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%

Will Work for Jobs

It's nearing election day and the blathering "jobs jobs jobs, jobs jobs jobs jobs" (said with the intonation of the Peanuts adults) speeches are out in full force.

With an unemployment rate hovering around 8% candidates present themselves as viable alternatives for "job creators-in-chief", but it seems to me that such a role is another in the long line of fictional platforms on which we judge our candidates.

Mitt Rombley (as I think I heard Candy Crowley call him in the 2nd presidential debate) loves to say things like, "The government doesn't create jobs.  I know how to create jobs, because I was the head of a massive institution which was able to create jobs, but governments definitely cannot do that because they're not corporations, which are people."

President Obama, on the other hand, says things like, "We've created almost over 4.5 million new jobs over the past 29 (ish) months and while there's more to do, we're on the right track."  His statement is a little more true than Romney's if we assume the "we" refers to 'the American economy', i.e. everyone in and involved with the United States.  Slow, steady growth has been a feature of our recent recovery.

The fiction, of course, is that either candidate's plans will, necessarily, lead to more jobs.  It seems to me that if we consider a job, 1 person's opportunity to do a certain amount of work on behalf of someone else, what we really need to talk about is how do we make "more work" not "more jobs".  Creating work is much more straight forward than creating jobs, because 'work' is a scientifically-specific term.  You can create new work, I think, in only one of two ways: by creating additional work or new needs, which amounts to the same (see Jeffrey Kaplan's excellent article on the topic) or by decreasing efficiency in the workplace.

Making new work was a central piece of The New Deal and is what is now (and then) being largely reviled by conservative or big-business thinkers.  The idea that Romney and others keep repeating is that "government doesn't create jobs".  Set aside the fact that almost 6 times as many people are employed by the government (11.8 Mil jobs as of 2007) than by the nation's next largest employer, Wal-Mart (2.1 Mil jobs as of 2010).  That idea of the right that jobs can't be created by government is exactly false.  In fact, government is the most straightforward way to create new job, because it can call for new work to be created... 'build that bridge, teach those kids, photograph that crucifix in the glass of urine...'

The first stimulus bill worked, but it hasn't worked as quickly as we may all want it to (and in fact most Obama supporters at the time were saying that it didn't go far enough).  The stalling of an additional stimulus and now the calls for anti-stimulus (drastic spending cuts) at a time when everyone says jobs are the most important issue is... well... exactly what we've come to expect, I guess.  It should be no surprise to anyone that the republican ticket will be turning back to what has worked so well for them.  Incomes and assets of the 1% (and especially the .01%) are up astronomically in the past 12 years, so why shouldn't they want more of the same?

Emotion, Elasticity and Paucity

The last 45 minutes has been personally significant. I came home from work (which evidently is a bastion of out-of-the-loop-ed-ness and "what was that?"), fixed a snack (crackers and cheese) and a cocktail (The Fifty-Fifty Cocktail, from The Savoy Cocktail Book) and turned on a rerun of The Daily Show, as I am wont to do.

It was the May 3rd episode, featuring an interview with Peter Bergen, recent author of the book Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden From 9/11 to Abottabad.  As I sat and watched, I was in a pretty good mood - as I always am.  Jon Stewart is (no matter what he says about it) the foremost voice of critique of the 24-hour cable news culture in America.  Bergen, who is doubtless the most well-informed person outside of the current administration about the killing of Usama Bin Laden, pretty clearly stated that...

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Update: 1/10/13 - I have no idea what the Bergen interview clearly stated, but here - you should watch it, because i trust my then-self:

!!!!

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Peter Bergen
www.thedailyshow.com
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Some thoughts on "Pre-Occupy"

Yesterday afternoon UW-M's Center for 21st Century Studies hosted a Pre-Occupy Symposium, examining various potential roots of #OWS*.  The talks, and in particular the subsequent Q&A reaffirmed my reticence to get much-involved with the world of leftist activism and organizing.  I am, of course, generally sympathetic and supportive (not to mention appreciative) of the work they do, but the conversations become a bit too predictable ofttimes.


