What Will It Take?

Is there anything at all that Bush could be caught doing that would get this Congress to impeach him? A "smoking gun" proving he was a paid agent of Osama Bin Laden? Would that do the trick? No doubt the Republicans would claim he was merely doing undercover work.

The Fall of Karl Rove

O, Christmas for which I yearn. It is to be expected that there is a certain amount of chicanery involved in any game as competitive as politics. In fact, no one anywhere in any game is likely to be as pure as the driven snow. (But what do I know about driven snow? I live in Central Texas). But a guy like Karl Rove is on a plane with some of the true villains of history--Martin Borman & Herman Goering springs to mind. The Bush Administration has been thwarted in the exercise of its basic impulses because the country retains enough of its democratic culture that allows incipient fascism only to come out as sort of Fascist Lite, or soft fascism.

The comparisons with the Nazis are old hat, virtually cliches. When people make those comparisons, they are condemned as shrill. However, as another cliche has it, "If the shoe fits..."

Purity Bollocks

It has become fashionable in some quarters on the Christian Right to host so-called "purity balls" in which young girls, some as young as 9 YO, pledge to their fathers to remain virgins until they are married. By newspaper reports it is a white dress & tux affair, with all the ambience of a wedding.

No sane person thinks it is a good idea for young girls to start sleeping around ASAP, but I can't help but thinking the whole idea of "purity balls" is rather nasty. To me it seems to carry a sort of pedophiliac shadow behind it.

The newspapers go on to report a study in which it was found that 88% of such young pledgers fail to keep their pledge, and because of their attendant shame engage in more unprotected sex and take other kinds of risk with their sexual behavior.

The practical consequences are important & but I continue to feel poleaxed by the ugly esthetics of such dirty puritanism.

Law and Order

I've been through the re-runs as many times as is practicable. I must find a new drug.

Back again...& the Bushies running the clock out

I have failed to post regularly primarily because the computer I use the most seems to have an allergy to my password. I keep having to reset it, and since I'm posting on the fly, during breaks at work, etc., I have yielded to the temptation to regard the whole business as just too much trouble...but a friend of mine once remarked that I have "long range perseverance"--what he meant was that while I may give up in the short term, I always return to the project and eventually complete it. If only that were a simple and absolute truth...

The latest Bush Administration scandal, the firing of the U.S. Attorneys, in a better world would mean the impeachment and conviction of Bush himself, the VP and several cabinet officers--not to mention the firing of many, many senior staff and their subsequent indictment and conviction for assorted criminal activities. But they're going to get away with it because of the inadequate majority of Democrats in the Senate...

Meanwhile, back at the homestead in Texas, there's the billowing scandal at the Texas Youth Commission--well, let's just say if you underfund government and contract out services, you are not only screwing up the services government is supposed to deliver, you're also sticking it to the taxpayers and enriching crony capitalists...and that's aside from those in the system who are victimized by abuse and neglect because of the failure to regulate adequately...I have no indisputable empirical evidence that government per se always does a better job than the private sector per se, but I strongly suspect it is true. Certainly, there is very little evidence that the private sector is superior. I know that seems counterintuitive to many because of the numerous anecdotes about government waste and inefficiency, but when one looks at each situation, one almost invariably finds that the government's inefficiency is usually the result of undue influence by the private sector (see Defense contracting), or the inappropriate application of the profit motive in a government agency...

Wanted: A lever to move the world

If one wanted to become a committed activist of some kind to Make the World a Better Place, the range of options is staggering. If I were faced with such dilemmas, I think I would be handicapped by (among other things)a certain subliminally acquired consumerist mentality...Unless I could break out of that mentality, the process of choosing a cause would resemble the same process a body might have to go through to choose a soap powder from amongst the vast array offered in supermarkets. One problem with choosing a cause in that way is that, unlike soap powders, there are significant differences between the various causes. There has got to be a way to make an intelligent choice.

(I believe I promised in a too long ago post, that I would do a continuation of that post--something to do with theology, I think. I will keep the promise, but right now I have other things on my mind.

