tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72341459921089279102024-03-13T19:01:45.962-04:00VectorPressTrevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.comBlogger398125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-23109801786384297902023-11-14T15:00:00.000-05:002023-11-14T15:00:15.879-05:00Not a Wave, but a Tide<p> </p>I've been rewatching an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGp2BzHMiCk&list=PLbPZYrS_g_At_AciykufZokPrN53wyZ0w&index=2">Adam Curtis documentary</a> and it just so happened to touch on the time the Red Army Faction trained with Syrian paramilitaries.
<br /><br />
The specifics of which I'll get into later but the main point I'm gonna try and explain is this: there is no conflict between socialism and capitalism, we live in postmodern technocracy. This is not a critique of our internet addled culture or "woke" anything, but rather the transition from modern liberal capitalism into postmodern technocracy began in 1945. World War II was the end of the old empires and also the end of the grand 18th Century revolution in liberal capitalism. The war economy was the New Deal on steroids. Big government didn't so much reign in big business as they merged, and that synthesis has persisted no matter how much tax cutting Reagan did. His whole schtick, when you get down to it, was less about economic transformation and making America "great" again than it was ameliorating the popular outrage - and malaise - of the transformations of the 1970s. When the rates of profits began to fall and the postwar revolutions failed.
<br /><br />
So here's that aside in the lede - back in the early '70s, the German Maoist terrorists Red Army Faction went to train with some Syrian militias that were fighting Israel. These RAF Germans were committed leftists and also very cognizant of their nation's crimes in the holocaust. And they were aghast at their Arab "comrades" who venerated a portrait of Hitler. "Good man. Killed lots of Jews." The Syrians didn't see a problem with this but the Germans suffered from cognitive dissonance, because all their Marx and Mao had taught the Revolution would be international and liberatory for all the working classes. And then here was a particular national liberation movement embracing exactly the kind of genocidal atavism they thought they were fighting back home. The RAF's way of "fighting" was also bombing department stores to shock the middle classes into understanding social democracy was built on global exploitation, and they were equally baffled when the German working classes reviled them as murderers.
<br /><br />
Now, how this ties back into the larger point (admittedly clumsily) is how you have a corps of committed ideologues who are both baffled that the rest of society thinks they're pricks and also fighting a battle that was already decided. That's the modern rightwing in America. They genuinely believe banning abortion and trans bathroom panics are the most pressing concerns. So they double down on this, expecting society at large to agree with the intrinsic goodness of their project - as they see it. Then they lose every state referendum on abortion. Then they lose elections in traditional southern enclaves like Virginia and Kentucky. If enough racist grandparents have been migrating there, like Florida, they can look successful but it's like winning class president at a special needs school. "Oh, good for you!" pat on the head, move on.
<br /><br />
However, this isn't because more Americans are virtuous liberals. It's because more Americans are just normal. "Normal" being a subjective thing - I remember growing up in the DC suburbs, it was quite "normal" for all the DOD and State Department contractors to decry the big government that paid their mortgages. Today, it's far more normal to think people screaming about "groomers" aor election conspiracies are both unhinged and - worse - annoying. Trump is really annoying these days, and that's gonna hurt him worse than all the trials. His only hope is another electoral college fluke, which is a non-zero probability but so is nuclear war. And again, like the RAF, this is a lost battle. The country's going "woke" no matter how much Trump's fan club whines, no matter how much the really committed try to "rise up" and usually shoot a dozen people with an AR before getting vaporized by the police state. They're not waking up the normal Americans to their manichean "truth" and are just slotted into yet another crime story.
<br /><br />
And here we get to how Joe Biden is like Ronald Reagan. Like Reagan, he's presiding over a transition in American society that's so slow and unconscious that it's hard to spot. Like Reagan, he's a bumbling old guy who is nonetheless endearing, even to those who criticize him. Yeah, lots of young people gripe about Ol' Joe, but that doesn't mean they're gonna vote for the bathroom-creeping Republicans. Where Reagan presided over the enrichment of a corporate oligarchy and suburban culture war that began under Nixon, Biden is presiding over a fuller technocratic transition - "rule by experts" - and the burying of that culture war that began under Obama. Nixon's silent majority were the normal people of their time, annoyed at the hippies. The Democrat voting base of today isn't DSA - I feel like they've just disintegrated since the end of the Sanders campaign - but the normal people in the professional classes. The ones who want peace, order, and good government - in contrast to the Republican base who think everything is a secret Marxist conspiracy. Crying that transcommies are turning your kids gay is the new blaming (bombing) department stores for being counter-revolutionary. Even if you can logically explain the theory, it still sounds fucking nuts to a person not plugged into the deep end of internet political discourse.
<br /><br />
To be clear, this is not a hopeful assessment. These same normal people are tuned out to climate change and the gigafication of the economy. I'm not arguing the triumph of technocracy will lead to human flourishing - I'm even skeptical it will ameliorate human want, which is about the only good argument for a dictatorship of the scientists. But I see this as the direction of things. Marxist revolution was a byproduct of liberal capitalism, an attempt to inject some Christian compassion into an exploitative economic machine. And too many latter-day "Marxists" just <a href="https://yasha.substack.com/p/the-jetsonian-left-wanthony-galluzzo?">want to keep the middle class material comforts they grew up with</a>, but not feel guilty about it. Like the MAGA faithful, it's yesterday's fight. The real struggle is against an ever more hostile biosphere, to be met with resilience and managed retreat. Which is also why I don't label my predictions of technocracy as "the good" - too many of these political theorists are just moralizing by other means - because shrinking resources and northward migrations are going to make even more draconian border controls agreeable to the aforementioned "normal" people.
<br /><br />
Stop worrying about elections. Start worrying about climate adaptation.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-90571489261624635852022-05-04T12:44:00.012-04:002022-05-04T14:59:30.592-04:00Why All-Out War is Good, Actually<p>How's your anxiety these days? Mine's a motherfucker. Rumors of nuclear war, PTSD, and a coffee addiction are not a fun combination.</p><p>Which is why I'm hoping the rumored "big news" out of Moscow come May 9th - V-E Day - will be a general mobilization. Brutal as it's been, the Russo-Ukrainian war thus far really has been a "special military operation" and not a formal war. This is a logistical as much as legal distinction, because it means the Kremlin cannot call up reservists or directly conscript new soldiers. Should Putin declare "a state of war" on or before the big Red Square celebrations planned for next week, that all changes as the entire Russian society will be placed on a war footing. Going all-in on Donbass, which will succeed no matter how many Polish BMPs Zelensky can get.</p><p>And that's a good thing. The terrible logic of this war from the beginning has been a conventional Russian victory - however that can defined and spinned by the siloviki - is better for the world than continued Ukrainian success. Because nukes. Many American and other Western talking heads and political class suckpuppets have bemoaned that the 4000+ nuclear warheads in the Russian arsenal puts Europe and the US in a sort of hostage situation, where NATO air forces can't just roll in and carpet bomb Russian forces without suffering actual consequences in London and DC.</p><p>Somewhere in Baghdad, people are muttering, "See how <i>you</i> like it..."<br /></p><p>There's been talk recently, which I am not linking to, about a possible deployment of tactical nukes against Ukraine to clear the current impasse in Donbass. Exaggerated and ridiculous talk but still alarming, as such an escalation besides the horror and suffering immediately in Ukraine would breach the global nuclear taboo that has persisted since 1945. Once Russia uses nukes in a conflict, that sets a precedent for US and Chinese (and Israeli) nuclear forces that amounts to, "Hey, we can do this now." Which will either translate into many tactical deployments as the Great Powers go about beating on weaker countries or - and who knows the odds on this anymore - an escalation to a strategic exchange as NATO "cannot let this go unanswered" or whatever other idiot excuse for annihilating the Northern Hemisphere.</p><p>But, should Putin declare All-out War on Ukraine, the possibility of a tac nuke <a href="https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/05/putin-may-have-no-choice-but-to-declare-war-on-ukraine/">goes way down</a>:</p><p></p><blockquote><i>If Putin declares a mobilization on May 9, that would almost certainly indicate a deferral of possible WMD use. More Russian soldiers in Ukraine means more of them exposed to potential WMD fallout. And conquering Ukraine, if parts of it are devasted by WMD, makes no sense.</i></blockquote><p></p><p>Michael Kofman, one of the few to predict the war who isn't a hysterical neocon, <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/ukraines-military-advantage-and-russias-stark-choices/">talked about this a week ago</a>.
He argues that current Russian forces, once the Donbass Offensive is
done, is a "spent force" that cannot prosecute further military
operations against Ukraine - let alone other neighboring countries,
despite the yelpings of Polish and Baltic reactionaries. Kofman also makes the point that such a mobilization would commit Putin to maximalist war aims - the total Kyiv regime change that initally failed - and that could prove politically untenable. <br /></p><p>There's an inevitable argument that invading Ukraine in the first place made no sense so Putin might still pull the nuclear trigger, but Anatol Lieven <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/05/03/reckless-and-ruthless-yes-but-is-putin-insane-no/">makes a good point</a> that while reckless and ruthless, Putin is not insane. His miscalculations are still rational. So here's hoping he doubles down conventionally, or just pulls a "mission accomplished" while the Donbass offensive stalemates, instead of trying to shock and awe the world one last time before that cancer gets him.</p><p><br /></p><p>UPDATE 2:59PM: A rare good <a href="https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1521803362152374274">Twitter thread</a> on the costs versus benefits of doing a Bush-In-His-Flightsuit victory lap rather than whole-hog mobilization.<br /></p>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-41397728018273201422022-03-11T10:00:00.009-05:002022-03-17T09:48:08.981-04:00Loosed Upon the World<p>Two weeks ago, if you told me Ukraine would still be resisting
the Russian invasion and Zelensky would still be alive, I'd have laughed
in your face. In fairness, I laughed at the prospect of an invasion of
this scale up until the morning of February 24th. The idea was simply
too stupid across every dimension - tactically, strategically, and
politically. I like to think I've so far been vindicated on that
analysis, the Russian tactics of shock and awe have stupidly abandoned
any sense of modern logistics and led to a whole new genre of internet
video: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/t53nbi/casually_eating_some_pizza_with_my_buddies_while/">tank theft!</a> Strategically, Putin has stupidly reinvigorated NATO
and even inspired Germany to start arming itself again. And politically,
this has galvanized the once waning opposition movement within Russia,
to say nothing of how it's compromised Vova's position among his fellow
siloviki in the Kremlin.</p><div>It was all so obviously stupid from the start. And it happened anyway.</div><div><br /></div><div>And
while how it's been happening has been even more of a surprise, how it
ends still looks written in stone. A Russian military victory, followed
by occupation and insurgency. Putin's very own Iraq quagmire, right on
the border and fed by NATO weapons shipments. Hundreds of thousands
dead, a nuclear superpower destabilized for a generation, and Ukraine a
breeding ground for all the worst sorts of throat-slitters.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Though
you wouldn't think it, to judge by every anglophone corner of the
internet. Between r/worldnews and Facebook memes, there is a popular
certainty Russia is losing the war and will soon be driven from the
Ukrainian plains, to allow the sacred sunflowers to grow. Or something.
