Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Brought To You By The Freest Press In History: I Have The News On It Is Lying
The local news channel is on where I am, they are talking about 9-11 and the "Flag Ladies". They are more than just implying that the invasion of Iraq had something to do with the attacks on 9-11. The lies about the invasion of Iraq, the lies about Saddam Hussein involvement with it, have become ingrained in the mythology of the past decade. It is the freest press and media in our history which has sold that lie first told by the Bush II Cheney regime in order to justify an illegal war that has killed scores of thousands so far and is still going on today.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
What is This Thing Called Love Eldar with Chris Potter
Live at the Blue Note in New York City May 2012
Eldar Djangirov (piano)
Chris Potter (sax)
Armando Gola (bass)
Ludwig Afonso (drums)
Either You Say What You Mean or You Don't Mean What You Say: On Losing Readers
It was in late fall 2006 while writing for a different blog that I got the first comment saying, "I'll never read you again". I didn't know why they bothered saying it. Well, it's clear the reason they said it, they didn't agree with something I wrote - probably on the foolish, futile new atheist war against the vast majority of the population. But was the declaration supposed to get me to change what I was writing about? Was it kind of a threat to shoot the dog if I didn't stop writing on that topic?
When I have had students interested in composing, my very first instruction is that they have to find out what the music that they want to write is, in the end. That's the real goal. If they write music because they think it will get the approval of other people, they should let those people write that music because it won't be their music. Before any attempt to train someone in harmony and counterpoint, they've got to have practice in writing music they like. My approach to writing is the same.
I write what I think is true, what I think makes sense and what I believe is most likely to produce something closer to a decent result, a livable planet, a tolerable society that is headed into the direction of a good society and world on the way to a good an just world. That is my absolute bottom line, more than any other goal. More than what I would like to be true, more than what any reader wants me to say, more than what I might want to be saying, more than I want people to like what I say. Though it's really nice when they do. I can't guarantee that is going to happen but I can guarantee something else. When someone goes to the bother of reading what I write, the least I can give them is the promise that I mean what I'm saying.
When I have had students interested in composing, my very first instruction is that they have to find out what the music that they want to write is, in the end. That's the real goal. If they write music because they think it will get the approval of other people, they should let those people write that music because it won't be their music. Before any attempt to train someone in harmony and counterpoint, they've got to have practice in writing music they like. My approach to writing is the same.
I write what I think is true, what I think makes sense and what I believe is most likely to produce something closer to a decent result, a livable planet, a tolerable society that is headed into the direction of a good society and world on the way to a good an just world. That is my absolute bottom line, more than any other goal. More than what I would like to be true, more than what any reader wants me to say, more than what I might want to be saying, more than I want people to like what I say. Though it's really nice when they do. I can't guarantee that is going to happen but I can guarantee something else. When someone goes to the bother of reading what I write, the least I can give them is the promise that I mean what I'm saying.
Elizabeth Warren At the AFL-CIO Convention
I could listen to this a thousand times and never get tired of it.
Fails The Laugh Test
Am I really supposed to get upset that the American Government has been spying on Brazilian oil companies?
If only they'd spy on American, British, Dutch..... oil companies and crack down on them.
If only they'd spy on American, British, Dutch..... oil companies and crack down on them.
Hard Teachings
The role of a white person looking at a political conflict among black people should be primarily to look and learn. Or at least that's what I think. It's the same for men in a political conflict among women. There will be things that those primarily involved with issues know about them, points that are important to consider that the experience of those not involved will not know or weigh accurately. But in the conflict between Cornel West, speaking on behalf of the black prophetic tradition and those he names as sell-outs involved the President of the United States and the soul of the country, the actions of the United States government inside the country and in the world so it concerns us all. I would assert that in the past it was when liberals and the left not only learned from that prophetic tradition but acted on its witness that things got better, that the country acted in a way at all in line with its asserted faith, in equality, in democracy, in justice. That gives all of us a legitimate interest in the issues, though I still think it is best to let the primary figures tell us what it is about. And on that:
“It is a spiritual issue,” West said. “What kind of person do you choose to be? People say, ‘Well, Brother West, since the mass of black folk will never be free then let me just get mine.’ That is the dominant response. ‘I am wasting my time fighting a battle that can’t be won.’ But that is not what the black prophetic tradition is about. History is a mystery. Yes, it doesn't look good. But the masses of black folk must be respected. Malcolm X used to say as long as they are not respected you could show me all the individual respect you want but I know it’s empty. That is the fundamental divide between the prophetic tradition and the sellouts.”
There is a conflict between those holding out for ultimate justice and those who begin by compromise and end up compromised, between those who really believe to the core of their being and at a real cost to themselves and their families that justice is not optional and those who think it's a nice sounding slogan, not much different from those the advertising industry uses to lie twenty minutes out of every hour, not counting product placement.
The disappointment with Barack Obama is legitimate, he sold himself as something he clearly is not and never intended to be, the head of an alternative to the corporate state, a progressive, if not liberal opposition to that. Instead he has been the champion of it. In the article about Obama's attempt to silence the prophetic tradition, by Chris Hedges,* Cornell West practices the witness that is guaranteed to not be welcome by many, observing that it has always been the case that before prophets are accepted or, as is often the case, coopted, they are often opposed, imprisoned and not infrequently killed
“The most pernicious development is the incorporation of the black prophetic tradition into the Obama imperial project,” West said. “Obama used [Martin Luther] King’s Bible during his inauguration, but under the National Defense Authorization Act King would be detained without due process. He would be under surveillance every day because of his association with Nelson Mandela, who was the head of a ‘terrorist’ organization, the African National Congress. We see the richest prophetic tradition in America desecrated in the name of a neoliberal worldview, a worldview King would be in direct opposition to. Martin would be against Obama because of his neglect of the poor and the working class and because of the [aerial] drones, because he is a war president, because he draws up kill lists. And Martin King would have nothing to do with that.”
“We are talking about crimes against humanity—Wall Street crimes, war crimes, the crimes of the criminal justice system in the form of Jim Crow, the crimes against our working poor that have their backs pushed against the wall because of stagnant wages and corporate profits going up,” West said. “Abraham Heschel said that the distinctive feature of any empire in decline is its indifference to criminality. That is a fundamental feature of our time, an indifference to criminality, especially on top, wickedness in high places.”
-------------
For a white, American tradition, Liberal, the product of the past half century of American history, it is extremely hard to figure out the lines between the possible and the ideal. The fact is that Obama is one in a line of merely the best we could get elected to office. But with Obama and his campaign to sell another involvement in yet another hopeless foreign civil war, it's clear that is not enough anymore.
It is clear to me that Obama has not had any intention of striving for the ideal at a cost to himself. He has almost never spent political capital on the legitimate program of liberalism. For example, it's called "Obamacare" first by his opponents, trying to put a black face on health care reform in order to use racism to destroy it. They've done the same with most of the social welfare programs dismantled during my lifetime. But Obama did nothing to push a really great bill whose implementation would transform the country, socially, economically and politically. He didn't even do very much to get what was passed through. He left it in the hands of people like Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman, trading away anything that would have comprised a really good bill in his futile attempt to woo the likes of Olympia Snowe in order to be able to duck behind the empty slogan of bi-partisanship. And even that almost failed but for the insistence of Nancy Pelosi that the bill be passed. That was the template for virtually every real liberal issue during the Obama administration. He spent his political capital - ALL OF IT GIVEN TO HIM BY HIS SUPPORTERS - on behalf of those who were far more interested in using his race to whip up the most vicious and potentially violent opposition to a president in our history. There is something pathological in Obama's repeated quest to get people who hate him because of his race and his party affiliation to like him even as it's obvious he expects the adoration of his supporters who he disdains and disrespects. He might give us a speech on a special occasion, he might use symbolism to woo us when he needs us, he gives us way too little for the cost of having him as the voluntarily weak president he has been. We must never give our most valuable political asset, out votes and our support, to someone who will so profligately throw it at those who will oppose us and the most basic of our values. That is justice, equality, economic equality, not free trade, not bank deregulation. I strongly suspect that Obama is prepared to give away more of that on behalf of Larry Summers than he ever would for even a moderately liberal member of the Supreme Court.
----------
As I said, my primary role in the dispute between Obama and West is to listen and learn and, though I don't agree with everything he has said and the way he says it is very hard, West gets the last word in this post.
“Obama is the highest manifestation of the co-optation that took place,” West said. “It shifted to the black political class. The black political class, more and more, found itself unable to tell the truth, or if they began to tell some of the truth they were [put] under surveillance, attacked and demonized. Forty percent of our babies are living in poverty, living without enough food, and Obama comes to us and says quit whining. He doesn’t say that to the Business Roundtable. He doesn’t say that to the corporate elites. He doesn’t say that to AIPAC, the conservative Jewish brothers and sisters who will do anything to support the Israeli occupation against Palestinians. This kind of neglect in policy is coupled with disrespect in his speeches to black folk, which the mainstream calls tough love.”