Digression from the previous post & re Jesus

The great Protestant Reinold Niebuhr affirmed in one of his books that Communists were misguided Children of Light--that was before he fell into a Cold War mentality--but I think his point is indisputable (that is, if you're into logic, evidence & stuff like that). One thing which almost all non-fundamentalist biblical scholars* agree upon is this: Jesus was a radical egalitarian & that may have been the most scandalous aspect of his teachings as far as his Jewish contemporaries were concerned. Jesus initially probably had only his fellow Jews in mind for this doctrine of radical inclusiveness. Indeed, judging from the tone of his remarks to the Samaritan lady at the well, he rather seems to have disliked non-Jews. Later, toward the end of his life, there are signs he was mellowing toward Gentiles. (I refer everybody to Bruce Chilton's books Rabbi Jesus and Rabbi Paul for support of the foregoing theses about Christian inclusiveness.)

It would be an anachronism to affirm that Jesus was a socialist, but some form of socialism would seem to be a natural consequence of Jesus's ethics as applied to political economy. More on this later.

*if a fundamentalist biblical scholar is not a contradiction in terms.

The unwatched SOTU

I couldn't stand to watch Bush deliver his cornpone agitprop on behalf of his utopia for the extremely rich, the very white, and the excessively lucky. Frederic Jameson in so many words points out that everyone is a utopian, and generates a utopia in his or her head according to the class to which he or she belongs or aspires to join. Everybody knows that his or her respective utopia can at best only be partially realized, but some are in a better position than others in their attempts to realize it.

I don't believe that conventional liberals are in any way a front for real world Communists, Socialists, Marxists, et al; but one of the redeeming qualities of mere liberals is that most yearn for it to be possible to have fellowship with absolutely anybody at all, should they want to do so. This is a preconscious presumption for equality and access to others than could only actually exist in the context of a classless society.

I will try and continue this thought in the next post unless something urgent pre-empts it.

Point of Light in the MSM

CNN actually debunked a story put out by Fox News consisting of lies and innuendoes about Barack Obama (that when he was six he attended an Islamic terrorist madras (sp?)school & also implying that Obama is a Muslim when he is actually a Baptist)

I do not know if Fox News ratings bleed will continue, but it does seem to me that the audience for Fox News is becoming increasingly isolated, discountable and discounted. I would love to see Murdoch empire go belly-up.

Dresden Files

Dresden Files premiered on the Sci Fi channel last night. It was not as engaging as I had hoped, yet I thought the series showed promise. After the characters from Jim Butcher's over-the-top urban fantasy novels are properly introduced, as well as the rules of his notion of the Otherwhere , I think it will find at least a niche following. I'll probably watch it semi-regurlarly unless it really goes down hill.

Characterization and settings are pretty faithful--although they changed the wizard's VW to a jeep & Murphy in the books, if I recall correctly, is a short, pugnacious blonde Irish person. She's an auburn-brunette on TV and seems tallish.

I don't feel like politics today--none of the Democrats who have announced their candidacy who have a chance would be a bad president although I've already decided on Edwards. I'm going to await Bush's doubtless miserable State of the Union address before adding any more political comments.

Chavez

I fear Chavez is playing a dangerous game with his blue language attacks on U.S. officials. For the moment, the Administration is bogged down with enough problems to do much to Chavez, & I'm reasonably sure that much of his rhetoric is for domestic (and Latin American) consumption. But he's building a resume that some Democratic President and Administration could use against him to prove that they are tough guys when it comes to perceived threats to U.S. interests, particularly capitalist ones, and particularly when those threats emanate from dadgummed commies and socialists lke Chavez.

Libraries are my temple

Politicians who don't support libraries are in a category only slightly above book burners--in my book.

Andrew Carnegie, despite his many other sins against the common good, is now in heaven for helping to initiate the municipal library system.

I wish I knew what circle Dante put folks who are guilty of sacrilege.

Even wicked books, such as Mein Kampf, should be available for intellectual autopsy. And banning books only empowers them beyond the influence they might ordinarily have.

