Deconstructing the Manifest

Chris Hedges Thinks Antifa Has Something To Do With Revolution

2017-10-11T17:38:00.000-07:00

A still from the conversation.

As one who identified in my youth as a “pacifist,” Chris Hedges’ views have been challenging to me over the last few years, particularly since #OccupyWallStreet, where he took a principled stance against the actions of the Black Bloc.

Hedges’ views of the Black Bloc, and Antifa, are lensed from a position of Total Revolution.

He is dead wrong to apply this logic to Antifa.

He has a point, to a degree, with the Black Bloc. Violence against property is an easy starting point for propaganda, as most of the Western world is still vested in the idea of private property, and in this context it’s easy to frighten the average citizen with images of black bandannas and shattered glass. No corporate media outlet is going to explain the degree to which some are frustrated by the absolute domination of corporate interests. It is a defensible position that he holds as regards to “winning hearts-and-minds” amongst the general populace.

His pacifist purism loses traction when it comes to Antifa vs. the “alt-right” (or, if we are to be honest, fascism or Nazism.) Nobody, not even the “elite overlords,” are openly defending this stunted sprout from the past. For sure, these people are being used to demoralize any progressive efforts, but it is a stupid and inflammatory tactic, regardless of whether the current president* of the United States is providing tacit cover. He is being used as well.

The left would be fools to let these trogs take over the streets, to frighten minorities and immigrants and the weak. This is not about a tactic towards Total Revolution - that banner is being taken up elsewhere.

To deride the courage of those who choose to stand at the front lines against these very violent bullies is to take “pacifism” to a ridiculous end. They are not fighting the revolution. They are protecting the women and the children and the vulnerable.

It is naive to think that if they disengaged it would result in more ebullient support for Total Revolution.

To claim that Antifa is filled with the “same lust for violence” as the troglodytes emerging from under their rocks to strike fear in the hearts of the vulnerable is sheer slander, Chris Hedges.

Watch the interview here.

America.

2017-06-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

"Balding Eagle," by Eric Cox

Compare And Contrast: The Interlopers

2015-09-12T09:49:00.000-07:00

Left, Jacquelyn Martin/AP - Right, Stephen B. Morton/AP

These are extreme times, so it is no surprise that the both sides of our increasingly moribund two-party system are being roiled by avatars of “radicalism.”

I put scare quotes around “radicalism” because, in spite of the irresistible pull to equate the populism of Donald Trump with that of Bernie Sanders, there is a clear difference between the characters of these two men and the movements they represent/inspire. This is much more than just a left vs. right worldview contest.

This is Thunderdome. At least I hope it is.

As of this writing, however, it looks as if “The Donald” is going full Wile E. Coyote on us, and may be exiting stage-left sooner rather than later. Whether or not that happens, it seems his party will be left in smoking ruins, at least in this election cycle.

In any case, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are currently shaking up the cherished plans of respective party leaderships.

This is really great news for America - but it’s also very dangerous. There is a reason that the “establishment” is eyeing the fainting couch. We, the people, should not let it get too far out of our sights, either.

The first contrast I’d like to make between these two interlopers is that while one is likely to leave his party in serious disarray regardless of whether or not he remains, Sanders is playing a class act and it is clear that the Democratic Party will be left in relatively good shape at the end of the primaries. Sure, there will be some viscera exposed by the respective “bases” of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (remember 2008,) it is clear from his current - and very classy - respect for his opponent that the latter will fall in line with the Party message if things do not go his way (a point of criticism from the true believers of the left, but this aspect of Bernie’s pragmatism is key to his viability as an actual leader.)

Both candidates (and their constituents) are angry, to be sure. But the targets of their anger are of significant difference. While Bernie Sanders has a coherent and righteous message to articulate in his decrial of the obviously corrosive trend of wealth accumulation to the very few, Donald Trump is stumping on the inchoate and incoherent hatred directed towards whatever “Other” he can conjure up in the speech-de-jour. The inspiration that Sanders offers his supporters - however Quixotic it may seem - is at least directed towards their rational self-interest. Trump is agitating a base that refuses to think clearly about their problems, and are being roused up to further buttress up the institutions and systems that are robbing them blind.

One thing is not like the other. There is no “one the one hand, on the other hand” in this narrative.

On a somewhat personal and whimsical note (and leaving aside the question as to how much a “radical” President can do in the face of the hugely entrenched colossus that is called the United States Government,) I would like to see a general election between these two. Why, it would be the Hippies vs. the Wingers, laid bare for all to see... at long last.

Leaving aside the fearsome danger to our country if the Wingers make a bigger turnout. But, after the Obama landslide, I’m not seeing that as a possibility.

My Highly Irregular, Not So Annual September 11th Post.

2015-09-10T18:03:00.000-07:00

The Butterfly from Hell II - Acrylic on canvas, by Mai Kari Hartvaag Zimbleman

What Paul Krugman said:

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

Get over it.

My 10-year anniversary post, for what it’s worth.

On Communication And The Changing American Demographic - A Looming Concern

2015-07-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

Image from Professor Jane O’Connor at Space Place & Self

I’ve long suspected that one of the reasons why human beings haven’t yet figured out how to carry on a conversation with bottlenosed porpoises, African gray parrots, et al. in their own language is quite simply that we’re terrified of what they might say to us—not least because it’s entirely possible that they’d be right...
- Darwin's Casino - The Archdruid Report

John Michael Greer’s perhaps whimsical (but no less possibly true) observation above set me to thinking about the dynamic he is illustrating here.

What he is most assuredly referencing is the relentless abuse that we inflict upon non-human species. In the thought experiment that it evokes, I can easily see a well-meaning scientist breaking the code of gray parrot language and, upon hearing the first few coherent phrases, shrinking back in horror at the forthcoming indictments and canceling the whole experiment.

What makes this even more realistic an outcome is made clear by the imbalances of communication that exist within our own species - inter-cultural or so-called inter-“racial.”

It is pretty clear to most of us that America doesn’t like to talk about “race.” More clearly, America doesn’t like to think about race. Even more clearly, White America doesn’t like to think about race.

Black America doesn’t have that choice. Because even though White America doesn’t like to think or talk about race, ironically it is shouting loudly and clearly on the issue 24/7, via the habits and customs resulting from the systemic imbalance of power in the country.

In other words, White America is always in Black America’s face... and while some Whites who perversely claim victim-status feel like they’re the ones being “faced” (e.g., affirmative action,) the truth is that the systemic imbalance of power in this country makes it reflexively - nearly un-noticeably - easy to completely ignore the voices of Black America.

Black America has no such luxury.

But this isn’t all, ahem, black and white. This is about prevailing cultures lording it over minority cultures. Going back to the language analogy, it is easy for those who benefit from the prevailing power dynamic to be lazy and ignore the voices of those who do not have their hands on the levers of power. And, if the the prevailing culture is not kind to the other cultures, it is in their best interest to ignore those voices (the recriminations and the guilt,) which always goes further and manifests as marginalization, which further feeds back into the dynamic, reinforcing the problem.

This applies to classes as well - the old 1% vs. 99% deal. We know who is ignoring who here, and which of the two have no choice but to deal with the noise of the other.

Demographics shift, however.

America is getting “browner.” The 99% are getting pretty fucking restless, too.

This is a good thing - but transitions of this kind can be more or less tempestuous (and downright violent) depending on the choices made by the participants. Actually, no - choices made by the prevailing culture or class. These choices are primarily choices of communication, of hearing voices.

Minority cultures, on the one hand, and disenfranchised classes, on the other, already speak loudly and clearly on the state of affairs. It is those who have the luxury to ignore those voices who make the mistake to do so.

If we do not shrink away from the voice of the gray parrot and hear her out, we have a chance of redeeming ourselves vis. the parrot population before they get their talons on the levers of power.

That may be pushing the metaphor a bit too far - but we are not talking about parrots here.

Kilpatrick vs. Giridharadas: Class vs. Privilege

2015-04-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

Image courtesy Le Colonel Chabert

An item at Truthdig brought to my attention a schism of perception between two thinkers concerned with inequality and privilege. I think it’s important to understand what is being said here. The Anand Giridharadas quote that ruffled the feathers of Connor Kilpatrick at Jacobin:

Don't console yourself that you are the 99 percent. If you live near a Whole Foods; if no one in your family serves in the military; if you are paid by the year, not the hour; if most people you know finished college; if no one you know uses meth; if you married once and remain married; if you're not one of 65 million Americans with a criminal record — if any or all of these things describe you, then accept the possibility that actually, you may not know what's going on, and you may be part of the problem.

In Let Them Eat Privilege, Kilpatrick responds:

"We are the 99%.” It was like a gift from on high.

For decades, the Left had been trying to come up with a slogan that was both inclusive and oppositional. A slogan that put a relatively complex critique of class society in the populist language of American egalitarianism — something that spoke to a widespread sentiment that the elites had gotten too wealthy and powerful and had to be reined in.

But a recent Vox article, citing TED talker and New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas, casts doubt on just who gets to sit at that 99 percent table. It seems one-percenter privilege is haunting quite a few of us...

Before you go after the one percent, Giridharadas says, take a look at yourself. Kill the one-percenter within. Check your privilege.

But instead of explaining what it actually means to be among this tiny sliver in terms of concrete earnings, accumulated wealth, or class position, Vox and Giridharadas rely on strange descriptors that Vox considers “privileges.”

By forcing the middle class to divert their attention downward (and within) instead of at the real power players above, Vox and Giridharadas are playing into the Right’s hands...

You get the picture.

I don’t see these two points of view to be in conflict at all, and Kilpatrick’s reaction strikes me as rather suspicious.

While I’ll get to that in a minute, let me first say that I commend the call to solidarity among the nominal “99%” championed by Occupy, and Kilpatrick. Also, he makes a solid point about distractions from this solidarity, and certainly Giridharadas could be quoted in certain contexts as a such a distraction.

I think, however, that Kilpatrick is being a bit sensitive here. First of all, I doubt that members of the “class-struggle” (as awakened by Occupy) are dangling on the precipice of asceticism, ready to abandon the fight for economic justice in the name of personal purity.

But what if they were, anyway?

