Once Upon a Time...

Hysteria Is Our God

2012-02-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

The nausea-inducing Drudge currently links to this terrifying "news" report:

Is Iran trying to develop a missile that could reach the "Great Satan"?

The missile under construction at an Iranian research-and-development facility, which was damaged by a mysterious explosion in November, was a long-range missile prototype with a range of 6,000 miles – enough to hit the United States, a senior Israeli official said Thursday in a speech to a defense and security forum.

I'm trying to be a billionaire. I'm trying to get Jude Law into bed with me. For at least three months. I'm trying not to hate these fucking warmongering morons with the heat of ten thousand suns.

But, but, but, A SENIOR ISRAELI OFFICIAL "said" ... Well, then. And the senior Israeli official says this ... based on what? Who the hell knows. He says it.

Are you trembling in terror? Ready to nuke those filthy foreigners yet?

It's at moments like this -- moments when my heart overflows with gratitude for the wisdom and compassion demonstrated by every member of the human race, all of whom are profoundly committed to peace throughout the world, nay the universe! -- that I recall the unforgettable words of Joan Crawford. Actually, they're my words, but Joan could have said them! She certainly gave speeches just like this one:

You're all trying to destroy me! You're all against me, you bastards! You broke my heart, and now you want to kill me! But I won't let you, do you hear me? I won't let you! I'm going to live, damn you, I'm going to LIVE!

That's from "Unreasoning Hysteria as the Default Position: Joan Crawford Does Foreign Policy," in which I discussed an earlier instance of The Horrible Plot by Filthy Foreigners to Destroy All the Universes for All Time Forevermore The End Period.

Good God. That post is from close to five years ago. We're hysterical ALL THE TIME. We are fucking insane.

If you wish, consult the earlier post for the argument. For now, that's all I have to say about this neverending exercise in murderous, bloody-minded national cruelty and stupidity.

The Law Is A Lie

2012-02-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

Yea, verily, the "sanctity of the law" doth operate most mightily to preserve -- let us praise all who rule us, by my sacred troth! -- the American Way:

The piracy, counterfeit and copyright battle has moved to the Super Bowl.

Speaking [at] a National Football League press conference ahead of this weekend's Super Bowl the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said special agents this week seized a total of 307 websites and snatched up 42,692 items of phony Super Bowl-related memorabilia along with other counterfeit items for a total take of more than $4.8 million - up from $3.72 million last year.

Sixteen of the sites the agency shut down during this operation known as Fake Sweep, were illegally streaming live sporting telecasts over the Internet, including NFL games. Two hundred ninety-one website domain names were illegally selling and distributing counterfeit merchandise, ICE stated.

Behold the triumph of the law-worshippers! Sixteen sites were illegally streaming sports events. Two hundred ninety-one website domain names were illegally used to sell and distribute counterfeit merchandise. (As for seizing and shutting down all these websites -- even though SOPA/PIPA are now ~~obliterated~~ ~~exposed as profoundly dangerous and authoritarian~~ postponed and, in any case, essentially irrelevant -- told ya. And I told ya before the Megaupload story broke. Yes, God is my bunkmate. Fantastic sex. And He always wants it.)

The targets were bad people engaged in illegal activities. The law-worshippers tell us that is the beginning and end of the argument. All right, perhaps they weren't bad people, at least not altogether. But they were certainly doing bad things. Illegal means bad according to these religious rites.

Moreover, it is wondrous to behold the manner in which the State uses "the law" to protect innocent, helpless victims who would otherwise be exploited in deeply horrifying ways. Here we have the NFL, a weak, mewling waif being brutalized by brazen, thuggish criminals. Who would not rush to the NFL's aid? Have you no heart? Are you devoid of compassion? After all, the NFL is merely a public cartel, public in that its power and wealth is only made possible and enforced by the State itself. What the State creates, the State will protect. Oh, sisters and brothers, ain't that the bleedin' truth. The NFL enjoys annual revenues of approximately $9 billion. Still, the starving, helpless wastrel must turn to the State for succor! In recent years and continuing at present, the bailouts, the winks and nods in place of prosecution, the consolidation and extension of criminality within those companies and and financial institutions favored and reinforced by the State have surely instructed us thoroughly on this question. Criminality exists only for those who have failed to receive the State's approving nod. If you do not pay off the State in one form or another, do not expect the State to protect you.

Ah, but these particular targets were behaving illegally and thus doing bad things. Even though many people regard this as the end of the inquiry, it properly should serve only as the starting point for analysis. I've made this argument before with regard to the evergreen controversy over "illegal" immigration. You can start with "The Triumph of Racism," in which I vivisected the nauseating Ann Coulter, as well as sanctimonious liberal idiots like Eric Alterman. As I said, after detailing some of the disgusting U.S. history regarding immigrants:

Despite all this, the myth of an inclusive America, one that opens its arms to all, continues. During the past week, I heard and read any number of comments that insist we affirmatively welcome immigrants. We welcome them so long as they are "legal" -- disregarding the hugely and incomprehensibly arbitrary nature of our immigration laws, and that those laws are crafted by already vested interests, those who also possess immense political power; we welcome them so long as they are willing to be fully "assimilated," that is, they are willing to be "Americanized," self-reliant, and independent in the mode adopted specifically by the ruling class in America -- which is to say, by affluent, white (and until very recently, exclusively male) Americans, who have always determined the particular content of the term, "American."

The issue of "illegal" immigration is one that particularly infuriates me. Almost no other subject reveals in quite so blatant and sickening a manner the vicious manipulations of power in the name of "the rule of law." I wrote a number of pieces on the subject, including:

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor -- But Not Too Many Jews, and Not Too Many Iraqis

A Nation of Lepers, Criminals and Parasites

The United States: Now a Private and Exclusive Country Club, Run by Monsters

The War on the Unique and the Unexpected -- and on Tall Top Hats (a personal favorite)

One other subject that also powerfully reveals the sham of appeals to "the law" is, of course, the abominable War on Drugs, which I discussed in "Concerning the State, the Law, and Show Trials." I wrote:

In the case of the Drug War, the State has been utilized to punish an entire class and an entire race over several generations in a hugely disproportionate way, to a degree that is eternally unforgivable.

The Drug War may be a prototypical example and indisputably repellent proof of one of my opening observations about show trials, but it is far from the only such example: "The major value of a show trial to the State is its usefulness as propaganda; more specifically, the major value is the utility of the proceeding to the enhancement of the perception of the State as legimate and/or to the demonizing of the State's chosen enemies." In this sense, the Drug War is nothing but an unending, detestable show trial from beginning to end.

Well. All that may be of some academic interest, but doesn't your soul positively ache for the awful plight of the weak, helpless, impoverished NFL? We can only be grateful that a merciful fate has provided The Law to protect such a deserving and terribly abused victim.

Now perhaps you have a better idea of why I say that I shit on The Law. "Aw, gee, Arthur, why do you have to be so rude, crude and profane? Why cancha be nicer and more civilized in your manner of presentation? You aren't going to persuade anyone this way."

Hell, I dunno. Maybe it's because most people seem to be in an irreversible coma, and I don't know any other to WAKE THEM THE FUCK UP.

Did that wake you up? That's fucking great! Now maybe we can get somewhere.

Distancing Evil, and Searching for Rescue

2012-01-31T13:15:00.000-08:00

Patrick Cockburn is frequently an unusually perceptive and reliable commentator. I've cited his work on a number of occasions.

In his latest column, Cockburn writes:

The way in which the growing confrontation with Iran is being sold by the US, Israel and West European leaders is deeply dishonest. The manipulation of the media and public opinion through systematic threat exaggeration is similar to the drum beat of propaganda and disinformation about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction that preceded the invasion in 2003.

The supposed aim of imposing sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and central bank, measures officially joined by the EU, is to force Iran to abandon its nuclear program before it reaches the point where it could theoretically build a nuclear bomb. Even Israel now agrees that Iran has not yet decided to do so, but the Iranian nuclear program is still being presented as a danger to Israel and the rest of the world.

There are two other menacing parallels between the run-up to the Iraq war and what is happening now. The purported issue is the future of the Iranian nuclear program, but, for part of the coalition mustering against Iran, the real purpose is the overthrow of the Iranian government.

...

In reality, sanctions are likely to intensify the crisis, impoverish ordinary Iranians and psychologically prepare the ground for war because of the demonization of Iran.

I obviously agree with all of this: it's what I said just the other day, as well as a few days before that.

But note what else Cockburn says, which is most definitely not similar to anything I've written. Writing about U.S. neoconservatives, the Likud Party and the Israel lobby in Washington, Cockburn states:

These are very much the same people who targeted Iraq in the 1990s. They have been able to force the White House to adopt their program and it is now, in turn, being implemented by a European Union that naively sees sanctions as an alternative to military conflict.

...

It is this latter policy [of toppling the Iranian government] that has triumphed. Israel, its congressional allies and the neoconservatives have successfully bamboozled the Obama administration into a set of policies that make sense only if the aim is overthrow of the regime in Tehran.

...

It is difficult not to admire the skill with which Netanyahu has maneuvered the White House and European leaders into the very confrontation with Iran they wanted to avoid.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Obama was strapped down, blindfolded, deprived of all food and water for weeks on end, and tortured in numerous ways. Perhaps Netanyahu screamed at him nonstop for 10 or 12 days. (It would unquestionably work on me.) And then, on top of that, Obama was tricked. Tricked!!! How unbelievably dastardly.

Thus was Obama -- who happens to be the goddamned President of the United States, who happens to be the goddamned Commander-in-Chief of all the U.S. military forces -- "forced," "bamboozled" and "maneuvered" into taking actions he doesn't begin to understand and doesn't actually intend.

Poor, poor Barack. To be exploited, taken advantage of, and grossly abused in such a horrifying manner. Let us all bow our heads for several moments of contemplative compassion.

I repeat: Cockburn is often an unusually perceptive writer, and much of his work is of considerable value. But not when it comes to comments of this kind. I also have to say, if I may speak more informally, that I am absolutely exhausted by this kind of shit.

In addition to the arguments provided in the recent posts (here and here, in case you missed them before), let's hit a few highlights. It was Barack Obama who, in a major foreign policy address in the spring of 2007 -- five years ago -- proclaimed that America was still "the last, best hope of Earth," and that "the American moment" is to extend for "this new century." I described Obama's speech as the undiluted embrace of American exceptionalism, and discussed it at length in "Songs of Death."

Obama emphasized his worship of American exceptionalism in numerous utterances, none more famous (or infamous, in my own view) than his heralded speech on race. I analyzed that speech as well. In "Obama's Whitewash," I said:

Almost every politician lies, and most politicians lie repeatedly. Yet in one sense, Obama's speech is exceptional, rare and unique -- but not for any of the reasons offered by Obama's uncritical, mindless adulators. It is exceptional for this reason: it is rare that a candidate will announce in such stark, comprehensive terms that he will lie about every fact of moment, about every aspect of our history that affects the crises of today and that has led to them, about everything that might challenge the mythological view of America. But that is what Obama achieved with this speech. It may be a remarkable achievement -- a remarkable and detestable one, and one that promises endless destruction in the future, both here and abroad.

I seem to have been correct. Imagine.

For still more on these issues, see this essay, including the numerous links provided near the beginning.

Now, seriously. Seriously, godfuckingdammit. After all this -- and after the ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and on and on and on -- an intelligent writer is going to tell me that Obama is being forced, bamboozled and maneuvered into a course of action that very probably will lead to regime change in Iran? And that result has nothing whatsoever to do with what Obama himself intends? That gentle, kindly, big-hearted Barack has been tricked?

What interests me about this kind of mental contortion -- and where I think its significance lies -- is what it achieves, and what unspoken premises it reveals. Among other things, it accomplishes a distancing from evil. If we acknowledge that Obama knows exactly what he's doing and that he intends the likely outcome of the events he sets in motion, we are compelled to conclude that he is engaged in a plan which can only be described as deeply, unforgivably evil. The effects of regime change, most likely accompanied by air strikes or military action(s) of some other kind, will include the widespread deaths of innocent human beings and vast destruction. As Cockburn points out, those same effects can be terrible and awful with notably harsh sanctions alone, but there can be no question that the results of sanctions followed by military action will be still worse.

This resort to "oh, poor Obama" argumentation also implies that, if only Obama were delivered from the clutches of those who "force" and "bamboozle" him into acting against his will, Obama would be free to follow his "true" convictions. It is further implied that those "true" convictions are far preferable, and more humane and just (and, it appears, more in line with Cockburn's own beliefs).

So I have to ask, keeping in mind even the brief recitation of Obama's own declarations as to his beliefs given above as well as his own record to date, where in hell is the evidence for those "true," better beliefs? Is there any evidence for them at all? All of the evidence to date supports only one conclusion: what Obama is doing comports fully and precisely with what he himself believes. The evidence permits no other conclusion.

To speak of Obama being "forced" and "bamboozled" in this manner may be regarded by some (although not by me) as a touching article of faith, but it cannot be considered a serious point of view, not if one is focused on the facts.

Another element of this form of denial merits mention. The implications of the "poor Obama" argument can be stated in a different way: if only we had a leader not subject to such wicked trickery and manipulation, we would be set on the right course. The policies of the U.S. Government would be vastly improved, perhaps even good -- and we will be saved!

To which I respond, as emphatically as I can: Absolutely not. You are not going to be "saved," not that way.

These issues -- distancing ourselves from evil, and the endless search for rescue by a savior (on a national and international scale, no less) -- are very complex and worthy of more detailed examination. And in fact, I'm planning such a discussion in the near future (and I've begun it, in part). So there will be more to come on these subjects.

Proof

2012-01-31T09:32:00.000-08:00

Listening to Limbaugh this morning. (Don't ask. Shut up.) He just said -- I swear to God, this is, like, totally fackshual, I'm not making it up -- that, "contrary to what most people think, I don't have much of an ego."

And he went on: "Frankly, I wish I had more of an ego."

Allrighty then. This constitutes ironclad, conclusive proof of what I've long suspected.

We're all dead.

This is Hell.

Seeming Madness: The Suffocating Unreality that Kills

2012-01-28T12:36:00.001-08:00

I occasionally remark that the most compelling reason for which I write about politics and foreign policy is that "the lives of countless people are affected because of the decisions we make." As I went on to say, in the first of my articles about the devastating effects of tribalism generally, and in politics more particularly: "[T]he final significance of all these issues is intensely personal: these questions matter so desperately because of how they affect me, and you, and all of us."

I recalled these earlier observations because I was searching for a different way of highlighting a particular aspect of the seeming madness that threatens to lay waste to much of the world as we know it today. I use the phrase "seeming madness" deliberately and with care, as I hope to make clear shortly. The two words convey different aspects of the problem I view as of critical significance.

To underscore the personal meaning of events of international scope, I offer three scenarios on a small scale. These events don't involve countries and entire peoples. The players are a few individuals, and the setting is a single neighborhood.

It's your neighborhood, and you're one of the players.

Situation One:

Several of Sam's friends are viciously murdered. Sam says he knows who did it, and he can prove it. Most people, including Sam, think that the suspected murderer is hiding in Tom's house. Sam demands that Tom surrender the alleged killer. Tom responds that he'd be happy to do so; Tom requests only that Sam show him the evidence that the suspected killer is, in fact, guilty. Sam insists he has the evidence, so Tom can't imagine why the request would be problematic.

Sam refuses Tom's offer and repeats his demand that Tom surrender the supposedly guilty man without conditions. Tom says again that he'd be glad to comply with Sam's demand; he only asks that Sam offer the evidence that Sam says he has. This back-and-forth continues; neither Sam nor Tom will alter his position. In frustration, Tom finally declares: "Look, I'll do everything you demand. You say you have evidence proving he's guilty. So show it to me. Then you can have him. You can have everything you say you want."

At that point, Sam yells: "THIS MEANS WAR!!" Sam means it. He kills Tom and his entire family, destroys Tom's house, murders several of his neighbors and wrecks much of the neighborhood.

Situation Two:

It's a short time later. Sam thinks that one of his neighbors, Henry, is hiding a huge stock of weapons. Many people aren't entirely sure why Sam believes this, but Sam never liked Henry very much. Maybe that's the explanation. (Sam would occasionally use Henry to cause harm to other neighbors Sam liked even less, but Sam still never liked Henry himself.) Sam regularly adds, in an especially threatening tone of voice, that Henry has a lot of weapons that are illegal. It's not clear to anyone why Sam believes this, but Sam repeatedly says it as if it's a fact beyond dispute. A lot of people are additionally puzzled by the fact that everyone knows Sam himself has the biggest collection of weapons in the neighborhood, in the entire city in fact.

Sam keeps repeating his accusations about Henry, and he keeps making them sound more and more ominous. Even if Sam's accusations were true, it's not readily apparent why that would represent a problem. What would Henry do with his weapons? It doesn't appear Henry could do much of anything. Despite all these questions about Sam's views and his reasons for them, Sam repeats the accusations over and over again -- and he regularly adds that something needs to be done.

Henry just wants to avoid trouble. So he tells Sam that Sam can send people to his, Henry's, house and search it from top to bottom. Henry knows they won't find anything. Sam takes him up on the offer; none of the dreaded weapons are found, and certainly no illegal ones, just as Henry had said. But Sam says that's not good enough. He knows that Henry's hiding something! So Henry says: "Then send the people to inspect my house again! You won't find anything. Inspect it as much as you like! You can have everything you say you want!"

At that point, Sam screams: "THIS MEANS WAR!!" Sam means it. He kills Henry and his entire family, destroys Henry's house, murders several of his neighbors and wrecks more of the neighborhood. This time, Sam also destroys part of the surrounding city.

Situation Three:

A few years have passed. These events are almost an exact replay of Situation Two. This time, Sam believes that a different neighbor, Charlie, has a secret weapons store. Sam again insists that some of Charlie's weapons are illegal. Just as before, many people have no idea why Sam believes any of this, but Sam keeps saying he has evidence! (That's just like Situation One, too.) All the other elements are the same, as well. Even if Charlie had the weapons, what could he do with them? Not much, it seems -- except perhaps use them to defend himself if somebody decided to attack him. Maybe someone like Sam.

Sam didn't like Henry, but he hates Charlie. No one knows why exactly, except that Charlie goes his own way. Most of the other neighbors follow Sam's lead in almost everything (remember Sam's own huge supply of weapons, bigger than anyone else's -- and Sam uses it). Charlie doesn't do whatever Sam says. Maybe that's why Sam hates him so much.

But Charlie saw what Sam did before. He knows what happened to Tom and Henry. Charlie desperately wants to avoid trouble if he possibly can. So he encourages Sam to send as many people as Sam wants to inspect his house. Sam sends a lot of people, many times. They don't find anything that could possibly cause serious concern. Despite this, and just as he did before, Sam keeps voicing his dark suspicions over and over again. And Sam always adds, "Something will have to be done." By this time, everyone knows what that means.

Because he doesn't know what else he can do, Charlie tells Sam many, many times that he will comply with all of Sam's demands -- and Charlie points out that he already has complied with those demands. Charlie says again: "You can have everything you say you want!"

As on the other occasions, Sam yells: "THIS MEANS WAR!!" Everyone knows Sam means it. And Sam gets ready to murder Charlie and his entire family. Sam also makes plans to destroy Charlie's house, to murder some of his neighbors, and finally to destroy the neighborhood entirely.

No one doubts that, this time, the neighborhood will no longer exist. If Sam should attack Charlie, they wonder if the city will survive.

**********

How would you describe Sam's behavior? Note that, in all of these scenarios, Sam's victim repeatedly assures Sam that he can have whatever Sam says he wants. Every time, despite the fact that Sam can have everything he says he wants -- and despite the further fact that Sam gets everything he says he wants -- Sam's only response is: "THIS MEANS WAR!!"

We can certainly conclude that what Sam says he wants is not what he actually wants. The scenarios compel a further conclusion, an especially terrible one: what Sam actually wants can be achieved in only one way -- the destruction of his victim. And as I've indicated, the destruction always encompasses more than just a single victim: other people are destroyed as well.

It is tempting to say that Sam is a homicidal maniac. In one sense, that's true, and I will not argue the point. But the full truth is far worse: what if Sam isn't "just" a homicidal maniac? What if he knows exactly what he wants and has set in motion a plan to achieve it? Note this: so far, Sam's plan has worked.

You realize, of course, that the scenarios I've described follow events of the last decade. In Situation One, Tom is the Taliban; the neighborhood is Afghanistan (and Pakistan). (Here is one story out of countless stories documenting what happened.) In Situation Two, Henry is Saddam Hussein; the neighborhood is Iraq. (Here is one story out of countless similar stories describing some of what happened.) In Situation Three, Charlie is the leadership of Iran, and Iran is the neighborhood, as I discussed this past week. The destruction that would almost certainly follow an attack on Iran would be ungraspably horrifying; while Iran would be the immediate neighborhood, the full effects of such an attack would be felt throughout much of the world.

I offer the above scenarios to highlight an additional element: the suffocating air of unreality that suffuses all these events, past and present. It is that unreality that makes it so difficult to grasp what is happening. What can you do when, in the course of a heated argument with an acquaintance, you keep repeating, "But I've told you and told you: you can have whatever you say you want!," and the acquaintance will only respond: "Then I'm going to kill you!" It may be insane -- on one level, it unquestionably is -- but you also know that he means it. You also know he'll do it -- for he's done it before.

Obama and the U.S. Government repeatedly insist that punishing sanctions against Iran are intended to avoid war, that they are meant as an alternative to war. The purpose, we are told, is to compel Iran to cease its attempts to develop nuclear weapons -- attempts which Iran denies it has ever made or is making now, and for which no evidence exists -- so that Iran may rejoin "the world community." This is exactly what the U.S. Government said about the sanctions against Iraq. It was a lie then and it's a lie now. What the U.S. says it wants is not what it actually wants.

In addition to the arguments in the recent post, here is a passage I wrote in October 2009:

It is at this point that I must remind you of one issue which most people remain determined to deny, even as the world plunges into agony and death:
A sanctions regime is not an alternative to war: it is the prelude to attack or invasion. Moreover, sanctions murder a hideous number of innocent people as surely as more overt acts of war.
This is the exact pattern that unfolded with Iraq, where the Clinton administration's loathsome sanctions regime inevitably and necessarily led to the invasion in 2003. And now, possibly encouraged by this obscene Nobel Prize, the exact same pattern is likely to be repeated with Iran.

(In that same article, I said, commenting about the Nobel Peace Prize that Obama had just received, that "this Nobel may, if anything, make active military confrontation with Iran more likely, not less." As I discussed, that was not the view commonly held at the time.)

Clinton's "loathsome sanctions regime" is detailed in a post which also answers the critical question: "So Iran Gets Nukes. So What?"

The lies about the Iranian sanctions and their purpose are starkly revealed in this recent New York Times story, which opens with this:

As the Obama administration and its European allies toughened economic sanctions against Iran on Monday — blocking its access to the world financial system and undermining its critical oil and gas industry — officials on both sides of the Atlantic acknowledge that their last-ditch effort has only a limited chance of persuading Tehran to abandon what the West fears is its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

That leaves open this critical question: And then what?

The story goes on to make painfully clear that the sanctions will not work, and that everyone involved knows they will not work -- that is, they will not work with regard to what the U.S. and the West say they want. It's even worse than that. The story also establishes that sanctions may very well make it more likely that Iran will conclude it should develop nuclear weapons, and the sooner the better:

In debates at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, administration officials say they have gamed out several possibilities, including an alarming one: that tougher sanctions and increased global isolation might compel Iran to decide that the only way to get the West off its back is to speed up its program and become a nuclear power.

The article offers the wan hope that the only way out of the dilemma would be if the West, i.e., the U.S., was able to "trust[] the regime." The hope is not only wan, but non-existent, for everyone knows that nothing Iran does will cause the U.S. to declare such "trust." ("You can have everything you say you want!" "THIS MEANS WAR!!")

And the article grimly concludes:

Mr. Takeyh ["a former Obama administration official and an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations"] warned that at some point soon — maybe in a year, maybe two — tightening the noose in the hope that Iran decides to negotiate could give way to a military strike or a nuclear Iran, or both. “At some point,” he said, “the song stops playing and you’re in a different, and more dangerous, place.”

The New York Times is far too "respectable" to state the only possible conclusion: that "more dangerous place" is precisely where the United States wants to be.

What does the ruling class of the United States actually want? On this point, the ruling class has been hugely cooperative: they have stated their ultimate goal repeatedly, and with great clarity. What they want is "Dominion Over the World," which is why I chose the phrase as the title for that series of essays. In the linked article from that series, I included comments from William Pfaff. Here are some of Pfaff's observations (the full article has longer excerpts, and much more on the general subject):

Militarized or otherwise, American policy remains under the influence of an unacknowledged and unjustified utopianism. This is the unanalyzed background to the work of all Washington's foreign policy agencies. It permeates the rhetoric and thinking of Republicans and Democrats alike. It is the reason Americans can think that history has an ultimate solution, and that the United States is meant to provide it.

And also from Pfaff:

The Washington political class remains largely convinced that the United States supplies the essential structure of international security, and that a withdrawal of American forces from their expanding network of overseas military bases, or disengagement from present American interventions into the affairs of many dozens of countries, would destabilize the international system and produce unacceptable consequences for American security. Why this should be so is rarely explained.

In an earlier age, when the U.S. made the decision to embark on empire, political leaders spoke more plainly about their motives and attitudes. Here is Senator Albert Beveridge, addressing the Senate on the subject of the necessity for subjugation of the Philippines:

MR. PRESIDENT, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever, "territory belonging to the United States," as the Constitution calls them. And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.

...

It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. I have been in our hospitals and seen the Filipino wounded as carefully, tenderly cared for as our own. Within our lines they may plow and sow and reap and go about the affairs of peace with absolute liberty. And yet all this kindness was misunderstood, or rather not understood. Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals. We are dealing with Orientals who are Malays. We are dealing with Malays instructed in Spanish methods. They mistake kindness for weakness, forbearance for fear. It could not be otherwise unless you could erase hundreds of years of savagery, other hundreds of years of Orientalism, and still other hundreds of years of Spanish character and custom.

We may fervently wish that such sickening and despicable views had altered in the hundred years that have passed. In what represents one of the most terrible of crimes against all of humanity and against history itself, they have not. As just two examples out of so many that we must recoil in horror, consider these typically vile comments from Hillary Clinton (which I coupled in that post with a different passage from Beveridge's speech, to stress the continuity) -- and consider that what Beveridge said is what Obama means when he declares that "the American moment" is to extend for "this new century."

For this is the view of the ruling class: "America is God. God's Will be done."

What they want is dominion over the world. They intend to have it. In pursuit of this aim, as they believe the necessity arises, they will destroy anyone and anything that stands in their way. To describe their behavior as insane is to miss the much more critical point, and to minimize the far greater danger. They know exactly what they're doing. They're hoping that you do not. To date, far too many people oblige them.

Don't help them in their pursuit of brutality, oppression, murder and vast destruction. I state again: they know exactly what they're doing. Be sure you judge them accordingly.

Oh

2012-01-25T14:00:00.000-08:00

The State laughs at you:

However, yesterday, a new theory surfaced that indicates Megaupload’s demise had less to do with piracy than previously thought. This theory stems from a 2011 article detailing Megaupload’s upcoming Megabox music store and DIY artist distribution service that would have completely disrupted the music industry.

TorrentFreak first reported about the service in early December 2011. ... Things were getting vicious in December but the quiet launch of Megabox might have been the straw that broke the millionaire’s back.

Dotcom described Megabox as Megaupload’s iTunes competitor, which would even eventually offer free premium movies via Megamovie, a site set to launch in 2012. This service would take Megaupload from being just a digital locker site to a full-fledged player in the digital content game.

The kicker was Megabox would cater to unsigned artists and allow anyone to sell their creations while allowing the artist to retain 90% of the earnings. Or, artists could even giveaway their songs and would be paid through a service called Megakey. “Yes that’s right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works,” Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak in December. Megabox was planning on bypassing the labels, RIAA, and the entire music establishment.

Lemme see. In a corporatist State -- where vastly powerful and wealthy companies and institutions form alliances with government precisely for the purpose of shutting out competitors and increasing their own power and wealth -- one group of vastly powerful and wealthy companies uses the State to eliminate a competitor and increase their own power and wealth.

Gee, think of that. How fantastically unexpected.

You know what's even better? This is an example of how things often aren't this or that. They're both. In this instance, the State puts into play one of its most cherished weapons -- fear -- as I discussed last week in "The State Is Not Your Friend":

When the State is intent upon controlling its population, when the State wants to end certain kinds of behavior, it doesn't need to punish everyone who engages in the disapproved behavior. It need only choose a few particularly visible and popular targets, which is precisely what it did when it chose Megaupload. Fear will do the rest.

This principle can be applied to all of the intrusions on personal liberty that are widely discussed at present ...

It is not the execution of State power that does most of the work. It is the fear of the execution of State power.

And the State confers an enormous benefit on its favored friends. Two for one! Such a deal.

We probably don't want to talk about this too much, for some of you might begin to wonder whether "the law" itself isn't worth a damn. And maybe "the rule of law" isn't the great defense of liberty most people think it is. Then you might get upset. I wouldn't want that.

But since I brought it up, perhaps I should confess my own view. How do I say this politely, in my constant efforts to observe the estimable norms of propriety and civility? Let's see, how's this:

To arrest your perhaps wandering attention, I announce my own perspective on this issue. With regard to what most people mean when they talk of the "sanctity" of "the law," I shit on it.

I shit on it repeatedly.

That's not very polite, I suppose. Gosh, I'm sorry. If you should want to see the reasons for my view, you can consult this article, and in particular the second part, entitled "Additional Means of Enforcement: The Law and the Rules."

And that's the point, you see. For the ruling class, "the rule of law" isn't a means of protecting you or your liberty. It's a means of enforcement, a critical way of protecting their own power and wealth.

But but but, someone challenges me, what about the Constitution and the ideals of the Founders? This might be rude, too:

What killed "democracy" in America? What gave the government over to the wealthy and powerful?

The Constitution. Of course.

The American Change in Management (formerly known as the "American Revolution," and we should work to make that "formerly" an actuality in usage) surely ranks as one of the more effective propaganda triumphs in history.

...

The Constitution created a government of, by and for the most wealthy and powerful Americans -- and it made certain (insofar as men can make such things certain) that their rule would never be seriously threatened. The most wealthy and powerful Americans were the ones who wrote it, after all.

For much more on the topic, including excerpts from Terry Bouton's valuable book, Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution, see my article, "Concerning the American Change in Management."

I sincerely hope none of this causes any discomfort. I would never dream of challenging anyone's cherished ideals.

Anyway, everything is going perfectly according to plan. But whose plan?, you might wonder. Ah, well...

The Easiest Thing in the World

2012-01-24T10:17:00.000-08:00

Chris Floyd writes about the European Union's decision to impose an embargo on Iranian oil:

The embargo will have serious, perhaps disastrous effects on many of Europe's sinking economies, which are heavy users of Iranian oil. This is particularly true in Greece ...

...

[T]he effects will be even more catastrophic for millions of innocent people in Iran. Already the lives of these innocent people -- including all of the dissidents supposedly so cherished by the West -- are being diminished and degraded by the series of sanctions imposed by the United States and its pack of tail-wagging Europuppies. But who cares about that? After all, it is glaringly obvious that our Euro-American elites are more than happy to see their own rabble go down the shock-doctrine toilet; it is inconceivable that the ruin of a bunch of dirty Mooslim furriners would disturb them for even a nano-second.

The ostensible aim of all these sanctions, we are told, is to "force Iran back to the negotiating table" on its nuclear program. This is patent nonsense. Innumerable "negotiations" -- including major concessions by Iran -- have been rejected by Washington and the puppies.

What are the actual reasons for the actions of the United States and the EU? Floyd explains:

[T]he current strategy here is two-fold.

First, while long-running sanctions do not in themselves overturn a regime, they do make the entire country much weaker. Infrastructure falls apart, society crumbles, communities wither, families fray, the people themselves become physically weaker -- indeed, they can die in droves, in multitudes, as in Iraq. All of this makes for a much softer target when you finally decide to pull the trigger on military action.

Second -- and I think much more relevant to this case -- there is the hope that ever-tightening sanctions will provoke a violent response from the victim, thereby "justifying" a war of "self-defense" against the "unprovoked" attack. The series of escalating provocations being carried out by Washington and its allies, chiefly Israel -- including an increasingly open program of assassinations -- is clearly designed to goad the Iranians into a casus belli retaliation.

To anyone who knows even a smattering of history -- which group decidedly does not include most Americans or their leaders -- all of this is horrifyingly familiar. I've described this pattern before. I beg your indulgence for offering the following passage once more, but I cannot express these ideas any more effectively than I did three years ago. In "The Slaughter of the Diseased Animals" (the title is a reference to a harrowing scene from the film Hud, and the post explains the relevance), about Israel's ongoing torture of the prisoners of Gaza, I said:

For a very long time, the United States government has specialized in the pattern pursued by Israel. The vastly more powerful nation wishes to act on a certain policy -- almost always territorial expansion, for purposes of access to resources, or to force itself into new markets, or to pursue the evil notion that economic and ideological success depend on brutality and conquest -- but a specifically moral justification for its planned actions does not lie easily to hand.

So the powerful nation embarks on a course designed to make life intolerable for the country and/or those people that stand in its way. The more powerful nation is confident that, given sufficient time and sufficient provocation, the weaker country and people will finally do something that the actual aggressor can seize on as a pretext for the policy upon which it had already decided. In this way, what then unfolds becomes the victim's fault.

The United States government has utilized this tactic with Mexico, to begin the Spanish-American War, even, dear reader, in connection with the U.S. entrance into World War II, most recently in Iraq, possibly (perhaps probably) with Iran in the future, and in numerous other conflicts. It's always the fault of the other side, never the fault of the United States itself. Yet the United States has always been much more powerful than those it victimizes in this manner. The United States always claims that its victims represented a dire threat to its very survival, a threat that must be brought under U.S. control, or eliminated altogether. The claim has almost never been true. This monstrous pattern is "The American Way of Doing Business."

If this pattern remains unchanged, the U.S. will initiate a much broader and more overt attack on Iran at some point (that is, much broader and more overt than the covert operations already ongoing). A decade passed between the first Gulf War and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but the bipartisan agreement on regime change and American control of the Middle East arrived at outright war in time.

If the pattern holds, the same will be true of Iran. The timing will depend on events, many of which are unforeseeable with the requisite degree of specificity. I will offer one far from consoling thought. This coming fall, if the presidential race appears to be very close, perhaps even with the Republican nominee enjoying a lead in the polls, it is entirely possible that the Obama administration will accelerate the timetable. In this manner, Obama and his fellow criminals will hope to ensure his reelection. As even the compressed history above demonstrates, it's frighteningly easy to manufacture a reason for military action (which I would expect to take the form of continuing air strikes, over a period of weeks or even months). Perhaps Iran sinks a U.S. ship; at least, our government will say it was Iran that did it. Or Iran kills some U.S. soldiers; at least, our government will say it was Iran that killed them.