“He is a shell of a man,” West said of Obama. “There is no deep conviction. There is no connection to something bigger than him. It is a sad spectacle, sad if he were not the head of an empire that is in such decline and so dangerous. This is a nadir. William Trotter and Du Bois, along with Ida B. Wells-Barnett, were going at Book T tooth and nail. Look at the fights between [Marcus] Garvey and Du Bois, or Garvey and A. Philip Randolph. But now if you criticize Obama the way Randolph criticized Garvey, you become a race traitor and an Uncle Tom. A lot of that comes out of the Obama machine, the Obama plantation.”
* Hedges, who I respect even as I sometimes disagree with him, has the kind of earned credibility that few other figures in the left opposition to Obama have. He does a fine job of letting Cornel West speak for himself even as it's obvious he's also saying things Hedges would like to say. Hedges sometimes manages the uneasy dual role of someone trying to balance between the roles of journalist and prophet, I think it would be good for him to realize that someone who has witnessed as much as he has can't any longer function as a journalist and go back to his pre-journalism roots.
“It is a spiritual issue,” West said. “What kind of person do you choose to be? People say, ‘Well, Brother West, since the mass of black folk will never be free then let me just get mine.’ That is the dominant response. ‘I am wasting my time fighting a battle that can’t be won.’ But that is not what the black prophetic tradition is about. History is a mystery. Yes, it doesn't look good. But the masses of black folk must be respected. Malcolm X used to say as long as they are not respected you could show me all the individual respect you want but I know it’s empty. That is the fundamental divide between the prophetic tradition and the sellouts.”
There is a conflict between those holding out for ultimate justice and those who begin by compromise and end up compromised, between those who really believe to the core of their being and at a real cost to themselves and their families that justice is not optional and those who think it's a nice sounding slogan, not much different from those the advertising industry uses to lie twenty minutes out of every hour, not counting product placement.
The disappointment with Barack Obama is legitimate, he sold himself as something he clearly is not and never intended to be, the head of an alternative to the corporate state, a progressive, if not liberal opposition to that. Instead he has been the champion of it. In the article about Obama's attempt to silence the prophetic tradition, by Chris Hedges,* Cornell West practices the witness that is guaranteed to not be welcome by many, observing that it has always been the case that before prophets are accepted or, as is often the case, coopted, they are often opposed, imprisoned and not infrequently killed
“The most pernicious development is the incorporation of the black prophetic tradition into the Obama imperial project,” West said. “Obama used [Martin Luther] King’s Bible during his inauguration, but under the National Defense Authorization Act King would be detained without due process. He would be under surveillance every day because of his association with Nelson Mandela, who was the head of a ‘terrorist’ organization, the African National Congress. We see the richest prophetic tradition in America desecrated in the name of a neoliberal worldview, a worldview King would be in direct opposition to. Martin would be against Obama because of his neglect of the poor and the working class and because of the [aerial] drones, because he is a war president, because he draws up kill lists. And Martin King would have nothing to do with that.”
“We are talking about crimes against humanity—Wall Street crimes, war crimes, the crimes of the criminal justice system in the form of Jim Crow, the crimes against our working poor that have their backs pushed against the wall because of stagnant wages and corporate profits going up,” West said. “Abraham Heschel said that the distinctive feature of any empire in decline is its indifference to criminality. That is a fundamental feature of our time, an indifference to criminality, especially on top, wickedness in high places.”
-------------
For a white, American tradition, Liberal, the product of the past half century of American history, it is extremely hard to figure out the lines between the possible and the ideal. The fact is that Obama is one in a line of merely the best we could get elected to office. But with Obama and his campaign to sell another involvement in yet another hopeless foreign civil war, it's clear that is not enough anymore.
It is clear to me that Obama has not had any intention of striving for the ideal at a cost to himself. He has almost never spent political capital on the legitimate program of liberalism. For example, it's called "Obamacare" first by his opponents, trying to put a black face on health care reform in order to use racism to destroy it. They've done the same with most of the social welfare programs dismantled during my lifetime. But Obama did nothing to push a really great bill whose implementation would transform the country, socially, economically and politically. He didn't even do very much to get what was passed through. He left it in the hands of people like Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman, trading away anything that would have comprised a really good bill in his futile attempt to woo the likes of Olympia Snowe in order to be able to duck behind the empty slogan of bi-partisanship. And even that almost failed but for the insistence of Nancy Pelosi that the bill be passed. That was the template for virtually every real liberal issue during the Obama administration. He spent his political capital - ALL OF IT GIVEN TO HIM BY HIS SUPPORTERS - on behalf of those who were far more interested in using his race to whip up the most vicious and potentially violent opposition to a president in our history. There is something pathological in Obama's repeated quest to get people who hate him because of his race and his party affiliation to like him even as it's obvious he expects the adoration of his supporters who he disdains and disrespects. He might give us a speech on a special occasion, he might use symbolism to woo us when he needs us, he gives us way too little for the cost of having him as the voluntarily weak president he has been. We must never give our most valuable political asset, out votes and our support, to someone who will so profligately throw it at those who will oppose us and the most basic of our values. That is justice, equality, economic equality, not free trade, not bank deregulation. I strongly suspect that Obama is prepared to give away more of that on behalf of Larry Summers than he ever would for even a moderately liberal member of the Supreme Court.
----------
As I said, my primary role in the dispute between Obama and West is to listen and learn and, though I don't agree with everything he has said and the way he says it is very hard, West gets the last word in this post.
“Obama is the highest manifestation of the co-optation that took place,” West said. “It shifted to the black political class. The black political class, more and more, found itself unable to tell the truth, or if they began to tell some of the truth they were [put] under surveillance, attacked and demonized. Forty percent of our babies are living in poverty, living without enough food, and Obama comes to us and says quit whining. He doesn’t say that to the Business Roundtable. He doesn’t say that to the corporate elites. He doesn’t say that to AIPAC, the conservative Jewish brothers and sisters who will do anything to support the Israeli occupation against Palestinians. This kind of neglect in policy is coupled with disrespect in his speeches to black folk, which the mainstream calls tough love.”
“He is a shell of a man,” West said of Obama. “There is no deep conviction. There is no connection to something bigger than him. It is a sad spectacle, sad if he were not the head of an empire that is in such decline and so dangerous. This is a nadir. William Trotter and Du Bois, along with Ida B. Wells-Barnett, were going at Book T tooth and nail. Look at the fights between [Marcus] Garvey and Du Bois, or Garvey and A. Philip Randolph. But now if you criticize Obama the way Randolph criticized Garvey, you become a race traitor and an Uncle Tom. A lot of that comes out of the Obama machine, the Obama plantation.”
* Hedges, who I respect even as I sometimes disagree with him, has the kind of earned credibility that few other figures in the left opposition to Obama have. He does a fine job of letting Cornel West speak for himself even as it's obvious he's also saying things Hedges would like to say. Hedges sometimes manages the uneasy dual role of someone trying to balance between the roles of journalist and prophet, I think it would be good for him to realize that someone who has witnessed as much as he has can't any longer function as a journalist and go back to his pre-journalism roots.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Chris Connor Ridin' High
Herbie Mann(fl,ts)
Ralph Sharon(p)
Joe Puma(g)
Milt Hinton(b)
Osie Johnson(ds)
4,1955 NYC
Update:
A Quick But Closer Look At Claims From The Atheist Equivalent of Chick Publications
The Atheist version of Chick Publications, Prometheus Books, has published a book by Avi Tuschman called Our Political Nature, The Evolutionary Origin of What Divides Us. Being a Prometheus book, it has to include a percentage of anti-religious content, that being the basis of everything that Paul Kurtz founded and had a hand in. Everything that comes out of Prometheus has that as a goal, the degree of directness the only variation. And, now that popular atheism has turned from the unfashionable Behaviorist ideology it used to use to construct plausible seeming explanations from to the ultra-adapataionist, evo-psy style, you could predict that would be what such a Prometheus Book these days would push as well.
I haven't read the book but I've read an excerpt by Tuschman, "Why Racist People Tend To Be Conservative." In outline, Tuschman claims
In relation to the political spectrum, tribalism breaks down into three components: (1) ethnocentricity, (2) religiosity, and (3) sexual (in)tolerance. High measures of ethnocentricity, religiosity, are commonly associated with one another. Individuals with this cluster of traits tend to have political views on the right. On the other end of the spectrum, attraction to out-groups (xenophilia), secularism, and higher sexual tolerance are well correlated with one another and with political views on the left.
