Today over at Niagara Times blog, good ol’ Hobbes, blog administrator and editorialist extraordinaire, paid me the dubious honor of being the exclusive subject of his day’s labor. He begins by rationalizing why he censored me from his web site. Poor ol’ Hobbes, whomever he/she/it/that may be, seems a tad bit defensive. Hobbes’ claim that I was never able “to articulate [my] thoughts into a clear, concise manner” really means I refused to think in the very small box within which his mind moves. My words were “white noise” to him because he wasn’t capable of thinking through a single new political idea. He Hobbes detests authentic democratic discourse. It’s not good for business.
Then the most gross distortions, misrepresentations and misreadings begin. Well, actually they begin in the title of his post, “Castellani Compares Hobbes to Hitler, Christ.” I did no such thing. What I did do was draw two analogies. The first compared the NCCC Administration’s attempts to destroy the Faculty Association while dragging the integrity of the college down with it, to Hitler’s attempt to destroy the Jews despite its ill effects on his beloved Fatherland. The second suggested that Hobbes moralistic, pseudo-political diatribes present himself as the sinless savior of Niagara County while he portrays almost everyone else as traitors to the cause. He is light years from Jesus and obviously closer to Judas if not Hitler in his betrayal of public democratic dialogue not to mention the pursuit of truth.
If you are curious why Hobbes lists a slew of my sentences in his blog, wonder no further. It’s to make sure that you don’t read my piece entitled, “Niagara Times Politico and County Bureaucrats Assault Education at NCCC”[Thursday, July 15, 2010]. He loves to take arguments out of context and put them to his own use as they do on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and that ilk.
If Hobbes were serious about “reigning in exorbitant, taxpayer- subsidized salaries” he would spend a little time criticizing the exorbitant salaries of the Administrators at NCCC starting with Dr. Klyczek. He would also criticize the use of millions in tax monies to subsidize business in Niagara County. But for Hobbes it’s socialism for the capitalists and capitalism for the poor.
Hobbes doesn’t criticize those who support the politics of his social class. He only criticizes those who wish to restore equity to a Liberal Democracy in severe political, economic, social and ecological crisis. He criticizes anyone whose political ideas go beyond trying to win tax breaks for business and eliminate any regulation of the same.
What becomes clear to me now, however, is that Hobbes probably censored me for one of two reasons. Firstly, it could be that he just can’t stand critical, creative political thought or, secondly, he just can’t read. He misunderstood two of my analogies and totally distorted the context of my argument and the issues at hand. But maybe he doesn’t do that intentionally or self-consciously. Maybe he just doesn’t read well. And if he doesn’t read well, just what kind of thinking could one expect from the ol’ Republican hit man.
Whichever it is, it doesn’t bode well for Hobbes. He’s either an elitist, authoritarian party-politics power mongerer or he’s kind of illiterate.
So please read Hobbes’ character assassination piece on me but then, please, also read my article. Then let’s collect some tuition money and send Hobbes back to school.
If democracy stands any chance to establish an authentic discourse of the people in a legitimate public sphere, the demagogic witch hunting of the likes of Hobbes, the lunatic fringe right wing in this country and the Neo-conservative and even moderate Republican elitists can’t be permitted to go unchallenged.
Lastly, we need to note one tactic that the rich and powerful use repeatedly against the poor, public servants and unions. The tactic is to manipulate anyone who believes they deserve better than the capitalist types are willing to let them have, or have the opportunity to achieve, into comparing themselves with the poorest. The psychological intent is to make you feel guilty and ashamed that you believe you deserve better. It’s pseudo-Christian elevation of the humble and self-sacrificing to which he tries to get you to emulate and thus accept whatever the “bosses” want to give you, usually the crumbs off their table.
Such moralism doesn’t work, at least not with me. Hobbes’ type of demagoguery wants to dumb you down, humiliate you and impoverish the will to self-determination. Hobbes is a Stalinist at heart. He’s dangerous and a light should be kept on his efforts to turn the public sphere into a realm of political violence, obstruction and obscuration.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Niagara Times Politico and County Bureaucrats Assault Education at NCCC
The demagogic pseudo-political hitman over at the Niagara Times blogspot who calls himself “Hobbes,” is once again finding an excuse to assault the integrity of the NCCC Faculty Association. The issue is a shortfall in operational funds due to NYS cutbacks. The issue is not the pending contract for the faculty. The Faculty Association is not holding up funding by the county. The Association is not the problem in the negotiations with the college Administration. The problem is an administration that continues to insult and assault the faculty and the community by breaking the Taylor Law, lying about negotiations and doing its best to divide and conquer the faculty in order to destroy the Association, if not the very right to "associate." The truth of the matter is that the Administration does not really even believe in the right to associate and legally defend one’s own interests. While the Administration and its Board of Trustees supporters attack the faculty endlessly and mercilessly, they fail to see they are destroying the atmosphere of healthy learning at the college and the morale of all who work at the college.
