Sorry, it wasn’t exactly Nietzsche and Plato in the news. It was a variety of issues that reflected the root causes of our social decay these days that these two great thinkers wrote about many years ago, namely, nihilism and sophistry.
These are two maladies, nihilism and sophistry, we are suffering in American society, if not in the world. Their manifestations are many and varied. But we can always rest assured that we are dealing with these social evils, so to speak, when someone is accused of either not worshiping the proper God or, secondly, diddling the little children in one way or another. Those are the charges Socrates was framed with, “impiety,” or, not believing in the gods of the community and, secondly, corrupting the youth. And we all know what they did to Socrates. But first, what is happening in America today and how does it relate to these philosophers.
Where to start? How about FLDS, the Fundamentalist Later Day Saints down Texas way? Apparently an anonymous phone call, from a woman only known as Sarah, alerted local authorities of some shady goings-on in this little religious community of some 700 or so people. Or so Sarah alleged. But on the basis of this anonymous allegation, Social Services with the help of a heavily armed police force raided the community and handily removed almost 500 children from the custody of their parents. Several buildings were ransacked by police who confiscated computer files and other personal belongings of the families. Social services ain’t what it used to be. ... Next issue!
Hot upon the heels of Reverend Jeremiah Wright defending his “Momma”, so to speak, at the National Press Club, Juan Williams, referred to by some at Fox News as “the Voice” proceeded on national TV to spin the Rev as duplicitous, divisive, anti-American and several other things on the talking points list of the “Let’s Destroy Barak Obama and the Democratic Party” hit squad. Juan Williams is an Oreo cookie at best and what some would call a race traitor at worst. Let the truth be known: Juan Williams better not lose that dark tan! It’s one thing to betray the history of your race; it’s another to not even be aware you are doing it. Poor Juan!
Moving right along, Miley Cyrus, latest little sex trollop cashing in on tits and titillation in the media, has proclaimed how “embarrassed” she was that suggestive photos of her appeared in Vanity Fair magazine. The poor little dear! How could her mother and father who were at the photo shoot let such a demeaning thing happen to this poor little girl? How could Walt Disney who has her under contract ever let its high aesthetic standards and good moral sense ever let this “poor little dear” be so outrageously exploited by this big bad wolf, excuse me, I mean big bad “magazine.” Disney, Mom and Dad accuse Vanity Fair of “manipulating” poor Hannah Montana at the shoot. The Bastards! Such a sweet little innocent dear so brutally exploited by this big bad …. well you get the point. And I’ll tell you how this happens: a sex image industry projected to make over $1 billion by the time this poor sweet innocent exploited little 15 year old girl is 18. So, guys, put your tongue back in your mouth and your dick in your pants. This is another little girl you’re never gonna get to fuck, except of course in your minds. In the meantime, while you’re “getting off,” Miley is getting off to the bank. Simply put, Miley Cyrus is a sex worker air brushed by Disney and a duplicitous media with huge double standards.
Be patient. I’ll get to poor forgotten Nietzsche and Plato shortly.
Meanwhile back on the local scene we have various nihilistically and morally, not to mention intellectually, corruptive happenings having to do with, you guessed it, sex, drugs and violence. Three students in the local town of Wilson have, it seems, been charged with felony sexual assault on a fellow teenager on the school bus. Whatever happened to shiny red apples and chalky blackboards?
Moreover, gang violence broke out in the lovely little hamlet of Lockport. Ten police cars showed up. It wasn’t a friendly, neighborly fight over the pitcher brushing back the batter at a local ball game. When tempers fly at that level there’s got to be drugs and big bucks around somewhere. What? Drugs in Lockport? What? Gangs in Lockport? And I thought their only problem was censorial, proto-fascist Boards of Directors of LCTV purging the cable airways of talk show hosts who have been accused of unacceptable political opinions. How naïve I am!
Let’s not leave out my hometown of North Tonawanda. Lockport and Wilson have nothing over on us. Certainly and damn it all, we have more and better drugs than them, comparable violence and an unsolved sex kidnapping of a little girl not too long ago, still unsolved by the FBI none the less.
Lastly on WLVL radio today Doug Young went ballistic when a caller suggested that Young wasn’t taking into account our right to be considered innocent until proven guilty during discussion of the Wilson teen sexual harassment incident. You’d have thought that Young had been accused of raping the Virgin Mary. Even though, the radio talk show host began with the admission that we had virtually none of the facts of the incident at hand, other than the arrest and charges, Young was coming off like we would be perfectly justified in getting out the rope and finding a sturdy tree limb, thus saving the tax payers money for litigation and dispensing with the nasty difficulties of actually finding out what happened. Now I do understand the dilemma of a talk show host having to beef up ratings, but there’s a little thing that all too few these days are paying attention to, namely, the American Constitution.
So what’s the common thread here? Why invoke Nietzsche and Plato? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, does it? The Nihilism is clear. A collapse of moral values, and a devaluation of what might be laudable if not sacred is manifesting in the abuse of sex, drugs and the media, not to mention our government. Our moral fabric has worn too thin and holes are showing, revealing the spiritual emptiness. The schools, police and church have failed to remediate the nihilistic ethos. The institutions of education, law and spirit can no longer make up for the corruption of community and the loss of the individual’s sense of the good of the whole, the "sensu communis," of the Humanist tradition. This nihilism, the crisis of man as the creator and keeper of values, began back in Greek times with Socrates. Socrates said at the age of 70 that he no longer knew what it meant to be a human being. This disclaimer was prophetic for those with ears to hear. Socrates was asking what was happening to this being that we are, a being higher than the angels, capable of loving like God, able to know the Divine, yet descended to a level indistinguishable from beasts and barbarians?
