AdAbsurdum's Blog

Functionalist vs Conflict Perspectives in Our Political Divide and in Human Evolution

2010-07-01T14:15:02Z

Stanley Kubrick's 1968 cinematographic rendition of Arthur C. Clarke's then futuristic 2001: A Space Odyssey still relevantly depicts after over four decades since its production man's ascent from non-technological or culture-devoid clannish animal living to a species reaching for the stars, engaging in diplomacy, and heavily imbued with cultural, governmental, and private institutions sustaining and driving this progress. Although the narrative is anthropocentric and fails to address animal culture, even the high culture shared by all humpback whales as their orchestrated and densely concentrated information-rich discourse amounting to a veritable collective consciousness that would put us to shame despite our Internet and media, much can nevertheless be gleaned from the Kubrick-Clarke production as it thematizes our evolution as well as it also artistically unmasks the space-time reality within which we exist and evolve. However, as in the case of the Internet's way of often stripping us of our privacy, our civilization involves our relationship with institutions, one which turns out to be of love-hate and of prosperity with frankensteinian disaster, leaving us weary and wary yet with unquestionable need for our police officers who sometimes abuse us and our doctors who occasionally kill us.

]]>
Although for millennia institutions controlled the message and imparted on the crowds a functionalist perspective, which is really a one-sided, unquestionable justification for their being and might, that of their necessity and benignness which separate us from the wild state, that of a feral child raised by animals, it is quite possible that when Marx introduced the conflict perspective into philosophy, the social sciences, and economics, even he did not grasp the extent to which this "real consciousness" also already drove human nature. Might I note that although it was finally formalized into science and philosophy by Marx, it had many classical precedents as well as later literary precursors in Cervantes, Diderot, Voltaire and, in my view, even in the biblical book of Job and its allegory. When America came into the picture, it meant fleeing the evils of old institutions as vast areas of sparsely populated land could be appropriated and exploited. For many, it meant fleeing oppression while for others old world laws disallowing slavery could be evaded in order to attain more economic "freedom."

There are no easy answers to address the evils of the institutions which sustain our culture, civilization, and our humanity. Standing armies, military science, and lamentably war have been throughout history major boosters of scientific and technological progress, with ballistics culminating in Newton's laws. Bellicosity and endless war is a major reason that Europe became the world's technological masters. The Internet which allows me to share these thoughts began among the military and its network of scientists and academia, governmental and private. It was a weapon in the war of intelligence and technological advantage, the epitome of pre-humans, as per Clarke and Kubrick, equipping themselves with bones as weapons for the defense of their interests.

Since our nation is composed of those fleeing large institutions in the Old World, empires, monarchies, class systems, static land ownership, brutal religious persecution, and incessant war, we were also feeling the crowdedness and found our melting pot of a Lebensraum, at the expense of the natives in the so-called New World. Fear of big power is encoded in American DNA. Few people in this nation do not have an institution they abhor, law enforcement, military, the IRS, or big oil, but few can live without these. Left and right, we embrace conflict perspectives, be they of different institutions. The same goes for the functionalist perspective since just about every American paradoxically has a profound embrace to the point of adulation of one of its institutions, be it again the military, Apple, Lucas Films, the postal service, Nascar, Costco, a sports team, cities, or anything but urban living, religion, academia, sororities, country clubs, Nasa, Cheers re-runs and class reunions. Americans derive their sense of individualism by asserting our conflict with our pet oppressive institution, yet also at the same time embracing and branding ourselves with our own preferred institutions of choice with an extreme advocacy of their functional role, their prestige and even at times of their transdental importance. These institutions are our Gods of the Olympus of war, love, beauty, wisdom, virtue, the arts and so on. Intimate relationships and family bonds often involve much investment into such institutions as in the example of the son pushed into high school football, like it or not, or the couple who demand certain branding of each other, Gucci, Harley, BMW, the Heights, downtown, muscles, skinniness, religious standards, and economic standards. Yet with all this submission to institution, we ironically still embrace the primitive alpha male crushing bones in the African desert to Also Sprach Zarathrustra, the winner, the athlete, the pop musician, the super-politician or businessman, even though in this society winning can only be achieved institutionally and the metrics and definitions differ whether one is watching CNBC or MTV, and left and right we often bizarrely adulate the real man, testerone, testicles, as if we were all Chris Matthews or Maureen Dowd.

Liberals and conservatives are both sides of the same coin, yin and yang, opposite sides of Foucault's pendulum that must and fortunately for us will keep swinging. Nevertheless, we shall keep cross-talking so long as we do not embrace both a functional and a conflict perspective toward all institutions without bias as to whether they are public or private, religious or military, for ultimately they are all capable of ill, but we would be fools to live without them. I assert this even with regards to religion. Man's myths are our identity, our alpha and our omega, and so long as we view them for what they are, they give meaning to the lives of many. Symbolic thinking is the most human feature about us. Indeed, religion is art, architecture, and another precursor, next to the art of war, to our modern epistemological thinking, but we should not all too readily scorn the symbols that preceded our sciences, or certainly not those who do find meaning in them. Often, ancient archetypes look further than any modern ideas do, still exist in our dreaming life, yet they have also lamentably been a considerable source of misery throughout history when taken elevated to fact or dogma rather than as as allegory and fable conveying more profound truths and rituals which bestow us with hope and dignity.