There may, of course, be a certain number of folk who - weak of heart and will - might abandon the struggle once they awakened to the sins of their own bourgeoisie habits and tastes. But such people are, well, weak of heart and will, and you’re not going to get much out of them anyway when the rubber meets the road.

But, again, what if a significant number of them did “turn inwards?” First of all, it would not be a contradiction to do both - to check your own privilege while continuing the struggle for economic justice. However, while that would be the likely course followed by our “new ascetics,” let’s indulge Kilpatrick’s bigger fear that it would indeed distract from class struggle (before you go after the one percent, Giridharadas is saying to him, take a look at yourself.)

Seeing as how the entire house-of-cards that is elite wealth and power is dependent upon the consumerist habits of the, er, 99%, then any substantial turning away from these habits would wreak a significant amount of “class-justice” in and of itself.

Why do I find his reaction to be suspicious? Because, like the deification of “the middle class,” it smells of the sort of lifestyle-protectionism that permeates the liberal well-off. They see class injustice, and they are focused on “lifting the boats,” while willfully ignoring just how much boat-lifting can be sustained across the entire population of the Earth. There is a pervasive and willful ignorance among those who have “become accustomed.”

I take Giridharadas’ point: The “1%” are merely an extreme caricature of the avarice within us all.

While we should remain solidly together in the struggle for economic justice, let us not be ignorant of what that justice really means. The “middle-class,” who after all might live near a Whole Foods, get paid by the year, and have “finished college,” are indeed taking more than their fair share.

God Is Dead... Again

2014-12-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

Still frame from The Turin Horse

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
- Frederich Nietzsche

The "God" to which I refer is the god of the 20th Century - a loosely-held complex of values that include Capitalism, American Exceptionalism, and the post-Colonial dream that never quite coalesced - for, after the liberated former colonies dispensed with a few pressing domestic concerns, they promptly set to colonizing what became known as "Third World" with gusto. Of course, the latter effect alerted, at the outset, any serious observer to the taint of this "god."

But we are not at "the outset" of this misadventure - we are firmly ensconced in the twilight of it all, so that now even "un-serious" observers are having their noses shoved unceremoniously into the soilings of it. It is very uncomfortable.

Part of the point of Nietzsche's pronouncement was to illustrate the hazard of not acknowledging to oneself such a murder. The murder of God was an act of the creator of God (humanity,) and the warning and lament was that the murderers were loathe not only to acknowledge their role in the birth, life and death of this deity, but worse still continued the empty rituals and pronouncements that continued to raise the hollowed corpse in puppet-like re-animation.

Such is the state of modern ideology in the "First World" today. We (as a citizen of the country that owns Washington, D.C. I will henceforth use "us" and "we") are "in control" of everything now. And yet, it is clear to many of us and becoming so to most of us that there are forces lurching about - inchoate and undirected as they may be - that frustrate this power to ever-increasing effect.

I mentioned earlier that serious observers would have been alerted to the "taint" of our ideologies due to the ongoing urge to colonize, but this is only the finger pointing at the moon. I want to talk about the moon.

II.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- Lord Acton

Nietzsche spoke of a "will to power" as a fundamental driving force in human nature, and this was as least as misunderstood as this death of God metaphor. While this misunderstanding is quite germane to the reasons for the mortality of our latest god, I am not writing that paper here. I mention it only in passing - what I really want to discuss here is Lord Acton's famous quote, and the corrupting influence that language has over truth.

I wish you were sitting here before me, reader, as I would most ideally like to begin by asking you to dissect the Acton quote. I'd like you to restate it in your own way, to explain its meaning. I would like to illustrate the corruption of truth so that I might not get an argument from you when I proceed. But you are not, so I am forced to construct a strawman - as honestly and ingenuously as I can, yet still reluctantly.

I've no idea if Lord Acton held that "power" and "corruption" were two different things, in a kind of tension with each other, but I do know that my initial intellectual response to that quote is as an explication that power causes corruption. With the implication that if a power-wielder could only stave off the corruption bit, then a benevolent influence he could be. It is read as a caution, as if there is a sliding-scale of corruption (and power) that might be tweaked with the proper vigilance.

We are quite certain, most of us, for example, that there is a vast difference between the power of a monarch and power of a representative democracy with "checks and balances" to power. I'm here to nakedly aver that there is no difference, that the decorations of statehood inspired by our efforts to manipulate the relationship between power and corruption are ultimately for naught. As any observer of the state of the world today should acknowledge without protest.

While the Acton quote is true in the sense in which language can approach truth, it becomes a misleading falsehood when fed back into the mind of the speaker. For there is not a schism between power and corruption - they are one and the same thing. Full stop. There is no "tension between the two" that can be metered and regulated, this is not a caution about technique and care, it is a caution against power. Full stop, again.

The God of the 20th Century was America, embodied in systems of checks and balances, invisible hands, rising tides, progressive homogeneity of culture - all projects of the City on the Hill. While she seized some of it at the outset, the world incrementally ceded to her most of the power that she has today, the self-fulfilling coalescence that incarnated the God of the 20th Century. But there are forces lurching about...

Things fall apart, the center will not hold, and in our atomization we are left as a million Nietzsches, in solitary mourning at the onset of this new Death. In our grief we, too, hold out hope for a sort of mass revelation, a burst of creative self-introspection that will once and for all replace the infirmity of false Gods with the firmament of Truth. The prelude to our madness...

With the revelations and spectacles of modern times - police madness, the sanctioned horrors of torture, state-sponsored terror (in our names,) the criminalization of poverty, the fevered seizure of wealth and resource by the few leading to the misery of the many - we are as well being driven mad by a man beating a horse.

Sartre On Collective Responsibilty And The Solace Of Optimism

2014-07-26T15:44:00.000-07:00

Photo: El Mercurio

This paragraph from a biography of Jean-Paul Sartre echoes my feelings today for the West in general, and the United States in particular.

(Emphases are mine, as is the inserted footnote. For the sake of sheer sanity on my part, I removed the footnotes provided by the author. You can purchase the book for those.)

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"First Lie... Second Lie... Guilty. Double guilty." InMay 1957, with his negative version of "You're Terrific," Sartre also sounds the alarm on Algeria, or, rather, he re-emphasizes the message of a brochure that had been published a few months earlier, Des Rappelés témoignent, denouncing the looting and torture taking place in Algeria, revealing the full corruption of the French army in its colonial excesses. "We are sick, very sick," Sartre insists. "Feverish and prostrate, obsessed by old dreams of glory and the foreboding of its shame, France is struggling in the grip of a nightmare it is unable either to flee or decipher. Either we'll see things as they are or we will die." Sartre initiates a trial that involves the entire country. Invoking the specter of 1945 and "collective responsibility," he assumes the garb of the public prosecutor to stir up dormant cowardices, awaken good consciences, probe live wounds. In a few lines, he sketches the France of 1957, underlines the contrasts, points out the contradictions and exposes the famous "You're terrific," the formula of the year, as noxious, vulgar, obscene. In his article, Jean Nohain*, the magician of France, the perverse leader who injects the whole country with a lethargic serum, becomes the stand-in for the Moller government, which, aware of the torture occurring daily in Algeria, continues to sweep the dirt under the carpet. "Never evading any sacrifice, [the Mollet government] has set the Queen of England on the throne of France for three days. ...Meanwhile, however, in Algeria, a gang of stubborn men kept doing their job: there are no holidays for butchers." "The queen has left; now she is resting up at Windsor Castle. We remain silent, but we know those documents. How many mattresses will we have to pile up on the Place de la Concorde to make the world forget that children are being tortured in our name while we choose to remain silent?" This is a typically Sartrean parallel: Queen Elizabeth II, whose coronation, three years earlier, had been followed in all its obsolete pomp and circumstance by every Frenchman with a TV set, and Jean Nohain, requesting mattresses for the indigent Lambda family, become one and the same thing, and Sartre incriminates both. So, for the peace of mind of the French people, this painful African truth is supressed, along with other nightmares and collective shame. "We will be caught in an abominable trap," the writer predicts, "and what's more, in an attitude we have ourselves condemned." Indignation, exaltation, urgency -- "It's still time... It's still possible" -- before the final injunction: "Let's look at the truth, it will allow us either to condemn our crimes publicly or admit them lucidly... This is the evidence, this the horror, ours: we won't be able to see it without tearing it away from us and crushing it." Sartre will repeat this strong, urgent, outraged text often, with minor variations on the same theme, rasping obsessively on collective guilt, the disease of silence, playing this role, his role, to the hilt.
- Annie Cohen-Salal (1985). Sartre: A Life Random House (translation 1987). p. 364. ISBN 0-394-52525-6

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*Jean Nohain, French television personality/producer. A nudger of the nascent consumerism of the fifties, he used the catch-phrase "You're Terrific!" to infect his audiences with optimism. References to "mattresses" in the rest of this text refers to the French version of "Queen for a Day," that implored audiences to send consumer goods (i.e., mattresses) to the unfortunate families he featured.

SB 1062 & The Soul Of The U.S.A.

2014-03-02T15:28:00.001-08:00

A very small business, from Sheknows Parenting

I listened to Rich Lowry yesterday, sounding very reasonable, on KCRW's Left, Right & Center explaining that Arizona's now-tanked SB 1060 bill was merely a tweak to existing state and federal laws protecting business owners from undue burdens upon their religious freedoms absent a "compelling government interest." This view is also expressed in this post at a "Right"-eous Christian blog.

I'm going to grant the point and proceed from there.

Overview

America was and is constituted on a spinning centrifuge of contradictions, held to the center by the sheer willpower of want. She - we - want, want beyond the considerations of need. We therefore are unwilling to make eye-contact in the mirror lest such exposure send our fallacies flying off into the great beyond.

It is a deep and fundamental mental disease that literally defines who we are as we are constituted, and it requires a great deal of distraction to continue its tolerance. The thing is that, where there is disease, there will inevitably be symptoms, the "meta" of sicknesses, and we are more than happy to leap into the mud and wrestle with these meta-symptoms with clarion and heroic effort. Since the underlying disease is never addressed, these exercises sometimes result in amelioration, more often in exacerbation by unintended consequence. It is America fighting herself, it is her penchant for punching at the mirror rather than gazing.

SB 1062 is one such meta-symptom. It really is, as the conservative apologists insist, a tempest in a teapot.