What has happened to a creature, as Plato said, capable of being motivated by love, guided by truth and aimed toward the good, consciously descending to a vicious self-interestedness, a myopic self-serving distortion of self-understanding and a blindness to the simplest virtues of honesty, caring and courage? Plato’s Socrates battled the Sophistry of the Sophists. At their worst the Sophist mind was capable of collapsing mere accusation and allegation into truth and making it appear as truth. Such a mind was able to turn ‘saying its so’ into its seeming ‘to be so.’ It nurtured this need to be right even at the cost of truth. Jesus called it self-righteousness. Doug Young illustrated this nicely today when he insisted that even though we didn’t have the facts of the Wilson case and even finally agreed that we are innocent until proven guilty he still insisted that “We do know some facts. Something happened…. This is wrong!” he ranted. But Doug, what happened was that there was an allegation of something having happen. We don't know WHAT happened. That's not a "fact" that allows you to accuse anyone of wrongdoing. Allegation is not conviction and it doesn't justfy further character assassination.
There was something of the witchhunt hysteria in Doug’s voice, even if it was for the ratings. Even if Doug really didn’t fully believe or feel what he said, he was still playing on this readiness to round up the lynch mob at the drop of a hat. But just like in Salem back in the 17th century, so today, given that things are out of hand with respect to moral respect, truth telling and a patient listening to “reality,” sometimes it just feels good to hang someone, purge the blood, kill a scapegoat.
But, as Doug Young implored, “There’s something wrong here!” And there is. Not necessarily on the school bus in Wislon but in our culture, society and political ethos. When good and bad are indistinguishable, when truth is not knowable, when saying it’s so makes it so, when wanting to find a witch leads to a witch hunt wherein a witch is sure to be found, then there really is something wrong here. When political discussion has irrevocably descended to and been conflated with character assassination; when discussion aims only at winning, being right and distorting the intention, context and integrity of one’s neighbor or fellow citizen, then we have descended into Nihilism, a nihilism of truth and goodness not to mention also of reality and beauty. In such a world there is “mere opinion,” sophistry, that is so construed as to annihilate truth. Truth is relativized to serve one's immediate, short term, short sighted self-interest. In such a world, there is only what’s good for me and not the good of the community let alone the world.
So what do we see as the common thread here in these events today. Allegation, accusation, assassination and avarice confused with truth, goodness and justice. The hierarchy of value, the capacity and concern to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, true from false, have all collapsed into a one-dimensional rush to judgement in which one must take abstract, unreal sides or seemingly perish. The willingness and ability to be wrong, to stand in the gray area, to moderate, mediate and modulate the violence, conflict, dissension and the raising of voices calling for vengeance, has disappeared.
Nihilism and Sophistry prevail. Late in the 19th century, Nietzsche predicted 200 years of such nihilism, the devaluation of all values and the impossibility of sharing meaning in the spirit of truth. I fear he was right about the first 100 years. It’s not too late for the second 100. He would agree if we could agree to once again become the creator of values worth living for, as opposed to those only worth dying for. With Nietzsche I too remain “tragically optimistic.” Though the vicious indifference of Nihilism could be with us for some time it would help to distinguish its spirit. Also, since the spin of Sophistry may well always be with us we can at least know the difference between it and truth.
Another philosopher born in the 19th century, Martin Heidegger, said before he died, “Only a God can save us now!” I hope Heidegger was wrong. But, on the other hand, if we can become that God as Jesus did, then such a One as ourselves can save us. As John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said, “God’s work must truly be our own.”
Monday, April 28, 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008
IGNORING THE DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
A process is underway in Niagara County called the Niagara Communities Comprehensive Plan. I wrote about it below on March 2, 2008. I’ll bet you still haven’t heard about it. I bet if you had heard about it you have since forgotten it. That’s too bad because this is a chance for you as a citizen to engage the communities as a potentially unified whole over the next 6 months of meetings and discussions regarding the future of Niagara County.
Actually, I do not exaggerate if I say that this is an amazing opportunity for the “stakeholders” in Niagara County to meet monthly to systematically discuss the issues, problems, potentials and possibilities of our communities, their concerns regarding land use, infrastructure, business needs and economic prospects and much more.
Hired to lead the process was a group of community planning experts called Clough Harbour & Associates. The project began on Feb. 27, 2008 with a Steering Committee meeting and one Public meeting. Since then a second Steering Committee meeting took place on March 26 at the Niagara County Center for Economic Development.
At the first Public meeting there was much negativity, cynicism and suspicion about spending several thousands of dollars on a questionably useful process. One citizen objected that the process would be used merely to legitimate decisions and projects already underway by the power bloc now in control of the county. Another attendee outright accused the consultants of being in it just and only for the money. I myself question the competency of the consultants but not their integrity. I had no reason to distrust them until I saw more. I questioned their competency only in the sense that I wanted some evidence that they knew what they were doing, that is, had some knowledge as to how to get antagonistic communities to work together in the interest of a unified whole not yet really even defined other than in name, namely, Niagara County as a “community” of communities. The man to whom I addressed my question, Mr. Walter Kalina an associate with CHA, was rather oddly mute when I asked my question. It was a simple question. I didn’t really get an answer. It seems that an experienced expert could have given me some brief synopsis of his work. But none was forthcoming. Yet I remained enamored if not bemused by anyone who might claim that they could unify such a fragmented geography, one which seems quite self-satisfied with its inability to come together in a unity, balance and harmony of political economy.
Nevertheless I remained hopeful that some good could come of this community process of self-examination and self-determination, or in the parlance of the community planning experts, simply PLANNING. My reason for optimism was that Kalina said possibly the best thing that could come out of this process was an authentic, trusting relationship of communities on the basis of which people might start working together. My idealistc democratic heart began to stir and populist juices began to flow. I was a believer.
I myself have since attended the first public meeting and the second steering committee meeting. I would have been at the first steering meeting but didn’t know that citizens not appointed by their jurisdiction as an official representative of the stakeholder group could attend the Steering meetings. I take full responsibility for that. And yet I excuse others because the Project has not been excessively advertised. I stumbled across an announcement of it in the local paper. I suppose if you are an avid reader of the county website you might also have seen a link to the subject of the Comprehensive Plan there. I don’t know how many attended the first steering meeting. I do know that at most about 20 or 25 people in a county of 240,000 or so were in attendance for the first Public meeting at the NCCC Fine Arts Auditorium. It seats about 500 or 600. Somebody had high hopes.