Nevertheless, the progress from pre-human to civilized man has not been a free ride. Our pharmacology pollutes our aquifers, and energy consumption is destroying our planet. The luxury of big country living and the romanticized notion of the rural escapade from the institution governed population centers, of the libertarian I-am-in-the-middle-of-nowhere at four dollars per gallon, of going West, in a single word, sprawl, has proved to be even more burdensome on our planet than our concentrated human-scale population centers. Rand's libertarian freedom has a collective cost at the expense of others, ironically. However, contrary to the Malthusian viewpoint of exponential population explosion, the notion that social welfare, wealth, education, health and nutrition are actually conducive to smaller population growth can be all too well evidenced in countries that have embraced these notions. So to a certain extent, I disagree with the American ideal of constantly moving away from the maddening crowd and institutions. Il faut cultiver son jardin is Voltaire's notion at the conclusion of Candide that we should find our place and nurture it, but always seeking a new promised land appears to be unsustainable. Perhaps we should be wary of our institutions, governmental, religious, private and cultural, but also participate in nurturing them. There's a certain elegance and effectiveness in community organizing, in open source software, in local grown food co-ops, in our creating new institutions and putting sweat and reforming our old and new institutions. We then become a society neither of survival nor of building anew, but instead of preservation along with progress and of enjoying life's pleasures (my excuses to any Anglo Saxons averse to pleasure but that also includes football). The higher quality (as opposed to standard) of living leads to less procreation just as it has in Western Europe. If Pat Buchannan is worried about too many non-whites having babies, allow them opportunities for prosperity and education, and they'll have fewer babies. Marx was one thousand percent right about conflict, but guess what, we are stuck with mixed-natured institutions and their functionality. Community, checks and balances for all institutions, entrepreneurship, and innovation so far appear to be the ultimate preservationism for our planet while promoting the general welfare and bestowing those blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to posterity.

Real Change and a Big Tent Democratic Party

2010-06-17T21:08:55Z

Michael Moore once pointed out that most Americans, even most Republicans, when quizzed issue by issue, usually ultimately appear to be somewhat liberal. It is with such an insight that Democrats need to maintain an outreach toward independents and even conservatives, to bridge the increasing divisions. It is the only change that will ever matter. However, many have embraced the view that change is all about pet issues, many of them irrelevant to the clichéd kitchen table concerns of the average person struggling to maintain a family. If the Democratic wing of the Democratic party should fall for strict ideology, they shall fare no better than the notorious dog in a fable I believe is attributed to Aesop.

A Dog, to whom the butcher had thrown a bone, was hurrying home with his prize as fast as he could go. As he crossed a narrow footbridge, he happened to look down and saw himself reflected in the quiet water as if in a mirror. But the greedy Dog thought he saw a real Dog carrying a bone much bigger than his own.

If he had stopped to think he would have known better. But instead of thinking, he dropped his bone and sprang at the Dog in the river, only to find himself swimming for dear life to reach the shore. At last he managed to scramble out, and as he stood sadly thinking about the good bone he had lost, he realized what a stupid Dog he had been.

]]>
If we view the butcher to be independent voters, Obamicans, red states such as North Carolina, and purple states such as Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and New Hampshire, and we view the dog as progressive Democrats, the fable still fails to point out that the stupidity not only hurts the dog but also alienates the butcher and screws the country when the butcher afterward chooses to throw the bone into the trash instead (votes for Republicans). There has been a constant insistence that any deviation from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party is a total sell-out, but this is just a prescription for a small tent party, a party that not only always loses, but which yields the power to the lunatics on the right who have de-regulated us to the disasters we now confront.

Let us talk about big tent Democrats vs small tent Democrats. Many of us work in corporations, have 401Ks - that's right, we're capitalists, alas-, and do believe in the importance of having a robust private sector with government imposing only as much regulation as necessary. These are values that big tent Democrats actually share with the saner republicans or ex-republicans who have joined our tent. Big tent Democrats do not see corporations as necessarily good or evil. We have moved on beyond Jean Piaget's pre-operational stage and the animistic thinking involved. Big tent Democrats view both government and corporations as potential agents for good and for ill, but that these outcomes are not intrinsic but rather the result of dogged oversight of these via the law, regulation, elections, and checks and balances. Big tent Dems therefore mistrust both government and the private sector but understand that both are necessary and can actually be maintained in check so that they work for the common welfare. They view government necessary when private enterprise cannot fulfill the necessity, but they otherwise view it as burdensome. The debate among the Democratic wing of the Democratic party does not seem to me to be along these lines. The discussion focuses on the impossibility of regulating insurance companies, but oftentimes it smacks of an ideological belief that government really should take over their role. There seems to be much small-tent Democratic hatred for oil companies and their activities, if they are done on US territory, but there is love for the cheap gasoline that affords them their constitutional right to drive up to Michigan and protest by some lake.

Big tent Democrats understand that Wall Street and Main Street do not exist in different universes because many big tent Democrats are part of the investor class, have pension plans, 401Ks, bonds and investments in other financial products. They have planned for retirement and plan on bequeathing their wealth to their children. Many are small business owners struggling for solutions for healthcare for their employees that are not too burdensome. A big tent Democrat may even be an oil-rig worker glad for that fat pay-check. All too often, she found the self-proclaimed Democratic side of the Democratic party hostile to her private enterprise or entrepreneurial proclivities, but she also now finds the Republican party much too bat guano crazy to support, much too dishonest and against their own principles to be trusted. They tilted the electoral map blue in 2008, but the small tent Democrats seem adamant about pushing them away. Small tent Democrats seem hostile to red state Democrats. North Carolina turned blue for us for the first time in decades and we still fail to realize the implications of this. They seem to be hostile to compromises with centrist Republicans so the tangible bone of a public option trigger was lost in exchange for the illusion of an immediate one that just had to be had at once at all cost. Well, now we have no public option, but neither do we have a trigger, and this is due to the ideological insistence of small tent Democrats. Attempts at expanding the tent to accommodate a majority are often deemed by the small tenters as pusillanimous and jelly-spined. It is true that dealings with those across the aisle do seem futile, but if we can extend an olive branch to Iran, which we must, we can occasionally extend the same gesture to Republicans. It shows our strength, not our weakness.

