populist cartoon that shows a cow grazing over the heartland and being milked on the east coast by bankers. It was basically true then, and even more true today. With one exception, gilded age bankers had an interest in keeping the cow alive, sick and skinny, but still able to function. The financial sector still extracts wealth from the heartland, as Holland argues, but today's PE pirates figured out that there is even more profit in fattening up the cow artificially with huge dollups of debt and then slaughtering it,  taking huge fees to butcher the carcass and sell off the choice cuts while leaving huge chunks to simply rot, then moving on to a new cow.

So, I don't know if the vulture is the best anthropomorphic representation for this version of "capitalism" it sure is catchy. Even if the conflation of venture capitalism, which actually has an interest in building a business, with the private equity pirates doesn't line up. What do you expect from an intellectual flyweight like rick perry who actually brought the term up? Anyway, the masters of stupid and easily understood slogans, five second sound bites, and the vicious competition that embodies the "other" American dream of the intentional ignorant have something to bat around a bit for the dumbed-down audience. It might even penetrate the compartmentalized and ideologically shielded minds of republican primary voters/cheerleaders/sports fans. I guy can hope.

Getting closer all the time

As usual, the GH is always the last to know.
The world is a dangerous place, always has been. Any time you have two or more people assembled there is going to be conflict. It is simply a matter of how the conflict is expressed. I had heard of Anonymous before but this is the first video I have seen. The delivery is new, but the message has been around for quite some time. Jello Biafra warned about this very sort of thing going back at least to his spoken word "I blow minds for a living." In fact, if you didn't know that album was from 1991, you might think it just came out. So, history repeats itself.

The relevant question is "why?" Why do people in power hit on this "let's round people up and toss them down a hole in secret forever" schtick so frequently in human history? More relevant for the US is, which state is the natural or traditional condition? Repression of dissidence flares up often in the land of the free, the first nation to actually write down what each citizen's rights are. The Alien and Sedition Acts, suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, Palmer Raids, internment of Japanese-Americans to name a few.

I have stated before that I wrote my thesis on Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr. Both of these intellectuals thought and wrote a great deal on these questions. Schlesinger felt that the flareups of repression where aberations, like society getting drunk, doing something stupid, and regretting it in the morning. So the natural state of American society was to be free and respect individual rights and liberties. He used the analogy of drink to explain the ferocity of businessmen's resistance to reform as well. A case of political "delirium tremens" in response to every effort of the people to increase social and economic justice. Normally a crisis triggered the bouts of repression and demoguagery, later, when the crisis passed, corrective measures tended to increase the security of individual rights. I say tends, perhaps not, but to really address the empirical history of each episode would take much more space and research.

Niebuhr, on the other hand, had a more pessimistic interpretation. He argued that it was the natural tendency of any social group in power to repress interests other than their own. In a time of internal crisis, where the social group in power is threatened, it is dispiciable that the elite would respond this way but not really suprizing. What is suprizing is that the traditional defenders of freedom are demoralized, disillusioned, lethargic, and scattered. Enter Anonymous, a secretive organization that may or may not be the necessary countervailing force. Whatever they are, it is not a suprize that they are using the same technologies to fight back against the Children of Darkness. The CoD use television, telecommunications, and so on to surveil and suppress every other group in society.

I still have hope that a stable American society can be restored without vicious repression or coercion. What shape the delirium tremens would take this time is anyone's guess. But I cling to Niebuhr's belief that stability is much more durable when a tolerable justice gives the broad population an investment in maintaining that society. This must be achieved by a reduction in the privilege of the very top.

Or else, what is getting closer is the nightmare scenarios of Robocop, The Running Man, Soylent Green, and all the other movies that scared the bejeezes out of me as a kid. Because honestly, the Anonymous broadcasts are a great aspect of fiction, much less fun in reality.

Omens

I wish I could say I am not a superstitious person, but I do believe sometimes there are signs from a greater power around us. Call it God, nature, the zeitgeist, or whatever you like. Maybe it is a throwback to the ancients who attempted to divine guidance from natural phenomena. Don't get me wrong, probably 99% of events are driven by the conscious actions of people, but there are always things we cannot account for. This is more individual than social, have you ever wondered why good or bad things happen to you or others around you for seemingly arbitrary reasons? Can I get away with saying "fate" sometimes has a hand in the unfolding of history?

The weather lately had me very worried. I'm sure it is just an old wives' tale (forgive the expression) that a very cold winter proceeds Democratic presidential victories and vice versa. But the warm weather seemed like a bad omen. I sputtered something to that effect recently and I wish I hadn't. Now however, there has been snowstorms like crazy and plenty of low temperatures. I am not going to sacrifice a goat or something to look at its entrails but maybe I misinterpreted things.