Whatever the U.S. Government might claim, history should teach you one thing, if nothing else at all: the truth of the claim will not matter. The facts will not matter. The U.S. Government and its compliant media have been preparing this ground for years. Most Americans already believe that Iran has nuclear weapons, or is determined to get them. Most Americans will vengefully embrace the notion that Iran is evil incarnate; many Americans believe that now. The atmosphere of growing hysteria will do the rest. And Obama and his supporters will repeatedly declare that it is far too dangerous to change leaders in the midst of a military crisis. Besides, Obama will welcome the opportunity to kick some serious ass. Many Americans, even many Republicans, will heartily enjoy that aspect of his performance.

A few of our political leaders, as well as many commentators, say that Americans are exhausted by a decade of bloody war and death. (It's odd that the same thought seems not to occur to them with regard to Iraqis, or the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc. The wars are being fought in their countries, not ours. Of course, we are superior to all other peoples in all respects, including in our capacity for exquisite suffering.) These leaders and commentators insist that Americans would reject another conflict, that they are not "prepared" for it. This pays Americans a compliment they have done nothing to deserve.

And it is simply not true. An American plane is shot down, an American ship is sunk, American soldiers are killed -- and the government says, "Iran did it!" They have conclusive evidence that Iran did it! They won't show us the evidence, but they have it! Or Iran takes some action which the criminal Obama gang declares "absolutely unacceptable," an action that threatens our "national security" in some bone-chilling manner. Americans will rend the heavens with their screams for revenge, retribution and murder.

I leave the final words on this question to the superbly perceptive and wise Robert Higgs. In a long-ago post which also discussed the sheer idiocy of appeals to the wise, gentle, peace-loving "American people," I excerpted Higgs as follows:

No one should be surprised by the cultural proclivity for violence, of course, because Americans have always been a violent people in a violent land. Once the Europeans had committed themselves to reside on this continent, they undertook to slaughter the Indians and steal their land, and to bullwhip African slaves into submission and live off their labor—endeavors they pursued with considerable success over the next two and a half centuries. Absent other convenient victims, they have battered and killed one another on the slightest pretext, or for the simple pleasure of doing so, with guns, knives, and bare hands. If you take them to be a "peace-loving people," you haven’t been paying attention. Such violent people are easily led to war.

After Iraq, after Afghanistan, after Libya, after all of these horrors and many more, can the American people be led into another war? Why, it's the easiest thing in the world.

Relocating Original Sin: The State Is Not Your Friend

2012-01-23T12:32:00.000-08:00

I wrote last week about the SOPA-PIPA controversy. My major point -- in a post written before the Megaupload raid occurred -- was that this discussion is essentially an irrelevant distraction given the massive powers already held by the federal government. I argued that we appear to possess some small remaining slivers of liberty only because the State has not chosen to utilize and consistently apply the powers it already has -- at least, not yet. Then the Megaupload story broke, an event I briefly referenced in a post mainly about other matters.

Much of the commentary about SOPA, and concerning the allegedly significant "victory" of the legislation being set aside for now (none of which matters for the reasons I set forth), continues to be wildly out of touch with the realities of State power -- and with the nature of the State itself. This article offers an interesting discussion of the nature of the evidence the government relies upon to demonstrate the persuasiveness of its indictment. Many of the writer's contentions are valid and valuable within the narrow limits of the argument, but I must repeat that I consider all such discussions to be sideshows, while most people don't even see the main attraction.

After a detailed discussion of highly questionable and suspect aspects of the government's approach, the final paragraph states:

But the bigger overall issue is why this action and why now? Companies in the US have filed civil cases against Megaupload in the US and the company was willing to come to the US and deal in US courts. Taking it up to a criminal "conspiracy" and racketeering charge seems like overkill, with tremendous collateral damage and chilling effects.

Everything was working fine! Companies that felt they had been damaged had legal recourse, and Megaupload made itself available to those legal proceedings. So, aw, gee, why would our nice government, a government solely committed to justice, fairness and proportionality in all matters, decide to make such a big deal about it? And why would our nice government do this especially when it leads to "tremendous collateral damage and chilling effects"?

I could simply say, "Talk about the missing the point," and the comment would be entirely accurate. But I urge you to consider the premise underlying this approach. Most people -- and I dare say, many of you reading this -- commit the identical error in different forms. During the long nightmare of the Iraq occupation, one of my constant themes was the unforgivable inaccuracy and moral blindness of those who maintained that the United States had committed a terrible "blunder," that the invasion and occupation of Iraq represented a failure of judgment, or a monumental "mistake."

It was none of those things. It was a hideous crime, in fact, an unending series of crimes. It still is. When commentators ask, "Why is the State doing this?," in the manner of the article about Megaupload, their question assumes that the government is making a mistake in some form, that the government has "bad" information or has failed to appreciate the consequences of its actions. (You'll find a detailed examination of this topic in "'Regrettable Misjudgments': The Shocking Immorality of Our Constricted Thought.")

I should mention here another hugely costly variation of this error, one that continues unabated today. Most people still argue that the "mistake" of Iraq resulted from "faulty" intelligence, that if only the intelligence had been correct (or if those in power had paid attention to the accurate intelligence), the invasion and occupation would never have occurred. This, too, is completely wrong. I've written about this at enormous length, and it has made absolutely no difference (even, I deeply regret to note, in the case of writers who I know have read some of my articles on this subject, and still argue about the importance of "getting the intelligence right"). You can start with "Played for Fools Yet Again: About that Iran 'Intelligence' Report," or "You, Too, Can and Should Be an 'Intelligence Analyst'," and follow the numerous links. To state the argument very briefly: "intelligence" is always irrelevant to major decisions of policy. If you're arguing about the intelligence and what it allegedly shows, you're going to lose. This matters so crucially because the precise error is now being repeated with regard to Iran. If the U.S. Government decides to attack Iran, it will not be because of what the "intelligence" shows. It will be a decision of policy -- in brief, as still another means of attaining and consolidating American global hegemony. The "intelligence" will not matter.

The correct view of the problem, and events that occur every day continue to prove it is correct, asks a very different question: What if actions that you might consider a "mistake," or a decision that you think results from incorrect information and/or analysis, are precisely what the State intends? What if all the consequences that you view as so negative or even horrific are exactly what the State wants? The article about Megaupload excerpted above notes the "tremendous collateral damage and chilling effects" of the government raid and indictment, and implicitly says: "Oh, the government can't possibly want any of that to happen!"

Think again:

The shock waves of the case appeared to be spreading among Web sites that offer file sharing. FileSonic, which provides online data storage, said in a statement on its site that it had halted its file-sharing services.

“All sharing functionality of FileSonic is now disabled,” it said. “Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally."

When the State is intent upon controlling its population, when the State wants to end certain kinds of behavior, it doesn't need to punish everyone who engages in the disapproved behavior. It need only choose a few particularly visible and popular targets, which is precisely what it did when it chose Megaupload. Fear will do the rest.

This principle can be applied to all of the intrusions on personal liberty that are widely discussed at present: warrantless surveillance, detention without charge or trial, and the rest of the awful list. The State doesn't have to keep tabs on everyone; it need only keep a few victims firmly under its thumb. The State doesn't have to ship very many people to detention camps; it need only "disappear" a (comparatively) few individuals here and there. Word gets around; people talk; stories are written (and the State isn't in the least concerned about those stories: those stories help the State). I'm reminded, and not for the first time, of something I read several years ago about the Stasi in East Germany. After previously secret records were made available, some analysts concluded that the Stasi spied "only" on about one in ten East Germans. But no one could ever know who that one person was, if they were among those watched, or if they might be among them tomorrow.

It is not the execution of State power that does most of the work. It is the fear of the execution of State power.

On a deeper level, questions about the State's reasons for acting, when those questions implicitly rely on the view of the State as an essentially benign actor, forget the nature of the State itself, including its origins. On that question, I refer you to "The State and Full Spectrum Dominance." In that article, I excerpted Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State. Nock wrote:

The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner. On the negative side, it has been proved beyond peradventure that no primitive State could possibly have had any other origins. Moreover, the sole invariable characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation of one class by another. In this sense, every State known to history is a class-State. Oppenheimer defines the State, in respect of its origin, as an institution "forced on a defeated group by a conquering group, with a view only to systematizing the domination of the conquered by the conquerors, and safeguarding itself against insurrection from within and attack from without. This domination had no other final purpose than the economic exploitation of the conquered group by the victorious group."

Thus, the essence of the State is domination, oppression, brutalization and exploitation. This is true even of these glorious and free United States of America, as I discussed in "Concerning the American Change in Management" (the phrase which properly should replace "American Revolution").

From time to time, the State may act in ways that benefit, at least temporarily, those who are not members of the ruling class. It is critical to see that such actions are only another means of control. They are the means of momentarily placating those who might threaten the ruling class's hold on power if events were allowed to run out of control. As just one example, I discussed some time ago the "benefits" of the health "care" bill: "Concerning Those Who Manufacture and Eat Shit." As I argued, every law in every regime, even under a totalitarian system, benefits some people. When we analyze the operations of the State, such issues are a distraction and a camouflage. But it works almost every time.

The naive questioning of the State's rationale for acting raises one further issue. Also implicit in the kind of questioning about the Megaupload case discussed above is an odd kind of presumptuousness and arrogance. The idea is that, if only the government understood these issues the way I do, if only the State had all the information I do, then it would act in the ways I suggest (or it would cease acting in the ways I criticize). We see this kind of commentary on a regular basis on most blogs, whether on the right or the left (it's especially popular on liberal and progressive sites). When you think about it, it's a very peculiar perspective. Does the author of the Megaupload column truly believe that he can see and understand with wondrous clarity the "tremendous collateral damage and chilling effects" of the government's action, but the government itself does not? Or, to choose the most extreme of current State policies, do you think that you comprehend how deeply evil it is to murder a human being simply because someone in power decides to do so, on the basis of a reason he need never disclose or even perhaps for no reason at all -- but that those who direct the State's actions do not understand that it is evil?

As for the belief that, if only people like you directed the State's operations, everything would be infinitely better and perhaps wonderful ... well. Keeping in mind even the brief comments on the nature and origins of the State set forth above, that means that everything would be much better, even great -- if you ran what is, in essence, a system of domination, oppression, brutalization and exploitation. That's what the State is. The purpose of the State is power. Full stop. Not the power to provide health care, or full employment, or education, or or or or or or ... Power for its own sake. Power itself.

Do you still want to run the State? If you do, and I genuinely say this with the kindest of intentions, go to hell.

Helping Each Other

2012-01-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

Many, many thanks to those who responded to my request for help in making next month's rent and my very minimal living expenses. I now have just enough to cover the basics, so the cats and I are all right for the next little while. ("All right" is a strictly comparative term nowadays.)

If you can -- and I realize that times are very hard for many of us -- I urge you to send something here, too. Two people and four wonderful dogs badly need some help. In looking over the donations I've received over the last few days, I realized that I could send a little bit myself, so I did. I hope that doesn't upset anyone who sent me a donation, but I couldn't read that post and not send something if I possibly could. I decided I could, so I did.

I worry about not being able to pay rent and facing eviction and homelessness every single month. It takes a terrible toll. I've stopped trying to figure out exactly what it's done to me emotionally and psychologically; at this point, I'm probably better off not knowing the details of the damage. Just as I realized a few years ago that, given my seriously deteriorating health and my inability to get medical care, I couldn't remember what it was like to feel "normal" physically, I realize that I have no idea what it's like to feel "normal" about most other fundamental aspects of my life (feeling secure in a home, knowing that money for food will be there next week and next month, and so on).

And what is "normal" in these times, anyway? For more and more people, it's what Sasha and I go through. This is normal.

Awful doesn't begin to describe that terrible fact. What is additionally awful is that for untold millions of Americans, this has always been normal. (And for especially disfavored Americans, this is normal on a good day.)

Well, please do what you can. I absolutely believe we must help each other to whatever extent we can, and perhaps even when it seems we can't. No one else is going to.

My deepest gratitude once again to all of you who are so wonderfully kind and generous.

You Probably Owe Me a Million Dollars! For Serious!

2012-01-20T08:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, I wrote:

If I had a million dollars, I'd bet all of it on the proposition that the U.S. Government has the power right now to shut down any and every website, internet provider, etc., etc., etc., etc. it wishes, and to do so permanently. And they could throw a whole lot of people in jail because they "threaten national security" or violate some statute, regulation, administrative rule, whatever.

God loves me. He doesn't love these folks. And people arrested -- in New Zealand. So much for those getaway plans. (Despite what follows, there is nothing remotely funny about the actual story.)

So I won the bet. Oh, yeah, there was an actual bet. If you read the rest of yesterday's post (and I know you did!), you saw my musings from several years ago on the subject of all the powers granted to government buried in statutes, regulations, administrative rulings, and all kinds of other crap that you've never heard of. That maybe no one has ever heard of. But those powers are there somewhere. So, as I said, "the U.S. Government already possesses the power to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whomever it wants."

But that's not true for the government alone. Oh, no. Nyuh-huh.

I have right here in my hot blogging hands a law from 1851. It's just part of a bill titled: "Protection of Our Open Parks and Safety of the Home and Interstitial Trellises." They had an acronym for it: "POOPSHIT." They had a sense of humor then. They weren't like today's pompous Washington assholes, at least not completely. And they knew words like "interstitial"!

You're probably wondering about the "trellises" part. There's a whole section about the crucial importance of trellises for displaying flowers and vines and stuff, and how trellises bring beauty to our towns and cities. I don't get it either, but them was different times, my friend. I guess trellises were a big deal to them. I'm just telling you what's in the goddamn bill. I didn't say I understand it.

But I understand this:

Section 2381, subsection A, subsubsection ccd94(v)(viii)(fff72a12): POOPSHIT also codifies the general understanding at common law (at least the general understanding as we understand it) that a binding contract shall have been formed between the author of any public proclamation of intent to form an agreement between said author and any other party who peruses said proclamation. This shall be true even when such intent to form an agreement is expressed in hypothetical or conditional form, typically designated by the employment of terms such as "if," "I wish...," "were it to be the case...," and so on. All parties to such binding contract formed in said manner shall be entitled to enforcement of the contract's terms.

It is the intent of this section that its provisions shall be applied to public proclamations that fall under the ambit of POOPSHIT, as well as all other public proclamations of any nature.

Applying this section from POOPSHIT to the instant case, we can say:

1. The blog post at issue is a "public proclamation."

2. I'm the author of said public proclamation.

3. The relevant language in the first paragraph of my post yesterday stated, "If I had a million dollars, I'd bet all of it..." The agreement is thus "expressed in hypothetical or conditional form" within the meaning of the statute.

4. If you read yesterday's blog post, you are "any other party who peruses said proclamation."

5. Applying the plain meaning of the statute to the public proclamation of which I am the author and where you are "any other party who peruses said proclamation," a binding contract was formed between us.

6. YOU OWE ME A MILLION DOLLARS.

You can be a person of honor and just send it to me. Or, you can make me sue you. You know you'll lose. This statute is still on the books, and it is good law.

But because I'm such a nice guy, I'll give you an out. It's nearing the end of the month. As regular readers know, I have no source of income other than donations to this blog. This blog WHICH UNERRINGLY PREDICTS THE FUTURE. I only have one-quarter of what I need to pay next month's rent. And I have some other bills that have to be paid (Department of Water & Power & Trellises, phone, internet, blahblahblah, FOOD).

That is, I'm, like, close to broke. So if you want to send a donation, even a small one, that would be wonderful. Maybe I can pay the rent, keep blogging, and continue to PREDICT THE FUTURE. (Of course, maybe you don't want to know the future, which I would completely understand. In that case, I'll see you in court.)

But if you send a little donation, I'll consider that the terms of our BINDING CONTRACT have been fulfilled. I'll even send you a notarized email saying that. (Okay, not notarized.)

Or, you know, you can feel HORRIBLY GUILTY for years and years and years. You'll have welched on a BINDING CONTRACT!! What kind of person are you?

But I know you're a great person and an all-around fabulous human being. I know you'll do the right thing.

Now the cats and I have to consult our crystal ball (Will the cats ever eat again? YOU have the answer!), so that we can write more posts PREDICTING THE FUTURE. Thank you for reading, and for being such a wonderful person.

P.S. That is a real statute. No shit. Haha. A little legislative humor there.

It's the End of the World! Again! And Again! And Again!

2012-01-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

I tell you this with profound seriousness. And I'm completely sober! (For the moment.) If I had a million dollars, I'd bet all of it on the proposition that the U.S. Government has the power right now to shut down any and every website, internet provider, etc., etc., etc., etc. it wishes, and to do so permanently. And they could throw a whole lot of people in jail because they "threaten national security" or violate some statute, regulation, administrative rule, whatever.

I'd win that bet.

Look, protests against the ever-metastasizing warfare-surveillance State are jake with me. So kudos to Google, Wikipedia, et al. -- as well as all you "ordinary" peepuls -- for making a big stink, and causing some Senators to interrupt their power lunches to say, "Oh, oops, haha, forgot there were human beings out there! Actual people with actual lives! Who knew? But okay, my bad!" And they set aside the latest power grab -- for the moment. [singing] They haaave a seeecret ...[enough singing] They know this latest power grab doesn't matter a damn, as we'll see in a moment.

Still, awesome protest! Um, was there protest on a similar scale about the NDAA? I guess I missed it. But heck, that only means the government can throw any of us or, you know, a million of us in jail forever, without charges or trial, without recourse to an attorney, without telling anyone what they've done with us or why. So I think this has worked out fine. I mean, we can all have a great time on the internet, which will make it that much easier for our overseers to identify the ones that need to be disappeared. Forever. See how that works? That is AWE SUM, dude! It's, like, synergy. But before you're hauled away, you can watch movies and teevee and stuff. Party on!

What's that crazy guy yelling from way out there, where nobody can hear him? WHAT? It's all kind of moot, since they can murder any of us anyway? Whenever they want? And ... huh, what? They don't even have to have a reason -- to murder us? He really is nuts! Seriosomente, man. WHAAAAT???? Oh ... mebbe not so nuts. No problem. Like The Man said, in the long run, we'll all be dead. Google it! You can!!

You know what is totally keen about, ta-da, "this time in history"? It's like there never were any other times at all. No history! No past, no future, barely even a present. This moment is all th -- ah, gone. Can't even finish a sentence! Pixel time! You'll have to read the rest of this really fast. Or skip it. Teevee!

I did a quick search of my archives to locate earlier posts on The End of the Internet, and I immediately found two. (I think there are more, but two makes the point.) One is from November 2009, "The Internet as You Know It Will Cease to Exist." Many of the same issues arose with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

One of the points I raised is the claim, repeated an endless number of times in endless variations, that this invention will change everything! As regards the internet, the claim is: when information is free, tyranny is dead forever! To which, I replied: Shit, man, no -- but (heh) with more words:

[I]f you understood the possibilities that might be realized by the internet, do you seriously think those people and interests possessing the most power and wealth did not? Yes, we're all special and unique and all that keen stuff, but the ruling class is people, too (revolting thought, I understand, but also true). And the ruling class is not stupid. It is certainly not stupid about this kind of thing. So our betters will do everything in their power to harness and redirect every advance to their own purposes. Again, consult history. This is always the pattern.

But that same post had good news. It did! Check it out. I also mentioned the critical importance for the future (for the future of us "ordinary" schmucks, anyway) of going local, and included some comments about how to do that on the internetz! And I ended on an upbeat note. (It was the drugs. Where the hell is that phone number?)

The other post about The End of the Future Forever and Ev-- (haha, thought it had ended right there) is from June 2009, "You're on the Battlefield Right Now." Ah, shades of the NDAA. See how the same themes come up again and again? That began with a discussion of how the Pentagon and the military generally regard cyberspace as part of the battlefield they want to control, and what that means for you and your 'puter. (Nothing good.)

But -- and this is what I truly wish you would fasten your bleeding eyes on -- I then referenced an earlier discussion of mine about FISA. What I said about FISA applies with full force to all the debates about the NDAA, and about internet "piracy" bills. My ongoing theme was and is: "The selective focus on FISA misses the crucial larger picture in a way that ensures that the ruling class's hold on increasingly tyrannical power will never be consistently or seriously challenged -- which is, of course, precisely what the ruling class wants."

My argument was this, and I repeat that the identical argument can be applied to indefinite detention or control of the internet:

With regard to FISA and issues of liberty and privacy in general, let me now ask you a few questions. How long do you think it would take you to identify, read, and understand every provision in every statute, regulation and other authorization that gives surveillance powers to the government? Furthermore: Would you know each and every place to look, or how to determine what those places were? Additionally: With a staff of 20, or 50, could it be done, even if you were provided with limitless time and limitless funds?

I submit to you, without qualification or reservation, that you could not do it. No one could. Consider that most legislators in Washington aren't even aware of much of what's in the bills they so eagerly vote on. Consider the prohibitive length and complexity of legislation that comes before Congress. That's true of what is going on now. If you tried to track down every piece of legislation, every regulation, every administrative agency ruling, and every other pronouncement still in effect that allows the government to surveil and otherwise keep track of you, me, the guy down the street, the woman next door and the man in the moon, based on alleged concern with and the need to protect us all from the ravages of drugs, "illicit" sex, any and all other suspected criminal activity and, natch, terrorism, how on God's green earth would you do it? You couldn't. I further submit to you that the only reason you appear to have some precious remnants of freedom left, and the only reason you remain at liberty, is that the government hasn't comprehensively focused on all the powers it already possesses and hasn't come anywhere close to utilizing them fully and consistently. This is the moment you should fall to your knees and thank whatever gods may be for the miraculous, close to perfect incompetence of the pathetically ineffectual blockheads in Washington.

The conclusion of the argument is one almost no one chooses to face squarely. Nonetheless, it is the truth: the U.S. Government already possesses the power to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whomever it wants.

Of course, it's not only incompetence that allows you to continue to believe you have some small remnants of liberty, although the incompetence of government generally is entirely staggering to behold. It is also the degree of determination of the ruling class in implementing the powers they already possess, which in turn is related to how much they think they can get away with. From that perspective, protests have great value, and the bigger and louder, the better. But wide-scale protests, especially if they become genuinely threatening to the ruling class, then trigger another element: the desperation of the ruling class to maintain control. If they feel sufficiently threatened, the crackdowns will begin, and their scale will at least match the scale of the protests.

Tragically enough, there's an additional factor. It's horrifying to think about, in multiple ways, but consider the following. What if there were another series of attacks here in the U.S., on the scale of 9/11 or even worse? What if attacks occurred in several major cities on the same day, or within a week of each other? What if five or ten thousand people were killed? Do you have any doubt, any doubt at all, that the government could haul in very large numbers of people (with no charges, or very vague ones concerning "threats to public safety"), shut down websites, and exert "control" in a multitude of other ways -- and that very, very few people would protest? Even after everything that's happened in the last ten years?

It's impossible to predict the particular form of future events. Liberty might continue to vanish slowly, in small increments, with the worst excesses targeting "those" people and not anyone you know, so that the illusion of freedom may continue for the majority of people. Or a cataclysm might occur, either by way of attacks as I described, or widespread financial collapse, or a series of natural and/or human-caused disasters, or ... The general direction cannot be disputed: liberty is vanishing. At some point, it will be gone entirely.

But my point, the point I've been making for years, is that it's gone now. Most people have simply rendered themselves incapable or unwilling to acknowledge and accept the fact. Read Jonathan Turley's recent column, "10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free." The reasons he discusses are assassination of U.S. citizens (yeah, they can murder you and anyone else they choose, but...teevee!), indefinite detention, arbitrary justice ... you know the list.

In my view, the most critical paragraph in Turley's article is this one (my emphasis):

An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.

That's the authoritarian state we live in now. Compare that to this passage I wrote in April 2006 (yes, six years ago; just kill me now -- oh, you will? thanks!):

To put the point the other way, which will hopefully penetrate the wall of resistance erected by so many people: the only reason you aren't in a concentration camp right now is because Bush hasn't decided to send you to one -- yet. But he claims he has the power to do so -- and there are almost no voices of any prominence to dispute the contention. What is even worse than the loss of liberty is the fact that most Americans aren't even aware that the loss has occurred.

My very serious suggestion, which I humbly submit to you, is: You still have your life. Live it.

Go local, in every area of your life, to the fullest extent possible. Seek out alternative arrangements beyond the bounds of the State, invent them as needed. Live your life, with all the joy and happiness that you can -- and not on their terms.

Politics, certainly politics in the modern State, is about control, force and violence. Politics is not going to save you. It never was.

Live your life. More than that: live it ecstatically.

Ordinary Evil (I): Just Admit that You're Voting for Hitler, Okay?

2012-01-17T14:51:00.000-08:00

Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
-- W.H. Auden

I view the following comments as of special significance with regard to one critical issue, and that is the reason I have transcribed them. Here is Rick Santorum speaking recently about the threat to the United States that he believes Iran represents (the emphasis is mine):

And now they're in the process of developing nuclear weapons, and it appears obvious to me that the administration is doing little to nothing. Now, I'm hopeful that some of the things we're seeing with respect to the nuclear program that the United States is involved with, which is on occasion scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly. I think we should send a very clear message, that if you are a scientist from Russia or from North Korea or from Iran and you're gonna work on the nuclear program to develop a nuclear bomb from Iran, you are not safe.

And if people say, "Well, you can't go out and assassinate people," well, tell that to Awlaki. Okay? We've done it. We've done it for an American citizen. We can certainly do it for someone who's producing a nuclear bomb that can be dropped on the state of Israel or provides a nuclear shield for a country that will spread terrorism with impunity and change the face of the world.

You can watch the video at Sibel Edmonds' site. In the video, at 0:28 (immediately after Santorum says, "scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead"), a bubble appears with this editorial comment: "He just admitted that the U.S. has a program to covertly kill Iranian scientists." It appears (by implication, although not by explicit statement) that this is Edmonds' view as well.

Imprecise argumentation of this kind is not helpful to those of us who strongly criticize the innumerable criminal actions of the United States Government. The inaccuracy of the comment is easily deflected. Moreover, it is the kind of remark that is often characterized by opponents as "hysterical," and it serves as what opponents regard as a valid reason to disregard your arguments in their entirety.

Santorum is speaking extemporaneously; he is not reading a prepared speech. The sentence is awkward and ungrammatical, but the strong sense of it is that Santorum is "hopeful" that the U.S. "is involved with" "some of the things we're seeing" -- and one of "the things we're seeing" is that "on occasion scientists ... turn up dead." Santorum is not saying that he knows the U.S. has ordered and caused the deaths, and he has not "admitted that the U.S. has a program to covertly kill Iranian scientists." He hopes that is what the U.S. is doing, but he doesn't know it.

Besides, Santorum isn't in the Obama administration, and he doesn't speak for the government in any capacity about these events. He is not in a position to "admit" anything that the Obama administration or the U.S. Government do. One person who is in such a position, Defense Secretary Panetta, categorically denies the charge: "I can tell you one thing: The United States was not involved in that kind of effort. That's not what the United States does ... We have some ideas as to who might be involved but we don't know exactly who was involved ... we were not involved in any way, in any way, with regards to the assassination that took place there."

That is the official, public position of the U.S. Government: it is not "involved" in these deaths "in any way." We may not believe the denial -- there are, in fact, many reasons to disbelieve it -- but the denial of involvement is what is on the record from the government itself.

The imprecision matters because this is typical of how public attention to matters of momentous importance is diverted onto comparatively trivial issues. Santorum can easily respond to the notion that he has "admitted" an assassination program by insisting that he only said he was "hopeful" that such a program was in place, and that if he were president there would be such a program. And then we're off into the weeds of what Santorum said or didn't say, what he actually meant, what he's claiming and why, etc. and so on. Meanwhile, the far more important point is ignored altogether.

Analytic imprecision is a constant in our public debates, and I just discussed another instance of this phenomenon in "The Varieties of Pissing." When the ruling class of the United States pisses on the entire world and on every human being who is not among those who are privileged and powerful, some Marines pissing on three dead bodies is barely worthy of notice. To be sure, it remains thoroughly sickening, but it is a third-order crime. The first crime is that the Marines are in Afghanistan; the second crime is that they are there to murder human beings. All our public energies are devoted to the crime of least significance, while the meaning and significance of the first two remain unchallenged.

The real killer in Santorum's remarks -- in more ways than one -- is contained in the second paragraph. Read those comments again:

And if people say, "Well, you can't go out and assassinate people," well, tell that to Awlaki. Okay? We've done it. We've done it for an American citizen. We can certainly do it for someone who's producing a nuclear bomb that can be dropped on the state of Israel or provides a nuclear shield for a country that will spread terrorism with impunity and change the face of the world.

You may view Santorum as a murderer without conscience on the basis of his "hope" that the U.S. Government has instituted a program of assassination. You might argue that Santorum is a genocidal killer in embryonic form when he maintains that the U.S. can "go out and assassinate people" (and Rick: so much for your "sanctity of human life," buddy) -- for one obvious implication of his remarks is that the U.S. Government can murder any and all of those human beings it regards as "threats" to our "security." Why, if the government determines that ten thousand, or a million, or even, say, six million people constitute a serious threat to our "national security," the U.S. Government can kill them all!

"We've done it," Santorum says. He's right. I well understand that the one form of argument that is absolutely prohibited in our public debates is to identify the meaning of a principle. Nonetheless, for the ten or twelve of you who resist the fatal corruptions of our "public discourse," I state that the "legitimacy" of wide-scale murder, even of millions of human beings, is the meaning of the operative principle.

But -- and here's the additional killer in Santorum's remarks -- note where Santorum correctly locates the "justification" for his view: the murder of al-Awlaki, an American citizen. Santorum is a "crazy" Republican nutjob, right? He's not the one who ordered the murder of al-Awlaki. You know who did: the "enlightened," "nuanced," Nobel Peace Prize-winning Democrat in the White House. Many liberals and progressives claim to be sickened and terrified by the prospect that some "crazy" Republican might be the next president -- and they forbid themselves to acknowledge that it is a Democratic president who has provided the moral sanction and "justification" for what could, in principle, become a genocidal, worldwide campaign of murder.

But at least he's not crazy! I'm reminded of a brief passage I wrote in what was almost a throwaway post from a year and a half ago:

Oh, President Obama! What a visionary! What a leader! Such momentous change from the dark days of evil, crazy Bush!

I always especially enjoy that argument from liberals and progressives. "Oh, the Democrats might be doing most of the same things, well, practically all the same things, and maybe some of the things Obama's doing are even worse ... but the Republicans are crazy!"

Yeah, I see how that works. Obama and the Democrats do all this -- and they're entirely sane. They know exactly what they're doing, why, and even what the effects will be.

This, we are repeatedly assured, is a notable improvement, for which we should be properly grateful.

What Americans desperately need to face, and what most of them adamantly refuse to acknowledge, is that to vote for either the Democratic or Republican nominee for president later this year is to vote for these horrors. It is to support them. (I consider it impossible that Ron Paul will be the Republican nominee, whatever your view of his candidacy might be. If by some miracle he were, he would never be elected. The ruling class, including its indispensable ancillary component, the media complex, will not permit it. I don't consider this an arguable point, not in this world.)

At this point, because the great majority of Americans will not allow themselves to understand it, I must repeat the meaning of the most important gift of the admirably "normal," "knowledgeable," and sane Democratic administration:

Obama and his administration claim the "right" to murder anyone in the world, wherever he or she may be, for whatever reason they choose -- or for no reason at all. Obama and his administration recognize no upper limit to the number of people they can murder in this manner: they can murder as many people as they wish. And they claim there is nothing at all that may impede their exercise of this "right."

This is the game entire. Understand this: once Obama and his administration have claimed this, there is nothing left to argue about. They can murder you -- and they can murder anyone else at all.

Tens of millions of Americans will vote for the Democratic and Republican nominees for president. They will not understand that they are thereby supporting evil. They refuse to consider withdrawing that support. If a sufficiently large number of people refused to vote at all, then my fable might even become true in some form: "The Tale that Might Be Told." I've said a few times that that is only a fable, and that I never intended it to be a projection of events that could actually occur. I've changed my mind on that point. Since I have spent the last five or six years documenting developments that I never expected to see transpire in my lifetime, including in this post, I now think that "tale" is not so farfetched after all. Suffering and death do not exhaust the possibilities for human transformation, not in my view. And I freely acknowledge that I unconditionally love that little story.

Most Americans are like badly damaged children: they expect evil to announce itself in advance, with the aid of thundering, ominous music on the soundtrack of their increasingly desperate lives. But that is not how evil most commonly arrives. It comes with a gentle, reassuring smile. It insinuates itself with soothing platitudes. It speaks of "threats" to our "security" that cannot be countenanced. It says it only wants to make you "safe."

And the murders go on, and they increase in number. Later on, those who manage to survive will be heard to say, "But we never knew it would come to that." Or they insist that most people "went along," and ask: Who was I to stand against that tide? Yet they will not be able to say they were not warned, or that no one had ever seen such horrors before. Consider this:

"You know," he went on, "when men who understand what is happening--the motion, that is, of history, not the reports of single events or developments--when such men do not object or protest, men who do not understand cannot be expected to. How many men would you say understand--in this sense--in America? And when, as the motion of history accelerates and those who don't understand are crazed by fear, as our people were, and made into a great 'patriotic' mob, will they understand then, when they did not before?

"We learned here--I say this freely--to give up trying to make them understand after, oh, the end of 1938, after the night of the synagogue burning and the things that followed it. Even before the war began, men who were teachers, men whose faith in teaching was their whole faith, gave up, seeing that there was no comprehension, no capacity left for comprehension, and the thing must go its course, taking first its victims, then its architects, and then the rest of us to destruction. ..."

You will find more passages from Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free in my essay from September 2006 about the passage of the Military Commissions Act: "Thus the World Was Lost."

As I wrote, just one year ago:

Obama will not renounce his claim to the "right" of ultimate violence. Who will be next on his kill list? Who else is on it now? With the dutiful acquiescence of the courts -- so much for your vaunted "rule of law" -- we will never know. But wait: you may know to some extent, when the "disappearances" can no longer be explained by coincidence, or you see the corpses pile up.

Oh, that could never happen here!, you exclaim in a petulant whine. This is America! That, too, is a critical part of the mythology Obama burnished for you last night. Consult history: all peoples in all places always believe it can't happen here.

Last evening, Obama also said: "Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world." He should know.