Ultimately, creating a big tent and abandoning stubborn insistence on our pet ideological positions are the only change that we can really believe in, a realignment which can lead to a sloppy, imperfect Democratic majority which focuses on kitchen table issues, on institutional stability over unbridled corporate hatred and an obsession with imprisoning Dick Cheney. There is room for such sentiment in the big tent, of course, but one cannot help missing the days when Liberalism stood for more important issues such as nuclear disarmament, one no longer discussed, one over which many laughed the Norwegian parliament to scorn for awarding Barack Obama for his yet unrecognized but nevertheless unprecedented work in this important subject. I suppose that politics is all local, and Norway's concerns about being just a few hundred miles away from the Russian bear are laughable to those comfortably blogging from some US town, but there was a time that this was George McGovern's platform, and progress in this has been advanced by this administration. Small tent Democrats however seem aloof, if not offended.

Small tent Democrats keep changing their priorities from one day to the next and would write about What Obama should do in favor of pushing healthcare for days and then suddenly change their mind and decide that healthcare is unimportant but employment is, but if employment picks up, the war crimes! the war crimes! No, it's the corporations! No, it's torture. No, it's gay rights - not the meaningful gay rights such as domestic partner hospital rights - but the flowers and the ring ceremony which not even Maine and California's electorate would uphold. Meanwhile that supermarket cashier's problems are not being discussed and she has no interest in small tent Democratic peeve issues and will not mobilize to vote for the fickle angry party small tent Democrats want. She will, however, vote for the party that finds solutions for her problems, regardless of the ideological approach, that will protect her from the abuses of both corporations and of government itself. She will consider middle class tax breaks, college tuition breaks for her kids, and maintaining a stable market for her retirement; she is not interested in self-absorbed Robispierres.

It is time to grasp that change actually means ending the divide so we can move on, that is, progress, regardless of the hopelessness of such a goal, with a little audacity. Change that we can believe in is not about the teapartiers and pitchforker anger and peeves, cynicism and mutual mistrust; it is about making the Democratic party one that deals with issues that both rational Republicans and Democrats can support, a little left, a little right, if you will. As much as this is scorned by the fringes on either side that have more in common with each other than they dare realize, change we can believe in is keeping our eye on the big picture, pushing the messy yet significant improvements that matter to people's everyday lives, not obsessing over the ideology by which these changes are achieved. The bickering will continue, Theda Skocpol need not tell anyone to shut up, because the determinant voters are not listening to the inanity in any case. They are too busy struggling to survive, to get healthcare, to educate their children. They may not yet be comfortable with "gay marriage", but they are comfortable with gay rights by any other name. They are progressive too, as Michale Moore deftly points out, but just using a different language and vocabulary and sometimes a different ideology, as paradoxical as this may read. Let us work with them, and let us know that we have a platform that is business and worker and investor friendly because in the real world, many of us find ourselves being at least two of the three. To the extent that we address the real concerns of these voters, we will win them over from the crazy side.

May She Who Rides the Bus Cast the First Stone

2010-05-28T21:15:13Z

There is a lot of indignation going around these days from the inhabitants and citizens of the great automobile nation as they listen to the oil spillage news in horror during their long commute over scores of miles of freeway. Their beautiful Gulf of Mexico has become a huge oil slick and they all now seek, left and right, whom to blame. I myself a born native of the shores of Lake Maracaibo, a fresh water enclosed bay formed from the rivers flowing down from the Andes mountains, have never had time to be shocked by oil slicks. The world's oldest extant oilfield in the West of Venezuela was our pride as the ships departed with huge cargoes for our friends up in North America so they could cheaply drive past the fast food store window and enjoy jobs two hours drive away, yet have the priiledge to live in the pristine exurbs with no sidewalks or pesky businesses nearby. We seldom complained about the diminishing tonina, an endemic fresh water cetacian related to dolphins, nor of the disfiguring fields of oil derrick towers replacing the pre-Columbian palafito, the indigineous stilted houses which inspired Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojeda to call this nation, Little Venice, or, translated to Spanish, Venezuela, around the same time North America was discovered by Europeans.

]]> We built our cities, our universities, our schools and hospitals with the oil-produced wealth and people from all over South America and the Caribbean and even beyond - of course there were also many "Americans" (South Americans do consider themselves Americans but that is another discussion) from Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma - plagued our country seeking opportunity. They came from Italy, Germany, Portugal, Argentina and they prospered, but many came less prepared only to create the hugest barrios in the world. Black gold brought us the fine arts and culinary delights, theatres and museums, luxuries, and then of course, gross corruption, and now we live in a regime which claims to be socialism, but really is one of mere anger. During all this vertiginous growth of metropolises and crises, we never complained about the golden lake that turned black from the oil and green from the large oil metropolitan city waste. We received our "dolares" together with the pollution, and Los Angeles inhabitants got to drive and drive and drive for cheap.

On my first visit to the states, it was clear what that oil had enabled. Having been used to walking to the bakery, bank, or school in my native Venezuela and afterward in Europe, I found it puzzling how hostile a place this automobile scaled country really was. This college student felt trapped on campus after having been used to freedom from the automobile, to walk to take care of my immediate needs, to hop on a tram or bus to visit the museums and cultural activities, to take a train at any convenient time to visit other cities, and all of a sudden, I could not even cross streets devoid of sidewalks to reach food stores miles away in what was supposed to be the greatest country in the world.

I then discovered the inner-city of the eighties, not the gentrified one we know today, but the abandoned one that showed remains of a human scale habitat, and I saw the color and the poverty of the people walking those streets, and it was all clear. My country's abundant cheap oil and polluted lake had enabled the final stage of racial segregation and fearmongering known as white flight. Cheap fuel allowed jobs to be built far away from the urban poor and the affluent to move as far away as possible from desegregation to monstruous moonscapes filled with sprawl, desolation, chain restaurants, bland living, no street life, no sidewalks, no freedom for children, no habitat for the elderly, and all of this sucking up a quarter of the world's hydrocarbons.

People have returned to the cities and rationality seems to be returning, but let us not forget what really happened. As I once wrote in a comment a few weeks ago:

Racism led to flight,
'f the righteous and moral white,
Leaving the cities in blight,
Opportunities far from sight.