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Update 1/10/13 - I never really got too far with my write-up of the event.  Needless to say, I was somewhat disappointed by the proceedings.  I am, certainly, sympathetic for the radical Marxian desire of those taking part in the event, but the whole imaginarium of the event.  The people presenting at the symposium seem not to live in the same world as most people - as real people.

*Though #OWS is also, ultimately, unsatisfying as a name for the 2011 (and subsequent?) movement, Annie McClanahan's excellent pre-pre blog post on the symposium submits the term for our consideration and I find it a useful catch-all.

Ayiti e poblem a pale

text here


*   *   *
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.  

As yet unused pun names for hair salons

Please feel free to make use of the names below for your own future endeavors for a small, one-time fee*:

• Hair Brains
• Hairstory
• Ken Sideburns': Haircut
• Locks, be a Lady Tonight!
• The Mane Idea
• You Want Mane-Ease on That!?

* Please deposit $8.35 into the Paypal account associated with this blog for use of any of the above names.  Fees are to be paid only one time and you will then own all rights associated with the name of your particular shop.  Note, if your shop goes out of business and you open another shop by the same name, you will need to pay the fee again, but if you relocate your business without dissolving the business, you may use the same name at the second shop.  Also, you may add "II" or "Too" to any of the above names when opening a second location for no additional charge.

On the Dangers of Nostalgia (and Apocalyptic Thinking)

Last night I attended my annual foray into reminiscing musicality and general old time-i-ness at the Badger Chordhawk's annual Barbershop Show in lovely Janesville, Wisconsin.  This year's theme was "remember the good old days" (which is it's theme every year), but this time, on the radio.  Live Radio - See it with your Ears! was a collection of classic Americana tunes interspersed with schlocky vignettes inspired by early radio programs.

This morning, reading Michael Chabon's Maps & Legends, it occurred to me that this mode of nostalgic thinking is the candy-colored cousin of the dystopian fiction of science fiction films, novels and graphic novels.  Chabon examines Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!, which is set in a post-apocalyptic, corporate-ruled world, where anyone who can afford to has relocated to the suburbs, as it were, on the new Mars colony.

His next chapter (about Cormac McCarthy's The Road) and two chapters after that (about Ben Katchor's Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer) further explicate Chabon's theories of dystopic and nostalgic thinking.  He never says so (and may not realize), but these two modes of thinking are the

Source: ComicsAlliance.com

same.  The nostalgia packed into the Chordhawk's erstwhility is an effort to ignore the present by idealizing the past.  The "good old songs" (some of which are great songs and others that are best forgotten) essentialize and simplify the era they come from just like songs today do.  The function of this nostalgic thinking is to focus attention on the non-existent past rather than the all-too-real present.

So too, post-apocalyptic stories (stories about how the future is so bleak and we are so doomed that we may as well just accept the present as is and distract ourselves while we wait for the inevitable collapse) are arguments for stasis, for inaction.  On the surface, dystopian stories (zombie narratives, say) might be read as warnings of what might come to pass if we do not take some course of action or do take another, but on further examination they are typically peopled with future nostalgialytes, pining for what's been lost.  In these narratives, characters re-enact the pre-apocalyptic traits and activities responsible for the blindness that causes the fall in the first place: empty bourgeois sentimentality (as in Terra Nova), rampant (also empty) consumerism (as in Dawn of the Dead), misplaced loyalty to institutions that lose their meaning once the world changes (as in The Postman or Jericho).

Nostalgia is a mode of remembering as we want to, with little attention paid to actualities.  There's a comfort in the past because it is untouchable.  The now (jetzt-Zeit) is hard, because of its potentiality and the future daunting because of its uncertainty and fluidity.  Then is easy because it can't come back and contradict you.  Apocalyptic thinking also negates the present by forsaking it, giving up on it.  If the future is certain (not necessarily defined, but certainly lost) then the now is drained of its revolutionary potential.  It is jetzt without jetzt-Zeit.