No, evil does not come to us proclaiming its true nature. Evil is not committed only by screaming, psychopathic maniacs. Most of the time, and certainly in the beginning, it seems completely ordinary. It is, as Auden said, "unspectacular and always human." It appears to be entirely normal. The greatest danger is not the person whom you view as obviously "crazy." The greatest danger is the person you regard as normal, thoughtful and well-spoken, the person who claims to be opposed to the horrors and who says he's on your side. This is precisely why Obama (and the Democrats generally) constitute a singular threat to those of us who genuinely value the sanctity of a single life -- and this is what a few of us said before the last presidential election: see, from May 2008, "The Fatal Illusion of Opposition."

No, we will not see evil for what it actually is. We invite it into our home. We ask it to eat at our own table.

To be continued, very soon.

The Varieties of Pissing

2012-01-12T13:22:00.000-08:00

Here is William Blum describing the destruction of Iraq by the United States (offered by Chris Floyd in a recent post; emphasis added):

"Most people don't understand what they have been part of here," said Command Sgt. Major Ron Kelley as he and other American troops prepared to leave Iraq in mid-December. "We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them."

"It is pretty exciting," said another young American soldier in Iraq. "We are going down in the history books, you might say." (Washington Post, December 18, 2011)
Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of "The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another." The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly, ... how the people of that unhappy land lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lying anywhere in wait for children to pick them up ... a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again …

The facts set forth by Blum are simply that: facts. These issues are not open to dispute, and one can discover the truth of what Blum says by reading numerous articles from many sources. Despite this, Blum notes that Barack Obama once again proclaims this all-encompassing destruction of an entire country and its peoples to be "an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making."

This complete inversion of the truth is the consequence of centuries of unending lies. The result is day turned into night, life transformed into death -- and all of it is, must be, good. These are the perverse demands of American mythmaking, as I described it in "The Blood-Drenched Darkness of American Exceptionalism" from July 2010:

[T]he U.S. invasion and occupation represent an ongoing series of war crimes. This is not an arguable point in any respect. Since it cannot be argued, it is ignored altogether.

And it is not just ignored, as malignantly evil as that would be by itself. The American exceptionalist myth tells us that the United States is unique and uniquely good. It is not sufficient to ignore negative consequences of our actions: we must transform any and all negative consequences into a positive good. This process has been rigorously followed for every American intervention ever undertaken (going back to the Philippines, then with the American entrance into World War I, on into many interventions after World War II, on into Iraq and Afghanistan today), and the identical process has been well underway for several years in connection with Iraq in particular.

...

Such is the limitless power of delusion on this scale: a blood-drenched tragedy of world-historical proportion becomes "an extraordinary achievement," and a criminal war of aggression is transmuted by the alchemy of cultural myth-making into a "success." This is the evil to be found at the rotted heart of the myth: whatever the United States does, it will lead to good and only to good.

And all of it -- all of it -- is a damnable, unforgivable lie.

In January 2012, we begin another year that will be filled with pain, terror, blood and death. The monstrous bearer of these terrible gifts will again be the government of the United States. The trail of suffering extends through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. Perhaps Iran will be yet another recipient of the United States' magnificent generosity.

The ambition of the United States ruling class extends far beyond what is suggested by this list. As I noted in "The Face of the Killer Who Is Your President," quoting Nick Turse:

This global presence -- in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

...

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans.

One further element must be added to the list of horrors:

Obama and his administration claim the "right" to murder anyone in the world, wherever he or she may be, for whatever reason they choose -- or for no reason at all. Obama and his administration recognize no upper limit to the number of people they can murder in this manner: they can murder as many people as they wish. And they claim there is nothing at all that may impede their exercise of this "right."

This is the game entire. Understand this: once Obama and his administration have claimed this, there is nothing left to argue about. They can murder you -- and they can murder anyone else at all. What in the name of anything you hold holy remains to be "debated" once a vile, damnable "right" of this kind has been claimed?

We recoil from understanding the nature and breadth of the horror that surrounds us. That is understandable, to some extent. Survival sometimes requires a certain degree of selective focus. (I had originally written "denial" instead of "selective focus." But denial is never advisable; it is especially not advisable in matters of life and death.) Yet if we wish to resist evil, we must be able to contemplate the enemy we face with dispassionate, even clinical detachment.

Perhaps this passage will help to make the issue clearer:

The highest levels of the United States Government have told you -- repeatedly, at great length, always emphasizing the critical significance of their conviction on this point -- that the lives of Americans are worth less than shit. Your life, the lives of all those you love and all those you know, the lives of everyone in your city and state, the lives of all Americans are worth absolutely nothing.

...

There is no power greater than that of life and death. This is absolute power. This is the power claimed by every slaughtering monster in history. You know this. You refuse to understand what it means.

As the condensed factual recitation above demonstrates, the United States Government recognizes no difference between the lives of Americans and the lives of anyone else anywhere on Earth: all human beings anywhere are to be brutalized, terrorized and murdered as the United States Government chooses.

The repeated actions of the U.S. Government over more than a hundred years -- and its actions today -- place this fact beyond all question. This is the horror that greets you upon waking in the morning; the screams of the victims are the lullaby to which you fall asleep. The horror is the air you breathe. It is the cultural atmosphere that surrounds you. It is the knock on the door.

In the parlance of the day, or what would be that parlance if we spoke more plainly, we can say with accuracy and precision:

The ruling class of the United States pisses on the entire world, just as it pisses on every human being who is not favored by privilege and power.

This is the ultimate foundation of our lives today. This is the truth that will almost never be spoken.

Since we resolutely refuse to acknowledge the actual horror, we neurotically displace our outrage onto matters of comparative triviality. It is certainly disgusting that U.S. Marines pissed on the bodies of several dead Taliban -- but isn't it more disgusting that the Taliban are dead in a criminal war of aggression waged to advance American global hegemony? Rank these items in terms of the disgust you think they merit:

* The systematic destruction of a series of nations and their peoples over a period of many decades.

* The murder of more than a million innocent people in a criminal war.

* The ongoing murders of people who do not (and most commonly could not) threaten the U.S., in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and on and on and on -- in 120 countries around the globe.

* The claim that the U.S. Government has the "right" to murder anyone in the world for whatever reason it chooses -- a "right," I remind you, which the U.S. Government has actualized.

* Pissing on three dead bodies.

We refuse to speak about the first four items, but the guardians of our culture insist that they are sickened and outraged by the last one. Displacement of this kind is never innocent. The purpose is to help those who claim to be disgusted and outraged convince themselves (and us) that they (and thus "we") are "moral," "good" and "decent." They are not. If they were, they would speak about the other items -- and they would speak about them all the time. But they almost never mention them, except to justify them.

The statement from a "Media Officer" for the Marine Corps is a genuine obscenity: "the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps." Under the pressure of the interminable lies of American exceptionalism, joy becomes suffering and life is turned into death, and it is demanded that these perversions be regarded as good. The "Media Officer" engages in another variant of these sickening inversions: "the actions portrayed" are the perfect embodiment of their "core values." The Marine Corps is a key instrumentality used by the United States Government in its wars of criminal aggression against innocent human beings. Nothing they do can be anything other than an obscenity. The fact that they are in Afghanistan at all is an obscenity. The fact that they murder human beings there is an obscenity. That they pissed on the dead bodies is a detail in the context of the policies and actions which give rise to the American presence in that country in the first place.

A further truth, a particularly ugly one, should be noted. Although many commentators have feigned outrage and disgust about this incident, what actually concerns them is not that it happened, but that the incident has become known. They are worried that public knowledge of the incident is bad PR. I heard a local Los Angeles radio host (this moronic fuck) express this despicable point of view with unusual clarity yesterday. I made notes during his comments, so this is very close to exact: "I'm upset because of what it does to the country [the U.S., that is] and what it does to the Marine Corps. I really don't care that they urinated on dead Taliban. I have no sympathy for the dead guys, maybe that makes me a terrible person, I don't know [it does] ... but this is really bad, that this story is out there."

The same host read an email from the father of a man who is currently in the U.S. military. The father exulted in the desecration of the bodies and said that is the least "they" deserve. The host wondered if the son would agree, thinking the son might take the Media Officer's line that such behavior is "not consistent" with the "core values" of the Marine Corps. The father wrote a followup email, which the host proceeded to read as well. The father had immediately written to his son and asked him what he thought. The son -- who, I repeat, is in the military today -- said, "Good! That's exactly what they deserve. My guys would be [bleeping] on them!" I assume the son had written "shitting," although the host declined to read that word on the air. We are so good and decent!

This kind of attitude is not uncommon among Americans in general, and it certainly cannot be uncommon among those in the military. This must be true given that the U.S. has not used its military overseas in a genuinely defensive war for decades. The U.S. military is sent overseas in offensive wars of aggression, or in preparation for wars of aggression. This isn't secret, specialized knowledge; it is knowledge easily available to anyone with minimal knowledge of recent history and current events. Moreover, this fact must be blindingly clear to a member of the military who travels many thousands of miles, to somewhere on the other side of the globe. A person who is capable of the most basic thought must wonder: "What the hell am I doing here, and how can these people possibly be a threat to the United States?" At this point in time, I do not think there is any legitimate reason for an individual to join the U.S. military. You will find my argument in several essays; you can start here and here, and follow the links. In the past, I did not offer as definitive a judgment on this question as I do now. If you join the U.S. military today, you are volunteering to be part of a vast, worldwide killing operation. Period.

One final point must be mentioned. I said that what actually concerns most of the "outraged" commentators is that this incident has become known, not that it happened. What I meant, of course, is that it has become known to the American public. It is not possible that an incident of this kind is unusual or perpetrated only by "a few bad apples." As was true of the horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib, it must be the case that incidents like this occur with considerable frequency. You cannot be part of a vast, worldwide killing operation -- you cannot travel across the globe and murder (or be prepared to murder) innocent human beings who otherwise could not possibly threaten you -- and remain a "nice," "decent" human being. I repeat: it is not possible. Since horrors like this must occur with hideous regularity, it must also be the case that the people who live in the countries victimized by the U.S. know of them. The horrors of Abu Ghraib were not news to Iraqis. Incidents like the one to which we Americans devote so much time today cannot be news to the people of Afghanistan.

But Americans live in the cocoon of the myths that are reinforced every day by almost every voice in the media, and by the majority of "ordinary" Americans themselves. Videos like the current one threaten those myths, and they throw into question our cherished belief that we are "good" and uniquely so. Pissing on dead bodies is not an image that can be reconciled with our desperate self-flattery, with our unquestioned and unquestionable belief that we are inherently superior to all other peoples and entitled to our way in everything, in all corners of the world. So it must be explained, and minimized, and excused. When it is condemned, it is condemned as an outlier, an extraordinary event that is "not consistent with our core values."

We will not acknowledge or come to terms with the fact that the U.S. Government has declared war on the world -- what else can it mean that the U.S. has ongoing operations in 120 countries? -- and that the ruling class maintains it has the "right" to murder any human being it chooses. So I state again:

The rulers of the United States piss on you, and on every other human being on Earth not favored by privilege and power.

You need to protect yourself as best you can.

Still Here, Very Sick

2012-01-04T10:03:00.000-08:00

[Update added.]

I'm in very bad shape at the moment. Kind of scary times here. I'm sorry to say that's about all I'm capable of saying right now. The articles I'm working on and want to publish next are complicated. When I run through the arguments my subjects require, I heave a deep sigh and think: "Dear lord, I can't possibly explain all that when I feel this terrible." (Although such concerns seem to be no impediment to most bloggers, so perhaps I should offer a string of undefined terms, incoherent or nonexistent arguments, and unsupported assertions. Then ... success!)

So I'm stuck in this remarkably unfriendly and barren territory. I hope a path out of here will reveal itself soon. For the duration, I ask for your understanding and indulgence.

UPDATE: Lots of talk about Iran these days. A reader reminded me of this article of mine, from almost five years ago: "So Iran Gets Nukes. So What?" Change just a few specifics, and it could have been written this morning. As for what is likely to happen in the wake of an attack on Iran, and concerning the meaning and significance of such a monstrous act, see: "Morality, Humanity and Civilization: 'Nothing remains ... but memories.'"

Those articles are good, and not a single one of my major arguments requires modification or revision. So if you want to know my views on this subject, read the earlier pieces (and there are links to additional articles, as well). Even if I were in perfect health, I would refuse to go through all of this again.

One of the most dispiriting aspects of the loathsome politics of our time is that nothing ever changes. We've been having the same arguments over and over and over ever since I began blogging, now closing in on ten years ago. Christ. It's unbelievably depressing. Ah, correction: some change is involved. For those of us who are not members of the ruling class or among the favored chatterers who find "success" in this sickly atmosphere (and I locate all "major" bloggers and well-known "dissenting" voices in the second category), everything gets steadily worse.

And you thought I couldn't find a cheerful thought for the New Year! Nuts to you! Hahaha. Oh, yes, I can still laugh. I laugh a lot these days.

Happy Fucking Holidays

2011-12-23T08:26:00.000-08:00

The DOJ has rejected a Freedom of Information Act request from the New York Times that asked the agency to reveal the legal basis for the newly unveiled American program of strategic drone-attack assassinations of American citizens off the field of battle.
Summary:

* The government dropped a bomb on a U.S. citizen,

* who, though a total dick and probably a criminal, may have been engaged only in propaganda,

* which, though despicable, is generally protected by the First Amendment;

* it did so without a trial or even an indictment (that we know of),

* based at least in part on evidence it says it has but won't show anyone,

* and on a legal argument it has apparently made but won't show anyone,

* and the very existence of which it will not confirm or deny;

* although don't worry, because the C.I.A. would never kill an American without having somebody do a memo first;

* and this is the "most transparent administration ever";

* currently run by a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

I'm a bit confused about the calendar. Was 1932 three years ago, or is it next year? Or maybe I'm thinking of 1934.

Well, it doesn't matter. Anyway, you don't care. No, you actually don't. How do I know that? Because in numerous ways, you still support this system. How do you support it? Ah, something to consider over the holidays. I could provide lots of links to previous articles here to help you out, but ... eh. You don't follow them when I do. Phooey to that.

Besides, I'm very sick right now. My major concern is trying to avoid having to call 911. For the third time. I don't want to do that. Three strikes and you're out, and all that. Hey, maybe I'll have a fatal heart attack on Christmas Day! That would be, like, totally cool, man. I could still hang out with you -- as an angel. Seriously, dude! Seventy-seven percent of adult Americans think angels are real! Seventy. Seven. Percent.

I guess this is what it feels like to wake up and find that you're trapped in an asylum for the incurably insane, where the administrators arbitrarily kill inmates now and then, just to pass the time.

So Happy Holidays to me! And to you, natch, and to the angel hovering over there. Look out, that angel's gonna launch another drone! Hahahaha.

God bless us, every fucking one.

OMFG! Criminals Commit ... Crimes!!

2011-12-10T13:37:00.000-08:00

James B. Stewart is, like, a smart dude. His bio says that he "shared the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 1988, when he was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal." That was, um, twenty-, uh, thirty-, no, well, like a lot of years ago. When they had VHS tapes and mastodons and shit. And no iPhones!! Primitivo, man.

But what a sweet, big-hearted guy. He shared the Pulitzer ("Hey, dudes, I could never have done it on my own!"), for "explanatory reporting." He explains stuff. To the rest of us, who are The Stupids. Here's the rest of his bio. He's a way privileged white dude. I'm, like, totally amazed. Privileged white dudes are the best. They keep telling us that, so I figure it must be true. I mean, they have the most stuff, man. And they make movies. Making movies is da bomb. Ask Jimmy Cameron, an awesomely smart, rich, white dude. Who, like, saves whole worlds. Privileged white dudes make lots of movies, including about funny shit like rape. Really privileged white dudes have a totally unique slant on things. I figure that's because they can do whatever the fuck they want. Like rape women and children. Or destroy whole countries.

Or even, like, create whole countries. That is so awesome, man! Those privileged white motherfuckers set up an entire country just for themselves. They killed all the people who were already there, enslaved a gigantissimo bunch of other people, and made sure only privileged white motherfuckers, who were men (which was, like, totally a coincidence), could run things. And this is true even when the privileged white motherfuckers look like they aren't white. Only supercool, way smart white dudes can think up shit like this. You try it. See? You can't. We're dumb fucks, man. C'mon, it's the truth. The truth will set us free. Free to be poor, dumb fucks.

And Stewart -- I like to call him JamB, which is like a totally cool nickname (doncha love the capital B at the end, cuz it's his middle initial, man -- that is so cool, it is, shut up, man) -- he teaches business journalism. At Columbia! I'm groveling, JamB! You are amazing! And he writes a column for The. Fucking. New. York. Times. His column is called "Common Sense." Isn't that sweet? I think it's sweet. It's like he's saying, "Yeah, I'm like so much better than you that we're not in the same universe. I'm like a kind visitor from another world, like in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Klaatu barada nikto! Do what I say or I'll, like, kill you, man! Hahahaha! Just kidding, dude. I call my column 'Common Sense' so you'll think I'm not really all that special -- it's just common sense, see? You can do it, too. Except you can't. Nope, no sirree, no way, not gonna happen. You need a smart, rich guy like me to explain shit. But we're really all the same. Except we aren't. But if I come across like just another not-special dude, you won't mind so much when I totally fuck you over! Hahahaha! Hey, man, kidding. Like I would ever do that! C'mon, dude, relax."

It's like those people who call themselves "Dr." whatever. Dr. Phil. Dr. Laura. The "Phil" and "Laura" is so you think they're like your best bud, just a pal you hang with. The "Dr." is to remind you that they're "experts." So they're smart and shit, they're authorities, and you should listen to them and do what they say. Then, when they fuck you over, you won't mind so much. See how that works? You don't get to be rich and privileged by being a dumb shit.

So okay, here's JamB's latest "Common Sense" piece, all about Corzine and MF Global. This is how JamB starts:

Are customer accounts at brokerage firms safe?

Until the collapse of MF Global, that’s a question I thought I’d never have to ask.

JamB is, like, stunned. He's totally amazed. The protection of customer assets is "considered a sacred obligation." That's what some privileged dude at the SEC told JamB, and it's what JamB had believed. These are way smart dudes, and they are as innocent as fucking lambs. These innocent lambs are being taught life lessons, man. Life lessons are harsh. The privileged smart dudes are sad.

JamB spells out the life lesson he learned when more than a billion dollars of customer assets at MF Global "had vanished." It's like magic, man! It's here, it's gone. It vanished! JamB says:

How could such a thing happen? I had always assumed it was impossible and that strict internal controls existed at all brokerage firms so that firm officials couldn’t tap segregated customer funds even if they were willing to break the law. Thanks to MF Global, it’s now apparent that isn’t necessarily true. “If people are determined to misuse customer funds, they will misuse them,” said Ananda Radhakrishnan, the director of the division of clearing and risk at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

This is how JamB announces -- in the holy pages of The. Fucking. New. York. Times. -- the discovery of A Great Truth: Criminals commit crimes, like, ah, er, um, stealing.

If we didn't have totally smart privileged white dudes explaining this shit to us, we'd never understand anything, man. Give thanks to JamB! But, but, but there are rulz against bad shit like stealing, man!, sez JamB, crying like a little baby. Besides the fact that those dinosaur-times white motherfuckers stole, like, the whole country in the first place, who does JamB think wrote the rulz? And who enforces them? Or, you know, doesn't? Those are real stumpers, huh? Gee, I wonder who does all that ... oh, yeah, I explained all that just recently. I have to keep explaining it, because I can't remember it, cuz I'm a dumb fuck.

My man JamB does mention a few cool things that I hadn't known about. Like this:

This week, the [Commodities Futures Trading Commission] issued new rules restricting how client assets can be invested, which had grown under C.F.T.C. interpretations to include sovereign debt and transactions known as “in-house repos,” or repurchase agreements, in which a firm contracts with itself to use customer assets as, in effect, interest-free loans to finance its inventory of Treasury bonds. MF Global was apparently a heavy user of in-house repos, and before his firm collapsed, Mr. Corzine had argued strenuously against the C.F.T.C.’s proposal to ban them.

Now that is cool. You make deals with yourself using other people's money. It's, like, total genius. Only supersmart white dudes (or not-white dudes who actually are white dudes, heh-heh, chortle, snicker) can do stuff like that. You can't do it. I can't either. Boo-hoo us.

It's almost like, well, there's no such thing as "law" at all. OMFG!!! Or, maybe, it's like the law depends on who has power. It's legal if we say it is! Oh, yeah, I've been through this before, and before that.

And about Corzine ... well, fuck me. Actually, Corzine sorta fucked everybody, didn't he? Awesome rich white dude move. And like he's ever going to jail. Hahahaha, yeah, right after George W. But Jonny went to D.C. to explain what happened and, like, he's completely stumped! Seriously, he has no idea at all:

How did the customer assets ever leave the segregated accounts to begin with? In testimony on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Mr. Corzine only added to the mystery. He said that transferring customer funds was “a complex process” and, asked who could execute such a transfer, said “I wouldn’t know probably who that person is.”

While Mr. Corzine said he had “no intention” of authorizing any transfer of segregated funds and “didn’t intend to break any rules,” he left open the possibility that someone might have thought he did.

"Hey, Jonny, how come there are like twelve bloody, mutilated, dead bodies in the bed you slept in last night?"

"Gee, well, I dunno. Murdering people is, like, a complex process. I guess, like, somebody murdered them, but I wouldn't know probably who that person is. I didn't want to murder anybody, but I guess, maybe, it's possible someone might have thought I did."

This shit is completely awesum! I can't pull crap like this when I steal a goddamned chocolate chip cookie. And the best part? Corzine will totally get away with it! You think that a bunch of superprivileged fucks are gonna put another superprivileged fuck in jail? And Corzine still has a gabillion fucking dollars. Ain't nobody messing with that.

This is such a fucking great country. Well, not for you or me or most of us, but for these shitheads it's the greatest racket ever invented. It's like the whole country is a legal scheme to make the rich and powerful even more rich and powerful.

Oooooohhhhhh ... man, I am, like, humbled. I never would have thought of that. A whole country ... fuck me. Fuck us.

JamB proves he's a fully deserving member of the Shithead Club in his article. He says the problem is that "the commodities and securities industry is mostly self-regulating, and self-regulation ultimately depends on the integrity of the regulated." So if we stop all this "self-regulating" and come up with some new rules, there won't ever ever be any more stealing or anything unseemly, everyone will be happy and fat, and there will be puppy dogs and kitty cats and rainbows everywhere. I don't know how to break this to you gently, but this is more of the Stuff that Privileged White ~~Fucks~~ Dudes Like.

So, yeah, these lying weasels won't "self-regulate." Instead, we'll turn over all the regulatin' stuff to completely disinterested, selfless agencies of the gummint. Like, you know, robots or something. (Klaatu barada nikto!) Of course, those agencies are run by other members of the Shithead Club, and the rules are devised and implemented by powerful, privileged fu--, uh, people. Must. Appear. Serious. And. Respectable.

Here's a respectable discussion. And an earlier one -- hey, you'll like this one, "It's not the sex. It's never the sex." (See, you go right to that one, cuz it mentions sex. I would, too. Woohoo! And I admit I really like that article. Sex!) And here's a passage I wrote on the eve of the elections in -- 2006. (I was twelve years old when I wrote it. I was. Just be quiet, or I'm telling Jonny C. about you.) That's when, as I'm sure you'll remember, all the liberals and progressives were overcome with joy because soon-to-be-elected Democrats would investigate all the crimes of the Bush mafia, come up with brand new regulations for, like, everything, and ... rainbows!

Or, you know, not:

Ah, but the Democrats will investigate the Bush administration's endless crimes. The investigations will restore honesty, decency and "true" American values to government. All the universes will be saved! Do people actually believe this nonsense? All such investigations will be exactly like all other government investigations of itself. People seem congenitally incapable of grasping that all politicians are now part of the same corrupt system, which aims only to protect itself and its existing prerogatives, as it simultaneously seeks to expand them. (The exceptions in the political class are so few that they don't matter.) In the end, all such investigations and committee hearings will conclude just as the 9/11 investigation concluded (and any other investigation you care to name): some criticisms will be made, general fault will be found but no one in particular will be condemned in terms that might cause distress, and some new guidelines and regulations will be proposed and enacted. Neither party wants to judge the other too harshly or cause irreparable harm: they don't want to, because they count on the same consideration in return. Both parties are happy to accede to this deal, for it is precisely how their system continues on its merry course, guaranteeing their lives of immense comfort and privilege, together with their hold on power. Many of the rest of us, both here and abroad, will be screwed, maimed or dead -- and just when exactly did that concern the governing class?

And then, in a year or two or five, and as on every other similar occasion, inventive ways will be found to circumvent the brand spanking new guidelines and regulations -- and the corruption and dishonesty will continue pretty much as before, via new routes and avenues. It's all a charade, by means of which politicians, the major media, and "serious" commentators (and bloggers) can convince themselves of their own virtue, that this time they really mean it, and that everything will be different now. An interesting question is how many times people can fall for such complete bullshit, and still be regarded as serious, credible or intelligent to any degree at all.

It helps to perpetuate the charade -- one that encompasses every aspect of domestic and foreign policy -- that most people know nothing of history, either our own or that of other countries. It's as if none of it ever happened before. For most of these people, it's as if nothing ever happened before. No wonder they so easily believe that this time will be different. For them, there are no other times at all. Everything is new to them, even and especially their own iniquity.

That is, like, fucking timeless, man.

But, as we all know, governing and shit is a complex process. I guess I could have gotten this whole thing wrong. Maybe this time will be different. It's gonna be beautiful. After all, I'm sure they have the best of intentions. Just so long as they're still the richest and most powerful. Hahahaha. But ...

I WANT MY RAINBOW, GODDAMMIT.

**********
I was gonna do this in a separate post, but then I realized this is, like, the perfect time. So like I said, I'm a poor dumb fuck. I'm not smart like my buds JamB and Jonny C., who are way more awesome than I could ever be. Thanks to readers' kindnesses, I was able to pay the December rent and a few of my monthly bills. I thank everyone who has donated -- you are truly awesome, in ways JamB, Jonny C. and their friends can't even dream of -- and I especially want to thank the small group of regular donors, who leave me close to speechless with their immense thoughtfulness and generosity (people like K.R., M.B., H.G., W.B. and a few others, who know who they are -- my apologies for not including all of you in this list).

But I still have to pay an electric bill, my internet provider, and ... well, food and stuff. After I've paid for that, I'll be close to totally broke. I mean, except for about a hundred dollars, I'll be totally broke. (Cyrano just looked up. "Does this mean we'll be getting 'food' like Friskies? Do I have to start emailing the ASPCA again???" And Sasha looks crestfallen and deeply troubled. This isn't just about me, you know. And Cyrano needs to go to the vet. "WHAT??" Sweetheart, I'm sure it's nothing serious -- I am pretty sure about that -- but there are a few things that need checking out. "I repeat: WHAT???" Can we talk about it in a few minutes, Cyrano? "Yeah, sure, whatevs.")

And just in time for Christmas. Christmas. I bet Corzine will have a wonderful Christmas. And the fab First Family will be in Hawaii.

Being a poor dumb fuck sucks. Hey, I'm working on several new big essays. One of them is about what I call the problem of "The Omniscient Commentator." Lots of that going around. Some others deal with extensions of my tribalism essays. I'm talking big stuff. Totally new!

Doncha wanna help a poor dumb fuck? At the most beautiful time of year? Have a listen to Leontyne Price singing "O Holy Night." That comes from one of the most beautiful Christmas albums I've ever heard: treat yourself to it. And Cyrano imploringly says: "Keep the Friskies away!" (C'mon, don't sue us. It's just his opinion. Besides, we're judgment-proof.)

My great thanks as always for your wonderful kindness. And let us all say, as Corzine surely does, "Happy Fucking Holidays TO ME!!!"

The Face of the Killer Who Is Your President

2011-12-08T19:05:00.000-08:00

The killer said:

“Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement,” the president fired back at an impromptu news conference at the White House.

“Or whoever’s left out there,” he added. “Ask them about that.”

Watch the video at the link provided above. It's instructive, particularly Obama's expression when he adds, "Or whoever's left out there." He speaks of murder, yet the words are breezy and casual: this is a murderer so used to killing that he talks of his past and future victims interchangeably, and in terms of approximation. Just "whoever's left out there." He wants to be sure you know he'll order all of them killed in time. His face is expressionless, the eyes dead. This is a man without a soul in any healthy, positive sense. He murders -- and he's proud of it.

More than a million innocent Iraqis were murdered as the result of the United States' criminal war of aggression on that country. Obama has heralded America's "success" in Iraq as "an extraordinary achievement."

The continuing murders in Pakistan and Afghanistan are so numerous and so regular that they barely merit notice for more than a few days, at least as far as the United States government and most Americans are concerned. Over the recent Thanksgiving weekend, the United States government murdered at least 25 Pakistanis. (NATO and the U.S. government are indistinguishable in any matter of importance, in any matter of murders of this kind.) Pakistan is deeply angry and unhappy. The United States government and Obama are concerned only to the extent that Pakistan's unhappiness might interfere with the U.S.'s intention to dominate and control that part of the world. The U.S. government and Obama aren't particularly upset about the murders, but about the strategic problem that might result from the murders.

On the same weekend: "Six children were among seven civilians killed in a NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Thursday." The story has already fallen into the well of forgetfulness. It must be the case that incidents like this occur at least once a day given the number of military operations ordered by the Murderer-in-Chief and carried out by those who follow his orders. Perhaps only one innocent person is killed. "Only" one. Perhaps we should ask "whoever's left out there" what that one loss signifies.

Earlier in November, there was this story:

Last Friday, I met a boy, just before he was assassinated by the CIA. Tariq Aziz was 16, a quiet young man from North Waziristan, who, like most teenagers, enjoyed soccer. Seventy-two hours later, a Hellfire missile is believed to have killed him as he was travelling in a car to meet his aunt in Miran Shah, to take her home after her wedding. Killed with him was his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan.

Over 2,300 people in Pakistan have been killed by such missiles carried by drone aircraft such as the Predator and the Reaper, and launched by remote control from Langley, Virginia. Tariq and Waheed brought the known total of children killed in this way to 175, according to statistics maintained by the organisation I work for, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

...

Unless the CIA can prove that Tariq Aziz posed an imminent threat (as the White House's legal advice stipulates a targeted killing must in order for an attack to be carried out), or that he was a key planner in a war against the US or Pakistan, the killing of this 16 year old was murder, and any jury should convict the CIA accordingly.

These are only a few of the stories we know about, and only from a very brief period of time. Countless other murders take place all over the world, and we can only gather the dim outlines of what is occurring. This is not to mention numerous lesser acts of cruelty and violence, many of which will alter lives in searing ways, for all the desolate years to follow.

Consider:

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries.

...

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command [SOCOM] spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence -- in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

...

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

No minimally decent human being would choose to have anything whatsoever to do with a government which systematically engages in acts of this kind. This is true of anyone who is part of the national governing apparatus, or wishes to be. It is most especially true of anyone who wishes to become president. Even if a person declares his or her absolute commitment to ending all of this, it is impossible for one person to do it. The massive bureaucracy of death which carries out these acts was erected over decades; all such bureaucratic monstrosities take on lives of their own. It will not be dismantled by a single individual overnight, or even in a matter of months or probably years. That means the murders will go on.

It may be that at some point this machinery of death will be brought down comparatively quickly. If that happens, it will not be the result of one person's actions, but of calamitous events on a momentous scale: widening war, catastrophic natural disasters, widespread financial collapse, and/or massive social unrest and violence. In the meantime, a reverence for life demands that we see the Death State exactly for what it is -- and walk away to the fullest extent we can.

That is not the course Barack Obama chose. He wanted to be, he now is the Murderer-in-Chief. He is proud of his achievement.

Thus, the words I wrote over five years ago continue to hold a relevance and meaning that fill me with the deepest despair. I desperately wish that I had never had cause to compose this passage, and that I did not feel compelled to repeat it now:

If you have ever wondered how a serial murderer -- a murderer who is sane and fully aware of the acts he has committed -- can remain steadfastly convinced of his own moral superiority and show not even the slightest glimmer of remorse, you should not wonder any longer.

The United States government is such a murderer. It conducts its murders in full view of the entire world. It even boasts of them. Our government, and all our leading commentators, still maintain that the end justifies the means -- and that even the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents is of no moral consequence, provided a sufficient number of people can delude themselves into believing the final result is a "success."

...

We can appeal all we want to "American exceptionalism," but any "exceptionalism" that remains ours is that of a mass murderer without a soul, and without a conscience. ... It is useless to appeal to any "American" sense of morality: we have none. It does not matter how immense the pile of corpses grows: we will not surrender or even question our delusion that we are right, and that nothing we do can be profoundly, unforgivably wrong.

A Solemn Day

2011-12-07T10:35:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes, the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Verily, a day of punishing, religious genuflection on the stony ground of national myth-making. Innocent, noble America, sneakily attacked without notice or warning by vicious "little yellow bastards." The phrase is from Time magazine. That was mild. Admiral William "Bull" Halsey declared, "The only good Jap is a Jap who's been dead six months." And:

Everyone from journalists to President Roosevelt routinely used the dehumanizing slang term "Jap," and regularly compared Japanese soldiers and civilians to monkeys, baboons, and gorillas. Admiral Halsey was especially fond of the monkey metaphor, invariably attaching "yellow" to it. At one point Halsey said he could hardly wait to put to sea "to get some more monkey meat."

The sainted FDR. Such a darling man. Many of the New Dealers were sweethearts of like kind:

New Dealers and others around the president made no attempt to alter this dehumanizing war against the Japanese. In September 1942, Admiral William Leahy, Roosevelt's White House chief of staff, told Vice President Henry Wallace that Japan was "our Carthage" and "we should go ahead and destroy her utterly." Wallace noted this sentiment without objection in his diary. Elliott Roosevelt, the president's son, told Wallace some months later that he thought Americans should kill "about half the Japanese civilian population." New Dealer Paul McNutt, chairman of the War Manpower Commission, went him one better, recommending "the extermination of the Japanese in toto."

Well, the United States did her best to kill as many of them as possible, even when surrender was at hand. There's that American know-how and determination! The above excerpts are from Thomas Fleming's The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within World War II. More excerpts will be found in this post from the time dinosaurs walked the earth.

And let us not forget that the sainted FDR was generously encompassing in his hatreds:

An American cannot read these two books without total revulsion at the reaction of his own government to Hitler's policies against the Jews. Both authors detail the methods by which American politicians and bureaucrats, while maintaining an appearance of great humanitarianism, used immigration policies to prevent Germany's Jews from escaping to the United States. Morse writes:

"In 1938 the Nazis burned every synagogue in the nation, shattered the windows of every Jewish establishment, hauled twenty-five thousand innocent people to concentration camps, and forced the Jews to pay 1,000,000,000 marks for the damage.

"Five days later, at a White House press conference, a reporter asked the President 'Would you recommend a relaxation of our immigration restrictions so that the Jewish refugees could be received in this country?'

"'This is not in contemplation,' replied the President. 'We have the quota system.'