Hopelessness led to crime,
By young people in their prime,
Stuck in the urban grime,
No jobs to be found in their time.

Flight led to excess in sprawl,
The monstrous shopping mall,
No sidewalks, no street life at all,
How tragic our habitat's fall.

Five percent of Earth's inhabitants,
Now use up one fourth of all carburants,
Blame for this greed and ignorance,
Belongs to the party of elephants.

There truly is no quick solution,
Now that the gulf is in pollution,
The culprits now seek absolution,
They fear a green revolution.

Amazing the mess created,
Just to keep us all segregated,
Past hatred unmitigated,
A coastline so decimated.

In our cities we must re-invest,
Of all options this is the best,
Posterity needs this bequest,
Our era must not fail this test.

A habitat for children and elderly,
Free from that oppressive SUV,
With parks, sidewalks, civility,
City life offers the best quality.

So now so many of us seek to blame someone as if this slick is the result of some new phenomenon. As someone born in the oil slick that cheaply powered your automobile lifestyle,I can only sigh at the tantrums of so many left and right who live the lifestyle which led to the death of the waters of my dear Little Venice near the equator. To those who delight in blame and public indignation, they shall have their rewards; however, may they also reflect on the society they and their parents have built out of fear and divisiveness, apartheid and greed, which has led to this catastrophe.

It is time to stop the tantrums, build our habitat as real communities rather than vast spans of isolation, and to catch that Metro bus just as the abandoned underclass do.

This Blog Post is Very Serious, and Please Don't Call Me Shirley

2010-05-07T19:10:00Z

This great nation, so afflicted by lack of short or long term memory, has truly bizarrely forgotten the tailspin in which we all found ourselves when Obama became the Airplane's pilot. Taking control after the drunk passed-out pretzel-eating Captain failed at impressing the world with his reckless and endangering fighter pilot maneuvers and putting up with screamers, accusers and the ever dissatisfied ideologues in the cabin, this administration's economic team have so far avoided a catastrophic crash in a way that deserves a standing ovation from those who truly understand (or just happen to bother to remember) the tailspin's severity. In spite of the conventional and new-media noise machine tantrums, the much-vilified economic team has kept its focus on the long-term big picture. Although it is not yet time to pop open the champagne as there still remain many storms to weather, it really is high time, after all the vitriol and accusations, to give this administration a teeny bit of credit, even if just a nano-tad of it.

]]> So Biden was not, after all, mistaken when he blabbed about substantial near-term positive job growth a few weeks ago. The job numbers suddenly look very encouraging. If they are sustainable and actually attributable to the administration's intended policies rather than to some random blip on the chart, then there may be some real hope, if you'll forgive the term, in not just the economic outlook of our nation but also that of the rest of the globe. Biden did, at the time, claim that this would be a trend. Should he also happen to be correct about this, the news should be enthusiastically welcomed by those concerned about unemployment and its hardships.

It is also time for more perspective on the administration's approach. In the case of its dealings with bankers and the financial system, immediate justice was a second priority to that of stabilizing the tailspin, but so many critics would not have it. Traditionally, justice has worked slowly but surely. It took years, but Ken Lay eventually ended up sentenced to prison in and of all places, good ol' boy Texas. The bankers are quite likely to pay if they broke the law, just as big tobacco did many, many years later, and they paid big where it really hurt, their pockets. However, the Executive's most important job this time was to stabilize that plane in tailspin and to eventually land it safely, even with passengers screaming, complaining, and debating how this should be done. Repairs to the aircraft become a priority once it is stable or landed rather than during a tailspin, but unfortunately a large segment of the noise machine seemed to believe that the solution was to rebuild the aircraft in mid-air, or to deny fuel to engines that, due to poor oversight by ground inspectors, had contributed to the crisis but which if kept functional, could help the plane recover stability. With the current up-tick in employment, there may be future normal stable cruising and an eventual safe landing at the destination to which Obama, in spite of his infuriating style, has already irreversibly and also very carefully, I emphasize, set us on course.

Healthy debate is paramount during a crisis, but things had reached the point where over-anxious passengers in coach were discussing storming the first class passengers with pitchforks because they were enjoying caviar even while the new captain was still trying to gain control. Meanwhile, there were passengers screaming that the co-pilot was complicit with the previous drunk captain, and even the integrity of the new captain was placed in doubt. Then there were those ex-copilots who were among the passengers, rich in advice for the cockpit and always willing to share it with other passengers, oblivious to the fact that out their window, the horizon looked vertical. As a so-called Jesus is attributed to have said, they will reap their rewards. Frustratingly, though also most fortunately for all, the new pilot held firm, brushed ideology aside kept focus on the immediate urgencies to be resolved and the eventual well-being of the passengers, and it now does appear that the new captain is now on course to land the colossal bird he was entrusted to fly.

Listening to all the pundits, with their myopic view of issues, surely our noise machine cannot be serious, and I am not calling anyone Shirley.

Ms Lowden Viewed by the Hospital Bed-Ridden

2010-04-22T22:03:21Z

During the month of February, I was deprived of the fun of posting my odious comments on this forum on the addictive subject of US partisan wars. I lay instead on a hospital bed, and even though my laptop was faithfully at my side, serious meningitis kept me from seeing letters, enjoying musical notes coherently, in short, of even clearly perceiving the world around me as it was. I consoled my politically obsessive mind by telling myself that this was a healthy respite during the year-long, exhausting healthcare debate, just as the chaos following last 08's hurricane Ike separated me from the pre-electoral hand-wringing over a certain candidate who allegedly lacked fight in him I return however to my experience in room 1204 and my happy return to my beloved home just blocks away from the colossal world-renowned Houston Medical Center to receive intensive outpatient treatment.
]]> I am grateful beyond bounds. It took a couple of months to relearn my favorite piano piece, which I could previously recreate from the piano keyboard with my eyes closed after years of practicing. I had to remember whose avatar and pseudonym was whose, and reintegrate myself to life feeling as if I was living a second life, a reincarnation of sorts. Live oaks, my ridge-back, piano chords, Vietnamese noodle soups now bring me joys that would have ended without the premium care I received from an incredible team that resorted to everything to bring me back here: MRIs, CAT scans, considerable IV infusions, spinal taps, various ultrasounds including an electrocardiogram and an electroencephalograph, attention from a team of specialists consisting of internal medicine experts, cardiologists, neurologists, nephrologists and infectious disease experts, their respective technicians and scores of nurses and orderlies attending to me 24/7 in my room as well as wheeling my bed to laboratories and rushing to relieve my occasional unbearable pain, and the pages detailing the results of frequent labs done on my blood and spinal fluid to track my health.