The faculty has bent over backwards to accommodate the Administration but the Administration doesn’t really wish to settle. They aim to take over control of educational functions from the faculty in the name of saving money. The administration does not care about the quality of education let alone conditions for quality education. If the Board of Trustees was not behind the “union-busting” tactics of Klyczek and Co., they would have intervened four years ago and settled.
It is the Administration and the Board of Trustees who waste the County’s money paying expensive lawyers to stonewall every attempt by the faculty association to reach reasonable agreement. It is a hapless legislature that continually acts to throw the baby out with the bathwater and otherwise is usually penny wise and pound foolish. NCCC is the best economic asset in Niagara County. It’s the best available first two years of college education in Western NY.
When these ignoramuses will ever learn to stop playing self-destructive politics, it is hard to tell. Probably never. Hobbes continues his rabid, toxic and violent disinformation by, for example, making it appear that the only issue separating the Association and the Administration is the faculty’s wish to hang onto “cosmetic plastic surgery.” This is so ludicrous it's almost embarrassing. Most if not all of the faculty have no problem dropping this “benefit.” Hobbes, however, wants to make it look like the faculty has the top of the line health care package. We don’t even have dental care. The Faculty Association agreed to a health package over a year ago that would have saved the County over a million dollars and the Administration refused. They must think if they reduce the Faculty to a minimal wage and an inadequate health care package that they will save the County more in the long run. What else can explain their deceptive practices and otherwise irrational negotiation tactics. They have an ulterior motive and they aim to carry it out even if the County goes bankrupt doing it. This is kind of like Hitler wanting to kill the Jews and extend his war to the entire world even though he would inevitably destroy Germany while trying to do it.
Hobbes seems to be insulted by the faculty Newsletter. Yes, free speech does insult Hobbes. That’s why he denied me free speech on his blog. He’s afraid of honest, open, public dialogue in which everyone declares who they are and we all know who’s talking. We don’t know who Hobbes is but we know who he speaks for. And it’s not for the people. Justice doesn’t seen to apply to the faculty, only to Hobbes' business and political friends. Hobbes belittles the faculty’s attempt to fight for what is just for itself. He says we are “insulting to every group in history who has actually had to fight injustice.” For his information we fight for justice and against injustice everyday in the classroom while he's at home making up lies in order to win more political power for Niagara County Republicans and the rich business crowd.
Hobbes wants you to think we are taking food out of the mouths of the poor. How about those tax breaks for all your business friends like the illegal multi- million dollar give away to the coal burning plant. Hobbes is paid by the Republican Party in Niagara County not only to gain political and economic control for his big business friends but also to suppress every possibility of true democracy and meaningful quality education. Hobbes has already written about what he thinks the community college is good for: job training to supply ready-made laborers for all his business buddies. As far as critical literacy and political knowledge for these same people, he could care less. The more ignorant the people are the more his type can control them and pay them slave wages.
Everyone wants a good education and good teachers. But they don’t want to pay for it. I was working my way through graduate school to earn a Ph.D. for many years making nothing except survival stipends. I deserve everything I make and more. Hobbes and his ilk could care less about the people unless his big business friends can use them to make more money.
Klyczek and Co.. ought to spend more time working on quality education at NCCC rather than wasting untold hours trying to build more buildings and figure out ways to divide and pit the faculty against themselves in hopes of destroying our right to associate. Such elitist administrative bureaucrats and their henchman such as Hobbes, who fears to show his face in public, are the death knell for Niagara County, the community college and the public sphere. We need to start worrying about something more than "money" if we are going to put Niagara County and WNY back on a strong political and economic footing. The basis of such power is an educated and autonomous public. Hobbes would take that away from us.
The only “greed” in Niagara County is the greed on the part of the likes of Hobbes and selfish business people who are greedy for power, the control of knowledge and information. They are greedy to continue to carry out their plan to reduce democratic practices to the blathering of professional politicians who could care less about “the people.” They are greedy to obey only those laws that benefit their elitist social class and the administrative bureaucrats who carry out their dirty work in stopping what really benefits the people.
