Here's What Happened...

 For the past 45 years (or so - no reason to take a specific measurement on it all...), we in America (and, because of the US's soft imperialism of the latter-20th Century, to a lesser extent, the world) have been in a state of civilizational decline.  It's easy to see now, looking back, that this has happened - and I think it's easy to look around our world today and see modern technologies and say "It's Tik-Tok / FaceBook / CRT" or "It's cancel culture / hyper - wokeness / Trump" and these are all, of course, symptoms of the decline, but to think that the symptom is the root cause and the thing to be treated is - well, is essentially modern American medicine under late capitalism, really.

And - i know i know - virtually anyone reading this is now saying, "wait a minute, you can't lump ______ in there with _______", and that's sort of also the point (see my point about writing things from a few weeks ago), but I would say in response that if you find yourself within a civilization in decline, all aspects of it are symptoms of it, not just 'the good ones' or 'the bad ones'.  Decline isn't necessarily a negative thing (I mean, for the civilization or whatever thing it is that is in decline, sure, it's probably not great, but), rather it is always also making space for whatever might simultaneously be arising or entering the emptying space...

But this, here, post is a look back rather than a look forward.

I finished Dan Carlin's book, The End is Always Near, "a couple months ago", and while Carlin's scope is (as always) much grander than my smaller [self]sample here, his take is that our current run as Western Civilization could be coming to a close here any day now...

We've had a pretty good run... whether you start to measure from, say, 1066, and we've been on a roll now for the last 960 or so years, or maybe 1776 and we're about to host our 'quarter of a millennium' party - or maybe the much more closely relevant to me, 1978, and it's halfway to 90!  And don't get me wrong, it's not over (hopefully) for all or most of us, but that word "Near" in Carlin's title has always been a bit squishy.  Nothing seems close, historically, except for the recent past.  A future shift always looks further away than it is.

That "our" moment of historical pre-eminence is at an end or in jeopardy or at least at a crucial moment has been widely accepted (or bemoaned or lauded depending on the perspective) for many and many a now.  From 'the end of the American Century' or the coming (stroke current) Chinese Century to Strauss-Howe's assurance that we're due for a Fourth Turning, there seems some agreement that 'we're due' for something.

It's often tempting, I think, to try reading history as 'tea'leaves' - learning from prior collapses just what might happen next.  We have a shorthand for this in the clichéd aphorism "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it."  But I tend to think it's a lot more complicated than that - (more of a "history doesn't repeat itself, but it does often rhyme" or Marx's "first as tragedy, then as farce" situation).  

I just finished Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (ikr!?), a book written during our last great Crisis Turning, and while I find Hayek's conclusions quite mystical, I think his read on the structures that are coming to an end and what they might look like coming out of World War II.  It's the difference between predicting 'what is going to happen' (which I don't think tends to turn out very well) and guessing 'what it might be like'.  

I've lived all of my life within an Unraveling and a Crisis Turning - starting with Watergate and Reaganomics and continuing through to 9/11, the Great Recession, Trump and then who knows what's next in the back half of this decade or so... If nothing else, I suspect the next 6 years won't be boring...

We have this narrative narrative desire to make history into something where decisions are made about 'what comes next', and to be sure I think the end of this next Crisis (if it isn't the end of all of it) will be a kind of tipping point - where history might lead us to one of several sorts of underlying superstructures: a new oligarchic royalty; or a next-gen AI authoritarianism (this one seems more likely if quantum computing gets discovered and then owned by one company) or perhaps a new new deal... (so, basically we're looking at Dune, or Terminator, or Star Trek... You Choose!)

Sometimes it seems like all sorts of pseudo-intellectuals are constantly bemoaning the imminent fall to come if ________________ is allowed to occur, but really it's only been that way for the last 45 years or so :(.  A real retrospective perspective will see that it's all just part of a cycle.  The end of this cycle might just end up being quite a bit bigger than the ones we've seen somewhat recently.

Terror | Terroir

 I've recently watched the Jordan Peele produced The Twilight Zone, and thoroughly enjoyed Get Out when it came out a few year's ago.  I've long made the case that horror is as (or more) necessary as terror, in our daily lives, and I think Peele's horror ouvre, as it continues to unfold in front of us, will provide an object lesson for my argument.

The other night, I watched Us, and was profoundly moved by it (and close to bowel-moved as well it was so freaking scary).  It is the story of a fear of an under-class rising up.  But this under-class is not comfortably something other.  Rather, they are us.

The notion is terrifying (as opposed to horrifying).  I do not love the quickly accessible distinctions between the two (including the one in my post linked to above); a more fulsome account, if desired.  The fear of the revolutionary uprising is something that the progressive / liberal-defining bourgeoisie want to mask.  We support (in principle at least) the overthrow of power, and watching these upper middle class families get their come-uppance is, I would argue, a terror movie rather than a horror movie.

But then, Peele does what he has done so marvelously in much of his recent genre work, he extends.  If you relish the terror of bourgeois families at their vacation houses getting terrorized and chased around by unknown baddies, then by extension you will cheer to yourself similar harassed and displaced.  Of course this (generally) does not hold true, and becomes where we enter the horror genre.  The apocalypse for everyone else and adventure / free to wander tale for ourselves is at the heart of the good old 'merican terror story (The Stand, The Road, Revolution, The Postman, et cetera et cetera).  We love these tales of terror as long as we are in the less than 0.6% who get to survive Captain Trips.

In Us, when we begin to see the masses of underworlders holding hands in lines across streets, in and out of buildings and over mountain roads, forming an echo (but what's the word for an echo that's louder - more heard!?) of Hands Across America, the implications begin to be horrifying.  They are coming for all of us: children and adults, black and white, rich and poor.  

For me personally, Hands Across America was already a horror-laden event.  In 1986, my two brothers and I piled in to the family station wagon with my dad, leaving my mom at home, and drove south toward central Illinois to join in the not-so-nationwide chain of humanity.  On the drive down, the three other boys in the car (7, 14 & 40 years my senior) were discussing apocalypse as some kooky preacher on the radio (and billboards I seem to recall) was predicting Armageddon in the coming days or weeks (evidently it wasn't high-profile enough to make this list, unless perhaps my memories are conflated).  My brothers and dad were discussing the concept academically (or at least the childish version of academically; my family, and in particular my dad, are textualist bible-y people, and while they didn't go in for specific predictions of any moment, I do have the sense that they all kind of generally believed in it 'eventually'), and my 8-year-old mind was swallowing it whole, and I was terrified that the end of my existence was mere days away (hours of it to be wasted in the way back of this damned car!). 

I don't believe that Jordan Peele tailored his horror story specifically to me, but I am curious (and it's probably too late to note, spoiler-alert) as to what the implications of the film might have been had it not been for the twistNotSoTwist ending.  Would Adelaide's (Lupita Nyong'o) doppelganger (Red), who in fact was Adelaide, have seemingly led the uprising had she not come originally from the top side. Revolutionary artists (or perhaps it's more often horror makers) often wind up creating works that actually make arguments quite the contrary to what they themselves believe or would espouse in the real world.  

• Thus, is the argument of Us that in order to make revolution, the underside need a spark (inspiration or perhaps permission) from a member of the ruling class?
• Just as the hippie horror-makers (Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter) wound up making conservative arguments warning about the dangers of teenage promiscuity...
• And a work of horror fiction as seemingly revolutionary as Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves winds up making a very very conservative argument (albeit circuitously).

It's not to say that it's the fault of these brilliant creators that their works wind up making conservative arguments that they'd rather not be making.  Rather it's the tricksy nature of working in the media of terror and horror and trying to bridge the gap.  It's why a filmmaker like George Romero was less susceptible to falling into the same trap, because he started with the horror and embraced it for its own sake, and the meaning came afterward.  When you try to wield the ephemeral (which is what you're doing when you're creating a work of art), it gets slippery, and doesn't always go where it wants.