"The United States not only insisted upon its immigration law throughout the Nazi era, but administered it with severity and callousness. In spite of unprecedented circumstances, the law was constricted so that even its narrow quotas were not met. The lamp remained lifted beside the golden door, but the flame had been extinguished and the door was padlocked."

To return to the high holy day commemorating the spectacle of good, virtuous, open-hearted America set upon by a gang of sallow, murderous monkeys: the seriousness of the required obeisances is underscored by the apex of observance in America -- a television special on the History channel, and reviewed in The New York Times. In light of the above, it is hardly a surprise to read: "More ignominiously, in that first day [after the attack] the president also set in motion the detention of Japanese-Americans." The man was a goddamned saint.

Hell, I'm sorry. This isn't the history we're supposed to remember, especially today. Time for a song! What a jaunty little tune. Fun times. You can read about some of the popular music written in response to the Pearl Harbor attack here, and learn about charming numbers like "We're Going to Find a Fellow Who Is Yellow and Beat Him Red, White and Blue."

Another fun musical fact: one of the most popular songs of World War II was "I'll Be Seeing You." Guess where the melody came from. Go on, take a wild stab at it.

Give up? The melody was lifted virtually unchanged from the last movement of Mahler's Third Symphony. Don't take my word for it (or Deryck Cooke's): listen for yourself. "I'll Be Seeing You" begins at 1:16. If you want to be transported to a wonderful place, set aside half an hour and listen to the entire movement. The notes appended to the Youtube entry include this: "Of the great finale, Bruno Walter wrote, 'In the last movement, words are stilled—for what language can utter heavenly love more powerfully and forcefully than music itself?'" It's one of my favorite pieces of music in all the world, and I intend to write about it at greater length one of these days. (In the meantime, I recommend this performance of the Mahler Third. It's sublime. The Youtube post is Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic. I love sinking into a leisurely reading of Mahler as much as anyone -- well, anyone except Bernstein when he entered his somewhat solipsistic, self-indulgent period. Bernstein's performance is often too slow, so that the music loses direction and force, and sometimes even musical coherence. Abbado's reading is stunningly right in every respect, at least to my ears.)

To return to the blasted heath of our Day of Remembrance: to talk of a perfidious "sneak" attack disregards the mountain of historical evidence that FDR and his henchmen desperately longed for an attack as the required means of propelling a reluctant, even resistant American public into the conflict. Many Americans still had raw, bleeding memories of the First World War, that devastating, entirely unnecessary crusade which had been promised to be the end of war. It should also be remembered, as I have noted before, that the sainted, progressive Woodrow Wilson had only dragged an even more resistant American public into the earlier conflagration by relying in significant part on a vicious, comprehensive, anti-German propaganda campaign that was never even approached by the vilified Bush-Cheney gangsters of recent years (as loathsome as they were, and as I have said on numerous occasions).

FDR and his fellow hoodlums not only longed for an attack: they did everything within their power to provoke one. Robert Higgs explains:

In June 1940, Henry L. Stimson, who had been secretary of war under Taft and secretary of state under Hoover, became secretary of war again. Stimson was a lion of the Anglophile, northeastern upper crust and no friend of the Japanese. In support of the so-called Open Door Policy for China, Stimson favored the use of economic sanctions to obstruct Japan's advance in Asia. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes vigorously endorsed this policy. Roosevelt hoped that such sanctions would goad the Japanese into making a rash mistake by launching a war against the United States, which would bring in Germany because Japan and Germany were allied.

Accordingly, the Roosevelt administration, while curtly dismissing Japanese diplomatic overtures to harmonize relations, imposed a series of increasingly stringent economic sanctions on Japan. In 1939 the United States terminated the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan. "On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials." Under this authority, "[o]n July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted." Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, "on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere." Finally, on July 26, 1941, Roosevelt "froze Japanese assets in the United States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective end. One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan."[2] The British and the Dutch followed suit, embargoing exports to Japan from their colonies in southeast Asia.

Roosevelt and his subordinates knew they were putting Japan in an untenable position and that the Japanese government might well try to escape the stranglehold by going to war. Having broken the Japanese diplomatic code, the Americans knew, among many other things, what Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda had communicated to Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura on July 31: "Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas."[3]

Because American cryptographers had also broken the Japanese naval code, the leaders in Washington knew as well that Japan's "measures" would include an attack on Pearl Harbor.[4] Yet they withheld this critical information from the commanders in Hawaii, who might have headed off the attack or prepared themselves to defend against it. That Roosevelt and his chieftains did not ring the tocsin makes perfect sense: after all, the impending attack constituted precisely what they had been seeking for a long time. As Stimson confided to his diary after a meeting of the war cabinet on November 25, "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."[5] After the attack, Stimson confessed that "my first feeling was of relief ... that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people."

I realize it's almost impossible to believe that so many saints have led the pure and virtuous American State.

I suppose that's more than enough of history that almost no one remembers, and that almost no one ever acknowledges. And after all, we wouldn't want to interfere with the devotional ceremonies that so many find so fulfilling. As with God, worship of the mythology of the American State requires only unquestioning faith and unthinking obedience.

And most Americans are only too eager to comply, offering their minds, souls and bodies on the blood-altar of power and death.

"The opera is your life. Your life is the opera."

2011-12-02T08:34:00.000-08:00

Alex Ross:

As promised, Philip Glass spoke to an Occupy Wall Street demonstration at Lincoln Center tonight, after a performance of Satyagraha at the Met. The protest, which was directed not at the opera itself but at a certain disparity between its lofty moral message and the machinery of corporate arts funding, got under way during the third act; police cleared everyone from the plaza, loitering music critics included (I had gone to the Mahler Tenth at the New York Philharmonic), and so the crowd assembled on the sidewalk at the foot of the steps. When the Satyagraha listeners emerged from the Met, police directed them to leave via side exits, but protesters began encouraging them to disregard the police, walk down the steps, and listen to Glass speak. Hesitantly at first, then in a wave, they did so. The composer proceeded to recite the closing lines of Satyagraha, which come from the Bhagavad-Gita (after 3:00 in the video above): "When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again."

Be sure to watch the video at the link.

A Nauseating, Detestable Culture that Deserves to Die

2011-11-22T11:59:00.000-08:00

Following up on my comments yesterday, there's this.

Speaking of which (unfortunately), I watched the film Horrible Bosses over the weekend (unfortunately). It's drenched, marinated and stewed in nauseating, detestable male entitlement and privilege. Endless jokes about sexual harassment and rape, because sexual harassment and rape are just so goddamned funny. You have to love that the "horrible boss" who engages in endless, humiliating sexual harassment is Jennifer Aniston. Because a woman widely viewed as extremely attractive and sexually desirable wanting to have sex all the time with her nerdy, dopey, idiotic male assistant is, like, totally the most common form of sexual harassment, as scientifically documented in thousands of studies. Or, two men conversing at one point: "Oh, no, I'd be more rape-able in prison!" "Are you kidding?! I'd be much more rape-able!" Because rape is so goddamned much fun. Especially prison rape.

Don't trouble yourself with any of these facts:

Rape in prison is an ugly reality that most people have learned to ignore, but prisoner rape is an institutionalized form of cruelty that infringes upon basic human rights, contributes to the spread of disease, and perpetuates violence both inside and outside of prison walls.

...

Male custodial officials have vaginally, anally, and orally raped female prisoners and have abused their authority by exchanging goods and privileges for sex. In many women’s facilities, male corrections officers are often allowed to watch female inmates when they are dressing, showering, or using the toilet, and some regularly engage in verbal degradation and harassment of women prisoners. Women also report groping and other sexual abuse by male staff during pat frisks and searches.

Currently, reporting procedures, where they exist, are often ineffectual, and complaints by prisoners about sexual assault are routinely ignored by prison staff and government authorities. In general, corrections officers are not adequately trained to prevent sexual assault or to treat survivors after an attack.

...

Punishment for prisoner rape is rare. Few public prosecutors concern themselves with crimes against inmates, and instead leave such problems to the discretion of prison authorities. As a result, perpetrators of prisoner rape almost never face charges. Staff members who sexually abuse inmates are rarely held accountable, facing only light administrative sanctions, if any. In fact, some female inmates have reported retaliation from corrections officers against whom reports of sexual misconduct have been lodged.

Prisoner rape has been used in some cases as a tool to punish inmates for misbehavior. Male inmates have testified that they were forced into cells with known sexual predators as a form of punishment for unrelated misconduct.

Oh, but the characters in Horrible Bosses were men joking about men being raped. That's totally different. Read the rest of my post from 2004, which includes part of Tom Cahill's account of being gang-raped for twenty-four hours. And the gang-rape was deliberately orchestrated by a guard. (Some of the internal links in that old post don't work any longer.)

Almost all of the "humor" in Horrible Bosses comes out of the same sewer. The film isn't remotely funny to any minimally aware, decent human being, in addition to which it's generally shitty in every other respect. But the ranks of minimally aware, decent human beings would not appear to include the NYT reviewer. Who is -- surprise! -- an enormously privileged, straight white man. By the way, I didn't mention that Horrible Bosses was written by three men, and directed by a man. Also a surprise! I was going to offer a few specific comments about Scott's review in theTimes, but fuck. Life is too short, and my stomach isn't strong enough.

On the subject of life for a woman in the Rape Culture, read this -- and watch this video. I'm sure the wonderful fucks who created Horrible Bosses and the wonderful fuck who reviewed it for the Times would find that monologue fall-on-the-floor funny.

With regard to the riotously hilarious song that greeted Michele Bachmann (Jimmy Fallon joked about it on Twitter, so it must be funny!): I find Bachmann to be a ludicrously awful politician, many of whose views are deeply repellent. That is, as they say, not remotely the point. If you don't know what the the point is, please go away. On your way out, take a look at "Kill That Woman!" and a followup article, "A Depraved, Violent and Indifferent Culture."

This ends the good news for today.

A Culture Dedicated to Creating Hell on Earth

2011-11-21T08:51:00.000-08:00

In my remarks last week about the Penn State story, I explained why the repeated statements by virtually everyone that we all must "protect the children" are largely meaningless. Most people say nothing about the common forms of cruelty to children that occur all the time; the majority of people perpetrate such cruelties themselves, in the name of "discipline" and "proper" upbringing. This is especially true when we speak of emotional and psychological violence against children; in our culture, such violence takes place every moment of every day.

And the bullying children described in this story may be monsters -- but they are monsters created by the adults around them (in almost every case, beginning with their parents) and by the culture generally:

The boy who first came forward to accuse former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky of sexual assault has been harassed so intensely that he had to leave high school, prompting ousted coach Joe Paterno to speak out against bullying.

The mother of the alleged victim, who set off the investigation that has rocked the world of college sports and led to 40 counts of child sexual assault against Sandusky, told ABC News that students at her son's high school blame him for triggering the sex abuse scandal that led to the firing of Paterno, the beloved head coach who oversaw the university's Nittany Lions football team for 46 years

Speaking exclusively with "Good Morning America," the attorney representing Paterno said that the former coach denounces bullying, and called for respect in the name of the school.

"Coach Paterno strongly condemns harassment or bullying of any kind, and he asks anyone who truly cares about Penn State to conduct themselves honorably and with respect for others," attorney J. Sedgwick Sollers told ABC News

"Coach" Paterno is a goddamned fucking liar. I say this with absolute confidence in the correctness of my judgment, on the basis of what is already known about what happened at Penn State.

In this culture, goddamned fucking liars of this kind are the leaders in business, in politics, in every field including sports. Our culture loves goddamned fucking liars like Paterno.

From "Bullied, Terrorized, and Targeted for Destruction: Our Children Have Learned Well":

[Our children learn] that cruelty and violence are not to be condemned, but constitute the coin of the nightmare realm of our culture: cruelty and violence are enacted many times every day in films, on television, in our personal lives, and by our government on a national and international scale. You will be rewarded for cruelty: the crueler you are, the greater the reward.

...

Our children learn all this, and many more lessons of the same kind. Of course, they are often vicious bullies. Our government is a murderous bully on a scale that beggars description; most politicians are bullies; the majority of adults are bullies to varying degrees. Why wouldn't these children be bullies? It's what they've been taught. In the most crucial ways, it's all they've been taught.

These children are the perfect embodiments of the central values of our culture. They have learned well.

In that earlier article, I also wrote that our children learn that "the extent of your awareness of the world around you, and the extent of your sensitivity to and concern for the sanctity of human life, will be the extent to which you are punished." This is the awful lesson that the boy who was forced to leave his school is now being taught, in a particularly terrible way. If we seek to end evil, we must first name and identify it. That is what the boy did. Evil reacts as it must: it will try to destroy him.

A culture like ours -- a culture so uniformly dedicated to inflicting pain, to cruelty, to violence, to destruction, to creating hell on earth -- does not deserve to survive for another moment. Many signs lead one to believe that it may not survive much longer.

Good. May there be some measure of justice, a vindication of humanity, compassion, empathy and basic decency, at very long last.

*****

On the same themes, see "A Depraved, Violent and Indifferent Culture," which includes this passage:

[A]ny signs of decency, of compassion and empathy, of being willing to say, No, and to mean it, any signs of healthy, vital life are ignored or, still worse, sneered at and made the target of mockery. (For much more on that last issue, see the discussion of high school students who peacefully protested the Iraq occupation and were then threatened with severe punishment, including expulsion, in "When Awareness Is a Crime, and Other Lessons from Morton West.")

In the most crucial sense, this is not a culture that deserves to survive. In all those ways that are conducive to fulfillment and joy, those ways that concern the sanctity of life and the possibility of happiness, such a culture is already dead.

Concerning the American Change in Management, and the Lies that Will Kill You

2011-11-18T11:05:00.001-08:00

We all claim concern with the truth. This is the case even for those individuals dominated by delusion: the delusion exerts a powerful psychological effect precisely because the sufferer believes the delusion to reflect accurately certain aspects of the world as it exists independently of him. And when we speak of political matters, we all maintain that our analysis and prescription for action correspond to the facts. In public life, it is rare that a person deliberately and knowingly lies about a matter of significance over an extended period of time and does so successfully, all the while being aware that his version of events is fundamentally false. The chances of detection are too numerous, especially when there exist a multiplicity of avenues by which facts can reach the public, as is true today with the reach of the internet (at least for the moment, and until the ruling class settles on an effective means of control and censorship). Even in earlier periods, the problem lay not so much with the availability of information, but with how that information was interpreted and offered for consumption. As one example, see the discussion here of the Pentagon Papers, noting Arendt's observation (which was forgotten by almost everyone when they employed the Pentagon Papers episode as a point of reference for criticizing WikiLeaks on the grounds that its releases contained no "surprises"):

What calls for further close and detailed study is the fact, much commented on, that the Pentagon papers revealed little significant news that was not available to the average reader of dailies and weeklies; nor are there any arguments, pro or con, in the "History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy" that have not been debated publicly for years in magazines, television shows, and radio broadcasts.

I find one particular demonstration of how long the road before us is to be especially frustrating, even maddening, at the moment. Everywhere you turn, you see repeated invocations of "a return to the Constitution," pleas for the resurrection of "democracy" as envisioned by the Founders, demands that we as a society revive "true Constitutional values." Statements of this kind will regularly be encountered on both the right and left. Among many progressive writers and those who are sympathetic to the Occupy movement, you will often hear such pleas coupled with outrage at the fact that government has been entirely taken over by the wealthiest and most powerful -- and, they will usually maintain, this takeover has most significantly occurred in the last several decades. Thus, the solution to the current calamity is, among other elements, a return to that earlier Paradise, when the Constitution as originally envisioned held sway. After all, why was the American Revolution fought in the first place?

My title is intended as a corrective to this widespread, indeed nearly uniform, delusion. For a brief moment -- a very brief moment -- a "revolution" might have taken place. But the wealthiest and most powerful Americans were not about to let that happen: they saw the chance to enshrine their power in a country all their own, and they took it. What killed "democracy" in America? What gave the government over to the wealthy and powerful?

The Constitution. Of course.

The American Change in Management (formerly known as the "American Revolution," and we should work to make that "formerly" an actuality in usage) surely ranks as one of the more effective propaganda triumphs in history. The Constitution is the sacred embodiment of "government of the people, by the people, for the people..."? The government established by the Constitution was the indispensable means by which the ruling class established its dominion over the new nation and sought to ensure the continuation of that dominion into the future. That government was created by and for the benefit of a very small number of privileged individuals; the vast majority of "the people" were struck from the ranks of those with whom it was concerned in any positive sense.

The Constitution created a government of, by and for the most wealthy and powerful Americans -- and it made certain (insofar as men can make such things certain) that their rule would never be seriously threatened. The most wealthy and powerful Americans were the ones who wrote it, after all.

Yet all our problems would be solved if only we returned to "real" and "true" Constitutional values. I suppose it's a blessing of sorts that I enjoy comedy so much.

The excerpts that follow are from Terry Bouton's Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. The first passages are from Chapter 4, "The Sheriff's Wagon: The Crisis of the 1780s." The similarities to our own time are striking: widespread, systematic foreclosure has always been a chief method by which the ruling class consolidates and expands its power. (In these excerpts, I have omitted footnotes and the highlights are mine.)

When it comes to symbols for the spirit of 1776, Pennsylvania has almost a monopoly. After all, it is home to the Liberty Bell, Valley Forge, and Independence Hall. It was the location of the First Continental Congress and the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence. These symbols speak of the triumph of liberty and democracy and have been celebrated, with good reason, by Americans ever since.

There is, however, another symbol of the Revolution that complicates the ending to the traditional story. And although this symbol has disappeared from cultural memory, in the years after the War for Independence, it was to many Pennsylvanians the most potent icon of the Revolution's outcomes. The image was this: the heavily loaded wagon of a county sheriff bearing the foreclosed property of debt-ridden citizens. The power of this icon came from its ubiquity. During the postwar decade, the sheriff's wagon could be seen nearly everywhere. With its load of foreclosed property, it struggled up the narrow gullied roads of the backcountry, groaned along the wide smooth lanes of the Delaware Valley, and rattled down the bumpy cobblestone streets of Philadelphia, the richest city in the new nation. As was to be expected in a largely agricultural society, the wagon made most of its stops at the homes of small farmers. Yet its flat wooden bed was just as likely to hold the confiscated tools of a blacksmith, the grindstone of a miller, or the inventory of a small merchant. Indeed, one striking comparative fact is this: there were more Pennsylvanians who had property foreclosed by county sheriffs during the postwar decades than there were Pennsylvania soldiers who fought for the Continental Army.

...

[I]t is important to pause and consider more closely the people who found themselves foreclosed. A few points deserve emphasis. First, the cash scarcity brought hardship to a wide range of people across the state, not just poor backcountry farmers. Second, although the crisis hurt some gentlemen, most of the pain was borne by those of the middling and lower sorts. And, finally, property redistribution performed by the sheriff ended up greatly widening the gap between the rich and everyone else.

...

In the end, the unequal distribution of pain translated into a widening gap between the wealthy and nearly everyone else. Although some individuals of the middling and lower sorts may have prospered, the lowest 90 percent of the population lost ground. By 1800, most citizens now possessed far less of the state's wealth -- land, money, livestock, tools, furniture, pots and pans -- than in the past. In Philadelphia in 1780, the lowest 90 percent of the population held over 56 percent of the wealth. By 1789, they held only 33 percent. By 1795, Philadelphia's lowest 90 percent owned only about 18 percent of the total assessed wealth -- a staggering downward shift in only fifteen years.

It was the same story in the countryside.

And from Bouton's concluding chapter:

In the waning years of the War for Independence, many of the gentry began embracing ideals and policies that they had once denounced as British "oppression." Frightened by the upheavals of war and spurred by a heightened sense of social status, many of Pennsylvania's self-styled gentlemen abandoned their commitment to extending political and economic power to ordinary folk. Instead, they adopted a new idea of "good government" based on concentrating both political and economic might in the hands of the elite. They launched a prolonged attack on popular ideals and the democratic achievements of the Revolution, attempting to undo reforms that many of them had helped to create. In this sense, the postwar period was essentially a replay of the 1760s and 1770s, with the revolutionary gentry playing the roles of Britain.

And, like Britain had done earlier, the gentry's effort to narrow democracy created an economic crisis and provoked an intense political struggle. Elite policies strangled the economy and led to mass property foreclosures across Pennsylvania. Many people from the middling and lower sorts initiated a powerful defense of popular ideals. They launched a barrage of petitions and tried to elect reformers to office. When those efforts fell short, they used mass civil disobedience and crowd protests to advance their ideals. In this way, the postwar years became a struggle to define whose vision of the Revolution -- and whose definition of democracy -- would reign in Pennsylvania and the new United States.

...

Genteel Pennsylvanians joined with elite men from the other states to create a new national government designed to be a stronger barrier against democracy. The new federal Constitution removed many economic powers from the states (like the ability to print paper money) and imposed new demands (like requiring debts to be paid in gold and silver), which effectively outlawed most popular reforms. At the same time, the Pennsylvania gentry replaced the 1776 state constitution with a new 1790 charter that mirrored the checks on democracy in the federal Constitution. State leaders then directed this new government toward enhancing the wealth of the elite and dismantling the rings of protection that ordinary Pennsylvanians had built to protect their communities. Ordinary folk continued to resist, even going so far as to close roads across the state. But they remained unable to mobilize in ways that would bring the changes they wanted. In 1794, when western farmers finally began organizing the state to oppose the new order, Federalist leaders became so threatened that they provoked a conflict to prevent ordinary folk from uniting. The final defeats came when armies marched in 1794 and 1799, solidifying a victory for the elite founders' vision of the Revolution.

It would be an enduring victory for the elite.

...

In terms of the practice of democracy, the defeat helped to confine democracy to forms of political self-expression that did not overtly threaten elite interests. The Revolution had convinced many ordinary Pennsylvanians -- and common folk across the colonies -- that they had a right to monitor the government, to shape policy, and to regulate the government if they believed that their leaders were not responding to the popular will. For these people, politics was not just about casting ballots -- indeed, politics was not even primarily about voting. To them, regulating the government to act on behalf of the governed happened mostly outside the polling place. And "the people" expected to participate not just on Election Day but 365 days a year. Indeed, many Pennsylvanians believed they had a sacred right to regulate their government and that it was their duty to exercise that right to preserve democracy.

The founding elite attempted to obliterate that idea of politics during the 1780s and 1790s and to confine political self-expression within an electoral system replete with barriers against democracy. Undoubtedly, the most powerful barrier was the new federal system that placed a tremendous organizing burden on anyone pushing reforms opposed by the ruling elite.

...

Along with radically scaling back the practice of democracy, the defeats of the 1780s and 1790s also weakened democracy's meaning -- primarily in the way the elite founders attempted to eradicate the idea that concentrations of wealth pose a threat to the republic. In Pennsylvania, the Revolution had been forged by elite and ordinary folk who insisted that a free government could only survive in a society with a relatively equal distribution of wealth. That belief had pushed the revolutionaries of the 1760s and 1770s to make wealth more equal -- or at least to repeal laws that made wealth more unequal. When many of the gentry decided during the war that concentrations of wealth were a blessing rather than a curse, they attempted to divorce wealth equality from the public's understanding of the Revolution. ... [T]he governments that emerged from the Revolution often fostered massive inequalities of wealth. At the same time, they redefined "democracy" as an ideal that could be reconciled with those disparities. By transforming democracy into a concept that encouraged uninhibited wealth accumulation rather than wealth equality, the founding elite (and subsequent generations of elites) tamed what they could not defeat. They turned democracy from a threat into an asset by making it into a concept that supported their own ideals and interests.

Today, many of the people who complain most vigorously about the current state of affairs still clamor for a return to "real Constitutional values" and for the revival of the Founders' vision of the Republic. With very rare exceptions, their efforts are directed to the continuation of the Founders' revised version of "democracy," not to the vision with which the "Revolution" had begun.

The comprehensiveness of the confusion can be seen even in the writings of those commentators viewed with great favor by progressives and liberal "reformers" (using "liberal" with the generally understood meaning). Appeals to the sanctity of "the rule of law" are indistinguishable from invocations of the "true" understanding of the Constitution -- for within the context of the Constitution as first adopted and the government it established, "the law" is simply another weapon wielded by the ruling class to protect and enhance its wealth and power. And yet Chris Hedges will write:

What we are asking for today is simple—it is a return to the rule of law. And since the formal mechanisms of power refuse to restore the rule of law, then we, the 99 percent, will have to see that justice is done.

What we have today is the rule of law -- the rule of law as conceived and implemented by the ruling class. As is true of the State itself, the law will always be conceived and implemented by someone -- and those who conceive and implement it will be those who have the most power. This should not be a difficult point to grasp, certainly not for those who regularly write political commentary.

And we see Glenn Greenwald write this:

The book focuses on what I began realizing several years ago is the crucial theme[] tying together most of the topics I write about: America’s two-tiered justice system – specifically, the way political and financial elites are now vested with virtually absolute immunity from the rule of law even when they are caught committing egregious crimes, while ordinary Americans are subjected to the world’s largest and one of its harshest and most merciless penal states even for trivial offenses. As a result, law has been completely perverted from what it was intended to be – the guarantor of an equal playing field which would legitimize outcome inequalities – into its precise antithesis: a weapon used by the most powerful to protect their ill-gotten gains, strengthen their unearned prerogatives, and ensure ever-expanding opportunity inequality.

The law has not been "perverted." The truth is exactly the opposite. "The law" is serving the precise function for which it was designed -- to serve, in Greenwald's own words, as "a weapon used by the most powerful to protect their ill-gotten gains, strengthen their unearned prerogatives, and ensure ever-expanding opportunity inequality." This is what history tells us repeatedly, as set forth in Bouton's book and other books on the same theme.

Moreover, this must be true if we are talking about "the law" of any State at all. (See "The State and Full Spectrum Dominance" and the detailed discussion here, as well.) It is again the most obvious point that seems to remain entirely invisible: The State and "the law" will always be devised and implemented by those with the most power: that is why they are devising them and not you. To expect the powerful to erect a system that will strip them of every advantage they possess fails to comport with the lengthy testimony of history, or indeed with human nature itself.

So we are left with the calls for a return to the vision of the Founders and to a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" -- by which almost everyone means the vision as embodied in the Constitution, not the vision with which the "Revolution" had begun and which did not survive the War for Independence itself. And, as Bouton explains, the ruling elite has "turned democracy from a threat into an asset by making it into a concept that support[s] their own ideals and interests."

It is an immense triumph of propaganda. And from that perspective, you have to acknowledge: it's fucking genius.

If it's all the same to you...

2011-11-16T13:27:00.000-08:00

I'd rather stab a rusty fork into my eyes 2,583,921 times than ever read a passage like this again:

Greil Marcus’s achievement in “The Doors” is to isolate and resurrect this band’s best music and set it adrift in a swirling and literate cultural context.

Isolate!

Resurrect!!

Set adrift!!!

And the cultural context swirls literately!

Now, you know that I am unfailingly generous and kindhearted. C'mon, you know that. So, sez I to myself, that's just some editor having funsies on the introductory Books page at the Times.

Then I swirl myself into the full book review. My heart, resurrected just moments before (that blurb was like unto an iron fist launched at my chest with the force of a 15,000-member zombie army, stopping my heart like a cheap watch stomped underfoot by a crazed "culture" correspondent at, say, the Times), stops again. Except for "Mr." replacing "Greil" as the opening word, the entire sentence appears verfuckingbatim in Dwight Garner's review.

Oh, yes, I read the full review. The book is "acute and ardent." Marcus "quotes others shrewdly." He also "dilates." At length. Finally, as my gnarled, trembling fingers close around the fork, I read Garner's concluding sentence:

As Jim Morrison said in a 1967 interview, in a line Mr. Marcus happily reprints, “Critical essays are really where it’s at.”

Critical essays -- including certain book reviews, as I'm sure Garner would dilate, as he happily repeats the line.

I can see the crooked, self-satisfied, little-boy grin begin to poke at the corners of Garner's mouth, as the warm snot and drool drip off his chin and puddle on his laptop.

Leave me to my goddamned fork.

Aren't You All Just the Most Wonderful People!

2011-11-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

Regular readers are familiar with my extensive writing on the abuse and mistreatment of children. My concern extends beyond physical abuse (although I've written many posts about it), and includes a detailed examination of what is much more common: the everyday emotional and psychological abuse of children, in forms that are accepted and approved by the majority of adults. Because of my focus on this subject, I've read a fair amount about the Paterno-Sandusky-Penn State story.

I would have read more, but I find most of the commentary profoundly disheartening and sometimes sickening. As I read about this latest horror story, I kept thinking: We've seen all this before -- and nothing changes. The phenomenon is largely identical to what one might experience reading about the current "crisis" on the economic front or in foreign policy. This, we are assured -- where this is whatever happens to be the "hot" story of the day or week -- is the breakthrough that will finally sweep away the rot and corruption and usher in a new order. Then, after a few weeks, the story slowly recedes from public awareness, to be replaced by another controversy. And that one will be the breakthrough that will finally sweep away ... well, you see how that goes.

One of the themes common to much of the Paterno coverage is the insistence, mixed either implicitly or explicitly with small or large helpings of self-congratulation, that "we all must protect the children!" The writers who condemn what happened at Penn State (which is all of them) are, by virtue of their heatedly announced condemnation, on the side of the angels, for they are fulfilling their responsibility to "protect the children." They know horrifying, sickening, even evil acts when they see them, and they are dedicated to eliminating them.

With so many people so passionately dedicated to "protecting the children," the safety of children in the future can hardly be in doubt even for a moment. Yet nothing will change -- and the abuse will go on.

For the most part, I don't doubt the sincerity of the writers who are outraged by what happened at Penn State, insofar as this particular story is concerned. I'm sure the pattern of extreme abuse that has been revealed genuinely horrifies them. But reactions of this kind (of every kind, in fact) are shaped and conditioned by the culture in which we live, including by the kinds of behavior that are so common and longstanding that they barely register in people's consciousness. Especially severe instances of cruelty grab our attention; such is the nature of "sensational" events in a culture which finds its primary nourishment in the sensational, while the common forms of cruelty continue uninterrupted.

Moreover, public displays of outrage and condemnation, particularly when engaged in with such unsettling eagerness, are to be distrusted. Anyone and everyone will rush to say, when the spotlight is on him, "No one could possibly care more about protecting children than I do!" The test of his sincerity is what happens when the spotlight moves on, when no one is looking -- no one, that is, except his own conscience and sense of humanity (and God, if he believes in such).

The test of his sincerity also includes what he does not say. I have yet to come across an article about what happened at Penn State that mentions this:

Thirty-one nations fully ban corporal punishment.

Sweden, in 1979, was the first to make it illegal to strike a child as a form of discipline. Since then, many other countries in Europe have also instituted bans, as have New Zealand and some countries in Africa and the Americas.

More than 70 additional nations have specific laws in place that prohibit corporal punishment in schools. You can sort through the table above to see where different countries stand on the issue.

In some cases, such as the United States, there are partial bans in place depending on either location or the age of the children.

For the U.S., corporal punishment is prohibited in public schools for 31 states and the District of Columbia. Two states, Iowa and New Jersey, extend their bans to private schools as well.

Thus, in the United States, corporal punishment is legal in public schools in 19 states, and in private schools in 48 states. In addition, corporal punishment is legal in every home.

I'll keep this simple. I'll put it in bold capital letters:

AN ASSAULT ON A HUMAN BEING IS AN ASSAULT ON A HUMAN BEING.

CHILDREN ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

CHILDREN ARE NOT PROPERTY.

I refer you to an article I wrote, God help me, in 2004: "From Mild Smacking to Outright Sadism, Torture and War: The Lie of 'Well-Intentioned' Violence." Here is the opening of that essay:

I had begun this essay with a different title: A New Law for Adults -- Moderate Assaults Now Permitted. Can you imagine for one moment that anyone would assent to a law of the kind suggested by that statement? Think about the howls of justified outrage that would greet a proposal to pass a law stating as follows:
After review of many studies and having consulted the opinions of numerous experts, we have concluded that it is sometimes acceptable for one spouse to smack the other, if he or she does so to inflict "moderate punishment" for disapproved behavior. However, we emphasize that this new law should not be taken as permission for any adult to go further. Any violence engaged in by one spouse which results in genuine physical or mental harm to the other will be prosecuted to the full extent permitted by other applicable laws.

Yet physical assaults on children are legal in public schools in 19 states and in private schools in 48 states, and in every home in the Glorious United States of America.

From the ACLU, three years ago:

More than 200,000 US public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a joint report released today. In the 13 states that corporally punished more than 1,000 students per year, African-American girls were twice as likely to be beaten as their white counterparts.

In the 125-page report, "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that in Texas and Mississippi children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old are routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions such as fighting. Corporal punishment, legal in 21 states, typically takes the form of "paddling," during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. The report shows that, as a result of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.

"Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence and it doesn't stop bad behavior," said Alice Farmer, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and author of the report. "Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it."

The report found that in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be expected. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary infractions at disproportionate rates.

"Minority students in public schools already face barriers to success," said Farmer. "By exposing these children to disproportionate rates of corporal punishment, schools create a hostile environment in which these students may struggle even more."

Students with mental and physical disabilities are also punished at disproportionate rates, with potentially serious consequences for their development. In Texas, for instance, 18.4 percent of the total number of students who were physically punished were special education students, even though they make up only 10.7 percent of the student population.

...

The report documents several cases in which children were beaten to the point of serious injury. Since educators who beat children have immunity under law from assault proceedings, parents who try to pursue justice for injured children encounter resistance from police, district attorneys, and courts. Parents also face enormous, sometimes insurmountable, obstacles in trying to prevent physical punishment of their children. While some school districts permit parents to sign forms opting out of corporal punishment for their children, the forms are often ignored.

...

Selected Witness Accounts:

"He took me into the office and gave me three licks. … He made me hold onto the wall and he paddled me. … It hurt for about two hours, it felt like fire under my butt."
– Matthew S., who was paddled in second grade for throwing food in a school cafeteria in the Mississippi Delta.

"The other kids were watching and laughing. It made me want to fight them… When you get a paddling and you see everyone laugh at you, it make you mad and you want to do something about it."
– Peter S., a middle school student in the Mississippi Delta.

"What made me so angry: he's three years old, he was petrified. He didn't want to go back to school, and he didn't want to start his new school. I was so worried that this was going to constantly be with him, equating going to school with being paddled."
– Rose T., mother of a 3-year-old boy in Texas who was bruised from physical punishment after he refused to stop playing with his shoes in class.

"I went into the principal's office. … He gave me a chair and said hold onto the chair. The paddle had holes in it. Then he just did three swats. … I was hit on my buttocks. … There were holes in the paddle to make it go faster. … It hurt very much. There were definitely red marks and then swelling… almost welt-like markings. It didn't last for more than a couple days. … It left me feeling very humiliated. I think there were several levels of emotion. Physical pain, mental humiliation. … And being a female at that age, it was like there was this older man hitting me on the butt. That's weird… even at that age I knew it was inappropriate."
– Allison G., a recent graduate punished as a teenager in Texas for being late to class multiple times.