I am grateful for the few weeks during which nurses came home to check on me, to my sturdy seventy-two year-old Mummy picking me up, and to my partner administering infusions through my picc line, exhausted after work yet with clockwork punctuality. I am grateful for the love of friends, family, my partner, so many strangers, even of health professionals, and of my Rhodesian Ridgeback, which some of you may remember from a long ago avatar. Even he understood the severity of the situation when I returned home in weakness after three weeks of absence. All of these brought me back here when I was ready to dose away eternally.

It is a flawed system and I did and do have my complaints, but I am here alive to tell you that I could not under any circumstances have haggled or bartered for the above-mentioned services, almost unconscious from my bed. The hundreds of thousands covered by my insurance was not anything I was financially, physically or psychologically ready to focus on at the time. I still cannot barter for the thousands of dollars in meds I'll be taking for months, and for the life of me, I cannot understand how voters in this great nation could send someone incapable of grasping such realities to the Senate of the United States of America.

I do not want this to be entirely humorless so I must return to my pre-illness odiousness just to point out that Ms Lowden cannot be too ignorant of the realities and complexities of medical treatment, just from the look of that chiseled nose. She certainly had the means to secure that urgent medical necessity, perhaps through insurance, as in my lucky case, or perhaps via haggling or barter, as she preaches about chickens and the sort.

Certainly in the state of Nevada, all sorts of goodies and services could be legally exchanged aside from chickens, not that I should judge against such transactions, but we truly also ought to consider the implications of just how far such bartering should go. There is a time and place for everything, but my experience clearly proves the obvious, that the hospital room is the last place for commodity exchanging.

My heart remains with those still in their rooms as I was wheeled out to finally go home after three weeks, many of them at the time had already been in there for months. At long last Republicans, do get a grip.

My Apologies to Mignon Clyburn and Good News for Net Neutrality

2009-09-28T20:10:13Z

It appears that in spite of fears of the contrary by many on the progressive blogosphere, the FCC is moving under the chairmanship of Julius Genachowski to strengthen and guarantee equality of access on the Internet with the support of the Democratic majority on the commission.

The battle over the net neutrality concept was formally joined Monday by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, who threw his support behind the free flow of Internet traffic without interference from carriers and ISPs. He was immediately supported by commissioners Michael J. Copps and Mignon Clyburn, both Democrats like Genachowski. With those commissioners forming a 3 to 2 majority over the FCC's Republican commissioners, the eventual approval of the free flow of Web content without blocking, slowing or extra charges seems assured.

My apology for boneheaded statements over the jump...

]]>
Regarding my Mea Culpa, in a comment I made earlier this year, I referred to Mignon Clyburn, daughter of the the prominent South Carolina congressman and congressional leader, as an anti-net neutrality zombie. Because her father's record on this issue has been less than stellar, I fell for suspicions that her nomination would lead to loose supervision of neutrality standards at the FCC. However, Ms Clyburn's statements have so far been unequivocally supportive of FCC Chairman Mr Genochowski's strong pro-Net Neutrality initiative. Until I see evidence of her moving against Net Neutrality, I will certainly give her the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, an important part of the freedom I enjoy on the Internet is the responsibility I have over the statements I make, especially about others. Hit and run accusations, based on association and not founded on any concrete evidence are unacceptable and diminish the entire medium, whether we be liberals or conservatives. Thus my obligation to set the record straight.

On September 21st this year, Ms Clyburn states (.pdf):

"I fully support Chairman Genachowski's intention to take affirmative measures to preserve the openness of the Internet. The Chairman's statement today is an important first step in setting forth clear rules of the road that will ensure the Internet's continued vibrancy. As a former small business owner, I am keenly aware of how an open and transparent Internet can serve as an equalizing force for new entrants to the marketplace. I look forward to working with the Chairman and my fellow Commissioners to move expeditiously on this issue of great importance to the country."

Until Ms Clyburn says or votes otherwise, I will view her as a strong Net Neutrality ally.

A Proposal to Shift the US Political Center Via a Take-Over of the Vulnerable GOP Base By Liberals Discontented with the Democratic Party

2009-09-07T15:05:00Z

Liberal disgust for our party has become quite a no-brainer. Under its oversized umbrella, the Donkey's wide straddle from the people's republic of Vermont to Landrieu's McCain-voting constituency is becoming an increasingly uglier balancing act to contemplate from down below amid the grassroots. The pretzel-like contortions in which our Republicratic party must engage to hold its lukewarm coalition together in order to push any sort of policy must surely be a source of amusement to the defeated, yet ever more cohesive, wingnuts. Meanwhile, disgusted liberals justifiably seek to bolt but are reminded by sanctimoniously odious centrists like myself of the self-defeating evil-breeding consequences of Naderism which only hands power over to the lunatic fringe. The extremists are still powerful because even as the GOP loses moderates and influence, their party becomes more radicalized while the Democratic party grows into decreasingly effective, tepid majorities.