Maybe the unseasonably mild weather was fate throwing us a bone to collect enough recall signatures before the snow really started. Or maybe Al Gore is really right and it was just a coincidence. Either way, a little hope that the people of Wisconsin have a chance to change their minds and throw this bum walker out of a job goes a long way.

So persecuted

Pictures like this do not work unless the ideological framework is already laid down. As near as I can tell, this is a picture of muslims praying somewhere next to a picture of denver qb tim tebow fretting over the latest stupid play he made. WHO SAYS WHAT ABOUT WHAT IS OKAY?

Self-righteous and selective outrage by "christians" in America is nothing new. I guess it is Bill Maher whose jackboots are on the necks of this persecuted minority. The "christians" who need to self-identify as somehow different from the rest of us who were baptised and went to Sunday school, etc. really know how to work themselves into a lather about whatever the outrage du jour their masters proclaim. These "christians" have to constantly remind everyone that they claim to be Christians because their actions and attitudes are about as far from what JC taught as you can get. Beyond this, I suppose they are a minority. They are completely insecure unless they have absolute control over everyone and everything around them, lack of control threatens their will-to-power and is therefore persecution. Not in the same way that Jews have been persecuted, but the way my 2 year old feels persecuted that daddy doesn't jump to it for her every trifling need.

The first picture came from the oxymoronically named "conservative patriots of america." This one comes from an article on Addicting Info that really helps unravel the silliness of the hyper-religious.


Especially since the first pic implies that muslims should have no freedom and tebow's version of "christianity" should be the standard by which others are judged, the "muslim test" helps frame the inconsistancy and contradictory nature of the American religious right. It does not reveal hypocrisy as the author contends though, the reality-based community get it and the zealots don't care. It is useful if you want to get yelled at and possibly lynched by glassy-eyed psychos though. Employing the muslim test does define what the fascist mind considers freedom though. "I" have the freedom to impose any standard I wish on others and they have the freedom to accept those standards or be attacked. In other words, the freedom to dominate.

The latest conspiracy

Maybe it's naivete, maybe just that I've been out of the loop completing my thesis. Maybe I just underestimate the ability of lunatics to believe things that should be confined to fiction are reality. It shouldn't I suppose, after all, the belief that a small group of sinister people are planning and executing harmful plans is at the center of it all. At least in the leftist version there is some empirical evidence that bankers and executives are manipulating government and society to increase profits and power.

This con theory from the tea bags that the UN and I guess the smoking man from the X-files are undermining capitalism with phoneybaloney preparations for rising sea levels operates without means or motives and only fever dreams projecting their worst fears onto superficial evidence. Maybe I need to review Hofstadter's work on the paranoid style to understand why right wing conspiracies are always constructed like a chinese buffet. Only they never seem to understand that they are in a chinese restaurant and that is why the buffet offers stir frys and egg rolls instead of meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Joshua Holland at Alternet helps put some flesh on the deformed skeleton of hysteria. The kind of people showing up to shout down the local planning office in the Chesapeake are conservatives in that they do not want things to change. If that is their starting point though, it does not explain why they jump right to aggressive protest. It would be like punching the waitress at our chinese buffet analogy because they only had chinese food. The planners did not cause the sea levels to rise, they are simply trying to adjust and prepare for the changes so life is minimally disrupted. The paranoia buffet allows angry people to choose which group is lying to them and which is telling the truth or to what level of truthiness accorded to each group. As the graphic circulating the intertubes lately says "why is it easier to believe 150 million Americans are lazy than that 400 Americans are greedy?"

Holland also cites Jared Diamond and the exploration of why civilizations die when climate conditions change. In our analogy here, there are no other restaurants to go to. While my example of specifically a chinese buffet is arbitrary, we only have one planet. And there are way too many customers attacking the buffet (resources) at once. This is good for the restaurant's owners but bad for everyone else. In the end, humans are just not rational, and the more humans you put into a group the less likely they are to adjust to really existing conditions, instead trying to impose their will and domination upon their environment.

How do the more rational among us with the foresight to see changes both deal with the irrational and paranoid part of the population and simultaneously combat or adjust the real changes occurring in our environment? I am all for pluralism and accepting diverse opinions, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. If the last 30 years and especially the last 10 are any indication, the irrational and manipulated part of the population can be counted upon to act and vote against their own interests and the interests of their children. The irrational, greedy manipulators are blind to interests beyond the next quarter's profit report and cannot be relied upon to change course. So the answer to that question will elude us for the foreseeable future, unfortunately for the human race and the Earth.