"I've heard this said at my school and at other schools: ‘This child should get less whips, it'll leave marks.' Students that are dark-skinned, it takes more to let their skin be bruised. Even with all black students, there is an imbalance: darker-skinned students get worse punishment."
– Account of Abrea T., former teacher in rural Mississippi.

"I see corporal punishment as a form of slavery. Beating on the slaves was how the headman got them to do something… we're focused so much on making kids do what we want. Think about the mental capacity that this kind of treatment leaves our children with. We are telling them we don't respect them. They leave that principal's office and they think, ‘they don't consider me a human being.' That young person loses self-respect."
– Account from Doreen W., school board member in a Mississippi Delta town.

Since the time of that ACLU report, two more states have outlawed corporal punishment in public schools, so some progress is being made. But corporal punishment is still legal in public schools in 19 states, and in private schools in 48 states -- and in every home. I have yet to see even one of the many wonderful people expressing metaphysical outrage about the Penn State story mention this fact.

So I repeat:

AN ASSAULT ON A HUMAN BEING IS AN ASSAULT ON A HUMAN BEING.

CHILDREN ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

CHILDREN ARE NOT PROPERTY.

I spoke of the endlessly repeating pattern of momentary outrage followed by forgetfulness, a pattern which will doubtless occur still another time with the Penn State story. I wrote an article in October 2009 about the Roman Polanski controversy, which was just one more among countless "sensational" stories. Among my points was this one:

Most people, and certainly most people in the United States, will not condemn cruel behavior toward children by adults in anything approaching a consistent and meaningful manner. For an examination of emotional and psychological cruelty to children, see the discussion here and here (and follow the links for much more; you'll find still more links here). Very few people condemn such cruelty, for many people, and most parents, inflict such cruelty on children with great frequency. They consider such methods of childrearing to be "proper" and "correct," and they believe they treat children cruelly "for the child's own good."

This inconsistency becomes even more marked when we note how common physical cruelty toward children is. See "When the Demons Come," "The Search for Underlying Causes, and Why Spanking Is Always Wrong," and "From Mild Smacking to Outright Torture and War: The Lie of 'Well-Intentioned Violence.'" I also direct you to my discussion of the heated and fundamentally hypocritical Mark Foley controversy, and of corporal punishment in public schools: "The Politics of Lies: Suffer the Children." I emphasize: corporal punishment in public schools -- which means you pay for the torture of children. On the identical point, see the ACLU report here (pdf).

As noted, individuals are correct to condemn Polanski's actions, and they should condemn them. However, until and unless they demonstrate that they understand the much more common forms of cruelty toward children -- and until and unless they condemn that cruelty as well -- their condemnations of Polanski (and of similar behavior by others), however impassioned and even sincere they might be, represent nothing more than an isolated instance of happening to stumble upon the truth. It is very easy to condemn a figure such as Polanski: such condemnation involves no risk of any kind (indeed, for many people, the failure to condemn is much more likely to open them to criticism from those tribes with which they identify and to which they belong), nor does such condemnation imperil their belief systems.

A heinous crime such as rape -- rape of anyone, adult or child -- is comparatively rare. How often do adults treat children cruelly in the much more common ways I mention above, and that I have analyzed in detail in the past (and which I will soon analyze in still further detail)? Why, every minute of every day, all around you. Do you react with horror when the angry parent smacks a child at the supermarket? You should. Do you intercede to protect the child? I would not suggest that you should in every instance; it might be very inadvisable, for a number of reasons. But you should want to. Most people don't. Many people approve the parent's behavior, and many other parents treat their own children the same way.

For these reasons (and many more), while I regard the condemnations of Polanski as correct in a broad sense, I view them as largely insignificant. I also regard them as worse than insignificant in one crucial way: we are eager to condemn the most extreme crimes, especially when that condemnation carries no personal risk of any kind, precisely because we do not wish to confront and condemn cruelty that is much more widespread. The eager condemnation of the extreme particular instance allows us to avoid a much more threatening and fundamental truth.

This is the same mechanism that I examined in my discussion of the behavior and meaning of those I call "the torture obsessives" ("By seeking to localize the evil in only one aspect of the much broader and more fundamental evil involved and within a falsely delimited period of time, the torture obsessives would thus whitewash the American project as a whole."). The mechanism is an especially effective means of avoidance. The torture obsessives seek to avoid far more uncomfortable truths about America the Good, America the Exceptional; the Polanski obsessives seek to avoid far more uncomfortable truths concerning their view of children and how we should treat them.

I want to reassure those readers who may tire of my mentioning these issues that even my realism, or cynicism as you may style it, is not without limits. I fully understand that all this has changed with the Penn State story and the widespread reaction to it. I have no doubt that this is the genuine breakthrough event that will finally change everything.

After all, with so many wonderful people in the world, how can I possibly believe that anyone, even a helpless, defenseless child, will ever be harmed again?

[In addition to the links provided above, much more on this subject will be found in "Meaningful Connections."]

I Care for Myself Too Much to Write About Iran

2011-11-14T09:27:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, I wrote the following about the growing likelihood of an attack by the United States on Iran:

I see no point in documenting the further steps on this route to hell, for the same reason I avoid a certain kind of horror film: it is the contemplation of cruelty, murder, barbarism and sadism for their own sake. Such exercises in psychopathology have no interest to me, and I will leave the dreadful task to others.

I said that after having written a few dozen articles about a possible U.S. attack on Iran, its causes, its meaning, and its likely consequences.

The passage comes from "The Worsening Nightmare," published on August 15, 2007. That's history for you. It'll kill you.

I discuss many issues in that article, all of them as critically significant now as they were over four years ago. Some specific details have altered, as have some of the players. What is most astonishing and horrifying is how much has not altered in any respect.

Since most readers aren't inclined to follow links, and to answer those who moan, "Oh, oh, oh, who could have known?," I offer this excerpt:

The great majority of people remain resolutely focused on the trivia of the day, and the latest "controversy" of the moment. Developments over a period of years and even decades bore them, and they have no interest in understanding them. Our politicians specialize in such ignorance, and most bloggers indulge their stupidity, and imitate it to varying degrees.

And most Democrats and their dedicated partisans (and I regretfully include almost all liberal-progressive bloggers in this category) remain absolute in their determined refusal to see the continuity of our foreign policy, from the annexation of Hawaii, through the Spanish-American War and the occupation of the Philippines, through Woodrow Wilson and the Open Door doctrine of global hegemony, to global interventionism, and all the other issues I've discussed in my "Dominion Over the World" series.

The Democrats don't object and they completely fail to mount serious opposition to our inevitable course toward widening war and an attack on Iran, not because they are cowards, not because they're afraid of being portrayed as "weak" in the fight against terrorism, and not because of any of the other excuses that are regularly offered by their defenders. They don't object because -- they don't object. That is: they agree -- they agree that the United States is the "indispensable" nation, that we have the "right" to tell every other country how it is "permitted" to act, that we must pursue a policy of aggressive interventionism supported by an empire of military bases. They agree about all of it; moreover, in most critical respects, they devised these policies in the first instance, and they implemented and defended them more vigorously and more consistently than Republicans, with the exception of the criminal now residing in the White House.

They agree. Try to wrap your head around it. Try to absorb the indisputable fact, which has been proven over and over and over again in the last century, and particularly in the last 60 years.

The heightened focus on Iran is the result of the new IAEA report. Numerous stories all make the same point: the report is based on "credible" information, i.e., credible intelligence.

This, too, is a subject I have repeatedly analyzed in enormous detail. You can begin with "Played for Fools Yet Again: About That Iran 'Intelligence' Report," from December 2007. Again, an excerpt:

I therefore repeat my major admonition, and give it special emphasis:
NEVER, EVER ARGUE IN TERMS OF INTELLIGENCE AT ALL.
It is always irrelevant to major policy decisions, and such decisions are reached for different reasons altogether. This is true whether the intelligence is correct or not, and it is almost always wrong. On those very rare occasions when intelligence is accurate, it is likely to be disregarded in any case. It will certainly be disregarded if it runs counter to a course to which policymakers are already committed.

The intelligence does not matter. It is primarily used as propaganda, to provide alleged justification to a public that still remains disturbingly gullible and pliable -- and it is used after the fact, to justify decisions that have already been made.

And still, everyone discusses "intelligence" endlessly, and how important it is that we get it "right" -- that is, that the "intelligence" be "credible." If you understand why the true restatement of that last phrase is, "that the propaganda be credible," perhaps you'll stop engaging in this exercise in inanity.

As my title from four years ago had it: Fools.

Beyond all this, and I say this for approximately the eighty-seventh time, "So Iran Gets Nukes. So What?" Actually, since I've argued this point so often, I now ask: So THE FUCK what?

I have only one life to live, one life to find joy and love. So do you. At this point, further discussion of this subject becomes the contemplation of evil for its own sake. Unless you are irreparably damaged and suffer a compulsion to damage yourself further, that is a pastime to be avoided.

On the other hand, there is one course of action you might consider in light of the horrific, world-shattering consequences of an attack on Iran. My very bad health keeps me housebound. I hope none of you suffers the same or a similar restriction. Assuming you do not, if a few million of you should descend on Washington and take up permanent residence in the streets surrounding the White House and the Capitol, you would have my full, fervent support. Stay there until the national government disavows all plans to attack Iran. While you're at it, stay there until the national government dissolves itself altogether. I had been ready to list several other actions of special importance the national government should take. But self-dissolution is the simplest and surest way of addressing the innumerable problems. Besides, getting rid of the motherfuckers is the point. (At this point, if they're part of the national government, they're motherfuckers. No exceptions.)

And in line with the preceding article, make no mistake: you would be compelling our monstrous, evil national government to act in the way you demand -- to act humanely, decently, in a genuinely civilized manner, with reverence for the sacred, irreplaceable value of a single human life.

That would be a noble endeavor, nobly undertaken. Go to it, with all my blessings.

So, What Exactly Are We Talking About? Some Preliminary Observations

2011-11-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

[Given the form and emphasis of the following discussion, and the possibly erroneous conclusions about my views of the Occupy movement to which they might lead, I think it advisable to mention that I have advocated widespread, ongoing civil disobedience for the past several years. As just one example, you can consult this article, in particular, the second section and the Addendum which discuss what I sometimes refer to as "The Power of No." Two additional articles of special relevance are this one (from February 2007) and "The Honor of Being Human: Why Do You Support?" (from December 2007).]

I have no opinion about the protesters' point of view. These barriers are killing my business, and everyone—the police, the protesters, the Mayor—has to understand the ramifications. The police decided the way to solve this was to put up these barricades, and I've approached every white shirt police officer here and said, "You are killing my business!" They say they're just following orders.

These barricades have created a siege down here on Wall Street that makes people not come here. I opened in June and hired 100 people and thought that was something good. I borrowed money, and the Trump organization took a risk with a little guy from Boston and signed the lease with me, and the bank loaned me money, and now I feel like a fool. I took such a risk here, and I'm collateral damage. My staff is collateral damage for other people's battles.

The remarks were made by Marc Epstein to the Gothamist. Epstein is the owner of the Milk Street Cafe. Because of the decrease in his business, Epstein has laid off more than 20 employees and may go out of business altogether.

Have Epstein, his business and his laid-off employees been damaged? Certainly. Has violence been committed against them? And if so, by whom precisely? Occupy Wall Street has an answer to the second question:

Asked about his plight, Occupy Wall Street issued a statement saying, "The NYPD makes the decisions on the part of police barricades. This is not our choice and we would never want businesses to have to deal with inconveniences that may reduce their business traffic."

Is that a satisfactory response? It may be true that the NYPD did not have to respond in the way they have; they might have used fewer barricades (or none at all), or placed the barricades in different locations (then perhaps harming others, but not Epstein). But the NYPD would probably respond with a statement on the order of, "We only did this [erected the barricades] in response to that [Occupy Wall Street]."

Would it claim too much to state that the presence of the barricades and the resulting damage to Epstein's business would not have happened but for OWS? That seems accurate in general terms. Given an ongoing presence by OWS, the NYPD will react in some manner, if not in this particular manner harming these particular actors, then in some other manner perhaps harming other actors. Some people might claim that the damage in this case is only to an "upscale food court" catering to Wall Street criminals and their abettors and enablers, so to hell with inquiries of this kind. Here, I will set aside such strategies, which substitute overly broad moral judgments for the difficult task of analysis, thus making analysis irrelevant.

In a different way, the response by OWS to Epstein's situation also avoids the analytic problems. The choices that led to damage to Epstein's business may not be those that OWS itself would make, but that isn't the issue. It was almost certain that the NYPD and the various other authorities potentially involved would respond in some manner; assuming they did respond (as they have), it was entirely certain that the choices they would make would not be selected by OWS. In other words, the fact of OWS's presence without more -- here assuming that such presence was completely "non-violent" as that term is generally understood -- set off a chain of events which OWS would not itself be able to control or direct. And that much could have been known by those taking part in OWS in advance of their taking any action at all.

Therefore, assuming for the moment that we wish to identify who is responsible for the damage suffered by Epstein's business (and based on reading various news stories from across the country, we can safely assume that there are more individuals suffering damage in the way Epstein has -- or in different ways, some possibly worse -- in additional locales), whom do we name? OWS? The NYPD? Both? Neither? Is it the case that, as he says, Epstein (and his staff) are "collateral damage for other people's battles," possibly unavoidable collateral damage once the battle was joined? Moreover, in reaction to the claim that the damage in this case would not have happened but for OWS, OWS might say that their presence only came about in response to the crimes of the ruling class. Thus, the causal chain is pushed back farther still; the parties who are ultimately responsible may be offstage, at least so far as this particular instance of harm is concerned (and setting aside for this inquiry the hardly insignificant matter of the extent to which the NYPD are only representatives and embodiments of the ruling class's means of control).

These questions, and more, call to mind an observation from Hannah Arendt: "No doubt, 'violence pays,' but the trouble is that it pays indiscriminately..." This returns us to the still more difficult question: Has violence been committed in the scenario involving Epstein's business? Relying again on the common understanding of the term, it would appear not. But "violence" is one of those terms ("God," "democracy" and "love" are others) which almost everyone uses without ever defining them, or even describing them with any particularity. "We all know what we mean" is a phrase that in practice means that we frequently possess only an approximation of a guess about the nature of the object casting constantly shifting shadows on the wall, that we likely have a similarly indistinct grasp of what others mean, and that debates very rarely clarify anything at all but only serve to strengthen the opinions with which the participants began. (You will find related observations here, especially in the parenthetical remarks in the second paragraph.) That is, in fact, we often don't know with any precision what the hell we're talking about. We can observe two results, among others. We may employ terms with one (vague, unspecified) meaning in one context, and then seamlessly shift to another meaning (still vague and unspecified, although apparently different in some respect) when the particular dispute alters. And, when a debate opponent appears about to corner us using our own words, we can say (and perhaps even believe, at least for the moment), "Oh, no, that's not what I meant!" I leave as an exercise for the reader a determination as to whether those who engage in such tactics do so with an appreciation of the sloppy, heedless, often repellent games they play while others suffer and die in the world of events.

Most typically, "violence" refers to physical harm inflicted on persons or things by direct action, where the harm is caused by an individual(s) or by an individual(s) controlling an instrumentality of some kind (a knife, a gun, a bomb, a drone). But we also use "violence" in a looser sense, when we refer to emotional or psychological violence -- or to economic violence. Factors common to these various usages include harm which would not have occurred absent the preceding action (assuming other possibly impinging elements remain unchanged), and that the nature and extent of the harm can often not be predicted with any reliability. We may think that a shot to the head will kill someone, but even that much is uncertain (as recently demonstrated in the case of Gabrielle Giffords). Although the specific nature and extent of the harm cannot be predicted, we can identify one other factor common to the different usages of "violence," including when physical harm is not involved (at least, in the beginning): when we employ violence, we seek to restrict or direct the range of choices available to the person(s) against whom the violence is aimed. As the Milk Street Cafe example demonstrates, those who are affected by the violence involved may not be immediately apparent.

In this last general sense, violence is a means of compelling obedience:

Informed, voluntary agreement occurs when a person is presented with a reason(s) to act in a certain manner; he understands and is ultimately convinced of the validity of the reason(s), and therefore acts in the manner suggested.

Obedience is the opposite of voluntary, uncoerced agreement: the understanding and agreement of the person in the inferior position are not required, and are often not sought at all.

The murderer's victim is compelled to obey: "You will no longer act at all." In a very different way, all the manifestations of the Occupy movement seek to compel obedience, even if only in a broad manner: "Our ongoing presence will make you take notice of us, and of our concerns." The same may be said of civil disobedience in general. As in the Milk Street Cafe case, a specific result of this effort at compulsion may not be what the initiators intended or would choose themselves -- but stating that they do not desire to cause a particular form of damage does not remove them from the chain of events. I emphasize that none of this is intended as a moral judgment or other kind of evaluation (whether the Occupy tactics are "good," or "justified," or "effective"); I am first attempting to identify exactly what is happening. And I mean to point out that when we view violence in general outline, as an instance of attempting to compel obedience, the line between violence and non-violence (as those terms are usually understood) is not a sharp one as almost everyone seems to assume, but one much more difficult to identify.

If we restrict ourselves to instances of civil disobedience which are entirely non-violent (again, in common understanding), we can observe that those who engage in such civil disobedience decline to follow those courses of action which are expected and informally condoned or, in the case of more overt conflict, those courses of action which are legally required. In other words, they decline to obey; they are being disobedient. While that much is obvious (perhaps painfully so, you might be heard to say), the reversal that is attempted is perhaps not so obvious: those who engage in civil disobedience seek to make others obey them. This is true in the manner already identified: the Occupiers (for example) are seeking to make the ruling class as well as the culture more generally take notice of their concerns. The additional goal is that those in power should do something about those concerns, even if what they should do is left unspecified (about which, more later). Those who protest seek to make those in power act in ways the powerful would not themselves choose, absent the protesters' actions.

I approach these questions from this perspective to throw into relief one particular issue: when we speak of civil disobedience, we are speaking of compulsion by those in power being answered by (attempted) compulsion by those who protest. The effort to compel others to act in a certain way (and/or to restrict their range of action) is common to both. It cannot be otherwise in a State founded on compulsion, which is any State. I will offer arguments on this issue in future articles; in the meantime, you can consult "The State and Full Spectrum Dominance" (in particular, the discussion of Nock and Higgs), which sets out some foundational concerns. I note again that this specific question is separate from an evaluation of the "rightness" or "justification" of the protest against perceived injustice, which I will get to in time (and it's touched on below).

Moreover, it cannot be otherwise when all of us are taught from the time we are infants that the foundation for society and "civilization" is obedience, which proceeds from compulsion. I say "all of us," and I mean all of us. There may be one exception among five or ten thousand, but I see you, and you are not that blessed exception. Nor am I, and the greater part of my work and thought over the last ten years has been to understand and undo the effects of that teaching. The work is neverending. I direct your attention to this article, which summarizes certain elements of this phenomenon about which I have already written. I will have more to say on the subject in these new essays.

Keeping these observations in mind, I think that, while it initially may strike us as very wrong to view the question this way given the widespread cultural conditioning to which we are all subject, it is far more accurate to view non-violence itself as another instance of compulsion. And if we are attentive to what proponents of non-violence advocate with regard to action -- and, importantly, what they hope the effects of that action will be -- the sense of error begins to dissipate. Surely, advocates of non-violence hope that change will result from what they do, and they often hope for dramatic and widespread change, even on a societal level. These advocates are not relying on persuasion alone; if they were, why the call to action?

One of the results of the commonly accepted view of non-violence as devoid of compulsion, and thus tautologically devoid of violence, is that we are led to bewildering reactions, as reflected in a number of comments I've seen about recent events in Oakland, for example. Advocates of non-violence will enthusiastically applaud the fact that the port of Oakland was forced to be closed (those who operate the port did not choose to close the port voluntarily), while they fervently condemn those protesters who smashed some windows and caused other property damage (all of which seems to be comparatively minor, to judge from multiple reports).

Why is compulsion approved in one case, but condemned in the other? I am unable to identify a principle which justifies the disparity. (There may be one, but I have yet to find it, even though I have read and continue to read extensively on these issues.) The answer cannot be in the nature and degree of the harm inflicted. Consider the Milk Street Cafe example with which we began. The chain of events which led to the dismissal of more than 20 employees, and which may lead to the closing of the Cafe altogether, includes the presence of Occupy Wall Street. Rather than the continuing presence of the protesters, the Cafe's owner himself might prefer, if he were free to choose, that the Occupiers broke some or even all of his windows, and perhaps went on to damage some of his other on-site property. If that happened on one occasion (and possibly even two or three times), he could replace and repair all of it, and his business might return to previous levels. That result would be a significant improvement over what is happening now.

Also consider the possible further effects for the laid-off employees. Perhaps one of them is a single mother (or father). She is unable to find another job, which is far from difficult to imagine in the present circumstances. She runs out of food in a few weeks, and she can't find sufficient food for herself and her two children from available food banks and similar resources. At some point, she considers stealing food so that her children will survive. Let's rephrase that to better capture the reality, which is much starker: she considers stealing food so that her children won't die.

But, certain proponents of non-violence will assuredly announce, that would be wrong. It would be a crime (obviously true, given current laws), and it would involve violence. For the non-violence advocates, it would be wrong in multiple ways. Violence is always wrong, they inform us. (Yet forcing the port of Oakland to close is a triumph.)

In addition to noting the inconsistency, a caution would not seem out of place. You might wish to reconsider a position which obliges you to take the part of Javert against Jean Valjean. Who's on the side of constituted authority, and of societal compulsion, and of institutional violence, now? As a thought experiment, I offer the following. Imagine that, a few years from now or even sooner given the possible trajectory of events, continuing and widespread food shortages occur. Imagine how different the manifestations of the impulses behind the Occupy movement might look. Food riots are not uncommon in periods of historical crisis, and sometimes precede revolutionary movements. What would those absolutely committed to non-violence have to say to the food rioters? "Violence is always wrong!" Will they add, "If you're unable to procure food except by violent means, then die"? Perhaps not.

(I have read, and continue to read, books, articles and numerous blog posts and associated comments about this general subject. Many of these concerns are addressed only infrequently. I sometimes get the sense that certain advocates of non-violence are more enamored of their self-perceived moral superiority than concerned with identifying and analyzing the immensely difficult questions involved. But the contradictions in their views alone fatally undercut the moral righteousness with which they seek to smother those who disagree with them. They eagerly endorse the use of compulsion [but it's "non-violent"!] to achieve the results they want, while they continue to eat the sweet, non-violent cake of moral self-satisfaction. Given the smugness that often oozes from the commentary of certain advocates of non-violence, I myself have begun to refer to such individuals as "non-violent smuggers." I am already inordinately fond of the phrase.)

Or is the commitment to non-violence not so absolute after all? Does the legitimacy of a response which includes violence depend on the nature of the injustice to which one reacts? The mention of Javert and Jean Valjean brings up a connection with which I had only a passing familiarity, one that I find fascinating. In my previous post, I pointed readers to Thoreau's passionate admiration and praise of John Brown (not precisely a consistent practitioner of non-violent civil disobedience). Another great admirer of Brown's was Victor Hugo, as discussed in David S. Reynolds' John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights.

Reynolds writes:

It was fitting, given Brown's racial message, that among the most heartfelt services in his honor were those held in Haiti. The epoch-making slave revolts of Haiti had inspired John Brown; he in turn inspired Haitian blacks.

...

The French novelist-reformer Victor Hugo was as deeply stirred by Brown's death as were the Haitians, whose history and culture he admired. Hugo sent an emotional letter about Brown, dated December 2, to the London News. Soon newspapers throughout the world, including many in America, had reprinted the letter. American Abolitionists saw it as a document that would "be read by millions with thrilling emotions."

What made the letter significant was not only Hugo's celebrity but also his sincere love of America. Hugo did not hate the South and love the North. Instead, he hated slavery and loved America. His revulsion over Brown's execution was proportional to his respect for the American democratic experiment. "The more one loves, admires, reveres, the Republic," he wrote, "the more heart-sick one feels at such a catastrophe." ...

The execution of John Brown revealed America to be the greatest oxymoron in the world. In this unthinkable act, Hugo wrote, the world witnessed "the champion of Christ ... slaughtered by the American Republic," "the assassination of Emancipation by Liberty," "something more terrible than Cain slaying Abel, ... Washington slaying Spartacus!" "The murder of Brown," he wrote, "would be an irreparable fault. It would penetrate the Union with a secret fissure, which would, in the end, tear it asunder."

...

Hugo's interest in Brown did not flag, even after slavery was abolished. Five years after the Civil War, Hugo aired plans to write a novel about John Brown. ...

Although Hugo dropped the plan, he incorporated Brown into Les Miserables, his famous novel of 1862. At the climax of the novel, to illustrate the idea that the victor is "magnificent" and the martyr "sublime," he wrote: "For ourselves, who prefer martyrdom to success, John Brown is greater than Washington." One sees shades of Brown in Hugo's Christ-like protagonist Jean Valjean, who suffers for the oppressed, and in Enjolras and his fellow revolutionaries, who fight against overwhelming odds on the barricades, just as Brown had fought in the engine house, and who die for a noble cause.

In 1874, Hugo, as the head of a committee of eleven French reformers, wrote a letter to Brown's widow along with a gold medal inscribed "to the memory of John Brown, judicially murdered at Charlestown, in Virginia, on the 2nd of December, 1859, and in commemoration also of his sons and comrades who, with him, became the victims of their devotion to the cause of Negro emancipation."

This is already far longer than I had intended. Perhaps these dismayingly unordered observations provide some impetus to reflection. As my title has it, these are only preliminary thoughts. In the next installment, we will turn to a consideration of a few genuinely difficult issues.

For the moment, I am condemned to exclusion from the state of grace which appears to be remarkably easy of attainment for so many others, where "we all know what we're talking about" and questions of grave import have luminously clear and satisfactory answers. I have sinned greatly in my life, and I continue to pay the price.

Sorrowful Silence

2011-11-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

I'm very sorry if my prolonged absence has caused some of you concern and distress. As longtime readers know, I stopped reading the majority of my email several years ago. I had been regularly receiving numerous exceptionally nasty messages, some of which were deeply upsetting to me. (My views have not been hugely popular for some time. I understate.) As a simple matter of self-preservation, I had to cease reading emails from people I didn't know. As a result, I must also apologize if you've written to express your worry about my state and received no response. (For those who will tell me to "have a thicker skin": please don't.)

Wendy died at the end of September, at home, in my arms. She and I always had a special connection, one which became truly extraordinary in the last several months of her life. Although she was slowly vanishing before my eyes, Wendy was still able to move fairly well until the last week. Even then, when it took enormous effort, she followed me around the apartment, making sure she was as close to me as possible (when she wasn't on my lap or we weren't lying on the bed together, which we were much of the time). After we had been through so much, and since she still seemed to experience some pleasure at being home, I couldn't bear the thought of taking her to what would be, for her, the strange and very upsetting vet's office.

I also couldn't have her killed. I've lived with a few cats who surrendered to the inevitable toward the end, retreating to a comparatively secluded spot (a closet corner, under a bed), curling up, and not moving at all. Wendy never did that. Right up until the last two or three days, which were ghastly, she still seemed to be enjoying my company, along with that of Cyrano and Sasha (who were wonderful throughout, and I always spent a goodly amount of time with them as well). Wendy especially seemed to like the songs I would sing to her. One of her favorites was this one. And when Frank and I would sing that to Wendy together ... well, Wendy would bliss out and purr, and purr, and purr. In the last few weeks of her life, we'd sing that to her five or six times a day. Some of you may think I'm silly, or pathetic. You're wrong.

I've been overwhelmed with sadness. At this point in my life -- toward the end, although that may still be a few years away (or not), which prospect fills me with relief or greater sadness, depending on my shifting mood -- every loss carries a very heavy weight. There aren't that many more losses to go. And there have now been so many ...

Well. I've been doing some reading, and thinking. I have a few things I think I want to say, in part because I continue to see a lot of nonsense written about, well, everything. Including about the Occupy movement, particularly by those people who are, for reasons which are not at all apparent to me, accepted as instant historians, mysteriously capable of informing us lesser beings of what it all means, including what it all means for the future. I admire their omniscience. Beware the seductive allure of narrative, my friends, especially a preselected one which accords with your particular preferences. In the event you hadn't noticed, history doesn't give a damn about you or the storyline you find so attractive and compelling. History is a messy, violent, most often excessively nasty business.

But I'm not ready yet to write about this in detail, both because of my great sense of loss (which is becoming less paralyzing, but slowly) and also because of the issues I'm reexamining. Unlike our all-knowing seers, it takes me a while to work through complex issues. So I'm rethinking a number of questions, including many related to violence, and doing a considerable amount of reading. Here's one short piece you might want to read yourself and ponder, especially if you're one of those who praises Thoreau (for example) and "non-violent" resistance in general: Thoreau's remarks about John Brown. These issues are fucking complicated. I'm reading a lot about Brown, and I'll have some observations to offer when my own thinking has become clearer to me. (I'm not entirely sure what I think about certain aspects of this at the moment. Phooey, I'll never be a celebrity commentator, to whom everything is crystal clear before it even happens!)

In the meantime -- yes, you knew this was coming, and good Christ, this is incredibly awkward and I loathe having to do it -- I've paid the November rent and I'm perilously close to broke once more. Bless all of you who have been so wonderfully generous. I truly don't know how to express my thanks properly. And I would feel less inclined to ask for help yet another time, except I noticed that Atrios has been flogging his Act Blue donation page. Take a look at how much has been raised, just at Act Blue alone, for Elizabeth Warren. Yes, that's right: closing in on two million dollars.

Two fucking million dollars. For this Elizabeth Warren. (And donations are urged by this Atrios. Did you honestly think he was going to "create an epic 360 degree shitstorm"? As I noted in the earlier post, he leads an exceedingly comfortable life. In other words: he's got his. All this "progressive" blather is simply that: blather. For the suckers. Are you one of them?) But, I mean, Jesus: two million dollars. Functionally, despite whatever they may say (and a lot of Warren says is far beyond despicable and dreadful; check out that link), Warren is part of the ruling class (as is anyone in national or state government and, at this point I would argue, in government at any level), while operatives like Atrios are the ruling class's very useful adjunct. These people will harm you, perhaps grievously and irreversibly. They already do. And people enthusiastically give them lots of money to harm them still more. Perhaps someday (we won't see it), humanity will cease its compulsion to act out its endless nightmare suicide fantasy on the national and global scale.

On the other hand, I won't harm you. I may not offer much, but I offer at least that. I do no harm. Many others can't say the same. So a little financial assistance to a harmless, obscure blogger would be most gratefully received. Cyrano, Sasha and I will be able to muddle along a bit longer, while I gather my thoughts and try to identify what they are. And then, I hope not too long from now, I'll be ready to write.

As always, I extend my enormous gratitude for reading, and caring.

Another Shitty Post

2011-08-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

Briefly: after I pay the September rent next week, I'll be close to completely broke. Some other bills need to be paid.

Also, I'm spending most of my time right now taking care of Wendy, who's dying. We're in the roller coaster of the final phase: every second or third day, I think that perhaps she's rallying, and the situation will mercifully level off for a short while. Yesterday, she ate very well, for the first time in three or four days. Today, she's back to not being interested in food at all. Her face is still very beautiful; otherwise, she's a bag of bones. I spend hours with her on the bed, gently stroking her, talking to her, singing to her. I make up little songs, about how much I love her, how much joy and fun she's brought into our lives. She raises her head and tilts it toward me, asking for her ears to be massaged and scratched. She purrs a lot.

I don't know if I'm doing her any favors by letting this go on. She doesn't seem to be in pain ... but how do I know? And she still eats, sometimes. She's still able to get on and off the bed without difficulty. And she seems to enjoy the company. How can I have her killed? I can't, not yet.

Chances are I'll need some more money to pay for a few things in these last days for her. I don't have any.

Despite this, I think I've managed to do some good writing recently. Nothing mysterious about that: it's a distraction from the awful pain of watching Wendy die, and sometimes I'm grateful for it. There's more I want to say about the London riots, about Libya, about tribalism and its many manifestations and complicated dynamics. Aside from the usual very small circle of somewhat likeminded discontents, almost no one gives a shit whether I say any of it or not. Why do I bother? I don't bother a lot: I have a huge number of notes for future essays, I've had a huge number of notes for years. Very few of them are translated into published pieces.

And who cares? I don't much care myself any longer. The world, and most readers of blogs, have given me no reason to care.

I do it, when I do, because I can't do anything else due to my own extremely rotten health. There's a rallying cry for you. Fuck.

Anyway, I need some money. If you have some you can spare, I'd be very grateful.

I wish I could still care about being "positive" and "upbeat" for you. Sort of. Actually, not so much. Fuck.

Wendy is dying, and she remains a great source of joy and love. That's considerably more than I can say for myself, or for most of you for that matter. The capacity and willingness of humans affirmatively to choose unnecessary suffering, when there's so much suffering in life that we can't avoid, try as we will, never ceases to astonish and horrify me.

I'm going to spend some more time with Wendy now. I'll take two or three or four dishes of food to her; maybe something will appeal to her.

Do what you will. Thanks, I guess.

If Pictures Were Arguments...

2011-08-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

It would appear that people with the capacity to make an actual argument choose instead to rely on pictures. I eagerly await the gallery of fetus love, offered as a detailed proof that women are inferior beings who have no business claiming a right to control their own bodies. Yeehaw!

But okay. Pictures are swell. Here are some more. I guess those Nazis were swell, too. (See what I did there? I mentioned Nazis precisely so you can feel righteous and superior in ignoring the rest of this post. I'm incredibly thoughtful.)

Watch for the festival of meaningless distinctions. "Oh, but we didn't invade Libya! We just bombed strategically so that the Libyans could reclaim their country for themselves!" The common feature -- the feature that matters above all others when evaluating what the Western powers did -- is that the West utilized military aggression in events that were none of their goddamned business. Of course, from the U.S. perspective, and it was the U.S. that drove this episode of aggression, anything that happens anywhere in the world is our business, that is, it is the business of the U.S. ruling class. They don't talk endlessly about American global hegemony to idle away a few centuries.

The Western powers bombed Libya a lot. They killed a whole lot of innocent people; we'll never have any idea how many. Did the Western powers have any right to act in this way, to murder innocent people? Assuredly they did not, absent an utterly unfounded conviction that you have the "right" and power to determine events according to your particular moral preferences -- and, most significantly, to eliminate those human beings who would frustrate your desires. In this context, it is more than slightly outrageous and offensive for Sartwell to engage in a blatant attempt at moral intimidation which announces itself even in the title of his post: "Stay human." From Sartwell's perspective, it is "human" to engage in unjustified campaigns of military aggression and murder. Such campaigns may tragically be all too typical of human behavior, but that is vastly different from claiming they are "human" in the sense Sartwell uses the term here.