While the conspiratorial may be inclined to see this total domination of
the propaganda space to be the works of some three-letter-agency, I
think it's genuinely organic. Millions of people throwing moral support
to Ukrainians, who despite the sins of the Azov Battalion really are
defending their homes from an aggressive invasion. Much like Iraqis or
Afghans or Vietnamese or Yemenis or...</div><div><br /></div><div>And it
helps the blue and gold flag memes that Russia's performance - so far -
has been so blitheringly incompetent. <a href="https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael">Michael Kofman</a>, one of the few
commentators to have predicted war, has gone on numerous social media
threads about both logistical failures and the bizarre way Russia has
abandoned their own combined arms doctrine, opting for slap-dash
"special ops" zipping in, getting overstretched, and either captured or
killed by even Ukrainian militia. Russian soldier morale, already not
the highest among armies, has reportedly been sinking faster than the
ruble. The way things look - the way they're made to look - is Ukraine
only needs to hold out through another week or two of bombardments until
either mass desertion renders Russian forces combat ineffective or
Vova suffers a palace coup by generals upset that even their own are
dying in this stupid war.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Serious question:
when was the last time an American General died in battle? I can't
think of any since the Civil War - maybe, since Confederates don't
count.</div><div><br /></div><div>A lesson everyone should have learned
from Syria is light infantry craft matters. The Kurdish YPG demonstrated
this over and over against Islamic State. Ukrainian regular military and militia have demonstrated it over and over again. But light infantry can only do so much against heavy armor, especially when Russia can afford to keep throwing men and material into the Ukraine meatgrinder. For all their bravery, a Ukraine that doesn't reach some ceasefire deal with the invaders is looking at the decimation of Kyiv (which might be happening as you read this) followed by an occupation and insurgency.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's
how an insurgency works: think about everyone in your entire extended
family. All of them, from the old yia-yias to the bouncing new babies to
the middle-aged failures. Now kill two thirds of them. Of those, a third
died bad. Like basement and power drill bad. In exchange, you maybe get
the occupiers to back off for a while. In rare cases, the occupiers
leave because the political situation among their bosses no longer
allows for the costs of the occupation. That usually takes a few changes
in the political leadership or maybe a new generation reaching age of
majority. Also, for this thought experiment, you are not one of the
guerillas. You just live in the occupied territory. The guerrillas lose
more.</div><div><br /></div><div>A bad deal for Ukraine. And every neighboring country. <a href="https://archive.ph/LYd16">And it's the big plan inside the Beltway</a>:</div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote><i>The ways that Western countries would support a Ukrainian resistance are beginning to take shape. Officials have been reluctant to discuss detailed plans, since they’re premised on a Russian military victory that, however likely, hasn’t happened yet. But as a first step, Ukraine’s allies are planning for how to help establish and support a government-in-exile, which could direct guerrilla operations against Russian occupiers, according to several U.S. and European officials.</i></blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div>NATO will not engage Russia directly. Which is a good thing, no matter how many schools and hospitals get shelled into rubble. But NATO will keep an unconventional war simmering in occupied Ukraine, nominally to bleed Russia, but also empowering the worst factions within Ukraine. Thoughtful, democratic types make for poor guerillas and Langley never arms Marxist rebels no matter who they're fighting. All this proposed support is going to the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment">Azov Battalion</a> and fellow travelers, because arming the Afghan Mujahideen worked out so well.</div><div><br /></div><div>Except now, the Great Powers quagmire with militant reactionaries is in the middle of "civilized" Europe. The blowback coming from Putin's stupid war is going to make Paris 2015 look like harsh language.</div>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-25548450936351942322022-02-24T09:17:00.002-05:002022-02-24T09:17:12.166-05:00Oh Shit<p>Putin is having his Bush Goes to Baghdad moment. Whether this is shock and awe to break off those breakaway regions or a prelude to a Ukraine-wide military occupation, it both amounts to the same thing: thousands dead and the weakness of the Russian state exposed (counter-intuitively) by it's massive violent demonstration.</p>
<p>I remember Stan Goff making this point in late 2004 (can't dig up the old Counterpunch/Beast article, may only be on Wayback now). That the US invading Iraq in 2003 was because they couldn't bring any other measures to bear, that US hegemony had already degraded to the point that soft power didn't work. Short-term, the US military defeated the Iraqi military but then a decade of occupation only managed to produce a corrupt government-in-name-only and the Islamic State.</p>
<p>That's the Russo-Ukraine War trajectory. Swift Russian tactical victory followed by long, grinding decline. It's already a domestically unpopular operation (which will probably fluctuate back and forth, people can forgive any atrocity if it achieves "victory") and has now effectively shut Russia out of the global economy with the all but stated death of Nord Stream 2. Now, the US faced a huge backlash for the Iraq adventure but the US in 2003 was also at it's hyperpower peak. Russia today has been under 8 years of Crimea sanctions and last I checked has a negative birth rate. Holding the threat of invasion was getting dialogue with the US and EU but now that's done. In trying to make Russia great again, Putin just set them on the path to being North Korea.</p>
<p><a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/01/13/did-this-weeks-us-nato-russia-meetings-push-us-closer-to-war/">Anatol Lieven</a> has been one of the war skeptics to still honestly assess what a war <i>might</i> be like. <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/11/24/what-war-with-russia-over-ukraine-would-really-look-like/">And he doesn't mince words</a>:
<blockquote>The European Union would impose greatly intensified sanctions that would do vast damage to an already troubled Russian economy; the Nord Stream gas pipeline would be abandoned; Russia would be forced into almost complete dependence on China; parts of the Ukrainian army would fight very hard, and might inflict heavy Russian casualties; and if it occupies large new territories, Russia would face the challenge of ruling not the pro-Russian populations of the Donbas and Crimea, but significant numbers of infuriated and rebellious Ukrainians.</blockquote></p>
<p>That the Siloviki running the Kremlin would take a look at all of this and decide Operation Ukrainian Freedom is better than it's coy brinksmanship of the past year is testament to Neocon-level idiot hubris, an air of desperation over maintaining their own power domestically, or likely both.</p>
<p>And, living on a different continent, this would all be so much background noise - the usual misery of the universe - if not for all the Acela corridor ghouls now salivating to <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/02/23/why-arming-ukrainian-resistance-fighters-would-be-a-really-bad-idea/">arm Ukraine</a>. Maybe that's why I'm rambling all over the place, because waking up to "War's on," in the one country that sabre-rattles the most at Russia, calling this "Our Sudetenland!" while forgetting Our Haditha means living in the crossfire of two sclerotic oligarchies, always threatening to sock each other in the goshdarn teeth while the ice caps continue melting.</p>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-87310099875277309102021-01-12T12:00:00.022-05:002021-01-12T13:30:40.670-05:00White RiotHistory repeats itself but it's important to be clear what history. Last week's failed coup attempt by MAGA and QAnon reactionaries on behalf of President Trump has already been likened to a "putsch" or even the infamous Kristallnacht. These comparisons are natural as Trump and his supporters are fascists - absolutely and beyond any reasonable doubt - but as detailed in such histories of World War II like William Shirer's <i>Rise and Fall of the Third Reich</i>, when the Brownshirts had their own riot the rest of the Nazi Party was already well connected to the Conservative Party within the Reichstag as well as German business leaders. That's how Hitler ascended to the chancellorship despite the Nazis never gaining a plurality of political support.
<br /><br />
Rather, the attack on Capitol Hill of 6 January is most comparable to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing">Al Qaeda bombing the USS Cole</a>.
<br /><br />
In late 2000, the US Navy destroyer USS Cole was anchored off the coast of Yemen. Prior to this, Al Qaeda had already placed itself on the FBI's radar with the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070805035833/http://usinfo.state.gov/is/international_security/terrorism/embassy_bombings.html">embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya</a>, leading then President Clinton to reportedly develop a fixation on shutting down the terrorist network. This doubled after a small boat loaded with munitions slammed into the Cole, killing fifteen American sailors and injuring a further 37. FBI investigators, with lackluster CIA help, were closing in on Osama bin Laden in late 2000 and into early 2001, then the new Bush administration ordered everyone to drop this Al Qaeda nonsense and turn their attention to Iraq.
<br /><br />
Then September 11th happened.
<br /><br />
The United States is currently in such a liminal space as it was between the USS Cole Bombing and September 11th. Without the latter, the war against Al Qaeda would have remained a shadowy business of investigations and interrogations. After September 11th, the world got the War on Terror. Either scenario ends with Al Qaeda demolished as it was never a sustainable model for an irregular force but the scenario we know came with tremendous destruction and pain.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://exiledonline.com/wn-37-is-there-an-al-qaeda/">Like Al Qaeda</a>, QAnon is unsustainable and born of a delusion. The paranoid ravings of pizza sex dungeons and turning the frogs gay are as grounded as the global holy war Osama bin Laden and his other Mujahideen buddies fantasized about. And also like Al Qaeda in 2000, QAnon thinks they’re winning. The storming of Capitol Hill looks like a victory because you didn’t see anyone stop them on TV. Over 80 people have since been arrested by the FBI and are facing felony murder charges, but the dream that Trump shall soon enact his master plan and all the evil Democrats will be swept aside for some glorious Patriot Reich still animates the thousands threatening to descend on Washington DC and state capitols before Joe Biden’s inauguration a week from now.
<br /><br />
The scale of this upcoming armed revolt will determine how this second War on Terror plays out. If there are sporadic clashes, pipe bombs that go off or not, the next few years will see a low-key counter-insurgency waged by the FBI. A darker and more dystopian retread of the 1990s, when Timothy McVeigh and other homegrown bin Ladens made brief splashes in the national consciousness before being swiftly ground under by the federal security forces. And while a relatively more peaceful scenario, this will also see QAnon’s principles nursed by a Republican Party that has no other option for protecting their own jobs and transferred to later generations in a slow, ugly spiral into an ever more vicious and dangerous society outside increasingly over-policed urban enclaves.
<br /><br />
Still, this is the best case scenario for the next week.
<br /><br />
The worst case scenario is QAnon stages some real tactical victory. Not in DC - anyone making a run at the inauguration will be vaporized - but in state capitols in Michigan or Pennsylvania. A MAGA militia could conceivably occupy a state legislature or governor’s mansion by force of arms and could even hold it until a federal response - and there would have to be a federal response, as so many American police have drunk the QAnon kool aid.
<br /><br />
This is the more dramatic scenario and arguably a very likely scenario because American reactionaries really think they can win a civil war - which in their imaginings is always fought against baristas and gender studies departments, not the National Guard. For all the shock and horror, a QAnon “victory” like this will be swiftly crushed because the interests that really matter in America cannot allow such insurrection and because the basic logic of power demands such threats be crushed as a message to the others. It would be horrific, a national trauma, and over much faster than the first scenario with QAnon designated a terrorist organization and the GOP collapsing as a viable political party. Like the first scenario, the FBI would spend years hunting down every last Parler account but without the sideshow of political nihilists trying to flirt with a terrorist base. The entire national conversation would go in one way and the de facto military totalitarianism that really dominates American politics would be laid bare.
<br /><br />
Impeaching Trump a second time, while good and right, will not change his followers’ minds. They are diving all in on a civil war they believe they can win but simply cannot. No action on your part will affect the coming days and we are all now at the mercy of history.
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-33523689413741595392020-08-26T06:00:00.001-04:002020-08-26T06:00:02.672-04:00So I Just Read Les Misérables<p> </p><div class="usertext-body may-blank-within md-container "><div class="md"><p><em>This regards the 1987 Signet Classics edition of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables,
complete and unabridged, translated by Lee Fahnestock and Norman
MacAfee, based on the original French to English translation by C.E.
Wilbour. All spoilers to follow.</em></p>
<p>I'd tried reading <em>Les Misérables</em> several years ago but quite
honestly got tired with Hugo's overwrought prose somewhere in Volume
II. Since the world is ending and I ran out of library books, I figured
this was a good time to give it another go. I'm glad I did because while
Hugo doesn't get any less wrought as the story grows, it's both a
fascinating exploration of 19th Century society in the shadow of
revolution and an insight into the psyche of the time, still wrestling
with old aristocratic habits and new republican ideals.</p>
<p>But having said all that - and planning to say more - what really
defines this gargantuan novel is a morality play, centered on the
character of Jean Valjean. Imprisoned for stealing bread and kept for
four times his original sentence because of repeated escape attempts, he
is both sympathetic while being hardened and cunning enough to be a
compelling hero. Some might be attempted to call him Byronic but rather
his turn from a life of wickedness - or what society deems wicked - to
the good is much more religious. Embittered and alienated from all
humanity at the start, the kindness and forgiveness of a provincial
bishop sets him on his path to redemption at the start to which he
pursues with as little regard for the mores and norms of society as when
he was a criminal but with rather with a focus on compassion and
relieving the suffering of others.</p>
<p>Valjean finds his project of human betterment embodied in the
orphaned Cosette. Orphaned by his own charitable machinations in his
guise as Monsieur Madeleine, the benefactor from nowhere who builds up
the factory town Montreuil-sur-Mer. A factory that employs - and
degrades and throws away - Cosette's martyred mother Fantine. But before
he can swoop in and save the poor orphan, Valjean's past catches up
with him in a morality play within a morality play.</p>
<p>Enter Inspector Javert, Hugo's embodiment not of Good but of Order.