Not that there would be no important consequences - and I'll get into that later - and it is here that the Right is being disingenuous. But the fight over this issue completely ignores the substrate of error that undergirds our ideas about property, about civil rights, about business.

These are the things that are not being discussed, and I think any serious meditation on what this bill is about must include them. Of course, I am not being merely cynical when I add that if we did do this, we would not be who we are, and we are still too enthralled with ourselves (for reasons that escape me personally) to risk transformation into something better.

The defensible argument for bills like SB 1062, if I understand it correctly, is that a private business owner should be protected by the government from unreasonable demands on her freedoms to conduct business with whomsoever she chooses.

Now whether one is a leftist thinker or a conservative, one is inclined to "slippery slope" every bit of legislation one considers. Often this results in absurd fears, but on the other hand the very fact that such extrapolations can take place is because of the unnatural, unconfronted constitution of our being. Things can go "one way or the other" because we are held together with the chewing gum and bailing wire of sheer will.

The Right sees righteous folk being forced into a Hobbes' choice of either being forced into engaging in heretical behavior or being sued into bankruptcy.

The Left sees the sanctioned marginalization of classes of people as the precursor to the brown-shirted scapegoating of years gone by (yes, I am going there.)

These extrapolations are extrapolations of symptoms because there is a disease. In the context of The System as it stands, they are important symptoms with important consequences, and I grant that the fears of both the Right and of the Left are reasonable within this context. As such, I'm going to devote inches at the end of this post on them, but first - the disease

The Disease

It's private property, that chimera of an abstraction that is itself a symptom of the disease of the abstraction of the "sovereign person." I'll further regress the idea and say that it signals the unexamined first-impression that consciousness provides us, the illusion that we are "in here" and the world, and its population of "others," is "out there." So we organize ourselves, in our ignorance, as if in competition against the world.

But this makes it too abstract a discussion, so I am simply going to state that humans are not separate from each other - they cannot be so - and so it is a fool's game to pretend that we are. If one cannot accept this as an a priori for the purposes of this discussion, then do not bother to continue. (For the record, I can defend the proposition quite robustly, but this post is going to be long enough as it is.)

So what cascades from this "private property" (description below*) of which we speak? First of all, of course it is right and just that one's private property should be reasonably protected from any violations, and so we tweak our social contract in order to do so. The problem here is that we have permitted such a liberal application of what can be made "private" that mayhem is bound to occur.

First of all, let's consider the "private property" that is "my" business. "I have a right to do business with whomever I please!" I say, reasonably enough. Actually, no I don't.

A business is a public property. Any world that tries to alter that truth through constitution, fiat, or legislation is simply setting up the sort of unnatural and self-contradicting society we live in today. Ever heard the term "a license to do business?"

I cannot simply start "my" business wherever I like and sell whatever I like. Try to set up a combination adult shop/cannabis dispensary/ammo depot next to an elementary school. You'll soon find that the public, through the organ of government, will not issue you that license, and any "freedom" you gain through license is not freedom at all, by definition (the hypothetical wingnut reading this right now - I seriously doubt he has made it this far - is now working up a rant against gub'mint licensing requirements. "I got yer license right here in my 2nd Amendment!" Which is also a license, but don't tell the angry little man.)

This brings us to Lowry's point about freedom except in the face of "compelling government interest." First of all, conservatives do not consider the government to be the organ of the public. They consider it to be the organ of those social-engineering liberal fascists.

As do most self-professed leftists in America, for that matter. This is the biggest failure of the Left - the abandonment of their government. The low-information self-identifying "leftists" also have a reactionary tendency to "other" the government, and this absurdity creates a self-fulfilling result.

Bottom Line

When in one's home and/or engaging in truly personal activities, one can claim a level of sovereignty - to a point. For in the moment one engages with other human beings (or any creature, for that matter,) the situation changes dramatically. There can be no guarantee of any "right" that is not conferred upon one by social compact, by the public, by, yes, that organ of the public - the government.

The Compelling Public Interest

So what is the "compelling government interest" in the case of bills like SB 1062, that are designed to ameliorate? Well, first of all, let's call it what it is: compelling public interest.

First, let's review. I am permitted to do business with other people because the public has issued me a (by definition provisional) license to do so. If I offend the public interest in the course of my business, the public can quite reasonably remove that license from me.

OK, here's the public interest, and it goes beyond avoiding a parade of sex addicts, stoners**, and gun nuts in front of your student children - all of which are subject to ideological interpretation. Simply, some of us wouldn't think that to be a big deal at all.

What isn't debatable is Nazi behavior (I told you I was going there.)

See, while the Right is framing this as a personal freedom issue, the Left is pretty crystal clear for what it is: It's the institutionalization of bigotry. Due to the public nature of public business, clearly indicated by the imprimatur of licensing, then allowing someone who is engaging in said public business to bring their personal prejudices into these transactions is clearly signaling to fellow bigots everywhere that there is no reason to re-examine their prejudices and to consider their offensiveness.

No big deal, you say? Right now, in Russia, it is not illegal to be homosexual or to engage in homosexual activity. The current kerfluffle over the laws banning discussing the subject in the presence of children (which is being conducted by the West - particularly the U.S. - with breathtaking hypocrisy given the glorious and ongoing history we have with bigotry) is masking the agenda of a ruling class who looks the other way as the "brown-shirts" of ignorance openly beat homosexuals in the street in full view of sanguine police officers.

Why can they do that? You can be sure that Putin did not put together a memo-of-intent and unleash these assholes. No, what happens in these cases is that the government is seen as objecting to a class of persons (through something as seemingly "reasonable" as protecting the religious freedom of parents by making homosexual "propoganda" illegal,) and that is a VERY BIG GREENLIGHT to those inclined to sadistic thuggery.

It happened to the Jews, it's happened to America's Blacks (you think the KKK would have been anything if not for the tacit support of the local authorities?,) it's happening to homosexuals in Russia, it happens to any population marginalized by the signals of public approval, of which SB 1062 was such a signal.

The public interest is that I don't want anyone to feel that they are not an "in group" in general society. It is a humiliation, it invites violence and blood like feces invite flies, and is particularly dangerous in times of economic stress like today.

It is indeed a "compelling government interest" that one does not engage in prejudice when in the course of conducting public business, and any bill introduced with the intention of watering down this power deserves to be ridiculed, as this bill correctly was.

So take that, Lowry.

---

*Private property: Any entitlement to ownership of real estate or assets that are not directly inhabited or being utilized. My home is not "private property" in this sense, as it is where I am, and everyone has a right to be were they are (I am of course not saying that you must be there at all times - we are capable of making social compacts that protect our homes from each other.) And my lawn-mower is "mine" as I mow the lawn, but someone explain to me why it is not absurd that, on a suburban street lined with 20 homes, there are 20 lawn-mowers in 20 garages? Of course, in America, this is a radical question.

In a sane society, of course, "private property" would indeed refer to my inhabited abode alone. But that is not the "private property" of an insane culture.

**Hey - I resemble that remark!

The Cowardice Of The Right: A Haiku

2014-02-08T17:24:00.000-08:00

Ford Picket Line Violence

The conflict resolved
Ascendant right does pograms
Left wins, no kill-list

It's safer to be a right-winger.

Dickwatch

2013-11-14T16:14:00.000-08:00

Cheney is just the gift that keeps on giving. On the deceased donor of a (now clearly lonely) heart:

"... the way I think of it from a psychological standpoint is that it’s my new heart, not someone else’s old heart. And I always thank the donor, generically thank donors for the gift that I’ve been given, but I don’t spend time wondering who had it, what they’d done, what kind of person.."

Of course you don't, Dick. I mean, you've already "generically" thanked the Aristotelean donor archetype.

I'm going to be very sad when Dick Cheney dies. Unless we get to have a few days of rage in his memory, that is.

The Secret History of Sarin - H.P. Albarelli & Ran Daniel

2013-10-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination
by H.P. Albarelli, Jr.

[Crossposted from The Secret History of Sarin]

Over the past several months the world has witnessed the heinous and lethal effects of sarin gas as deployed in Syria, yet virtually unknown is the long history of this deadly chemical compound. Especially abhorrent in this history are sarin’s entangled roots in Nazi Germany and its subsequent exploitation by the United States government. This history also graphically underscores the brutal byproducts brought on by international conflicts and the insane subterfuge that frequently accompanies the aftermath of war.

A Parable, Short And Bitter

2013-10-02T18:19:00.001-07:00

Image from fine art america

Some people are sitting at a card table, playing cards. The card table is set squarely over some railroad tracks.

Because I want it that way.

Everyone is having a good time playing cards, except for one guy.

"I see a train coming," he says.

Another player rolls his eyes, and says, "You always focus on the negative."

"Yea, what about the important things in life?" says another, "like enjoying life in the moment."

"We're having a good time," agreed yet another.

"I'm just saying..."

"Why is the most important thing to you always the worst thing?"

"Well... because the worst thing is almost always the most important thing. If you were in an accident and bleeding from an artery, you would hope that the paramedic would not be distracted by scrapes and bruises..."

Eyes glower over a playing hand. "We're trying to enjoy ourselves, you're a downer, and you should just shut the fuck up."

The train impacted the card table with the expected result, and our "negative" guy has, finally, shut the fuck up.

---

Brought to you by Fukushima and the shadowmasters of our corporate media, who understand all too well just how rightfully terrified we would all be if they gave the unfolding disaster in Japan the attention it deserves. This is unmanageable, so they prefer fluffing the other kind of terror, which can be turned up or down like a thermostat.

Oh, You're Just Against Everything!

2013-08-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

Image snatched from Andy in Oman

Why dissent?

This may seem a silly question to many people (particularly to those of you who wander here,) but I am querying the psychological roots of contrariness. Additionally, there is a great deal of evidence that many - if not most - of us are content to "go along to get along" as long as some basic needs are met.

What is up with those of us who aren't willing to let the machine run the way it's running? It's easy to see how people who are suffering the consequences of an unjust social system might revolt against it, but what of those of us who would do just fine if we would simply sat down and shut up? Indeed, those of us who create negative experiences for ourselves by speaking out or acting against the status quo?

Certainly the hubris of Ego can be a part of the answer. That's what S. thought.