The second steering committee meeting had about 50-60 in attendance. I think there are @ 150 stakeholder representatives. I may be wrong about that. I do know that my own representative from North Tonawanda, Chuck Bell, was not in attendance at the second steering meeting although I understand he was at the first meeting.
At the second steering meeting it was promised that complete notes of the discussions would be circulated to all at the meeting by way of the internet. As of today, Saturday, April 19, no such notes have been forthcoming. I’ve sent several e-mails of inquiry to CHA, contacted Jason Murgia, Niagara County Legislator, and searched desperately on the hopelessly inadequate Niagara County website for some way to request the information.
Today however finally I received an e-mail from Mr. Kalina that the notes would be posted on the Niagara County site “early next week.” If we are lucky, this will give the 100 or so people involved time to review, think about and contact one another about the process. If we are lucky that “time to review” will be about 1 day. Yes, I wax sarcastic if you hadn’t noticed. Why? Because this just will not do. This is embarrassingly inadequate, demeaning and offensive to anyone seriously engaged in this process. Should I raise the question of the competency of CHA at the next meeting again? Or is it just a matter of the process not really being taken seriously?
Maybe as the pessimistic accuser at the first public meeting said, this Project will just be used to legitimate the prior decisions of the powers that be. Maybe it will be used, should it fail and is filed away as a final “REPORT” that no one will ever again read, to say to the people: “Well, we gave you a chance to practice democracy and you blew it. So we the rich and powerful, the conscientious and caring, must take over.” Is this a set-up? Am I paranoid? Is this Comprehensive Plan planned to fail. Will the Lone Ranger and Tonto ride in to save the day?
Well, the point is that not enough people are engaged in this process and too few are paying attention to the ‘process’ of the process. The Diamond here, my friends, is in the process itself. The “result” that matters here will be in the relationships that develop and the experience of seeing that people can come together to think about the whole of the county communities and how it might become One. The Report and Document that get filed away are not the result that will matter.
If we want to get our thousands of dollars of money worth we must participate. CHA must also spend more of that money to advertise this Project. And the naysayers who crapped on the Project such as the Tonawanda News editor’s column and the local blog Niagara Times need to get their collective head out of the sand, then come down from their high horses and smell the democratic process. It’s easy to pretend you can piss on the people when you stand in such high and lofty places.
I suggest you get involved and begin to learn to talk to one another with the unity, integrity and prosperity of the communities of Niagara County in mind.
Actually, I do not exaggerate if I say that this is an amazing opportunity for the “stakeholders” in Niagara County to meet monthly to systematically discuss the issues, problems, potentials and possibilities of our communities, their concerns regarding land use, infrastructure, business needs and economic prospects and much more.
Hired to lead the process was a group of community planning experts called Clough Harbour & Associates. The project began on Feb. 27, 2008 with a Steering Committee meeting and one Public meeting. Since then a second Steering Committee meeting took place on March 26 at the Niagara County Center for Economic Development.
At the first Public meeting there was much negativity, cynicism and suspicion about spending several thousands of dollars on a questionably useful process. One citizen objected that the process would be used merely to legitimate decisions and projects already underway by the power bloc now in control of the county. Another attendee outright accused the consultants of being in it just and only for the money. I myself question the competency of the consultants but not their integrity. I had no reason to distrust them until I saw more. I questioned their competency only in the sense that I wanted some evidence that they knew what they were doing, that is, had some knowledge as to how to get antagonistic communities to work together in the interest of a unified whole not yet really even defined other than in name, namely, Niagara County as a “community” of communities. The man to whom I addressed my question, Mr. Walter Kalina an associate with CHA, was rather oddly mute when I asked my question. It was a simple question. I didn’t really get an answer. It seems that an experienced expert could have given me some brief synopsis of his work. But none was forthcoming. Yet I remained enamored if not bemused by anyone who might claim that they could unify such a fragmented geography, one which seems quite self-satisfied with its inability to come together in a unity, balance and harmony of political economy.
Nevertheless I remained hopeful that some good could come of this community process of self-examination and self-determination, or in the parlance of the community planning experts, simply PLANNING. My reason for optimism was that Kalina said possibly the best thing that could come out of this process was an authentic, trusting relationship of communities on the basis of which people might start working together. My idealistc democratic heart began to stir and populist juices began to flow. I was a believer.
I myself have since attended the first public meeting and the second steering committee meeting. I would have been at the first steering meeting but didn’t know that citizens not appointed by their jurisdiction as an official representative of the stakeholder group could attend the Steering meetings. I take full responsibility for that. And yet I excuse others because the Project has not been excessively advertised. I stumbled across an announcement of it in the local paper. I suppose if you are an avid reader of the county website you might also have seen a link to the subject of the Comprehensive Plan there. I don’t know how many attended the first steering meeting. I do know that at most about 20 or 25 people in a county of 240,000 or so were in attendance for the first Public meeting at the NCCC Fine Arts Auditorium. It seats about 500 or 600. Somebody had high hopes.
The second steering committee meeting had about 50-60 in attendance. I think there are @ 150 stakeholder representatives. I may be wrong about that. I do know that my own representative from North Tonawanda, Chuck Bell, was not in attendance at the second steering meeting although I understand he was at the first meeting.
At the second steering meeting it was promised that complete notes of the discussions would be circulated to all at the meeting by way of the internet. As of today, Saturday, April 19, no such notes have been forthcoming. I’ve sent several e-mails of inquiry to CHA, contacted Jason Murgia, Niagara County Legislator, and searched desperately on the hopelessly inadequate Niagara County website for some way to request the information.