Meanwhile, the extreme right continues to engage in the hijacking of our institutions by controlling the base of the Republican party and thus controlling important strategic positions such as our schoolboards and by engaging in propaganda aimed at the wobbly center to which the Democrats are hostage. It is clear that we are hijacked by them, and they operate unfettered by us. So here is my proposal to the sizeable disgusted liberal faction of the Democratic party. If you have already vowed to stay home rather than again support the Dems, forget the Greens and the Socialist third parties. Instead, do something which would shift the nation's center. Water down the Republican party. Register as Republicans. Vote in numbers in Republican primaries. Let the Fundies know exactly who's coming for dinner. Dilute the bejeezus out of the Religious Right's disproportionate influence on the GOP platform. Shift the Republican party to the left. Reclaim the party from Nixon, Reagan and Palin in order to return it to Lincoln, and thus allow the entire national political center to shift.

In my view this would be a win-win strategy for Liberals who already feel that the Democratic party is a total waste of time. Political results will not be immediate, but the de-radicalization of the GOP would definitely change the political landscape significantly more than any third party ever will in the absence of a parliamentary system. In addition, there are short term satisfactions to be enjoyed as the liberals register and potentially outnumber the radicals in many constituencies. I am referring to the look on the the gun nut's face when the dirty effing hippies show up to vote in their primaries and caucuses, challenging the hate platforms, and ousting the flat earth school boards. If enough lefties show up, the rightwing extremists will be the ones pouting and leaving to form third parties just in order not to coalesce with supporters of marriage equality, choice, and single payer healthcare. Now that is change in which any Liberal can believe.

Before Casting that Stone - A Few Insights From and Beyond Nuremberg

2009-04-27T21:37:00Z

Shocking as it may seem, it takes very little to push young, liberal, humanistic, educated American college students toward behavior approaching that which was photographed in Abu Graib. Such malleability of the average person has been demonstrated by numerous studies in the behavioral sciences since the Nuremberg trials. Two towering studies in particular, Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Study and the Milgram Experiment at Yale reveal that the capacity for cruelty borne out of obedience are more universal than merely within the context of the Holocaust, that it could and does happen at any place and any time given the right setting, and that it is not at all unique to Nazi Germany. Indeed, although most references to Nuremberg are to the legal precedent that its ruling establishes, that of totally dismissing obedience as an absolution for atrocities, perhaps the most shocking discovery gleaned by the court is that perfectly normal and otherwise moral people would do monstruous things to others if ordered to do so by figures of authority.

The Milgram Experiment was, literally and figuratively speaking, shocking. Under the guise of a memory and learning experiment, subjects who were paid to participate, under the direction of an authoritative lab-coated actor, were persuaded to administer what they were told were incrementing electric shocks to a stooge based on the correctness or incorrectness of the stooge's answers to questions. Subjects heard progressively distressed pre-recorded screams and complaints from the unseen stooge, which even after awhile included protests over his heart condition, all these triggered in accordance with the voltage level the subject believed then to be administering. With the prodding of the lab-coated administrator, sixty percent of participants, although hesitantly and occasionally frantically, reached the 450 volt level, long after the stooge screams had troublingly gone silent. This experiment was repeated around the world under different settings with insignificant differences in its results, and it clearly showed how easily randomly selected people could be convinced by a figure perceived to be authoritative to inflict cruelty and possibly even kill or seriously hurt a stranger.

Zimbardo's experiment recreated a mock prison populated with students who for a couple of weeks were to be paid to play the roles of prisoners and guards. These were healthy, psychologically evaluated Stanford students during the early seventies who embraced much of the hippie culture of their era. The results were so unexpected that the experiment was terminated on its sixth day. Participants assimilated the roles they played to an extent that transformed the site into a veritable prison with its entailing harsh authoritarian environment.

]]>
Stanford Prison Experiment
par 0110110x

These experiments shed light on the otherwise well-intentioned people tried at Nuremberg for atrocities they committed due to obedience and due to being in an environment which promoted such conduct. They also shed light on the young enlistees at Abu Graib, people such as Lynndie England, who transformed into that which the military institutions, following Cheney's orders, had intended for them to become. In that sense, I have my qualms with Nuremberg's inflexibility. These kids are also victims. Even those who did not succumb, such as conscientious objector Alyssa Peterson who committed suicide, ultimately were not strong enough to survive the pressure faced after disobeying the institutions of the country they loved to their core. I distinguish them from the career intelligence agency professionals who knew better, who trained them in these methods, just as they have for decades trained torturers in the service of US-backed foreign regimes, although I am certain that most who do intelligence service for this nation also feel dishonored by the role they have had to serve under the Cheney and other previouus administrations.

Let us think twice and not be too eager to pelt stones at those who were young and full of desire to serve their nation. They were not merely led astray. They were psychologically manipulated by our government in whom they trusted. Our ire needs to be better aimed.

Dear Angry Lefties: Your Imported Pitchforks are Foreign Financed

2009-04-06T19:35:53Z

Credit: Reputation for solvency and integrity entitling a person to be trusted in buying or borrowing: You should have no trouble getting the loan if your credit is good

We digested the American pie over three decades ago, and we now owe even the Indonesian soles of our shoes to foreigners. Our trade deficit based service economy has for the past three decades been one of increasingly borrowing from abroad to purchase from abroad, and Americans have survived by suckling from the global financial teat, and the world was all dandy with this because of our unique credit. The fact is that credit has been for a long time the US's one true asset, and with a global financial crisis and our nation collapsing into a depression, the consensus is that investment is our least painful way ahead, but in order to invest we must more than ever resort to our credit.

However, in many circles there are cries that we should stiff the sovereign bondholders who invested in major private bond markets in institutions such as Citi. Puzzlingly it should be Treasury that steps in to effectuate the stiffing, the very same Treasury which must maintain credit to finance our recovery. After stiffing these creditors, we then simply expect them to return business as usual and buy our Treasury Bonds so we can finance our much coveted healthcare reform and other liberal dreams.