Yes, let’s make what’s really happening at NCCC public. Not Hobbes' vicious distortion of facts and truth, nor his selective dissemination of slanted “facts” that make him and his buddies look like Jesus Christ while making everyone else look like Judas. These tactics should be transparent to anyone with any brains whatsoever. Let’s make public how the administration get’s egregiously large pay increases and the faculty is denigrated and maligned for wanting a 3% increase. How about the 30% increase of Klyczek who is pushing his way toward the $200,000 a year club. The rest of the administration whose size, by the way, continues to grow disproportionate to their usefulness and our need for them, are also receiving excessive pay increases. Why favor the administration? Because then there are more bureaucrats to try to control the freedom and will of the faculty to truly educate and do what’s right for the students.
Niagara County is on the brink of losing more than a few dollars to pay the faculty a fair wage. It is on the brink of succumbing to the authoritarian anti-democratic elitists who are turning education and the public sphere into the private property of the rich and powerful and their bureaucratic hitmen, deceitful lawyers and professional politicans who have no respect for the law.
Pay those people who still care about truth and justice in Niagara County a fair wage and stop playing venomous "politics" with the future of education in Niagara County.
The faculty has bent over backwards to accommodate the Administration but the Administration doesn’t really wish to settle. They aim to take over control of educational functions from the faculty in the name of saving money. The administration does not care about the quality of education let alone conditions for quality education. If the Board of Trustees was not behind the “union-busting” tactics of Klyczek and Co., they would have intervened four years ago and settled.
It is the Administration and the Board of Trustees who waste the County’s money paying expensive lawyers to stonewall every attempt by the faculty association to reach reasonable agreement. It is a hapless legislature that continually acts to throw the baby out with the bathwater and otherwise is usually penny wise and pound foolish. NCCC is the best economic asset in Niagara County. It’s the best available first two years of college education in Western NY.
When these ignoramuses will ever learn to stop playing self-destructive politics, it is hard to tell. Probably never. Hobbes continues his rabid, toxic and violent disinformation by, for example, making it appear that the only issue separating the Association and the Administration is the faculty’s wish to hang onto “cosmetic plastic surgery.” This is so ludicrous it's almost embarrassing. Most if not all of the faculty have no problem dropping this “benefit.” Hobbes, however, wants to make it look like the faculty has the top of the line health care package. We don’t even have dental care. The Faculty Association agreed to a health package over a year ago that would have saved the County over a million dollars and the Administration refused. They must think if they reduce the Faculty to a minimal wage and an inadequate health care package that they will save the County more in the long run. What else can explain their deceptive practices and otherwise irrational negotiation tactics. They have an ulterior motive and they aim to carry it out even if the County goes bankrupt doing it. This is kind of like Hitler wanting to kill the Jews and extend his war to the entire world even though he would inevitably destroy Germany while trying to do it.
Hobbes seems to be insulted by the faculty Newsletter. Yes, free speech does insult Hobbes. That’s why he denied me free speech on his blog. He’s afraid of honest, open, public dialogue in which everyone declares who they are and we all know who’s talking. We don’t know who Hobbes is but we know who he speaks for. And it’s not for the people. Justice doesn’t seen to apply to the faculty, only to Hobbes' business and political friends. Hobbes belittles the faculty’s attempt to fight for what is just for itself. He says we are “insulting to every group in history who has actually had to fight injustice.” For his information we fight for justice and against injustice everyday in the classroom while he's at home making up lies in order to win more political power for Niagara County Republicans and the rich business crowd.
Hobbes wants you to think we are taking food out of the mouths of the poor. How about those tax breaks for all your business friends like the illegal multi- million dollar give away to the coal burning plant. Hobbes is paid by the Republican Party in Niagara County not only to gain political and economic control for his big business friends but also to suppress every possibility of true democracy and meaningful quality education. Hobbes has already written about what he thinks the community college is good for: job training to supply ready-made laborers for all his business buddies. As far as critical literacy and political knowledge for these same people, he could care less. The more ignorant the people are the more his type can control them and pay them slave wages.
Everyone wants a good education and good teachers. But they don’t want to pay for it. I was working my way through graduate school to earn a Ph.D. for many years making nothing except survival stipends. I deserve everything I make and more. Hobbes and his ilk could care less about the people unless his big business friends can use them to make more money.
Klyczek and Co.. ought to spend more time working on quality education at NCCC rather than wasting untold hours trying to build more buildings and figure out ways to divide and pit the faculty against themselves in hopes of destroying our right to associate. Such elitist administrative bureaucrats and their henchman such as Hobbes, who fears to show his face in public, are the death knell for Niagara County, the community college and the public sphere. We need to start worrying about something more than "money" if we are going to put Niagara County and WNY back on a strong political and economic footing. The basis of such power is an educated and autonomous public. Hobbes would take that away from us.