Moral intimidation continues in the body of the post:

but right or left, black or white, straight or gay, capitalist or communist, you've strayed too far from your basic human responses and your basic opposition to oppression - if any - if you do not feel exhilarated as you watch the people of tripoli celebrate the end of their dictatorship.

To the degree "the people of Tripoli" may genuinely be somewhat freer from oppression, I'm thrilled for them -- if that is, in fact, what these events mean. But is that what they mean? Beyond the moments captured by these pictures, we have absolutely no idea.

Who are these people "celebrating" in Tripoli? What do they want? What will they do now? Is the future going to be better for them -- or worse? And what about all the other Libyans? What do they want? What are they going to do? And what about the Western powers? It is certain the Western powers will announce the indispensability of their "assistance" in fashioning Libya's future. That does not bode well for the Libyans, if one is genuinely opposed to oppression, if one hopes for a future of peace. See Iraq.

But in a different sense, all of this is beside the point with regard to Sartwell's post. For Sartwell, along with many others, cheered on the West's military aggression in Libya. (And I only write this post because I'm sure we will see more than a few entries similar to Sartwell's from others who also supported this latest campaign of "liberation.") Sartwell is attempting to justify his earlier support for this particular instance of the West's, and more particularly the U.S.'s, endless campaign of aggressive, murderous intervention around the world. In the same way that propagandists for other instances of the U.S.'s acts of brutalization, destruction and death sought to justify their support, Sartwell wants to be able to say: "I was proved fucking right."

No, you were not. And please note carefully: this will still be true even in the (impossible) event that Libya becomes a paradise on Earth. Speaking of Iraq, here is part of an essay I wrote almost five years ago. If you genuinely want to "stay human," consider this, all of which applies to Libya as well (and to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the rest -- up to 120 countries by year's end, we are told):

Each of us has a family, loved ones, friends and a life that is a web of caring, interdependence, and joy. When even one of us is killed or horribly injured for no justifiable reason, the damage affects countless people in addition to the primary victim. Sometimes, the survivors are irreparably damaged as well. Even the survivors' wounds can last a lifetime.

This is of the greatest significance. There is nothing more important or meaningful in the world. No moral principle legitimizes our invasion and occupation of Iraq, just as it will not justify an attack on Iran [or Libya]. Therefore, when the first person was killed in Iraq as the result of our actions, the immorality was complete. The crime had been committed, and no amends could ever suffice or would even be possible. That many additional tens or hundreds of thousands of people have subsequently been killed or injured does not add to the original immorality with regard to first principles. It increases its scope, which is an additional and terrible horror -- but the principle is not altered in the smallest degree.

I'm most awfully sorry. I don't have a picture to go along with that.

Never mind.

And Our Suitably Shabby Award for Risible Achievement in Fiction Goes to...

2011-08-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

This.

Not a single goddamned word deserves to be credited as truth, to even the smallest fragmentary degree. With regard to all such exercises in self-pleasuring by the Death State which rules us and lays waste to ever larger swathes of the world abroad and at home, I can offer only this paraphrase of a famous remark:

Every word they dictate is a lie, including "and" and "the."

The proof of my claim lies before the world, it is scalded into countless mangled bodies and ruined lives, yet very few people will accept it.

I remind you that virtually every aspect of this glorious exercise in murder has been revised multiple times, with later versions often directly contradicting earlier ones. When individuals act this way in our personal lives and do so repeatedly, and assuming we function as adults prepared to draw necessary conclusions from available facts, we acknowledge the compelled judgment: the person is a rotten, lying bastard. He or she has lost any and all claims to credibility. Their own behavior causes us to reject all the person's statements absent compelling evidence from independent sources.

I'm prepared to accept that something happened that night in Pakistan. Probably. Maybe. And absolutely nothing else at all.

That, in turn, causes me to ask: What in hell has everyone been yammering about? You should never permit a web of lies to drain you of precious resources: time, and thought.

I strongly suggest that you stop it immediately.

P.S. About this, toward the end of the article: "For God and country. Geronimo."

Jesus Fuck. All other words fail.

Stop This Dangerous Flash Mob!

2011-08-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

I can admit when I've made a mistake. I've made a whole bunch of 'em lately. A related realization, which comes tragically late in my life: just because I'm a limp-wristed, nelly faggot, that doesn't mean I have to think like one.

Lots and lots of people tell me that looting is always, always wrong. Except when it isn't. Okay, I get that! When a ludicrously mythologized national history transforms what is looting (and rioting!) by any definition into a glossy, pornographic celebration of violence, you go with the ludicrously mythologized history. This particular celebration of violence comports with the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, and it flatters our self-image -- we were fighting for freedom and equal rights for all! -- so sometimes violence is, like, totally swell. I get it! Will you be my friend now?

And even though I said I think that violence is always deeply tragic (how limp-wristed and nelly can you get? that is just fucking embarrassing), I wrote a few posts that may have sounded like I'm sympathetic to bad looters and rioters. The bad looters and rioters are the ones who aren't like us, who aren't part of our mythology, who don't tell our particular lies. The bad looters and rioters are the ones we don't want in our neighborhoods, littering outside the Starbuck's or our favorite hair stylist's, acting "inappropriately," or making us uncomfortable. They aren't our kind of people. I know I don't need to explain that to you. You would never riot! God bless you.

And rioting is totally wrong! So I may be a limp-wristed, nelly faggot ... but Stonewall? TOTALLY WRONG! Do you see the title of this Wikipedia entry? "STONEWALL RIOTS." Riots!!!! Fucking faggots. (They're, like, the worst kind of faggots.) And, Jesus, I mean, Wikipedia. Right at the beginning, it says:

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent [!!!] demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.

American gays and lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s faced a legal system more anti-homosexual than those of some Warsaw Pact countries.

Never mind whether any of this is true: it is, like, completely obviously Commie propaganda. Another mistake I made: please disregard completely the post I wrote in 2003 about my experiences as a teenager in the 1960s. (Christ, I'm old. Nothing scarier than an angry, aging queen, right, baby? You will tremble!) And seriously, big deal: so a well-known psychologist wanted to "cure" me with electroshock therapy. So I thought about killing myself. A lot. That was just my weakness, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the culture I lived in. This is America, which was fucking founded so that everyone could have equal rights! And all those rioting queens at Stonewall. I mean, if all of us had just had lots and lots of shock therapy, everything would have been fine, right? Right???

Some of you are going to start whining about Native Americans, or women, or Blacks. I've done way too much of that myself. But think about it for a minute. Every single one of those groups engaged in violence. Sometimes they even rioted! That is TOTALLY WRONG. So they had to be eliminated, or controlled, or co-opted (thanks, Obama!). They asked for it! Then, after they were eliminated, or controlled, or co-opted, then maybe, America would grant them equal rights. Kind of. A little bit. Here and there. When America feels like it.

But America isn't being violent or rioting. The government isn't being violent or rioting. The ruling class isn't being violent or rioting. America is being America! Stop being such a goddamned faggot. I did, so you can, too.

So I think it's fabulous that England is throwing people in jail for writing Facebook posts. They were inciting violence! They are definitely not our kind of people. Maybe they were completely "unsuccessful" in inciting violence, and maybe they were just "joking." That doesn't matter:

To put the ‘Facebook sentences’ into context, Chester Court’s presiding judge for the case, Judge Elgan Edwards, said that he hoped they would act as a deterrent to would-be rioters.

Other crimes that carry a four year custodial sentence include offences such as kidnapping and killing someone whilst drink driving.

A Facebook post is the same as kidnapping or killing someone. Makes sense to me! (Thanks to the reader who sent me that link. But he shouldn't send such a nice note to a limp-wristed, nelly faggot. He might get defriended! Don't worry, though: I won't ever identify him. I'm not a nelly faggot anymore! I know how to keep my mouth shut! Watch it ... do not go there.)

I also think it's fabulous that lots of people in government are thinking about censoring and even shutting down social networks:

The major social networks have been called to the home office next Thursday to discuss the English riots.

So far only Facebook has confirmed its attendance, although Blackberry has suggested it will also be there.

Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry have all been criticised after it emerged that some rioters may have used them to plan trouble or encourage others.

David Cameron has said the government would look at limiting access to such services during any future disorder.

...

Prime Minister David Cameron sparked controversy when he suggested that the government might look at disconnecting some online and telecommunications services in the event of further civil disorder.

Addressing Parliament he said: "...we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."

"When we know..." God, I love this! The State knows so much! It knew Iraq was an imminent threat requiring a huge invasion and endless occupation, it knows Iran is a ginormous threat (maybe another fun invasion and occupation!), it knows we have to kill people in Libya to prevent people from being killed in Libya, it knows we have to stay in Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and oodles of other places.

This is too much fun, and the U.S. doesn't want to be left out:

A summer marked by social-media-fueled riots in England and flash-mob violence in several American cities, including Philadelphia and Cleveland, has officials debating how much they should — and legally can — crack down.

...

Officials at the Bay Area Rapid Transit District have taken perhaps the most controversial step. Faced with a large demonstration on a subway platform announced by social media to protest the police shooting of a knife-wielding man, BART last week shut down cellphone service at the station. Officials said their goal was to protect the safety of subway riders, but critics immediately blasted the transit agency, saying it encroached on their free-speech rights. New protests Monday shut down several BART stations.

"Free-speech rights," my magnificent faggot ass. I would seriously appreciate it if you stopped staring at it. Don't want people talking about you. "If you see something, say something." Don't want people saying something about you.

This is really great. Think about the possibilities. As more and more people turn to ebooks and we eliminate all that annoying paper crap, we can finally get rid of all the trash that talks about revolution and violence and rioting. Now don't go all faggot on me again. Don't start whining about "classics" and shit like that. When everything is digital, the State can finally control it all! We'll finally have genuine peace on Earth and equal rights for all. We all know that's what the ruling class wants. That's what they keep telling us.

I want to help. Seriously. There's a flash mob we have to stop. The leaders openly brag about their prowess: “We’re getting organized; we’re getting very organized." Their Ultimate Leader has opened an account with a location-based social networking service called Foursquare. They claim they “will wage the most innovative and effective digital campaign in history, " and that their "team that will not just surpass but demolish our ... communications, and organizing goals.”

They already have about 9 million followers. And they've already committed systematic, organized violence and rioting in lots of places all over the world -- and they promise to bring organized violence and rioting to 120 countries by the end of the year!

You have to agree that this is very, very dangerous stuff.

For God's sake, please, STOP THEM!!

Crime and Punishment -- and Destruction and Death

2011-08-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

In my post the other day, I wrote:

If we broaden our perspective, and if we look beyond particular developments and attempt to grasp what is happening over a longer period of time, the nature of the horror that awaits us takes on a clearer shape: The West's ruling class is embarked on a program of killing and elimination.

You may consult the earlier article for my argument.

As a postscript to my earlier comments and as further evidence of my thesis -- to say, in effect, "I was not fucking kidding" -- consider the following:

*** "A Manchester mother of two who did not take part in the riots was sentenced to five months for wearing a pair of looted shorts her roommate had brought home."

*** "[A] London man ... received six months in jail for stealing a case of water worth about $5 from a looted supermarket."

But these minor details -- "minor" but for the fact that they are intentionally designed to devastate the lives of these fearsome barbarian "animals," who could easily be you or someone you know -- come at the end of the story.

The story primarily concerns this:

Late Tuesday, two men in northwestern England were handed stiff jail terms for inciting disorder through social networking sites. Cheshire Police said Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, both received 4-year sentences for using Facebook to "organize and orchestrate" disorder.

Blackshaw used the social networking site to create an event — with a date, time and location — for "massive Northwich lootin."'

Sutcliffe created a page on Facebook called "Warrington Riots" which listed a time and date for anyone who wished to be involved in a riot.

Some of you brave readers may be thinking: "Well, gee, four years seems a bit harsh. But I don't support rioting! How can we have any kind of society when people deliberately organize rioting and 'lootin'? If we want any kind of civilization, such people have to be punished!" And then you'll thoughtfully add: "But proportionately, of course." You're so thoughtful.

If you reacted that way in whole or in part, shame on you. What I'd actually like to say is too rude even for me. Motherfucker.

Did these two young men actually riot or loot? Did they themselves participate in the events they wrote about? Did they mean the Facebook posts seriously -- or just as some kind of joke?

But you see, the government isn't interested in any of those questions. And they didn't charge the two young men with actual rioting or looting. They charged them for the Facebook entries. For what they wrote. That's it.

To be precise, that's it with regard to what these two men themselves did. I remind you that they're the ones who were sentenced to four years in jail. The government did have some additional concerns:

[A] representative of Britain's Crown Prosecution Service said the two young mens' Facebook posts, "caused significant panic and revulsion in local communities as rumors of anticipated violence spread."

Well, that's okay then. It's fine to send people to prison for four years because of how other people reacted to something they wrote. Panic! Revulsion! Rumors!!

Just to be on the safe side, you probably want to shut the fuck up. For the rest of your life.

Thomas Knapp:

I must confess, however to falling speechless and slack-jawed for a moment at the sheer gall of a CBS News Internet poll accompanying the story of two men sentenced Tuesday in the United Kingdom (“Brits get 4 years prison for Facebook riot posts,” August 17): “Is four years prison too harsh for a Facebook post?”

I don’t really even have to reach the issue of reader response (although, as I write, 50% of respondents sickeningly declare for “No, fair punishment”). The only thing possibly more appalling than the question itself asked with a straight face is the absence among multiple choice answers of “are you out of your freaking mind? Prison? For a Facebook post?”

Folks, this is not an edge case — “fire in a crowded theater” or “fighting words” spoken while brandishing molotov cocktails. It’s a clear matter of people sitting in front of computers, typing things intended to be read by other people sitting in front of other computers.

Nor, seemingly, did the Crown Prosecution Service pull a fast one with “conspiracy” charges or other trickery to make it look like this was about anything other than speech. The cases were plainly charged, the alleged crime being “inciting disorder.”

...

Over the course of mere months, we’ve gone from “western democracies” chiding Egypt’s Mubarak regime for shutting down Internet access to stall a revolution, to San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit bureaucracy shutting down cell phone access lest its authority be “challenged.”

In a matter of a few weeks the status of “social media” has been doubly transformed — first from “a free marketplace of ideas” into a potentially dangerous venue that prisoners might abuse, and now from that into a place where communicating might make one a prisoner.

Knapp has more.

Consider the opposing forces. On one side, a massively powerful surveillance State, which brutalizes, imprisons, destroys and kills by myriad methods those segments of populations, both foreign and domestic, that it designates as noncompliant, or threatening, or disfavored for whatever reason, or for no reason at all. The State imprisons, destroys and kills in vast numbers.

On the other side, you have members of those noncompliant, disfavored groups. These particular disfavored persons perform incendiary, revolutionary acts -- such as wearing a pair of stolen shorts a roommate brought home, or writing Facebook posts.

And a lot of people -- including many liberals, progressives and "dissenting" writers -- side with the State.

The formulation I keep seeing, used by self-identified liberals, progressives and "dissenting" writers, goes something like this: "No, no, of course I don't support rioting [eagerly offered to reassure anyone who might have mistakenly thought the writer was "dangerous" to even a microscopic degree]-- but I don't support State violence either!"

These things are not the same. To avoid any misunderstanding, I emphatically state that I include actual rioting as well. To treat them as equivalent in this manner, in any manner of importance, is necessarily to side with the State.

I acknowledge that the issue is not entirely self-evident, although I think it should be easily understood to a large extent, especially by people who regard themselves as "dissenters" in a serious way. I'm currently working on an article about this subject, which I hope to publish in the next few days.

But since I think the issue should be understood to a significant degree after a few minutes of careful thought, I will tell you my reaction to the typical formulation set forth a few paragraphs above. I find such statements absolutely enraging -- and deeply sickening.

To be continued.

Caught Up in Nightmare: Killing Jack Rabbits

2011-08-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

This post took shape in my mind over the last week, as I read and listened to further reaction to the riots in England. I didn't want to write what follows, and I thought about jettisoning this essay altogether more than once. The reason is very simple: the thesis I offer here, and the connections I will make, are profoundly disturbing. If we -- and by "we," I refer in this context to the West generally -- continue on our current path, our future will be increasingly bloody and murderous. But this shouldn't surprise us: the ruling class now visits on its domestic populations the same fate it has delivered for hundreds of years to those deeply unfortunate peoples who lived in targeted foreign countries. In their pursuit of power, wealth and dominion, the ruling class systematically brutalized, tortured, "relocated" and murdered those foreign peoples in vast numbers. (All this continues today, of course; see Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, et al.) This is the program that the governments of the United States, England and other countries now bring home. I think it is of some value to look ahead to see what awaits us; among other things, you may take such precautions as are possible.

In my article last week, I mentioned the repeating pattern in the reaction of the ruling class and its defenders to popular uprisings. The current protests are condemned as "lawless" and "criminal," as representing the actions of what are almost certainly (in the ruling class's view) irredeemably "bad" elements of society. But the elites insist that some protests arise out of what the elites will kindly grant are "legitimate" grievances -- but all such valid protests are always those safely tucked away in the past. The elites neglect to mention that at the time those past protests occurred, the elites similarly condemned them as "lawless" and "criminal," as representing the actions of what were almost certainly (in the elite's view) irredeemably "bad" elements of society.

Ashley Dawson amplifies this theme:

The killing of [Mark] Duggan took place within the context of Operation Trident, a special arm of the MPS established in 1998 to investigate gun crime in London’s black communities. More recently, the MPS launched Operation Razorback in order to crack down on “troublemakers” planning to attend this year’s carnival in Notting Hill. As British activist Darcus Howe explained in a recent interview, these police operations come on top of a broader transformation in police-community relations facilitated by the war on terror that has allowed the police to engage in unimpeded stop, search, and arrest operations in Britain’s Black communities.

Despite the fact that most British police do not carry guns, being arrested in the UK is no joke. As Caroline Davies reported in an article earlier this year, 333 people have died in or following police custody in the UK over the last eleven years; not a single member of the police has been convicted for any of these deaths.

This pattern of police dragnets in Black communities has deep historical roots. As I discuss in my book Mongrel Nation, Black communities were targeted during the 1970s and 1980s by very similar special operations. In 1981, for example, Operation Swamp deployed huge numbers of police into the predominantly Black neighborhood of Brixton in South London. Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government oversaw the revival of Victorian “sus” laws that allowed police to detain anyone who they suspected might be either breaking or about to break the law. Not surprisingly, young Black men were disproportionately targeted, and a significant number of deaths in police custody ensued. In 1981, riots broke out in Brixton and quickly spread to Black, Asian, and white working class neighborhoods of cities such as Birmingham and Manchester.

Exactly the same pattern is repeating itself today. Given this fact, it’s worth remembering how these uprisings were framed at the time. The most trenchant account of urban unrest of the time, Policing the Crisis, suggested that urban “criminality” needed to be placed in the context of the organic crisis of the British state and society. For Stuart Hall and his fellow contributors, public fears about “mugging” (which anticipated and legitimated draconian tactics such as Operation Swamp that sparked the Brixton riots) were a moral panic that condensed much broader fears and redirected those fears onto the scapegoated figure of the “immigrant.” For the contributors to Policing the Crisis, that is, fears about crime helped authorities contain a much broader crisis in Britain.
...

In response to these interwoven economic and ideological crises, elites in Britain, the United States, and other developed countries gradually cobbled together the hegemonic project we now know as neo-liberalism. The lineaments of neo-liberalism of course included smashing institutions of working class power, shrinking and/or privatizing the redistributive arm of the state, and beefing up the state’s security apparatus. Hall and his colleagues called this approach popular authoritarianism.

A key element of popular authoritarianism, according to Policing the Crisis, was pinning the cause of the organic crisis on the figure of Black immigrant. Black communities had of course been hyper-exploited and, in tandem, economically marginalized for decades in Britain. Nevertheless, the underground economies that developed as a result were taken out of context and classified as criminal in a process that tended to pathologize entire communities and to treat criminality as a purely racial issue. Policing the Crisis elaborates a theory of Britain’s Black communities as part of an international surplus labor population whose outsider status allowed them to be demonized by British authorities in order to explain away their inability to establish a socially and economically just society. Both the Tories and the Labour Party cooperated in this scapegoating of Britain’s Black population, as a survey of the increasingly racialized elements of immigration legislation demonstrates.

The "broader crisis" of the 1980s to which Dawson refers has returned today with a vengeance. England and the United States are hollowed-out societies, with their former productive capacity vanishing at an ever-increasing rate. In close alliance with the State, the most powerful and wealthiest corporations continue to amass record profits, but only by siphoning up every last bit of wealth held by the numerically greatest, but otherwise weakest and most defenseless, part of the population. Every significant piece of legislation must be viewed in this context. This is true even of legislation which styles itself as concerning matters which would not appear to be directed to policing the "undesirable" elements of the population. Thus, Obama's heralded "health reform" bill, which I dubbed The Fuck You Act, has very little to do with providing health care, but everything to do with brutally controlling the weakest segments of society and extracting what little money they have left for the benefit of already vastly wealthy insurance companies and their constant partner, the State.

Although it is perilous to make such judgments as events continue to unfold, the evidence strongly compels the conclusion that we have entered the death spiral for the West's ruling class. The disfavored members of society have less and less economic resources of their own to be extracted, and fewer (and often non-existent) opportunities for improving them. Simultaneously (and inextricably connected to this point), the same disfavored members are increasingly unable to defend themselves in any area of their lives. The growing surveillance State watches over them day and night, privacy approaches the point of complete eradication, and the State continually adds to the weapons it uses to harass, intimidate, brutalize and imprison them. The State's methods of control are increasingly, brazenly explicit and crueler by the day.

As the society's resources continue to dwindle, the problem of the "surplus population" becomes more acute for the ruling class. The State now controls a population which is far larger than the ruling class finds useful for its purposes. What do States do in such situations? As much as we understandably resist stating the obvious conclusion, we would be well-advised to face it now: the State kills the especially disfavored parts of its population -- those who cannot work, those who are old and/or sick, those who produce nothing the ruling class finds of value.

If we broaden our perspective, and if we look beyond particular developments and attempt to grasp what is happening over a longer period of time, the nature of the horror that awaits us takes on a clearer shape: The West's ruling class is embarked on a program of killing and elimination. A general caution should be kept in mind. I'm not suggesting that this program is one that the ruling class has explicitly identified, even to itself, at least not necessarily. The ruling class is intent upon increasing its own power and wealth; in one sense, that is its only concern. I suppose, in some fantasy world, the ruling class would be content to enjoy its immense power and wealth while "ordinary" people pursue their own lives of contentment. This, of course, is the goal which the ruling class announces, and which it desperately tries to convince both itself and us is true.

But we don't live in that fantasy world. In this world -- and, I would argue, in any world where brute power is the final means of settling every dispute, especially when that power is consolidated in the State -- the ruling class seeks power and wealth by dominating and controlling the weaker segments of society. The ruling class may not set out to kill those people it finds unnecessary for its aims, but if the ruling class can maintain and increase its power and wealth only by eliminating them, it will eventually eliminate them. This is the logic of the ruling class's desires. It is certainly true that the ruling class could change much of this if it wished to: the productive capacity of both England and the United States could be reinvigorated, and much new wealth could be created and enjoyed by many more members of society. But the ruling class believes that would necessitate the diminishment of its power and wealth, so they will not consider the possibility seriously.

The ruling class dreamed a nightmare, and made it real. We are now caught up in it. For many of us -- certainly for me, and very possibly for you -- the end result is clear: the ruling class intends to kill us. Not today or tomorrow, the ruling class hasn't reached that point of desperation quite yet, but they'll kill us soon enough. We have no value to them; we're superfluous; we're not needed.

A killing by the State was the spark that ignited the London riots; many more killings by the State are where the ruling class's chosen reaction will inevitably lead it. We can note several signposts along the road through the nightmare. As I noted above, the State will exert increasingly brutal means of control and punishment:

Ministers and the security services are planning draconian powers to shut down or disrupt mobile phone messaging services and social networks in times of civil disorder.

...

Mr Cameron, promising yesterday to do "whatever it takes" to restore order, outlined a series of new security measures, which included:

* Consider further powers of curfew.

* Investigate using the Army to free up police for "frontline" duties.

* Give individual police officers the power to force people to remove scarves, hoods or masks covering their faces or be arrested.

* Extend "gang injunctions" banning teenagers as well as adults from associating with each other or visiting designated areas. The Government will also consult former New York Police commissioner Bill Bratton on further measures to tackle gang culture.

Mr Cameron confirmed that a parliamentary debate would be held on whether convicted looters should lose their benefits after more than 100,000 people had signed an e-petition calling for it. He also backed several local authorities – among them Nottingham, Salford, Greenwich and Westminster – who have said they will seek to evict social tenants who are convicted of being involved in rioting.

Before the ruling class finally eliminates the "undesirables," there is a necessary preceding step: the most disfavored, weakest elements of society must be demonized. I heard the following article first mentioned by Rush Limbaugh; it was quickly picked up by many conservative commentators (including self-identified "libertarians"). Limbaugh praised the article in glowing terms; he thought it identified the crucial issue in especially eloquent terms. For Limbaugh, the crucial issue was one made familiar in connection with history's bloodiest and most horrifying episodes of mass murder, although Limbaugh himself failed to note that fact. I'm sure it was merely an oversight. The crucial issue is, obviously, that the rioters are, as Limbaugh summarized it, "human only by virtue of their DNA." The rioters are not actually human at all; they are sub-human, animals deserving only to be put down.

From the article:

If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame.

...

They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong.

They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.

Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.

A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the ‘feral children’ on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.

The article offers much, much more in the same vein if you have the stomach for it.

A day or two later, Limbaugh found another article that he deemed equally penetrating. This article speaks not only of London, but of "black mobs" intent on destroying America. This paragraph summarizes the perspective:

Let’s return to the question of why. Many have absolute confidence about what we are witnessing. They can surely imagine the whispers of Wormwood to a thousand Patients. Delighted that the Mob has bypassed the gradual path toward evil, they can imagine him basking in the heat of burning double deckers in Peckham. They know who delights in a father’s dream for his daughter destroyed. Others perhaps imagine Legion, who admits in the Gospel of Mark, “We are many,” before being cast into the maniacal herd of pigs by Christ. No longer simply pigs, the maniacal herd for our times now roams London and stalks families in Milwaukee and Akron.

This leads directly to an entry on the widely-read and influential Instapundit, which reads as follows in its entirety:

IN THE UK, a changed mood.

UPDATE: Reader Brent Salmons emails:
I just got back from a two year stint living in London, and I found that I generally agreed with Allister Heath’s editorials in the City Paper. But I’m conservative even by US standards, so all of my British friends thought that I was an extreme right-winger. Allister Heath is also pretty far to the right by British political standards and, as such, may be fooling himself.

That said, I just spoke with one of my friends in London (a Labour voter) and she said that the rioters should have been shot in the streets and then proceeded to complain about paying taxes to pay for those “do nothings”. So, perhaps Mr. Heath is correct after all.
We’ll see.

I assume I do not need to spell out why I find that "We'll see" far, far beyond abominable.

I began by observing that the West's ruling class has brought home to its domestic population -- systematically and with increasing brutality -- the barbaric, murderous behavior it has visited on much weaker, comparatively defenseless foreign peoples for centuries. You will find a discussion of that argument in, "Terrorist State, Abroad and At Home." (I emphatically note that the West's ruling class obviously has already brutalized and killed huge numbers of especially disfavored peoples at home as well, but I've focused on a separate element of the same lethal compound in this essay. For a discussion of America's treatment of Native Americans and Black Americans, see this article, particularly the second section entitled, "Torture and the American Project.")

To close this admittedly grim analysis -- but then, I did say we were discussing a living nightmare -- let us return to the viciously brutal war the United States waged in the Philippines over a hundred years ago. As I've periodically noted, the Philippines episode established the pattern the U.S. followed in countless subsequent foreign interventions. It is the identical pattern that the ruling class has begun to reenact in England and the United States (and in other Western countries as well, to be sure).

The following excerpt is from Paul A. Kramer's, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines. You will find additional excerpts in, "The Mythology of the 'Good Guy' American."

Here is Kramer:

On the ground, racial terms like "gugu" and "nigger" both reflected and enabled a broadening of the enemy. In their letters and diaries, U.S. soldiers sometimes attached them to descriptions of combat status -- such as "nigger army" -- which, in effect, made them racialized terms for "insurgent." In some cases, they continued to distinguish combatants and non-combatants, referring to the latter as "natives" or "Filipinos." But in other cases, soldiers used both "gugu" and "nigger" to refer explicitly to noncombatants. "At meals [sic] times there are always a lot of little 'gugus' around, each with his tin can, begging scraps to eat," wrote Perry Thompson. Peter Lewis described how "the Niggers keep going to Church" on Easter. ...

Racial terms and exterminist sentiment were at the center of the most popular of the U.S. Army's marching songs, which marked the Filipino population as a whole as the enemy and made killing Filipinos the only means to their civilization....

...

One Nebraskan soldier boasted to his parents of his comrades' bold, aggressive fighting spirit, restrained only by officers' reticence. "If they would turn the boys loose," he wrote, "there wouldn't be a nigger left in Manila twelve hours later." ...

Racial exterminist impulses were also in evidence in U.S. soldiers' descriptions of violence against prisoners and civilians. The American torture of prisoners -- some fraction of which appeared in soldiers' letters, newspaper accounts, and court-martial proceedings -- was often, if not always, justified as a means of intelligence-gathering. The most notorious form of torture by the American side, if far from the only one, was the "water cure," in which a captured Filipino was interrogated while drowned with buckets of filthy water poured into his mouth. The scale of its practice and the frequency of death remain difficult if not impossible to establish.

...

Along with torturing them, U.S. soldiers also killed Filipino prisoners. Rumors of "no-prisoners" orders were common. Arthur C. Johnson of the Colorado Volunteers, for example, reported as early as February 1899 that Manila's prisons were already overflowing, and "the fiat is said to have gone forth that no more prisoners are to be taken"; he anticipated that "the Filipino death list promises to correspondingly increase." ...

The ultimate form of exterminist war was the killing of acknowledged noncombatants. As early as April 12, 1899, an entry in Chriss Bell's diary took derecognition to its furthest extension: Filipinos had already "caused so much trouble & murdered so many of our boys" that U.S. soldiers "recognize them no longer but shoot on sight all natives. Natives will not or cannot understand kind & civilized treatment. If you treat them as equals they will think you are afraid of them & murder you."

...

One of the most banal and brutal manifestations of racialization was U.S. soldiers' imagination of war as hunting. The Manila occupation and "friendly policy" had frustrated martial masculinity; the metaphor of the hunt made war, at last, into masculine self-fulfillment. All at once, a language of hunting bestialized Filipinos made sense of guerrilla war to American troops, and joined the latter in manly fraternity. "I don't know when the thing will let out," wrote Louis Hubbard one week into the war, "and don't care as we are having lots of excitement. It makes me think of killing jack rabbits."

...

The most notorious orders of indiscriminate killing were Gen. Jacob H. Smith's late October 1901 instructions to Marine Maj. Littleron W.T. Waller, following Filipino revolutionaries' successful surprise attack against U.S. soldiers at Balangiga on the island of Samar, to make reprisals against the entire population of the island. "I want no prisoners," he had directed. "I wish you to kill and burn." Smith ordered "all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States." When Waller had asked the general for clarification, Smith stated that he considered any person over the age of ten "capable of bearing arms." The interior of Samar must be made "a howling wilderness!" The direct result of these instructions was systematic destruction and killing on a vast scale.

I had planned to offer a few final thoughts here. But I find I'm unable to write more on this subject right now.

These matters are too terrible, too profoundly horrifying.

A Pledge Ad Even I Can Love: "Help Me Destroy Public Radio!"

2011-08-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

Oh, lordy: one of the Los Angeles area NPR stations is having another pledge drive. Perhaps it's because of the shifting perception of time that supposedly accompanies growing older (except when it doesn't), but it seems to me that the "non-commercial" radio stations are one endless, nonstop pledge drive. Or maybe it's because the programming is always the same: self-congratulatory, relentlessly "respectable," and always, always serious. Even the programs that are supposed to be "funny" are serious. I hate that shit the most.

But I just heard an ad that caused me to double over in laughter. It was, natch, tongue in cheek; unfortunately for the serious!, respectable!! NPR folks, an increasing number of people locate the joke in a place rather different from where they aimed in such a predictably trite manner. This is kinda how it went (I've shortened it, cuz I'm a thoughtful and gentle soul):

This pledge drive, don't give. Who needs national public radio, with its serious treatment of ideas, its lack of buxom babes [jezus, how old is that phrase? and what, no mention of hunky men? not even from liberals?!], its refusal to discuss news as entertainment? Who enjoys that? blahblahblah stuff in the middle of the ad blahblahblah So this pledge drive, keep on being lazy. Don't lift a finger. Don't dial the phone. Don't make a pledge. Help me destroy public radio!

You got it, brother! It is my pleasure to obey.

Reminds me: I wrote about pledge drives, and about the music programming (and the respectable, well-informed hosts of same) on KUSC a while ago. I haven't listened to Svedja's program (or Murphy's) in months. Even I haven't been that bad.

And I still haven't told you about The Miracle of the Leaves. You need to earn that. Help destroy public radio -- hey, that's what they want you to do -- and you may qualify.

Everyone Agrees: Looting Is Always Wrong!

2011-08-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

I would never be so foolhardy as to challenge what is indisputably the consensus view on any subject.

Thusly and therefore: Fucking colonists. What a bedraggled bunch of criminal, immoral, lazy, destructive bastards. And they didn't even use the tea. They just destroyed it! Goddamned nihilists. No moral compass! No self-discipline! And all because of some teeny little tax, all the while enjoying the lavish benefits that accrued to them as privileged members of the British Empire! Those rotten bums never heard of paying their fair share, or shared sacrifice?

To top it off, some of those criminal lowlifes didn't even have the courage of their rotten, immoral convictions -- so they pretended to belong to the already designated disfavored group, Native Americans. Because everyone who mattered knew what lazy, shiftless, immoral, criminal bastards they were. Well, once the colonists got their own racket going, they showed those uncivilized barbarians! A mere one hundred years later, almost none of them were left.

But what a downer that turned out to be. There was hardly anyone left to murder in these magnificent United States, unless you counted Black Americans. Nobody who mattered counted them. So all those upright, super-moral white boys, who simply loved murdering in a righteous cause, had to look farther afield. There's that American initiative for you!

Next stop: the Philippines! That was after a little warmup exercise in Hawaii, but nobody remembers that anymore. And after the Philippines, they never stopped.