Today however finally I received an e-mail from Mr. Kalina that the notes would be posted on the Niagara County site “early next week.” If we are lucky, this will give the 100 or so people involved time to review, think about and contact one another about the process. If we are lucky that “time to review” will be about 1 day. Yes, I wax sarcastic if you hadn’t noticed. Why? Because this just will not do. This is embarrassingly inadequate, demeaning and offensive to anyone seriously engaged in this process. Should I raise the question of the competency of CHA at the next meeting again? Or is it just a matter of the process not really being taken seriously?
Maybe as the pessimistic accuser at the first public meeting said, this Project will just be used to legitimate the prior decisions of the powers that be. Maybe it will be used, should it fail and is filed away as a final “REPORT” that no one will ever again read, to say to the people: “Well, we gave you a chance to practice democracy and you blew it. So we the rich and powerful, the conscientious and caring, must take over.” Is this a set-up? Am I paranoid? Is this Comprehensive Plan planned to fail. Will the Lone Ranger and Tonto ride in to save the day?
Well, the point is that not enough people are engaged in this process and too few are paying attention to the ‘process’ of the process. The Diamond here, my friends, is in the process itself. The “result” that matters here will be in the relationships that develop and the experience of seeing that people can come together to think about the whole of the county communities and how it might become One. The Report and Document that get filed away are not the result that will matter.
If we want to get our thousands of dollars of money worth we must participate. CHA must also spend more of that money to advertise this Project. And the naysayers who crapped on the Project such as the Tonawanda News editor’s column and the local blog Niagara Times need to get their collective head out of the sand, then come down from their high horses and smell the democratic process. It’s easy to pretend you can piss on the people when you stand in such high and lofty places.
I suggest you get involved and begin to learn to talk to one another with the unity, integrity and prosperity of the communities of Niagara County in mind.
Friday, April 18, 2008
PRIME TIME AT CAFE LCTV
I’ve been wondering for some time exactly what political identity I have or should have. As a Viet Nam war protester in the late sixties and early seventies, I gravitated toward Marxism. But I no sooner started to understand what it was about that I also began to understand that its politics was obsolete. Since then I have remained actively apolitical at least insofar as I’ve not been engaged in the community or on the state or national scene as some sort of ‘player’ or ‘participant.’
Watching LCTV’s latest installment last night brought the question again to the fore regarding political identity. It occurred to me that the ousting of Tom Christy was motivated by an attempt on the part of the Republican/Business crowd in Niagara County to consolidate the image/identity that they have of themselves and that others in the county also have, although not in the same positive light. Christy threatened that identity, even if ever so slightly, enough to invoke their wrath and set in motion the political correctness purge, always justified of course by handy administrative rules and the blessings of some state bureaucratic functionary.
But oddly it seems that the image that the Christy supporters and various Democratic critics of the Republicans had of the Republican/business crowd, call them the “Rebizzlicans,” contributed to the perceived necessity of saving that political identity. So before the Christy phenomenon actually consolidated into an identity of its own--whether Democratic or possibly even authentic Populist, or, maybe Libertarian or some unnamed breed—the Rebizzlican machine, be it as it may be, kicked into gear and cleansed its Lockport staging ground. Lockport is now kind of the Green Zone of Rebizzlicanism in Niagara County.
So with the oh so smoothly nice and conciliatory, if not somewhat nauseating, manners of Jackie Davis, LCTV Board Member and host apparent of Access to Government, the Rebizzlican damage control machine got under way. Whew! Back to bizziness as usual! What a relief! I was starting to worry that honest and open critical political discourse might actually take hold in Niagara County. Never fear! Politics has been safely sublimated as business problems soon to be solved by the IDA and Center for Economic Development and ethical concerns quickly cleaned up by the county “Ethics” committee. It’s kind of like the Beckett play, Waiting for Godot. Godot never seems to get here. Vladimir and Estragon are played by lawyers of course.
So you may continue to fire away at the Green Zone but you’ll never get in now. The occupation is secured. I’m not sure it could have been avoided nor that the critics of the Rebizzlicans could have done anything differently.
By the way, did anybody else get the feeling that Jackie Davis’ head would start spinning around at any minute like the Linda Blair character in the Exorcist and she’d start screaming at Edwina Luksch something like, “Go die in hell and fuck yourself while you’re at it!!!”
Watching LCTV’s latest installment last night brought the question again to the fore regarding political identity. It occurred to me that the ousting of Tom Christy was motivated by an attempt on the part of the Republican/Business crowd in Niagara County to consolidate the image/identity that they have of themselves and that others in the county also have, although not in the same positive light. Christy threatened that identity, even if ever so slightly, enough to invoke their wrath and set in motion the political correctness purge, always justified of course by handy administrative rules and the blessings of some state bureaucratic functionary.
But oddly it seems that the image that the Christy supporters and various Democratic critics of the Republicans had of the Republican/business crowd, call them the “Rebizzlicans,” contributed to the perceived necessity of saving that political identity. So before the Christy phenomenon actually consolidated into an identity of its own--whether Democratic or possibly even authentic Populist, or, maybe Libertarian or some unnamed breed—the Rebizzlican machine, be it as it may be, kicked into gear and cleansed its Lockport staging ground. Lockport is now kind of the Green Zone of Rebizzlicanism in Niagara County.
So with the oh so smoothly nice and conciliatory, if not somewhat nauseating, manners of Jackie Davis, LCTV Board Member and host apparent of Access to Government, the Rebizzlican damage control machine got under way. Whew! Back to bizziness as usual! What a relief! I was starting to worry that honest and open critical political discourse might actually take hold in Niagara County. Never fear! Politics has been safely sublimated as business problems soon to be solved by the IDA and Center for Economic Development and ethical concerns quickly cleaned up by the county “Ethics” committee. It’s kind of like the Beckett play, Waiting for Godot. Godot never seems to get here. Vladimir and Estragon are played by lawyers of course.
So you may continue to fire away at the Green Zone but you’ll never get in now. The occupation is secured. I’m not sure it could have been avoided nor that the critics of the Rebizzlicans could have done anything differently.