The excerpt develops something like a case, which I found only seemingly plausible in places, clearly nonsensical in others, based largely on Just-so story telling which is rather racist in its assumptions of non-progress in "primitive" cultures* and entirely clueless about atheistic racism, the history of which is quite floridly extensive and developed. Among the more clearly ahistorical and absurd statements is this:
What is the logic between these three components of tribalism? The more ethnocentric, religious, and sexually intolerant people are, the more likely they are to reproduce with a mate from their own in-group.
Which apparently doesn't take into account such things as the rape of African American slaves by their thorougly racist, ethnocentric, hetero-centric, conventionally religious etc. white masters, producing many offspring known by everyone to be the products of such "mating". The instances of those who believed themselves to fully believe that their own "in-group" was superior refraining from raping or having sex with members of other groups would have to count as remarkable in their rarity. Of course taking such things into account would mess up the Just-so story but there is no denying that it has been common to the human species.
But in order to assert the things Tuschman does, he has to deny much, much more than that, including the history of evolutionary biology, the ideological character of exactly the ultra-adaptationist school in that history, its endemic racism, its associated political, social and philosophical results in combination with icons of the "liberal" culture he believes himself to be complimenting.
For example, there is the rabid racism and concurrent advocacy of genocide in Ernst Haeckel - someone who I've read and studied at length as well as many of those who admired and promoted his materialist monism. It was extremely popular with atheists and, apparently, still is in diluted form. That materialistic monism is intrinsic to Haeckel's racism and advocacy of murder and it is inescapable to anyone who has read Haeckle because it pervades his writing. Apart from those in the circle of Charles Darwin who promoted Haeckel's writing of that kind, Lankester, Thomas Huxley, Charles Darwin, himself, Haeckel was also advocated by Joseph McCabe. McCabe was probably the first person to make atheism a profession in Britain and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. McCabe is the subject of a hagiographic "biography" published by Tuschman's publisher and, in fact, Prometheus republished some of McCabe's translation of Haeckel. McCabe translated Haeckel into English well after there was any question about his extreme racism, his advocacy for the murder of those he designated as "unfit" and any number of other depravities relevant to Tuschman's thesis. Since those are present in Haeckel's writing from the beginning of it, any uncritical promotion of him would have to include it. And McCabe's advocacy of Haeckel was nothing like fluke. You can see that in such publications as the "Little Blue Book" number 579, Ernst Haeckel Evolutionist, number 598, Ernst Haeckel - Philosopher-Naturalist and 599, Haeckel's Monistic Philosophy. The Little Blue Books and their publisher E. Haldeman-Julius could serve as the template for Prometheus and Paul Kurtz and the modern atheism industry.
To see some of the result of that, among others inspired by the atheist propaganda that came from McCabe and through the "Little Blue Books" and related atheist literature, was the pretty repellent, thoroughly racist and antisemitic James Hervy Johnson**, the head of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism who is being given a new life on such atheist web resources as "Positive (sic) Atheism", they also promote McCabe as well.
That is just a tiny bit of the atheist promotion of "scientific" as well as "historical" racism, antisemitism (a lot of atheist diatribe is inevitably antisemitic) and bigotry. I would, however, deny that it has anything to do with any real progressive, liberal or leftist political identity, though in its time and today, atheists did and still assert that such materialist depravity is liberal. If you think I'm agreeing with Tuschman due to that, I don't think it has anything to do with genetic heritage. That's just the current pseudo-scientific framing of a malignant ideological assertion. If it were done forty years ago, it would have been Behaviorism based. People whose genes don't change can change their hearts and minds, for the better as well as for the worse. Materialism doesn't do much to improve people.
I'd go a lot farther than that if I had the time, though whenever I dip into those notes, the next thing that happens is a series. I don't have time for it just now.
* Any human culture that can be looked at in the history of anthropology or through the lore of literature is not reliably related to any presumed culture in the pre-historic past. The idea that the people in such "primitive" cultures don't go through cultural change, cultural development, periods of greater and lesser depravity must as "advanced" cultures is pretty racist, in itself. You have to wonder how they could get by the idea that the cultures that began the presumed climb from a "primitive" state to "advancement" weren't genetically superior to such "primitive" cultures which they presume didn't develop in the past few tens of thousands of years. There is no culture that is know of today which isn't materially advanced from the handfuls of material evidence we have from the ancient past. Assuming their culture hasn't undergone change is a hallmark of scientific racism.
** The war between Johnson and Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her outrageous attempt to grab hold of his large estate is quite interesting reading. There is as much insight to be gained from a good long look at the underside of the atheist ideology as there is any other. Atheists are as unwilling to take that look as any other group I'm aware of, though there are religious traditions which at least advocate looking at their sins and confessing them. I'm unaware of any moral holding of atheism that promotes that practice.
I haven't read the book but I've read an excerpt by Tuschman, "Why Racist People Tend To Be Conservative." In outline, Tuschman claims
In relation to the political spectrum, tribalism breaks down into three components: (1) ethnocentricity, (2) religiosity, and (3) sexual (in)tolerance. High measures of ethnocentricity, religiosity, are commonly associated with one another. Individuals with this cluster of traits tend to have political views on the right. On the other end of the spectrum, attraction to out-groups (xenophilia), secularism, and higher sexual tolerance are well correlated with one another and with political views on the left.
The excerpt develops something like a case, which I found only seemingly plausible in places, clearly nonsensical in others, based largely on Just-so story telling which is rather racist in its assumptions of non-progress in "primitive" cultures* and entirely clueless about atheistic racism, the history of which is quite floridly extensive and developed. Among the more clearly ahistorical and absurd statements is this:
What is the logic between these three components of tribalism? The more ethnocentric, religious, and sexually intolerant people are, the more likely they are to reproduce with a mate from their own in-group.
Which apparently doesn't take into account such things as the rape of African American slaves by their thorougly racist, ethnocentric, hetero-centric, conventionally religious etc. white masters, producing many offspring known by everyone to be the products of such "mating". The instances of those who believed themselves to fully believe that their own "in-group" was superior refraining from raping or having sex with members of other groups would have to count as remarkable in their rarity. Of course taking such things into account would mess up the Just-so story but there is no denying that it has been common to the human species.
But in order to assert the things Tuschman does, he has to deny much, much more than that, including the history of evolutionary biology, the ideological character of exactly the ultra-adaptationist school in that history, its endemic racism, its associated political, social and philosophical results in combination with icons of the "liberal" culture he believes himself to be complimenting.
For example, there is the rabid racism and concurrent advocacy of genocide in Ernst Haeckel - someone who I've read and studied at length as well as many of those who admired and promoted his materialist monism. It was extremely popular with atheists and, apparently, still is in diluted form. That materialistic monism is intrinsic to Haeckel's racism and advocacy of murder and it is inescapable to anyone who has read Haeckle because it pervades his writing. Apart from those in the circle of Charles Darwin who promoted Haeckel's writing of that kind, Lankester, Thomas Huxley, Charles Darwin, himself, Haeckel was also advocated by Joseph McCabe. McCabe was probably the first person to make atheism a profession in Britain and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. McCabe is the subject of a hagiographic "biography" published by Tuschman's publisher and, in fact, Prometheus republished some of McCabe's translation of Haeckel. McCabe translated Haeckel into English well after there was any question about his extreme racism, his advocacy for the murder of those he designated as "unfit" and any number of other depravities relevant to Tuschman's thesis. Since those are present in Haeckel's writing from the beginning of it, any uncritical promotion of him would have to include it. And McCabe's advocacy of Haeckel was nothing like fluke. You can see that in such publications as the "Little Blue Book" number 579, Ernst Haeckel Evolutionist, number 598, Ernst Haeckel - Philosopher-Naturalist and 599, Haeckel's Monistic Philosophy. The Little Blue Books and their publisher E. Haldeman-Julius could serve as the template for Prometheus and Paul Kurtz and the modern atheism industry.
To see some of the result of that, among others inspired by the atheist propaganda that came from McCabe and through the "Little Blue Books" and related atheist literature, was the pretty repellent, thoroughly racist and antisemitic James Hervy Johnson**, the head of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism who is being given a new life on such atheist web resources as "Positive (sic) Atheism", they also promote McCabe as well.
That is just a tiny bit of the atheist promotion of "scientific" as well as "historical" racism, antisemitism (a lot of atheist diatribe is inevitably antisemitic) and bigotry. I would, however, deny that it has anything to do with any real progressive, liberal or leftist political identity, though in its time and today, atheists did and still assert that such materialist depravity is liberal. If you think I'm agreeing with Tuschman due to that, I don't think it has anything to do with genetic heritage. That's just the current pseudo-scientific framing of a malignant ideological assertion. If it were done forty years ago, it would have been Behaviorism based. People whose genes don't change can change their hearts and minds, for the better as well as for the worse. Materialism doesn't do much to improve people.