It's why when the artistic mockery of religion that is televangelist doomsayers like Jack Van Impe and publishing powerhouses like Joel Osteen and religiosity-based "university" educators like Jerry Falwell Jr... 

• Ply their craft, they wind up arguing against their personal ownership or understanding of church doctrine, and their political and moral arguments (not to mention their continuing calls for their own personal enrichment) wind up making the case for exactly the opposite of their intent.

Happy Syttende Mai! - Happy Every Day!

Today is Syttende Mai (17 May), which is the founding day of modern, constitutional Norway (officially Constitution Day).  It feels like a super-arbitrary day most everywhere in the world except, perhaps, Scandinavia and Northern Minnesota where my people hail from.

Every country has their day - as I started this post, it occurred to me that Haiti's Independence Day is January 1st (1 January 1804), the official end of the Haitian Revolution.  Starting on January 1st, I figured I would start another perpetual post* which would function as a calendar outlining founding dates of the countries of the world.  I'll start with the one's I know and think of off-hand (which is these two, plus the 4th of July^), and build from here (I'll appreciate anyone's input in the comments section!, or I'll add as I notice them going about my daily life):

January

1 - Haitian Independence Day

May

17 - Syttende Mai (Norway's Constitution Day)

July

1 - Somalia's Independence Day

1 - Canada Day (formerly Dominion Day until 1982 - which sounds much more bad-ass, Canada and you may want to consider switching back)**

4 - United States of America's Independence Day

September

16 - Mexican Independence Day (Celebration of the Mexican War of Independence with this date marking the start of the Hidalgo Revolt in 1810)

December

1 - Romania's Great Union Day (marking the 1918 unification of Transylvania, Bessarabia, Bukovina & The Romanian Kingdom)

* a perpetual post is one on Roman Numeral J that gets updated over the course of months & years, and may never truly be finished, but is a work in progress toward some declared end goal (e.g. the Lost Last Fives, the Vodka Ranking, and the Star Trek Chronology).

^July 4th feels significant - until you spend an American Independence Day outside of the United States.  America does a pretty good job of lampooning itself most of the time, but that's nothing until you experience a bunch of people from all over the world throwing you and your American friends a party that is heavily sarcastic (and always features a sparkler, which i think is the only firework that is partly legal in most sensible countries)

** it's a small sample size thus far, but on discovering that both Canada Day & Somalia's Independence Day both occur on the same day, I wonder if we will come to discover that a disproportionate amount of founding days will be on the first of the month.  Like the start of a month feels like a good 'reset button' when you're starting up a new country (as opposed to most countries "happening" on some random date).

Pre-prequel

Anticipatory plagiarism is a concept I used to struggle with - coming up with a brilliant idea only to come to realize that someone else had thought of it and published it decades or even centuries earlier than you had the opportunity to get it down.

This also happens in literature when a writer unwittingly writes a similar story to something they had never come across. In general, this happens by some sort of collective osmosis (perhaps it’s a Jungian phenomenon) by which these thoughts and ideas are in the ether - part of the existing background. It’s in the groundwater. 

This morning I read a short story in the Bradbury-edited collection that I’ve been making my way through.  It’s called “Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman”, by Helen Eustis. It is an unintentional prequel to Piers Anthony’s On a Pale Horse (by which I mean of course, Anthony unintentionally wrote a whole series of novels {of which I’ve read the first few but not all} as a follow up to Eustis’s very fine story).

I've been getting back into Wikipedia as of late, particularly as I've been reading Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow, edited and with an introduction by Ray Bradbury.  As I started digging into the stories, I was struck first by the sense of time - of being tales from a different (but not entirely unfamiliar) era.  Much like when I read The Thin Man last year, one of the most enjoyable parts of every story, is a real insight into how folks lived 'in the before'.

The stories have also been enjoyable in their own right, but because they are primarily speculative as opposed to pure fantasy, they each have been deeply and fundamentally rooted in the time they are written (or when they are portraying in the rare case it's not meant to be "present day").  Bradbury finished the introduction on 1 July 1951, which means the collection is made up of stories all from before that time (and likely mostly well before, given that they're mostly being re-produced and collected here in this book).

As I read the first couple stories, I wondered who the collection of writers were that Bradbury had collected.  I've heard of many of them, but the first two at least were completely unfamiliar to me.  Henry Kuttner's story, particularly, excited me as he had worked within the Cthulhu Mythos (and had corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft).  Kuttner also worked closely in collaboration with his wife, C.L. Moore and the authorship of much of his work and her work were intermingled (so much so that the story in this collection could likely have been in good part her work).

 I plodded forward, and for each story resolved to read the Wikipedia entry for each author in concert with the story.  Which brought me to Christine Govan's story, where I found no corresponding wiki-entry (though she was mentioned in a few other articles, often as a family member to someone else).  A writer in her own right, I created her article and have now noticed that Helen Eustis also has one missing.

Govan and Eustis were the second and third woman authors collected in this book, and the first two authors in the book without their own wiki-entries.  It's a problem and I am working on solving in a small way.  I created a stub for Govan, in the same way that I had Faustin E. Wirkus years ago.  I don't have the time or inclination to go in depth and create a full article, but a sourced stub about someone who definitely deserves a wiki-page will grow on its own.  It takes time, but eventually the world will help do the work (as long as it doesn't get deleted!).

Florida Man hates Triangle Man

… lives his life in a garbage can…

Florida, man…

I am constantly amused by the fear of IDENTITY THEFT


it's a thing, sure - I myself had my identity stolen. Twice in fact. One was a pypal scam and the second was my discover card being used to buy gas and take cash advances.

Both times it was a hassle, but I ultimately lost 0 dollars. I know that's not always the case, , but generally it seems to be.

The real theft, tho, is corporate grift. My 5 year old LG refrigerator has ceased refrigeration. I am a prisoner of Wells Fargo bank these last 20 years and they and every other credit card company is guilty of usury upon me and all of their "customers". We are made to fear scammers of all varieties, but the real scam is out in broad sight. 

Drive

This year, I've driven across more than 2/3rds of the continental United States, from from Glendo, Wyoming to Bonita Springs, Florida; across the great state of Iowa; and around the bottom third of Lake Michigan; a bit around parts of Nebraska, Texas, New York and New Jersey.

   Source: googleMaps w/ Paint!

It's been a strange and sad year for our country, and it's not over yet, but on our recent arrival home from SouthWest Florida, I think that I won't be forging any new roads these last five weeks, so I offer my driving retrospective on 2017.

I love to travel, but a road trip is a special form of tourism.  Driving to or through a place helps you see it in a new way.  Interacting with local drivers (FIBs, the Pittsburgh Left, Georgians who don't like to be passed and speed up each time you move to the left lane to overtake them but then slow down once you're back behind them again, LA Wazers...) provides insight into the local culture. (The only better way to get in tune with a locality is to take public transit - to get around and see how people really live).

Brooke said to me (after we had just driven 21 hours to Florida for Rex Grossman's "Make-a-Wish" trip to swim and play ball in the ocean) that she loves the magic of an airplane ride... waking up one morning with your feet in an ocean, and returning home to sleep in your cozy bed during a blizzard that night (or vice versa).  I agree with this, but even when I do fly somewhere, I like to rent a car and traverse the local streets (see my video from my driving tour of Haiti in 2013 here!).