I do not pledge allegiance. Without going too deeply into the reasons for this, I'll just say that the thing you pledge allegiance to can shape-shift, and you can find yourself on the wrong side of things in a hurry. I prefer to keep my options open. As regards pledging allegiance "to the flag" - to me, a flag is a military banner, a brand on a tribe, provocative and divisive. If I'm to feel any reverence for "my" country, it will only be located in its Constitution. In any case, is it hubris that motivates a ten-year-old to refuse to place his hand on his heart and cite the pledge - all the while feeling his face flush with embarrassment for his impudence? It didn't feel like it.

I have a deep fondness for S. - though she is too young and too beautiful for this to be more than a musing - and I was taken aback one evening when she was on the other side of the bar with me and blurted, "I was really mad at you once."

The incident had taken place a couple of years earlier, on September 11th, a few years after the attacks. A patron had taken it upon herself to distribute votive candles to all of us, and had the lights turned off for a "moment of silence."

I am not to be tricked into groupthink or mob acquiescence, and I resent the hubris of self-appointed ministers of social propriety, so I blew my candle out. The absurdity of arbitrarily observing a moment of silence in the evening, so many hours after the actual anniversary of the event (how do you know I wasn't on my knees at 8:46 am or 9:03?)

"You had to make it about you," S. said. This made me a little sad, but I could not fault her for her interpretation. It can look like hubris. Maybe she was a little bit right.

But there is a strong downside to, and disincentive for, being "against" things. The main thing is that it flies in the face of our deep nature as social animals. To invite, in a vacuum, the disapprobation of the people around you is counter to our very strong bonding impulses.

Remember, I am not talking about a man railing against his chains - I'm talking about someone who is quite comfortable and happy in hologram America (h/t the late Joe Bageant). And I have always, as far back as I can remember, considered the ramifications of any cooperation I might give, and have done, as often as not, the contrary thing.

Gandhi's dictum - which lit up so many threads during #Occupy (and, in the hypercompression of cultural trending that the Internet enables, so quickly became trite and "passé"):

First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.

Well. Winning is not a certainty, but I can tell you that there is no escaping the marginalization, the mockery, and the persecution that comes with sustained and deeply held dissidence.

Why does an Edward Snowden walk away from his Hawaiian paradise, in a snit and a tizzy over a wrong? He was certainly in a position to innoculate himself from being personally harmed by the surveillance state. It would have been much easier - indeed, some would say saner - to "go along to get along." Clearly, many tens of thousands of contractor employees are doing just that. And he is indeed suffering the Gandhian gamut (he may not "win," by some standards, but he is certainly "winning" in his own eyes. The conversation he has forced our government to participate in must be deeply satisfying for him.)

I do not know why. Maybe some of us are deeply sensitive to those things that might make one toss and turn at night, make one sit straight up in bed at some dark hour and just feel that something is wrong, that one has said or done something wrong. That is no answer, that is a deeper regression into the mystery - why does a comfortable person even care about "wrong," as long as one is OK? What is this conscience thing anyway?

While one can hold one's tongue, for the most part, at a dinner party or social event to be cordial (and "sane"), one cannot do it for long, and for too many times in a row. One is very conscious and self-aware of the danger and hubris of thinking that the world is hanging on for one's every opinion and response to make sure that one gets it right, but that only temporarily quiets. Eventually, that thing in there, that conscience, tells one that it's time to forget the excuses, and to speak the truth.

I am not a believer in an anthropomorphized God, or any creator force that gives personal attention to the often pathetic antics of human beings (indeed, I have a problem with the concept of an inviolable "self" that would define a human being, but that's a whole different essay.) So I do not find an answer there (and it would still be a regression of the question, just one that conveniently obviates further query.)

Perhaps it is a function of having an awareness of long-term vs. short-term gratification. Short-term would be to seek and have the approval of the people right here, right now - long term would be... increasing the pool of happy people and that would more effectively ensure one's happiness?

I do not know, but that seems close. I suppose it is enough to be grateful that some will take the slings and arrows that come with saying "No!"

Learned Helplessness / Learned Despair

2013-07-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

Despair - Edvard Munch

(A quick note: While doing my standard cursory "research" to make sure I have my terms right, I ran across the Wikipedia entry on Learned helplessness and was reminded once again of the despicable nature of Behavioral Psychology research. What Seligman and Maier did to those poor creatures, in order to gain insight on what a simple fucking thought experiment will accomplish, disgusts me.)

"Learned helplessness," as applied to the state of political apathy here in the United States, is a meme I've been running across with increasing frequency here in cyberspace. The idea is that we - those of us who are not in that special class of uber-wealth - have become so disconnected from the mechanisms of power, so disenfranchised from the influence of our representative democracy, that we shrink from contemplation of, let alone action against, the insults heaped upon us by "the system," much as like Seligman and Maier's battered dogs.

I like "learned despair" but, to depart from the rigors of behavioral psychology, "helplessness" is instructive in the political context. We are well-indoctrinated in individualism in this country. While it serves the capitalist model to have us adhere to a up-by-the-bootstraps, personal productivity ethic, it also serves those exploiting that model to atomize us into little islands who are out for ourselves. Money is needed in order to safely navigate this societal model we have trapped ourselves within. In such a milieu, it is much more difficult for people to come together - to help each other - in pursuits outside of the imperative of securing a reliable income.

We have lost the ability to be for each other outside of the pursuit of a particular agenda. This is an artifact of our training to pursue the primary agenda of securing ourselves. And agendas, no matter how "kumbaya" they may be, chafe against each other - witness the devolution of liberalism into special-interest conflicts. Each of the "special" interests are admirable and seductive, but the end result has been a cacophony of competition for limited political resources. We are not for each other as a prime directive, even as many of these interests purport to move us towards communal concern.

The problem is not the interests - it's the fact that they are pursued without the necessary eye on the true prize. We atomize our concerns without realizing that they are empty if the primary concern - that of enabling a sense of "helpness," of the reliability of my neighbor. We glance suspiciously sideways, afraid that perhaps "Save the Whales" might get more funding than breast cancer research.

This is an extraordinary benefit to the hierarchical capitalist model. It keeps us in competition even as we yearn to come together. Learned helplessness and despair is the only possible result of such an irony.

---

I wanted to write about this because in contemplating the Snowden & NSA affair, I found myself in stunningly conflicting emotional states in back-to-back mornings on my morning bus commute.

One morning, I had on my shit-colored glasses and was weary with depression over the encroaching surveillance state, and its attendant cynicism. Also, I thought of Edward Snowden holed up in his no-man's-land at the Russian airport, and the clouds loneliness and conflict that most certainly move across his inner landscape in spite of his stoic and heroic protestations. He is a human being just like you and me, and as such enjoys the love of acceptance - and suffers any rejection as any sane primate must do. Why, oh why, must there be such "heroes?"

The next morning, I was feeling a buoyancy while contemplating the very same thing. Chris Hedges often speaks of the expression of humanity being preserved in acts of goodness, however futile they may be. In the acceptance of defeat and failure, and to insist nonetheless on right action, to refuse to acquiesce to the system even if it means a crippled life, actually shines a light on what it is to be truly human.

This candle will never blow out.

Immoral Embrace: The Sickness Is Deep

2013-07-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

Image liftted from Patriot Acts

I am personally offended by some comments made by a Portland "newcomer," as quoted in Jon Talton's Sunday column in the Seattle Times, Check of Portland’s vitals shows signs of life. On Portland, Taz Loomans says:

...this place seems to lack a work ethic. There are too many loafers here unfortunately, too many people satisfied with doing service jobs and enjoying the time off, without developing themselves into something more.

and

...the key is to attract weird people who are motivated and ambitious and want to contribute to society and the economy, not weird people who are satisfied living on the edge of homelessness.

Well.

What sort of bigotry is this? Considering, first of all, that low-wage service jobs are primarily what are being offered to wage-slave Americans, that this class of worker is on the ascent, this is a remarkable observation to so glibly make. Are we now to pile on and further humiliate the working public? But let's leave that aside for the moment.

"Contribute to society and the economy" - these words have long been code for "not rely on the public welfare." It seems that it now considered polite conversation to extend this to those who, while providing for themselves, do not wish to pursue wealth ("develop themselves into something more.")

To go back to the diminished offerings to today's workers, I'd like to point out that there are very good, moral, reasons why one might voluntarily elect to accept a minimal wage. (I was going to add "and perform minimal work," but I remind myself that when I was making close to a 6-figure income I worked far less strenuously than I do now cooking for $8 dollars an hour. Indeed, it was not work at all.) Let's have a look.

Perhaps one has a natural avocation that is not so easily rewarded in our capitalist system and cannot be bothered to squander precious time and energy pursuing a more respected "career." (Of course, freelance writer Ms. Loomans surely understands this, so I'll assume that this would satisfy her ideas of "developing... into something more.")

Perhaps one is disillusioned with that hamster-wheel we call the "pursuit of success." There are very good reasons why one might come to the conclusion that there is really no enhancement of personal happiness at each incremental plateau of achievement. Because there isn't.

Perhaps one has awakened to the suffering of those at the bottom of the economic pyramid who serve as the foundation and the necessary support of those at the top, and do not want to participate any longer in this subjugation. At least not as a beneficiary of the system.

Perhaps - and this relates to the last two points - perhaps one realizes that more income means more consumption, and one wishes to resign from the activity that makes one the bane of the Earth that the average, middle-class American has become.

I do not mean to pick on Ms. Loomans - she is expressing something that is on the tips of the tongues of nearly all of us who have been educated in this abysmal social system that we find ourselves trapped in at this time in history. We acquiesce largely because we feel that if we work hard enough, if we "develop ourselves into something more," then we will rise above mere wage-slavery and become someone who contributes "to society and the economy."

We rarely ask ourselves what else we will become, once we have the whip placed firmly in our hand.

So You Wanna Work For The CIA / JFK Assassination 50th Anniversary / Signed Book Giveaway

2013-07-07T14:01:00.000-07:00

A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination
by H.P. Albarelli, Jr.

[Update 08/07: All 15 books have found happy owners. Offer closed for now.]

This November 22nd will mark 50 years since President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination. I was less than two months shy of my seventh birthday...