I'd go a lot farther than that if I had the time, though whenever I dip into those notes, the next thing that happens is a series. I don't have time for it just now.
* Any human culture that can be looked at in the history of anthropology or through the lore of literature is not reliably related to any presumed culture in the pre-historic past. The idea that the people in such "primitive" cultures don't go through cultural change, cultural development, periods of greater and lesser depravity must as "advanced" cultures is pretty racist, in itself. You have to wonder how they could get by the idea that the cultures that began the presumed climb from a "primitive" state to "advancement" weren't genetically superior to such "primitive" cultures which they presume didn't develop in the past few tens of thousands of years. There is no culture that is know of today which isn't materially advanced from the handfuls of material evidence we have from the ancient past. Assuming their culture hasn't undergone change is a hallmark of scientific racism.
** The war between Johnson and Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her outrageous attempt to grab hold of his large estate is quite interesting reading. There is as much insight to be gained from a good long look at the underside of the atheist ideology as there is any other. Atheists are as unwilling to take that look as any other group I'm aware of, though there are religious traditions which at least advocate looking at their sins and confessing them. I'm unaware of any moral holding of atheism that promotes that practice.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
The Post-Obama Period Has Begun Democrats In Congress Need To Say No to Bombing Syria
Barack Obama and John Kerry seem to be determined to bomb Syria, egged on by those of such proven irresponsibility and irrationality as John McCain and Lindsay Graham. If this crackpot idea is to go ahead, it's important for as many Democrats as possible to say no to them, When it comes to irresponsible and clearly futile bombing and military action, party loyalty comes in no where near first in consideration. If David Cameron can't bring the Parliament along, it's a good sign that Democrats should consider what that means.
So far I've heard nothing from Barack Obama or John Kerry that explains which side of the multi-side Syrian civil war is supposed to benefit from this and how they are supposed to benefit from it. That it took so long to figure out that one of them wasn't responsible for using chemical weapons should make people realize that those who are likely to benefit from U.S. action could be at least as bad as the Assad government. It's reported that even his side has factions which are likely worse and better placed than others to assume control.
The frustration of men up in the heroic fights against fascism in the 1940s and the one against slavery in the 1860s, that there is no side to support that is a clearly better alternative than the status quo can't be allowed to govern us. TV, movies, novels are structured according to human imagination, which selects from the wider universe of historical and human experience to make up a story. It isn't reality. To an extent neither is written history, though taking into account a wider range of what historians write can provide us with those parts we like and find inspiring and with those which we find disquieting can inform us of reality in a way that fiction can't sustain. Syria in 2013 has no side that can win and unite the country with a reliable chance at having a better government than the awful one in place now.
Syria, to me, seems to be a lot like Afghanistan during the nominal communist rule during the 1980s. If Obama starts bombing and training it won't be enough for McCain and Graham who will constantly press for more and more. Bombing the hell out of a few places for a few days won't do anything to end things, it will almost certainly make things worse and the tendency in that situation is to ramp up the bets and go for broke like a drunk gambler.
It's long been clear that Barack Obama is an extremely unskilled politician whose practice, since law school, has been to profit from volunteering to be coopted by his adversaries. Having watched him do that during the entire course of his presidency, it's time for the rest of the Democratic party to realize it is well into the post-Obama period, that is in the period after anyone has a rational expectation that he will be a strong Democratic president. He simply will not be one. He would have been one already if that was ever going to happen. It's time for Democrats to face that and think ahead to next year. Obama's track record of supporting Democrats in elections he isn't running in is pretty abysmal. Democrats are on their own next year and they don't need to get sucked into the burden of an unpopular war in Syria enabling our opponents, who are the people Obama has allied himself with. Democrats should approach Obama in the same way, any cooperation with him has to be on the same basis, admitting that he has always had a greater affinity for our opponents than us. If they vote to support Obama's and Kerry's bombing in Syria, they are voting to enable John McCain and Lindsay Graham.
So far I've heard nothing from Barack Obama or John Kerry that explains which side of the multi-side Syrian civil war is supposed to benefit from this and how they are supposed to benefit from it. That it took so long to figure out that one of them wasn't responsible for using chemical weapons should make people realize that those who are likely to benefit from U.S. action could be at least as bad as the Assad government. It's reported that even his side has factions which are likely worse and better placed than others to assume control.
The frustration of men up in the heroic fights against fascism in the 1940s and the one against slavery in the 1860s, that there is no side to support that is a clearly better alternative than the status quo can't be allowed to govern us. TV, movies, novels are structured according to human imagination, which selects from the wider universe of historical and human experience to make up a story. It isn't reality. To an extent neither is written history, though taking into account a wider range of what historians write can provide us with those parts we like and find inspiring and with those which we find disquieting can inform us of reality in a way that fiction can't sustain. Syria in 2013 has no side that can win and unite the country with a reliable chance at having a better government than the awful one in place now.
Syria, to me, seems to be a lot like Afghanistan during the nominal communist rule during the 1980s. If Obama starts bombing and training it won't be enough for McCain and Graham who will constantly press for more and more. Bombing the hell out of a few places for a few days won't do anything to end things, it will almost certainly make things worse and the tendency in that situation is to ramp up the bets and go for broke like a drunk gambler.
It's long been clear that Barack Obama is an extremely unskilled politician whose practice, since law school, has been to profit from volunteering to be coopted by his adversaries. Having watched him do that during the entire course of his presidency, it's time for the rest of the Democratic party to realize it is well into the post-Obama period, that is in the period after anyone has a rational expectation that he will be a strong Democratic president. He simply will not be one. He would have been one already if that was ever going to happen. It's time for Democrats to face that and think ahead to next year. Obama's track record of supporting Democrats in elections he isn't running in is pretty abysmal. Democrats are on their own next year and they don't need to get sucked into the burden of an unpopular war in Syria enabling our opponents, who are the people Obama has allied himself with. Democrats should approach Obama in the same way, any cooperation with him has to be on the same basis, admitting that he has always had a greater affinity for our opponents than us. If they vote to support Obama's and Kerry's bombing in Syria, they are voting to enable John McCain and Lindsay Graham.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Is The Obama Administration Blowing Health Care Due To Being Above Explaining It?
I read The Rude Pundit every once in a while as a kind of guilty pleasure. Not so much the rudeness which is common as hydrogen but because he often makes points I haven't read anyone else saying or saying as succinctly. His post last week about the potential for Affordable Health to help destroy the Republican right contained one passage, though, which made me go down memory lane.
As far as the GOP is concerned, the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act is their appointment with the executioner. That's why they have desperately attempted to defund, discredit, and disappear the thing. Forty votes to overturn it in the House. Threats in the Senate and House to hold the debt ceiling or the budget hostage if it's not defunded. A campaign of disinformation that has succeeded in making 44% of Americans unsure if it's still a law.
And let's be honest here: The Obama administration and the AFA's supporters in Congress have totally fucked up in making people understand exactly what the hell the thing does, beyond easy shit like "No caps" or "Kids can stay on your insurance until 26." Transforming health care for tens of millions of Americans is a huge undertaking, made more complicated by the demands of asshole Republicans and assholier conservative Democrats, so of course it's gonna be hard to explain until it's in effect, no matter how many Katy Perry tweets or Bill Clinton speeches try to help. On October 1, the health insurance exchange opens and people can start shopping and discover for themselves that Obamacare won't rape their dogs, kill their parents, and eat their childrens' hearts while Kenyan drums beat savagely in the background.
Which, while it's not my style, says it about as emphatically as it will be put anywhere. I'd say that the Obama administration is in serious danger of blowing it because they're either too snobbish to explain the program in language that can be understood often enough for it to be understood or, as I strongly suspect, they are so clueless about communicating with real people outside of the DC-Ivy League class that they don't really understand that it's even important to do that. Sort of as a follow up to my post yesterday.
Why smart people do stupid things like that featured in one of my early blog posts when the same kind of thing was happening in one of those experiments in the 50 states that you're always hearing about, one of the alleged virtues of our rather awful federal system. Then I attributed a lot of the problem surrounding Maine's experiment with providing full coverage to too many people wanting to sound like they were speaking West Wing talk. And I think that kind of thing is still a big part of the problem. Oddly, you'd think that Kathleen Sebelius, the former DEMOCRATIC governor of Kansas the quintessential puzzle of selling programs to people who need them, would have a clue about this. That is until you see in her CV that she used to be the Insurance Commissioner of Kansas as well as being a state legislator before then. I suspect that, as much as it may have counted as an asset in setting policy, it probably disabled her ability to talk to real people about health insurance. But that's only a guess.