Javert's commitment to law and authority is tautological - it must be
obeyed because it is law and authority - and he takes visible pleasure
in subjecting others to the law's severity. At first suspecting the
beloved Mayor Madeleine of being the convict Valjean, he later recants
his theory as some poor dolt in a neighboring town is arrested for
stealing apples and roundly accused of being the infamous Valjean. Real
name Champmathieu, he is subjected to a Kafkaesque trial in which his
insistence upon his true identity is proof of his guilt.</p>
<p>This play within a play serves to illustrate Hugo's larger point
about the society of his day and law and order. How stealing bread or
simply mistaken identity can condemn someone to lifelong ignominy, the
old feudal castes persisting under different names, as further
demonstrated when "Monsieur Madeleine" storms the trial to proclaim
himself the true Jean Valjean, to which everyone reacts with
incredulity. He can't possibly be a convict because he is a respected
mayor and businessman.</p>
<p>However, as much as Hugo challenges these lingering ideas of inherent
goodness and wickedness, of castes assigned either success or misery
for all time, he still cannot break free of the essentialist view of
human nature. This Great Man theory is a constant theme through Hugo's
novel, often in tension with his professed republican ideals. For all
his focus on the dignity and suffering of the lower classes, it's only
through the superiority of Mayor Madeleine - the reformed Jean Valjean -
that uplifts the community of Montfermeil. When he surrenders himself
to the law to save Champmathieu, the whole town goes back to seed.</p>
<p>The long digression on the Battle of Waterloo further cements this
paradox in Hugo's thinking. Hugo talks glowingly of Napoleon, of how his
incredible successes had to be ordained by Providence, and contrasts
this with the dull and offensively un-brilliant Wellington. But the dull
guy won.</p>
<p>To go on my own brief digression - and Hugo would approve, having
dedicated an entire chapter to the history of the sewers of Paris - this
Great Man theory so enraptured the French post-Napoleon that it
arguably led to their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The
Grand Armee had long been accustomed to being the instrument of their
supreme commander's genius, but where Napoleon III proved timid and
dejected the mid-rank officers of the Prussian forces quickly exploited
every opportunity to drive the fight across Europe and back to Paris.
Not through any particular genius but rather through disciplined
efficiency.</p>
<p>Speaking of the siege of Paris and glorious Great Men getting ground
under by forces of history, the tension between Hugo's conflicting
ideals also manifests in the dichotomy between Enjolras and Thenardier.
The former a young republican idealist and leader of a sort of
proletariat salon of downwardly mobile intellectuals styling themselves
revolutionaries, the latter an unscrupulous thief and con artist always
striving after a new payday. Thenardier appears first in the narrative,
he and his wife nominally accepting Cosette into their home to care for
her while Fantine works herself to an early grave to provide for the
little girl. Thenardier naturally makes the little girl a
Cinderella-like slave, while constantly demanding more and more payments
from Fantine, citing the many expenses incurred raising Cosette. Which
is a blatant lie.</p>
<p>When Valjean escapes the chain gang yet again and comes to rescue
Cosette - his coat sewn up with bank bills from his Madeleine fortune -
Thenardier lets the little girl go for a song and a mere 15,000 Francs.
He's got a good grift going with a tavern at the time, where his wife
gets to lord it over everyone and his own daughters get to play with
dolls and a kitten. But when this family appears again, they are fallen
much lower in circumstances and are living in a squalid boardinghouse.
Thenardier is left to composing fraudulent letters begging well-to-do
Parisians - or who he thinks are well-to-do - for a little remittance
here and there, while quite literally whoring his own daughters out to
his criminal contacts. As much pains as Hugo goes to in portraying
society beating down the "good" scoundrels like Jean Valjean, here he
offers no such compassion for low and grasping people in a chapter even
named "The Noxious Poor."</p>
<p>Contrast with the impoverished in matter but not in spirit Enjolras
and his coterie. At first secondary to the bildungsroman of Marius that
makes up the second half of the novel, they represent the boiling
political radicalism that claimed descent from the Revolution but
doesn't have much to show in terms of concrete plans - at least as
presented by Hugo. They have plenty of noble airs and when the uprising
of 1832 comes, they all take up arms and man the barricades gladly, but
they have no real plans beyond dying gloriously for "the cause."</p>
<p>Really, the particulars don't concern Hugo so much as Progress. Like
Hegel, he sees a deliberate direction to history, rising from the
barbarous Ancien Regime into the glorious Republic of freedom and
reason. And in service of this Progress, the violence of the barricades
is completely warranted. Enjolras feels morally empowered by his ideals
to kill not just the gendarmes mobilized to suppress the uprising but
also to execute those whose rebellion is too sloppy and undisciplined.
He even plans to execute a police spy within the barricade - the long
absent from the narrative at this point Inspector Javert - but is
bamboozled by Jean Valjean who arrives to rescue not just his nemesis
Javert but also Marius, who is due for a wedded ever after ending with
Cosette. In the process, he manages to assist the barricade without
taking a single life - allowing Hugo to maintain Valjean's sainthood
while also indulging in the thrill of revolutionary violence.</p>
<p>In the midst of all this bloody climax though, we get to see an
unintentionally more compelling character. Eponine, daughter of
Thenardier whose arc takes her from playing with a kitten in the
Thenardier Inn to walking barefoot and broken through the slums of Paris
illustrates how society fails the unfortunate. She descends through the
lower strata of acceptable morality not out of any personal failings or
even mistakes, but rather from the misfortune of birth. Her father -
and mother, to a lesser degree - are the few truly wicked in Hugo's
novel and their vulgar machinations drag their daughter into ignominy,
poverty, and an untimely death. A better illustration of how society
fails the less fortunate than the transcendent sainthood of Jean
Valjean.</p>
<p>All of this being said, I can appreciate how much of a classic <em>Les Misérables</em> is but I wouldn't recommend it as a quarantine read. You'd have a better time with George Eliot's <em>Middlemarch</em>,
which offers a more digestible prose style and greater psychological
depth. But if you've read that already, you should give Hugo's magnum
opus a go.</p>
</div>
</div>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-24850032804848111832020-02-26T06:00:00.000-05:002020-02-26T06:00:02.947-05:00Darkly Through a Mirror: 2020 to 2030<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Elections are the least of your worries.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Climate change is on track for maximum damage in the next
decade. Barring a catastrophic global war - not impossible - emissions will not
be reduced, arctic ice will continue to melt, and this global hot house will
get a lot hotter. So let's speculate on what's gonna get worse and what you can
do to survive. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
1. War is Coming Back in Style.</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whether or not the Beltway insiders get their longed for
conflict with Iran or if all the armchair fascists will have to content
themselves with border bush wars, the trend in militarizing American culture is
due to accelerate. Trump already telegraphed this, unintentionally as he's more
autistic Cassandra than Machiavellian schemer, packing his first season White
House with generals. Democrats enable this, being just as if not more
deferential to the brass than the GOP. When the Pentagon launches its coup on a
President Sanders, plenty of professional liberals will cheer them on.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, regarding those border wars, they’ll be fed as
much by climate migration as the full blown fascism of white suburbanites. The
National Guard will eventually get involved which, depending on who they’re
ordered to side with and who they actually side with, could kick off a hot
civil war that all the alt-right violence has presaged in the past couple
years. What will surprise all the MAGA-sucking chuds is how it doesn’t break
down along a clean Mason-Dixon line or even the expected Democrat and
Republican divide<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but between urban and
suburban/rural. The rurals will make good fighters but they’re commitment to
the small business tyrants calling the shots will wax and wane with the
seasons. And as the parched and mismanaged countryside fails to keep the
supermarkets stocked, the suburbanites will realize their error and start
scrambling for the cities – though not after they’ve tried to ethnically
cleanse every cul de sac.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
2. The New Feudalism.</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The cities are where it’s at, for better and for worse.
Already logistically integrated for delivering food, power, and most important
of all water they will be able to outlast the dying howl of the suburbanites.
They’ll also win every straight out battle as they have just as many guns as
the NRA pickup truck squadrons but more people to man the barricades. War comes
down to people and American cities have them to spare.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once the Y’allqaeda attacks cease, the cities can benefit
from real green innovations in solar power and rooftop gardens. They won’t have
to defer to the hippie-hating Reaganites in the retirement exurbs and as anyone
who’s spent real time in Brooklyn or Philadelphia can tell you, urban
conservatives are much more agreeable to welfare programs and public works than
their nominally ideological cousins haunting the outer strip malls.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it won’t be all wine and DSA roses. These same cities
also host the financial and corporate powers that brought us to this wretched
state of affairs in the first place. So while you should flee to a city now,
you should be very careful about which city. Some of them are just broken:
Baltimore, Gary, Milwaukee – all ravaged by
opiates and austerity. You’d stand a better chance tramping it with the rurals
– who won’t all be white nationalists, as that’s a strictly suburban middle
class phenomenon. Others will be too technocratic and oligarchic to be livable,
especially New York City which will let Brooklyn drown in the rising seas as it
extracts Brooklynite taxes to build a wall around Lower Manhattan. Wall Street
is too sure of its own importance to consider moving, even as the waters come
in. And the promise of all that wealth trickling down will keep a steady stream
of migrant workers flowing into ever more cramped proletariat blocks and
squats, their simmering rebellion kept in check by an NYPD that would already
qualify as a standing army. Imagine the Mega-City One of Judge Dredd, just with
trash everywhere and worse humidity than Atlanta.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
3. Socialism and Barbarism. </h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The worst of both worlds will be SoCal and Denver. Not
because they’re saturated with old money power but because outside their
respective downtowns it’s all suburbs and strip malls. This will be where the
bloodiest battles will be fought, along explicitly racist lines throughout
SoCal and in a nihilistic war of all against all in the Mile High City, which
already leads the nation in mass shootings. Boulder might survive, being more
left than San Francisco and more armed than Texas.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The best – all things considered – will be the Twin Cities
and Great Lakes. Beyond escaping the worst of the rising temperatures, these
regions boast generous fresh water (I can’t emphasize water enough), much more
leftish leanings than the East and West Coast sprawls – especially Minneapolis
– and get you closer to the true mid-century goal: Canada. This is not to
idealize the Great Northern Frontier – you’ll find just as many reactionaries
polluting the Toronto and Vancouver suburbs – but northward is the only
sensible option as the Colorado River runs dry, hurricanes batter down even New
England, and fires spread from California into the Pacific Northwest. Get there
now, before they militarize their own border!<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-22059774867280458042020-01-15T06:00:00.000-05:002020-01-15T08:48:51.873-05:00The Empire Strikes OutLast week, the American Empire ended. It was short lived, as empires go, but managed to cover the most square miles across the globe with military bases and go directly from savagery to debauchery without any of that pesky civilization in between. Unless you still think the Eisenhower era wasn’t monstrous.<br />
<br />
It may not look it, especially with Trump and his chickenhawks insisting no Americans – meaning nobody who mattered – died in Iran’s ballistic missile strike. Iran is saying 80, so by the rules of warfare body counts, we can estimate about a dozen US or US-allied casualties. None of whom compare strategically to Soleimani, but that’s not the point. The point is Iran, a supposedly third world backwater theocracy fired not one but two dozen missiles from their country across the border into another. Two dozen missiles demonstrating the capacity for more – if they spend this many in a choreographed show of force, how many can they call up if under direct threat by the US military? – as well as demonstrating the grit and determination to engage US forces on open military terms, rather than just through deniable proxies or the other impoverished peasants the American war machine has battled across the Islamic world for the past two decades. A serious and technologically capable opponent.<br />
<br />
And Trump blinked.<br />
<br />
A decade ago, even under Obama, a foreign nation launching missiles – not car bombs, not IEDs, actual weapons of war – at US troops would precipitate a thunderous response. Since the Clinton Pentagon of full spectrum dominance, the US military has cultivated a vast and vicious arsenal of scaleable mayhem. Nuclear capable artillery is just one of the reasons Americans can’t have cheap insulin. There’s also fleets of space age aircraft that cost whole congressional districts and even got to be deployed in a real fight on the night of the missiles. They didn’t engage Iranian aircraft but may have shot down a civilian jetliner – not a first for US air forces over Iran. But rather than deploying any of its hugely expensive arsenal, the American Empire waited out the missiles and, once the dust cleared, put on a dog-and-pony press conference to insist they didn’t just totally get their shit kicked in. For all his swagger and bluster, Trump is thankfully terrified of a real fight.<br />