One of the most fascinating narratives in A Secret Order, for me, was the story of the "femme fatale enigma," June Cobb. An attractive woman with clearly a great gusto for life, she sets off for Colombia with a pair of wanna-be druglord twins and winds up working for the CIA. Or so she figures, since apparently they don't always tell you who you're working for.

Aside from her international adventures themselves, what's even more fascinating is the information Mr. Albarelli has uncovered on the intelligence community's view of asset Cobb. Her recruitment, her grooming, and the musings on her usefulness in different settings are all very enlightening, and certainly show that the seemingly romanticized fictionalizations of the CIA are really not that far out there.

---

We are giving away books here!

I was honored to have been invited to pen the Foreword to this work, and in return I get to give away some autographed copies. Just email me at "getafreebook3@gmail.com" with your mailing address, and I will send one your way.

Hank was also kind enough to provide me with a list of books that he would recommend for further reading. True to his nature, it's a sweeping list, designed to provide plenty of material to help in forming one's own opinion (I've not read all of these, so I have to get cracking myself.) The list, with comments:

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott [University of California Press, 1993]. - An excellent starting point for critical background information.

Deep Politics II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico, and Cuba by Peter Dale Scott [The Mary Ferrell Foundation, 2007]

Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics: Revelations from CIA Records on the Assassination of JFK by Peter Dale Scott [Skyhorse Publishing, 2013]

The Man Who Knew Too Much: Hired to Kill Oswald and Prevent the Assassination of JFK by Dick Russell [Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, Revised Edition, 1992]. - For me, in countless ways, a partial Rosetta Stone for the assassination, even apart from the material on Richard Case Nagell.

Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK by John M. Newman. [Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., New York, 2008 edition with epilogue.] - A near masterpiece on Lee Harvey Oswald's possible ties to the CIA and his days in Mexico City.

Bloody Treason: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by Noel H. Twyman [Laurel Publishing, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., 1997]. - Overlooked classic.

Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs [Carroll & Graf, 1989] - An early but excellent examination of the assassination.

Inside The Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination Of JFK, Volumes I, II, III, IV, and V by Douglas P. Horne [self, 2009]

Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace by Peter Janney [Skyhorse Publishing, 2012]

Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother by Robert L. Oswald and collaborators Myrick Land, Barbara Land [Coward-McCann, 1967]

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters James W. Douglass [Touchstone, 2010]
...and for more relevant material on the shadowy side of our government:
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy [The Ecco Press, New York, 1985] - This novel, which does not deal with the assassination, contains the key to unlocking all the high strangeness about the assassination and much more.

Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley [University Press of Kansas, 2008]

The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America's War on Drugs by Douglas Valentine [Verso, 2006]

The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA by Douglas Valentine [Trine Day, 2010]

OK. Let's get to work and figure this thing out! What do you say?

This Acid Trip Is An Extraordinary Rendition / JFK Assassination 50th Anniversary / Signed Book Giveaway

2013-07-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination
by H.P. Albarelli, Jr.

[Update 08/07: All 15 books have found happy owners. Offer closed for now.]

This November 22nd will mark 50 years since President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination. I was less than two months shy of my seventh birthday...

My anger often surprises me - my rage, on the other hand, always catches me off guard. I suppose that's true for most people who don't find anger - and its big green cousin, rage - particularly useful or helpful.

I remember last being blindsided with the emotion in the pub a few years back. I was with a couple of young ladies, good friends - always quick with the cheer - and they struck up an amiable conversation with a couple of guys who were new to this neighborhood bar. In return for the fine company , this pair of sociopathic morons roofied my friends' drinks. They miscalculated, as the girls began to pass out right there at the bar and they high-tailed it out of there just as we realized what had happened. I can think of few acts more despicable than that one, and it is fortunate for both them and myself that they ran off*.

Similarly, I find it difficult to appreciate the humor with which popular culture sometimes presents "dosing" of a different sort - like Tyler Durden (Fight Club) urinating in a soup to be served to hapless patrons. I once got quite angry with a bartender who adulterated one of my cigarettes with an exploding load while I was in the restroom. OK, maybe I can be a bit anal (it was just a friendly joke,) but service people have a sacred trust, dammit...

Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent George Hunter White, OSS-trained and most certainly an asset for the CIA, was one of these sociopaths who, with great irony (Bureau of Narcotics?,) found it easy to slip LSD and other experimental drugs to unsuspecting people. I was first introduced to this character in Albarelli's expose on the murder of a CIA scientist (A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments.)

Nobody was safe around this guy, apparently. He did his evil Johnny Appleseed gig in all "sets and settings," as the psychiatrists like to say, to all kinds of people - from subway commuters to party guests to prostitutes. Ostensibly, he was "studying" the effects of these substances in the variety of the aforementioned sets and settings, at least this was his mandate (or cover.) One cannot help but suspect that this required a certain taste for sadism, however, so one would be forgiven if one suspected that a bit of off-the-reservation "free-lancing" was tolerated. You can't blame The Director for every little thing, after all.

We meet this reprobate once again in A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination, where Hank sketches in more of this character's strangeness. I say strangeness because it was not without a great deal of dark humor that I read of his visceral disgust with the corruption of the Houston Police as regards narcotics. He seemed to be honestly offended - this man who thought nothing of sending a couple of his friends to the hospital after bidding them off on an acid trip that, without prior knowledge or consent, amounted to a psychic Extraordinary Rendition.

---

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott [University of California Press, 1993]. - An excellent starting point for critical background information.

Deep Politics II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico, and Cuba by Peter Dale Scott [The Mary Ferrell Foundation, 2007]

Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics: Revelations from CIA Records on the Assassination of JFK by Peter Dale Scott [Skyhorse Publishing, 2013]

The Man Who Knew Too Much: Hired to Kill Oswald and Prevent the Assassination of JFK by Dick Russell [Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, Revised Edition, 1992]. - For me, in countless ways, a partial Rosetta Stone for the assassination, even apart from the material on Richard Case Nagell.

Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK by John M. Newman. [Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., New York, 2008 edition with epilogue.] - A near masterpiece on Lee Harvey Oswald's possible ties to the CIA and his days in Mexico City.

Bloody Treason: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by Noel H. Twyman [Laurel Publishing, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., 1997]. - Overlooked classic.

Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs [Carroll & Graf, 1989] - An early but excellent examination of the assassination.

Inside The Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination Of JFK, Volumes I, II, III, IV, and V by Douglas P. Horne [self, 2009]

Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace by Peter Janney [Skyhorse Publishing, 2012]

Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother by Robert L. Oswald and collaborators Myrick Land, Barbara Land [Coward-McCann, 1967]

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters James W. Douglass [Touchstone, 2010]
...and for more relevant material on the shadowy side of our government:
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy [The Ecco Press, New York, 1985] - This novel, which does not deal with the assassination, contains the key to unlocking all the high strangeness about the assassination and much more.

Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley [University Press of Kansas, 2008]

The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America's War on Drugs by Douglas Valentine [Verso, 2006]

The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA by Douglas Valentine [Trine Day, 2010]

OK. Let's get to work and figure this thing out! What do you say?

---

*As it happens, these two showed up again some weeks later. They didn't make it through one drink, however, before one of the victims spotted them and howled a pointed "j'accuse!" We saw their backs before the bartender could pick up the phone...

Fourth Of July Post - Look Behind The Logo

2013-07-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Milt Priggee, Cagle Cartoons

Aww - it's our "birthday," again.

I'm going to do my bit and meditate on the idea that is "The United States of America," and some on identity and ritual and coercion, collusion and self-delusion. Yes, you should go elsewhere for parades and fireworks...

Disgraced politician (but I repeat myself) John Edwards made famous the idea of there being "two Americas," Bobby Kennedy (taken down before he had the opportunity to disgrace himself) limned a similar meme when he dared to be photographed with poor folk in his brutally truncated Presidential run. We have the "1%," the "99%" - the social Darwinish "rugged individual" Americans, the barn-raising Socialisty communitarian Americans, post-Enlightenment secular humanism America, hell-and-brimfire God-bothering America, public library, transportation, and education America, and home-schooling get-off-of-my-lawn America.

I could go on, of course. There are many Americas, millions at the least, perhaps a different one all the way down to each individual who utters, "America." This was never a consensual reality, this experiment was never preceded by an adequate hypothesis - one might hold up "inalienable rights," but we never seem to be settled on the quality, universality, or even the robustness of these "rights." Life (the death penalty,) Liberty (our disgracefully populated prison system,) and the Pursuit of Happiness (we have never properly educated our youth on what "happiness" even means, and our culture is most ubiquitously settled on acquisition, consumerism, and careerism for its officially sanctioned expression.)

I have my own "America," of course. Contested as it is, I'll try to resist the folly to claim that it's the definitive one, but of course that is my feeling. One of the problems with my vision is that I have always felt that the founding charters and realpolitik that defined its birth were wanting, and hence I am forced to hold on to a progressive, or evolving, view of this country if I am to have any love at all for her. This is certainly true for pretty much everyone, I'm guessing - but since the expression or direction of this "progress" is hardly agreed upon, it's a pretty weak board upon which to pin unity.

For purposes of context and disclosure, I'll share my view. I see the American Experiment as a work in progress, as an historic effort to organize ourselves around "good" principles. We know what they are in general, but we are not so certain as to how they are. We've branded, in that 20th Century American way, our inalienable rights, and in our lazy habituation we follow the logos without nurturing the principles behind them, nor do we give attention to what is required in order for them to become more than a Nike "swoosh" run up the flagpole.

For one thing, transparency is essential. There is nothing American about nobility or elitism of any kind, yet our country is shot through with it. It is a peculiarity of our institution of democracy, adulterated as it is with vulgar patriotism, that we actively cheer on this elitism. A country that should be in high dudgeon over the recent Snowden revelations* instead is participating with self-proclaimed "insiders" in the debate over "how much" information the great unwashed should be allowed to have, how much it can "handle," and "who" has the right to tell us this. That is all bullshit and very un-American - in my sense of "America," of course.