Here is what I wrote seven years ago as I was tearing my hair out while my Democratic Governor was in danger of blowing what should have been a spectacular asset both in terms of providing health care to people who couldn't afford it and in liberal politics in my state.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
For those who are already turning away, let me reassure you, this is not going into the details of Dirigo Health, though those aren't as complex as an income tax form. A lot of the trouble Dirigo is in comes from the same source as what plagues so much of the Democratic agenda. .
The explanations of Dirigo from its supporters are just awful. They are detailed, they are truthful, they mention all possible roadblocks and turns. They are delivered in so much insurance industry and policy jargon that not one in a thousand of those paying attention can understand what's being said.
John Baldacci, the incumbent Democratic Governor of Maine, has done some things I don't like at and has appointed some people I don't like but he hasn't been a really bad governor. For anyone who needs reminding, Jock McKernan, now better known as Mr. Olympia Snowe was the gold medal winner of bad governors. [Paul LePage, Baldacci's sucessor, has certainly demoted McKernan to second place.] But John Baldacci has appointed spokesmen for Dirigo who can't seem to get three words out not guaranteed to make eyes roll from Kittery to Fort Kent. The program is under attack from Republicans who have two things to say about it, "costs money", "socialized medicine". They just took out the talking points handed to Ronald Reagan in the 60s by the AMA and the insurance industry and are going to bury an experiment that has a real chance of doing it. A model for the nation.
For the Democratic Party in other states and on a national level, you've got bright people making the same STUPID mistake. I know they are brilliant with real degrees in real subjects from fine universities. I know they love the feel of those words coming out of their mouths with perfect diction. I know that if they close their eyes they see C. J. and Toby. But remember all of those plots where these brilliant, jargon fluent, policy wonks got into trouble when they tried to speak in public? There is a reason for that. It's because anyone who takes five minutes from their frantic schedule and looks knows that policy wonkery as public relations is guaranteed to do three things:
1. Confuse the public that would like the program if they understood it,
2. Embarrass them and make them hate you for it.
3. Provide the decisive opportunity for the lying servants of your enemies to master the debate.
For the love of Mike, stop it. You've got to use plain language, you've got to finish talking about step one before you jump to step 49 no matter how much of an inter-relationship there might be. Train two people on your staff to speak English on the subject, on that subject alone and let ONLY them talk on that subject to the public. Come up with simple accurate words and phrases to replace the industry terms that no one understands. If you want to know what those are ask the experts. The janitor, the lunch counter person, your doctor who has only been pretending to understand them all these years. Don't use the words the insurance industry invented to confuse their customers in the first place.
You have made a noble choice to serve the public. You have decided that the sacrifice is worth it. But if it is worth serving the people you should have enough regard for them to explain things. Getting them to understand isn't an exercise in vocabulary building. They've got all the words they want to know. Use those and show the world how smart you really are.
Update 2013: Dirigo Health never lived up to its original potential. What should have been an extremely popular program was always underfunded and its availability was limited. What could have been a roaring success, once it was put into place, was constantly undermined and always widely misunderstood. Here is what the Maine Government website says about it today. Unless and until the Obama administration comes down from the Ivy Tower and explains the program in language people understand, it will always be a shadow of its potential and it will always be under attack, lies about it sold to the very people who would probably like much of it, and will wither and be in danger of blowing away. Unless you've got designated spokesmen who are trained in explaining it, selling it to real people around the country in language they can understand, its failure will be due as much to administrative arrogance as to Republican-corporate lies.
As far as the GOP is concerned, the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act is their appointment with the executioner. That's why they have desperately attempted to defund, discredit, and disappear the thing. Forty votes to overturn it in the House. Threats in the Senate and House to hold the debt ceiling or the budget hostage if it's not defunded. A campaign of disinformation that has succeeded in making 44% of Americans unsure if it's still a law.
And let's be honest here: The Obama administration and the AFA's supporters in Congress have totally fucked up in making people understand exactly what the hell the thing does, beyond easy shit like "No caps" or "Kids can stay on your insurance until 26." Transforming health care for tens of millions of Americans is a huge undertaking, made more complicated by the demands of asshole Republicans and assholier conservative Democrats, so of course it's gonna be hard to explain until it's in effect, no matter how many Katy Perry tweets or Bill Clinton speeches try to help. On October 1, the health insurance exchange opens and people can start shopping and discover for themselves that Obamacare won't rape their dogs, kill their parents, and eat their childrens' hearts while Kenyan drums beat savagely in the background.
Which, while it's not my style, says it about as emphatically as it will be put anywhere. I'd say that the Obama administration is in serious danger of blowing it because they're either too snobbish to explain the program in language that can be understood often enough for it to be understood or, as I strongly suspect, they are so clueless about communicating with real people outside of the DC-Ivy League class that they don't really understand that it's even important to do that. Sort of as a follow up to my post yesterday.
Why smart people do stupid things like that featured in one of my early blog posts when the same kind of thing was happening in one of those experiments in the 50 states that you're always hearing about, one of the alleged virtues of our rather awful federal system. Then I attributed a lot of the problem surrounding Maine's experiment with providing full coverage to too many people wanting to sound like they were speaking West Wing talk. And I think that kind of thing is still a big part of the problem. Oddly, you'd think that Kathleen Sebelius, the former DEMOCRATIC governor of Kansas the quintessential puzzle of selling programs to people who need them, would have a clue about this. That is until you see in her CV that she used to be the Insurance Commissioner of Kansas as well as being a state legislator before then. I suspect that, as much as it may have counted as an asset in setting policy, it probably disabled her ability to talk to real people about health insurance. But that's only a guess.
Here is what I wrote seven years ago as I was tearing my hair out while my Democratic Governor was in danger of blowing what should have been a spectacular asset both in terms of providing health care to people who couldn't afford it and in liberal politics in my state.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
WONKERESE, INADVISABLE OR JUST STUPID
Stay with me two paragraphs, that's all I'm asking. One of the most important and ambitious of those fabled experiments on the state level is in really bad trouble. Dirigo Health of Maine, a well planned try at providing affordable health insurance to the uninsured and the soon to be uninsured, is under full attack by the insurance industry and its Republican spearhead. Those who wax romantic about the states as test tubes always leave that part out. When progress is made in one of the fifty Petri dishes instead of all of them, it's easier for industry to kill the culture. And Maine is a mighty small dish.For those who are already turning away, let me reassure you, this is not going into the details of Dirigo Health, though those aren't as complex as an income tax form. A lot of the trouble Dirigo is in comes from the same source as what plagues so much of the Democratic agenda. .
The explanations of Dirigo from its supporters are just awful. They are detailed, they are truthful, they mention all possible roadblocks and turns. They are delivered in so much insurance industry and policy jargon that not one in a thousand of those paying attention can understand what's being said.
John Baldacci, the incumbent Democratic Governor of Maine, has done some things I don't like at and has appointed some people I don't like but he hasn't been a really bad governor. For anyone who needs reminding, Jock McKernan, now better known as Mr. Olympia Snowe was the gold medal winner of bad governors. [Paul LePage, Baldacci's sucessor, has certainly demoted McKernan to second place.] But John Baldacci has appointed spokesmen for Dirigo who can't seem to get three words out not guaranteed to make eyes roll from Kittery to Fort Kent. The program is under attack from Republicans who have two things to say about it, "costs money", "socialized medicine". They just took out the talking points handed to Ronald Reagan in the 60s by the AMA and the insurance industry and are going to bury an experiment that has a real chance of doing it. A model for the nation.
For the Democratic Party in other states and on a national level, you've got bright people making the same STUPID mistake. I know they are brilliant with real degrees in real subjects from fine universities. I know they love the feel of those words coming out of their mouths with perfect diction. I know that if they close their eyes they see C. J. and Toby. But remember all of those plots where these brilliant, jargon fluent, policy wonks got into trouble when they tried to speak in public? There is a reason for that. It's because anyone who takes five minutes from their frantic schedule and looks knows that policy wonkery as public relations is guaranteed to do three things:
1. Confuse the public that would like the program if they understood it,
2. Embarrass them and make them hate you for it.
3. Provide the decisive opportunity for the lying servants of your enemies to master the debate.
For the love of Mike, stop it. You've got to use plain language, you've got to finish talking about step one before you jump to step 49 no matter how much of an inter-relationship there might be. Train two people on your staff to speak English on the subject, on that subject alone and let ONLY them talk on that subject to the public. Come up with simple accurate words and phrases to replace the industry terms that no one understands. If you want to know what those are ask the experts. The janitor, the lunch counter person, your doctor who has only been pretending to understand them all these years. Don't use the words the insurance industry invented to confuse their customers in the first place.
You have made a noble choice to serve the public. You have decided that the sacrifice is worth it. But if it is worth serving the people you should have enough regard for them to explain things. Getting them to understand isn't an exercise in vocabulary building. They've got all the words they want to know. Use those and show the world how smart you really are.
