I’m not too worried about the Wisconsin outcome. At one time I thought there was hope there for the beginning of the “uprising,” but that’s just a fond remembrance of the 1960’s, a time when the upper classes were caught off guard and didn’t quite know how to react. As I am fond of saying, all of American history from the early 1970’s forward can be summed up as a reaction to the 60’s. It scared the crap out of them. Even the saddest current legacy of this futnucking place, kids in hock up to their eyebrows with college debt, can be traced to the refuge that college campuses had become back then. Kids could go to college and walk away with the beginnings of a way through life and without a mountain of debt. No more. It gives them too damned much freedom.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is a combination of arrogance and stupidity. That he thinks himself so right when he’s so wrong is what makes him what he is – an idiot. But there are so many Scott Walkers around today in every state, in every race, that we just have to weather this storm. American politics is incredibly stupid on the Republican side, and soft in the belly on the Democratic side. Since both sides feed at the teat of the 1%, there is no hope in that system for immediate reprieve. We’ll have to live for a good long time with extreme wealth inequality, unending war and mountainous private debt. We’ll have to endure another crash or two, and defeat in these wars (they lost in Iraq and are losing in Afghanistan, very nice) before there’s any division among the owning classes about what kind of society we want. Out of that might come some inspired leadership, and some strength from popular movements.
Continue reading “Nutshell history” →

Today’s recall election in Wisconsin is close, but Gov Scott Walker is expected to pull it out. A push from Obama might be helpful, but he’s kinda busy.

Democrats are odd ducks, possessed of no fight yet expecting enthusiastic support from voters. The Wisconsin uprising, a sign of life in our country’s sleeping labor movement, officially ends today with the Walker victory.

Thanks, Democrats, for hitting the snooze button.

Elmo Roper (1900-1971) was a pioneer of the science of polling, and his legacy is The Roper Center at UConn. The fundamental principle of polling is that we are more alike than we know, so that one person (assuming proper selection techniques) represents the views of thousands of others. So a poll of 1,500 Americans, properly done, can predict the outcome of an election with astounding accuracy. (Exit polls are even more accurate.)

We are polled more than an other people on earth, mostly for commercial purposes. We are also asked our opinions on political issues. But those opinions are not important (if so, we’d have national health care). Political polling on issues is merely a means of ascertaining whether or not opinion management techniques are effective.*

It’s easy to wander off into idealistic notions of democracy and get all glassy-eyed about the will of the people, voting and all of that. Roper’s research led him down a different path. He concluded that 90% of Americans are “…politically inert, inactive, inattentive, manipulable, and without critical faculty.”

I wish it were not so, because it rules out self-governance as a viable alternative to rule by the “elite,” or moneyed interests. What then is the point of having elections?
Continue reading “Why elections do matter” →

Has this ever happened to you – you’re at a family wedding, and suddenly, a drone strike kills the entire wedding party and many guests?

Are you tired of annoying government agencies killing your friends and family members?

We can put an end to these pesky assassins by signing onto the White House DO NOT KILL LIST. Once on that list, you can rest assured that President Obama will remove your name from the list of Americans he wants to kill. Here’s the petition, which despite the snarky nature of this blog post, is quite real, as is the kill list:

The New York Times reports that President Obama has created an official “kill list” that he uses to personally order the assassination of American citizens. Considering that the government already has a “Do Not Call” list and a “No Fly” list, we hereby request that the White House create a “Do Not Kill” list in which American citizens can sign up to avoid being put on the president’s “kill list” and therefore avoid being executed without indictment, judge, jury, trial or due process of law.

h/t David Sirota

I tend to think of veterans, along with the people they maim and kill and turn into refugees, as mere victims. They know not what they do. They are mostly high school graduates, many drop-outs, but not by any means of lesser intellectual ability than the rest of us. They only suffer limited exposure. Also, they needed a job.

On return from duty they often assume an exalted posture, thinking of themselves as exceptional people who have given of themselves, put their lives on the line to “protect” us. Indeed they are at risk, and a small percentage die, more are wounded, and many are so jaded by the things they saw and were asked to do that they are forever changed – “PTSD” we call it now.

But there is a problem with that line of thought, as they are protecting us from non-existent enemies. No Vietnamese, Nicaraguan, Afghan, Iraqi, Libyan, Somalian, Sudanese, Colombian, Yemeni, Iranian, Panamanian or Grenadan has threatened our safety. Yet we have attacked them all.

We set this day aside in their honor. President Obama today repeated the myth that Vietnam veterans were abused on return. I suppose I should honor veterans in some way, but not for what they do or for their low level of awareness. I honor them if they return smarter people, if military duties changed them in such a way that their political and social awareness was raised. If they assume their proper role as world citizens, respecting life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness everywhere on the planet, and not just here, then I honor them.

Pat Tillman, prior to his death, had arranged to have a meeting with Noam Chomsky. That’s an extraordinary transition of mind, and few can be expected to make such a change. But if a few of our veterans leave the military in a higher state of awareness than those I have encountered in my life’s wanderings, I guess I can say it’s a bit like kissing your sister. It ain’t exciting, it ain’t fulfilling, but it ain’t nothing.

To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; he is carried along in the current, and can at no time take time to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness – of himself, of his condition, of his society – for the man who lives by current events. Such a man never stops to investigate any one point, any more than he will tie together a series of news events. (Ellul, Propaganda, pp 46-47)

[Footnote*]
I don’t wish to follow the common notion that propaganda is a series of lies or even a big lie, but for this purpose this day will concentrate on one very big lie. The big propaganda event of 2011 was the “killing” of Osama bin Laden, and it is so thinly constructed, so transparently false, that I wonder why it is so easily sold.

In large part this has to do with the follow-the-leader nature of the American public (the “public” that I am familiar with – I suppose other “publics” are as malleable). If important people say it is true, and especially if there is general agreement among people who purport to oppose one another in public, then the story will be believed, no matter how incredible.
Continue reading “A matter of continuing puzzlement” →

I normally don’t read books by Washington insiders, as I find them boring. I have tried. I once worked my way through a book by the actor who played a journalist in the Watergate affair, Bob Woodward. The book, Plan of Attack, was awful – he had Bush saying things he could not possibly say; Bush all by himself deciding to invade Iraq, as if he was in charge. The book had glossy black and white still photographs, obviously posed, of administration officials talking, one in particular where Bush was looking officious and others standing around listening with serious faces. Does anyone ask how that camera got in the room? Not Woodward.

Does anyone ever ask why he is even granted such access? If he were a decent journalist, he’d never get through the front door. Journalism, as Assange and Manning well know, is illegal.

I did find Plan of Attack useful – I hollowed out the middle and used it to hide spare credit cards and cash. I thought if anyone was looking for a book with significant content, that would not be that one. My valuables would be safe hidden in garbage.
Continue reading “The audacity of somnambulant stupidity” →