It seems un-related, but as i drove across this vast and disparate country of ours this year, I was gratified and alarmed to be reminded that we are both the nation of President Trump and the nation of President Obama.  We are such a complicated amalgam of a citizenry, it's kind of amazing that we can function (and have functioned) so well as to accomplish as much as we have.  It's not to say that there aren't massive wrongs that need righting, and injustices and indecencies and indignities that we can and should solve for - there are.  But it's not a small thing that we have created from this nation of mass diversity a grand, awesome, and terrifying power.

In my travels this year, i crossed the Mason-Dixon line, which is not a border (borderlands are thin, desperate places - see Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub for some ideas about this), but is another cultural continental divide of sorts for us.  We once fought a Civil War over this divide, and i've heard it suggested that we are approaching a new kind of civil war in our country.  This one would not be fought along geographical or tribal lines, but a kind of neo-tribalism.  Artificial tribalism.  Managed and created tribalism.

But i didn't see that in my trips.  We are a disparate lot, and i encountered a lot of folks in my travels who were different from me - who were my Other.  But we were also united in common cause of friendliness and decency and civility.  It's not the people peppered across this land who are divided, it is the artificial divisions that are being thrust upon us by richer (not higher!) powers that are divisive.

(i expect there is more to come...)

The eclipse, Hegel, and the American Road

I logged 2400 miles of American roads, 14 hours of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, 3 full Brewers game broadcasts (all the enemy radio feed on XM), and 1 total eclipse as seen from Glendo State Park in Wyoming.

I woke up on Sunday morning and decided to forgo my Midwestern eclipse experience plans because the weather looked uncertain for optimal viewing.  En route to Deadwood, SD, I listened through the Preface (very familiar!), the Introduction and the early parts of A. Consciousness. 

My copy of Phenomenology was safely at home on my bookshelf, sitting right next to Susan Buck-Morss' excellent Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (which I have read in its entirety!).  I bought a used copy (originally Elizabeth Trejack's it seems) at a book shop in Minnesota.  It was highlighted and underlined in a few very specific sections (it opens automatically to Lordship and Bondage), and otherwise appears largely untouched.

I first learned of the existence of a fellow called Hegel and his friend "Geist" on my first day of classes at the University of Chicago.  I read the greatest hits from Hegel's masterwork, and nodded knowingly when his influence on later theorists was discussed.  On arrival to UW-M, I heard less about Hegel (though there was quite a lot more mention of Foucault, who I only heard come up once at UChicago, and that was in a joke from a Zadie Smith reading about introducing someone at an academic party as "... she likes Michel Foucault and costume jewelry"), but dutifully put Phenomenology and Buck-Morss' book on my prelim reading list.

Naturally, like most good reading lists, I did not read most of most of the books on the list, but excel at the academic art of talking about books you have not read.  I have also not read that book, though I've held it in my hands, and skimmed through bits, and I know people who have read it.

During my long drives of the last several days, I've read through the first 513 paragraphs of Hegel's work, starting and stopping and occasionally paying more and less attention as one is wont to do when reading or listening or existing at all, I suppose.  I think this might be the best way to read Phenomenology, not as one's only or deep reading of the text, but as a way to have read through it all.  As I drove, I would make notes of paragraphs I wanted to return to (don't worry, the highways of South Dakota and Wyoming are sparsely populated, even when there's an eclipse on!).  When I was first reading Shakespeare (or first reading it in college, I can't remember which), someone (either Jerry Davis or Mary Hull Mohr) gave me the advice to "just keep going" when you're reading it and not sure you're absorbing.  It's reading as muscle memory, and the deep read of certain sections can come later (or earlier!). 

Hearing "of Lordship and Bondage" after reading through the entirety of Consciousness changes the focus of the passage.  It makes the easy reading of Hegel as writing the heroic history of Haiti less easy and fancy free.  I've come to trust Buck-Morss, and don't think her reading is at all off the mark.  That said, I think it is important to remain aware of our academic practice of the use of texts to suggest meaning and significance.

*.  *.  *

I first learned of the Great American Eclipse earlier this year, and almost in the same moment committed in my mind that I would be there to see it.  I took a few days vacation, but made few other plans, except to choose Beatrice, Nebraska as my viewing sight.  Tim & Jen & the kids live in Omaha, and actually lived in Beatrice shortly after they got married.  When the day got close, weather across the Midwest started looking dicey, and I headed west.

A total eclipse is an awe-inspiring sight, truly an opportunity to see the most awesome, magnificent vision available on earth.  An eclipse is also a random conflation of events - a new moon that aligns with the earth and sun; a sun for a planet that is about 400 times larger than the planet's moon, which is about 400 times closer than that same sun (so they take up about the same amount of sky space).  Also, we also happen to be in the small window of time, cosmically speaking, that allows this confluence.

I've been struggling to describe what I saw, or what the experience was like, or why it was worth the trip.  Finding significance in the random confluence of hunks of rock hurtling through the galaxy is what we do as humans.  Making meaning from bringing texts, histories, moments - that's what humanists do.  We live in a strange confluence of psychology, philosophy, astronomy, physics, history, sociology, geology, chronology and on and ology.

My thoughts of late have been turning back toward the super-modern, and the importance of the small.  I'm still working at making meaning from the experience of the eclipse, and from reading Hegel on the way to and from seeing the eclipse, and the observations and thoughts I had about Americans and Trump and Mt. Rushmore and history on the way to and from seeing the eclipse.  I expect that I will continue to try to build this meaning for quite some time.

What I learned or have built or have decided for now is that my phenomenology of totality has provided me some perspective on our present American experiment.  We are a strange and strained people, but I still think this is all just crazy enough to work. 

Trumpt

I'd say the unthinkable has happened - except as D-Force reminded me, I had actually thought a Trump win had been likely since the summer.  I wanted to take a few days to let the election results sink in and be able to reflect with some distance.

Now that we find ourselves here, I think it's useful to look forward, rather than back (you know, like back to when I and many others were rationally trying to explain why Bernie had a much better chance of beating Donald Trump in a general election because it was such an overwhelmingly Change Election...).  Looking forward, I see the three most likely paths that a Trump presidency holds in store for us, and I rank these in the order that I think them likeliest to less likely (note not least likely - I won't even present that here...):

1.
Trump assumes power in January, and by the time we get to Inauguration Day, we find that he has oddly stopped talking about "The Wall" and "Muslim Bans" and he is instead focused on "Border Security" and "Safe Zones for Refugees" (safely located in their own countries or regions, naturally).  Trump works closely with the Republicans to gut our national safety net and build a non-progressive tax system that waits for financial relief to "trickle down" to unprotected workers who have lost the right to unionize or earn a fair, living wage.  In other words, he behaves as any normal Republican would have in office - he's Mitt Romney, only richer and more orange.

The Result: The Establishment (K-Street, Republican & Democratic Parties, most Major Media outlets, Wall Street, Middle Management, Delaware and Connecticut) thinks they've won, and scary 2016 is behind us; Righteous Anger Comedy (John Oliver, Samantha Bee, The Daily Show, etc.) have a field day - it's like the heady days of mocking the George W Bush years on steroids on PCP; Flyover Country Working Class Rage (this has been mis-diagnosed pre- and post-election as "the last stand of the old white guy" or racism, misogyny, xenophobia - all of that was certainly a part of the Trump Coalition, but there are two major groups who overwhelmingly elected Trump: Working Class Labor and White Middle Management. 

This is not a natural partnership and can't stand.  If Trump proceeds on the most likely course (#1), as I see it, The Tea Party and Working Class Crossover vote (progressives bemoaning the outcome of the election as depressed voter turnout and voter suppression - both valid, but not the whole story - have to get comfortable with the fact that the Democratic Party also lost voters this cycle) will remain furious.  Trump's more extreme policies (both the racist and xenophobic ones and the more tenable radical positions on trade and mass military interventionism) would be tempered and mostly forgotten in this scenario.  In 2020, the Outrage for Radical Change electorate will still be out there.  It's key to remember this voting bloc is neither inherently conservative or liberal - if they calcify around a specific candidate, it need not be a Republican or Democrat (or left or right Third Party). 