By the way, did anybody else get the feeling that Jackie Davis’ head would start spinning around at any minute like the Linda Blair character in the Exorcist and she’d start screaming at Edwina Luksch something like, “Go die in hell and fuck yourself while you’re at it!!!”
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
CONSPIRACY OR STRATEGY: Writing Off America
If the American people continue to delude themselves that the regime in Washington represents the interests of a sovereign America, their world will continue to appear irrational and they will continue to feel powerlesss. As I began to argue in “Illegal Immigration and the End of America”(see below), it is not difficult to see the pattern of the dismantling of American sovereignty and national solidarity and integrity. Consider the following from Scott Thill’s article, “Over the Top Fed actions Feed Conspiracy Thinking,” at http://www.alternet.org/workplace/80501/?page=2:
"If you're one of the 2 million American families losing your house this year, it's a depression," argues Greg Palast, BBC investigative journalist, author of Armed Madhouse and onetime student of neoconservative privatization guru Milton Friedman. "If you're a mortgage shark, happy days are here again. The difference between the Great Depression and this one is that, back then, everyone was in it. Now, it's a selective mangling. Exxon's profit hit $40 billion, the highest of any corporation since the pharaohs. So how can you say the economy is going down? For whom?"
Palast's point is well taken, even as it is ignored by everyone from the Bush administration to the financial (which is to say, entertainment) media and all the way to homeowners who ignorantly refinance so they can buy that new Hummer: Your life may suck ass, but others around you are sucking you dry. And most importantly, they're crushing the dollar on their way out the door to Dubai, or wherever suits hide in the New World Order's afterlife.
"Regardless of what the Fed does, the dollar is going to keep going down," Schiff agrees. "If the Fed keeps doing what it is doing, it won't make it out of this as a functioning currency."
"I'm sorry to tell you this," Palast adds, "but higher oil prices and weak dollars is not a failure of policy. That is the policy. Clinton had a strong dollar policy and Bush hated it. The weak dollar is a way to temporarily hike exports to create short-term pretend juice for the economy. But the weak dollar also made it easier for foreigners to buy up U.S. assets. The capitalists are cashing out of America. They're keeping condos in New York, Palm Beach and Malibu, but their investments are where the returns are fatter: Malaysia, China, India. A weak dollar helps the transfer of capital ownership."
With respect to how we think about all this consider again whether all the fundamental categories of political thought help us understand and act. They do not. Left-Right, Republican-Democrat, Conservative-Liberal, Democracy-Republic all are obscurantist tools of rhetorical ranting, name-calling and marginalizing one another. In the political realm this is analogous to black on black crime in the social realm. We are parasitical on and destructive to one another intellectually and economically, while transnational capital is shifting the playing field out of our neighborhood.
The spectrum of political interests are clearly not conceptualizable as a horizontal paradigm but as a vertical one. The transnational capitalist class and their military-bureaucratic Army of international “stormtroopers,” call it the New Class, are at the very top of the pole. The rest of us are at the bottom of the pole.
The war on the middle-class is part of the strategy as is opening the flood gates to illegal and legal immigrants. The New Class of international capitalists have everything to gain by “third-worldizing” America. Why protect our standard of living, when those wages and benefits could be used to invest abroad where there’s real money to be made and resistant cultures to conquer? So as the wealth distribution becomes more painfully obviously divided top-heavy to bottom light, the class division becomes more clear. The mass of atomized, disenfranchised, discounted and impoverished pseudo-citizens, is the Client Class, a class unable to pay and at the mercy of what the Owners wish to give. We are systematically and strategically dumbed down in the schools and in the media. We are morally and spiritually numbed down by religious extremism on the one hand and on the other by a dissolved public sphere where a new social morality and civic virtue could be nurtured, but is not.
In short there is no horizontal playing field any longer in America. There is only the very narrow, horizontal dichotomous stratification of the few very rich and their maintainance “Army” at the top of the food chain, and the remaining anonymous mass of self-alienated laborers and servants at the bottom.
What “technical” and “educational” infrastructure remains will be progressively used, firstly, to police and indoctrinate the masses to accept this global reconfiguration of national/international socio-economic restructuration; secondly, fight the wars of those who resist in order to save their cultures, homes and local viability and integrity; and, finally, amuse the disenfranchised with the entertainment and advertising culture that keeps them pretending that they are happy and deluded that this is the best of all possible worlds, and reasonably enough, the only possible world.
Conspiracy? Not at all. Isn’t it interesting that any ideas which presume to explain the irrationality of the whole of our disastrous American domestic and international policy, of the context of globablization, or of failed government actions and fiscal policies, get labeled as conspiracy theory. In fact events, such as FEMA’s “failure” in Katrina and actions such as the exportation of jobs and capital, are not really “irrational” to the New Class. It makes a lot of sense to them. It is only irrational to those of us, the Client Class, who expect too much from the Capitalists, that is anything more than they are willing to finance.
As was said in the movie Network, ‘America doesn’t exist. Nothing exists but international monopoly capital.’
The crops are being plowed under, the hands are being let go and a new “crop” being planned. Politics as we have known it is a game for fools. Local and regional politics play a larger part than ever. As Western NY is written off as the new ‘Appalachia’ only we can unite and redefine ourselves on a neo-populist basis to reconfigure “political representation” and change the conversation that we have with the Capitalist lackeys in Washington who pretend to, but in fact do not, represent the interests of America as a self-sufficient nation and the greatest political idea in the history of Modernity.
Conspiracy or strategy? Old politics or new politics?
"If you're one of the 2 million American families losing your house this year, it's a depression," argues Greg Palast, BBC investigative journalist, author of Armed Madhouse and onetime student of neoconservative privatization guru Milton Friedman. "If you're a mortgage shark, happy days are here again. The difference between the Great Depression and this one is that, back then, everyone was in it. Now, it's a selective mangling. Exxon's profit hit $40 billion, the highest of any corporation since the pharaohs. So how can you say the economy is going down? For whom?"