Thanks to the public library system, I believe many a poor lad and lass have read themselves right out of the constrictions of poverty, race and class. I believe that the public library enabled me to do so. (To be honest, my constrictions were primarily of class--though poor I probably only missed one day without a meal.)

The library is also one of the few relatively commerce-free zones left in our society.

Gloominess of mature political perspective

As I get older it seems more and more apparent that the world is on the brink of going to hell in a handbasket. But maybe that's the quasi-eternal generational view taken by people over 50 who give a shit about world affairs and politics, regardless of their position on the political spectrum. I was not a conscious entity during the glory days of the New Deal. Now looking back at that time that I know mostly through books and a few converstions with older folk, it is easy for me to depict it in my mind as a halcyon era. But we (the U.S.) was involved in a frightfully costly war and many of Roosevelt's plans were squelched by the same forces that ran the country for two previous generations, and are again running the country now. I peruse the rants of the right wing and see that they are also convinced we are on the brink of disaster, brought on by liberal forces whom they tend to regard as dangerously naive and/or near treasonous. What utter bullshit.

I read one of their screeds and once again I find myself reinforced in my political faith that socialism, in the broadest sense, is the way to establish the Good Society. I believe that some day humanity will achieve that. That does not mean that all problems will be solved. I have little doubt that if humanity does eventually achieve the Good Society, with peace, justice, freedom and prosperity for all, as we understand it, that somehow there will be an undertow generating some other problems that we can't even imagine now. Perhaps TWGAS (those who give a shit) of a certain age have similar Sisyphean intuitions that kindle their pessimism about their projects. But I think on this and conclude that we can't worry about those unimaginable problems we will likely generate, regardless of the nature of the utopias we hope to establish. As Billy Blake sez:

I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Untl we have built Jerusalem
In England's* green and pleasant land

*or wherever.

Enya

Someday soon I'm going to put up a list on the right under the rubric "World Music Finds." Enya won't be among them because I reckon everybody who might care knows who Enya is. The folkiness of her music may be compromised by the use of synthesizers and various electronic tricks, her work may be haunted by a cloying New Age ethos, but anybody who can sing "I dreamed I dwelt in marble halls..." and make me believe it for the duration is not a good singer, but a real good singer. (The designation 'great' should be reserved for people like Shakespeare or Abraham Lincoln).

Interrupted journey toward fascism

A friend of mine opined that it was a crazy leftish idea to think that the Bush Administration was taking the U.S. down the road to fascism--even when that idea was expressed on the libertarian Right. I believe my friend was mistaken. Every action the Bush Administration has taken, and every theoretical justification for those actions, with respect to expanding the executive and demeaning the leglislative and judicial branches, seems to me to have had the sole purpose of creating and legitimizing a caudillo style fascist state. I believe the 2006 election has slowed their progress to a crawl. N.B.: that archetypical defender of constitutional rights, Arlen Specter, slipped a provision in the provision in the Patriot Act giving the Prez the right to choose U.S. Federal prosecutors without Senate review. Conveniently, that right now is being exercised to get rid of prosecutors who have Rethug politicians in their sights & replace them with Rethugs.

Excerpt from note to D.H. on the sometime rightness of the Right...

My favorite Marxist writer, Frederic Jameson, who writes mostly about literature and cultural politics, observed once that the Right often has better insight into the reality on the ground than many liberal intellectuals...Jameson also said that conspiracy theories are the poor man's social critique...(for "poor man" read "unsophisticated" and/or "ill informed")