2.
The other likely (tho slightly less so, methinks) outcome of Trump's assumption of power in January is that he actually tries to do what he has said he would do.  The uncertain part here would be the order of things.  If Trump starts, as he seems to have hinted, with a Public Works program (Massive Infrastructure Investment), he would likely get cooperation from the Democrats.  That would be wise, as I'm not sure whether Democrats would go along with any proposed measures of Trump's after he starts down any racist or xenophobic policy paths.  Mass protests would follow.  It's difficult to say how long these first several evenings of protests will progress.  They are important, and need to be a part of the conversation, but if Trump actually starts enacting is catastrophic policies, the Foolhardy Wall, the Unconstitutional Muslim Ban, Alarmist Foreign Policy (possibly including either Russia-loving or going to proxy war with Russia in Syria), Protectionist Economics, and Extreme Blue Collar Job Creation (this is accomplished either through the Massive Infrastructure Investment mentioned above or via Soviet-Style Factory Takeover by the State {or better by local Municipalities}). 

The Result: What's strange is that the complete package of Trump's proposals are all over the map.  The question is whether we can parse the policy from the president.  Can the protests turn toward specific policies (Don't take away our Obama-Care! Enact Progressive Tax Reform!), and not just be against the figurehead.  I've already heard anecdotal stories of people helping strangers out against bigoted, misogynistic, xenophobic attacks on an individual basis.  The question is whether protest can be used surgically to disagree with the deplorable policies, while welcoming the Public Works and creating trade policies that don't solely support the Financial Class.

3.
Less likely (though not least likely - I won't even present my unlikely scenarios - some of which are quite hopeful and absurdly optimistic), but still a distinct possibility (maybe for example as likely as a Donald Trump presidency!) is that Something Happens.  Of course unforeseen things will occur in the course of the next four years.  Most of the way that I select a presidential candidate is based on how I think they will deal with the unforeseen.  That said, what I mean with #3 is that instead of Trump getting into a room with professional advisors, he acts out.  If North Korea launches an attack or China stretches further into the South China Sea - perhaps the Russia/Syria/Iran/ISIS hotbed becomes hotter - a question of a very sudden militaristic response that isn't thought out and can't be taken back. 

The Result: Goddess knows, but if anything outrageous were to occur, it may well spark mass protest, from people across the political spectrum.  If we have a person with control of the most powerful military in the history of the world who decides to wield it, and in particular who wields it toward un-humanistic outcomes, it will be scary - and a frightening opportunity to unify a seemingly un-unifiable populace.

Setting the Stage

... remember when we thought Donald Trump was unqualified and unelectable for the Presidency because he wanted to deport 11 million people and have a religious test as part of entry into the United States?

Oh that we could go back to that simpler time...

Linda Tirado wrote an article about Trump's speech yesterday, and it rightly identifies some of the fascist elements of Trump's campaign, and in particular the appeals to the sovereign-citizen set.  What Tirado only implicitly points to, is the fact that it doesn't actually matter all that much that Donald Trump will now most likely lose this election in November. 

Way back when, in the Summer and Fall of 2015, I was opining to anyone who would listen that Bernie was going to surprise everyone and come out of the Democratic primaries as the nominee and the Trump phenomenon would fade and we'd have a nice boring candidate like Jeb or Kasich on the Republican side.  At first glance, it seems I was wrong twice - but I think the actual case is that I was right, just in the wrong way. 

I've long thought that America was ripe for a fascist uprising.  And that said fascist movement could be either a leftist or rightist one (or both/neither, as this one seems to be).  It has always been the great danger of the right and left media as cottage industries, that intelligent, critical, political thought would be a casualty of our time.  Fascism, in whatever form, was always going to be a possible result.

The Right may well have started this media war with the explosion of talk radio in the 1980s, but it has been a boon to Democrats, because it's sated their base, while fundamentally undermining all that they hold dear.  It feels/felt so good to sit watching Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert, and knowing that we were laughing with them from the right side of history or learn from John Oliver what some of the most egregious and offensive offenses are of our time - but all the watching and the reading can stagnate a drive to action. 

My favorite podcaster, Dan Carlin, dropped a new episode of his politics and current events show, Common Sense, yesterday.  And he reiterated an idea that he said months and months ago, before we knew how the primaries were going to turn out, which was, essentially: "you think 2016 is interesting/terrifying... just wait for 2020."

American Fascism isn't going away any time soon.  Because the wealth inequality (which is so much more important an issue than income inequality) isn't going away.  Nor is a culture of ressentiment, nor the anger and the know-nothing-ness, nor any of a cadre of issues that culminate in present-day America being a great place to fulminate fascism.

We're going to be very good at this, and that's not a little bit scary.  Hillary Clinton, it now seems, will win in November - and hopefully by a surprising margin and with a new Senate majority (and dream of dreams a newly-democratic House as well!).  If all that happens, we may even have some progress - baby steps, but progress - toward starting to fix some of the edge problems (adding a public option to a massive insurance-company-backed health care program, finding a way to make Medicare and Social Security not go broke in the immediate future, starting to think about actually taking a few steps toward beginning to slow our contribution to global warning, etc.).

However, the ready-to-be fascist angry folks out there will still be out there.  And they're not all right-wing nuts (some of them are left wing nuts like me!).  The Anger Election of 2016 will not have gotten what it really wanted (an outsider who doesn't care about how we've done things up until now) - it will still want to be fed.

So, America, let's talk... before it's too late.

Celebrating American Hope

In anticipation of the upcoming release of Star Trek Beyond, and in celebration of America's birthday, I'm going to start another stroll between now and July 22nd (or so) through the dozen films of the Star Trek universe.  Star Trek: TOS will be 50 years old this September, and in that half a century, the world has changed.  Has moved on, one might go so far as to say.  The American outlook has shifted to one of cynicism.  The Reagan-era brought with it a seemingly ingrained mistrust of government - and the Great Recession, Anonymous, Edward Snowden & WikiLeaks & Occupy & Bernie movements have engendered a new parallel mistrust of institutions of all kinds, governments & multi-national corporations and massive NGOs.  These two mistrusts appear on the surface as countervailing forces - one liberal and the other conservative; the one side clearly hails from well outside the establishment, while the other feels ensconced in the corporate, media and government elite establishments.  In fact, these 'sides' are the same force, but they've been harnessed and messaged toward separate ends.  But that is a story for another day...



Source: Twitter (@starTrek)

In these 50 years, Star Trek's enduring hopeful vision of a future, where individuals are free to explore and enact their own chosen lives and livelihoods, partnered with institutions that work to improve and expand on those individuals' interests, has changed and grown up, but remained steadfast.  It's easy to sit in our cynical seats to the world's history and read Star Trek as a naïve vision of the future, particularly in the wake of dystopian science fiction and horror.  How can a world that can imagine The Walking Dead also see Star Trek as an equally viable (which is to say fantastical, but usefully so) future vision?

