Legal moves are underway to stop Governor Paterson’s attempt to grant civil rights to gays. Joseph Illuzzi of NYPolitics.net asserts that “LIKE ABORTION GAY MARRIAGE IS AN ASSAULT ON THE INTEGRITY OF OUR CIVILIZATION NOT TO MENTION THE INFALLIBLE WORD OF GOD…” Yes, in capital letters none the less. Illuzzi accuses Paterson of secretively abusing the rule of law in this matter. Apparently Illuzzi says he intends to mobilize various forces including the Catholic Conference to halt this “executive directive.”
At this point in his memorandum, Illuzzi confuses reason with rhetoric and includes the gay directive with the attempt to issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants as both assaults on the integrity of civilization. While both these examples may be instances of legally bypassing the legislative process (and I’m assuming they are legal moves on Paterson’s part even though challengeable in court), surely the attempt to ameliorate the negative effects of millions of undocumented immigrants with the licensing is not an example of “an assault on the integrity of our civilization not to mention the infallible word of God.”
Even though I disagreed with the licensing initiative, the intent was construable as an attempt to possibly help save our civilization and conceivably even live up to the word of God. While Illuzzi will also be calling upon "New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms," whoever they are, to fight his discriminatory cause, he should be consulting with "Americans for Constitutional Obligations." Now I don’t know that there is such an organization as the latter, but there should be. After all what about the obligation of our “civilization” to guarantee “civil rights” for all and equal protection under the law? Why should a medieval theology trump the legal guarantee of conceivably they geatest constitution in the history of the West?
It is considerably more disturbing, if not frightening, when the political integrity of the great American idea of Freedom is reduced to the regressive dark-ages ethic of the Catholic Church. If there ever was an institution that has forestalled and at times turned back the progress of civilization, it is the Catholic Church. If there ever was an ideology that perverted the modern idea of the right to the subjective self-assertion of one's own individuality, the idea at the very heart of Modernity, it was the shock troops of Catholicism whose inhumanity stems the spectrum of historical incidents of such repression from the trial of Meister Eckhart in the 14th century to the present subterranean psychological genocide against countless innocent children at the hands of the “pederasty priests” who unforgiveably abused the power of priestly authority to serve pure carnal interests.
It’s very easy to invoke the infallible word of God. It just depends upon how arrogant and self-righteous you are. Of course it makes it much easier to invoke the infallible word of God when you can change you mind radically as to what that means and still always be correct. Witness the latest Papal Edict which even if in disagreement with a prior edict still gets to be correct and, guess what? INFALLIBLE. Isn’t it great to always have the winning card up your theological sleeve. This is obviously nothing but superstitious fear-mongering.
So as Paterson attempts to extend civil liberties to one of the most heinously repressed minority groups in America, the “infallibility insurgents” seek to selectively apply American liberties to "elect" groups in the name of recreating all culture unilaterally in the image of Catholic and lunatic-fringe Christianist fear and guilt.
The greatest victim in this is the very “people” who could be united on a neo-populist basis in the name of a participatory democracy. If the “the people” could be left alone to reconstitute their communities multi-culturally as will be inevitable in the future, they could restore power to the “forgotten man” in the face of the bureaucratic class whose increasingly centralized administrative apparatus seeks to expropriate culture and instrumentalize it at the service of the neo-imperialist globalist ideologists of transnational capital. Instead these self-appointed but misguided master of monolithic culture continue to pit the people one against the other in the name of bureaucratically conceived conflicts that has nothing to do with the real and true political antagonism that is destroying our country today.
Like a mirror image of the bureaucratic centralists, the cultural Christianists want to make culture and community over in their own image and in their own interests. Somehow both these theocrats and technocrats seem to forget our history of origination in the clash of immigrants, religions, ideologies, modes of existence and radically differing philosophies--all in the context of an agonistic participatory democracy. The only thing that holds this kaleidoscope of differences together without repressive homongenization and one-dimensionalization is a Constitution that guarantees from a neutral standpoint the right of individuals and communities to constitute their lives as they see fit. Such cultural and communal freedom is not intended to be exploited by any one religion or any political/economic ideology.
However the regressively reactionary aristocratic tyranny of autocratic minds such as the Catholic/Christianist theocrats and the Neo-Conservative/Neo-Liberal technocrats insist on further homogenizing autonomous American cultures and individualities in the interest and in the name of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that does immeasureable injustice to spirituality, constitutionality and the kind of neo-populist federalist political reconfiguration of America that could return sovereignty to the people on a communal and participatory basis.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The Crisis: Individuality in the Age of Nihilism (Part 1)
The first task of a democracy is the acknowledgement of the political sanctity and efficacity of the individual. In a political culture particularly like our own, conceived as a mass democracy in which each individual has an equally valuable and valid vote, the individual especially is the keystone. The proper individuality, consciously autonomous and responsible, is required to legitimize the political culture. Such is the ideal. The reality in America is a far and horrific cry from this ideal.
With respect to Joe Mesi, the subject of my last few posts, I hope his professional career better nurtured his sense of self than we see other professional sporting systems nurture the individuality of their pro athletes. All too often we have seen professional athletes leave the limelight and crumble in the cold, dry air of everyday adult reality. Pro athletes are in effect coddled and cared for without concern for the day they walk out the back door of the locker room. In short sports on the whole does not nurture individuality in our culture, let alone professional sports. Of course and obviously there are exceptions. Yet those athletes who shine as individuals making a new mark after the cheering stops would have done so regardless. Let’s hope Joe is the latter, especially if he wins the Senate seat. If not the latter, and if he wins, lets hope at least for his sake, his Albany handlers manage his functionality as well as his father’s management team.
But this is not about Joe Mesi. It is about the social, educational and political deficit of concern for the democratic individual. Surely the possibility of such a being begins in the family. This is so even though the family is not essentially a democratic institution. But what better way for a child to observe problem solving, cooperation and decision-making than to experience his/her parents dealing with family life and its relation to the community. But given that life in the family, assuming the child has one as such, is equaled by time spent in school, the schools must equally contribute to the formation and cultivation of such an individual.
Individuality is first and foremost a social relatedness. The integral personality is integrated socially and yet always in integrity with itself. The democratic individual is one who can think and act in the interest and good of the whole or wholes to which he belongs. Given that individuality is a product of sociality, the unfolding and fulfillment of the individual self is the conscious production of a community and by a community in which autonomy and responsibility are the dimensions or horizons of social relatedness. The democratic individual is not the narcissistic exploiter nor creator of that community. He does not use it for the masturbatory satisfaction of involuted desire nor the aggrandizement of an infantilized ego seeking self-serving power over that community. He does not seek that power which characterizes relations of domination but seeks that dialogical diplomacy of the communal cooperation of equals.