The only “greed” in Niagara County is the greed on the part of the likes of Hobbes and selfish business people who are greedy for power, the control of knowledge and information. They are greedy to continue to carry out their plan to reduce democratic practices to the blathering of professional politicians who could care less about “the people.” They are greedy to obey only those laws that benefit their elitist social class and the administrative bureaucrats who carry out their dirty work in stopping what really benefits the people.
Yes, let’s make what’s really happening at NCCC public. Not Hobbes' vicious distortion of facts and truth, nor his selective dissemination of slanted “facts” that make him and his buddies look like Jesus Christ while making everyone else look like Judas. These tactics should be transparent to anyone with any brains whatsoever. Let’s make public how the administration get’s egregiously large pay increases and the faculty is denigrated and maligned for wanting a 3% increase. How about the 30% increase of Klyczek who is pushing his way toward the $200,000 a year club. The rest of the administration whose size, by the way, continues to grow disproportionate to their usefulness and our need for them, are also receiving excessive pay increases. Why favor the administration? Because then there are more bureaucrats to try to control the freedom and will of the faculty to truly educate and do what’s right for the students.
Niagara County is on the brink of losing more than a few dollars to pay the faculty a fair wage. It is on the brink of succumbing to the authoritarian anti-democratic elitists who are turning education and the public sphere into the private property of the rich and powerful and their bureaucratic hitmen, deceitful lawyers and professional politicans who have no respect for the law.
Pay those people who still care about truth and justice in Niagara County a fair wage and stop playing venomous "politics" with the future of education in Niagara County.
Friday, July 09, 2010
Everybody's talkin' at me, can't hear a word they're sayin'....
… only the echoes of my mind," as the theme song of Midnight Cowboy declared. Such may well be the status of contemporary political discourse and for good reason. Witness the flakey demagoguery of the three musketeers of mediatized mindlessness: Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. If I were to add a fourth it would be, hands down, Michael Steele. On any given night one or another of the major media outlets will feature some inanity from at least one of these headline catchers. They may well, frighteningly enough, believe that what they say is valid and true. More frightening is that far too few will question the il-logic, assumptions, purposes and motivations behind their polemics.
Explaining such irrationality-- that is, of the sophistic manipulativeness of these would-be national leaders and our susceptibility to their polemics-- need not be too perplexing. The atomization of individuality in our “mass democracy,” precludes our realizing any effective, intelligent, critical involvement in an authentically self-determining political life. We are are reduced to "participation" via the passive gaze. Whether hypnotically conforming with nods of approval or disapproving with rants of vile abuse or simply indifferently enjoying the show, in effect our "involvement" is nothing more potent than a mere gaze. We are unable to fulfill that necessary integral role of supplying the crucial criticism of determinative judgments and decisions which provide essential feedback constituting the internal control mechanism required by any sustainable, self-correcting society.
Locked out of democratic participation in economic planning, investment and production, sequestered behind the invisible walls of contemporary class structure, the post-modern “individual” is relegated to carrying out the functions of consumer and client of the mass culture industry. From the far side of the invisible social class wall, profit and power guide, though unsuccessfully, the choices and actions of the denizens of globalized economy and cultural hegemony.
In the storm of opinion-mongering and pseudo-participation enabled by the global mass media, everyone can play a part yet none are really heard. Everyone gets their turn at the endless political carnival throwing the ball at the “clown” perched above the vat of water, hoping to knock him down such that we can laugh at his foolishness.
So the ditsy discourse drones on. We laugh at or cheer at the protagonists, such as the aforementioned ‘musketeers of mindlessness.’ Meanwhile they prepare their next round of obscurantist distractions and manipulations, advancing their masters' bid for power and a monopoly on wealth. However, no one is really talking in such discourse because no one politically empowered is really listening to the pleas to deal with the crises and move beyond the stock answers or solutions. There is no efficacity of truth or justice. Yet the hordes of our ‘mass democracy’ are once again being herded together, steering huge blocks of votes toward whatever candidate serves the masters of capital, social control and mass cultural imperialism.