Sovereign funds from abroad are already growing impatient, and although they too are inextricably intertwined with us in our financial bacchanal, they do not necessarily have to continue in this path. We are in a position to call China's bluff, since everyone knows that the value of the US bonds they hold will only diminish as they let go of them. However, to what extent must any longterm lenders continue to give us fresh credit for our dream supertrains and investments in new energy if we make the decision to stiff them through the private institutional bondmarket, all in the name of politics and pitchforkers threatening with imported pitchforks purchased at Walmart. Of course, many will disingenuously attempt to blurr the difference between stiffed Citi bonds and Treasury bonds, but from the eyes of a world of sovereign lenders, the difference will at best be fuzzy, but their lost wealth will be as real as their diminished capacity to lend to us and also as real as our evaporated credit.

How ironic it is that the cry for Treasury to step in and stiff international bondholders at Citi and other institutions is advanced by precisely those who most wish that Treasury issue debt to finance their dream healthcare reform. There is a typically American hubris-filled notion that we can stiff our foreign creditors on one end and expect them to continue offering us trillions on the other, via Treasury bonds, to finance our safety net and our pet projects. I, for one, know that my credit is based on my payment history to all of my debtors, and the world will judge the US likewise.

Perhaps some of us need to pause and reconsider, put down our Chinese manufactured pitchforks, and place practicality before moral indignation, and most of all admit to ourselves that we all partook in the loot.

Straights Coming Out

2008-11-15T18:43:00Z

What else should I be?
All apologies.
What else could I say?
Everyone is gay

Kurt Cobain

Rarely does anyone emphasize their non-membership within an ethnic minority when defending said group's civil rights, yet it seems a few appear to feel the need to remove any doubts about their one hundred percent sterling heterosexuality before advocating for the rights of gays. Many are so eager to point out bigotry that led to the passing of Proposition 8, and yet they betray a necessity to assert their unequivocal straightness while doing so, lest the audience may inconveniently misconstrue, or perhaps to emphasize the extent to which their advocacy is untainted by personal stakes in the discussion of the rights of what we view as a straight majority and a gay minority.

However, such a demographic breakdown seems at odds with the Kinsey scale.

]]>

If the Kinsey scale (and therefore our sociology and anthropology courses taught in college) is to be believed, Keith Olberman, when he professes not to be gay as he passionately defends gay rights, is the exception rather than the norm. As the scale reveals, the proclivities of an overwhelming percentage of our population can be categorized as ambisexual behavior. Strictly straight and strictly gay are anomalous extremes in the spectrum. Instead, the reality is that most people live in a sexually ambiguous world modulated by social norms with strong rewards and vicious punishments which ensure adherence. Most people who claim to be straight to a certain extent do so because their intrinsic nature has subdued itself for the sake of conformity, and this majority do not understand the extreme straight or gay. In their choice for conformity, they suspect that everyone chooses.

I, for one, am inclined to believe that a person who rates naught on the Kinsey scale, as Olbermann claims for himself, and is truly one hundred percent heterosexual in his or her yearnings is also more likely to be more understanding of someone at the opposite extreme who is purely homosexual and incapable of being otherwise. I suspect the bigotry of the majority, which is commonly justified by accusations of homosexuality being a choice, is more likely to be advanced by those belonging to the bisexual majority in the center who successfully conform. In fact, it is advanced even by many who are unsuccessful at conforming, such as Sen. Larry Craig and Rev. Haggard and the countless other closeted gay or bisexual conservatives who are ambisexual enough to fool their spouses and the world for a while, but who eventually cannot maintain the charade forever.

The more oppressive the social environment, the greater the extent of the charade. It leads to deceit to spouses, risky casual sexual behavior, and gross hypocrisy and injustice by the majority against a minority. Oscar Wilde's conviction so angered some observers that they demanded in a published letter, "Why does not the Crown prosecute every boy at a public or private school or half the men in the universities?" Discriminatory initiatives are enthusiastically voted for by members of the ambisexual majorities who, given the right environment, will succumb to the "boys will be boys" or "low down" behavior, but who will not tolerate the lifestyle of those for whom homosexuality is not a choice. The truly straight are then left scratching their heads.

Hockey mom and piano playing moose sing out against Palin

2008-10-30T00:18:59Z

A thoughtful message to Sarah Palin from a real American hockey mom: I share her sentiments.

Women Voters Do Not Like Palin

2008-09-01T15:34:09Z

Look at the numbers from the latest CNN poll. Only thirty-six percent of women view Sara Palin favorably, and we know who those thirty-six percent are. Simply put, outside the wingnutosphere, Sara Palin is the biggest flop conceivable as garnerer of female support for the ticket. At thrity-six percent, she fails to impress even quite a few Republican women. Simply put, women do not like Sara Palin.

The trophy running mate (tm) is having pretty much the same effect on the electorate that a trophy wife typically has in your average ex-urban cul-de-sac. Palin is generating bulging enthusiasm among certain males, who, after oogling the unqualified Alaskan VP nominee on CNN as she shoots her gun with her tight sweater on, run to their keyboards and blog what their scrotums have told them, that Palin will be a major game changer. Suddenly, they have ceded to the power of imagery over policy and have fixated on the notion that Mrs Palin offers the McCain presidential ticket its much needed bounce.

Little did these prognosticators in their second pubescence realize that most hard-working women who struggle in a man's world, the ones who admired Hillary for her erudition and tenaciousness, were not going to transfer their support to an unprepared Linda Carter look-alike, just because CNN is touting with her marksmanship. The truth is that Palin offends women. She insults them. She reminds the normal struggling woman of the less qualified for whom they get passed-over for jobs on a day-to-day basis just because men prefer their ilk smiling at the reception desk, waiting at the restaurant table, beaming at meetings, or standing next to them in a presidential ticket so they can catch a peek. Women read her body language and understand it without succumbing to it. Women listen to her tall-tales about her last pregnancy and are calling out the bullshit. Most of all, they are telling themselves, this is no Hillary Clinton.