In a world in which the (a) corporation is conceived as having the legal right of a person, (b)education trains first for functionality as employability, and (c)political candidates are measured according to electability rather than political desireability, the meaning and purpose of the individual person or human being is (a)annhiliated in incorporated interests, (b)functionalized in technically useable learning and experience and (c)instrumentalized as a mechanism of externally constituted power. The wisdom of the world of commodification and consumption requires that you be made over such that (a)business will invest in you and your community; (b)such that you are interesting to the functional world seeking to ‘place’ you; and, (c)such that you are a non-resistant energy source for power as it exists.
T.W. Adorno, German philosopher and Critical Social Theorist, puts it this way:
“In a world that has been thoroughly permeated by the structures of the social order, a world that so overpowers every individual that scarcely any option remains but to accept it on its own terms, such naivete reproduces itself incessantly and disastrously. What people have forced upon them by a boundless apparatus, which they themselves constitute and which they are locked into, virtually eliminates all natural elements and becomes ‘nature’ to them.” (Critical Models, p.12, CUP, 2005)
The consciousness of the individual is reified as the mere reflection of the way things are. Such consciousness is thoroughly naive, yet when rejected, is judged to be the paragon of foolishness and folly. The consciousness of the individual no longer lives and judges ethically but calculates pragmatically in order to successfully conform with the given and all it promises. It can no longer think but only manipulates and maneuvers to the benefit of its perceived, privatized advantage.
So the reason that there is no individual as such today, let alone individuals in government, is that we in fact are “governed” by the things we presume to govern.
The mechanized structures of human construction, material and symbolic, have expropriated the capacity for that very “human measure” which gave rise to but lost control of those structures. Thus the film, The Matrix. If Protagoras is right, that man is the measure of all things, then possibly it is the state of being of individuality which can “smash through” such constructions and within which such capacity for “human measure” can again be sensed, fully experienced and reappropiated.
The socially fragmented and alienated individual must be returned to itself from the ends of the rainbow to which it has been spirited away: returned from the empty irrelevance of its own pseudo-soulfulness and returned from the mechanized animality of purposeless, unending desire, that is, the living death of an irreconcilable comfortable safety, security and equanimity on the one hand, and, on the other, the agitated excitement of thrilling yet unimaginable expectations.
The beginning of this restitution may be in the an-nihilation of bureaucratically centralized institutions such as the Catholic Church and the New International Political Class and the "theme park consciousness" promising bigger and better escapes from reality. False care, on the one hand, and vitiated, vicarious pseudo-experience on the other. False self-control in the first and faux freedom in the latter.
The decompensated individual begins to return to integratd personality and ethical integrity in the political action of reconstituting organic community as political community and democratic culture.
With respect to Joe Mesi, the subject of my last few posts, I hope his professional career better nurtured his sense of self than we see other professional sporting systems nurture the individuality of their pro athletes. All too often we have seen professional athletes leave the limelight and crumble in the cold, dry air of everyday adult reality. Pro athletes are in effect coddled and cared for without concern for the day they walk out the back door of the locker room. In short sports on the whole does not nurture individuality in our culture, let alone professional sports. Of course and obviously there are exceptions. Yet those athletes who shine as individuals making a new mark after the cheering stops would have done so regardless. Let’s hope Joe is the latter, especially if he wins the Senate seat. If not the latter, and if he wins, lets hope at least for his sake, his Albany handlers manage his functionality as well as his father’s management team.
But this is not about Joe Mesi. It is about the social, educational and political deficit of concern for the democratic individual. Surely the possibility of such a being begins in the family. This is so even though the family is not essentially a democratic institution. But what better way for a child to observe problem solving, cooperation and decision-making than to experience his/her parents dealing with family life and its relation to the community. But given that life in the family, assuming the child has one as such, is equaled by time spent in school, the schools must equally contribute to the formation and cultivation of such an individual.
Individuality is first and foremost a social relatedness. The integral personality is integrated socially and yet always in integrity with itself. The democratic individual is one who can think and act in the interest and good of the whole or wholes to which he belongs. Given that individuality is a product of sociality, the unfolding and fulfillment of the individual self is the conscious production of a community and by a community in which autonomy and responsibility are the dimensions or horizons of social relatedness. The democratic individual is not the narcissistic exploiter nor creator of that community. He does not use it for the masturbatory satisfaction of involuted desire nor the aggrandizement of an infantilized ego seeking self-serving power over that community. He does not seek that power which characterizes relations of domination but seeks that dialogical diplomacy of the communal cooperation of equals.
In a world in which the (a) corporation is conceived as having the legal right of a person, (b)education trains first for functionality as employability, and (c)political candidates are measured according to electability rather than political desireability, the meaning and purpose of the individual person or human being is (a)annhiliated in incorporated interests, (b)functionalized in technically useable learning and experience and (c)instrumentalized as a mechanism of externally constituted power. The wisdom of the world of commodification and consumption requires that you be made over such that (a)business will invest in you and your community; (b)such that you are interesting to the functional world seeking to ‘place’ you; and, (c)such that you are a non-resistant energy source for power as it exists.
T.W. Adorno, German philosopher and Critical Social Theorist, puts it this way:
“In a world that has been thoroughly permeated by the structures of the social order, a world that so overpowers every individual that scarcely any option remains but to accept it on its own terms, such naivete reproduces itself incessantly and disastrously. What people have forced upon them by a boundless apparatus, which they themselves constitute and which they are locked into, virtually eliminates all natural elements and becomes ‘nature’ to them.” (Critical Models, p.12, CUP, 2005)
The consciousness of the individual is reified as the mere reflection of the way things are. Such consciousness is thoroughly naive, yet when rejected, is judged to be the paragon of foolishness and folly. The consciousness of the individual no longer lives and judges ethically but calculates pragmatically in order to successfully conform with the given and all it promises. It can no longer think but only manipulates and maneuvers to the benefit of its perceived, privatized advantage.
So the reason that there is no individual as such today, let alone individuals in government, is that we in fact are “governed” by the things we presume to govern.
The mechanized structures of human construction, material and symbolic, have expropriated the capacity for that very “human measure” which gave rise to but lost control of those structures. Thus the film, The Matrix. If Protagoras is right, that man is the measure of all things, then possibly it is the state of being of individuality which can “smash through” such constructions and within which such capacity for “human measure” can again be sensed, fully experienced and reappropiated.
The socially fragmented and alienated individual must be returned to itself from the ends of the rainbow to which it has been spirited away: returned from the empty irrelevance of its own pseudo-soulfulness and returned from the mechanized animality of purposeless, unending desire, that is, the living death of an irreconcilable comfortable safety, security and equanimity on the one hand, and, on the other, the agitated excitement of thrilling yet unimaginable expectations.
