tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90781574245318503452024-03-08T13:16:21.643-08:00Chasin' JesusUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger193125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-83825074977992384282021-03-25T04:42:00.003-07:002021-03-25T04:42:29.835-07:00Medium is union busting<p> . . . and I'm not having it. Been using that platform for a couple of years, and I've amassed 175 articles on there. Now, I'm transferring all of them into one book length document, which I'll post here when I'm done.</p><p>Contact Medium here https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/requests/new#/360002298134/360035861914/</p><p>...and tell them union-busting is unacceptable, and that you will refuse to read them until they cease and desist.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-87644439551485503722020-02-01T05:35:00.002-08:002020-02-01T05:35:37.289-08:00The Sad History of Hillary
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Hillary Clinton has denounced Bernie Sanders far more times
than she has denounced her friends Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill
Clinton, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
— tweet from Anonymous (the group)</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpmcvariety.files.wordpress.com%2F2017%2F10%2Fhillary-harvey.jpg%3Fw%3D1000%26h%3D563%26crop%3D1&f=1&nofb=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpmcvariety.files.wordpress.com%2F2017%2F10%2Fhillary-harvey.jpg%3Fw%3D1000%26h%3D563%26crop%3D1&f=1&nofb=1" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the same day that we learned about the zany
double-endorsement of Klobuchar and Warren by the execrable <i>New York Times</i>, the
capitalist press was also regurgitating remarks by Hillary Clinton which
included, “Nobody likes Bernie Sanders.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the past few weeks, we have seen the acknowledgement by
these stenographers for power that Senator Sanders is positioned, his army of
millions mustered, to grab the Democratic nomination. This was followed by a barrage of
smear campaigns dutifully echoed and amplified by that same capitalist press.
Hillary Clinton’s anti-Bernie jeremiad is just the latest. On the other hand,
her bomb went off like a wet squib and had the same anti-effect as the hit job
during that buffoonery they called a debate: Sanders’ fundraising spiked, and
the political semiosphere exploded with stuff like the Anonymous tweet above.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimg2.timeinc.net%2Fpeople%2Fi%2F2016%2Fnews%2F160314%2Fdonald-hillary-800.jpg&f=1&nofb=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimg2.timeinc.net%2Fpeople%2Fi%2F2016%2Fnews%2F160314%2Fdonald-hillary-800.jpg&f=1&nofb=1" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I admit to disliking Clinton, the Clintons actually, her and
Bill both. I dislike their perfidious center-right politics, but I also have a
problem with the way she attacked women who spoke out about Bill Clinton’s
career as a slimy sexual predator. It’s astonishing to me that she continues to
use the senescent playbook of the same handlers who engineered her loss to Trump.
Her judgement seems even more flawed than I could have imagined; on view as she
attempts to resurface in the post-#MeToo, post-Epstein “suicide” era — an era
that exposes Bill and her craven complicity with him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Goldwater Girl meets the Rhodes Scholar who grew up in a
town built by the Irish mob. And she stands by her man — even if she despises
him . . . because she refused to sacrifice that stepping stone to her own embittered
ambition.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the same time that Elizabeth Warren is deploying
bourgeois “feminism” to tar Sanders with the “Bernie is a sexist” smear,
cribbed from the Clinton campaign, Clinton herself has popped up again . . .