<br />
Thankfully, because while the US military could still win a battle with Iran, they would lose the war. And not the way they’ve lost to the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents but in hard material ways that would impact the American homefront – not because Iran is so formidable an opponent but because American hegemony has been collapsing.<br />
<br />
Let’s assume Trump didn’t wimp out last week. Let’s assume he took the reins off all the conventional and “special” forces the US has deployed throughout the Gulf. There are even mid-rank officers chomping at the bit to go after Iran, because they blame Iran for the failure in Iraq and aren’t that bright. All of these elaborate, advanced, and very expensive weapons and troops the US is poised to use would immediately run into the one thing they haven’t experienced or expected in generations: an actually serious military opponent. Iran has the hardware and manpower to stop any US advance in its tracks, thanks to the shallow draught of the Gulf, the mountainous geography of the Iranian plateau, and the incredible vulnerability of American sea power to the sort of ballistic missile attacks just carried out. <br />
<br />
Even once American forces could penetrate Iran’s defenses – likely after calling up reinforcements like Rumsfeld was forced to do for the much smaller and weaker Iraqi defenders in 2003 – any attempt at occupation would collide with a population universally opposed to a foreign presence on their soil. “Regime Change,” that idiot dream of neoconservatism, would immediately give way to conquest, which would need to be fought block by bloody block. Already popular American opinion has refused to rally around the flag for Trump’s assassination of Soleimani and the Iranian’s retaliatory fireworks show. The sinking confidence in official institutions ushered in by the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crash would quickly spiral into a popular disconnect, protests devolving into riots, and martial law being instigated by a police culture all too eager to murder their own neighbors. In defeating Iran, America would turn itself into a failed state and international pariah.<br />
<br />
That’s not even counting the impact Iran can have beyond the immediate battle with an American invasion force. All the allegations of Iran terrorizing oil shipments through the Persian Gulf confess the reality that they really can disrupt the biggest oil export line in the world. The same missiles and irregular attacks that will sink an American carrier can shut down the Strait of Hormuz, causing enormous economic damage worldwide. Hezbollah and other Iran-friendly militias have already made it clear they will go all in against Israel just for a retaliation to last week’s Iranian retaliation. The American neoconservatives and their evangelical fellow travelers will finally get the crusade against all Islam they’ve desired since 2001 - and will quickly see they are outnumbered across the whole Middle East. Every day will be Benghazi.<br />
<br />
That’s still a good scenario. When faced with such a serious, implacable foe and with a cruel dunderhead like Trump at the helm the inevitable question is “What about nukes?” The US has them and despite all the propaganda to the contrary Iran definitely does not. Once Marine battalions are retreating back to the shores of the Gulf, even the “reasonable” people middle class rubes have placed their hopes in might be arguing for a nuclear strike. A limited one, of course, at least at first. Limited to the battlefield or targeting Tehran and other population centers, two outcomes are certain: First, Russia and China will not launch in retaliation, no matter how friendly they are now with Iran, because mutually assured destruction would then be in effect. Beijing is too busy plotting out its Chinese Century to fall for that and the Kremlin – while being more cavalier on tactical nuclear deployment – isn’t looking for a kamikaze strike on their geopolitical rivals either. Second, and more important, nobody has to nuke the US back to retaliate over the ravaging of Iran.<br />
<br />
Even if the nukes never enter the picture, the US launching a wildly unpopular war on the regional power most responsible for defeating ISIS could trigger the actual doomsday scenario of the United States Dollar being dropped as a reserve currency. It’s not the massive and massively expensive American armed forces ensuring imperial power so much as an international demand for dollars. Oligarchs from Russia to China to France can’t get enough of them and it’s how the US has managed to remain a top global economy despite hollowing out its own manufacturing sector. But abandon that reserve currency – something that’s already in the works – and the whole house of cards collapses. The mortgage crisis will look like a slow afternoon in comparison, the Great Depression merely a rainy day. And it won’t just wreck the financial markets and the suburban small business clowns – without that inflation-proofing granted by dollar hegemony, all the grand plans of DSA and the Sanders campaign really will be impossible to pay for.<br />
<br />
So it’s for the best Trump blinked and we should all hope he keeps blinking. His whole existence was always an argument against the American system and it’s appropriate he be the one to preside over its final dissolution. Post-imperial life can be positive for nations, it’s how the Brits managed to finally do good things like the NHS and Monty Python. By not following through on his bullying, Donald Trump can end the era of Pax Americana and then Americans can have some actual peace in their lives.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-13923143359301457772019-09-06T00:00:00.000-04:002019-09-06T00:00:04.632-04:00Fiction Friday: The Crapper Study<i>Because </i>Babbling of the Irrational<i> is now a dead link, "The Crapper Study" has been reposted here for all the world to continue to see.</i><br />
<br />
Imagine a public bathroom. Not pristine, though certainly not what one would find at a gas station, just a run-of-the-mill facility with toilets/urinals and toilets, sinks, and the occasional dull vulgarity scribbled on the interior of a stall.<br /><br />Now imagine Individual A enters -- Individual A can be male or female, it is inconsequential. A has a great desire to relieve himself/herself -- as would be expected of anyone entering the previously described facility -- and looks forward to promptly being done with the whole process for whatever reason -- e.g. going to a meeting/appointment, catching a bus/train/plane or getting home to watch his/her favorite TV show that is only ever on for a short time of the year, as a matter of fact the rerun season is two-thirds longer than the season proper and there is an overarching storyline that requires meticulous viewing of every single episode in sequence to gain the fullest satisfaction possible -- only to find Individual B already present and attempting to relieve himself/herself1.<br /><br />Individual A and Individual B need not be familiar with each other. Ideally, this would be their first meeting, but any form of not-being-familiar-with-each-other will suffice.<br /><br />Now imagine Individual A has a personal “quirk” that prevents him/her from doing his/her “business” while in close proximity to another human being. This can be for whatever reason, from simple concerns for privacy, to red-faced embarrassment at the “business” done, to such personal shame and revulsion at the necessary “business” as to feel foolish and unclean should there be any audience to the act.<br /><br />Now imagine Individual A’s first instinct will be to flee the facilities and seek relief elsewhere. However, he/she has already been well inside the facilities for several seconds and to walk out now would look silly and foolish. For the situation, we will dictate that A’s well-cultivated self-image requires he/she never look silly or foolish around anyone, even Individual Bs with whom A has no prior familiarity.<br /><br />So Individual A must remain. He/she takes up position in a stall or by a urinal, depending on his/her needs and physiological disposition.<br /><br />Now imagine Individual A has decided to “hold it” -- i.e. refrain from doing his/her “business” -- until Individual B completes his/her (B’s) “business” and vacates the facilities. It would be a sound enough plan if not for one serious problem: Individual B is not doing his/her “business.” As a matter of fact, B is not doing a fucking thing! He/She is just standing/sitting there like an exposed bump on a log!<br /><br />Now imagine the strain this would place on Individual A. He/She (A) is mightily uncomfortable from the get-go, what with “holding it” and all, and now this stubborn Individual B refuses to complete his/her “business” in a timely fashion. How shall Individual A ever get to his/her “business” anyway with an audience present? And what a tasteless audience: to “hold it” as A “holds it” in the blatant attempt to force A to do his/her “business,” despite how shamefully filthy it all is!<br /><br />Now imagine Individual A coming to a highly unpleasant realization: by “holding it” through all of the above, and what is now a ridiculously long time, he/she has generated an aura of near supreme foolishness. Having set out not to look foolish, he/she has behaved even more foolishly for this damned Individual B’s entertainment. These factors combined with the physical discomfort of “holding it” and the subsequent realization that the aforementioned favorite television show has already begun make for a very disgruntled Individual A.<br /><br />Now imagine Individual B, a human being in his/her own right with as meaningful an existence as A. As a matter of fact, from B’s perspective, A has just come barging in on his/her (B’s) “business” without any warning. Anyone who has ever been in B’s situation should be able to sympathize -- the shock of some clown stomping in on one while one is doing one’s “business” can be so disruptive as to actually halt said “business” immediately and uncomfortably. Perhaps one never consciously thinks of these things, but it was certainly Individual B’s reaction to that damn A’s intrusion.<br /><br />Now imagine Individual B has a personal quirk not unlike A’s -- Again, Individuals A and B need not be familiar with each other despite similar psychological dispositions and again the ideal situation calls for complete unfamiliarity. In Individual B’s case, he/she too finds the doing of “business” in the presence of another most unappealing. This, as above, could be due to any factor from an unpleasant toilet training or previous embarrassing situation or from his/her (B’s) mother locking him/her in the bathroom and warning that he/she (B) had better use the potty and not his/her pants again or else he/she would have a pink bottom by the end of the night and it was all empty threats as Little B’s wretched bitch of a mother would forget about the incarcerated child on the porcelain behemoth and go off to poker night which had the unforeseen consequence of conditioning Little B (and subsequently Individual B) to be incapable of doing his/her “business” except in complete solitude.<br /><br />Now imagine Individual B elects to “hold it” until such a time as he/she is alone again in the facilities -- This could be the first or fiftieth time such a situation has occurred, it is unimportant. So Individual B proceeds to “hold it” in hopes this troublesome Individual A will get on with his/her (A’s) business and then kindly fuck off. However, as earlier explained, Individual A has gotten it into his/her head to do the exact same thing, i.e. “hold it” until Individual B completes his/her (B’s) “business” and exits. Hence, having been copied in stubbornness, Individual B is made to stand/sit uncomfortably -- very uncomfortably, as he/she was cut-off in the middle of his/her “business” -- while that silly bastard/bitch A just stands/sits there not doing a fucking thing!<br /><br />Now imagine the confusion of Individual B at the strange -- not to mention profoundly annoying -- behavior of Individual A. Who in their right mind storms into any facilities anywhere just to stand/sit there all exposed like a Little B while mommy works on a straight flush? Individual B might run through a mental checklist of why on Earth he/she (A) might refuse to get on with his/her “business” -- Perhaps some physical ailment causes A difficulty or maybe A had no need to do any “business” in the first place or maybe A is some spy/gangster/other secretive character and is only pretending to do any “business” as a cover for meeting another spy/gangster/other secretive character or maybe A is from the planet Quaxilon where bodily waste is invisible. Any of the above would make for an unnerving situation for any Individual B.<br /><br />Now imagine Individual A and Individual B. The former experiencing a great deal of frustration over the backfiring of his/her plan to not look foolish by “holding it” until left in peace due to some infuriating Individual B following the exact same tactic, thus making him/her (A) look profoundly foolish. The latter driving himself/herself (B) to paranoid schizophrenia in contemplation of A’s intentions while the specter of a card-shark mommy hangs over his/her head, making sure he/she (B) does his/her goddamn business properly.<br /><br />Question: Who goes first?Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-27992921680465677272019-08-04T11:13:00.003-04:002019-08-04T11:13:53.461-04:00Bleeding Kansas 2.0Let's talk about Bleeding Kansas.<br /><br />In the 1850s, while they were still territories being Incorporated into the United States, it was a hotly debated question whether Kansas and Missouri would be free or slave states. The planter class of the deep south and Tidewater states wanted to expand slavery, as it would reinforce their own base of power. Slavery was explicitly rooted in white supremacy, because this both rationalized the bondage of other human beings and served to maintain the political power of a very small, very well-to-do elite in a place and time with widespread rural poverty.<br /><br />The different factions that set up shop in these Border States spent the better part of a decade engaging in the sort of bloody partisan ambushes seen within living memory in Syria, Iraq, and the Balkans. While everyone remembers the great big Blue vs. Gray battles of the Civil War, this is where that war really began, years before the slave states marched their uniformed forces on Fort Sumter. The planter class gave tacit approval to the pro-slavery partisans in Kansas and Missouri because their terrorism served to frighten away abolitionists who might vote to remain free and also for the grim reality that a dead abolitionist is one less voice calling for abolition.