The beginning of this restitution may be in the an-nihilation of bureaucratically centralized institutions such as the Catholic Church and the New International Political Class and the "theme park consciousness" promising bigger and better escapes from reality. False care, on the one hand, and vitiated, vicarious pseudo-experience on the other. False self-control in the first and faux freedom in the latter.
The decompensated individual begins to return to integratd personality and ethical integrity in the political action of reconstituting organic community as political community and democratic culture.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Mesi for Senate -- Neither Heaven Nor Hell, but... (Part III)
The Mesi candidacy, then, is neither Heaven nor Hell. His candidacy will neither make us nor break us. I am neither exhilarated nor defeated. Yet I still do find it depressing and demoralizing if this is the best the Democratic Party has to offer. Neither Heaven nor Heaven, just some nihilistic political never-neverland.
At best his candidacy is mercenary. More mediocrity in a progressively mediocre, if not defeated democracy. And I think I’m being generous with that appraisal.
Where is his self-proclaimed “strong leadership” leading us? Down a visionless path charted by empty clichés and guaranteed by virtues which he may only have exhibited in relevant form in the boxing ring. He campaigns with slogans that rival the ads of pharmaceutical companies for vagueness, empty promise and deliriously inappropriate good cheer. But the drug ads are at least more honest in that they do now warn of side effects some of which can kill you. Mesi’s promotions do not carry such cautions with respect to the deleterious effects such minions can have on participatory democracy.
Just one more note on his claim to be an “independent voice.” What is he independent of? Certainly not the uses the democratic party would make of him. Certainly not the egregiously banal campaign commonplaces that merciless bore and alienate an already disenfranchised mass of non-beleivers in the “system.” Could meaning and language, thought and communication been any more deeply eviscerated? Stick around for the Mesi show.
Despite the picture of democracy that one could paint given the impending Mesi candidacy and all that suggests regarding our sorry state of political affairs, there are possibilities of action and thought. It’s just that the Mesi phenomenon does not point in that direction. Thus through the lens of his hopefulness and bright-eyed boyishness we cannot see such potential for a creative politics. He will join the ranks of the fledgling functionaries, some of whom, like a few of the pro athletes of recent times, may survive and make a mark for himself, carve out a career and maybe even do some good. I’m not holding my breath.
It is more likely that he will disappear among the business oligarchs or corporate-controlled careerists yet possibly some day “succeed” as a mouthpiece of some newfound elitist and autocratic cabal, kind of like George Bush. What a country!
At best his candidacy is mercenary. More mediocrity in a progressively mediocre, if not defeated democracy. And I think I’m being generous with that appraisal.
Where is his self-proclaimed “strong leadership” leading us? Down a visionless path charted by empty clichés and guaranteed by virtues which he may only have exhibited in relevant form in the boxing ring. He campaigns with slogans that rival the ads of pharmaceutical companies for vagueness, empty promise and deliriously inappropriate good cheer. But the drug ads are at least more honest in that they do now warn of side effects some of which can kill you. Mesi’s promotions do not carry such cautions with respect to the deleterious effects such minions can have on participatory democracy.
Just one more note on his claim to be an “independent voice.” What is he independent of? Certainly not the uses the democratic party would make of him. Certainly not the egregiously banal campaign commonplaces that merciless bore and alienate an already disenfranchised mass of non-beleivers in the “system.” Could meaning and language, thought and communication been any more deeply eviscerated? Stick around for the Mesi show.
Despite the picture of democracy that one could paint given the impending Mesi candidacy and all that suggests regarding our sorry state of political affairs, there are possibilities of action and thought. It’s just that the Mesi phenomenon does not point in that direction. Thus through the lens of his hopefulness and bright-eyed boyishness we cannot see such potential for a creative politics. He will join the ranks of the fledgling functionaries, some of whom, like a few of the pro athletes of recent times, may survive and make a mark for himself, carve out a career and maybe even do some good. I’m not holding my breath.
It is more likely that he will disappear among the business oligarchs or corporate-controlled careerists yet possibly some day “succeed” as a mouthpiece of some newfound elitist and autocratic cabal, kind of like George Bush. What a country!
Friday, May 16, 2008
Mesi for Senate -- Or, I Could Be in Heaven (Part II)
Democracy Heaven that is. Part of democracy is having a faith in the people. Mesi is the people isn’t he? Yes. So maybe I’m just an elitist. An intellectual snob who has no right to be especially since I don’t teach at Harvard, and can’t really get a handle on Slavoj Zizek. Or so I’ve been told.
Maybe this is the way democracy such as it is in America should be. Pick an electable body, train him to toe the line and hope he doesn’t step too far out of the box, over the line, beyond the pale. Eventually he will be able to find the bathroom in Albany by himself with any luck. Maybe it’s the best we can hope for. No, sorry, I’m drifting into sarcasm. I’ll try again.
I’ve never met Joe Mesi let alone have talked to him. Maybe the school of hard knocks does inculcate wisdom. Maybe he has a high IQ. But given IQ theory is mostly myth if not mere ideology, that doesn’t work for me either. The question is ‘Should I not have faith in the process given I trust in democracy?’
And the answer is “No, I don’t think so.” Surely democratic conflict does not guarantee truth. Even moreso democratic conflict without good educational grounding most surely does not guarantee truth nor ethically solid recommendable action. So given our educational system does not educate for even minimally competent let alone creative and critical democratic participation, I should not be required to have faith in the process as it stands. And by the way that doesn’t make me a traitorous American. It makes me an authentic American.
Joe Mesi is a symptom, neither a solution nor the real problem.
As Aristotle pointed out the probable truth of practical political discourse and action is not the apodictic truth of scientific inquiry. Maybe the rationality of power is reasonable, media distortion, dirty tricks, institutional disinformation, educational ideology notwithstanding. If reason is seeking first what is in our interest, especially as community(forget about humanity), possibly consciousness of what is in our interest will soon show itself, such that even Joe Mesi can grasp it. Then we won’t need to worry about the arrival of the rationality of the graduate school seminar in politics, which like Godot never arrives.
That is, possibly “greed” does work as the Michael Douglas character opined in the film, Wall Street. But it may just be that we are not greedy enough. We have not been clear and courageous enough to really “desire” what we really do desire. And as such we cannot know what is in our interests, argue for it nor fight for it. Possibly as Nietzsche maintained, we require another 100 years of nihilism to work it out. Let the struggle continue (and hope we survive, yes?). Maybe this is democracy, even if it is based on a mixed martial arts militarized model.
Maybe I am in democracy Heaven.
Maybe this is the way democracy such as it is in America should be. Pick an electable body, train him to toe the line and hope he doesn’t step too far out of the box, over the line, beyond the pale. Eventually he will be able to find the bathroom in Albany by himself with any luck. Maybe it’s the best we can hope for. No, sorry, I’m drifting into sarcasm. I’ll try again.