So, our walk begins in 1979, with:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) - dir. by Robert Wise (7/4/16)

The first movie is, admittedly, a bit of clunker.  It's not to say that there's nothing redeeming about it, it is, in the end, a good story and a product of its time.  Much of the film stands as a late-70s, hi-tech art piece: reveling in the special effects technology of the time, an exposition of time and narrative in film (long 2001-style sweeping scenes which amounts to five minutes of parking a goddamn shuttle craft).  At one point, during the closing confrontation scene on the bridge, Bones walks in, a few lines of dialogue are said (none to him or by him) and plot points furthered and he walks back out.  Overall, it's a classic part of the franchise, with a few themes and questions, in particular V'Ger's ultimate (and eternal) question about the nature of existence.  After completing a centuries-long voyage to complete her prime directive (learn and report back), V'ger has amassed vast power and intellect and become sentient.  That sentience has the burden that (sometimes at least) goes with it of questioning of its own purpose.  Are we here, knowing that we're here, only in order to complete our directives (be they biological, tribalistic, or capitalist, etc.).


Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn (1982) - dir. by Nicholas Meyer (7/6/16)

The best of the movies with the original cast, and may be the best of the bunch.  A classic villain returned, Shakespearean-worthy revenge plot.  Wrath of Kahn sets up the Trilogy, which stands at the heart of the first six movies.  Each of the second, third, and fourth movies are distinct stories, but serve the dual purpose of returning Kirk, in a round about way, from admiralty back to captaining the Enterprise and also to begin the tradition of destroying Enterprises, and starting a line of Enterprise A, B, C, etc. 


Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) - dir. by Leonard Nimoy (7/10/16)

This film explores the quiet space that religion and mysticism hold in the Star Trek universe.  In the later series, there were episodes focused on Bajoran and Klingon (and occasionally Vulcan) rituals, but other than as a plot device (e.g. so Kirk has to fight Spock!), the original cast didn't have much time or interest for old-time Federation religions.  The plot brings Spock back from death, reborn thanks to the technological marvel of the Genesis device.  After Kahn, though, the battle against some Klingons - even led by one so charismatic as Christopher Lloyd - is something of a letdown. 


Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) - dir. by Leonard Nimoy (7/11/16)

This was hands down the most popular of the Star Trek movies to date.  I say this with no statistical or research backing whatsoever, but a firm confidence that comes from it just making sense.  It was an attempt to make the Star Trek characters and universe relatable by bringing them into our own time.  An ecological fairy tale (or folk tale or fable), we get to see our beloved characters stumble around naïvely, clearly not understanding the complexities of modern times.  Really, it's an indictment of capitalism - the silliness of our everyday lives in comparison of work of real importance.


Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) - dir. by William Shatner (7/15/16)

Such a strange mess of a movie... It pleases me to know that at 50, I'm not the only one whose working on this project and as I've come to expect, EW has written the apt re-review of the fifth installment.  I started the re-watch of number five assuming that I hated it... Because I remember being told that it was awful, and disliking it on the first go round.  Now, when I watch it, I can't quite tell if I love it or hate it or both...  It's a classic adventure - and the religiosity that may once have offended me, has more of a new age feel (epallan pronounces it newage to rhyme with sewage)... The concluding scene with a conversation with god is at first presumptuous (writing dialogue for god, that is), but at second glance, it's just about exactly right and how that conversation will eventually go.  A throw-back to the TV series episodes where the crew encountered other human gods (e.g. Apollo) and demystified them.


Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) - dir. by Nicholas Meyer (7/16/16)

This is a great conclusion for the original cast (with a coda in the first next generation film).  It's a story about the place of old people in politics.  Set against the end of the Cold War in our century, the big picture story is almost a direct historical mirror - the dismantling of the Klingon Empire while the Iron Curtain was coming down.  What's more interesting, I think, is looking at the inner Federation political conversations throughout the film.  It's really more a film that reflects our current political moment (not so much Trump/Clinton or Sanders/Clinton, more the aging Republican Party and finding its place in the new world).  Again, Star Trek is an overly-optimistic rendering, but there is an acknowledgement that old folks and an old political way of thinking is on its way out.  Michael Moore posted a recent letter about why Trump will win, and a key piece is what he calls "The Last Stand of the Endangered White Male" - overcoming 240 years of American history... I think the future - both Star Trek's and America's - is an undiscovered country, but the frontier is shrinking and we're starting to traverse it.


Star Trek: Generations (Star Trek VII) (1994) - dir. by David Carson (7/18/16)

It's a bit of a fun romp.  It's not a great movie.  It's good, sorta.  If I'm not much mistook, it's our only trip aboard the Enterprise B, with Kirk's apparent death saving the ship on its pre-maiden voyage.  The plot centers on access to a wish-granting natural phenomenon called the Nexus.  However, the plot of this one isn't terribly captivating.  It's more of a pageant opportunity for our Next Gen friends to traipse in to a new adventure.  Really a glorified episode (maybe a two-parter).


Star Trek: First Contact (Star Trek VIII) (1996) - dir. by Jonathan Frakes (around 7/20/16 & again on 9/20/16)

This is sorta the best Star Trek movie ever.  Fundamentally, the most amazing bit is the last moments of the film when the Vulcans, having landed on earth to meet a newly warp-capable species, are frakking mortified to find themselves hanging out with the dregs of the earth... of all earths really.  I feel like there's more to say in my chronology post of Star Trek


Star Trek: Insurrection (Star Trek IX) (1998) - dir. by Jonathan Frakes (on or around 7/23/16)

As a follow-up to First Contact, this movie is a bit of a let-down.  That said, it's an odd-numbered movie, so expectations were muted.  At the core of the story, though, is a pretty profound point about Star Trek - and too often ignored - namely that despite the fact that Star Trek takes place in a post-awful era, when humans have come to realize that the acquisition of wealth is a pretty silly system by which to define one's (an individual's or a society's) existence, there are still going to be smaller people.  There will always be people of any number of species and races and belief systems who work toward the detriment of all.  Those people, says this movie (and Star Trek in general), ought to be outed and stopped.  Truth will out, and so will good, again, says the central argument of Star Trek - and Insurrection, for all its failings and scope (a mid-sized episode story, not much more).


Star Trek: Nemesis (Star Trek X) (2002) - dir. by Stuart Baird (on or around 7/24/16)

The first movie to buck the trend of even-numbered films being the quality ones.  The premise of the film is actually promising, but it's all a bit disappointing.  Not terrible, but falls short of its potential.  Den of Geek actually seems to have diagnosed pretty specifically what went wrong with regard to the lead-up and decision making about the film.  Tom Hardy's villain feels to me a bit interchangeable with Eric Bana's in the 2009 reboot - I think they both may actually be Remans, which strikes me as an oddity that doesn't get noticed much (I suppose because Nemesis itself rarely gets noticed).

DoG gets right that the film feels off, the characters behave uncharacteristically, and the director didn't like (and even refused to watch) the series.  There are also obnoxious plot points and painful scenes (the cloning thing, Data singing at the wedding, Picard gleefully driving his fancy-new golf cart {which is underwhelming}).

That said, there are some redeeming qualities, mostly to do with the overall premise (and probably the original writing).


Star Trek (Star Trek XI) (2009) - dir. by J. J. Abrams (7/29/16)

Such a fun return for the franchise that had started to lose its way.  The new movie offered a clean break by creating a new timeline, allowing the franchise to go its own way while occupying the same space and time of the original series and films. 

What's missing is the humanist optimism that is central to the Star Trek Universe.  Throughout the series and films, Star Trek fearlessly posits scynical optimism as a central premise.  The Americanist tropes of TOS remains (humans can do everything that Vulcans can better...!) as the same central joke, but that cynical joke lacks the tenacious hope that always accompanied it in all of the shows and movies.  The cynicism sharpened in the later movies and especially in the Enterprise series, but optimism remained a central tenet. 

The movie is fun, fast-paced, smart and nostalgic. 