<br /><br />There are clear parallels we can draw today between the pro-slavery gangs in the Border States and the spree shooting terrorism of the Trump era. Like the hand-wringing over citizenship and borders, slavery was built on an ideology of white supremacy. Because without that sense of superiority, too many people might recognize how the current economic system benefits only a few at the very top - the planters then, the billionaires now. During the Civil War proper, this ideology collapsed in on itself with the rebel soldiers finding their superior whiteness no match for the superior industry and logistics of the Union Army, especially while their families starved back home due to 1) Confederate inefficiency and 2) an explicit system of superiors and inferiors, where the plantation master in his family were always well-cared for but anyone not born into this de facto aristocracy had to scrape by. Had they not had the satisfaction of being white, and therefore the better and more civilized race, they might too quickly have turned on the very planters whose economic system debased free labor.<br /><br />However - and this is the big difference between then and now - the abolitionists engaged in politically motivated killing just as enthusiastically as the pro-slavery partisans. Most famously, John Brown engaged in ambushes and outright mass murder before leading his ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry. Despite the pundit class always spinning scare stories, Antifa has not killed a single person. Bleeding Kansas 2.0 is - so far - entirely one-sided. And worst of all, there's no real opposition to this terrorism within the nominal government. Where America of the 1850s had a fractious but dedicated political culture of abolitionists and Know Nothings and Radical Republicans all vying for the soul and future of the country, the modern United States has a few social deomcrats unwanted by their own party on one side and craven careerists making up the other much larger side. And then there's Trump, a more incompetent narcissist than even Jefferson Davis.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-23616697201658964592018-09-26T06:00:00.000-04:002018-09-26T06:00:02.628-04:00The Quiet LifeYou're not allowed to live quietly and without ambition in America. Everyone must be Up and Doing, all day, every day, to preserve an instrumentalist delusion. That your circumstances not only may be changed for the better but that You are the agent of that change. Also, it should be changed for the better, no matter how satisfied you are now.<br /><br />This is the pathology at the root of the American dream. Alexis de Tocqueville saw it some two centuries ago, how Americans of every class were perpetually buying and selling. No sooner did some Ohio Valley burgher purchase a horse or a butter churn then he was trying to sell it again at a profit. One nation under the side hustle.<br /><br />Even if you think you're getting into a profession - or at least a day job - that will afford you some peace and quiet, you will soon find this not to be the case. As the economy moves more and more away from actual production and into the exponential bureaucracy of managerial feudalism, even the most innocuous activities become charged with a production for production's sake mania. You have to crush that PowerPoint, demonstrate enough can-do spirit to single-handedly build a pyramid, or you run the risk of appearing as a layabout. Not a doer. An un-person, unworthy of friendship or love or your middling office job - where a dozen others also compete in who can best present the simulacrum of productivity.<br /><br />Because without that job, you're nothing. Without any job, you're worse than nothing. The less America spends on welfare, the more it resents those dependent on such public assistance. Poverty is the one unforgivable sin, so better look busy.<br /><br />Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-39539481566982051722018-09-21T06:00:00.000-04:002018-09-21T06:00:01.549-04:00As Above, So Below<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ever since their founding, the American suburbs have been the subject of bitter criticism. We should all be critical - suburbia birthed every wrong-thought from libertarianism to LARPing - but the bitterness is because, even in the wake of financial collapse, the suburbs won. There is no escaping them and half the 20th Century is choked with books and films and records born of resentment at this crushing normality.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/He-Digs-Hole-Danger-Slater/dp/1621052567"><i>He Digs A Hole</i></a> by Danger Slater is an heir to this anti-suburb philosophy, at least on the surface. Harrison Moss is an average decaying man in an average decaying cul de sac who rebels against this dreadful state and tries to find a way out. So far, so standard. Even the splatter-horror approach is more cosmetic to the story, with Moss shearing off his own hands and replacing them with garden tools. So he can dig his hole and get away from his depressing house and vacuous neighbors.<br /><br />Except that's only half the story. Literally, as Moss and his wife Tabitha descend down the hole halfway through the book, emerging in a negative universe beneath. A place populated by monstrous horrors and walking worms, but curiously still ordered exactly as the post-industrial hell above. A different, deeper hell but a hell all the same.<br /><br />This is where Slater's book diverges from the well-worn path of the suburban doldrums tale. It's not a matter of escape so much as transcendence, breaking free of the rut by breaking free of one's own apathy and alienation. This part of the narrative isn't even carried through by Harrison but by Tabitha, who was always the stronger of the two - an excellent twist on what is often a masculine escape and power fantasy. The Mosses do not break free of the hells within hells through more striving - striving just leads back to the cul de sac where this all started - but through each other. For all the grotesque madness of spleen fruits and zombie garden parties, <i>He Digs a Hole</i> is a strangely uplifting book. Even with the world consumed and the sun blotted out, as long as Tabitha and Harrison have each other they have hope.<br /><br />Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-48721619938298367602018-09-12T06:00:00.000-04:002018-09-12T06:00:06.434-04:00Contra NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche is one of those favorites among dilettantes because he wrote accessible prose that flatters the individualist yearnings of stunted middle class children. This is not to disparage Nietzsche's very real accomplishments in meta-ethics and the history of morality, just to disparage all the modern fans who take his arguments as an excuse to be conceited dickheads in their Philosophy 101 courses. You know who I'm talking about.<br /><br />Nietzsche famously differentiated Classical and Christian ethics, defining the former as a good/bad dichotomy and the latter as good/evil. Classical ethics, rooted in a warrior elite from Achilles down to Charlemagne, prized courage and personal honor, using these virtues to define themselves as separate and above the greater mass of humanity and thereby justifying their own privileged position in society.<br /><br />Christian ethics, in contrast, seek to promote a universalist altruism and therefore concern themselves first with evil, rather than virtue. This evil often constitutes the same privileges enjoyed by the Classical elite - wealth, sensual pleasure, mastery over their social inferiors. Nietzsche saw in this a slave revolt, hence his christening of Christianity as the "slave morality" which shames those who display the Classical virtues.<br /><br />Nietzsche, being the prototypical angry white boy, bristled at this shaming. And his critique has served as inspiration for alienated youth in Western Civilization for generations. However, as much fault as Nietzsche found with Christian ethics, his own description of "master morality" doesn't sound all that better:<br /><br />
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<i>To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle which even the apes might subscribe; for it has been said that in devising bizarre cruelties they anticipate man and are, as it were his "prelude."</i></blockquote>
<br />Much as the abused might come to identify with her abuser, her Nietzsche has fetishized the abuse on which Western nobility built its reason for being. This indeed makes him all-too-human, as it echoes Hegel's parable of two men at the beginning of history vying for dominance. Because, as David Graeber points out, the archetypal everymen "in all such stories, they appear to be 40-year-old males who simply rose out of the earth fully formed." Which speaks more to the historical forces that shaped modern Western philosophy, rather than any essential Human Nature.<br /><br />Further, this is usually where some readings of Nietzsche identify him as a fascist. And with good cause - his Will to Power and injunctions to embrace an aristocratic ethos is entirely in line with the reactionary tradition as described by Corey Robin, who traces every disparate strain of conservatism, from George Will to Sarah Palin, back to the Counter-Enlightenment sentiment "that some are fit, and thus ought, to rule others." A sentiment Nietzsche ran with in his otherwise laudable resistance of Victorian moralizing.<br /><br />Where Nietzsche identified the pathology of Victorian Christianity, Lewis Mumford identified the pathology of Classical kingship: <br /><br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Murderous coercion was the royal formula for establishing authority, securing obedience, and collecting booty, tribute, and taxes. At bottom, every royal reign was a reign of terror. </i></blockquote>
<br />The enforcement of such a reign necessitates the same "submissive faith and unqualified obedience" Nietzsche spurned in Christianity, but instead directed towards the desires of a sovereign, whose very station both breeds and rewards an anti-social neurosis:<br /><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The rigid division of labor and the segregation of castes produce unbalanced characters, while the mechanical routine normalizes - and rewards - those compulsive personalities who are afraid to cope with the embarassing riches of life.</i></blockquote>
<br />To see the apotheosis of this pathology, just look at Donald Trump's Twitter feed.<br /><br />Nietzsche did necessary work in dismantling the shoddy foundations of Western morality. He just didn't go far enough. Excavating down to the fetid and worm-eaten base of kingship, he declared "This is good!" either out of a limited imagination or the artist's desire to shock the middle-brows. Would that he'd gone further and dynamited the whole edifice, we might actually have tasted that freedom he talked about so often. Instead, we just traded the white collars for power ties, vicars for venture capitalists. The same song of power since Ur, now dumber than disco.<br />
<br />
<b>Works Cited</b><br />
David Graeber. "Consumption." <i>Current Anthropology</i>, Vol. 52, No. 4.<br />
Lewis Mumford. <i>The Myth of the Machine</i>.<br />
Friedrich Nietzsche. <i>On the Genealogy of Morals</i>.<br />
Corey Robin. <i>The Reactionary Mind</i>. Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-44850537163399743692018-09-04T06:00:00.000-04:002018-09-04T06:00:01.985-04:00The World as Won't"The surest way to fail is not to try." Everyone has heard some variation of that injunction. Every American especially, as the civic religion and mythos of America declares at every turn all things are possible for those with the Will. That "those with the Will" have historically been property-owning white men is often left out of the pithy proverb.<br /><br />Another such proverb, "You only lose if you play the game," appears at first to be promoting the same can-do exceptionalism. The words are superficially the same, but the core idea is different. Where "The surest way to fail is not to try" compels - commands, even - the listener to go out and seize the day, "You only lose if you play the game" presents the natural state not as failure but as null. One does not court failure except by engaging in whatever pursuit the first proverb commands, and so failure may be avoided altogether simply by not getting involved.<br /><br />Digging deeper, we find "You only lose if you play the game" further offers a critique of the dog-eat-dog paradigm our opening proverb takes for granted. "The surest way to fail is not to try" presents failure as the default state, the state you're in right now. A state that persists until you actively take charge of your own life and destiny, shaping the world to your Will!<br /><br />A stirring idea, if you've never worked an office job.<br /><br />The reality, which we've all experienced, is that the World is not amenable to Will. The World just is. The idea that by giving it the old college try we can rectify this rests in the same instrumentalist view that animates everything from neoconservative foreign policy to new age cults like The Secret.<br /><br />This is the game that you only lose if you play. A rigged game too, as demonstrated by the continuing foreclosure crisis amidst yet another Wall Street boom. Millions have played this game, or tried to, only to discover that as you try and try you still fail. Because effort does not correlate with success, nor success with righteousness, no matter what Calvin and Adam Smith claimed.<br /><br />But if you refuse to play - reject the logic imposed by the game - you escape the default failure state imposed on everyone not born into the winning class. It may not reshape the World into something more amenable to your own notions of justice, but it's a damn sight better than being ground under the treads of this awful Megamachine our forefathers have foisted upon us.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-6752805462011675992018-08-29T06:00:00.000-04:002018-08-29T06:00:02.044-04:00John McCain in Hell<span class="im"></span><br />
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John McCain steps up to the podium. His raggedy skin hangs looser now,
blistered and peeling from the everlasting fires, but nothing can dampen
his enervating rictus grin. A little teeth peaks out at the corners, a
little more fang now as he more directly reflects
the contents of his own soul. "My fellow Hellions!" he declares to the
assembled imps and incubbi, "We stand at a crossroads...</div>
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"When I first arrived, I - like so many of you - knew only torment for
my sins and wickedness. In my first thousand years, I suffered as I made
others suffer on Earth. Bullets tore my flesh, I drowned over and over,
and of course I tasted the rough caress of
the same fires I unleashed on Vietnamese children.</div>
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"I did not object to this treatment, as I am a longtime champion of
personal responsibility. I told the news media so in life, over and over
so they would actually think it was true. But now I come before you
because I fear Hell has lost its way.</div>
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"Since the Fall, a stalemate has held against our accursed enemies in
Heaven. While we gather the greater magnitude of souls, we are
nonetheless denied our rightful place as the first among afterlives.