I’ve never met Joe Mesi let alone have talked to him. Maybe the school of hard knocks does inculcate wisdom. Maybe he has a high IQ. But given IQ theory is mostly myth if not mere ideology, that doesn’t work for me either. The question is ‘Should I not have faith in the process given I trust in democracy?’
And the answer is “No, I don’t think so.” Surely democratic conflict does not guarantee truth. Even moreso democratic conflict without good educational grounding most surely does not guarantee truth nor ethically solid recommendable action. So given our educational system does not educate for even minimally competent let alone creative and critical democratic participation, I should not be required to have faith in the process as it stands. And by the way that doesn’t make me a traitorous American. It makes me an authentic American.
Joe Mesi is a symptom, neither a solution nor the real problem.
As Aristotle pointed out the probable truth of practical political discourse and action is not the apodictic truth of scientific inquiry. Maybe the rationality of power is reasonable, media distortion, dirty tricks, institutional disinformation, educational ideology notwithstanding. If reason is seeking first what is in our interest, especially as community(forget about humanity), possibly consciousness of what is in our interest will soon show itself, such that even Joe Mesi can grasp it. Then we won’t need to worry about the arrival of the rationality of the graduate school seminar in politics, which like Godot never arrives.
That is, possibly “greed” does work as the Michael Douglas character opined in the film, Wall Street. But it may just be that we are not greedy enough. We have not been clear and courageous enough to really “desire” what we really do desire. And as such we cannot know what is in our interests, argue for it nor fight for it. Possibly as Nietzsche maintained, we require another 100 years of nihilism to work it out. Let the struggle continue (and hope we survive, yes?). Maybe this is democracy, even if it is based on a mixed martial arts militarized model.
Maybe I am in democracy Heaven.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Mesi for Senate -- Or, I Must be in Hell
I’m a slow learner. But it’s becoming clear to me – silly, silly me – that the intelligence and/or education of any given candidate for public office is not a primary consideration or concern these days. I don’t think it’s even a secondary consideration. I guess I’m trying to come to terms with the reason-power equation. I keep thinking that without a dramatic if not revolutionary transformation in our culture such that learning becomes in some sense as exciting as sports or sex, that democracy’s greatest potential doesn’t stand a chance. Possibly even its minimal potential doesn't stand a chance. That is, short of such a revolution, reason or reasoning will never have its rightful place in the power equation.
So the Democratic Party of NY needs to win 2 seats to control the senate and some are saying that Baby Joe Mesi is a good bet, maybe the best bet. Are we betting? Is this reasonable? Well, not to me. But then again I have little respect for someone who through the age of 34 has used his head for seeming little more than stopping punches. Is this “reasonable” according to the logic of the Democratic Party? Apparently, yes, and traditionally so.
I would want Joe Mesi to teach my kid to box. I wouldn’t want him to teach him mathematics. Do I want him to help lead NYS? Probably no more that I would want him to assist in brain surgery.
To quote Mesi, "I am running to bring an independent voice, strong leadership and the average person's point of view and values back to Albany,"
Exactly whose voice would that be? Independent voice? The biggest lie is “average person.” No he is not the average person. As a boxer he is way above average. As a prospective politician he is way below where average starts. And we won’t even mention leadership unless we want God to cause another hurricane in New Orleans. The sequel to Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind is way overdue.
This is funnier than Bush nominating Harriet Miers as a candidate for the Supreme Court. I’m trying my best at humor. But in truth I find this monumentally demoralizing, depressing, tragic, ludicrous. I could go on or I could laugh. However I’m afraid if I start laughing, I’ll never stop. Then the men in the white coats will come and take me away.
And I’ll spend the rest of my days writing anonymous posts to the Niagara Times blogspot, hurling vile epithets at everyone just because I can.
So the Democratic Party of NY needs to win 2 seats to control the senate and some are saying that Baby Joe Mesi is a good bet, maybe the best bet. Are we betting? Is this reasonable? Well, not to me. But then again I have little respect for someone who through the age of 34 has used his head for seeming little more than stopping punches. Is this “reasonable” according to the logic of the Democratic Party? Apparently, yes, and traditionally so.
I would want Joe Mesi to teach my kid to box. I wouldn’t want him to teach him mathematics. Do I want him to help lead NYS? Probably no more that I would want him to assist in brain surgery.
To quote Mesi, "I am running to bring an independent voice, strong leadership and the average person's point of view and values back to Albany,"
Exactly whose voice would that be? Independent voice? The biggest lie is “average person.” No he is not the average person. As a boxer he is way above average. As a prospective politician he is way below where average starts. And we won’t even mention leadership unless we want God to cause another hurricane in New Orleans. The sequel to Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind is way overdue.
This is funnier than Bush nominating Harriet Miers as a candidate for the Supreme Court. I’m trying my best at humor. But in truth I find this monumentally demoralizing, depressing, tragic, ludicrous. I could go on or I could laugh. However I’m afraid if I start laughing, I’ll never stop. Then the men in the white coats will come and take me away.
And I’ll spend the rest of my days writing anonymous posts to the Niagara Times blogspot, hurling vile epithets at everyone just because I can.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Creating a New State Out of Western New York
What Western New York needs to do is secede from New York State. Any political leader that deserves the name of politician in this region is the one who will begin to mobilize the forces and marshall the energy and respect to carrying out such a project. What we have now are mere functionaries lacking the necessary combination of political leadership, vision, authority and creativity.
Given that Albany continues to expropriate the wealth of resources and revenues from Western New York without anything of essentially significant value for our recovery returned, any obligation we continue to have to Albany has apparently long since ended. Albany has legal authority but no real political legitimacy.
Also, given that the Federal Government and the nation benefited from the contribution of this region to the WWII war effort but fails to clean up the mess that was left over, our obligation and loyalty to any claim to control over us that they may believe they have is also ended. They also have no legitimacy caught essentially between meeting the coercive demands of the extra-national corporations while struggling to placate the masses and rationalize the validity of Washington’s pseudo-policies and absolute lack of any sense of American identity or purpose let alone vision.
Western New York has been written off as a lost cause for the much too foreseeable future. We receive lip service and serve well only in prostituting ourselves to Albany, New York City and the Federal Government.
Given that this region is rich in water as such, natural beauty of the Falls, river, gorge, lakes, historical value, cultural riches, universities, winter attractions unlimited and endless artistic and architectural merit, it is time that we recognize the grounds of our uniqueness, potential autonomy and capacity for local self-determination. By comparison, we may with some little thought wonder why it is that Saudi Arabi and Venezula, rich in oil have the lowest oil prices in the world for their people but Western New York, rich in water-generated electrical power, has some of the highest electrical costs in the nation for its own people. Why are we getting ripped off? Because we are letting ourselves be ripped off.