Palast's point is well taken, even as it is ignored by everyone from the Bush administration to the financial (which is to say, entertainment) media and all the way to homeowners who ignorantly refinance so they can buy that new Hummer: Your life may suck ass, but others around you are sucking you dry. And most importantly, they're crushing the dollar on their way out the door to Dubai, or wherever suits hide in the New World Order's afterlife.
"Regardless of what the Fed does, the dollar is going to keep going down," Schiff agrees. "If the Fed keeps doing what it is doing, it won't make it out of this as a functioning currency."
"I'm sorry to tell you this," Palast adds, "but higher oil prices and weak dollars is not a failure of policy. That is the policy. Clinton had a strong dollar policy and Bush hated it. The weak dollar is a way to temporarily hike exports to create short-term pretend juice for the economy. But the weak dollar also made it easier for foreigners to buy up U.S. assets. The capitalists are cashing out of America. They're keeping condos in New York, Palm Beach and Malibu, but their investments are where the returns are fatter: Malaysia, China, India. A weak dollar helps the transfer of capital ownership."
With respect to how we think about all this consider again whether all the fundamental categories of political thought help us understand and act. They do not. Left-Right, Republican-Democrat, Conservative-Liberal, Democracy-Republic all are obscurantist tools of rhetorical ranting, name-calling and marginalizing one another. In the political realm this is analogous to black on black crime in the social realm. We are parasitical on and destructive to one another intellectually and economically, while transnational capital is shifting the playing field out of our neighborhood.
The spectrum of political interests are clearly not conceptualizable as a horizontal paradigm but as a vertical one. The transnational capitalist class and their military-bureaucratic Army of international “stormtroopers,” call it the New Class, are at the very top of the pole. The rest of us are at the bottom of the pole.
The war on the middle-class is part of the strategy as is opening the flood gates to illegal and legal immigrants. The New Class of international capitalists have everything to gain by “third-worldizing” America. Why protect our standard of living, when those wages and benefits could be used to invest abroad where there’s real money to be made and resistant cultures to conquer? So as the wealth distribution becomes more painfully obviously divided top-heavy to bottom light, the class division becomes more clear. The mass of atomized, disenfranchised, discounted and impoverished pseudo-citizens, is the Client Class, a class unable to pay and at the mercy of what the Owners wish to give. We are systematically and strategically dumbed down in the schools and in the media. We are morally and spiritually numbed down by religious extremism on the one hand and on the other by a dissolved public sphere where a new social morality and civic virtue could be nurtured, but is not.
In short there is no horizontal playing field any longer in America. There is only the very narrow, horizontal dichotomous stratification of the few very rich and their maintainance “Army” at the top of the food chain, and the remaining anonymous mass of self-alienated laborers and servants at the bottom.
What “technical” and “educational” infrastructure remains will be progressively used, firstly, to police and indoctrinate the masses to accept this global reconfiguration of national/international socio-economic restructuration; secondly, fight the wars of those who resist in order to save their cultures, homes and local viability and integrity; and, finally, amuse the disenfranchised with the entertainment and advertising culture that keeps them pretending that they are happy and deluded that this is the best of all possible worlds, and reasonably enough, the only possible world.
Conspiracy? Not at all. Isn’t it interesting that any ideas which presume to explain the irrationality of the whole of our disastrous American domestic and international policy, of the context of globablization, or of failed government actions and fiscal policies, get labeled as conspiracy theory. In fact events, such as FEMA’s “failure” in Katrina and actions such as the exportation of jobs and capital, are not really “irrational” to the New Class. It makes a lot of sense to them. It is only irrational to those of us, the Client Class, who expect too much from the Capitalists, that is anything more than they are willing to finance.
As was said in the movie Network, ‘America doesn’t exist. Nothing exists but international monopoly capital.’
The crops are being plowed under, the hands are being let go and a new “crop” being planned. Politics as we have known it is a game for fools. Local and regional politics play a larger part than ever. As Western NY is written off as the new ‘Appalachia’ only we can unite and redefine ourselves on a neo-populist basis to reconfigure “political representation” and change the conversation that we have with the Capitalist lackeys in Washington who pretend to, but in fact do not, represent the interests of America as a self-sufficient nation and the greatest political idea in the history of Modernity.
Conspiracy or strategy? Old politics or new politics?
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
THE ISSUES ACCORDING TO NADER, PLEASE
Nader continues to be the only candidate willing to break with the stranglehold on political thought and action. We might ask the question why all the candidates of the last two presidential elections been afraid to debate him. He may be off the radar but soon we may well have to start asking if there’s something wrong with the radar. Consider Nader’s issues:
1. Adopt a single payer national health insurance.
2. Cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget.
3. Say no to nuclear power, solar energy first.
4. Crack down on corporate crime and corporate welfare.
5. Open up the Presidential debates.
6. Adopt a carbon pollution tax.
7. Reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East.
8. Impeach Bush/Cheney.
9. Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law.
10. Adopt a Wall Street securities speculation tax.
11. End to ballot access obstructionism.
12. End corporate personhood.
1. Adopt a single payer national health insurance.
2. Cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget.
3. Say no to nuclear power, solar energy first.
4. Crack down on corporate crime and corporate welfare.
5. Open up the Presidential debates.
6. Adopt a carbon pollution tax.
7. Reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East.
8. Impeach Bush/Cheney.
9. Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law.
10. Adopt a Wall Street securities speculation tax.
11. End to ballot access obstructionism.
12. End corporate personhood.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
BENEATH CONTEMPT IN NIAGARA POLITICS
I had the great displeasure of seeing a re-run tonight of Senator Maziarz's interview with Kathy Paradowski.
WHY? WHY? WHY SUCH AUDACIOUS ARROGANCE? Well, now we know why.