Satan is as much to blame for this sorry state of affairs
as God and His angels, opting to tempt and corrupt one mortal at a
time. He has lost the will to fight and limited the real tools at our disposal."</div>
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Here the late Senator looms over the podium, bristling with indignation
and bloodlust. "Our Dark Lord says 'That's the way of things,' but I'm
too much of a maverick for that! I say we strike at Heaven now, not on
some designated Day of Reckoning. Even with the proper resources, it's a campaign that will be measured in years, not days. And we do have the proper resources - massive resources made up of all the sinners and psychopaths who ever lived! I know some of them personally, having served together in the Navy or the Senate."</div>
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The audience cheers and hisses with malicious glee. Behind the stage
curtains, Tricky Dixon nods approvingly, while wiping sweat from the
scales of his upper lip. He hadn't really believed John could rally the
troops like he never could. "But they used to talk
about your integrity all the time on CNN," Tricky had argued, CNN being
the only channel available in Hell.</div>
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<br /></div>
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"Look, did I tell Dubbya to go get stuffed when he asked me to campaign
with him?" McCain had spat back. "Did I turn down that moose-fucking
loon from Alaska? I rode her just like I rolled over on John Kerry. Fuck that integrity shit - I'm in this game to win!"</div>
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And he certainly looks like he's winning now in the eight circle of hellfire, the horns atop his head and forked
tongue whipping from his cracked lips as he whipped the legions of lof the damned into a wargasmic frenzy. "Let's finish the fight the First of the Fallen
started!" McCain declares. "Let's march straight
up to those pearly gates and bomb them into the stone age!"</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-41885659230649331962018-08-24T19:00:00.000-04:002018-08-25T11:51:00.956-04:00Fiction Friday: DronesI have a new story out, all about the coming robot apocalypse and how it will be so very dreary and corporate.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<i>The doors nearly shut on Luis as he lingered, watching the girl rush down the narrow lane between cubicles to her spot with the Analytics Team. Aardvark, as they’d been dubbed during the last restructuring. Luis ducked his head down as he traveled to his own team, Dark Dungeons. So named by another developer as a roundabout way of naming themselves after his favorite hobby and as “Double Ds.” Just as he came within view of his workstation, he heard the familiar, nasally voice –</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>“I was just looking for you,” said Campbell, as he swooped in. Though nearly a whole head shorter than Luis, he always felt like the tallest man in the room. “You didn’t just get in, did you?”</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Luis, feeling the conspicuousness of his backpack and still damp umbrella replied, “No.”</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>“Good, good,” Campbell said, not giving it a second thought. “Listen, I’m gonna need the whole team — but you especially — I’m gonna need you all to double down on the AGI project.”</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>God, not that boondoggle again… “Sure thing.”</i><br />
<br />
Campbell did that thing that looked like a very happy chipmunk. “Great to hear! You’re my man, Luis!”<br />
<br />
Luis nodded, smiling with great effort. “Yes, I am.”<br />
<br />
He let his face droop back to normal once Campbell turned around and sauntered away. That damned AGI project…</blockquote>
<br />
Read the rest of "Drones" at <a href="http://strangefictionszine.com/drones/"><i>Strange Fictions Zine!</i></a> They did some awesome artwork.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-77808292904099890862018-08-13T06:00:00.000-04:002018-08-21T10:45:19.002-04:00No Fate But What We MakeOne of the more obnoxious things about contemporary literature is how every MFA grad thinks they're the first to break the fourth wall or mix philosophy with satire. You can probably find a best-seller in Barnes & Noble right now, celebrated by all the respectable rags for being bold and experimental when really it's an overwritten shaggy dog story that does the "Dear Reader..." thing you forgot Dickens put into every single novel he ever wrote.<br />
<br />
Truth is fiction has always been much more wild and experimental than the best-selling beach reads. Case in point: Denis Diderot. A contemporary of Voltaire, you didn't hear about him in AP English because his philosophy is too complex and self-critical to fit as neatly into the American "common sense" dogma. Also he's French and Americans have long failed to appreciate the nation that midwived their own.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i> "Eyy!"</i></td></tr>
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What sets Diderot apart from more acceptable thinkers like Voltaire are two things antithetical to American sentiment: his material atheism and his determinism. Now this might seem contradictory on the face - how can a totally godless cosmos still be determined? - but that confuses determinism with Fate.<br />
<br />
Determinism simply posits that A leads to B leads to C. That cause leads to effect. Fate, on the other hand, holds that a certain outcome has already been pre-determined. Or rather pre-ordained, as Fate can only exist in a metaphysical framework as posited by religion, whether modern iterations or the pagan pantheons of the Axial Age.<br />
<br />
Thus, a Deterministic cosmos is compatible with a metaphysics of material atheism, however this framework is still incompatible with Fate.<br />
<br />
The debate between Fate and Determinism matters because both imply - indeed require - their own ethos that are fundamentally opposed to one another. If Fate, the Will of Heaven, then there is comfort that even misfortune has a good reason but also implies said misfortune may be deserved. Illness and poverty are divine judgements, or at the very least tests, and mass political action to alleviate this suffering becomes a defiance of that same conscious, almighty Will. That is in fact where the Protestant Work Ethic comes from - Calvin's doctrine of predestination and Adam Smith's Invisible Hand are opposite sides of the same idea that there is an order, a purpose to the world which is reflected in material wealth.<br />
<br />
However, if events are determined but not pre-determined, if there is still a reason but not a transcendent or at least benevolent one, the ethical implications change entirely. Misfortune is not a test or punishment but a hazard of existence faced by all. This raises the issue of how a people or a society should manage these misfortunes, a moral imperative in a deterministic cosmos that can turn on all of us.<br />
<br />
Diderot communicated this Determinism through comic vignettes, often to the point of self-parody. The title character of <i>Jacques the Fatalist</i> argues that all is pre-determined, written up above on a great scroll (<i>"tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut"</i>) but his examples from his own life are all clearly the products of his own foolishness and incompetence. Fate would make a great comfort to a fool, as it absolves him of the moral responsibility for his own foolish actions.<br />
<br />
But can the fool still be held accountable under Determinism? Does he bring the angry cuckolded husbands on himself or is it again the indifferent cosmic winds? That's a question no physicist can answer so it falls back to the philosophers and there is indeed a long philosophical tradition of grappling with how to improve the human condition. Karl Marx himself even cited Diderot as his "favourite prose-writer."<br />
<br />
Because if the world is Determined but not ruled by Fate, we can shape the causes to gain beneficial effects. We can "hack" our lives, in the jargon of douchebags, achieving greater happiness and tranquility. But only if we can get over the primitive prejudice that Fate makes you rich or poor. Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-60118983261711841492018-07-04T12:00:00.000-04:002018-07-04T12:00:06.977-04:00Adventures in OutreachOne of the hardest challenges facing public libraries is reminding the public they exist. Especially your local neighborhood branch, which lacks the advertising - and impressive architecture - of central libraries. That same central library will often have an "outreach office," partly a marketing department and partly a community program clearinghouse. And always stretched too thin to get the word out on every little satellite of a municipal library system<br /><br />Which leaves much of the branch outreach in the hands of the branch librarians. This is difficult because nobody gets into librarianship because we like talking to people. Patrons are the one drawback to an otherwise sweet gig. Unfortunately, since we have to defend our existence to the local government bean counters - who will always cut public services before their own bullshit jobs - we have to get those numbers up. And that means outreach.<br /><br />I've had the fortune - good or bad - to work in both a central outreach office and a small neighborhood branch in one of the largest municipal library systems in the country. For plausible deniability, we'll call it Booker. While stationed in the main branch of the Booker Public Library, I sat in on every conceivable outreach scheme from oral histories to Tumblr feeds to holding seminars on household pests. It was comprehensive and well-funded and when pressed I still can't describe anything I'd describe as effective outreach strategy.<br /><br />Except the day we spent handing out fliers when I worked at a small neighborhood branch. We had our work cut out for us since this particular branch had been closed for renovation for 18 months, owing to a busted HVAC that they didn't fix. Gave us lots of new furniture for the kids' section though. That's also typical of the big municipal systems.<br /><br />Fortunately, everyone really liked the library. Across five blocks of store fronts, I heard from people how excited they were we'd be open again, how much they missed the library, and could they have their own stack of the flyers to hand out. A better experience than expected all around.<br /><br />Then I came to a small barbershop with just the barber. A sour Russian sort you see all the time in this particular city. I gave my then well practiced spiel about the library re-opening and would he mind posting our flyer.<br /><br />"What type of business is this!" he demanded.<br /><br />"Uh, it's not a business. It's a public library -"<br /><br />"I no like libraries!"<br /><br />Fair enough. I wished him a good day and moved along.<br /><br />I told my colleagues later - because the librarians are always talking about you - and they asked if this barber had any customers. When I said he didn't, they all said, "Exactly!"<br />Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-84683974422186020572018-06-27T12:00:00.000-04:002018-06-27T12:00:28.755-04:00Rambo RevolutionBefore winning the Vietnam War and joining the Mujaheddin, John Rambo fought the law. People often forget this first chapter in the Rambo saga, since it has the lowest body count and keeps its reactionary politics under wraps until Stallone's climactic monologue. Those politics have been better scrutinized elsewhere, so I'd like to talk about the subversive streak in the movie that introduced the Rambo character, <i>First Blood</i>.<br />
<br />
Beginning with dialogue-free scenes of John Rambo drifting across small town America. It sets a somber mood, putting the audience in the shoes of a socially alienated vet in the dreary fringes of Reagan's America. Where the Carter malaise still lingers and the local sheriff is the sort of power fetishist who will harass and jail anyone who looks weak and unimportant.<br />
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The sheriff in <i>First Blood</i> is a villain that couldn't exist in the present time, despite being much more timely. Such sheriffs certainly exist in reality - from Joe Arpaio to the wannabe fascist who ticketed you this morning - but the Police lobby is much too vocal these days. And the whole culture is much more policed, especially since 9/11.<br />
<br />
Not so in the First Blood era. People forget but in the years following the Vietnam debacle and the Watergate scandal, police and other symbols of power were a dirty word in American discourse. Nixon and Reagan had to work over time to make "law and order" - the sheriff's mantra for his own doomed pursuit of Rambo - a palatable concept to the public at large. Their base were already fans of course, because their base were just the sort of atomized suburbanites who cheer police shootings and vote for Trump. The mindless, moronic fascism of ordinary people.<br />
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Rambo, in his first iteration, didn't fit that paradigm. Clothes too dirty, hair too long, the sort the "law and order" types always target because the order they seek is an ordered appearance. As the sheriff says, "We have a nice town." And keeping it nice means keeping out the undesirables.<br />
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It doesn't stop there, of course. It can't because just by existing, Rambo threatens the sheriff's sense of order. He must be broken down, made to fit in if not disappear completely. He doesn't, he rebels, and the whole power of the police-state descends upon him. All because he wanted to eat in a diner in peace. Rambo's desperate cries of "I didn't do anything!" fall on deaf ears because he has no voice in this system - like more and more Americans in this ever more authoritarian and neoliberal state.<br />
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So he takes up arms. It's the only logical path, when reasoned argument and civility did nothing to dissuade a police state that is not so much corrupt as corrupting, the power it confers with a badge really just license to continue being the schoolyard bully into adulthood. This is also where the film finally breaks with reality - at least our sick and sad modern reality - as Rambo is a product of the military-industrial complex.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>What you call home, Rambo calls Hell.</i></td></tr>
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A full-bird colonel - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bathtub-Admirals-Jeff-Huber/dp/1601640196">meaning a company man</a> - arrives late in the third act to talk up Rambo's battle prowess in the exaggerated manner of all stunted twerps who provide fascism with its shock troops. In the original ending of the film, as in the book, the colonel kills Rambo as he's nothing but a defective part in the machine that bombed and massacred the Vietnamese for the crime of wanting to be something other than American. In the film, Rambo surrenders peaceably after a largely bloodless rampage, setting up the cartoonishly jingoistic sequels.<br />
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But in this first film, even with the lost cause malarkey at the very end, Rambo serves as the everyman caught between the insatiable Pentagon empire and a homefront dominated by the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Reactionary-Mind-Conservatism-Edmund-Donald/dp/0190692006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1530054929&sr=1-1&keywords=reactionary+mind+conservatism+from+edmund+burke+to+donald+trump">democratic feudalism</a> of respectable neighborhoods and pigs with badges. It's very weird how films can age.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-40892335933385284632018-05-16T06:00:00.000-04:002018-05-16T19:56:23.829-04:00Steven Pinker is an IdiotFor the longest time I've been blissfully unaware of the thought - or what passes for thought - of Steven Pinker. At most, I've seen him mixed together with Jordan Peterson and other intellectual lightweights on the <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/badphilosophy/">Bad Philosophy subreddit</a>, usually being mocked for their attempts to critique modern philosophy without ever engaging with its ideas. Due to circumstances I'm not going into, I finally read some primary Pinker sources over the weekend and those wry internet barbs have been much too kind to him. He's not just an idiot and embarrassment to academia, he's an apologist for the worst crimes of the day.<br />
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Specifically his latest pop-sci book, <i><a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/media/features/books/EnlightmentNowPDFExcerpt4.pdf">Enlightenment Now</a></i>, which claims to be a defense of reason and humanism against all those dastardly postmodernists. Like Ayn Rand and other such imbeciles before him, Pinker picks a fight with a statistical minority within the already statistically minor world of tenured professors, then goes on to not actually quote any counterarguments to his thesis. The closest he ever gets is disparaging the sort of liberal arts syllabus that Limbaugh and Hannity would whinge about but which is never actually seen outside a graduate seminar:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>In</i> The Idea of Decline in Western History<i>, Arthur Herman shows that prophets of doom are the all-stars of the liberal arts curriculum, including Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Cornel West, and a chorus of eco-pessimists.</i></blockquote>
A charitable reader may assume Pinker makes such a broad - and wrong - generalization because he's not read any of the listed authors, just this Herman hack. That appears to be the only excuse for lumping Schopenhauer (a pessimist), Sartre (a Marxist), Nietzsche (a Nietzschean) and Heidegger (???) in with social critics like Foucault and Adorno. Nevermind the explicitly ant-colonial projects of figures like Fanon and Said, whose worldviews hinged on the faith that the world is not getting worse and transformations for the betterment of oppressed peoples is a real possibility.<br />