The state of New Niagara has every capability of not just being one of the world’s greatest tourist destinations but THE world tourist destination. Why continue to let ourselves be exploited as has been the local tradition and why let ourselves be at the mercy of real estate speculators buying up property while they wait around for prices to go up. If state authorities such as the liquor authority cannot pass rulings that facilitate the success of our wine industry, then the new state of New Niagara could create such policies.
The Niagara corridor between Buffalo and Niagara Falls is the heart of a new state which could however be joined by all of the state minus New York City and whomever may choose to go with them. But with the western corridor recreated as a new state, northern New Niagara could be a summer paradise and southern New Niagara could be a winter paradise, not that it isn’t equally attractive in the summer. Possibly only the western corridor and the Finger Lakes would be the limit of such a State. I don’t know. But this is what needs to be discussed and considered.
The Indian “nations” also have to realize that they must now be part of a regional strategy and give up the illusion that they are actually a nation. It is probably only a matter of time that they will lose such autonomy as it is to New York State when financial push finally comes to fiscal shove. They need to join in a neo-populist con-federation of communities that must realize that they either will re-create their identity and image or they will continue to be an afterthought of the NY state and the Federal governments.
These governments do not represent what we should be and they can not claim to have had the authority to sell out Niagara Falls to the so-called Indian “nation” to appease the ethnic Indians in their untenable jurisdictional relation. Such past arrangements cannot change the past and only serve to shackle real regional development in the future. Casinos are a good gig but merely serve the purpose of extracting capital from the region without considering the well-being of the region as a unifed whole upon which their very survival in the long-run depends. If in fact the Indian nation believes it can extract wealth without helping to secure the sovereignty upon which the regions survival depends, then they must be judged as exploitative as the other two aforementioned governments.
The leaders of Western New York need to stop playing petty pretend parliamentary politics, passing out what crumbs they can manage to weasel out of Albany and Washington. They need to call upon the legal, financial, managerial and scientific talent of Western New York and propose talks for the creation of a new regional community as a new state of New Niagara or whatever its name may be.
All real politics really is local politics in the sense sketched above. It’s principal is that of subsidiarity, that is, whatever can be done at home must and should be done at home. This neo-populist and authentically federalist secession could be the beginning of a true federalist reconfiguration of the relations of all local American regions and communities with the central government in Washington. Given that Washington has reached the limits of governmental sanity and has gone far beyond the limits of rational fiscal responsibility, selling out the middle class, conducting irrational neo-imperialist wars, striving for an empire in which all lands would be subdued and transformed in the name of a Liberalist Democracy which we ourselves fail to practice let alone believe in.
Washington has failed to represent, value, reflect or desire in any reasonably expressed way a national unity that imbues local regions with as much consideration as it gives corporations, trading partners and other nations which serve the interests of the networks of corporations and banks that no longer value the history, geography and integrity of local peoples, their traditions, cultures and continuing needs and aspirations. When the communities and localities are no longer treated as ends in themselves but utilities of a “greater good” from which the communities do not benefit, then the center does not hold and new decentralized centers must be created. Only in this way can a new political center be non-violently forced to be recreated as a regulative administrative center as opposed to the constitutive bureaucracy and autocracy that now exists. Washington and Albany are our “capitals,” all right, in the sense that they will “capitalize” on every opportunity to continue to use us to sustain their solvency as a bureaucratic social class, a class-based power as purveyor of the interests of trans-national corporations and as an advanced guard of the military-industrial complex’s interest in empire.
So someone or more true politicians that the region will listen to must step forward and call for a “constitutional” convention of sorts to begin the process of re-constituting, planning and declaring our independence. Otherwise given our situation and status, we are probably doomed to a slow cancer-like loss of vitality and vision, a diamond in the rough treated as a stepping stone for the benefit and advantage of others. If we don’t constitute ourselves as a self-responsible, self-regulating and autonomous State, then we will be constituted and again reconstituted at the whim and in the interest of “foreign” powers perpetrating a vision of us as mere raw material and a kind of “disposable income” for the well-being of “states” in whose essence and abundance we do not seem to share.
Why not?
Given that Albany continues to expropriate the wealth of resources and revenues from Western New York without anything of essentially significant value for our recovery returned, any obligation we continue to have to Albany has apparently long since ended. Albany has legal authority but no real political legitimacy.
Also, given that the Federal Government and the nation benefited from the contribution of this region to the WWII war effort but fails to clean up the mess that was left over, our obligation and loyalty to any claim to control over us that they may believe they have is also ended. They also have no legitimacy caught essentially between meeting the coercive demands of the extra-national corporations while struggling to placate the masses and rationalize the validity of Washington’s pseudo-policies and absolute lack of any sense of American identity or purpose let alone vision.
Western New York has been written off as a lost cause for the much too foreseeable future. We receive lip service and serve well only in prostituting ourselves to Albany, New York City and the Federal Government.
Given that this region is rich in water as such, natural beauty of the Falls, river, gorge, lakes, historical value, cultural riches, universities, winter attractions unlimited and endless artistic and architectural merit, it is time that we recognize the grounds of our uniqueness, potential autonomy and capacity for local self-determination. By comparison, we may with some little thought wonder why it is that Saudi Arabi and Venezula, rich in oil have the lowest oil prices in the world for their people but Western New York, rich in water-generated electrical power, has some of the highest electrical costs in the nation for its own people. Why are we getting ripped off? Because we are letting ourselves be ripped off.
The state of New Niagara has every capability of not just being one of the world’s greatest tourist destinations but THE world tourist destination. Why continue to let ourselves be exploited as has been the local tradition and why let ourselves be at the mercy of real estate speculators buying up property while they wait around for prices to go up. If state authorities such as the liquor authority cannot pass rulings that facilitate the success of our wine industry, then the new state of New Niagara could create such policies.
The Niagara corridor between Buffalo and Niagara Falls is the heart of a new state which could however be joined by all of the state minus New York City and whomever may choose to go with them. But with the western corridor recreated as a new state, northern New Niagara could be a summer paradise and southern New Niagara could be a winter paradise, not that it isn’t equally attractive in the summer. Possibly only the western corridor and the Finger Lakes would be the limit of such a State. I don’t know. But this is what needs to be discussed and considered.
The Indian “nations” also have to realize that they must now be part of a regional strategy and give up the illusion that they are actually a nation. It is probably only a matter of time that they will lose such autonomy as it is to New York State when financial push finally comes to fiscal shove. They need to join in a neo-populist con-federation of communities that must realize that they either will re-create their identity and image or they will continue to be an afterthought of the NY state and the Federal governments.