This is such a violation of everything from good taste to ethics and everything in between it is inexorably appalling. I was deeply, deeply offended. After LCTV tells Tom Christy that the Government Channel was about the interview of elected officials, they run this blatantly audacious violation of their stated rules. This is nothing but the conscious intent to add insult to injury rubbing in the face of the public what the tyrannical political situation is in Niagara County. This is moral nihilism passing as business as usual. The Government Channel apparently now with impunity can be used for business advertisement and a platform to denigrate Democratic political leadership in North Tonawanda.
Senator Maziarz did not miss the opportunity-- undoubtedly part of the purpose of the show -- to disparage and denigrate Mayor Soos's political leadership. Ethically this was a bald and egregious misuse of the station. What about Mayor Soos's side of the story? Soos deserves equal time to trash Paradowski in return. Maziarz owes Soos an apology and he owes Niagara County an apology for such embarrassingly infantile behavior. This is political leadership???
If what was said about Maziarz having a big hand in getting rid of Christy was not true, then this would never have happened. He would have been more sensitive. Obviously we now know it was true. Such unabashed self-promotion in flagrant violation of the the rules of LCTV is letting Niagara County know who's boss and who can get away apparently with anything.
Apparently LCTV will now be used to promote the Republican political and business agenda.
If that is not sufficient rape of the intelligence of the community, with fraudulent smiles Maziarz and Paradowski wish North Tonawanda well in their concert series.
This is all descending far beneath contempt. Im my estimation Senator Maziarz has lost any right to moral and political leadership in Niagara County.
I myself am unaligned politically and I write with an interest in what I see as true, fair and in the interest of Niagara County as a potentially unifiable community and polity.
I may not be well experienced in local politics. I may even be naive, ignorant or even stupid. But I am not a fool. I know when I'm being told I don't count. Unless of course I get on board the band wagon.
WHY? WHY? WHY SUCH AUDACIOUS ARROGANCE? Well, now we know why.
This is such a violation of everything from good taste to ethics and everything in between it is inexorably appalling. I was deeply, deeply offended. After LCTV tells Tom Christy that the Government Channel was about the interview of elected officials, they run this blatantly audacious violation of their stated rules. This is nothing but the conscious intent to add insult to injury rubbing in the face of the public what the tyrannical political situation is in Niagara County. This is moral nihilism passing as business as usual. The Government Channel apparently now with impunity can be used for business advertisement and a platform to denigrate Democratic political leadership in North Tonawanda.
Senator Maziarz did not miss the opportunity-- undoubtedly part of the purpose of the show -- to disparage and denigrate Mayor Soos's political leadership. Ethically this was a bald and egregious misuse of the station. What about Mayor Soos's side of the story? Soos deserves equal time to trash Paradowski in return. Maziarz owes Soos an apology and he owes Niagara County an apology for such embarrassingly infantile behavior. This is political leadership???
If what was said about Maziarz having a big hand in getting rid of Christy was not true, then this would never have happened. He would have been more sensitive. Obviously we now know it was true. Such unabashed self-promotion in flagrant violation of the the rules of LCTV is letting Niagara County know who's boss and who can get away apparently with anything.
Apparently LCTV will now be used to promote the Republican political and business agenda.
If that is not sufficient rape of the intelligence of the community, with fraudulent smiles Maziarz and Paradowski wish North Tonawanda well in their concert series.
This is all descending far beneath contempt. Im my estimation Senator Maziarz has lost any right to moral and political leadership in Niagara County.
I myself am unaligned politically and I write with an interest in what I see as true, fair and in the interest of Niagara County as a potentially unifiable community and polity.
I may not be well experienced in local politics. I may even be naive, ignorant or even stupid. But I am not a fool. I know when I'm being told I don't count. Unless of course I get on board the band wagon.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
NIAGARA COUNTY LEGISLATURE CONFOUNDS COMMON SENSE
In a second round of protest in the Niagara County Legislature, the wishes of the people were again repelled and renounced by a mute and recalcitrant Republican majority. Without argument or explanation the right wing, if not reactionary, Republican power block inexplicably refused to act to restore one small venue of the public sphere, namely the popular and successful Legislative Journal with Tom Christy.
Without any concern for having their position understood, the Legislative block brazenly held its ground on mere excuses alone as to why they should not act to restore the Christy show to the people. Obviously without apology or regret and with what can only be understood as smug and arrogant indifference, the Legislature allows the unjustifiable acts of the LCTV Board of Directors to go unquestioned and unclarified.
Not only has the Legislature further deepened the divide between government and the people but now begins building a wall to prevent real communication, education and understanding. When Boards of Directors, of questionable talent and integrity, can serve as a buffer between the government and the people, between reason and the public interest, we the people enter into a very dark and dangerous period of civic neglect, disregard and repression. When government officials consider public discourse to demean and compromise their own integrity and right, the political process called democracy becomes a thing of the past.
It was with the stone wall of silence that the essentially inaccessible mind of the Republicans frustrated the democratic process. What could they really be thinking? What could really be motivating them? Who is really influencing such inscrutable if not vile actions against the people? We will probably never know. They don’t feel obligated to explain.
What little we heard from these newly self-appointed Aristocrats, came primarily from Mr. Updegrove. In brief he denied that the Legislature had any authority or authorization to act upon the Christy affair. He gave excuses as to why they can’t act but not why they should not act. They hid behind the weak claim that they had no authority to intervene. They excused themselves of any obligation with the feeble and questionable excuse of administrative and legal formalities. Sadly if not pathetically they refused to own the moral responsibility as leaders to reconcile the Lockport bureaucrats with the interest and right of the people to be heard publicly and be represented with their own voice. They failed to live up to a standard of legislative conduct given us by one no less than Plato himself. That standard is that the true mark of a Legislator is to use powers of the Law to bring harmony from conflict.
However, apparently scoffing at both legal and moral responsibility or obligation, and obviously lacking any sensitivity, compassion or respect for the voice of the community, the Legislature sharpens and exacerbates the conflict. These living obstacles to truth are no Legislators. They are functionaries and factionaries of interests and powers that ultimately do not serve you and me. They refuse to talk openly and honestly about those interests. The have de facto de-legitimated their legally given powers.