They still haven't stopped today. In addition to all the righteous murder going on overseas, they're coming after you now. Whatcha gonna do?

Hmm ... ah ... well ... oh, I know, I know! Be sure to vote in the next election, and in every election! That'll fix up everything, lickety-split.

And for God's sake, whatever you do, don't loot! That is, like, totally wrong!

Everyone says so. And you probably shouldn't mention the Boston Tea Party. Certainly not to conservatives (need I spell out why? didn't think so), but not to liberals and progressives, either. Everyone says looting is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Anyway, the Boston Tea Party couldn't actually have been "looting." People who would soon be Americans did that, which makes it completely different. I know I don't have to explain that to good Americans like you. And don't even think of talking about how the ruling class is sucking up all the wealth of "ordinary" Americans, and now their lives, too. That can't possibly be looting! This is America!

Confused? That's because you're a criminal, immoral, lazy, rotten nihilist. And a potential or actual looter! You better keep that to yourself. Wait...oh, geez, Napolitano and Holder say they already know all about you. And I do mean all. But if you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about. This is America!

God bless us, every one. Except for the looters. And God bless America!

See also: Your Approval of History Is Irrelevant and Meaningless

Thank God for Obama's Enlightened and Transformational Leadership

2011-08-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

Of course, God is one vicious sadist:

Citing the Defense of Marriage Act, the Obama administration denied immigration benefits to a married gay couple from San Francisco and ordered the expulsion of a man who is the primary caregiver to his AIDS-afflicted spouse.

Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, and Anthony John Makk, a citizen of Australia, were married seven years ago in Massachusetts. They have lived together 19 years, mostly in an apartment in the Castro district. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied Makk's application to be considered for permanent residency as a spouse of an American citizen, citing the 1996 law that denies all federal benefits to same-sex couples.

The decision was issued July 26. Immigration Equality, a gay-rights group that is working with the couple, received the notice Friday and made it public Monday. Makk was ordered to depart the United States by Aug. 25. Makk is the sole caregiver for Wells, who has severe health problems.

...

"We are appealing to the Obama administration to begin to put into action what they've said repeatedly they can do," said Immigration Equality spokesman Steve Ralls. "The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have said again and again that they can exercise discretion in individual cases, but they have not done so for a single gay or lesbian couple yet."

All you good liberals be sure to vote for Obama and all the other Democrats next year! Think how much worse things could be under a crazy Republican president!!

What's that? Nothing comes readily to mind that would actually be worse? Oh, you just keep thinking... See how kind and generous I am? I assume, in the complete absence of supporting evidence and even when confronted by several huge mountains of contradictory evidence, that such people engage in "thinking."

I'm a living saint. Be awestruck.

Your Approval of History Is Irrelevant and Meaningless

2011-08-10T08:39:00.001-07:00

Mr. Interlocutor [*]: "Mr. Bones, what do you think of the Fall of the Roman Empire?"

Mr. Bones: "I approve! Corrupt, cruel -- and, speaking as a smug, self-satisfied modern technocrat, remarkably ineffective. Time for it to go!"

Mr. Interlocutor: "And what do you think of the French Revolution?"

Mr. Bones: "I strongly disapprove! Nasty stuff."

Mr. Interlocutor: "What's your opinion of Lincoln's assassination?"

Mr. Bones: "I think the play is sadly underrated. The happenstance of negative association."

Also, from Alan Bennett's The History Boys:

MRS. LINTOTT: Now. How do you define history, Mr. Rudge?

RUDGE: Can I speak freely, miss? Without being hit.

MRS. LINTOTT: I will protect you.

RUDGE: How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another.

I obviously recognize the critical human need for stories. That recognition is reflected in the name of this blog (and in its URL); you can read some reflections on the subject here. In the final section of that essay, I discuss the disastrous consequences of investing psychologically and emotionally in a narrative which is dangerously false; more particularly, I analyze the self-aggrandizing and destructive myth that lies at the heart of American exceptionalism.

To impose a particular narrative of meaning on past events is almost always a pointless exercise, and frequently a ridiculous one. I don't wish to be misunderstood as saying that we cannot learn from the past or find value in understanding the forces that finally expressed themselves in action. Much of my writing here is devoted to this enterprise -- but such endeavors of mine try to confine themselves within restricted boundaries and to the task of descriptive analysis, as it were.

It is a very different matter to ascribe specifically moral meaning to large-scale cultural events as events in themselves, past or present. Yet many commentators ask us to believe that we (or, at least, the commentators in question) find ourselves standing on a different, separate plane of existence, dispassionately offering judgment on the moral qualities of events that pass before us for review. This is moral narcissism parading as sober historical analysis.

"But surely, surely you don't condone the violence in England?" Since I doubt I will ever hear the only sensible response from anyone else, let me offer it myself:

"Whether I condone it or not is fucking irrelevant, you pompous ass."

I encourage you to read Hal Austin's discussion of the London riots. Here are two excerpts to get you started. First, Austin's opening paragraphs:

It is too early to give a definitive assessment of the London Uprisings over the weekend, but there are nevertheless two key lessons that have emerged.

The first and most important is the social breakdown that can take place when the police force has become an invading army, using paramilitary tactics, and has lost the trust of the people it is meant to serve.

The Metropolitan Police are in the main interlopers in some London communities. They are mainly recruited from the regions (Scotland, Ireland and to a lesser extent Wales) and the provinces, the North East, some from the North West, and even fewer from the Midlands and the South East and South West.

But, they largely share in common a dislike of living in London. Most Metropolitan Police live in the Home Counties – Surrey, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. They commute in to work and see policing the inner city as policing aliens, crooks, thugs, dope dealers and users, pimps and dole scroungers.

Sadly, it has been ever thus. Since the 1950s and 60s, when Notting Hill and Notting Dales police stations became like internment camps for black people. Then Brixton, Stoke Newington, Harrow Road, Shepherd Bush, Peckham, Lewisham and Harlesden, and Handsworth in Birmingham, took up the fight.

I view the following passage as especially critical, for it describes how broadly institutionalized racism creates "criminals" where none would otherwise exist:

There is no hiding the fact that a generation of socially dysfunctional young people, mainly men, are out of order. This is the generation that has fallen victim to the institutional racism that hits it full in the face the moment its members enter the British educational system at the age of five. By the time they are ready to enter secondary schools, quite often they have a record of suspensions, police searches, and teacher neglect.

The society has chosen to explain away this appalling treatment as a failure of black parenting, of peer pressure, of lack of ambition. However, it does not explain why black university graduates do not fare any better than their less qualified counterparts, why women in particular (and black women are among the highest qualified women in the country, better qualified overall than white women) do not get career opportunities to reflect this – although they do much better than men.

...

But the narrative of black youth crime and its fabrication by police is long and sad. Take Winston Silcott, the young man who became the symbol of the 1985 Broadwater Farm uprisings and the aetiology of his criminal history.

Silcott's first 'offence' was for riding a bicycle on the pavement, an anti-social act that can be and is often resolved with a telling off. From there it built up and built up with the petty accusations that the black community knows only so well, every time going before a magistrate who no doubt saw the courts as the institution to criminalise 'idle' young people.

It was easy from there to make the assumption that after the brutal hacking to death of PC Keith Blakelock that the police was determined that someone – anyone – must pay the price. The person, it soon became evident, was Silcott. Eventually they got him jailed, not for the murder of PC Blakelock, but for the stabbing to death of another youth, an offence for which Silcott pleaded not guilty.

It was widely assumed that his conviction and jailing was in reality punishment for the murder of PC Blakelock. To many, the death of Mark Duggan and the weekend's uprisings were but the latest chapter in the continuing showdown between Tottenham police and the local black community.

Austin offers much more history and many additional facts. It all leads to one inescapable conclusion: Violent protest against these ongoing, ceaseless acts of institutionalized racism and cruelty was inevitable. One might wonder why it didn't happen sooner, or why the violence isn't far worse than it is (so far, at least).

If you want to shake your priggishly moralizing finger at "bad actors," I suggest you cast your gaze much farther back in the train of events and much more broadly. As for judging the violence itself, as an isolated phenomenon which its critics would have us believe sprang fully grown out of precisely nothing, I can only say: "Fuck that, and fuck you, you inflated, self-important, oozing pustule. You know what you can do with your sickening 'lessons in morality.'"

It's not at all surprising that most Americans can't begin to understand what's happening in England. Most Americans still don't understand what happened in America. A few years ago, I wrote about certain of my experiences as a teenager in the 1960s, and how I became good friends with several Black Americans on the standing room line at the old Metropolitan Opera House. I went on to say:

But on this issue, my upbringing and my own experiences as a teenager were very unusual. With rare exceptions, White and Black America occupied entirely different spaces, geographically, culturally, economically and psychologically. One of the results of these different spaces is the profoundly opposed views of America and of American history discussed by Tim Wise (and excerpted in "Obama's Whitewash").

The violence unleashed in the civil rights upheaval of the 1950s and 1960s was inevitable; in retrospect (and for perceptive observers at the time), it was remarkable only for its restraint. One of the primary reasons for the violence, and a large part of the explanation as to why a sustained, massive movement encompassing millions of people was required to achieve those changes that resulted, lies in the nature of that white "kindness to Negroes." Whites in America, including those whites who exclusively made up the ruling class, were prepared to be "kind" -- but only to the extent they absolutely had to. Equality was not granted, to the extent it was, primarily in recognition of an unspeakable, deadly injustice that whites had committed, although a few whites were aware of that. For the most part, equality was granted, to the extent it was, because the cost for failing to do so had become prohibitive.

The nauseating moralizers who rush to condemn the violence in England also engage in a favorite trick. "Of course," they proclaim, rushing to convince us of their reasonableness and that they couldn't possibly be racist, may the gods forbid!, "blacks had real, legitimate grievances in the past. But not this time!"

Of course, with regard to the underlying forces in play, this time is exactly like last time, and the time before that. Moreover, the finger-waggers said exactly the same thing last time, and the time before that, as Austin lays out to devastating effect. The same trick is played with American history. Now that several decades have rendered the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s "safe" for distant contemplation -- a justifiably, even murderously angry black man from the 1950s isn't going to break down your door today, which is why whitey can ever so graciously acknowledge he might have had a complaint or two -- Americans eagerly rub off all the hard edges and present the civil rights movement (and Martin Luther King) suffocated in a sickening, entirely inaccurate soft, rosy hue. Protest the same way today, or say what King said in the last few years of his life ("Why America May Go to Hell"), and watch the condemnations fly.

Rush Limbaugh offered some comments on the London riots yesterday. His first point was that the target of the rioters is the "rich," and "self-reliant" individuals who own businesses. By contrast, the rioters are poor, lazy bums who only survive by sucking on the teat of the welfare state. (Note how this tracks the lies told after the devastation of New Orleans.) Limbaugh went on to say that this is the mentality of "Obama voters" in the United States. For Limbaugh, Obama is a "socialist" who seeks to destroy the rich -- and he thus disregards every critical fact about Obama and his record, which compels the conclusion that Obama is the perfect embodiment of the authoritarian-corporatist system, who enthusiastically seeks to increase the power and wealth of the ruling class. And Limbaugh ominously went on to warn that we in the United States aren't far at all from what's happening in England. In other words, and almost in Limbaugh's exact words, the primary target of the rioters, present and future -- and, much more significantly for Limbaugh, the primary victim -- is rich whitey.

You "disapprove" of violence in response to a sickening perspective of this kind, when this perspective undergirds the comprehensive, soul- and body-killing system that holds sway in England and the United States? I myself think that violence is always deeply tragic. It is uncontrollable and, among other lamentable consequences, it will always lead to the death and severe injury of innocent people. It very frequently leads to results which are worse than the conditions which gave rise to it (watch for that to happen in both England and the United States). Violence as a response means that hope has been destroyed, that the victims of the system no longer believe (or can even pretend to believe) that "change from within" is worth a damn, or even possible in any meaningful way.

Given recent and continuing events in England, the United States, and other countries, can we say that judgment is wrong? I certainly can't, even though I still think recourse to violence represents an enormous tragedy and that it will almost certainly prove to be self-defeating.

And do I "disapprove of" and "condemn" the violence itself? No, I don't. In this context, I don't know what such condemnation even means. Violence is a completely understandable response, particularly when every other means of amelioration and recourse has been systematically closed off. When you leave people no choice but to engage in violence, they'll engage in violence. You want to condemn someone as responsible? Look in the goddamn mirror, fuckhead.

History happens. Try to understand it. Otherwise, get the hell out of the way.

The Impotence of the "Intellectual" Elite

2011-08-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

For a few minutes, I considered writing a detailed takedown of this piece of piss-poor analysis. Then I thought: Oh, Christ. I've been through all these issues countless times. Those who want to see the truth have far more evidence than anyone could require to reach the correct conclusions. And those who are driven by their preconceptions and self-sustaining illusions refuse to change their minds on the issues that matter, so why bother? Instead, I'll offer just a few brief notes.

Drew Westen tells us that, "over the last several years," he has worked "as a messaging consultant to nonprofit groups and Democratic leaders." In that work, he has "studied the way voters think and feel, talking to them in plain language."

"A messaging consultant." Huh. Translation: Westen helps those intent on wealth and power achieve their aims. That is, he sells himself to bloodthirsty, criminal motherfuckers so that they can sell shit to people while pretending it's prime rib. Some call it "war," some more accurately describe it as "criminal, aggressive war in service of American global hegemony"; a "messaging consultant" calls it "kinetic military action." Some call it a deliberate scheme to enrich already hugely wealthy insurance companies; a "messaging consultant" calls it "health care reform," when health care is the one element notably omitted from the plan. And so on. (Also: "Arbeit macht frei," another phrase provided by a "messaging consultant.")

Westen additionally tells us that he is "a practicing psychologist with more than 25 years of experience." The little bio at the head of the article states that Westen is a professor of psychology at Emory University.

Then, in the midst of his burblings and on the basis of all these impressive credentials, Westen writes:

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue.

It makes you want to scream, doesn't it?

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH

Ah, better. As I said: Christ. I cannot go through it all again, or even a substantial part of it. I'll simply quote the end of a Pam Martens article that I first quoted in May 2008. Get that, Westen? May 2008. Here's Martens:

The Wall Street plan for the Obama-bubble presidency is that of the cleanup crew for the housing bubble: sweep all the corruption and losses, would-be indictments, perp walks and prosecutions under the rug and get on with an unprecedented taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. ... Who better to sell this agenda to the millions of duped mortgage holders and foreclosed homeowners in minority communities across America than our first, beloved, black president of hope and change?

Why do Wall Street and the corporate law firms think they will find a President Obama to be accommodating? As the Black Agenda Report notes, "Evidently, the giant insurance companies, the airlines, oil companies, Wall Street, military contractors and others had closely examined and vetted Barack Obama and found him pleasing."

The article in which I provided extensive excerpts from Martens' analysis was titled, "The Fatal Illusion of Opposition." Get it, Westen? The fatal illusion of opposition. You may as well try to reason with a rock. A rock that has chosen to blind itself, pierce its eardrums, and remove its brain.

The title of Westen's article is, "What Happened to Obama?" Nothing happened to Obama, Westen. He did exactly what he said he was going to do, if you actually listened to what he said and understood it. And, I have to add, were willing to acknowledge what it meant.

This is the state of political analysis and, in very significant part, of psychology today. Even though it doesn't surprise me in the least, I have to admit that to see someone proudly announce in the pages of The New York Times that he is "a practicing psychologist with more than 25 years of experience" in conjunction with this kind of article takes my breath away. It also makes me grieve for anyone who is unfortunate enough to see Westen professionally (and pay him for the privilege) or to be taught by him.

Westen would be better advised to set aside the pathetically misleading question in the title of his article (which I grant Westen himself might not have chosen, although it accurately reflects his perspective), and consider these questions instead:

What the hell is wrong with me, and with all those other people who made the same terrible error I did?

Why was I so willingly enthusiastic to believe all the lies?

And why am I still so resistant to admitting the truth?

In a radically different culture, I might suggest that Westen seek professional help in trying to find the answers, perhaps from a...psychologist. But -- oh, well. In any case, I'm sure Westen would prefer not to do that, especially if it promised to help him arrive at accurate answers.

But I'm confident he would be very happy to talk with a "messaging consultant." In that way, he can continue to find illusory comfort from the lies he so desperately requires. And, as I said at the very end of "The Fatal Illusion of Opposition": "The killing of truth and hope continues unimpeded."

For many more essays about Obama written in the summer of 2008, consult "Silenced: Barack Obama and the End of Struggle toward Truth and Freedom" and the links provided toward the beginning of that piece.

Not Suicidally Depressed Yet? Try This!

2011-08-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

I absolutely believe that "we" (the Good, non-insane people; we know who we are, and the rest of you should suck eggs) can save each other. But before we can do that, we must all be equally depressed and despairing. Then we can truly relate to each other in the true manner of true, like, equals. We can snatch the razor blades, canisters of poison, and other instruments of deliverance from each other's hands at the same moment. Unexpectedly grateful for being spared the messy enveloping void of the Great Nothing (they never tell you the void is messy or that it smells, one of their nastier tricks -- and we know who "they" are: they're the ones sucking eggs), we will all fly multicolored kites in the blessed sunshine, as we enjoy every variety of guiltless, fabulous sex. C'mon, go with my hallucination. It's better than whatever you've got going. You know that's true.

But it's come to my attention that some of you still think "the system" can be reshaped, reformed, mashed, tugged, or nagged into Something Good, or at least Something Better. You. Are. Wrong. Also, the system doesn't even hear your nagging, but it annoys the shit out of me. It's my blog, so that matters. Don't like it? Find an egg.

It's the weekend, but you get no reprieve. The system is not merciful. Deal. Don't want to deal? Egg.

Item:

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. ...

While it's well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command [SOCOM] spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence -- in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

...

SOCOM carries out the United States' most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal "kill/capture" campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine."

This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets

...

SOCOM represents something new in the military. Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army," today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

You're gonna nag this into "reforming" itself? Sure you are, baby.

Another item:

Last week Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) joined a demonstration in Washington D.C. to protest the refusal of President Obama to use his executive powers to halt the deportations of the undocumented. Gutierrez’ arrest came only two days after Obama had addressed a conference of the National Council of La Raza. Conveniently forgetting the history of the civil right struggles that made his Presidency a possibility, Obama reminded those attending that he was bound to “uphold the laws on the books.”

With over 392,000 deportations in 2010, more than in any of the Bush years, many activists fear we are in the midst of a repeat of notorious episodes of the past such as the “Repatriation” campaign of the 1930s and the infamous Operation Wetback of 1954, both of which resulted in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Latinos.

But several things are different this time around. A crucial distinction is that we are in the era of mass incarceration. Not only are the undocumented being deported, many are going to prison for years before being delivered across the border. While the writings of Michelle Alexander and others have highlighted the widespread targeting of young African-American males by the criminal justice system, few have noted that in the last decade the complexion of new faces behind bars has been dramatically changing. Since the turn of the century, the number of blacks in prisons has declined slightly, while the ranks of Latinos incarcerated has increased by nearly 50%, reaching just over 300,000 in 2009.

A second distinguishing feature of the current state of affairs is the presence of the private prison corporations. For the likes of the industry’s leading powers, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, detaining immigrants has been the life blood for reviving their financial fortunes.

...

While private prisons own or operate only 8% of general prison beds, they control 49% of the immigration detention market. CCA alone operates 14 facilities via contracts with ICE, providing 14,556 beds. They have laid the groundwork for more business through the creation of a vast lobbying and advocacy network. From 1999-2009 the corporation spent more than $18 million on lobbying, mostly focusing on harsher sentencing, prison privatization and immigration.

One significant result of their lobbying efforts was the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona, a law which nearly provides police with a license to profile Latinos for stops and searches. The roots of SB 1070 lie in the halls of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a far right grouping that specializes in supplying template legislation to elected state officials. CCA and other private prison firms are key participants in ALEC and played a major role in the development of the template that ended up as SB 1070.

...

Sadly, the Obama presidency has consistently provided encouragement for the likes of CCA and GEO to grow the market for detainees. While failing to pass immigration reform or the Dream Act, the current administration has kept the core of the previous administration’s immigration policy measures intact. These include the Operation Endgame, a 2003 measure that promised to purge the nation of all “illegals” by 2012 and the more vibrant Secure Communities (S-Comm). Under S-Comm the Federal government authorizes local authorities to share fingerprints with ICE of all those they arrest. Though supposedly intended to capture only people with serious criminal backgrounds, in reality S-Comm has led to the detention and deportation of thousands of people with no previous convictions.

I have a campaign slogan that I offer to Obama 2012 completely free of charge. Yes, I'm that generous. Here you go:

Reelect Obama! He's more evil and shittier than Bush -- because he's not crazy!

Yes, I'm that smart.

You're still not ready for the kite-flying. Or the sex.

Remember the significance of today's date:

Today is the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of "liberals," as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.

Alperovitz notes the remarks of two of the first Muslim Socialist leaders of America:

Here is how General Dwight D. Eisenhower reports he reacted when he was told by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that the atomic bomb would be used:
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."
In another public statement the man who later became President of the United States was blunt: "It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force "hawk," was also dismayed. Shortly after the bombings he stated publicly: "The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all."

Obviously they were secret Commies.

Alperovitz is unaccountably gentle (I suppose he'd say he's being "balanced" and "reasonable") in his discussion, at least in this article, of the actual reasons for the use of the atomic bombs: "Impressing the Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor."

Given all the evidence of which I'm aware, I will state the necessary conclusion much more strongly. Every reason offered by the U.S. Government and its defenders for these acts of nauseating barbarity is a vicious lie. Dropping the bombs had absolutely nothing to do with shortening the war or saving American lives. No: the U.S. Government used the bombs -- and murdered huge numbers of innocent human beings -- to send a message to Soviet Russia.

I've discussed all this before, in a lengthy article from over six years ago. That piece provides many details if the subject interests you. You might want to consult it since you'll be hearing the vicious propaganda repeated still another time over the next few days.

Now, please put that razor down. Remember: the void is messy and smelly. Enjoy a wonderful meal with cherished friends. Read a good book. Listen to music you love.

Fuck these shitheads. Your life doesn't belong to them.

And I still say, I always say: Live ecstatically.

Almost No Comment, Except for the Vomiting

2011-08-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

NYT, August 3, 2011:

Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary and dean of President Obama’s economic team, is expected to stay through the president’s term after intense White House pressure, according to officials familiar with the discussions.

But Mr. Geithner has not yet notified the White House of his intentions, and family considerations could still win out, advisers say.

...

Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, have been urging Mr. Geithner to stay, administration officials say, not only for continuity when the economy has weakened and to avoid an all-but-certain confirmation fight in the Senate over a successor, but also because Mr. Obama has developed a close rapport with Mr. Geithner. [Vomiting.]

...

Mr. Geithner has been working at a breakneck pace since the early days of the financial crisis in 2007. Formerly president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he has been among the three top stewards of the economy, along with Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, and the Bush administration Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson.

“He’s had a tough job during a tough time, and I think he’s really slogged through and made some really tough choices,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia. “I can understand why he might want to cash it in." [More vomiting.]

...

From the start, Mr. Geithner’s biggest critics have been on the left. But Jared Bernstein, a former member of the administration’s economic team and a liberal economist close to some of the critics, said: “To the extent people vilify Tim as only caring about banks, they’re way off. He’s always understood that Main Street depends on credit from Wall Street, and I know for a fact that he advocated the steps we took for that reason, not to preserve anyone’s capital or profits. I’ve actually heard him say some pretty nasty stuff about those guys." [Vomiting of such violence that it is life-threatening.]

The prospects of being drawn into an election-year confirmation brawl could deter some who might be considered as Mr. Geithner’s successor. Among those named by people familiar with administration thinking are Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase; Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chairman of General Electric and of Mr. Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness; Roger Altman, a deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration; and Erskine Bowles, a former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and co-chairman of Mr. Obama’s fiscal commission in 2010.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Terminal vomiting.

Then, dea

Tell Me Again: Who's the Stupid/Weak/Incompetent One?

2011-08-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

I've made this point numerous times before. I'll make it again, because, Jesus Fuck Me Christ, a lot of you are truly, deeply, stupefyingly dumb.

So we have the debt ceiling deal, yet another step on the road to the impoverishment, brutalization and death of all those who are not sufficiently blessed to be part of the ruling class or of the ruling class's endlessly helpful adjunct, the media-blogger complex. For the cognitively impaired, which seems to be most people, that complex includes all "leading" bloggers on both right and left -- that is, Instapundit and his fellow gangsters on the right, and Atrios, Digby, et al. and their fellow gangsters on the left. I use "right" and "left" as those terms are commonly used. Let us please skip the onanistic pleasures of analyzing at interminable length what might make up the "true" right or left: most of those who contemplate such matters are only perpetuating the existing system while pretending they aren't. If you regularly engage with the present political system, you're perpetuating it. The rest is details. More on that issue soon.

Lots of people are celebrating or moaning about the "triumph" of the Tea Party. Apologies: I meant to say the crazy Tea Party. Which triumphed! I betcha some of those who say they will fight to the death to defend Social Security, Medicare, etc. would like to be "crazy" like that. They might actually succeed! Well, they might if you assume their actual and proclaimed goals are the same. Usually, and almost always in politics, they aren't.

And lots of people are celebrating or moaning about Obama's "stupidity," "weakness," "incompetence," and so on. I must confess to having a weakness for the popularity of this self-deluding ploy. In the midst of horror, it's a wonderful momentary relief to enjoy a hearty laugh. I especially like the ongoing theme at Digby's House of Mirth and Lies: "If only Obama understood all these issues the way I do, if only he were smart like me, none of this would be happening!" No, I'm not providing links to all this crap. If you've been following the latest "crisis" in even a cursory fashion, you've seen scads of pieces repeatedly announcing all these themes. And, Jesus Fuck Me Christ, I'm not going to direct people to shitty sites. They have far too many readers as it is.

I'll say it again. I suggest you slowly sound out the words this time. Maybe you'll begin to understand what they mean.

When one considers the destructive powers of the weapons at his command, as well as the bloodily murderous enthusiasm with which he uses them, and when one contemplates the enormous powers he enjoys entirely apart from and in addition to those weapons, it will easily be seen that Obama is the single most powerful individual in the entire history of humankind.

I'll say it once more. I'll bold it. Again, sound out the words:

Obama is the single most powerful individual in the entire history of humankind.

This is the goal toward which Obama diligently worked for years. This is what he wanted: the power of life and death over countless millions of people, and potentially over all of humanity. During that time, he was bracingly clear about what he would do once he achieved that cherished goal. Some of us told you all about this in the summer of 2008, and even a year earlier. Obama told you exactly what he would do. Most people convinced themselves -- contrary to all the available evidence, even when that evidence directly contradicted their illusions -- that Obama would do precisely the opposite of what he himself said he would do.

But now that Obama continues to do exactly what he said he would do, most of those who voted for him and viewed him as "transformational," "transcendent," and blahblahfuckingblah, talk nonstop about his stupidity, weakness and incompetence. Therefore, I state again:

Obama is the single most powerful individual in the entire history of humankind -- and he's accomplishing exactly what he set out to do.

So tell me again: who's stupid? Who's weak? Who's incompetent? Who was outmaneuvered? (I note, and it's an important point, that many people made the same profound error with the monstrous George W. Bush.)

The fundamental problem for most people is a very simple one. They are unable to look at Obama, or any one of many similar figures, and say:

Impoverishment, brutalization, destruction and death are his aims. He has said so, repeatedly. Impoverishment, brutalization, destruction and death are what he wants to achieve. These are evil goals, and this is a deeply evil man.

Why are the vast majority of people unable to say this? I'll begin to explain why next time.

The Priorities of the Damned

2011-07-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

I put myself on The New Republic's email list when I was young, carefree and stupid, around 1923, as I recall. (In my defense, I will note that I've had an extraordinarily low estimate of that magazine's intellectual and moral worth for some years: "The Abominables of The New Republic: Getting Away with Murder.") In any event, I still receive their missives, which occasionally turn up an item of limited clinical interest.

One such item is Jonathan Chait's column, "What Deal Should Obama Take?" (I additionally note that I've had a very negative view of Chait for several years as well: "Just STFU, Chait.") Chait's piece is just what you'd expect. Relying in significant part on what he terms Ezra Klein's "nice rundown of the Obama administration's rationale for cutting a deal to reduce the deficit as part of the debt ceiling negotiations," Chait/Klein tick off the elements you've all heard numerous times during this "crisis," if you've been unfortunate enough to have been following this important national debate. I've been following it to some extent because of the fascination severely aberrant psychology holds for me (doubtless a disturbed and disturbing failing, but mine own). Also, I have no life. What's your excuse?

So Chait/Klein mention "You can't spend till you cut," "It's your only shot at stimulus," "It's a way to control the timing," "Getting Obama reelected is important," and "Deficit reduction is good economic policy, both now and later." Chait then adds these insightful gems spit out by his churning brain:

Obama's goal here seems to be a fiscal adjustment that takes the deficit off the table as an issue. But that would just lead to an election focused on the state of the economy, and that's a bad grounds for Obama to fight on. ...

The tax code is filled with inefficient subsidies that are regressive but still provide some benefit to the middle class. (Think home mortgage deduction.) Because of his 2008 campaign promise, Obama can't close those tax expenditures. He needs Republicans to give him cover. In return for that, he can offer entitlement cuts, which is something Republicans crave but can't get without Democratic cover. ...

So if a deficit deal is to be had, these are the contours for Obama. Root out wasteful spending on the domestic side, with some balance between domestic and military. Cut spending on Medicare and Social Security in return for closing some tax loopholes. Leave the fate of the Bush tax cuts to the 2012 election.

These are the political calculations of utterly unprincipled, opportunistic, power-seeking peabrains. What strikes me very forcefully about ruminations of this sort -- and these constitute the only sort of reflections you hear from politicians and most commentators (including "leading" bloggers like Atrios, Digby, et al., together with their conservative counterparts) -- is how tired it all is.

I'll use a blunt and, I fervently hope, unsettling comparison. All of these repellent people have decided to rape "ordinary" Americans until they're dead. They're only debating who gets to rape them next. And what these human slugs know but will never acknowledge, and what they hope you won't notice, is that they can't even get it up anymore.

You're being fucked to death by impotent terrorists. The only power they have is the power you grant them. Why do you continue to let them do it?

I have one more point to make, concerning the priorities mentioned in the title of this post. Of course, this is never mentioned by anyone taking part in this important national debate. I've made the point before, a number of times in fact. But I can't improve on the following way of expressing it. In writing about the Obama administration's assertion of its power to murder whomever it chooses, for whatever reason it cares to name or for no reason at all, I said:

Most of you refuse to understand the meaning of what you know. Allow me to offer some assistance.

The highest levels of the United States Government have told you -- repeatedly, at great length, always emphasizing the critical significance of their conviction on this point -- that the lives of Americans are worth less than shit. Your life, the lives of all those you love and all those you know, the lives of everyone in your city and state, the lives of all Americans are worth absolutely nothing. ...

There is no power greater than that of life and death. This is absolute power. This is the power claimed by every slaughtering monster in history. You know this. You refuse to understand what it means. ...

So you continue your arguments about the best course for the United States Government to follow in creating jobs, or preserving Social Security, or providing health care. You continue to act as if the United States Government is essentially civilized.

The United States Government can murder you if it chooses to, today, tomorrow, next week, next year. The United States Government can murder you because someone in government feels like it. He enjoys murdering people. He gets off on it.

And you're going to chat with him about job creation or Social Security? And you're the "realistic" one?

You make me puke.

You should also note that not a single person has resigned in protest from the Obama Administration as the result of the administration's claim of absolute power. Not one single person. At a minimum, this means that all those in the Obama Administration view this assertion of absolute power as of minor importance, certainly nothing to resign over, for heaven's sake. That should tell you a great deal about the depth and breadth of corruption in our national government. Yet you will not understand what it means.

Against this background, anyone who cares at all about which gang of rapists gets to commit the next series of crimes is damned. And he is damned by his own choice.

Don't tell me this is the only choice you have, for it is no choice at all. You have another one, but most Americans refuse to consider it. You can start by withdrawing your support from a system of evil, devoted only to the commission of evil. If you give a damn at all about the innocent victims -- and there are many of them, although you will not find them among the ruling class or its useful allies in the media/blogger complex -- you will decline to take part in this endlessly cruel charade perpetrated by monstrous terrorist-rapists.

If you are still capable of even a flickering, momentary recognition of the sacred value of a human life, you will say, as forcefully as you can: "No."

You're So Easy to Rule

2011-07-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

My God and gee whiz, the desperate need for debt reduction by the federal government is a terrifying business. I know this must be true, because all our leaders and all major commentators repeatedly tell us so. To a person, their pronouncements are drenched in urgency, warning of doom if we do not accede to their demands.

For example, one very well-known political figure said that Congress must act now or "the economic damage will be painful and lasting." He went on:

"The reality is that we are in an urgent situation, and the consequences will grow worse each day if we do not act," he said.

... "And if our nation continues on this course, the economic damage will be painful and lasting."

Barack Obama calls it "an American crisis." He continued:

"To the Democrats and Republicans who opposed this plan yesterday, I say: Step up to the plate and do what's right for this country."

Obama went on to sound a favorite theme of the ruling class when they deign to address their hapless subjects: You're just too stupid to know what's good for you. And what's good for you is what we tell you is good for you, you moronic dolts.

Hillary Clinton took time out from directing the torturing, murdering foreign exploits of Empire to emphasize that message for the worthless peasants at home. Warning of the failure to reach a deal, she intoned:

"It sounds dire but there is a risk that commerce could grind to a halt," she said.

...

"[Voters] have to recognize that we are facing a very serious economic slowdown, a recession that could be of long-lasting and deep impact," she said.

Hell, I'm convinced! Raise the debt ceiling! Get those expenditures under control! Slash all the safety net programs! Middle-aged and older Americans have already spent half or even all of a lifetime paying for those programs, but this is an emergency! Everyone has to sacrifice! (Well, not the ruling class, of course, but that's because they're better than we are. That's why they're the ruling class and you're not. And if you don't understand that, you're just stupid. Get it?)

Hey, wait a sec. Oh, gee, I'm sorry. I got confused there for a moment. The above statements were made about the extortion scheme the ruling class rammed through -- in the fall of 2008. I collected those warnings of impending doom in, "Terrorist State, Abroad and At Home." When your preferred, and more and more frequently your only, tactic is terrorizing your subjects -- abroad or at home -- the specifics of the "crisis" of the moment are entirely irrelevant. What matters -- the only thing that matters -- is spreading panic and fear. For a terrorist, terror is the point.

Your national leaders are terrorists. Look on the bright side: they aren't shooting at you or sending drones into your neighborhood. Not yet. You still have that to look forward to, you fortunate idiots.