These governments do not represent what we should be and they can not claim to have had the authority to sell out Niagara Falls to the so-called Indian “nation” to appease the ethnic Indians in their untenable jurisdictional relation. Such past arrangements cannot change the past and only serve to shackle real regional development in the future. Casinos are a good gig but merely serve the purpose of extracting capital from the region without considering the well-being of the region as a unifed whole upon which their very survival in the long-run depends. If in fact the Indian nation believes it can extract wealth without helping to secure the sovereignty upon which the regions survival depends, then they must be judged as exploitative as the other two aforementioned governments.
The leaders of Western New York need to stop playing petty pretend parliamentary politics, passing out what crumbs they can manage to weasel out of Albany and Washington. They need to call upon the legal, financial, managerial and scientific talent of Western New York and propose talks for the creation of a new regional community as a new state of New Niagara or whatever its name may be.
All real politics really is local politics in the sense sketched above. It’s principal is that of subsidiarity, that is, whatever can be done at home must and should be done at home. This neo-populist and authentically federalist secession could be the beginning of a true federalist reconfiguration of the relations of all local American regions and communities with the central government in Washington. Given that Washington has reached the limits of governmental sanity and has gone far beyond the limits of rational fiscal responsibility, selling out the middle class, conducting irrational neo-imperialist wars, striving for an empire in which all lands would be subdued and transformed in the name of a Liberalist Democracy which we ourselves fail to practice let alone believe in.
Washington has failed to represent, value, reflect or desire in any reasonably expressed way a national unity that imbues local regions with as much consideration as it gives corporations, trading partners and other nations which serve the interests of the networks of corporations and banks that no longer value the history, geography and integrity of local peoples, their traditions, cultures and continuing needs and aspirations. When the communities and localities are no longer treated as ends in themselves but utilities of a “greater good” from which the communities do not benefit, then the center does not hold and new decentralized centers must be created. Only in this way can a new political center be non-violently forced to be recreated as a regulative administrative center as opposed to the constitutive bureaucracy and autocracy that now exists. Washington and Albany are our “capitals,” all right, in the sense that they will “capitalize” on every opportunity to continue to use us to sustain their solvency as a bureaucratic social class, a class-based power as purveyor of the interests of trans-national corporations and as an advanced guard of the military-industrial complex’s interest in empire.
So someone or more true politicians that the region will listen to must step forward and call for a “constitutional” convention of sorts to begin the process of re-constituting, planning and declaring our independence. Otherwise given our situation and status, we are probably doomed to a slow cancer-like loss of vitality and vision, a diamond in the rough treated as a stepping stone for the benefit and advantage of others. If we don’t constitute ourselves as a self-responsible, self-regulating and autonomous State, then we will be constituted and again reconstituted at the whim and in the interest of “foreign” powers perpetrating a vision of us as mere raw material and a kind of “disposable income” for the well-being of “states” in whose essence and abundance we do not seem to share.
Why not?
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
NT UNANIMOUSLY ENDORSES CHRISTY'S LEGISLATIVE JOURNAL
Tonight the North Tonawanda City Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the return of Legislative Journal with Tom Christy to the airways of LCTV. In supporting this resolution, the Republican majority council caste a vote for open, free political discourse in Niagara County. It took the council apparently little time to see that what was at stake was the openness and integrity of the public sphere that constitutes the democratic process of our community and our Republic.
The Council transcended the opportunity for partisan gain and took a stand to defend the primacy of a fair and free process of political inquiry, information and self-expression. They are most surely to be commended and thanked for their championing the return of one of Niagara County's few forums for the public scrutiny of our legislators, city and town officials and other citizens who work for the public good.
The North Tonawanda Council was able to see that the return of Legislative Journal with Tom Christy was not simply about the person of Mr. Christy. Yet they were able also to see that the democratic substance and energy of the inquiry that occurred on that show was a function of his courage and constancy in asking in the questions whose answers remained in the dark. The Council rejected the politics of secrecy and partisan power. They opted for a politics that seeks to know the motivations and justifications for the actions taken by government officials that affect all of our lives. The council sees that Mr. Christy deserves to be returned to the forum he created and nurtured with his quirky, earthy, unpretentious repartee, rapport and honest vulnerability.
The actions of the LCTV Board of Directors in ousting Mr. Christy is a black mark for public integrity in Niagara County. Also, the virtual wall of silence and callous lack of compassion with which Niagara County Legislators confronted the many citizens who pleaded for the return of the show they loved is a frighteningly disheartening sign of the depths of indifference to which local politics has descended.
Senator Maziarz feigned ignorance of the coercive abuse of power at LCTV and denied having any knowledge of anything "except what I read in the papers." Such disingenuousness is insulting to the intelligence of the citizens of this county and a final reminder that the Republican majority has no respect for any citizens other than those who toe the line and support the limbo of business as usual, the status quo which has been good for the few but is failing and defeating the many of our county.
Plato once said in his discourse on the Law that the task of the true Legislator was to bring harmony to the community through the mechanisms of law and the authority of leadership. In so far as the Republican majority of the Niagara County Legislature chooses to claim they have no right to intervene to achieve such harmony in our county in this case and insofar as our senior leader, George Maziarz, prefers the display and application of administratively coercive force rather than cooperative solution to our problems, Niagara County will in the foreseeable future remain in a state of political violence, that is, a state of suspicion, animosity, destructive antagonism, character assassination and incredulity. The unity, harmony and integrity of democratic process and the respect for the spirit and intent of law will remain secondary, compromised and scoffed at in the name of partisan power and privilege, a strategy that history shows has not worked and is certainly not now called for.
It is unfortunate that the Legislative majority of our County could not learn a little political prudence from the leaders of North Tonawanda.
The Council transcended the opportunity for partisan gain and took a stand to defend the primacy of a fair and free process of political inquiry, information and self-expression. They are most surely to be commended and thanked for their championing the return of one of Niagara County's few forums for the public scrutiny of our legislators, city and town officials and other citizens who work for the public good.
The North Tonawanda Council was able to see that the return of Legislative Journal with Tom Christy was not simply about the person of Mr. Christy. Yet they were able also to see that the democratic substance and energy of the inquiry that occurred on that show was a function of his courage and constancy in asking in the questions whose answers remained in the dark. The Council rejected the politics of secrecy and partisan power. They opted for a politics that seeks to know the motivations and justifications for the actions taken by government officials that affect all of our lives. The council sees that Mr. Christy deserves to be returned to the forum he created and nurtured with his quirky, earthy, unpretentious repartee, rapport and honest vulnerability.
The actions of the LCTV Board of Directors in ousting Mr. Christy is a black mark for public integrity in Niagara County. Also, the virtual wall of silence and callous lack of compassion with which Niagara County Legislators confronted the many citizens who pleaded for the return of the show they loved is a frighteningly disheartening sign of the depths of indifference to which local politics has descended.