There is a brutish, violent, elitist and imperialistic vein that shoots through this country, and it has been trying to own "brand America" at least since the Civil War. And it's doing a good job of it, as well. This is predictable - when you are trying to own a brand, you flog it, so those lapel-pin flags tend to mean what you want them to mean. It's hard to fight that - a true patriot knows that the first step in losing transparency is to get everyone to stare at a symbol, so he or she tends to eschew pomp and circumstance (just typing "true patriot" grates on my nerves, so quickly does patriotism turn to vulgarity.) "True patriot" Hunter S. Thompson was haunted by this venal streak within America, for him finding corporeality in Richard M. Nixon and, somewhat ironically, the conspicuous consumption of elites.

This is another thing that we have accomplished in brand America - that bizarre what's-the-matter-with-Kansas habit we have of celebrating a system that is robbing us in broad daylight. Because brand America has built into it the American Dream that we're all Marlo Thomas - we're going to make it after all - then it is in our own best "interest" to protect wealth and the wealthy. "There but for the grace of God go I," we have upended the proverb and trope instead towards the privileged.

All of this matters on its own terms. There is real suffering that occurs because of our mindless participation in these things, and real people would be made literally happier (one of our charters, right?) if they were rectified. Yes, there are some - the rumor is about 1% of us - who would suffer some privation... of wealth, however, not "happiness." Try and sell that, though. But there is a larger, historical context in which this matters a great deal more.

While we may have put the cart before the horse in declaring our Exceptionalism and our Number Oneness before we nailed down exactly who we actually are, we have - fortunately and unfortunately - done a bang-up job in selling pretty much the entire planet on it. If we were quietly misadventuring our way through our little experiment it might be a little different, but we've become Leviathan, and everybody is watching. Sure, the experiment could break out and begin anew (and even better because it might do something about accursed property rights and the legal standing of Nature,) but even this might be tainted by our poor example. We could, seriously, be a serious drag on History itself. This is not my America.

Because we have become a poor example, and we are experiencing the humiliation that goes along with the globe awakening to this fact. I'm not going to litanize our misdeeds here, but one cannot escape the fact that we are finally beginning to reap disrespect in a serious way. We deserve it, and I hope we can at least keep our eye on that ball, because if we have a temper tantrum over this deserved disrespect then I will have nothing "America" at all to hold on to. Not that I've got a firm grip now.

So, yea, Happy Birthday America and ho-hum yes by all means celebrate it with vulgar patriotic zeal or with this sort of offensive post-Modern smug irony, but I find more comfort in hoping that at least some of you are peeking behind the logo, and looking this country in the face. Love her.

---

*Yes, yes - of course most of us "sophisticated" folk knew what the NSA was up to, but I have no tolerance for using this as an argument to be sanguine about it. Save your smug superiority for the mirror.

Jason Bourne With A Carcano Rifle / JFK Assassination 50th Anniversary / Signed Book Giveaway

2013-06-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination
by H.P. Albarelli, Jr.

[Update 08/07: All 15 books have found happy owners. Offer closed for now.]

This November 22nd will mark 50 years since President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination. I was less than two months shy of my seventh birthday...

The highly entertaining Bourne novels and movies tell the tale of an intelligence asset who begins, in disconnected fragments, to recall committing a dark deed, or deeds, on behalf of interests other than his own. This begins a spell of self-loathing that animates the riveting drama of a man who simply will not be left alone, and who turns the black arts that have been soaked into his very DNA against his tormenters.

He "goes rogue."

Decades earlier, a similar story is spun in print and film - The Manchurian Candidate - using language appropriate to the zeitgeist of the Cold War ("commies!") Again, a hapless asset is compelled to murder.

Hollywood has had great fun with the themes of a shadow government, and from Major Marco to James Bond to Jason Bourne (and their epic villains,) we have been entertained by glimpses into the awesome secrecy of these agencies, cutting edge technology, and the preternatural skills of their operatives.

These movies not only entertain, but they also provided a great service - in their precious romanticizations and titillating exaggerations they place these stories into our collective mythology, and rather firmly into the realm of great fiction. No serious person would take The Man With the Golden Arm very seriously, or amnesiac killers triggered by code words and playing cards.

Yet - as ridiculous as the latter sounds, it is clear that our security forces did indeed dabble in such aspirations. Classified information unearthed by authors like H.P. Alberelli Jr., buttressed by interviews with privileged sources, has revealed in carefully researched books like A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments and A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination the extent to which resources were dedicated to pursuits that seem quite foolish and foolhardy to "normal" folk.

Particularly in the latter book - the one that we are giving away here - there is a great deal of "high strangeness" surrounding Oswald and the characters involved in research and operations involving drugs, hypnotism, torture and generally inhumane treatment of soldiers, agents and private citizens in our dark, unspoken history. Most of it, quite justly I would say, resulted more in embarrassment and accidental disaster than smoothly shaken, not stirred, operational coups.

And so it is with some light amusement - and sinister implication - that I ask the question... was the frightened and confused Lee Harvey Oswald one of the original Jason Bournes? You read, you decide.

---

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott [University of California Press, 1993]. - An excellent starting point for critical background information.

Deep Politics II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico, and Cuba by Peter Dale Scott [The Mary Ferrell Foundation, 2007]

Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics: Revelations from CIA Records on the Assassination of JFK by Peter Dale Scott [Skyhorse Publishing, 2013]

The Man Who Knew Too Much: Hired to Kill Oswald and Prevent the Assassination of JFK by Dick Russell [Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, Revised Edition, 1992]. - For me, in countless ways, a partial Rosetta Stone for the assassination, even apart from the material on Richard Case Nagell.

Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK by John M. Newman. [Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., New York, 2008 edition with epilogue.] - A near masterpiece on Lee Harvey Oswald's possible ties to the CIA and his days in Mexico City.

Bloody Treason: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by Noel H. Twyman [Laurel Publishing, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., 1997]. - Overlooked classic.

Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs [Carroll & Graf, 1989] - An early but excellent examination of the assassination.

Inside The Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination Of JFK, Volumes I, II, III, IV, and V by Douglas P. Horne [self, 2009]

Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace by Peter Janney [Skyhorse Publishing, 2012]

Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother by Robert L. Oswald and collaborators Myrick Land, Barbara Land [Coward-McCann, 1967]

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters James W. Douglass [Touchstone, 2010]
...and for more relevant material on the shadowy side of our government:
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy [The Ecco Press, New York, 1985] - This novel, which does not deal with the assassination, contains the key to unlocking all the high strangeness about the assassination and much more.

Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley [University Press of Kansas, 2008]

The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America's War on Drugs by Douglas Valentine [Verso, 2006]

The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA by Douglas Valentine [Trine Day, 2010]

OK. Let's get to work and figure this thing out! What do you say?

JFK Assassination 50th Anniversary / Signed Book Giveaway / Author's Recommendations

2013-06-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination
by H.P. Albarelli, Jr.

[Update 08/07: All 15 books have found happy owners. Offer closed for now.]

This November 22nd will mark 50 years since President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination. I was less than two months shy of my seventh birthday - nonetheless, that day is seared in my memory as it is in most peoples' who were alive on that day.

At my age, it was the trauma of the adults around me that marked it, of course. The tearful school principal announcing the event on the intercom - of a K-6 grade school. My Irish-Catholic mother's grief when I got home. The endless dirge of television coverage in the days following, including the oft-looped footage of Lee Harvey Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby, two days later.

A seven-year-old became a very serious person that day, and it irrevocably fixed his attention on the cornucopia of upheaval that characterized the current events in the years that followed.

It was a hugely visible event, and yet it remains, arguably, the most shrouded. What do we know about what really happened that day? Despite the "conclusions" of the Warren Commission, nearly 6 out of 10 Americans are of the mind that Oswald did not act alone - in other words, that there was a conspiracy to murder the President of The United States. This is my opinion, as well.

Yet, we still have no idea who these conspirators were, and what exactly the motives were for this crime. The Mafia, the CIA; communists, Castro sympathizers; right-wing business interests, anti-Castro forces; Vietnam warmongers, the Vice President - or more likely an unholy alliance of individuals from some or all of these interest groups, at varying degrees willfully, neglectfully, or accidentally involved. The parties involved (and their descendents,) were certainly very close to the centers of power in the most powerful country in the world, and this is a huge reason why it may never be successfully investigated or resolved.

We don't know... but we have some ideas.

H.P. Albarelli, Jr. has painstakingly gone through the available literature and recently declassified information, conducted first-hand interviews with members of the intelligence community, and in general pressed his journalistic skills on the question. His work, A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination, is a result of these efforts (a Volume Two is already in the works.) While dense and wonky in parts, it also offers intriguing and colorful vignettes of the often bizarre cast of characters in assassination lore. Speculation is scrupulously avoided, and fallacies eliminated, but there are a great deal of coincidences documented here, and it is left to the imagination and deductive reasoning of the readers to perhaps form their own opinions.

A brief overview of some of the material you will find:

The chimera that is Lee Harvey Oswald - From his childhood on up to the death of a president, and his own murder two days later, Oswald shapeshifts from background to fore, appearing in his own name and with known aliases, here and abroad, brushing strangely close to various suspicious actors associated with the intelligence community.
The white hat/black hat antics of the CIA's flamboyant LSD interrogator George Hunter White - a character one is grateful to have never met, but at the same time is filled with the most certain fear that there are versions of this White walking (and plotting) amidst us even today.
Rose Cherami - The woman who warned, "We're going to kill President Kennedy," struck twice by automobile, the second time left broken and dead in the road.
An attractive neuro-physiologist who almost certainly given hallucinogenic drugs over dinner and possibly hypnotized by a CIA-affiliated pathologist who pressed her to pass strange messages to Lee Harvey Oswald.
The rendition and enhanced interrogation of a CIA asset. Aside from the JFK connection, it is a disturbing peek into the business-as-usual objectification of a human being by the intelligence community.
The story of "femme fatale" June Cobb, which I found particularly intriguing (and paranoia-inducing) as it sheds a lot of light on what it might be like to be noticed and recruited by the CIA. As in, you probably wouldn't even know it as it happened, and may never be quite sure if it ever did.

...and much, much more, as they say.

I was honored to have been invited to pen the Foreword to this work, and in return I get to give away some autographed copies. Just email me at "getafreebook3@gmail.com" with your mailing address, and I will send one your way.