Buchanan represents the fairly sane wavelength on the Far Right spectrum exemplified by the likes of a fellow like William Cooper, author of BEHOLD A PALE RIDER...Cooper was an ex-Navy officer who came to believe in something like the Trilateral Commission-Illuminati--International Communist Conpiracy theory of history...He believed that the Protocols of Zion were true, except that the culprits weren't the Jews, it was, in contemporary terms, the international socialist conspiracy, openly yclept The New World Order & at the time of his book's publication, Cooper regarded the elder Bush as the mastermind--or figurehead, I'm not sure which--overseeing the whole conspiracy. Cooper said (approximately direct quote) we would have been better off if Dukakis with his drunken wife had been elected President... Without doing any research on the guy's life, I would be willing to bet money that Cooper was somebody who grew up in a small town, or at least a sheltered neighborhood, who tended to believe that the corner grocery store was the epitome of capitalism...vast international corporations and the various mechanisms by which they promote their interests could not but seem socialist to such a soul...in a sense he was/is right...Marx observed that corporations represent, among other things, the incredible economic power of large scale social production...Cooper was wigged out on a number of fronts, but he, like many rightwing nutsos, was on to something without really knowing what it was...When I was putzing around with the Spartacist League, we had a saying that Maoism was Trotskyism with a prefrontal lobotomy...I'm no longer a doctrinaire Marxist (if I ever was), but I would extend the comparison to those weird aspects of Right Wingery with which I sometimes sense a odd resonance...

The Dark View

We are truly messed over. I think Bush is just smart enough to avoid an action in Iran that will get him impeached, but not smart enough to solve any of problems he has already created or the additional problems he is creating with Iran and the rest of the Middle East. He will run the clock out to January 20th, 2009. His successor will have to spend all of her time and whatever political capital she has (no assumptions with the pronoun--just felt like using an EO pronoun) picking up the pieces left behind by the disastrous Bush Administration and continuing to fight a rearguard action against those forces that would send us back to the Gilded Age as far as social justice is concerned--much like what Bill Clinton had to do after the Reagan and Bush I years...Probably true even if Bush and Cheney were impeached and Pelosi took the helm...Perhaps one could argue for a silver lining in that Republican neocon and neoliberal policies should be dead in the water for a generation...except they won't...there will be "stab in the back" theories to account for their failures, but more important I think is simply the absence of Americans' capacity for historical memory...Reagan shouldn't have a video game arcade named after him, let alone an airport or an elementary school, but there you go again...Of course, there's the right wing echo chamber, but why do so many people buy into it...I'm sure there's lots of good counterevidence for all of this negative thinking, but it seems hard to call any of it to mind...perhaps it's because the Bush Administration is such an unmitigated...messup...

Riff on Clausnitzer esthetics

Having visited the essay on his website Rough Trade & read the hard thought therein about the contribution realism could make to abstract painting, I was inspired by the article to parasitize and assimilate (probably wrongly) some of the thinking I found there to my own philosophical prejudices...Whitehead's theory of perception is that the senses are not primitive graspings of the real at all, rather, they are very precise and refined indices of the real world that, like computers, are supremely precise, except when they aren't, i.e. when they get a glitch at some basic level of functioning...in Whitehead all the senses are refinements of a direct grasping of the universe that he calls "prehensions." Basic prehension as such is supremely vague but is in its way more reliable than so-called sense data. (An example of basic prehension, prior to all information from the senses, is the sense, say, of being a localized entity...) A prehension is a direct grasp of all the immediate entities contiguous to the experiencing entity in time and space (this is not precise Whiteheadian language at all, because time and space are also, er, things, that are built up rather than being foundational, but for the sake of time and a certain rough and misleading clarity, I'm leaving that for the moment...) A prehending entiy's grasp of another entity also indirectly prehends all the entities prehended by the other entity, etc. ad infinitum...thus a prehending entity to a vanishingly small degree prehends the entire universe...Now, my favorite French philosopher, Giles Deleuze, warns against the project of trying to subsume all of art under a single theory...in his view each of the arts has a certain sphere that is irreducible to any of the others...yet he would likely admit that the cross-fertilization and boundary mergings can be fruitful ways to proceed...by a process of analogy from Whitehead, if something is expressed as visual image is borne along on the back of a more primitive prehension, then the more primtive prehension can also be assimilated to an expression in another perceptual mode...of course, that is a gross oversimplication...a great deal is lost in de-translation and re-translaton in such a context...yet it could account for how it is possible to find relatonships and analogs among the various arts and at the same time not threaten the autonomy of any...& maybe has some bearing on phenomena such as synesthesia...