Star Trek Into Darkness (Star Trek XII) (2013) - dir. by J. J. Abrams (7/30/16)

A reintroduction of Khan, and an intro worthy of making Kirk Kirk.  The "cowboy diplomacy" of earlier generations of the Federation is on display in the opening escape sequence of the film.  Kirk subsequently gets momentarily demoted, until a terrorist attack carried out by Khan.

The plot is a bit blah - enemies and then frenemies Kirk and Khan work with and against each other in an effort to unveil darker tendencies within the Federation.  Another fast-paced film version of the franchise that loses a lot of the original value of the series.  While these new films are fun, they definitely show why we need another Star Trek series on TV.


Star Trek Beyond (Star Trek XIII) (2016) - dir. by Justin Lin (8/2/16)

This third step through the alternate timeline starts out with Kirk casting about a bit for the what it all means and what he's supposed to do with his life (so say we all).  The film is action-packed (I don't mean that as a good quality), but the villain, Krall, is interesting in the fact that he is deranged lost Star Fleet captain whose crew are intent on revenging themselves upon pretty much everybody.  Of note is the reconnecting of the two timelines - as Krall's ship is from the era of the Enterprise TV series (which also appears to be the era of the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery series.  I'm still a little ways away from catching up to this series on my chronological run-thru (tho this project has helped!), but I think now (as it turns out!), my plan is to be able to watch Discovery in "real time".  Overall, the latest movie was fun, but not too important.

Sometime recently, with all the 50th Anniversary look-backs and the new movie look-backs for Star Trek, I read someone comment that Star Trek is first and foremost about the series.  The movies were fun events, and reaching a (slightly) wider audience, but the shows did the real work of Star Trek.

 

What time is it?!!?

4:30...

4:30 PST that is.  As I publish this post, it's currently 5:30am in Los Angeles, and the entire West Coast of the US, but it's 4:30 Pacific Standard Time.

Now, there aren't a lot of places in the world that (celebrate?) observe PST year round, but once you move a little further east, and get a little more Pacifically-challenged, other time zones don't behave quite so orderly...

For example, go to Phoenix tomorrow, (oh my gawd, wouldn't it be hilarious if twos upon twos of my readers went to Phoenix tomorrow!?  That reminds me of a social media experiment I want to try called #letsGoToRookies - it's based on the theory that everyone lives fairly close to a bar called Rookies.  Probably, you've never been there or maybe you went once and haven't been back... Anyway, on this certain moment, we all go to Rookies, and around the country, places called Rookies' business explodes, for like 40 minutes {stay and have a couple beers!} and regulars and bar owners are flummoxed for a while) and figure out what time it is.  Sure, it will seem like it's whatever time it is Pacific Time, but in fact it is Mountain Time, Mountain Standard Time.

Let that soak in a moment, while you think about the last email you received from your client in Denver.  They were likely confirming a call (did you know that today, 15% of all emails are confirming times for future calls? That's a fact.) with a consultant in Flagstaff, Arizona for 3:00pm MST (because the middle initial makes everything seem so much more business-like!).  Point of fact, those two people will (I think I don't know if all of Arizona follows the same rules - there is no research budget for RNJ...) be on the phone exactly one hour apart.

Of course, our glorious savior Microsoft Outlook, solves these sorts of scheduling snafus, if you use calendar invites (USE CALENDAR INVITES!), but I've been seeing this in far too many places, and blatantly mistaken, and it's time that someone finally says something.

It's quite simple, really... also, those of you who are reading this as news and use middle initials in your time stamp, we who know better have been laughing at you for years... YEARS!!!  Most of the world honors daylight saving time (this is, of course, a wildly inaccurate statement, but as an American, it's true for most of America, so it becomes true... "from a certain point of view" - name the movie quote i'm thinking of and win a VMP {very minor prize} shipped to you at no expense -), but I would estimate that 83% of all administrative professionals are using CST or EST right this very moment.

Well fear not, help is here:

• Daylight Standard Time (DST - hugely confusing because S!!! is the middle initial - happens, generally, in the summer time for the Northern Hemisphere)

• Standard Time (ST - standard time is what we more commonly refer to as time.  Of course, time is relative, but as long as we all are still land-bound, it makes sense to come to some accord with regard to what time it is.  That said, Standard Time is the closest we have available in the US to GMT.

I think this distinction is fairly clear to most calendar purveyors.... that said, I will stand by my 83% statistic that most administrative and support professionals misuse (or perhaps disable) the correct language.

The reason for this is complex/simple as most things are... D is less serious than S.  At a momentary glance this sounds crazy - that said one need only look at the (i.e. vs. e.g.) example.  I.E. which is a couple of glorious vowels, working together to say - literally - "in other words".  E.G., of course, mean "for example".  Somehow, seriously, G makes things seem less serious to some folks, and so almost invariably in standard business writing and most non-academic prose, you'll see i.e. when the writer clearly means e.g.  Oddly, I think part of the reason for this is also that e.g.  sounds like the start of the way that many Americans say the word "example", and they may be afraid that it's an abbreviation, rather than a Latin derivation.

I think it's also, maddeningly, related to the "I/me" idiocracy that holds that using the word 'me' makes people sound less intelligent, and so you get fools using phrases like "between George and I".  Please learn this, people.  Really, I'm just asking for the time one today.  D is a less-oft used letter, I know, but using it more often will improve your Scrabble scores, and, at least until November, stop infuriating those of us already in the know.

Vote Happy

Election Day will soon be upon us, once again.  Milwaukee has a Socialist running for Sheriff (she seems really lovely, smart, and on the right side of history!), and a Green Party candidate for State Treasurer (and in September, his numbers were pretty okay!).

In this sad/silly era of bought & sold candidates, dangerous zealots (as well as more clown-ish zealots), and a political campaign and lobbying system that encourages corruption, a progressive looking for genuine reform options often doesn't know which way to turn.  Of course, Democrats being in charge of things is less bad than Republicans.  So, the sensible choice seems to vote for Democrats in close races, and vote more radically (Greens, Socialists, liberal Independents) when it's expedient.  The fear-mongering lessons of Ralph Nader loom large, despite the fact that they're misguided.

Nationally, there are a lot of interesting races.  That said, the US House is guaranteed to remain in Republican hands, despite the fact that more people will probably end up voting for Democrats.  Thank you gerrymandering.

Unfortunately, the same reason can't be given for why the Senate seems poised to fall into Republican hands as well.  Though it would be awesome, wouldn't it?  To re-draw the state lines to re-organize people into more culturally appropriate regions? 

• East and West Dakota - East Dakota would be a 40 or so mile wide strip surrounding the I-29 corridor, stretching from Grand Forks all the way down to Kansas City (anything north of GF we can give to Canada).
• Up North - the northern part of Minnesota and Wisconsin, along with the UP.

  

  Source: www.pastemagazine.com

• The Middle Bit - a utopic plot of mostly rural farmland, focusing primarily on the biography of me, including Clinton, Wisconsin, stretching up north to Madison, then over to Decorah, Iowa, then up to Minneapolis.  It looks a bit like those Tetris pieces that go down one, over one, down one again (see picture, except the other one, and turned vertically).
• Austin, Texas - Austin, Texas.
• Yellowstone - Just a really cool state to visit.  First bear governor.
• Iraq - I know we're mostly moved out, but it's time to start colonizing, people.

The State of Wisconsin has a useful resource for figuring out what all is going to be on your ballot: 

At the top of the ballot, of course, is the Mary Burke / Scott Walker race for Governor.  This one will come down to turnout, and while I'm not overly excited about Mary Burke, she's the choice.

Down the ballot a ways is our rootin'-tootin' Sheriff Clarke, running against Angela Walker.  It seems the last time the Journal Sentinel deigned to mention her in an article was August 8th, when Chris Moews was being backed against the gun-loving sheriff by Michael Bloomberg. 