Hank was also kind enough to provide me with a list of books that he would recommend for further reading. True to his nature, it's a sweeping list, designed to provide plenty of material to help in forming one's own opinion (I've not read all of these, so I have to get cracking myself.) The list, with comments:

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott [University of California Press, 1993]. - An excellent starting point for critical background information.

Deep Politics II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico, and Cuba by Peter Dale Scott [The Mary Ferrell Foundation, 2007]

Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics: Revelations from CIA Records on the Assassination of JFK by Peter Dale Scott [Skyhorse Publishing, 2013]

The Man Who Knew Too Much: Hired to Kill Oswald and Prevent the Assassination of JFK by Dick Russell [Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, Revised Edition, 1992]. - For me, in countless ways, a partial Rosetta Stone for the assassination, even apart from the material on Richard Case Nagell.

Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK by John M. Newman. [Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., New York, 2008 edition with epilogue.] - A near masterpiece on Lee Harvey Oswald's possible ties to the CIA and his days in Mexico City.

Bloody Treason: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by Noel H. Twyman [Laurel Publishing, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., 1997]. - Overlooked classic.

Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs [Carroll & Graf, 1989] - An early but excellent examination of the assassination.

Inside The Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination Of JFK, Volumes I, II, III, IV, and V by Douglas P. Horne [self, 2009]

Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace by Peter Janney [Skyhorse Publishing, 2012]

Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother by Robert L. Oswald and collaborators Myrick Land, Barbara Land [Coward-McCann, 1967]

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters James W. Douglass [Touchstone, 2010]
...and for more relevant material on the shadowy side of our government:
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy [The Ecco Press, New York, 1985] - This novel, which does not deal with the assassination, contains the key to unlocking all the high strangeness about the assassination and much more.

Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley [University Press of Kansas, 2008]

The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America's War on Drugs by Douglas Valentine [Verso, 2006]

The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA by Douglas Valentine [Trine Day, 2010]

OK. Let's get to work and figure this thing out! What do you say?

Hunger In America: What You Really Think

2013-06-04T18:27:00.000-07:00

Image from Feed our Vets

In the May 30th broadcast of Democracy Now!, Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman interview Smita Narula of the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU’s School of Law, co-author of "Nourishing Change: Fulfilling the Right to Food in the United States" (pdf). The interview begins at the end of that day's broadcast, at around the 47:00 minute mark.

Amy introduces a clip of Congressional Republican Steve King:

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers in both chambers are moving to drastically cut the nation’s Food Stamp Program through the farm bill. In the Democratic-controlled Senate, the Agriculture Committee has approved proposal by Republican Senator David Vitter to drop permanently anyone convicted of a violent crime from ever getting food stamps. Meanwhile, the House Agriculture Committee has approved $20 billion in cuts to the Food Stamps Program over the next decade. The cuts could result in nearly two million people losing access to food stamps and 200,000 schoolchildren losing free school lunches. One of the most vocal supporters for cutting the budget for food stamps has been Republican Congressmember Steve King of Iowa. He recently claimed President Obama is trying to expand what he called "the dependency class."
REP. STEVE KING: We want to take care of the people that are needy or the people that are hungry, and we’ve watched this program grow from a number that I think I first memorized when I arrived here in Congress at about 19 million people, now about 49 million people. And it appears to me that the goal of this administration is to expand the rolls of people that are on SNAP benefits. And their purpose for doing so, in part, is because of what the gentleman has said from Massachusetts. Another purpose for that, though, is just to simply expand the dependency class.

Intro: "The Dependency Class"

That a sitting politician can utter such a dehumanizing (and ultimately Orwellian, as we shall see) phrase is an indictment of the sickness in our society.

If you are a Democrat, or a progressive/liberal, and are inclined to nod in agreement, let me stop you for a moment. Because the response from the all-American opposition is to say, "no, we are not expanding the dependency class, we are providing a temporary bridge." A bridge to... not being dependant, I presume?

Most people would agree that knowingly allowing people to starve to death is barbaric. A significangly smaller pool of people would agree that using hunger as a motivational whip to induce "productive behavior" (read: get a job) is also barbaric.

Or would they?

The All-American Inalienable Rights

Let's step back for a moment, because the right to eat has never been explicitly mentioned in our founding charter, nor is it among the "inalienable rights" articulated by our in-your-face manifesto to King George. Although it does say only that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are among those rights, it rather leaves it to the imagination as to what the others might be. One might wonder how rights could be enjoyed without the right to food, but...

...And when one looks at the actual Constitution and its Bill of Rights, it is clear that the right to "life" is really not clearly codified. There are all kinds of qualifications around liberty and the rather vague "pursuit of happiness" as well, really.

Such legalistic caveats aside - I think that it's fair to say that it is ingrained in the patriotic character to hold a few "American" values as sacrosanct. Let's leave aside the right to a good breakfast - since that's not usually associated with the American ethic, anyway - but ponder instead for a moment our feelings about, say, the freedom of speech. For some, the rights codified in the Second Amendment might be an even "grippier" thought experiment - and go ahead with that if that is your predilection - but I am shooting for the wider audience here.

For All Americans?

I know what you really think.

You think that Americans have to deserve their rights. In that, there's nothing inalienable about them at all. You have to be a certain kind of "American."

You either have to have money, or you have to have an income.

The tapestry that is America today is so woven from the threads of this ethic that you are right now thinking, "No shit."

If you are too lazy to have a job (or too unlucky to have been born into wealth, or to have "scored" with an exploitable talent or patent), then you are not entitled to your rights as an American.

If you are willing to let someone's stomach grumble in order to "motivate" her to do something for someone else so that they can get paid in order to eat, then I know that you are willing to suppress the free speech of that person if they are not "pulling their weight." Because eating is a more immediate life-imperative than is speech. (If you deny this, and remain so patriotic as to assert that you would protect a person's speech even as you let him starve, then you are a disingenuous ass.)

And, if you are willing to let someone's stomach grumble in order to "motivate" him to do something for someone else so that they can get paid in order to eat, then you are willing to let that person starve.

Because some people don't like joining the "dependency class," and that brings us to...

Outro: The Orwellian "Dependency Class"

Representative King's lament about the expansion of the "dependency class" is a laughable lie. What King and, quite frankly, the average American fears is not dependent people at all, but independent people.

A person whose basic needs are provided for is a free person, a truly independent person. A person who can decide upon how and when she spends her days, whether it be in a traditionally "productive" manner, in creative pursuit, or in idle contemplation. A person who does not have to submit to the will of an employer in order to purchase the right to eat, to simply remain alive.

A person could decide that he has no interest in material goods beyond his basic needs, perhaps to briefly take on some work if there is something specific he might desire.

This is what you fear. There is something unsavory about it. Admit it. People being given the permission to be idle, if they so choose. You do not like this.

In America, "the land of the free" is an empty platitude. "Freedom" is not an American value at all.

It is better - it is much better - to let people go hungry.

Necessary Distinctions II: Being Better Vs. Being Good

2013-05-30T17:14:00.000-07:00

You're doing it wrong (Running Towards The Goal - Erland Sibuea)

Don't let the pure be the enemy of the good.
- Any asshole with an agenda

You can only be a better (or worse) person in relation to something else.

Being good, however, is only on its own terms. Indeed, a "good" person is often considered to be quite "bad" to his/her contemporaries.

Goodness, or Truth, has no relationship with anything. It stands alone, timeless and enduring, unmoved and unafflicted by the considerations of the day.

Since existence itself involves being trapped within the amber of time, even very smart people who have resolved this question can forget the distinction between "better" and "good" from time to time.

The undeniably brilliant Ian Welsh stepped into it a bit this week with The Moral Calculus of the Woolwich Murder:

So, a man killed a soldier in Woolwich London by hacking his head off.

That’s bad.

But on the scale of bad, immoral things, it ranks very low.

The murderer took the time to kill someone in the military. He did not target civilians.

This makes him superior, morally, to the Boston bombers...

Now I understand what Ian was getting at here, and within the context of that understanding, I am somewhat in agreement with him. Lest a larger point about morality be lost however, I responded:

Placing my objection on record.

I respect that you make a legitimate point overall, Ian, and I’ll concede (some) that it needs to be made.

But I’ll not concede that morality is on such a sliding scale, because that is a slippery slope, indeed (yes, I generally dislike slippery-slope arguments.) Murder wrong. The stridency of using “superior” in this context cries out for my objection...

I hope it's not necessary to point out that these are truncated excerpts of the beginning of a conversation, and Ian's post at least deserves more attention. I am pleased that a conversation was provoked and, aside from a few with hopelessly entrenched opinions and prejudices, some value was achieved. I have, for the most part, bowed out of the conversation and decided to explore the fundamental problem over here at my place.

Especially since I don't think that Ian Welsh was attempting to discuss absolute morality in the first place - that's really my itch (though I am always concerned with, and often detect, the confusion between the relative and the absolute.)

That said - certainly the subject touched a nerve, as Ian was moved to post in uncharacteristically rapid succession some posts that are, in my personal assessment, rather defensive. Wonderful, and they all deserve a look, along with the threads of each:

Ethical Degradation - May 28
Ethics 101, Part 3: Forseeable Consequences - May 28
Ethics 101: The difference between ethics and morals - May 30

Wanting To Be A Better Person

"Wanting to be a better person" sounds pretty good. The desire to be a good person is often expressed in such a way. The construct, however, of making an achievement out of being a good person has ramifications that need serious attention.

Being a good person, and becoming a good person, are two entirely different things. Different enough that it can be said that one has no actual relationship with the other. This can be difficult to grasp, and it is not just a matter of syntax and semantics - understanding the difference goes to the very heart of what it means to be "good."

If one is interested in such things. For many of us, "becoming better" is a vocation that will fill the entirety of our life. I can increase my intelligence, my strength, my fitness, my relationship with my neighbors, my family. I can become more productive, I can be a help to my community rather than a burden, I can reduce my impact on the environment, I can build a better mousetrap. These are all fine and admirable pursuits, on a sliding scale of more-or-less, depending on who the observer is and what that observer's agenda may be, but they have absolutely nothing to do with being a good person.

A Good Person...?

What is a "good person?" Ah, there's a rub. One of the problems with a question like that is the minute you work up a definition, then you have at the same time defined a yardstick against which "goodness" can be measured. And yardsticks change according to the verities of time and fashion. We are trying to avoid such vulgarity when we speak of a "good person."