Four Nights of Tears of Joy

2008-08-29T14:45:24Z

Although not much prone to welling up easily, I have wondered what on Earth it was about this Democratic convention that has had me repeatedly reaching for the Kleenex box. I had not even watched that much of it, yet even during the brief segments I witnessed, I caught glimpses of tears betraying deep emotions surfacing up to the tearducts of delegates, prominent politicians, and other participants of this event. There also seemed to be a sense of disbelief, a pinch me because I must be dreaming this is really happening attitude, throughout the Pepsi Center.

Obviously, the sense of reconciliation after a bitterly divisive primary is one important reason for this phenomenon. The cameras have not spared us from any of Michelle Obama's unguarded facial expressions, and the drama for the rest of the world as she and all of us witnessed the Clintons coming through for the party and channeling their political genius with no holds barred must have opened up a stream of emotions. Art does make me tear up, whether it is a Beethoven symphony or the Clintons at their best, and I can now only feel love toward them in spite of the rancor of the past few months.

Likewise, the sight of the globally spanning Obama family leaves few of us untouched as the multiple generations of Asian, African and Euro-American faces take the spotlight, making everyone realize that this family's presence in the White House will be an unprecedented symbol of unity of people from so many backgrounds. Thus, as Maya Soetoro-Ng gave her brief and touching speech, a young Asian woman in the crowd was caught by the camera shedding a tear, and we all, in our heart of hearts, can understand the joy behind it.

Fortunately, I missed the Ted Kennedy appearance. It would have been too much. I however, like most, could not and did not miss Obama's acceptance speech. It was an evening during which the camera caught face after face filled with emotion and shedding tears of joy with a frequency that I never before in my life have witnessed.

Perhaps others here at this forum could add to these impressions for they certainly are beyond the capacity of a single person to explain.

Those ex-POW Perks

2008-08-21T20:50:35Z

It must be good to be an ex-POW. Indeed, all because John McCain was a POW,

he cannot tell a lie,

it is proof enough that he did not cheat at that Evangelical forum,

General Wesley Clark cannot reasonably question his qualifications to be CIC,

it's ok if he has an affair,

he was able to become, that's right, a celebrity-hero and a Senator,

he gets to run a dishonorable campaign,

he got to marry the ultimate golddigger's dream wife,

he is entitled to have her buy him four (or is it seven or ten) homes,

he gets to call her anything in public, even a trollop or a ...

he gets her to buy him $520 shoes while he calls others elitists,

he knows how to win wars,

he gets special media treatment,

and he even gets to admit he did not love America until he became, you guessed it, a POW.

So indeed it is good to be a John McCain, although he will never play that POW card.

"I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences," he said, noting that he has huge admiration for the "heroes" who served with him in the POW camp and said the experience taught him to love the U.S. because he missed it so much.

"I am always reluctant to talk about these things," McCain said.

White, Brown, and Black in South Side Chicago

2008-08-14T18:06:57Z

White, Brown, and Black in South Side Chicago

Race relations is a subject that will never go away, that can hardly ever be avoided, and which can so strongly mark on an individual level, yet it is also one I seldom address. With Chicago's South Side now thrust to the center of our nation's discourse on race, so much has been broadcast and written about this place, of which until this election season I had known almost nothing. There are three narratives that stick to my mind: two by fellow TPMers and the third an eye-opening description of black experience in this rough city excepted from Rick Perlstein's Nixonland. Each narrative is a disturbing read yet each creates an important context for the others.

The first is an excerpt from TPM reader Chauncey Baker's touching essay about his family in Chicago. I hope he does forgive me for using his candid narrative here, but I was so struck by it, I find it cathartic to contextualize it here. Among other things, Chauncey tells us:

Because they were one of the few white people in the neighborhood, they were terorized by a few thugs in the community that decided any white person was open to attack.

My grandmother bore the brunt of the attacks. It started with her not being able to carry her groceries home because someone would knock them out of her hand. It escalated with her being spit on. It ended with her being beaten.

Who is to blame? Who knows. My grandmother was the perfect stereotypical German woman: Big boned and didn't take shit from nobody. Who knows what she might have said to provoke the attacks. But I can say this, anything she might have said was done out of fear and a complete misunderstanding of America at the time. She thought that America was the land of opportunity. I guess she learned the hard way.

More recently, TPM reader Hard Truths shares her traumatic upbringing as an adopted brown Hispanic child growing up in two black families in Chicago.

Then and now, people stop me in grocery stores, gas stations and on the street to ask, "Are you mixed?" and "What are you mixed with?" as if having golden-colored skin grants all the world the right to inquire about my full familial history anytime or anyplace.

When I was twelve, I asked my second-adoptive mother to explain what it meant for me to be three different races. Since I had been raised in mostly black neighborhoods and educated in a strict ethnic culture, with little to no white or Hispanic interactions other than school, I simply wanted to get to know and love my own, multi-racial self.

She said, "You have to pick one or the other. Because you cannot be both." In a single sentence, my own mother had not only over-looked my Latino heritage altogether, as if it didn't even exist, she had commanded me to choose between being black or white, because society (which included my own parents) would not 'allow' me to be both. She might as well have said, "Which perfectly good arm do you want to cut off and throw away?"

For the the black experience segment, I quote from Rick Perlstein's Nixonland via Brad DeLong:

You could draw a map of the boundary within which the city's seven hundred thousand Negroes were allowed to live by marking an X wherever a white mob attacked a Negro. Move beyond it, and a family had to face down a mob of one thousand, five thousand, or even (in the Englewood riot of 1949, when the presence of blacks at a union meeting sparked a rumor the house was to be "sold to niggers") ten thousand bloody-minded whites. In the late 1940s, when the postwar housing shortage was at its peak, you could find ten black families living in a basement, sharing a single stove but not a single flush toilet, in "apartments" subdivided by cardboard. One racial bombing or arson happened every three weeks.... It neighborhoods where they were allowed to "buy" houses, they couldn't actually buy them at all: banks would not write them mortgages, so unscrupulous businessmen sold them contracts that gave them no equity or title to the property, from whcih they could be evicted the first time they were late with a payment.

I let these texts speak for themselves and with each other, together with any of your impressions.