Update 2013: Dirigo Health never lived up to its original potential. What should have been an extremely popular program was always underfunded and its availability was limited. What could have been a roaring success, once it was put into place, was constantly undermined and always widely misunderstood. Here is what the Maine Government website says about it today. Unless and until the Obama administration comes down from the Ivy Tower and explains the program in language people understand, it will always be a shadow of its potential and it will always be under attack, lies about it sold to the very people who would probably like much of it, and will wither and be in danger of blowing away. Unless you've got designated spokesmen who are trained in explaining it, selling it to real people around the country in language they can understand, its failure will be due as much to administrative arrogance as to Republican-corporate lies.
Friday, September 6, 2013
What About Snowden's Reliance on His Encryption In Face of Today's Episode?
The daily dose of attention getting in the Snowden cult has brought the shocking information that the major intelligence branches of the U.S. and British governments have made enormous strides in breaking encryption. That that should be shocking is rather shocking in the British and Anglophile TV viewers of the U.S. who make up such a large percentage of our soi disant educated classes who are the ones who are being so regularly shocked on cue is rather shocking. Didn't they watch all of those BBC based Nova and Masterpiece shows about Alan Turing and the others at Bletchley? And they didn't have access to anything like modern computers. The uniqueness of Turing's genius would seem to be unlikely, though I've had someone recently express skepticism that there could be anything like a Chinese Turing, assuming that a country containing a significant percentage of the human population wouldn't have someone approaching his abilities. Which could make an interesting blog post in itself.
One of the things I've been assured of while raising the near certainty that the Chinese and Russian governments had whatever data that Snowden carried with him was that the Super Snowden's Amazing Powers of Encryption would guard it from them. Leaving aside the ability of those two governments to force him to give them the keys, presumably Snowden had read the documents that we are to be so shocked about in today's episode of this show. Are we to assume that the Chinese and Russian governments, which are hardly famous for the innocuousness of their intelligence agencies, wouldn't have at least the decryption capability of the British government?
It's too bad that Snowden can't be forced to answer questions about that because it looks like another very good reason to not believe anything that his cult has been saying on the basis of his and his promoters' assurances.
One of the things I've been assured of while raising the near certainty that the Chinese and Russian governments had whatever data that Snowden carried with him was that the Super Snowden's Amazing Powers of Encryption would guard it from them. Leaving aside the ability of those two governments to force him to give them the keys, presumably Snowden had read the documents that we are to be so shocked about in today's episode of this show. Are we to assume that the Chinese and Russian governments, which are hardly famous for the innocuousness of their intelligence agencies, wouldn't have at least the decryption capability of the British government?
It's too bad that Snowden can't be forced to answer questions about that because it looks like another very good reason to not believe anything that his cult has been saying on the basis of his and his promoters' assurances.
On The Non-Thinking of the Play Left
If I'd never been able to read large numbers of people who believe themselves to be and are considered to be on the left end of the political spectrum online, a lot of things that hadn't made sense wouldn't have become clear to me. I'd still look at the general outline of asserted liberal-leftist stands and assumptions as presented in formal articles and political platforms and I'd be at a loss to understand how they and the politicians who supposedly support those could be rejected by the very people who would benefit from them. In other words, I'd still be looking at Kansas and, in frustration, asking what was wrong with it.
William James famously pointed out that, "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." And that isn't a habit reserved to people who vote for Republicans against their own interest. It's quite amazing how many of those who believe themselves to be evidence based rationalists are really only playing with toy blocks of cognition, many of which are minimally reasoned out based on a little evidence, many of which are far less successful as logical holdings, many of them, and most damaging of all, are nothing more than alternative expressions of class and economic interest, mere alternatives to conservative thinking based on slightly different factors, producing a mere variation on self-interest perhaps enlightened by a few more watts.
A lot of those in the last category are powered by the snobbery and disdain for the lower classes, those who had less educational opportunity, in unglamorous low-wage jobs whose lifestyles are entirely unfashionable. And it is more insidious because, while conservatives are sly enough to hide their intentions, the "rational class" proudly maintains their superiority on the basis of that conceit. It's a matter of scientific fact, or so they love to believe, that they are right and that their opponents are stupid-heads. If there wasn't that kind of snobbery really present in a significant percentage of what gets called "the left" it would never have been possible for the right to use it to talk so many millions of people into voting against their best interests. Just as the right seems to be on the verge of losing big due to its racism, its sexism and prejudice, the left has lost so much due to its toleration of the snobs who play at being leftists and liberals.
Early in my blogging career I tried to reconcile what I encountered in the unedited thoughts of more "leftists and liberals" than I'd encountered in real life by a large factor, with what I knew about electoral politics. I've been friends with a number of people who have been members of local and state governments, many times as a liberal running in swing districts. I knew that in order for them to do anything they had to hold the office, something that the many of the leftish libertarians apparently don't understand about basic civics. An out of office politician can do nothing to make laws, to repeal laws, to set regulations and to participate in legislative or committee debates and hearings. If they don't hold office they are either a failed politician or a politician in their own mind and the minds of those they can sucker into wasting their votes on them or, I suspect not infrequently, being suckered into giving money to. Alan Keyes wasn't the first person to make being a serially failed politician into a career. But such focuses of futility couldn't exist without people willing to be suckered. In that endlessly repeating and unproductive exercise, the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves, as someone else once put it.
While the play-leftists online can play at politics, real politicians know they have to be elected with a majority of their vote. Their party, their coalition's hold on power depends on receiving the most votes - and, as the last election proved - even getting the most votes doesn't insure that. In only a tiny handful of congressional districts can the elite snobs playing at being the left deliver an electoral victory for a real liberal, one who is in it to make law to change life for the better. In almost all cases, the real left depends on votes from people this elite disrespects and, in so many cases, openly despises. Unable to deliver on a liberal agenda, they can deliver electoral defeat for liberals, they have largely been doing that for the past forty or so years. Real liberals who attain office in most districts will have to weigh carefully how much the support of the play left will cost them in order to determine how seriously to take them. That is a real factor in why they won't do what we want them to do, they have no choice if they are to hold the office and make liberalism a real force in life instead of the mutual whining of blog communities.
As one of my favorite composers and musicians said, "Don't just sit there taking abuse, you've got to put it to use." And I have put the frustrating experience of watching the play left at play for the past twelve years. It wasn't fun, it wasn't easy to take, its diminution of the effective real left in numbers is troubling, but facing the reality of what it will take for the real left to win elections and make its positions real in real lives is the only road to a better future. It may be the only road to any future that includes human beings. Anyone who wants to divert us or put stumbling blocks of thought in the way will have to be rejected and marginalized, their whining ignored and discredited. Eventually better politicians will be able to take better stands on our agenda, but that will depend on real liberals rebuilding the credibility that has been lost through the "left" which has made itself an asset to our opponents. We need The People to be with us, in their unfashionable clothes,in all their unstylish uncouthness and lower class diction. Those are the people we have to love and respect and listen to and learn from, they won't listen to people who demonstrate their disrespect and disdain for them. I don't expect that the people who this post calls out are going to listen to what it says, after all. Only thing I can say about that is I can count who has been winning elections and making law.
William James famously pointed out that, "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." And that isn't a habit reserved to people who vote for Republicans against their own interest. It's quite amazing how many of those who believe themselves to be evidence based rationalists are really only playing with toy blocks of cognition, many of which are minimally reasoned out based on a little evidence, many of which are far less successful as logical holdings, many of them, and most damaging of all, are nothing more than alternative expressions of class and economic interest, mere alternatives to conservative thinking based on slightly different factors, producing a mere variation on self-interest perhaps enlightened by a few more watts.
A lot of those in the last category are powered by the snobbery and disdain for the lower classes, those who had less educational opportunity, in unglamorous low-wage jobs whose lifestyles are entirely unfashionable. And it is more insidious because, while conservatives are sly enough to hide their intentions, the "rational class" proudly maintains their superiority on the basis of that conceit. It's a matter of scientific fact, or so they love to believe, that they are right and that their opponents are stupid-heads. If there wasn't that kind of snobbery really present in a significant percentage of what gets called "the left" it would never have been possible for the right to use it to talk so many millions of people into voting against their best interests. Just as the right seems to be on the verge of losing big due to its racism, its sexism and prejudice, the left has lost so much due to its toleration of the snobs who play at being leftists and liberals.