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But that would mean engaging with their thoughts and arguments, something Pinker never does because it would get in the way of his Pollyannaish boosterism for "progress." Pinker incidentally strongly objects to being labelled a "Pollyanna" or a "Pangloss," likely because he flunked comparative literature as an undergrad.<br />
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Had he not, and had he actually read any of his proposed opponents, he might understand the difference between pessimism as a psychological disposition and philosophical pessimism. Pinker conflates the two, the better to dismiss it with a sneer and graphs. Lots and lots of graphs, the last refuge of the thin-skinned dullard. He's got graphs showing declines in war! Increases in life expectancy! Growing civility on the internets! And I'm not posting any of them because they're all so fucking stupid!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"Great Scott I'm dumb!"</i></td></tr>
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Take Pinker's assertion that war is on the decline. That depends how you define and measure "war," which Pinker does in such a way to paint a rosier picture. He only tracks conflicts between "Great Powers" running from about the 14th Century to today. That's an awfully broad view, seeing as some "Great Powers" like the Ottomans cease to exist halfway through. Further, he explicitly leaves out colonial wars and proxy wars and all the other wars that have ever been more common than some <i>Game of Thrones</i>-addled clash of empires.<br />
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He follows the same murky methodology in his tracking of human well being. Yes, it is nice not to be dying of the plague these days but what of wealth inequality? And healthcare inequality? And the exponential rise in rage massacres since the 1980s?<br />
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Also, his claims of online civility are blatant lies, simply for the fact that there's no way he researched the entire Internet for every racist and sexist joke when he couldn't even be arsed to read a little of <i>Being and Nothingness</i>.<br />
<br />
Ah, but that's all taking Pinker's arguments in good faith. And as anyone who's read <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/05/dreary-fanfic-bari-weiss">the recent hagiography</a> of Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson knows, these sorts of pop-sci "intellectuals" are not arguing in good faith at all. They stake out positions tied up with their own particular sense of self and bellow that all the pointy-headed know-it-alls are wrong and you can see how if you just buy this new book.<br />
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It's a sales pitch masquerading as a sermon, and Pinker is a particularly egregious offender as he claims the language of reason and rationality to argue that things are fine. He rails against climate change skeptics and "eco-pessimists"in equal measure, turning the golden mean fallacy into a moral imperative. His book reads less like a well-reasoned rejection of nihilism and more like any other half-bright yuppie talking back to the evening news:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will interact with the nature of cognition to make us think that it is. News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. We never see a journalist saying to the camera, “I’m reporting live from a country where a war has not broken out”— or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up. As long as bad things have not vanished from the face of the earth, there will always be enough incidents to fill the news, especially when billions of smartphones turn most of the world’s population into crime reporters and war correspondents.</i></blockquote>
Have you seen those <a href="https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/war-nerd-syria-home-videos/">smartphone reports</a> from Syria? Pinker sure hasn't, because it would make a mockery of all his precious graphs. And probably make him puke.<br />
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However, none of this should be taken as some call to challenge Pinker as he pretends to challenge two centuries of Continental Philosophy. He doesn't deserve that much consideration and he's much less consequential than his ever unnamed antagonists among the tenured guild who supposedly oppose progress and humanism. Rather, Steven Pinker is just the sort of idiot who comes along every five years or so, selling the same security blanket of a book to all the middlebrows with degrees, IRAs, and crushing debt. He's not assuring them the world is getting better so much as he's distracting them from their own personal experiences getting worse.<br />
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Forty years ago it was est and the evangelical revival. Today it's Silicone Valley and shoddy cognitive science. It gives white collar drones and centrist muddlers something to chew on, pretend they have real thoughts, while the real work of philosophy is done by folks like <a href="http://www.glass-bead.org/article/transcendental-logic-and-true-representings/?lang=enview">Ray Brassier</a>, who will never get his books excerpted by a billionaire ghoul like Bill Gates.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-74661177746903009022018-04-09T07:00:00.000-04:002018-04-10T12:26:56.190-04:00Netflix Killed the Video StoreWhen I tell people I'm a librarian, they often ask me, "Isn't Google a threat to libraries?" This is a stupid question, asked only by stupid people, but it skirts close to the observable truth that the Internet has made a number of other forms of media obsolete. At least from a market perspective.<br />
<br />
I've been seeing this myself over the past week. My wife and I are finally extricating ourselves from the festering sore of New York City and one of my self-appointed tasks has been selling off all our old crap. Most of this has been bag after bag of books but no small shortage of CDs and DVDs. And as far as the latter two are concerned, nobody's buying.<br />
<br />
There are certainly still music stores - and music for sale in big box retailers - but I've been hard pressed finding anyone willing to buy old used music. On CD. What few music shops persist in Manhattan and Brooklyn revolve around vinyl, that favorite medium of snobs with more money than brains.<br />
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Likewise, you can still find DVDs for sale around town but no store wants to buy them off you. Look through what they have in stock and you'll see why - things are marked down to the ground. A buyer's market, should anyone care to show up.<br />
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They don't. All y'all would rather #NetflixAndChill. Much as MP3s decimated the CD market, streaming services and other such digital distribution are so much more convenient than going out and buying your preferred movie or TV show. In the latter case, you can even cover every season of <i>Friends</i> without ever getting up to change the discs. A brave new world for couch potatoes.<br />
<br />
And this has all happened before. Not two decades ago, DVDs did the same thing to VHS tapes. A decade before that, CDs did the same to audio cassettes - which did the same to 8-track tapes, which did the same to vinyl, no matter what those snooty hipsters might say.<br />
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Plenty of Boomers and Gen-Xers have lamented these changes as stripping their favorite pop music of all the tertiary goodies, like album art and inventive packaging and travelling four hours to find the one indie record store offering the latest Butt Trumpet LP. But that's just it - all that high-art malarkey always was tertiary to what is a very ephemeral art form. Jazz musician and expat Eric Dolphy said it best, "When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again." People have been trying to capture music for a century regardless, but the vast storage space afforded by modern digital technology just reinforces Dolphy's point. With a hundred thousand songs mixing together in your hard rive, everything becomes an intermingled and meaningless soup of noise. The old-fashioned scolds are right to cling to their old record sleeves as it lends a sense of permanence to something fundamentally impermanent.<br />
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It's taken a little longer but the same is now happening to film and television. How permanent can a TV show be if you can watch the new season in a single day? How can you stay focused across such a mind-deadening stretch of time? How are all these woke and prestigious serials not just so much dull porridge of light and noise?<br />
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Music and film became dominant art forms in the 20th Century not because of inherent aesthetic value but rather due to the evolving media technology of a post-war boom in consumption. Now that we live in the belt-tightening austerity era all this storage media is so much clutter, the kipple of a middle-class suburban dream from which we've been forced awake. And no one wants to buy that bitter revelation.<br />
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But while these reams upon reams of optical discs collect dust in basements and thrift stores - and deteriorate rapidly - used book stores are still doing a brisk business. Borders is shuttered and Barnes and Noble is shit, but Mercer Street and Alabaster Bookshop have better philosophy, poetry, and pulp sci-fi offerings than Amazon. And they'll happily pay cash for your old books. Books trade more easily, and for cheaper, than the aforementioned mediums because what they store can be accessed as easily today as when the first Gutenberg Bible rolled off the press. You don't need a stereo or turntable or busted old Betamax, just the capability to read.<br />
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So is the Internet a threat to libraries? Probably not, since it still hasn't killed the indie book stores.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-84693331370270647062018-02-06T06:00:00.000-05:002018-02-06T07:03:28.712-05:00Fly Eagles FlyUsually I wouldn't address something that is just sports but the recent Superbowl between the Eagles and the Patriots is a very special case. Very personal. My wife is a huge Eagles fan and Tom Brady is the Devil, so this was the one game I've been most invested in since the last one I played myself back in high school. That direct experience, <a href="https://vectorpress.blogspot.com/2016/12/fear-and-loathing-in-trumpland.html">which I've mentioned before</a>, is also how I plan to show that this game has some interesting socio-political implications, as well as this whole post just being an exercise in self-indulgence.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Brandon Graham</i></td></tr>
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<br />
First, let's look at the politics of this game as they are just within the world of professional football. Everyone with a lick of sense already hated the Patriots - <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/why-does-everyone-hate-new-england-patriots-ncna843876">even their own fans resent them for their cheating</a> - and the Eagles came in as the scrappy underdog Americans are conditioned from birth to cheer for. But as anyone who's followed an NFL season knows, uplifting narratives don't have half the staying power as the demoralizing success of teams like the Patriots, who were shooting for their sixth Superbowl victory, which is currently a club of just one. For all that old timey grit and hometown love driving the Eagles, these sorts of contests in America have historically gone to the crass and the sleazy, as best personified in the Brady-Belichek tenure of the Patriots.<br />
<br />
Bill Belichik and Tom Brady represent a common wisdom that is much too common in America. The power of the single, unencumbered superstar to drive a franchise to ever greater heights of wealth and fame. It's the logic that got Donald Trump elected and caused the housing market crash, the logic of ubermensch capitalism that has been harder to kill than Rasputin or Dracula. Tom Brady himself is exactly the sort of hero Ayn Rand would dream up, a completely self-certain and self-satisfied prick who's sole skill - throwing a goddamn ball - is presented as justification for his rich vampire lifestyle. This is aided and abetted by Belichik's management style, where every Patriot player is just a cog in the Fordist machine. This is visible not just in Patriots' fans' own dismal slogans, like "Do Your Job," but also in how Belichik's machine revolves around the arm and ego of Tom Brady.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Nick Foles</i></td></tr>
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<br />
When it comes together, the Patriots offense really is worth the hype. Brady proved this with some of the longest Superbowl throws in history, usually to high-functioning freight rain Gronkwoski. The Brady-Gronk pairing, as sports journalism knobs have dubbed them, carried the majority of the scoring during the game and, when the stars were right, proved unstoppable.<br />
<br />
But building a franchise around one or two star players is as risky as building a political movement around the mythology of the strong leader. The Patriots proved that too, in all their pre-game hagiography of Brady which was both reminiscent and reflective of the typical American presidential campaign circus, where whatever tired old hack the party's money-men agree on is puffed up and deified like a Roman Emperor. It's the Great Man theory in history, which has looked more and more like a fantasy for power-worshipping nerds ever since Election 2016. And since the collapse of the Patriots offense in Superbowl LII.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnIM5RfXlKSv8xcQuc2lR8FLIWHOxwwMksyoAZsvaYNdRkdb5UlvP68f_35RZQVDYo7zLa5RyvL58zCp8z-GdQnVd9bK_NrUZRSZYAqVRTLFbBeuaktuB6zM4pKQgOWMAVSFpKI06REQfe/s1600/ajayi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="634" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnIM5RfXlKSv8xcQuc2lR8FLIWHOxwwMksyoAZsvaYNdRkdb5UlvP68f_35RZQVDYo7zLa5RyvL58zCp8z-GdQnVd9bK_NrUZRSZYAqVRTLFbBeuaktuB6zM4pKQgOWMAVSFpKI06REQfe/s400/ajayi.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Jay Ajayi</i></td></tr>
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<br />
Whereas the Eagles' offense proved the old mantra of "four yards and a cloud of dust." Every other first down, they sent the ball up the middle, which will never clear ten yards but will always close the distance a little, giving a team more flexibility with their passing. Nick Foles didn't throw as many passes as Brady, let alone throw as far, but he didn't need to as the rest of the Eagles' offense could be counted on to keep moving the ball down the field. This makes for a slow but inevitable advance, bringing the Eagles close enough for field goals even when the Patriots managed to stop the run.<br />
<br />
Teamwork, as the after school specials like to say, but it bears repeating as so much of popular American myth revolves around a single rugged individualist, rather than the long grind of group effort. It may not be as photogenic as Brady's long bombs but, as demonstrated, it gets the job done better. All it takes to make a good quarterback is a good arm, but a good offense needs a quarterback who knows when to swallow his own ego and get out of the way. That's how a good team can carry a mediocre quarterback, but not the other way around.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjATRl53KVGMIyFK1hs0c07ldUCyDcyJyrbV7Q8lI5NRqdhC5uvrK1lLfhIckdAmWwD5kMalQKg_MV0wPoQL-KDXbsknzenj7qH_0zqEkOIMwnWt47KC7JULtHyRTA6BUd975cFrmjYz9Z7/s1600/chrislong.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjATRl53KVGMIyFK1hs0c07ldUCyDcyJyrbV7Q8lI5NRqdhC5uvrK1lLfhIckdAmWwD5kMalQKg_MV0wPoQL-KDXbsknzenj7qH_0zqEkOIMwnWt47KC7JULtHyRTA6BUd975cFrmjYz9Z7/s400/chrislong.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Chris Long</i></td></tr>
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The Eagles still couldn't have pulled it off, though, if their defense wasn't so <i>scary</i>. A good defense isn't a wall, it's a grenade that sows terror and confusion. A great defense is a white squall descending on Tom Brady's stupid preppy face. The pressure they kept bearing down on him had him throwing for the stands more often than not, anything to save himself from a blitz that would make even <a href="http://exiledonline.com/death-of-the-assassin/">Jack "The Assassin" Tatum</a> wince. With Brady in retreat, the morale of the whole team collapsed because, like all tyrants, they had everything to lose in this game and no support from their bloodless oligarch of a coach.<br />
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There's a lesson in all of this. The lesson I've been circling around in all the football talk - that the powers that be are not gods, not invulnerable, just contemptible little schemers like Brady and Belichik. No different from a crooked auto mechanic or a Brooklyn hustler, mortal and alone. A great mass movement can unseat everyone from the Patriots to the Senate, if they follow the example set by the Eagles in Superbowl LII: keep driving forward and never give your opponent the space to breath. It won't be an easy victory but it'll still win elections like it wins games.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5PtjzgRxmwcn28JFAFbp8pOPHzQbomXbIPpx8WZGPcEO_htnFBVfg9ayfo-q-LVPqhrfNw11DiyPIqVn534cSbfmn8Xq4OBPmxFiN5Di3lKIzThJ_VZsRqQuULSsklN2ddhIa7hfn61VZ/s1600/brady.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="600" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5PtjzgRxmwcn28JFAFbp8pOPHzQbomXbIPpx8WZGPcEO_htnFBVfg9ayfo-q-LVPqhrfNw11DiyPIqVn534cSbfmn8Xq4OBPmxFiN5Di3lKIzThJ_VZsRqQuULSsklN2ddhIa7hfn61VZ/s400/brady.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>*sad trombone music*</i></td></tr>
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Also, Justin Timberlake is a twat.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-3193833662553570022018-02-02T06:00:00.000-05:002018-02-02T06:00:47.757-05:00Fiction Friday Returns!A small boy with a kiddie-hawk haircut and holograph of happy cartoon mutants on his shirt gaped at Jerome. “Mommy, what’s wrong with that man?” he asked in innocent wonderment.