But most Americans can't or won't acknowledge the fact that terrorists rule them. The ruling class counts on that, and they're absolutely right. Are there millions of Americans camped out in Washington, or even thinking about it? Don't make me laugh.

For the current version of these identical terrorist tactics, see here:

"If they don’t act, then we face catastrophic damage to the American economy. And the leadership, to their credit, and I mean Republicans and Democrats, fully understand that,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

And here (via):

"The United States must be strong at home in order to be strong abroad," Clinton said in remarks on the Obama administration's new national security doctrine, which was made public on Thursday.

"We cannot sustain this level of deficit financing and debt without losing our influence, without being constrained in the tough decisions we have to make," Clinton said, adding that it was time to "make the national security case about reducing the deficit and getting the debt under control."

...

President Barack Obama, who pushed through his own huge stimulus spending plan last year amid the global financial crisis, was committed to taking the politically difficult steps needed to put government finances back in order, Clinton said.

"We are in a much stronger economic position than we were. And that matters. That matters when we go to China. That matters when we try to influence Russia. That matters when we talk to our allies in Europe," Clinton said.

Gotta love the Clinton program:

We'll scare Americans to death, and then they won't complain when we destroy their lives.

And then, we'll be strong enough to tell everyone else what to do, while we destroy their lives!

Now, see, I think it would be beneficent beyond measure if the United States lost its "influence" to the degree that it couldn't compel the poorest peasant scrabbling for life on a parched hillside in Asia to lift her little finger. But that's because I'm stupid. Hillary Clinton is smart!

But the ultimate terrorist is not to be outdone:

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.

"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.

The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2.

These very smart terrorists want to rule the whole goddamned world. Although I understand why very few Americans are willing to acknowledge this irrefutable fact, the scope of the resistance to facing what is very painfully obvious still astonishes me. After all, domination and control has been the ruling class's goal for over a century. I had many reasons for titling my series of historical essays "Dominion Over the World," and if you read that series (all the essays are listed at the end of that entry), you'll learn what some of them were.

For now, I'll conclude by offering once more the final paragraphs of the "Terrorist State" article from October 2008:

The system is now set up so that when the ruling class is particularly intent upon a certain objective, even your obedience isn't required any longer. After all, what are you going to do? Move to another country? Not vote for any of these bastards in November?

Most Americans won't do that. They protest now; once the deed is done, they'll go back to their lives, such as they will be at that point, and devote themselves to making the ruling class more wealthy and more powerful.

To a terrorist government, you're irrelevant, as irrelevant as a slaughtered five-year-old Iraqi girl. But they'll continue to try to scare you to death. You're easier to rule that way.

I suggest you get used to it. This is your future.

At this moment, you might want to reconsider a question I have asked before: Why do you continue to support this kind of system? To the degree you comply with the ruling class's demands for obedience, you are not merely obeying: you are supporting.

Is that your choice?

Is it? Even now?

You don't have to make it so damned easy for them. But oh dear, the inconvenience of even mild resistance!

Never mind.

Profiles in Courage

2011-07-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

Atrios, July 7, 2011:

Elite Fail

Obama wants to cut Social Security, the ECB just raised interest rates...

We are ruled by horrible people.
by Atrios at 08:18

Atrios, February 12, 2009:

No

I believe this is what we in the professional blogging biz call "trolling," but I'll bite. The Left, including yours truly, will create an epic 360 degree shitstorm if Obama and the Dems decide that cutting Social Security benefits is a good idea.
by Atrios at 09:30

We should endeavor to understand Atrios's priorities. It's difficult to "create an epic 360 degree shitstorm" when you willingly participate in the meaningless charades arranged by the ruling class. C'mon, it was a "big twitter town hall"! There are only so many significant thoughts a "leading progressive blogger" can entertain within a couple of days.

One might observe that those who aid the ruling class in their games of deception are an exceedingly useful adjunct to that ruling class. It's so helpful to keep those people who might otherwise consider a very different course of action distracted, weak and thus firmly in line. One might even say that those "leading bloggers" who repeatedly behave in this manner are only doing the ruling class's bidding. It would appear they are happy to do so. They certainly lead lives of considerable comfort, unlike so many other Americans. One might begin to suspect that certain bloggers are themselves members of the elite (pipsqueak division) they purport to criticize so severely. (I suppose one might call that something like "The Fatal Illusion of Opposition.")

One might make such observations. I, of course, could not possibly comment.

P.S. And does anyone doubt that Atrios, et al. will support and vote for Obama and Democrats generally next year? We may be assured that they will. And you should, too, because the Republicans are crazy!

That's a cue:

I always especially enjoy that argument from liberals and progressives. "Oh, the Democrats might be doing most of the same things, well, practically all the same things, and maybe some of the things Obama's doing are even worse ... but the Republicans are crazy!"

Yeah, I see how that works. Obama and the Democrats do all this -- and they're entirely sane. They know exactly what they're doing, why, and even what the effects will be.

This, we are repeatedly assured, is a notable improvement, for which we should be properly grateful.

It would appear that certain people prefer their pillaging, rapacious, murdering, torturing leaders to exhibit full self-awareness and to be completely in control of themselves at all times. No insanity defense for them!

The Democrats and their supporters know precisely what they're doing. That is: they are doing exactly what they want to do.

They themselves endlessly emphasize this fact. We may therefore pass judgment accordingly.

Assistance for Our Better Angels

2011-06-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

And by "better angels," I mean, of course, the ladies. First, I encourage you to help a human lady if you can. Dr. Socks has some medical bills which are undoubtedly overwhelming. I have no means of even trying to pay any of my own medical bills. I haven't looked at the bills from my latest hospital stay, although I've kept the envelopes (just in case curiosity overcomes me in an odd moment). It's impossible for me to pay even a small fraction of them (no money, can't pay! simple how that works), so there's no point in contemplating the numbers. But based on the bills from my first hospital stay two years ago, I assume the total to date is well north of $60,000. Note that I didn't have surgery either time; the most complex procedures, which aren't complex at all, were blood transfusions and an endoscopy. Mind-boggling shit is what that is. Anyway, I hope you can help Violet.

I'm mightily distracted right now by the two lovely feline ladies who permit me to live with them. I did take in Sasha a few weeks ago. In addition to the fact that she's meltingly adorable and loving, I knew I had to get her away from my neighbor, who explicitly acknowledged that she had absolutely no interest in Sasha other than as a mouser (she'd had one mouse before getting Sasha -- and none since -- and she probably brought that one in herself when moving boxes from the garage into her apartment, as she also acknowledges). My neighbor was never home and barely noticed Sasha when she was. Sasha and I decided she deserved much better.

Since my neighbor had gotten Sasha at a shelter, we assumed Sasha had been spayed. My neighbor said she definitely had been. Apparently, um, not, for Sasha has been in heat for the last four days. As I remarked to a friend, and as my vet confirmed on the phone yesterday, the signs are THWACKINGLY OBVIOUS. They are also extraordinarily LOUD. The yowling ... oy. Well, hate the yowling and not the yowler and so forth. Besides, Sasha is far, far too sweet to get mad at, even for a moment. But oh my God, the yowling... (And my neighbor had had Sasha for about four years. How this thwackingly obvious fact escaped her, for the same symptoms must have announced themselves -- LOUDLY -- before, is only further testimony to people's capacity to avoid head-bashingly unmistakable facts they are determined to ignore. As my vet remarked when I expressed my shock that this must have gone on for several years: "People have an amazing capacity to ignore such things when they want to.")

Next week, Sasha goes in for surgery. After consultation with the vet, I conclude that's the safest and surest way to make certain everything is taken care of properly. (Blood tests are often inconclusive, so aren't necessarily helpful at all.) Even if she was spayed, it's not uncommon for some ovarian tissue to be left behind. The surgery itself will cost $350.00; add in incidentals (and let's assume, please Goddess, there are no complications at all), and we're talking in the neighborhood of $400.00.

And then there is the incredibly sweet Wendy. I'm not going to recite all the details; I'm too upset by it at the moment. The news is not good. (Background here.) She'll have a cortisone shot tomorrow. If the problem is an inflammatory bowel one alone, that should help. If it doesn't, or only helps for a little while, well... I've accepted now that we've probably entered the final stretch for Wendy. I've seen the same general pattern (although the particular causes varied) with six other cats during my lifetime. I'm overly familiar with it. I sense we probably have two to four months remaining -- perhaps more or less depending on particulars. It's possible that the cortisone will have a tremendously revivifying effect, which would certainly change the prognosis for the better. Let's keep our fingers crossed for that. Otherwise...

Wendy's trip to the vet tomorrow will cost around $100.00, perhaps more if the vet decides she needs to be hydrated (a distinct possibility) or requires additional procedures. I've just paid the July rent. With the other monthly bills requiring payment (the bare minimum, as has been the case for years now), I'm looking at rapidly dwindling financial resources. Dwindling toward the point of the big zero.

So once again, I must extend the begging cup. I do have a number of articles lined up for the near future. Once I'm able to focus a bit more on them (I hope this weekend), I'll start preparing them for publication. But I am deeply saddened by Wendy's situation. I've readied myself as much as I can for what may come, but that's not being ready at all. She's so, so sweet, and such a wonderful presence in our lives. Oh, damn. Now I'm crying. God damn it all to hell.

All right, I'll have to leave this for now. Bless you for listening, and bless you if you can help. I'm more grateful than I can say.

And For Their Next Number...

2011-06-24T11:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a treat for you: the Ride of the Valkyries, arranged for eight pianos. The pianists are Evgeny Kissin, Lang Lang, Emanuel Ax, Leif Ove Andsnes, Claude Frank, Mikhail Pletnev, Staffan Scheja and James Levine, performing at the Verbier Festival & Academy 10th Anniversary Piano Extravaganza. I was hooked and had to watch it because of a comment made on my opera email list: "I have never before seen so many world-class musicians counting furiously to themselves. ;)" Hahaha. It's enormous fun, and the pianists themselves have a grand time. (I have to note that, dammit, the volume on that video isn't nearly loud enough. Grrr.)

But, shucks, that's nothing. I remember one occasion when I was studying piano when a huge group of us performed a piece arranged for 32 pianos. And drat, I can't remember what the composition was. I find that rather odd, since I remember the performance itself at that "extravaganza" of ours very clearly. Well, you can't remember everything, and I still remember an overwhelmingly huge number of details from the past, even my distant past. Which, I note, is not an unqualified blessing.

For those who might be interested, I wrote about the opera list, which is open to anyone and includes many notables among its members, although usually under pseudonyms, here ("Yet Another Intensely Exciting Internecine Battle at Versailles!") and here ("Concerning Open and Closed Lists, and the Claim to 'Special' Knowledge"). The first of those links contains my confession concerning an "exclusive" and "SECRET" email list that I myself once belonged to! You have no idea just how seedy, disreputable and unhygienic my past is. I do have some consideration for the requirements of propriety, vicious rumors to the contrary notwithstanding. Oh, for a bit more, see here, too.

Those articles were occasioned by the Journolist affair, and I contrasted a genuinely open list with "restricted" groups of the Journolist kind (and the kind in which I was a participant). And the opera list occasionally offers rare gems of commentary, as mentioned in the second of those pieces -- and here as well, in an article about John McGlinn.

The McGlinn article excerpts a wonderful post from Albert Innaurato to the opera list. I'd forgotten most of the details from that piece, but I think my concluding words there are the best way to conclude this entry:

The world may barely note John McGlinn's passing, and it may place far too little value on the extraordinary work he did and what he accomplished against tremendous odds.

We should not be so unmindful, or so uncaring. We should do our utmost to follow McGlinn's own advice, and to be among those people who are "willing to dream" of a better world, just as he did. And in his life and work, McGlinn made that better world real.

That should be, that must be, our aspiration and our dedication, too.

Every Word He Utters Is a Lie

2011-06-22T17:56:00.000-07:00

I watched Obama's speech. For its brief duration, I kept thinking that George W. Bush could have given exactly the same speech. (Ah, I just remembered that John Caruso demonstrated this truth two years ago, in an exceptionally astute and clever manner.) In fact, and this is the point of significance, no man or woman is going to ascend to the office of president unless he or she will utter precisely the same empty phrases and offer the identical meaningless assurances.

The underlying problem is identified in this post's title. When an individual lies to you repeatedly and systematically, about matters large and small, and especially when he does so over an extended period of time, there is only one method by which an adult will proceed in the future. Very simply, that is to treat everything he says as a lie -- or, if you prefer an alternative, "softer" version of the same idea, to believe nothing he says absent independent corroboration. Sadly for all of us, there are very few adults in America, and only four or five of them have blogs.

In the case of Obama, I could offer the words of one prescient observer. In response to Obama's wildly applauded speech on race, this person wrote:

Almost every politician lies, and most politicians lie repeatedly. Yet in one sense, Obama's speech is exceptional, rare and unique -- but not for any of the reasons offered by Obama's uncritical, mindless adulators. It is exceptional for this reason: it is rare that a candidate will announce in such stark, comprehensive terms that he will lie about every fact of moment, about every aspect of our history that affects the crises of today and that has led to them, about everything that might challenge the mythological view of America. But that is what Obama achieved with this speech. It may be a remarkable achievement -- a remarkable and detestable one, and one that promises endless destruction in the future, both here and abroad.

Oh, yeah. I wrote that -- in March 2008. I think perhaps 12 or 15 people agreed with me. Most of you schmucks didn't. I would say the laugh's on you, but given the devastation and death Obama has caused -- and he's very, very far from done -- I don't think anyone feels much like laughing about any of this.

But having said that, I must note that in the speech this evening, Obama offered a brief passage containing nothing but fall-on-the-floor whoppers. Here you go:

We are a nation that brings our enemies to justice while adhering to the rule of law, and respecting the rights of all our citizens. We protect our own freedom and prosperity by extending it to others. We stand not for empire, but for self-determination.

I love "while adhering to the rule of law." And, "We stand not for empire..." Those three sentences in their entirety are gold-plated comedy material.

Couldn't you just die? You might.

I'm working on an article which will discuss further (among other things) this issue of not crediting a single word uttered by Obama, or by any member of the national ruling class. These are just a few preliminary notes, occasioned by this distinctly forgettable address.

To be continued in the next day or two.

P.S. You'll find more about the specifics of the Afghanistan part of the speech here. The overriding conclusion is one I've stated repeatedly: WE ARE NOT LEAVING.

Yes, I wrote that post yesterday. I'm a thoughtful guy that way.

The Fragile Vanity of the War Criminal

2011-06-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following almost five blood-soaked, barbaric, murderous, goddamned, fucking years ago:

If you have ever wondered how a serial murderer -- a murderer who is sane and fully aware of the acts he has committed -- can remain steadfastly convinced of his own moral superiority and show not even the slightest glimmer of remorse, you should not wonder any longer.

The United States government is such a murderer. It conducts its murders in full view of the entire world. It even boasts of them. Our government, and all our leading commentators, still maintain that the end justifies the means -- and that even the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents is of no moral consequence, provided a sufficient number of people can delude themselves into believing the final result is a "success."

...

It is useless to appeal to any "American" sense of morality: we have none. It does not matter how immense the pile of corpses grows: we will not surrender or even question our delusion that we are right, and that nothing we do can be profoundly, unforgivably wrong.

As I detailed in "The Blood-Drenched Darkness of American Exceptionalism," the United States exhibits all the symptoms of severe neurosis brought on in significant part by "the extreme nature of the delusions necessitated by an unquestioned belief in the myth of American exceptionalism."

It is not enough that our national political culture completely ignores the deadly, catastrophic consequences of the U.S. government's actions. Our national delusions, and our national neurosis, compel us to invert every moral value and principle. This is a world in which evil becomes good, and death becomes life:

The American exceptionalist myth tells us that the United States is unique and uniquely good. It is not sufficient to ignore negative consequences of our actions: we must transform any and all negative consequences into a positive good. This process has been rigorously followed for every American intervention ever undertaken (going back to the Philippines, then with the American entrance into World War I, on into many interventions after World War II, on into Iraq and Afghanistan today), and the identical process has been well underway for several years in connection with Iraq in particular.

I could mention many facts about the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, but let us consider only two.

The propagandists continue in their damnable work, as reflected in the headline of this AP story: "Obama to Move US Closer to Leaving Afghanistan." [The headline was changed after this post was published, which alters nothing in the following argument.] To grasp the huge lie this represents, you have to read the entire story -- which, of course, very few readers will do. For it is only near the very end that we read this sentence: "Obama has tripled the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan since taking office, bringing the total there to about 100,000." Keeping that 100,000 figure in mind, now read the opening paragraph of the story:

President Barack Obama is set to announce a blueprint for bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan that is expected to reduce the number of troops by up to 5,000 next month, as well as a broader plan for recalling the rest of the 30,000 surge forces he sent there in 2009.

Assuming all 30,000 of the "surge forces" leave, 70,000 U.S. troops will remain. Well, there's "leaving" and then there's leaving. Moreover, as we are always told about such matters, all this is subject to "conditions on the ground" -- which means only that the U.S. government will do whatever the hell it believes is required to maintain dominance and control. And, not at all by the way, Afghanistan is especially crucial to ongoing U.S. plans for geopolitical dominance; see this post, as well as the Robert Higgs article I excerpt: "CENTCOM's Master Plan and U.S. Global Hegemony." I therefore state, as I have many times before: WE ARE NOT LEAVING.

(Also note: This bloody charade about "leaving" follows exactly the pattern seen in Iraq. One can hardly blame the war criminals who lead the U.S. government for playing the same bloody tune again. After all, almost no one is objecting in any way that matters to our continued presence in Iraq. Why not offer the identical music of death another time? Everyone already knows the melody, and no one gives a damn.)

So, an enormously significant, ongoing U.S. troop presence is the first fact to remember about Afghanistan. The second is the nauseating number of civilian deaths caused by U.S. warmaking. As is always the case, we can only be certain of one aspect of this bloody business: whatever number manages to surface into public awareness must necessarily be far, far lower than the accurate and truthful number. With that qualification noted, we can turn to an article published just a few months ago:

The latest UN report puts the death toll for Afghan civilians across the nation in 2010 to 2,777, the largest since the war began in 2001 and a 15% increase over the toll from 2009. The vast majority of those killed were random victims of the fighting between NATO and the Taliban.

Take a look at this article from the Guardian, too. It's from a year ago, but it remains helpful in grasping the continuing slaughter.

It would appear very safe to say that the total for civilian deaths in the last ten years is well over 10,000, and the actual number may be far greater than that figure. But hell, it's not as if we're talking about Americans. They're just those people, the Other. Who gives a shit? Almost no one.

Certainly, one of the many Ministers of Death -- the departing American ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl W. Eikenberry -- doesn't give a shit. That is, he doesn't give a shit about the U.S. troops that will remain in that devastated country into the foreseeable future, or about the slaughtered civilians. But he wants to be sure Karzai and the rest of us know that he is deeply offended and hurt because not everyone appreciates how noble, glorious and self-sacrificing Americans are. Reread my description offered at the beginning of this post, and especially note my observation about the serial murderer (and, I stress, his accomplices) remaining "steadfastly convinced of his own moral superiority and show[ing] not even the slightest glimmer of remorse." And then read these sickening remarks offered by Eikenberry:

“When Americans, who are serving in your country at great cost — in terms of life and treasure — hear themselves compared with occupiers, told that they are only here to advance their own interest and likened to the brutal enemies of the Afghan people,” the ambassador said, “my people, in turn, are filled with confusion and grow weary of our effort here.”

...

“When we hear ourselves being called occupiers and worse,” Mr. Eikenberry said, “and our generous aid programs dismissed as totally ineffective and the source of all corruption, our pride is offended and we begin to lose our inspiration to carry on.”

...

“Mothers and fathers of fallen soldiers, spouses of soldiers who have lost arms and legs, children of those who lost their lives in your country, they ask themselves about the meaning of their loved one’s sacrifice,” he said. “When I hear some of your leaders call us occupiers, I cannot look these mourning parents, mourning spouses and mourning children in the eye and give them a comforting reply.”

I often describe our national leaders as monsters. These are some additional reasons for that description. And "monsters" has special application to those who fashion, implement and defend U.S. foreign policy.

I referred above to "the symptoms of severe neurosis" which result from a dedicated reliance on the delusions supporting American exceptionalism. Eikenberry's comments show how that severe neurosis begins to veer ever closer to psychosis, if we use "psychosis" to indicate a condition representing an irreparable break with reality. I emphasize again that it is not simply that U.S. leaders ignore the murderous, bloody consequences of the U.S. government's actions. That would be more than sufficiently evil by itself, but U.S. leaders and functionaries like Eikenberry go much further. They transform evil into a positive good. And they go further still: they demand that others acknowledge their nobility and goodness -- and thank them for it.

"Oh, thank you, President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Ambassador Eikenberry! Thank you for destroying my country and slaughtering my family and half my relatives. How can I ever thank you enough for your overwhelming kindness and generosity! Thank you a thousand times!"

If that isn't insane, nothing is. Our leaders are profoundly, deeply terrible people. They are monsters. I stand by that description.

To My Fellow Sufferers of Stockholm Syndrome: When Your Captor Is the State

2011-06-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

If you live in the United States (and more broadly, if you live in any modern State), you are a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. This is necessarily true, even if you passionately protest against the overwhelming majority of the policies and actions pursued by the State in which you live. If you continue to live there, you suffer from Stockholm Syndrome due to that fact alone. I suffer from the Syndrome myself, although (I think it is fair to say) far less than most people.

Remember the basic characteristics of the Syndrome. I emphatically do not refer to Wikipedia entries in the belief that they are likely to be correct, especially on any matter I view as of special importance. But this Wikipedia entry is correct on the essentials (and I refer to it especially because of one document it relies upon, as mentioned below). The entry begins:

In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a real paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors; sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness.

It deserves emphasis that "[t]hese feelings are generally considered irrational" -- but if, and only if we are able to view the situation from outside the perspective of the hostages themselves.

Now consider what happens if the captor is the State in which you live. I would submit that the identical mechanisms can be identified, but that it is very rare indeed for the captive in this situation to be able to step outside the hostage perspective. If I reword my earlier observation, the reason for that becomes clearer: if you still live in the United States (or another State), you are still a hostage. To maintain consistently a perspective which steps outside the captor-hostage situation requires unceasing, dedicated effort when you remain a hostage in your daily life.

I've been thinking about these issues in connection with upcoming articles. I provided a small preview in a recent entry:

My focus in the upcoming article(s) will be on the various ways in which the oppressive, deadly system under which we try to live has distorted and coopted the approach of even those who condemn and protest against that system.

In a discussion of the beginning of what was positively guaranteed to be the "brief" (!!) intervention in Libya, I mentioned how difficult I often find it these days to read "dissenting" writers. The reactions to the sordid Weiner crap provide a further opportunity to explain why I find most "dissenters" to fall lamentably short of the mark. I wrote in the earlier post that one way of describing the failing I discern is to note that the dissenters "are all so goddamned, fucking polite."

Most "dissenting" writers exhibit the characteristics of Stockholm Syndrome, even if to a somewhat lesser degree than reflexive supporters of the status quo. Consider the deeply awful Sam Smith article that I analyzed the other day. Smith identifies a number of reasons for his strong criticisms of Obama -- and then proceeds to offer transparently unconvincing rationalizations for voting for Obama next year (because, as Smith says, Obama will "do us the least harm," ignoring that Obama, too, is committed to your complete destruction).

Smith, like many, many others, thus adopts the captor's perspective, and "fights" on the captor's terms -- and in this sense, he is "defending" his captor, just as a sufferer of Stockholm Syndrome does. If you fight in the manner permitted by those who hold you hostage, how likely do you think it is that your captors will set you free? That's right: they won't. Your captors permit you to "fight" them in certain ways because they know you'll lose.

The Wikipedia entry largely relies on an article in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin: "Understanding Stockholm Syndrome." Several formulations in that article particularly caught my attention. Ponder this sentence:

In essence, eventually, the hostage views the perpetrator as giving life by simply not taking it.

Now contemplate this idea with the United States government as "the perpetrator." On this point, we must begin (as I always endeavor to do) with the terrible fact that Obama claims the "right" and power to murder anyone in the world, whenever he wants, for whatever reason he wishes, that is, he claims to hold absolute power. In other words: if you continue to live, it is only because the State permits you to. Gone altogether is even a nod toward the notion of unalienable rights, or that "life" is first among them. Thus, the State gives life by simply not taking it.

This is the fundamental point for us today, and it is tragically inescapable, short of permanently leaving the country. And, as is always true, the hostage situation encompasses far more than this one issue, as ultimately dispositive as this first issue may be. Turn your attention to my formulation of the related point:

Our entire political-cultural frame of reference is that determined by the perpetrators.

I've discussed this phenomenon in many articles. For a single detailed treatment of it, I would recommend one essay: "'Regrettable Misjudgments': The Shocking Immorality of Our Constricted Thought." From the beginning of that discussion:

As a nation, we are resolute in our refusal to identify the true nature of our actions, and in our refusal to acknowledge the consequences of what we do. This may well be true of most nations throughout history. Yet there is a direct correlation between a nation's power and influence, and its reliance on myth and other public relations ploys. As the world's sole superpower, the United States via its ruling class saturates its subjects at home and abroad with propaganda on a scale and with an intensity that have rarely been surpassed. As is true of all propaganda, permissible viewpoints are confined within suffocatingly constricted boundaries of thought; variation of any moment from the prescribed guidelines is prohibited.

The full article discusses this in detail.

My own views continue to grow more radical with each day that passes, in contrast to the idea that many people tend to become more conservative as they age (a point I mentioned in one of my essays about the Reverend Wright affair). In connection with the ideas offered here, I would say that I view my thought and writing as an attempt to step outside the bounds of thought and action prescribed by our captors as completely as I can. Or: my work here, and in my thinking generally, is to escape the effects of the Stockholm Syndrome. In many ways, it is an arduous task; among other things, it requires a willingness to challenge one's own ideas anew every day and to take nothing at all for granted. But I also find the rewards incalculable. As I discussed in the Wright article, it is a perspective of youth, using that term in its best sense. A willingness to perform this very hard work grants one the blessed sense of being young again. I would cherish that feeling under any circumstances; since I feel terrible physically so much of the time, it has come to represent a gem of inestimable worth to me. Given the political circumstances in which we now find ourselves, I do not exaggerate when I say that I will continue to guard it with my life.

In addition to the sentence I highlighted above, I was also very struck by these formulations in the Wikipedia entry, which are largely taken from the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin article (the first point is the one already discussed):

The following are viewed as the conditions necessary for Stockholm syndrome to occur.

-- Hostages who develop Stockholm syndrome often view the perpetrator as giving life by simply not taking it. In this sense, the captor becomes the person in control of the captive’s basic needs for survival and the victim’s life itself.

-- The hostage endures isolation from other people and has only the captor’s perspective available. Perpetrators routinely keep information about the outside world’s response to their actions from captives to keep them totally dependent. [See the "'Regrettable Misjudgments'" article for more on this point.]

-- The hostage taker threatens to kill the victim and gives the perception of having the capability to do so. The captive judges it safer to align with the perpetrator, endure the hardship of captivity, and comply with the captor than to resist and face death.

-- The captive sees the perpetrator as showing some degree of kindness. Kindness serves as the cornerstone of Stockholm syndrome; the condition will not develop unless the captor exhibits it in some form towards the hostage. However, captives often misinterpret a lack of abuse as kindness and may develop feelings of appreciation for this perceived benevolence. If the captor is purely evil and abusive, the hostage will respond with hatred. But, if perpetrators show some kindness, victims will submerge the anger they feel in response to the terror and concentrate on the captors’ “good side” to protect themselves.

With regard to the third element -- that the "captive judges it safer to align with the perpetrator, endure the hardship of captivity, and comply with the captor than to resist and face death" -- I refer you to "Killing Wikileaks, and Making Collaborators of Us All," and to this formulation of mine:

The corporatist-authoritarian State is designed to force all of us to become its collaborators. If you wish to survive in such a State, you either collaborate or your life becomes increasingly difficult. In the most extreme case, your non-cooperation means you will die.

And you will find an extended discussion of this theme in: "Memo to the Victims: You Yourselves Will Pay for the Crimes of the Ruling Class," which includes this passage:

The authoritarian-corporatist-militarist system victimizes untold millions of individual human beings, as well as many other forms of life as we see again today, both here and abroad. That would be a momentous evil in itself, but this particular evil is unsatisfied with only this first form of destruction.

Thus, the victims are targeted a second time, and they are forced to become collaborators in their own destruction. It is crucial to understand that these two forms of destruction are not separate manifestations of separate evils. They are the consequences of the same evil, and the two forms of lingering torture and death (psychologically at a minimum, and frequently existentially as well) are part of one overall design.

The fourth of the conditions identified as necessary for Stockholm Syndrome to occur is of special importance, and I will be discussing some of its numerous manifestations in upcoming pieces. For the moment, think about those people (which is most people, including almost all "dissenters") who are so deeply committed to "reforming" and "saving" the system. To allow themselves to believe that the system is capable of being "reformed" and "saved," they must constantly appeal to what they view as the "kindness" of their captors. This must be true, even if that "kindness" is only the alleged willingness of the captors to change and alter course, if only they "understood" and finally appreciated the truth, or some critical element of the truth. The "dissenters" are, of course, eager and willing to explain that truth to them. They must desperately search for their captors' "good side" to grant legitimacy to their efforts. Of course, this is precisely what the captors want you to do. But what if you're wrong about your captors' willingness to change? And again, I ask: If you fight in the manner permitted by those who hold you hostage, how likely do you think it is that your captors will set you free? As I said: they won't.

And we must answer this question: Is our political system capable of being "reformed" or "saved"? I'll turn to that in more detail shortly.

Progressive Heroes Poopyheads

2011-06-17T10:24:00.000-07:00

Now, I don't want you to worry. I'm painfully aware that my spectacularly immense enjoyment of the pageant of progressive schmucks making fools of themselves in Minneapolis reveals something dark and twisted in my soul. With the dedicated help of a team of highly trained therapists, I am sincerely endeavoring to remedy these disturbing defects in my character.

Aw, who am I kidding. I lied! I love this shit:

The frustrations and the fears that progressives feel about President Obama were on full display Thursday as thousands of them flocked to Minneapolis for the sixth annual Netroots Nation conference.

Former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold said he hoped that Obama will be re-elected, but he urged the president to stand up to corporate interests, demanding that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling become a focal point of the 2012 campaign.

“Sometimes we have to be very direct with the Democratic Party. Just as you have long pushed our Democrats to stand up for their ideals, I’m here this evening to ask you to redouble your efforts because I fear that the Democratic Party is in danger of losing its identity,” Feingold said in his keynote address to a crowd of around 2,400 progressive activists and bloggers here at the Minneapolis Convention Center, the most ever for the event.

...

Former DNC chairman Howard Dean also addressed the opening day of the conference, noting that “grousing about the president is a stage we have to go through.” Dean said he will continue to support the president, but rather than focus on Obama, he suggested, people should focus on what they can do in their own communities.

“We are responsible for the change we can believe in,” he said. “Change does not come from Washington, DC. Change comes from the bottom up.”

How can you not love this shit?

Every blogger and writer who is conscious and even fractionally honest now acknowledges that Obama has doubled down on every single policy of Bush's that the progressives had condemned so loudly and for so long. Moreover, Obama has gone beyond Bush's profoundly awful record in certain critical respects. And never, ever forget that Obama and his administration claim the "right" to murder anyone in the world, wherever he or she may be, for whatever reason they choose -- or for no reason at all. (Also, see this.)

But it's their guy doing it so, hey, no prob. Obama normalizes every horror of the Bush administration and adds some new horrors of his own, and the progressives are "frustrated." They're "grousing." It's "a stage [they] have to go through," like misbehaving seven-year-olds. I guess we can't exactly blame Dean for infantilizing these idiots. They are a lot like children -- not healthy children, I emphasize, but very badly damaged and not terribly bright children.

With regard to the actions and policies to which the progressives had claimed to be so passionately opposed, their willingness to dance to the new tune means exactly what I said a few years ago:

In the event, [the progressives] didn't prove me wrong; to the contrary, they demonstrated the truth of what I had still hoped, however faintly, wasn't true. But what was demonstrated to be true was simply that virtually everything the Democrats and progressives claimed to be their fervent concern was merely instrumental: that is, they staked out the positions they did for their perceived political advantage, and for the assistance those positions would provide in regaining and consolidating power.

In the end, that was the only goal, the only purpose toward which everything else was directed: the achievement and maintenance of power.

I do love that Feingold "urged the president to stand up to corporate interests" -- oh, he urged him! such courage! -- just as I adore his claim that "the Democratic Party is in danger of losing its identity." Well, Russ, if you weren't such a dedicated Democratic partisan, you might begin to grasp that the Democratic Party has revealed its identity more clearly, as opposed to its marketing lies. For a discussion of how political tribalism and a commitment to preexisting beliefs can render people who had once appeared to be smart irreversibly dumb, see "Blinded by the Story."

So these pathetic poopyheads invite me to repeat this summation of their stunning brilliance as political tacticians. (Remember that they're the "realistic" ones. Hahahahahahahahaha. Christ, I think I hurt myself.) I wrote this in September 2007, you schmucks with sponges for brains:

In short: the ruling elites do not care what you think. I repeat: they do not care.

Oh, yes, they care to some extent when elections come around -- but any such concern Democratic politicians might have for certain voters' views is obliterated by one consideration loudly and repeatedly announced by almost every liberal and progressive blogger. As I've noted before (with regard to the vacuous, narcissistic bloviating of that great political thinker, Markos Moulitsas), the Washington Democrats know you will continue to vote for them no matter what they do.

When you approach the negotiating table and tell your opponent you'll give him everything he wants before you even sit down, exactly how successful do you think those negotiations will be from your perspective? Yet this is precisely what the liberal and progressive bloggers do time after time after time -- and then they profess amazement when the Democrats act in ways opposed to those same bloggers' views. And note this is not even about all voters' views, just the views of some of them. Since you'll vote for them anyway no matter what they do, why the hell should they care? Sure, you're "alienated" for the moment -- but who are you gonna vote for in November 2008, hmm? They already know the answer to that question.

And here we are four years later.

This is the point at which you are fully justified in concluding that these lying shitheads don't learn because they don't want to. In the end, they're perfectly content with things exactly as they are. Among other factors, permanent -- but toothless and meaningless -- "frustration," "grousing" and so on might more accurately be termed: The Full Employment Act for Professional "Dissenters." I do believe some people are making a pretty penny out of this nauseating charade.

In addition to the post linked above concerning the mahvelous Moulitsas, please take a look at another post about the performance of the liberals-progressives in the Age of Obama: "Exceptionally Awful." I especially like the passage about some notably sickening remarks from Moulitsas and Joan Walsh toward the end.

I suppose I need to attend another therapy session now.

To hell with it. I'm having too much goddamn fun.