Senator Maziarz feigned ignorance of the coercive abuse of power at LCTV and denied having any knowledge of anything "except what I read in the papers." Such disingenuousness is insulting to the intelligence of the citizens of this county and a final reminder that the Republican majority has no respect for any citizens other than those who toe the line and support the limbo of business as usual, the status quo which has been good for the few but is failing and defeating the many of our county.
Plato once said in his discourse on the Law that the task of the true Legislator was to bring harmony to the community through the mechanisms of law and the authority of leadership. In so far as the Republican majority of the Niagara County Legislature chooses to claim they have no right to intervene to achieve such harmony in our county in this case and insofar as our senior leader, George Maziarz, prefers the display and application of administratively coercive force rather than cooperative solution to our problems, Niagara County will in the foreseeable future remain in a state of political violence, that is, a state of suspicion, animosity, destructive antagonism, character assassination and incredulity. The unity, harmony and integrity of democratic process and the respect for the spirit and intent of law will remain secondary, compromised and scoffed at in the name of partisan power and privilege, a strategy that history shows has not worked and is certainly not now called for.
It is unfortunate that the Legislative majority of our County could not learn a little political prudence from the leaders of North Tonawanda.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
McCain Spills the Oily Beans
John McCain spilled the beans this past week. He proudly declared that his energy policy would make us free of Mid-east oil. Then, he said, we would no longer have to send our soldiers to die in such foreign wars.
I thank John for finally saying openly and honestly what we already knew. Not that he has a great energy policy, but that Iraq is all about the oil.
Greenspan said as much in his recent book. He said he knew it was "politically" ineexpedient to admit it, but the fact of the matter was that Iraq is simply all about the oil. Why such inexorable deceit? The most astounding aspect of this deception that doesn't deceive anyone is that it is effective in preventing any political action in opposition to such an evil war.
Is it America's insurmountable selfishness? Narcissism? Have we suffered so little, that we can't see the pain we are causing over there, not to mention over here? God, I hope the law of Karma isn't true because if it is we are in for some "blowback" that you can't even imagine in your worst nightmares.
I thank John for finally saying openly and honestly what we already knew. Not that he has a great energy policy, but that Iraq is all about the oil.
Greenspan said as much in his recent book. He said he knew it was "politically" ineexpedient to admit it, but the fact of the matter was that Iraq is simply all about the oil. Why such inexorable deceit? The most astounding aspect of this deception that doesn't deceive anyone is that it is effective in preventing any political action in opposition to such an evil war.
Is it America's insurmountable selfishness? Narcissism? Have we suffered so little, that we can't see the pain we are causing over there, not to mention over here? God, I hope the law of Karma isn't true because if it is we are in for some "blowback" that you can't even imagine in your worst nightmares.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
SODOMY IN GOMORRAH: Westless Willies in Wilson, N.Y.
Well, what do we make of these shenanigans on the bus in Wilson. This is a new take on the “object of my affection.” It’s a good thing they didn’t have any baseball bats in the back of that bus. I guess there are all kinds of bats and balls, uses of bats and ball, meanings of bats and balls. “Base” and “homerun” take on new meanings too. Base-ball!!
Ok, enough attempts at humor. It’s obviously not a funny situation. But how seriously are we going to take it? There will be and already are various attempts to deal with this “situation” in short “shrift.” But I’m not sure the priest is the one to be shriving to in this situation, if you know what I mean. Of course you do. (If you don’t, just look up ‘shrift’ or ‘shrive’ in the dictionary and you’ll get the joke.)
Ok, I’ll get serious. The short shrift crowd won’t really want to try to understand what happened on the bus in Wilson. There will be various rationalizations such as “this has been going on for a long time.” Or, “it’s a tradition.” Or, some will say that this was a fluke and such things never happen around here, implying it won’t happen again. So there’s really nothing to really worry about let alone understand. Some will look for the failure in ’supervision,” that is, the “cause” of the situation in failed “management.” Others will blame the students who should thusly be treated as “adults,” whatever that is these days. As if just arbitrarily assigning a number to determine when adulthood starts solves the problem of ‘adult’ mature behavior. As if heinous behavior could automatically catapult a minor into the category of “adult” for legal purposes. Silly, no? The quest for the “cause” in the administrative structure may go to the top: Principal, Superintendent, Commissioner… maybe the whole to blaming God? How about just dealing with it legally and then tightening the screws on behavior. More discipline! Throw them in jail and set an example! How about police in the schools? On the bus? In the bathroom? We’re good at quick, easy, pragmatic answers and then we can forget about it.
By the way, the lawyers are enjoying this, aren’t they!? It won’t be the windfall it was down Texas way. Hundreds of lawyers descended on the FLDS trial. More lawyers than defendants. Nevertheless the Niagara County lawyers should do well here.
Well, back to perversion in Wilson. No one really wants to anal-yze this do they? No one really wants to understand this phenomenon. Why? The rational attitude is that all we need to do is anal-yze the “facts” and then make legal and administrative judgments. Just get things under control and do damage control of course such that no one gets suspicious that just maybe the moral and social fiber and fabric of the communities is going to hell. We want immediate explanation that is somehow satisfying such that it comforts or explains away the phenomenon as any kind of a really serious problem or symptom of a serious problem.
Someone such as myself will always be accused of making a mountain out of a mole hill. People actually believe that the surface “facts” of the immediate issue will explain and help us understand it. But can we understand this event such that we can do something about it or about the real problem? Unfortunately most all of us will see the real problem as this event itself rather than what this event –sodomy—is a sign or symptom of. The real fact is that this act of perverse violence is one variation on the theme of violence, cruelty, indifference and defensiveness that permeate the schools, especially junior and senior high schools. How is it that such crass, vulgar, tasteless and ignorant behavior can take root and thrive in our schools? Is social and intellectual refinement a lost cause? Can we pretend that such “extracurricular” activities are only marginal and minority behaviors and are not a function of the cultural bankruptcy at the very heart of the educational system? Why is such barbaric behavior considered merely a matter of immaturity as opposed to a reflection of the incivility that thrives at the center of adult behavior? In fact the inability of the schools to maintain and nurture civility, some semblance of refinement and an interest in taking the high road regarding human self-fufillment, is a reflection of the inability of the communities to do the same.
Why is degrading another human being the price of gaining access to belonging to certain groups? Why now is a baseball team mimicking the initiation rites of some of the most murderous street gangs in LA? It seems to me that such rites of initiation are required by groups that in some sense conceive themselves as being at war with the world around them. They require absolute loyalty. Is it that they know that you must really want to be a loyal part of them if you are willing to be abused in order to be a member?