I was on a jury... and it was really awful... but hugely important

Last month I was called for jury duty and was ultimately selected to serve on a criminal trial involving two young black men who were accused of perpetrating an armed robbery in the Western Suburbs of Milwaukee. The experience was singularly unpleasant, not only in the ‘this is jury duty and it sucks” way, but also in the resulting loss of faith in humanity (which was already fairly unsteady).

The trial itself took the better part of a week, starting on Monday afternoon (after a couple hours of jury selection) and ending Thursday afternoon. Almost all of that time was spent on the prosecution, which made a fairly circumstantial case that the two young black men in the room were in fact the two, similarly shaped, young black men appearing on a poor-quality surveillance video. The defense* re-called one witness, a Milwaukee cop, and asked a few questions to demonstrate how little police work really went into all of this (not following up on additional leads or suspects, etc.)

At that point, after some final arguments, the case was given over to us, the jury. This is the point at which everything went to hell.

It was approximately 4:15pm by the time we adjourned to the jury room (a dreary room with a long table and mis-matched chairs, the windows covered in privacy tape and an alarm on the door). As we took our seats, the bailiff came in and said we would need to elect a foreperson. He asked for any volunteers and the old woman seated next to me (who will hereafter be referred to as Crotchety O’Lady) said, “I’ll do it.” She was eager, but worked hard to seem resigned to it.

The long and short of it was that most of the folks on the jury were convinced by 'authorities'.  The prosecutor and police officers who testified laid a flimsy groundwork based on burner cell phones and the aliases assigned to burner phones in the contact list of one guy who was not very believable, and whose vehicle was at both locations according to the grainy video footage.

*   *   *

3 May 2018
I am sorry that i didn't post this in real time... It was a lazy period for me (regular life, in other words).  [Is it just me #iijm or do we find ourselves creating irl type abbreviations in the real world (#itrw) - i wanted to abbreviate #irt and #iow when i was typing earlier this paragraph, but then realized i was making those up.)

I was called to be a juror in late 2013, and it was in the early days of my being a person with a real job.  When i was actually called into a court room, i answered honestly (mostly**) when the attorneys were selecting jurors.  I did make myself sound banal (a "staffing specialist" rather than a "graduate student"), and not overly opinionated.

Mostly what i found being on a jury is that people crave leadership and most people have strong prejudices that they are astoundingly unaware of.  There were a few (or perhaps a couple) people on this particular jury who were actively and obstinately racist in their preference for convicting.  But at the beginning of deliberations, almost all (actually all, except for a middle aged African American lady, who described the defendants as "guys who could my kids", and me) jurors were initially in favor of conviction despite the lack of any compelling evidence.

In the end the two of us had convinced enough of the jurors that there was enough doubt to acquit one defendant entirely and get a hung jury for the other. 

Since serving on the jury, i have been shocked by the number of times i've heard friends, colleagues and other folks discuss openly how they have or planned to avoid jury service by answering introductory questions to the effect that they are prejudiced or would not be able to be impartial.  Jury service is a pain in the ass, but the fact that so many middle and upper class and educated people shirk their responsibility means that juries are largely and disproportionately peopled by under-educated and  underprivileged people... people who are more likely to be unintentionally prejudiced.

And these people need a leader in their midst in order to do the right thing.

*Note: In point of fact there were two separate “defenses” as each defendant was being tried independently of the other, with separate counsel. This becomes important later in the post and only one of the two “defenses” called anybody to the stand.

** Defense attorneys asked whether any of the potential jurors had any "pre-conceptions" of whether the defendants in this case were guilty or not.  My immediate instinct was to answer that, "yes, i would go into the case starting with an assumption about their guilt - namely that they are not guilty, unless the prosecution can prove otherwise."  I withheld this smart-alec remark, which i think would've gotten me tossed by prosecution despite it's accuracy.  

"The American Crisis"

I'm reading through Thomas Paine's "The American Crisis" and at the outset of the essay (actually a series of pamphlets) Paine invokes the term 'slavery' to explain the American situation at the outset of the war.  He writes:

"Britain...has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but 'to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER,' and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon the earth." (formatting from the original)

What gets me is of course that the idea of slavery for Enlightenment thinkers like Paine was so universal when the actuality of slavery (and indentured servitude, which we might think of as slave temps) was everywhere in the actual world at the time.  Most Western philosophers, prior to Hegel "we" might argue, used the concept of slavery as convenient short hand for any abridgment of liberty.  All this while staring actual examples of horrific and lucrative slavery in the faraway face of The (still) New World.

Source: www.ktersakian.com

Even if normal European citizens weren't faced with daily examples of slavery, the spoils of that trade were part of their daily lives*.  Though I suppose you could make the same argument in our post-enlightenment (HA!) age.  From my iPhone and it's problematic origins to my occasional (and shamefully delicious) Big Macs, it is a common refrain of the modern left that poverty is just the new(est) form of slavery.  Barbara Ehrenreich argues it (in not so few words) in Nickel and Dimed and Aristide's book, Eyes of the Heart, makes the argument directly. Tales of the evils of globalization as creating a slavery of poverty is an old new idea.  At the same time, I can imagine an ill-conceived, Norquistian argument about increased taxation representing a new form of slavery and the looming, largely imagined fiscal cliff a mass ensnarement, an abridgment of liberty.

My attention meanders from these comparisons to slavery to my more recent encounter with (imagined) actual slavery in the form of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.  While there have been several reviewers bemoaning the historical usefulness of the film's central drama regarding the passage of the 13th Amendment, I think it should go without saying that looking to Hollywood for significant historical lessons leaves one wanting.  (Both of these reviews, however, are excellent and well worth a read).  It's a well-worn truism that historical films are more about the time in which they are made than the time they pretend to represent.

But I do think that Lincoln does make some fairly sophisticated historical arguments.  The desire to find a super-hero in the figure of important historical figures is better articulated in Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (which I think is actually a better biographical sketch when it comes down to it), but it's definitely present in this movie.  I was struck, though, that when I was thinking of what the film might be saying about contemporary political figures, I wasn't reminded of 'our man from the Land of Lincoln', but more often found myself thinking about W (or perhaps more accurately, Josh Brolin's portrayal of W in W, which has become our historical W).  Lincoln is really funny, because the president constantly wanders off on tangents, tells dirty jokes, and tells stories at odd times.  With Lincoln, though, we are meant to believe these meanderings are acts of secretive genius (his super power is being able to get anyone on his side by telling stories about his suicidal barbers).

I guess all of this is to say that the world is not so big a place, that experiences and history are largely communal (or perhaps even universal), but we act as if each instance, our instants, are unique.  I tell my students that we (and especially they) frequently seem to act as if the world is something that is happening to us, rather than a place that they are actively engaged in.  The catastrophic activities that we take part in every day exist regardless of our recognition (and hopefully thoughtful critique) of them.


*I've been reading lately about the economics of the Age of Revolution (and the age of slavery) and in particular the "triangle trade" as it is known, where slave traders brought captured Africans back to European centers of the slave trade located in secondary port cities like Liverpool and Bordeaux.  Slaves were marketed in these centers and then forwarded on to the Americas, generally.  The result was a booming economy in what were formerly provincial areas.  In fact, Carolyn Fick argues in her excellent book, The Making of Haiti, that it was these growing, outlying economies that directly produced the very middle class nouveau riche who were the main drivers of the French Revolution (and therefore the Haitian Revolution), thus undermining the very system that made them riche in the first place.