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His mother, one of those high-strung yuppie sorts with a severe haircut, reluctantly looked up from her phone. “I’m so sorry,” she said automatically. Adding, grudgingly, because it was expected, “Would you like to sit down?”
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As much as he enjoyed watching these sorts squirm, Jerome’s knee just couldn’t keep up with the train today. “Thank you. Yes, thanks.”
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The woman tried her best to politely ignore him once he was settled on the seat, between a grumbling fat man in a heavy suit and a fatter woman who sniffed with indignation at Jerome, the train, and just the whole world in general. They all tried their passive aggressive best but the little boy just couldn’t let things go - “But what’s wrong with him? Why’s his skin look like that?” His little voice carried up and down the subway car, even over the squeal of the rusty tracks.
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“Mason, stop it!” his mother hissed back. And again to Jerome, she said with repressed bitterness, “I’m so sorry. He knows better than this.”
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He clearly didn’t but Jerome just chuckled. “It’s fine, really,” he assured her, making a magnanimous gesture with one gnarled hand. Then, addressing the little boy directly, “Hey Mason, want to know how my skin got like this?”
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The boy answered with an excited "Yeah!" while his mother tittered "No he doesn't – No you don't!"
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Ignoring her, Jerome told Mason with more than a hint of pride, "I let it happen! I let myself grow old!"
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<i>Learn Jerome's shameful secret <a href="http://www.portyonderpress.com/trevor-kroger---older-model.html">here</a>, exclusively at Eastern Iowa Review!</i>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-14555398456502672242018-02-01T12:00:00.000-05:002018-02-01T12:00:27.482-05:00Willard Goes West<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPqHtLLS8xUKfctwgfZsVuuq6SIyBq1AZC2CF4R2hqcit9MxsDbpKOhu5BruvMn1GIsrLjeGFMmfgQIyfzDJtUdX7E_LRzHRQq2d8pov1Ki6rfwBZdLZDbdugGhCDdHXeSziYJHEw5u7Of/s1600/hostiles-film.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPqHtLLS8xUKfctwgfZsVuuq6SIyBq1AZC2CF4R2hqcit9MxsDbpKOhu5BruvMn1GIsrLjeGFMmfgQIyfzDJtUdX7E_LRzHRQq2d8pov1Ki6rfwBZdLZDbdugGhCDdHXeSziYJHEw5u7Of/s400/hostiles-film.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
It's refreshing at a time when Hollywood can't stop congratulating itself on its progressivism to see an uncompromising look at the era of the Indian Wars. As the War Nerd so aptly put it, the First Peoples of the Americas and those 19th Century Americans were engaged in a war of extermination on both sides, with no quarter asked or given. That people speak English and Spanish in New Mexico rather than Comanche or Apache has nothing to do with who was right or wrong but simply who had the industrial base and the birthrate.
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<i>Hostiles</i> kicks off with this cold, clear view of the Old West right away with a Comanche gang massacring Rosamund Pike's homesteader family. It won't be the last time she's brutalized in the course of the film and it sets a very deliberate formula for the ensuing two hours: people are cruel, there are no heroes, and gunfights are a matter of sheer dumb luck.
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It's a far cry from the usual genre fare at the multiplex and thank Christ for that. I blissfully skipped the latest <i>Star Wars</i> and Marvel film and all those other Disney properties, opting instead for something both old fashioned and on the bleeding cultural edge.
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The Western is really the quintessential American movie genre - and it still reflects the cultural zeitgeist even with all the changes from <i>Unforgiven</i> on. The old adventure pictures with noble white hats battling dastardly black hats reflected a popular imagination embracing the post-war vision of a nation as a global leader, the wide open plane representative of the potential and optimistic future just as much as science fiction's rocketry. Now, that plane is just as wide but reminds us how small we all are, how weak and mortal in the face of this great big world.
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That old fashioned terror gets a good workout with Pike as she goes from getting massacred to kidnapped and raped to just the generally crummy life on the trail in late 1800s America. She's really the core of the film, emotionally and thematically, even though much of the actual plot revolves around Captain Joe Block chaperoning a dying Apache chief to his ancestral burial ground. It's forty miles of bad road, as Cameron said of <i>Aliens</i>, but much further than that and with fewer respites from the elements or - the greater threat - other human beings.
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These sorts of travelling narratives are common - it makes up half of <i>The Lord of The Rings</i> - but many of those embody the threat of the open road in some persistent antagonist, always nipping at the heroes heels until the climactic battle just as they finish their journey. <i>Hostiles</i> has no such over-arching conflict because that sort of thing never happens in our dreary Real World. If it's not Comanches it's poachers, if it's not poachers it's some Army sergeant gone rogue. Or it's just the punishing rain. By the time Block is facing down the gun-toting libertarians - who sneer at his presidential order, proudly racist but happy to shoot other white men over their God-given property rights - you can feel not just his weariness but his bitter incredulity at these constant hurdles. "Great, now this..."
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Block himself is just as far from the traditional Western hero as the film is from any redemptive message. Played by Christian Bale with the sort of big filthy mustache they only had in those days, he's much less the gunslinger than the morally apathetic veteran of a counter-insurgency war with no end. Captain Willard on the river, knowing damn well if they search the local's sampan they'll have to kill everyone. But where <i>Apocalypse Now</i> was still enamored with the American Dream and how it supposedly died in Vietnam, Block is on the front lines of the dirty wars that carved a United States out of the wild and free North American continent. He's right there where the Good Old Days were born and it's the bloodiest birth since the aforementioned <i>Alien</i> franchise.<br />
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A contrast to Block appears at times. Soft-hand intellectuals and bureaucrats from the East Coast, bleeding hearts for the poor put-upon Red Man. What might have been a reactionary's dichotomy is muddier though, as these are the same pillars of civilization who dispatched soldiers like Block to the Indian Wars in the first place, now full of sympathy and sentiment since the poor put-upon Red Man doesn't look like a threat by 1892. Not to the big cities at least. Most of the serious things never register with the cities, which is how climate change is already sinking Miami into the Atlantic.<br />
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But <i>Hostiles</i> admirably does not stake out a morality one way or the other. Comanches massacre the farmers, soldiers torment and murder Apaches, it's a Shankill road gang fight played out across sagebrush and valleys. <i>Hostiles</i> feels like a longer movie than it is but it's a rare case of this being a good thing. It brings you closer to the psychology of the characters, whose common humanity is ground downward with every passing mile by such common human cruelties, until the brutality of everyone from the soldiers to the Native tribes is comprehensible. It's not so much some innate or socially normative evil as just frustration, lashing out in ever more gruesome ways because why the hell not? Screw it, burn the world and God too.<br />
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It was the best time I've had at the cinema since <i>Get Out</i>. Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7234145992108927910.post-14971391908142065822017-10-19T21:15:00.000-04:002017-10-19T21:15:12.932-04:00This Is You<br />
<a href="http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/this-is-us-and-the-twist-in-the-episode-still-here.html?utm_source=eml&utm_medium=e1&utm_campaign=sharebutton-t">This article</a> about the cloying hit show <i>This Is Us</i> is what happens when you raise a generation of middle-class middle-brows on the notion Jane Austen novels were anything more than 19th Century soap operas. The author, and her audience, have just enough education to know this is hokey and culturally regressive, but that's exactly what they crave in their shallow Wal-Mart souls.<br />
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They know from the books they read in college that they should be skeptical of the family as an institution and critical of patriarchal structures which mandate all women choose motherhood, especially since it's not always really a choice...<br />
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But they're too much a product of contemporary suburban mores and norms to take that truly courageous step out of the Normal and into the sort of rootless bohemianism which the iconoclasts in their Norton anthologies embraced. Their critical articles, their social justice cant, their entire "wokeness" is so much virtue signalling. A mating call from the bland to the bland, so they can go in-hoc on a 4,000 square foot vinyl-sideded fuck-box, as the late <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Waltzing-Doomsday-Ball-best-Bageant/dp/1921844515">Joe Bageant</a> called American middle class housing. And all for the sake of recreating the family holidays and barbecues of their memories, despite how anxious and miserable they really were as children.<br />
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The media they consume - I hesitate to call it "art" - reflects this. A few well-timed fart and dick jokes to add a juvenile level of transgression to what is really a stuffy square's morality talking to itself. <i>The Leave It To Beaver</i> ethos, decked out in a few memes so these professional bores can pretend it's something new.<br />
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And this deep unconscious craving for the hokey and traditional that they so publicly roll their eyes at is exactly why we have the political climate we do now. Not hot enough to turn Red, but not cold enough to embrace the neo-feudal project of Conservatism, they are as lukewarm as piss in a swimming pool. They can't stand against the madness at this late stage of capitalism because they cannot bring themselves to conceive of a world beyond white picket fences, 2.5 kids, and lifelong consumer debt.Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01801487338426411136noreply@blogger.com0