There may be a positive aspect to this. Given that the communities we live in are less than desireable, failing to have a common value system or common vision even, such trials required for membership may well indicate an instinctual recognition, even if unconscious, of the primacy of the group and even the sacredness of the group. We all know that the “community” is filled with parasites, lone wolves, exploiters, loan sharks, con artists, etc. Thieves, rapists, robbers, murderers, drug dealers, addicts, pedophiles, hate-mongerers, mentally ill souls, etc. The center of communities may not hold very well or at all especially without police forces, media mediated identities and hopes for futures the likelihood of achieving is less and less realistic. Apparently the aspirations and standard of living of this generation is lower than the last. When joining the military and fighting a meaningless and barbaric war in order to find a way out of the cul de sac of your life and to thus buy a possible future is actually attractive if not reasonable, then the culture of main street, small town America and the middle class is lost. Maybe these sodomistic students are just trying to guarantee a solidarity, a sense of belonging, an integrity of the group that they can't find in their family, school, community or church.
Why is sensitivity, civility, intelligent activities of learning and creativity, camaraderie and socially festive celebration less attractive than violent sports, tire burning events, barbaric imperialistic wars, loud noisy machines roaring around in circles and other absurdities? Why are we eating ourselves to death on foods that taste like shit and fail to have any taste for good foods, the art of cooking. What happened to the art and science of gastronomy? What happened to singing songs on the bus and celebrating a victory? Why is humiliation of our peers a celebration, an initiation, a condition of belonging and sociality?
Is it surprising that a dying culture —if we ever were a culture-- cultivates child psychologies that are violent, narcissistically self-absorbed and indifferent to the meaning, feeling and value of their actions?
Ok, enough attempts at humor. It’s obviously not a funny situation. But how seriously are we going to take it? There will be and already are various attempts to deal with this “situation” in short “shrift.” But I’m not sure the priest is the one to be shriving to in this situation, if you know what I mean. Of course you do. (If you don’t, just look up ‘shrift’ or ‘shrive’ in the dictionary and you’ll get the joke.)
Ok, I’ll get serious. The short shrift crowd won’t really want to try to understand what happened on the bus in Wilson. There will be various rationalizations such as “this has been going on for a long time.” Or, “it’s a tradition.” Or, some will say that this was a fluke and such things never happen around here, implying it won’t happen again. So there’s really nothing to really worry about let alone understand. Some will look for the failure in ’supervision,” that is, the “cause” of the situation in failed “management.” Others will blame the students who should thusly be treated as “adults,” whatever that is these days. As if just arbitrarily assigning a number to determine when adulthood starts solves the problem of ‘adult’ mature behavior. As if heinous behavior could automatically catapult a minor into the category of “adult” for legal purposes. Silly, no? The quest for the “cause” in the administrative structure may go to the top: Principal, Superintendent, Commissioner… maybe the whole to blaming God? How about just dealing with it legally and then tightening the screws on behavior. More discipline! Throw them in jail and set an example! How about police in the schools? On the bus? In the bathroom? We’re good at quick, easy, pragmatic answers and then we can forget about it.
By the way, the lawyers are enjoying this, aren’t they!? It won’t be the windfall it was down Texas way. Hundreds of lawyers descended on the FLDS trial. More lawyers than defendants. Nevertheless the Niagara County lawyers should do well here.
Well, back to perversion in Wilson. No one really wants to anal-yze this do they? No one really wants to understand this phenomenon. Why? The rational attitude is that all we need to do is anal-yze the “facts” and then make legal and administrative judgments. Just get things under control and do damage control of course such that no one gets suspicious that just maybe the moral and social fiber and fabric of the communities is going to hell. We want immediate explanation that is somehow satisfying such that it comforts or explains away the phenomenon as any kind of a really serious problem or symptom of a serious problem.
Someone such as myself will always be accused of making a mountain out of a mole hill. People actually believe that the surface “facts” of the immediate issue will explain and help us understand it. But can we understand this event such that we can do something about it or about the real problem? Unfortunately most all of us will see the real problem as this event itself rather than what this event –sodomy—is a sign or symptom of. The real fact is that this act of perverse violence is one variation on the theme of violence, cruelty, indifference and defensiveness that permeate the schools, especially junior and senior high schools. How is it that such crass, vulgar, tasteless and ignorant behavior can take root and thrive in our schools? Is social and intellectual refinement a lost cause? Can we pretend that such “extracurricular” activities are only marginal and minority behaviors and are not a function of the cultural bankruptcy at the very heart of the educational system? Why is such barbaric behavior considered merely a matter of immaturity as opposed to a reflection of the incivility that thrives at the center of adult behavior? In fact the inability of the schools to maintain and nurture civility, some semblance of refinement and an interest in taking the high road regarding human self-fufillment, is a reflection of the inability of the communities to do the same.
Why is degrading another human being the price of gaining access to belonging to certain groups? Why now is a baseball team mimicking the initiation rites of some of the most murderous street gangs in LA? It seems to me that such rites of initiation are required by groups that in some sense conceive themselves as being at war with the world around them. They require absolute loyalty. Is it that they know that you must really want to be a loyal part of them if you are willing to be abused in order to be a member?
There may be a positive aspect to this. Given that the communities we live in are less than desireable, failing to have a common value system or common vision even, such trials required for membership may well indicate an instinctual recognition, even if unconscious, of the primacy of the group and even the sacredness of the group. We all know that the “community” is filled with parasites, lone wolves, exploiters, loan sharks, con artists, etc. Thieves, rapists, robbers, murderers, drug dealers, addicts, pedophiles, hate-mongerers, mentally ill souls, etc. The center of communities may not hold very well or at all especially without police forces, media mediated identities and hopes for futures the likelihood of achieving is less and less realistic. Apparently the aspirations and standard of living of this generation is lower than the last. When joining the military and fighting a meaningless and barbaric war in order to find a way out of the cul de sac of your life and to thus buy a possible future is actually attractive if not reasonable, then the culture of main street, small town America and the middle class is lost. Maybe these sodomistic students are just trying to guarantee a solidarity, a sense of belonging, an integrity of the group that they can't find in their family, school, community or church.
Why is sensitivity, civility, intelligent activities of learning and creativity, camaraderie and socially festive celebration less attractive than violent sports, tire burning events, barbaric imperialistic wars, loud noisy machines roaring around in circles and other absurdities? Why are we eating ourselves to death on foods that taste like shit and fail to have any taste for good foods, the art of cooking. What happened to the art and science of gastronomy? What happened to singing songs on the bus and celebrating a victory? Why is humiliation of our peers a celebration, an initiation, a condition of belonging and sociality?
Is it surprising that a dying culture —if we ever were a culture-- cultivates child psychologies that are violent, narcissistically self-absorbed and indifferent to the meaning, feeling and value of their actions?
Monday, April 28, 2008
NIETZSCHE AND PLATO IN THE NEWS
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.”
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.”
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.
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