Early in my blogging career I tried to reconcile what I encountered in the unedited thoughts of more "leftists and liberals" than I'd encountered in real life by a large factor, with what I knew about electoral politics. I've been friends with a number of people who have been members of local and state governments, many times as a liberal running in swing districts. I knew that in order for them to do anything they had to hold the office, something that the many of the leftish libertarians apparently don't understand about basic civics. An out of office politician can do nothing to make laws, to repeal laws, to set regulations and to participate in legislative or committee debates and hearings. If they don't hold office they are either a failed politician or a politician in their own mind and the minds of those they can sucker into wasting their votes on them or, I suspect not infrequently, being suckered into giving money to. Alan Keyes wasn't the first person to make being a serially failed politician into a career. But such focuses of futility couldn't exist without people willing to be suckered. In that endlessly repeating and unproductive exercise, the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves, as someone else once put it.
While the play-leftists online can play at politics, real politicians know they have to be elected with a majority of their vote. Their party, their coalition's hold on power depends on receiving the most votes - and, as the last election proved - even getting the most votes doesn't insure that. In only a tiny handful of congressional districts can the elite snobs playing at being the left deliver an electoral victory for a real liberal, one who is in it to make law to change life for the better. In almost all cases, the real left depends on votes from people this elite disrespects and, in so many cases, openly despises. Unable to deliver on a liberal agenda, they can deliver electoral defeat for liberals, they have largely been doing that for the past forty or so years. Real liberals who attain office in most districts will have to weigh carefully how much the support of the play left will cost them in order to determine how seriously to take them. That is a real factor in why they won't do what we want them to do, they have no choice if they are to hold the office and make liberalism a real force in life instead of the mutual whining of blog communities.
As one of my favorite composers and musicians said, "Don't just sit there taking abuse, you've got to put it to use." And I have put the frustrating experience of watching the play left at play for the past twelve years. It wasn't fun, it wasn't easy to take, its diminution of the effective real left in numbers is troubling, but facing the reality of what it will take for the real left to win elections and make its positions real in real lives is the only road to a better future. It may be the only road to any future that includes human beings. Anyone who wants to divert us or put stumbling blocks of thought in the way will have to be rejected and marginalized, their whining ignored and discredited. Eventually better politicians will be able to take better stands on our agenda, but that will depend on real liberals rebuilding the credibility that has been lost through the "left" which has made itself an asset to our opponents. We need The People to be with us, in their unfashionable clothes,in all their unstylish uncouthness and lower class diction. Those are the people we have to love and respect and listen to and learn from, they won't listen to people who demonstrate their disrespect and disdain for them. I don't expect that the people who this post calls out are going to listen to what it says, after all. Only thing I can say about that is I can count who has been winning elections and making law.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Claude Debussy: Feuilles Mortes Preludes Book II #2
Monique Haas
Trees here have started turning so Dead Leaves.
Glenn Greenwald As The Dead Canary in the Coal Mine of Pseudo-Liberalism
Major Update below
One of the weirdest things about the Greenwald cult is the assertion that we're supposed to be upset that the United States spied on other countries and diplomats. O, so the saying goes, the humanity! That his fan base is so wet behind the ears that it doesn't understand that's the truly legitimate reason for spying, to find out what other countries are up to that they're not telling the world about, only shows how truly unserious they are. That a country keeps something secret is a pretty good indication that it is of legitimate interest to another country and, quite often, is something seriously important for them to know. Otherwise, they wouldn't be keeping it a secret. And it's especially funny considering the bread and butter of their cult. What do they think Snowden was doing when he took a job to engage in free lance espionage? And that was what he was doing. If we were in a declared war I'd have no problem calling what he did treason, by his own admission. He was stealing secret information from the U.S. government and handing it out. As of now, we don't know what he did with all of what he took, I doubt he gave all of it to Greenwald and Poitras and, as it becomes obvious, other entities. I strongly suspect he was intending to either sell or trade some of it to the Chinese government but was rather stupid in putting himself directly under their control as he did that. If he thinks that's libelous, he can sue.
One of the weirdest things about the Greenwald cult is the assertion that we're supposed to be upset that the United States spied on other countries and diplomats. O, so the saying goes, the humanity! That his fan base is so wet behind the ears that it doesn't understand that's the truly legitimate reason for spying, to find out what other countries are up to that they're not telling the world about, only shows how truly unserious they are. That a country keeps something secret is a pretty good indication that it is of legitimate interest to another country and, quite often, is something seriously important for them to know. Otherwise, they wouldn't be keeping it a secret. And it's especially funny considering the bread and butter of their cult. What do they think Snowden was doing when he took a job to engage in free lance espionage? And that was what he was doing. If we were in a declared war I'd have no problem calling what he did treason, by his own admission. He was stealing secret information from the U.S. government and handing it out. As of now, we don't know what he did with all of what he took, I doubt he gave all of it to Greenwald and Poitras and, as it becomes obvious, other entities. I strongly suspect he was intending to either sell or trade some of it to the Chinese government but was rather stupid in putting himself directly under their control as he did that. If he thinks that's libelous, he can sue.
I am glad the United States spies on other countries and I am certain that other countries spy on the United States. The countries that Snowden fled to and Greenwald lives in certainly do that and, far more so than the United States has been exposed as doing, on their own citizens. As Joshua Foust seems to be making a habit of doing, he puts into words what others of us intend to get to someday, asking Why is There Outcry Only Over American Spying?
One of the things that this whole thing shows is that there is a very weird thing going on. The United States probably has among the strongest legal protections of individual liberties of any country in the world. In fact, it is exactly those liberties from which many of our problems come. Buckley vs. Valeo, Citizens United are all structured and sold as rights under the constitution. I would assert that most our problems, most of the real, genuine dangers to democracy, come from the rich and powerful and their legal and media lackies, abusing those protections to harm and cheat other people, destroy the environment and endanger our democracy. Oddly enough, extending privacy as far as some of these people want to will only make that worse. As the post I linked to yesterday morning shows, Greenwald isn't especially on record as caring about that and he is on record of wishing for a billionaire savior who will subvert the democratic process with his money to take power. Not to mention his hankering after a conservative Republican such as Gary Johnson.
By saying he might support Gary Johnson, Glenn Greenwald has now demonstrated that he is a narrowly-focused advocate who cares about only a few issues, and is not a liberal or progressive with a broad sense of the common good. He’s also a poor political analyst, for if can’t he recognize the damage that would be unleashed by having as a president someone who cavorts with 9-11 truther Alex Jones and who in 2008 endorsed nutball libertarian Ron Paul for president, why pay attention to what he says outside the narrowly legal boundaries of his claims about the government, our politicians and public policy?
And that same narrow focus guides many of his admirers who know that they don't trust the American government while ignoring that, compared with others such as China, Russia, Brazil ... it's the freedom and privacy available in the United States that has allowed the billionaires and multi-millionaires to corrupt it just as it has in those countries which, apparently, are seen by what unfortunately represents the left as havens of freedom and privacy. And, by the way, we are supposed to take that all very seriously even as it is complete nonsense.
Most bizarre of all is how the alleged liberals sound exactly like what are supposed to be their polar opposites, their irrational paranoia focused on the federal government to the extent that some of them express admiration for the insanity of Rand Paul and others. If you transposed a lot of the comments on allegedly liberal blogs to World Nuts Daily or Before It's News, you'd be hard pressed to find the "liberal" expression from the right wing crackpots.
If the results of Edward Snowden's espionage result in ending the contracting of spying to corporations such as those who hired and cleared Snowden and conglomerates such as the Carlye Group it might signal a real reform of domestic spying operations. If the base of judges under FISA is widened under a system less guaranteed to produce bias, that will be good. If there is more, real, independent, congressional oversight of spying, that would be excellent. But I doubt those are going to be the result of this nonsense. I've never been less than extremely unhappy with the present system of civilian oversight of spying and I'm certainly not happy with the operations branches of the CIA and FBI. But I doubt that the national tantrum over the rather unshocking revelations of what the NSA is up to - frankly, I'd always figured they were doing a lot more than that - is going to lead to real reform. And that reform is absolutely needed because every country that has ever existed spies both internationally and internally.
I'm not unhappy that some of that spying happens when it prevents murders and terrorism and a host of other crimes against The American People and people elsewhere. I'm not unhappy when it puts criminals in prison. I'm unhappy when they spy on pacifist groups, environmental groups, and civil rights groups. I'm unhappy when they get away with doing that. I suspect that under a Gary Johnson administration, that wouldn't be done less often than it is under the Obama administration. Though I thought Eric Holder, among many others, should be replaced by people less wedded to the establishment. That establishment serves the billionaires, the Bush family, the Cheney Family, the Koch's and not The People. That is where the real danger to democracy lies, their ability to game the Bill of Rights and the law for their purposes, and, as Greenwald shows, he's not really interested in addressing that, he wants it to take the presidency.