American Except-alism

My favorite thing in the world today is Mark Rice's blog, Ranking America, which dispassionately reports on the United States standing in the world on anything from alfalfa exports (2nd) to child poverty (2nd worst) to percentage of rural population (167th) to penis size* (50th) to nocturnal safety (30th), which are the five most recent entries.  Rice's blog pinpoints the childish mentality of needing to only hear that America is the best, richest, most powerful, free-est, awesome-ist, nicest country in the world.  Yes, the United States is Number 1 in small arms ownership and incarceration rates.  That's American Except-alism, number one except for most everything that matters.

I was directed to the blog by an editorial in The New York Times, which replays the quadrennial lament at our politicians' inability to be straight with citizens.  The article essentially asks "What would happen to a presidential candidate who instead of pandering about American Exceptionalism pointed out disgraceful facts like our rank of 34th among the 35 most economically advantaged nations (we beat Romania!) in terms of child poverty?"  They'd lose, is the quick answer, then un-reflectively moves on to say "too bad."  If only we lived in a media environment, says the most prestigious media outlet in America, that was better at creating true political dialogue rather than posturing and pandering...

Point of fact, there is a presidential candidate who is making these kinds of arguments (while offering solutions to some of the same issues).  In her too brief interview with salon.com, Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for president rightly argues for her inclusion in the televised debates (she's on 85% of ballots across the country) and also rightly points out that 90 million Americans don't have a candidate who represents them (that's a small estimate if you ask me).

This morning, I finally became a Decided Voter for the 2012 presidential election.  I will vote for President Obama despite the fact there are other candidates who better reflect my beliefs and hopes for the nation.  I do this out of fear and despair, because I live in a "Swing State".  I would encourage anyone who doesn't live in a swing state to do what I am not brave enough to do, vote for a candidate for president who represents not Mitt Romney's supposed "47%" of Americans who will vote for Barack Obama no matter what or the "43-47%" of partisan republicans who "decide" to believe what outlets like Fox News report, but the "43%+" of people who have so little representation in their elected officials that they don't even bother to vote.  Vote for Jill Stein if you are free to.

*This just in, Roman Numeral J site visits just increased by 13,056%

Ayiti e poblem a pale

text here


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October 2018

This post was a title, and that's it, but there was a lot here.  Written not so long after I had studied Haitian (Creole) and 2 years after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince.  The title is a pun - a joke - but also a sad truth.

Pale in Haitian Creole (or what i like to call Haitian, because it is the language of Haiti) means language.  It also means speaking or conversation.

Haitian is a language of double and triple (and more) entendre.  Haitians love to speak in adages, cliches, old knowledge.

Haiti's (Ayiti) problem (poblem) is largely a problem of language.  Haitians speak Haitian (Creole or kreyol).  Rich Haitians are taught French at school when they are young, and hold it against the rest of the population.

This was going to be a post about this central reality of Haiti, but also that Haiti's central problem is honest conversation.  

When in, of course, the human events...

, being "necessarily" dissolved by some people (if, indeed, corporations are people), we assume it among the powers of the earth.  That is to say, natural - "that's life" - sort of stuff.

I was reading Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" this morning and it occurred to me that it occurred to him how arbitrary our form of government is (or forms of government are).  In his tracing of the formation of governments out of the state of nature*, Paine sets out a natural progression from absolute, direct democracy to a representative form of government once the number of people makes everyone attending the meetings untenable.

This got me thinking, though, how a truer form of democratic republicanism might be found in the form of a selected government, rather than an elected form.  If all representatives were randomly selected during each (s)election cycle I wonder if we would do no worse (and possibly a great deal better) than where we find ourselves right now.  Rather than a nation of the people (if corporations are people), by the people (if corporations are people), and for the people (if corporations are people) we would guide ourselves with a random sampling of our peers making decisions for a predetermined length of time (six, four or two year terms).  We would be guided by polling data in a much more real and meaningful way - that is, the "deciders" would themselves be that polling data, a random, statistically significant set of data, each with their own individual motivations (but without the motivation of fundraising, pandering or party loyalty.)

7/31/11 - Jefferson Memorial

If memory serves, this idea has been posited before (I'm thinking perhaps of Plato's Republic or Sir Thomas More's Utopia - anyone remember?) and I'm quite sure of it myself, but in the spirit of Jeffersonian renewal of government, I put it out for discussion.  I was reminded this summer of just how selective our collective memory has become when I saw again for the first time the Jefferson Memorial in DC.  I was there with JP and George Etwire who we met on the bus into the city.  George is from Ghana and was travelling to Utah on business.  Like us, he had several hours to kill in DC before his next flight so we saw some sites.

Jefferson (and I would argue the rest of them, too) never intended for this to be The Constitution, in perpetuity.  It must be a living document, both in how we read it and amend it, but also in the sense that it might (must?) grow, give birth to new ideas and eventually even die.  The real Tea Party (the one before it was co-opted by corporate interests) might have known this, but the idea was lost in the ideological fervor of originalism.  The Occupy Movement may also know it, but not admit to knowing it because of its efforts to appeal to the "middle of the roaders."  (Calling the Occupy Movement extremist makes about as much sense as calling Barack Obama a Left Winger - while, as with anything, there is some fringe there, the majority line is fairly tame.)

What surprises me, though, is that it's been right in front of us since at least 1943 - 8th Graders have been carted past it for years - this is not a historical "argument", it's history.


* Very interesting is Paine's formulation of the state of nature as a "group of emigrants" come together (presumably as a displacing force of whatever happened to live there before) in a new, untouched land.  This of course presumes a certain modern (or at least enlightened) sensibility in the people of the hypothetical age, whereas Rousseau's "state of nature" hearkens back to an earlier, more innocent humanity.  Paine's Founders are always already colonizers (and therefore need governments to reign in their baser nature).

...

The stress is on the "Pursuit" in Pursuit of Happiness...

Zombie Narratives as Cultural Reset Buttons


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May 2018
In the interest of publishing the stagnating drafts and have full release (in the non massaganistic sense) of the blog, i present two headlines... Perhaps they were both meant to be posts in and of themselves one day (they certainly have the resonance for it).

They're both ideas that i've worked out a bit, but not that i've written out fully in any way.  Happiness is not guaranteed in America in the same way that Life and Liberty are.  And Zombies help us think about the future and what we might do differently.

did The Secret cause the Recession?

http://www.getrichslowly.org/2007/06/11/get-rich-quack-david-schirmer-of-the-secret/


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January 2018

The title of this post was one of my proudest moments writing this blog.  I remember when i came up with the premise, and it's the reason that i continue to punch keys on this little corner of inter-obsolescence. 

It's a tweet, before there was twitter.  (was there Twitter in 2010?  anyway, i didn't know about it if there was).  A forum to posit incomplete thoughts and premises, and pass them off as modern wisdom. 

This thought was the underlying absurdity of American Capitalism and our (sadly not unique) taste for mumbo jumbo. 

The Secret was a dumb book that was massively popular for a time, particularly when i was a Barnes & Noble bookseller.  The premise was essentially that if you believed in the Secret, you could use its powers to magically make whatever you want to have happen happen.  This is called manifesting.  It's dumb, but kinda fun to think about.

The Secret at its core is a concept about selfishness.  We like to pretend (in magic, but also in capitalism) that we can win, but that there is no one losing on the other end of our win.  Capitalism (again, like magic!), is very good at making things invisible.  In particular the lines that connect things.  You win in capitalism when you find a cheap cool sweater (or a $1 hamburger), and it's easy to pretend that the worker who made that sweater or our entire ecological system aren't losing in that deal.

American capitalism - American oligarchs - are at their core about that same selfishness.  Oligarchs pretend they have magically manifested something that no one else could have, and they are therefore owed what they have taken.  In reality, the world is more McLuhanistic (or Benjaministic?), and most things that are would have been eventually anyway... probably, but in a new way.