But as we should all know by now, this one small venue of public discourse, Christy’s Legislative Journal, apparently loomed very large when it insisted the failures of economic development, egregiously high and misappropriated taxes, that is the wasted wealth of the people, should be brought to light and discussed. Critical discussion of our disastrous political economy is now off the table in Niagara County. The writing is on the wall. The purging of the Christy show is a warning and threat that what may be discussed in the Niagara region will be determined by the wishes of established wealth and power. But such power is not real, only apparent. It is surely only a coercive, bullying force refusing to be held up to the mirror of self-examination.
If such people cannot explain and convince, they choose to threaten and intimidate, repress and mock if not revile any faith in the generative and nourishing power of the democracy that we stand for and countless have died for.
If it is true that Truth fears no questions, then we know now that Niagara County does not yet have the truth behind the egregious cancellation of the Christy show. Apparently many questions are feared by our Legislature. Possibly the central question is what exactly the agenda might be that permits the cancerous growth of an autocratic if not authoritarian contempt for the people, public discourse and the very lifeblood of America which is our own democracy.
This in effect is a state of siege against civic integrity, the public sphere and ultimately freedom of speech. The question for those who still desire openness of democratic inquiry is whether we will forfeit our government to the interests of greater political centralization of power and the sequestered, immune bureaucracies which make decisions and policies for a public which now no longer has the acknowledged right and means to question those decisions. The political parties do not now really work for us let alone really represent us fairly and interactively. Possibly the community must now reconstitute itself and repoliticize itself to empower actions which are really in its interest and for its benefit. Can we believe that a Legislative body that does not speak to us with respect for our need to understand is really even any longer listening to us?
However all is not lost. There are efforts underway in the Erie County Legislature and other jurisdictions in Niagara County to pass resolutions to reverse the publicly insulting decision regarding Legislative Journal with Tom Christy. The fight for legitimate and authentic democracy continues.
Without any concern for having their position understood, the Legislative block brazenly held its ground on mere excuses alone as to why they should not act to restore the Christy show to the people. Obviously without apology or regret and with what can only be understood as smug and arrogant indifference, the Legislature allows the unjustifiable acts of the LCTV Board of Directors to go unquestioned and unclarified.
Not only has the Legislature further deepened the divide between government and the people but now begins building a wall to prevent real communication, education and understanding. When Boards of Directors, of questionable talent and integrity, can serve as a buffer between the government and the people, between reason and the public interest, we the people enter into a very dark and dangerous period of civic neglect, disregard and repression. When government officials consider public discourse to demean and compromise their own integrity and right, the political process called democracy becomes a thing of the past.
It was with the stone wall of silence that the essentially inaccessible mind of the Republicans frustrated the democratic process. What could they really be thinking? What could really be motivating them? Who is really influencing such inscrutable if not vile actions against the people? We will probably never know. They don’t feel obligated to explain.
What little we heard from these newly self-appointed Aristocrats, came primarily from Mr. Updegrove. In brief he denied that the Legislature had any authority or authorization to act upon the Christy affair. He gave excuses as to why they can’t act but not why they should not act. They hid behind the weak claim that they had no authority to intervene. They excused themselves of any obligation with the feeble and questionable excuse of administrative and legal formalities. Sadly if not pathetically they refused to own the moral responsibility as leaders to reconcile the Lockport bureaucrats with the interest and right of the people to be heard publicly and be represented with their own voice. They failed to live up to a standard of legislative conduct given us by one no less than Plato himself. That standard is that the true mark of a Legislator is to use powers of the Law to bring harmony from conflict.
However, apparently scoffing at both legal and moral responsibility or obligation, and obviously lacking any sensitivity, compassion or respect for the voice of the community, the Legislature sharpens and exacerbates the conflict. These living obstacles to truth are no Legislators. They are functionaries and factionaries of interests and powers that ultimately do not serve you and me. They refuse to talk openly and honestly about those interests. The have de facto de-legitimated their legally given powers.
But as we should all know by now, this one small venue of public discourse, Christy’s Legislative Journal, apparently loomed very large when it insisted the failures of economic development, egregiously high and misappropriated taxes, that is the wasted wealth of the people, should be brought to light and discussed. Critical discussion of our disastrous political economy is now off the table in Niagara County. The writing is on the wall. The purging of the Christy show is a warning and threat that what may be discussed in the Niagara region will be determined by the wishes of established wealth and power. But such power is not real, only apparent. It is surely only a coercive, bullying force refusing to be held up to the mirror of self-examination.
If such people cannot explain and convince, they choose to threaten and intimidate, repress and mock if not revile any faith in the generative and nourishing power of the democracy that we stand for and countless have died for.
If it is true that Truth fears no questions, then we know now that Niagara County does not yet have the truth behind the egregious cancellation of the Christy show. Apparently many questions are feared by our Legislature. Possibly the central question is what exactly the agenda might be that permits the cancerous growth of an autocratic if not authoritarian contempt for the people, public discourse and the very lifeblood of America which is our own democracy.
This in effect is a state of siege against civic integrity, the public sphere and ultimately freedom of speech. The question for those who still desire openness of democratic inquiry is whether we will forfeit our government to the interests of greater political centralization of power and the sequestered, immune bureaucracies which make decisions and policies for a public which now no longer has the acknowledged right and means to question those decisions. The political parties do not now really work for us let alone really represent us fairly and interactively. Possibly the community must now reconstitute itself and repoliticize itself to empower actions which are really in its interest and for its benefit. Can we believe that a Legislative body that does not speak to us with respect for our need to understand is really even any longer listening to us?
However all is not lost. There are efforts underway in the Erie County Legislature and other jurisdictions in Niagara County to pass resolutions to reverse the publicly insulting decision regarding Legislative Journal with Tom Christy. The fight for legitimate and authentic democracy continues.
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