Update: After finishing this post I remembered that Glenn Greenwald was a big fan of the Citizens United ruling, presenting a truly dangerous ruling for the very legitimacy of the government as a "free speech" issue. That along with his heroic savoir billionaire, cutting through the democratic system powered by the billions in "free speech" at their disposal, betrays just how elitist Greenwald is. A long time ago I noted how dismissive the media were of the importance of self-government by an accurately informed population are and Greenwald is certainly singing from the same book they are. Among the most important reasons for free speech to matter is its service to that kind of self-government by The People. When "speech" is equated with money, it's very easy to do a calculation.
If money equals speech then you can count it, you can figure out how much speech someone has. It only takes the simplest math. With P being a person and m being the money they have. P(m)= Speech owned by p. Or, more simply, 1xm=Speech. P is a person and always equals 1. m is a variable, it depends on the amount of money P owns. As m increases then the total speech owned by P increases. Buckley v. Valeo makes it possible for the first time in our history to calculate the amount of free speech someone has.
It might be lost on our brilliant Supreme Court and the scholars who support this monstrosity but if m=O the free speech owned by P is zero. Maybe they are so busy rearranging legal Platonisms that they don't know what happens when you multiply one by zero. Or maybe they do understand and the outcome doesn't bother them. And that wouldn't surprise me anymore than that it is a Buckley who has his name attached to it.
But that doesn't much concern the libertarian puritanism of Greenwald.
For those who believe that “money is not speech,” I’d be interested in your answers to these questions. [Note: the link doesn't work at Salon]
As for the question of whether corporations possess “personhood,” that’s an interesting issue and, as I said, I’m very sympathetic to the argument that they do not, but the majority’s ruling here did not really turn on that question. That’s because the First Amendment does not only vest rights in “persons.” It says nothing about “persons.” It simply bans Congress from making any laws abridging freedom of speech.
And in a response in the comments:
GlennGreenwald
FRIDAY, JAN 22, 2010 11:37 AM EST
KcM
As Justice Stevens said in 2000, "money isn't speech. It is property." I find it hard to argue differently. [From KcM's comment]
Greenwald's comment on it:
I don't find these even plausible, let alone persuasive. Anyone who believes that would have to say that there's no First Amendment problem with any law that restricts the spending of money for political purposes, such as:
"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money to criticize laws enacted by the Congress; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such laws, provided no money is spent;" or
"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money advocating Constitutional rights for accused terrorists; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such matters, provided no money is spent"; or
"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money promoting a candidate not registered with either the Democratic or Republican Party; all citizens shall still be free to advocate for such candidates, provided no money is spent."
Anyone who actually believes that "money is not speech" would have to believe that such laws are necessarily permitted by the First Amendment (since they merely restrict the expenditure of money, which is not speech).
Do you actually believe that? I don't even find that argument sufficiently coherent to warrant much discussion.
It would be like saying: "No person shall be permitted to use a megaphone or television outlet to advocate liberal views -- there's no First Amendment problem: megaphones and television outlets are just 'property, not speech'."
Of course, I've never known of someone who had, never mind could use billions of megaphones and the number of billionaires who would use their wealth to promote liberal views would seem to be not in evidence or where are they now? Greenwald is a wealthy libertarian living the expat life in a multi-million dollar enclave among truly horrific third world squalor. He's a very odd hero of American style liberalism.
Update: After finishing this post I remembered that Glenn Greenwald was a big fan of the Citizens United ruling, presenting a truly dangerous ruling for the very legitimacy of the government as a "free speech" issue. That along with his heroic savoir billionaire, cutting through the democratic system powered by the billions in "free speech" at their disposal, betrays just how elitist Greenwald is. A long time ago I noted how dismissive the media were of the importance of self-government by an accurately informed population are and Greenwald is certainly singing from the same book they are. Among the most important reasons for free speech to matter is its service to that kind of self-government by The People. When "speech" is equated with money, it's very easy to do a calculation.
If money equals speech then you can count it, you can figure out how much speech someone has. It only takes the simplest math. With P being a person and m being the money they have. P(m)= Speech owned by p. Or, more simply, 1xm=Speech. P is a person and always equals 1. m is a variable, it depends on the amount of money P owns. As m increases then the total speech owned by P increases. Buckley v. Valeo makes it possible for the first time in our history to calculate the amount of free speech someone has.
It might be lost on our brilliant Supreme Court and the scholars who support this monstrosity but if m=O the free speech owned by P is zero. Maybe they are so busy rearranging legal Platonisms that they don't know what happens when you multiply one by zero. Or maybe they do understand and the outcome doesn't bother them. And that wouldn't surprise me anymore than that it is a Buckley who has his name attached to it.
But that doesn't much concern the libertarian puritanism of Greenwald.
For those who believe that “money is not speech,” I’d be interested in your answers to these questions. [Note: the link doesn't work at Salon]
As for the question of whether corporations possess “personhood,” that’s an interesting issue and, as I said, I’m very sympathetic to the argument that they do not, but the majority’s ruling here did not really turn on that question. That’s because the First Amendment does not only vest rights in “persons.” It says nothing about “persons.” It simply bans Congress from making any laws abridging freedom of speech.
And in a response in the comments:
GlennGreenwald
FRIDAY, JAN 22, 2010 11:37 AM EST
KcM
As Justice Stevens said in 2000, "money isn't speech. It is property." I find it hard to argue differently. [From KcM's comment]
Greenwald's comment on it:
I don't find these even plausible, let alone persuasive. Anyone who believes that would have to say that there's no First Amendment problem with any law that restricts the spending of money for political purposes, such as:
"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money to criticize laws enacted by the Congress; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such laws, provided no money is spent;" or
"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money advocating Constitutional rights for accused terrorists; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such matters, provided no money is spent"; or
"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money promoting a candidate not registered with either the Democratic or Republican Party; all citizens shall still be free to advocate for such candidates, provided no money is spent."
Anyone who actually believes that "money is not speech" would have to believe that such laws are necessarily permitted by the First Amendment (since they merely restrict the expenditure of money, which is not speech).
Do you actually believe that? I don't even find that argument sufficiently coherent to warrant much discussion.
It would be like saying: "No person shall be permitted to use a megaphone or television outlet to advocate liberal views -- there's no First Amendment problem: megaphones and television outlets are just 'property, not speech'."
Of course, I've never known of someone who had, never mind could use billions of megaphones and the number of billionaires who would use their wealth to promote liberal views would seem to be not in evidence or where are they now? Greenwald is a wealthy libertarian living the expat life in a multi-million dollar enclave among truly horrific third world squalor. He's a very odd hero of American style liberalism.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Provocative Idea For The Day
While washing up, I've been listening to Dr. Matt Walker of the U.C. Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory Arts and Lectures, going on about sleep even as he admits that very little is known about it. In passing he quoted someone whose name I didn't catch, he called him "the father" of his field, who said that if dreaming didn't have any biological function it was the greatest error of evolution.
Well, how would you know that if you don't understand dreaming in human beings? And, since he goes on to talk about animals who can't articulate anything of their experience of dreaming, how much less does he know what's going on in animals' experience when we assume they are dreaming? Even in humans about all we know about dreams is based on people reporting their experience and their reports are not exactly uniform. Perhaps there are a range of things that happen that we, in our inability to access other peoples' experience, we classify as "dreaming".
But, and this is far more provocative, how does he know that dreaming has anything to do with evolution? Maybe it is entirely divorced from evolution, especially if, as most of the scientists I've heard talk about evolution, he really means natural selection. If, and this is a crucial "if" to make my point, dreaming is entirely neutral in terms of evolution, the temptation would be to try to force it into an explanation based in some invented benefit in terms of natural selection. I doubt, given the total hegemony that natural selection has on our thinking about biology, that it is presently possible for us to even entertain possible alternative ideas about it. But what if more understanding of dreaming, or any other aspect of our experience, would depend on radically different ways of thinking about it, we wouldn't be able to understand it. But we might believe the lore that develops due to the cyclical explanatory system of trying to fit phenomena into natural selection and that being taken as confirmation of the selective explanation. I have to say that a lot of this looks exactly like begging the question to me.
I wonder what chance any other explanation could have in the orthodox culture of biology and, especially, in fads like neuro-imaging. I suspect that any real advances will depend on unorthodox thinking about it. Though I strongly suspect that human consciousness is not, ultimately, susceptible to scientific methods. We've seen the frameworks around that rise to a glorious hegemony only to witness their crashing into ruin over and over again. Beginning with natural selection and trying to push consciousness into it has not been a successful strategy. It's been the basis of a lot of it, from Freud to today. After three or four major schools tumbling into discredit sort of feeds my skepticism on that count. Given the discussion that is all over the map, both the interview (where's the lecture?) and the questions, it doesn't sound much different from the things I suspect these same folk would call "woo" if Walker had an Indian or Chinese instead of a upper crust British accent.
Oh, yeah, I've procrastinated enough, back to the dishes.
Oh, yeah, I've procrastinated enough, back to the dishes.
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