At this point, we must either conclude with the cynical and nihilistic opinion that all is relative and exit the conversation, or concede that there is indeed a mysterious and unmeasurable aspect to morality (as you may have noticed, nothing particularly original is being said here) that is not well-served by an evolutionary approach to it.

In that, one cannot move from somewhat good, to better, and to better, and to good.

In that, a man who bloodies himself upon the body of a soldier has not incrementally achieved a closer proximity to the hem of God* than if he had taken his grievance out upon an "innocent civilian."

True goodness is - full stop! - only in one place, in an immovable center that permeates any peripheries that the imagination creates in evoking a "center" at all.

It is not subject to the vagaries of circumstance or of time, though it will be treated differently depending on those vagaries. One may be lauded or one may be crucified depending on those vagaries, but there is no judgment that can be placed upon it.

Some things are "better" than others, but such things should not be confused with being "good." And while I do not mean to reflexively disparage the effort to be better, to make a better world, I would be remiss if I did not point out that a life dedicated solely to such concerns is a life wasted.

Oh, yes... what is a good person? There is no "good person." There is only Good. One either defers to that fact, or one doesn't.

---

*God is, of course, always a metaphor.

Necessary Distinctions I: Self-Knowledge Vs. Self-Reflection

2013-05-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

Perhaps its because I am of a generation that was raised on the romance of science! that I have such a violent reaction to the techno-fantasists of today. No, not perhaps... of course, that is it.

I cannot express the amount of loathing that rolled through my being as I watched this Lifeblogging documentary.

May I also note the sweet irony that it is those who gaze into the mirror of narcissism who are the least able to see themselves. The lack of self-awareness of these people in their own pettiness staggers me.

Knowing oneself in the moment, and immersing oneself in one's past manifestations are two entirely different things, for God's sake*. While I appreciate the walk down memory lane as much as the next person (indeed, as I grow older, I drift more and more into nostalgia and recall of days gone by), I am not foolish enough to think that there is any lesson to be learned by doing so - certainly not any opportunity for self-actualization!

Which is the opposite impression that one gets from watching the bright and bright-eyed, excited technocratic "pioneers" in the video. They really seem to think that they are on to something exciting. They don't have the self-awareness to see that they are taking narcissism to a whole new level - and that is being generous - disappearing up the rabbit-hole of their own assholes in a Borg-ian fantasy that debases the whole idea of being human.

Lest you think I am over-reacting to this:

You're giving people a chance to do create meaning for themselves, and that is hugely empowering. Like, you know, that's world changing.

No, no you're not.

One maniac - and I use that word in the medical sense, because this video is thematically maniacal - invites us to imagine what it might be like to be able to recall any moment of our lives.

Uh... why don't you just ask Marilu Henner? I suppose she's attained the singularity.

The morbid and vulgar reduction of a human life to data is shamelessly portrayed in one segment that should be particularly more poignant than it is. You'll know it when you see it.

Oh, and the founder of one of these ventures characterizes the first and second oldest questions in history: "Why am I here?" and "How am I doing?" I've got some news for this philosopher: "I" is a construct of thought, so without doing any research I can say that a few things surely passed through the mind before those concerns about the self were conceived.

Good God*.

---

*God is, of course, always a metaphor.

Comin' Atcha, Sheriff Joe

2013-05-25T17:02:00.000-07:00

Pink pants for the Sheriff's inmates

[Update 2013/05/25: In light of the recent ruling (Judge rules against 'America's toughest sheriff' in racial profiling lawsuit,) I thought I'd percolate this post from four years ago (February 13, 2009) up to the top. Incidentally, while he is "toughest" on those placed under his care, there is nothing tough about this cowardly bully.]

[Update 2011/09/21: Some questions and elaborations on my Tent City experience at Rogue Columnist's place.]

Looks like the House Judiciary Committee is going to have a look-see at the goings on here in Arizona:

Sheriff Arpaio has repeatedly demonstrated disregard for the rights of Hispanics in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Under the guise of immigration enforcement, his staff has conducted raids in residential neighborhoods in a manner condemned by the community as racial profiling. On February 4, 2009, Arpaio invited the media to view the transfer of immigrant detainees to a segregated area of his "tent city" jail, subjecting the detainees to public display and "ritual humiliation." Persistent actions such as these have resulted in numerous lawsuits; while Arpaio spends time and energy on publicity and his reality television show, "Smile… You’re Under Arrest!", Maricopa County has paid millions of dollars in settlements involving dead or injured inmates.

I am not proud to say that I am an alumnus of his "Tent City," but I do have a certain amount of pride in this piece which was published a month after I was discharged (on the front page of the Sunday "Opinions" section):

Sunday, January 1, 1995

'Tent City': Third World ambience in Arizona
By Michael J. Petro
Special for The Arizona Republic

On Nov. 28th, I completed a 30-day, mandatory minimum sentence for a DUI conviction at Joe Arpaio's "In Tents Unit" at Estrella Jail. I was permitted work release five days a week, which means that I was allowed to leave at 7 a.m. and return at 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, but had to remain inside over the weekends.

Being under no outside supervision, I was able to go home in the mornings to shower and breakfast before work and to return for dinner before going back in. Most of the working "Tent City" inmates are in work-furlough programs, however, which impose outside supervision by probation officers. These folks are permitted to travel only to and from work and jail, with lunch allowed "in the vicinity"; they can be "busted" from furlough privileges for stopping at a convenience store for a Coke on the way, for example.

The majority of inmates are non-working, full-time residents for the duration of their sentences.

For those who are curious, here's what it's really like in Tent City.

After turning myself in, "checking in" consisted of hours of sitting in crowded holding cells with others as shaken as myself. These periods, aided by the ambience provided by the odor of institutional disinfectant, were interrupted by the occasional fingerprinting, photographing, searches, verbal sexual abuse by some institutionalized or otherwise stir-crazy female inmates in a nearby crowded cell - this last having an eerily inexplicable innocence about it - and general manhandling by detention officers who wore their weary, disdainful cynicism in a manner made all the more humiliating by its inevitability.

This was happily concluded by a charming march to the dorm, charged by an officer, who admonished that "if I see anyone's head turn to the right or to the left, then he will be pepper-gassed or stun-gunned, depending on which falls into my hands first."

Sitting in the dorm, where the inmates eat, shower and shave, I looked around at my new compatriots, afraid.

A couple of hours later, we were assigned to tents scattered throughout the yard.

I've never served a sentence before, and I was relieved to go to a tent outdoors after all of those hours in cells.

"I can do this," I thought.

There were fences around me, but the sky is still infinite. That's about where the charm ends.

The tents are old, single-ply, canvas army surplus, most with holes in the sides and tops. Inmates stuff sheets and blankets into the holes against the cold November desert breezes. Side zippers are broken, doors are torn.

Because of age, faulty manufacture, and amateurish tent-raising, most don't reach the ground on the sides. Aside from the orderly arrangements of the slabs of concrete on which they are constructed, they are reminiscent of slums I've seen in Bombay with their multicolored rags stuffed against the weather. In mid-November, when airport lows were reported at freezing, early-morning temperatures were at least 5 degrees lower.

Ridiculous inadequacy

"Heat" is provided by one portable indoor space heater per tent, ankle-high and approximately 3 feet long. They must be seen and experienced to appreciate their ridiculous inadequacy.

Most, if not all, of the inmates are sick with a flulike malady we called "the Estrella crud." I am one of those fortunates who rarely get sick, but during the aforementioned weekend, I shivered with fever all of one Saturday, with another concerned inmate bringing me chicken soup and hot chocolate from a vending machine in the dorm - which, incidentally, is a breach of rules: No food or drink in the yard. Within a few years of operation, Estrella's pebble-and-sand yard should be effectively paved with the congealing expectorations from hacking residents.

The conditions of the "Porta-Johns" is repelling. I went into the dorm to urinate but decided to return to the portable toilets after looking at the conditions of the inside. I watched urine/fluid trickle from the overflowing seat of the plastic urinal.

It rained the second weekend - I luckily had no leaks directly above me, but others weren't so lucky - which left three portable toilets sitting in a large puddle of rainwater and who knows what else.

I was puzzled on my fourth weekend by the uncharacteristic early cleaning of the johns Saturday morning - i.e. before the were full. My confusion dissipated when I saw documentary cameras on the roof that afternoon. The word on the yard was that it was the BBC.

Rules vs. reality

Jail rules: No smoking, food or drink in the yard. No commerce of any kind.

Reality: Many times an hour, inmates came into the tent hawking cigarettes, marijuana, speed, cocaine, boxer shorts, socks, sweat shirts, "Ladmo" bags - Joe Arpaio's cold lunches - oranges, apples, nicotine patches, blankets, and anything else one can imagine to bring comfort to the incarcerated.

A game was played between the officers and inmates regarding enforcement, partly cat-and-mouse capriciousness, partly, I'm sure, enabling a "selective enforcement" window to assist officers in controlling truly troublesome inmates.

Jail is jail, not the Ritz-Carlton, Uncle Joe likes to say, and he's right. This is what it's really like. I am not necessarily aiming to raise outrage against his Tent City. I did, after all, commit the dangerous crime of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol.

But to other potential inmates, I say, you don't want to go there.

And to the taxpayers, I want you to be aware of what you are paying for and for whom you are voting.

I was informed by a parent of one of the inmates that there was a shit-storm on the yard that Sunday morning, mostly massive searches for contraband. I was also told that my name was being cursed by both officers and inmates, so I must have said something right.

A Free And Clear Moon (Tent City)

A few years ago, I wrote a melancholic song exploring the state-of-mind of "Tent City" inmates - A Free And Clear Moon (Tent City) - and, in an impulse, sent a copy off to the famously un-self-aware bully of a Sheriff. He wasted no time in displaying his opaqueness, apparently missing the ironic nature of the song:

November 1, 2002

Michael J. Petro
[omitted]
Phoenix, AZ 85014

Dear Mr. Petro,

Thanks for sending me a copy of your CD with its "tribute" to Tent City. We listened to it during our staff meeting Monday, and why not? It's related to our office!

Sincerely,
Joseph M. Arpaio
Maricopa County Sheriff