The "musketeers" are deployed to appear as if they truly and sincerely know our hearts and minds and we buy into the operative assumption that therefore no critical discussion is really necessary. They are marketed to appear as if they know our minds and what is in our interest. They become our minds and the echoes of our minds. If what they say doesn’t make sense nor provide any new, let alone convincing, solutions to the myriad crises of our Liberal Democracy, we pay no mind. They are us and we are them. All the serious and responsible speaking that needs to be done and heard we still have faith will be taken care of by the professional elites who “represent” us and their experts who assure us that all will be taken care of in the end. Somehow faith in progress still holds water despite all the holes in the rusty bucket of modernist ideology.
The present-day citizen-- unable to make a difference politically as an individual, essentially locked out of the party machines, lacking revolutionary possibilities and, most importantly, ignorant of the power and potential of populist or communitarian alternatives-- falls ever more deeply into the anesthetized, apolitical nihilism of the collectivized and politically contained "individual." The only seemingly empowering choice appears to be the average ordinary everydayness of bare existence. Purposeless life marks time amidst the well-trained herd while we wait for happy hour or the latest exciting cultural fix to take away our anxious meaninglessness and helplessness.
In short, in the face of such powerlessness we may as well hear only the echoes of our own minds, if in fact these are our own echoes. Making sense of today's discourse for most is impossible and what sense can be made will not rationally mediate new directions in politics. The irrationality serves its own purpose: namely, to prevent the people from having their own autonomously determined purpose.
Explaining such irrationality-- that is, of the sophistic manipulativeness of these would-be national leaders and our susceptibility to their polemics-- need not be too perplexing. The atomization of individuality in our “mass democracy,” precludes our realizing any effective, intelligent, critical involvement in an authentically self-determining political life. We are are reduced to "participation" via the passive gaze. Whether hypnotically conforming with nods of approval or disapproving with rants of vile abuse or simply indifferently enjoying the show, in effect our "involvement" is nothing more potent than a mere gaze. We are unable to fulfill that necessary integral role of supplying the crucial criticism of determinative judgments and decisions which provide essential feedback constituting the internal control mechanism required by any sustainable, self-correcting society.
Locked out of democratic participation in economic planning, investment and production, sequestered behind the invisible walls of contemporary class structure, the post-modern “individual” is relegated to carrying out the functions of consumer and client of the mass culture industry. From the far side of the invisible social class wall, profit and power guide, though unsuccessfully, the choices and actions of the denizens of globalized economy and cultural hegemony.
In the storm of opinion-mongering and pseudo-participation enabled by the global mass media, everyone can play a part yet none are really heard. Everyone gets their turn at the endless political carnival throwing the ball at the “clown” perched above the vat of water, hoping to knock him down such that we can laugh at his foolishness.
So the ditsy discourse drones on. We laugh at or cheer at the protagonists, such as the aforementioned ‘musketeers of mindlessness.’ Meanwhile they prepare their next round of obscurantist distractions and manipulations, advancing their masters' bid for power and a monopoly on wealth. However, no one is really talking in such discourse because no one politically empowered is really listening to the pleas to deal with the crises and move beyond the stock answers or solutions. There is no efficacity of truth or justice. Yet the hordes of our ‘mass democracy’ are once again being herded together, steering huge blocks of votes toward whatever candidate serves the masters of capital, social control and mass cultural imperialism.
The "musketeers" are deployed to appear as if they truly and sincerely know our hearts and minds and we buy into the operative assumption that therefore no critical discussion is really necessary. They are marketed to appear as if they know our minds and what is in our interest. They become our minds and the echoes of our minds. If what they say doesn’t make sense nor provide any new, let alone convincing, solutions to the myriad crises of our Liberal Democracy, we pay no mind. They are us and we are them. All the serious and responsible speaking that needs to be done and heard we still have faith will be taken care of by the professional elites who “represent” us and their experts who assure us that all will be taken care of in the end. Somehow faith in progress still holds water despite all the holes in the rusty bucket of modernist ideology.
The present-day citizen-- unable to make a difference politically as an individual, essentially locked out of the party machines, lacking revolutionary possibilities and, most importantly, ignorant of the power and potential of populist or communitarian alternatives-- falls ever more deeply into the anesthetized, apolitical nihilism of the collectivized and politically contained "individual." The only seemingly empowering choice appears to be the average ordinary everydayness of bare existence. Purposeless life marks time amidst the well-trained herd while we wait for happy hour or the latest exciting cultural fix to take away our anxious meaninglessness and helplessness.
In short, in the face of such powerlessness we may as well hear only the echoes of our own minds, if in fact these are our own echoes. Making sense of today's discourse for most is impossible and what sense can be made will not rationally mediate new directions in politics. The irrationality serves its own purpose: namely, to prevent the people from having their own autonomously determined purpose.
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