like the perfect target.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last year, Wipf and Stock, my publisher, released a little
book of film crit I did called <a href="https://wipfandstock.com/tough-gynes.html" target="_blank"><i>Tough Gynes —
Violent Women in Film as Honorary Men</i>.</a> It looked at nine films with violent
female leads, unpacking the bourgeois “feminist” tropes in these films that
correspond to “lean in,” “girl power,” and “post-feminist” feminism. Liberal
feminism, if you like. That brand of “feminism” which demands only the most
symbolic forms of “equality” by promoting women in positions of unjust power
instead of men . . . and which leaves the circumstances of the overwhelming
majority of women untouched. Instead of a golden bull-calf, we can worship a
golden cow-calf. There was one anomalous chapter in the book, which
deconstructed the film <i>Michael Clayton</i>. I’m posting that chapter here, because
it mentions Clinton in the most compassionate way I know how, acknowledging the
double-bind of women ascending through the old ceilings of power, and I’ll
follow with a few concluding comments.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Begin excerpt</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Chapter 6: Monstrous Women and the Idol of Success: Karen
Crowder</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Melissa Silverstein:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tilda Swinton, superb in Michael Clayton, makes a virtue of
being the only gal in her own otherwise male-dominated ensemble. Her
performance as the morally decentered opposition lawyer Karen Crowder is a
brilliant reproach to a frankly wretched part: the role is tinged with
misogyny, but Swinton makes Karen, with all her neurosis and terror, seem like
the stricken victim of a man’s world.1</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I agree with Silverstein. <i>Michael Clayton</i> is partially
redeemed by Tilda Swinton’s performance from the clueless misogyny of its own
writer, director, and producers; because Swinton takes a Monstrous Female and
humanizes her in a way that bridges — in my view — the contradictions of a film
like this and the contradictions of women in the real world contesting for the
traditional power of men. When I saw Swinton’s “Karen Crowder,” I found myself
empathizing with her even in the face of her murderous calculations. I thought
of the real Hillary Clinton, not the persona she has been driven by her
ambition to project in public for so many years, but the more tragic private
one — obsessive, perpetually worried, terrified of any whiff of vulnerability
being discovered, and thereby cut off from the kind of vulnerability that is
the precondition of intimacy. Sacrificing all before the idol of success.2</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Karen Crowder is not the main character in <i>Michael Clayton</i>,
Michael is, played by George Clooney. Along with Arthur Eden, the brilliant,
bipolar attorney at the mega-firm that employs Michael as its fixer. Michael is
“fixing” the problem of Arthur going off the rails as lead attorney defending
U-North (a kind of fictionalized Monsanto) in a class-action law suit over a
highly carcinogenic herbicide. Karen Crowder is U-North’s General Counsel, a
position that we can infer is relatively new, and relatively tentative, given
her obvious anxiety and obsequiousness in the company of her boss, CEO Don
Jeffries, and her embarrassed reference to a bumpy start in the not-too-distant
past.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Karen Crowder is not the main character in this film, but
she is the main villain. She organizes a contract killing of Arthur, followed
by an attempted assassination of Michael Clayton, to neutralize the threat of
her employer losing its multi-billion-dollar class-action lawsuit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a sense, I am departing from the theme of honorary male
with Karen Crowder, because — even apart from the casual misogyny of the film —
Tilda Swinton’s performance hits inadvertently on a paradoxical truth about
real women trying to make it as honorary men in the real world of high-powered
politics and business. If it degrades men, it will degrade women. But that is
not what this film is meant to convey, at least by intent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s talk about misogyny first.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The writer and director, Tony Gilroy, is the author of the
screenplays for the Bourne series, high-powered, fast-action thrillers starring
Matt Damon as the amnesiac former government assassin, Jason Bourne. Gilroy was
nominated for an Academy Award for <i>Michael Clayton</i>, as were others; but his
comfort zone is obviously with the boys; and his one female action lead was
actually Jen, in <i>Star Wars: Rogue One</i>, which he co-wrote with Chris Weitz and
Gareth Edwards. Jen was a Smurfette, the only significant female part in an
otherwise all-male film. Jen kicked ass, for sure, and she was “hot.” [earlier
references in book to the trope of Exotic Hot Girl with a Gun]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Michael Clayton</i> centers its initial action around the manic
monologue of Arthur Eden, after his middle-aged infatuation with Anna, a
nineteen-year-old member of one of the plaintiff families, triggers a
man-epiphany about the depth of the evil of the company he represents. This is
the Insider Becomes Outsider trope. Arthur’s monologue opens the film as a
voiceover, then the movie circles around to re-capture that monologue again in
person after Arthur is locked up for stripping naked at Anna’s deposition.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During this carpet-chewing monologue, Arthur describes his
Damascene moment, which happened while he was with two prostituted Lithuanian
women. Understand, that Arthur is meant to be the absolute most sympathetic
character in the whole film;3 and this is important, because as he describes
this epiphany — after he has understood the difference between Good and Evil —
he says:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
I look up and there’s Marty in my office. He’s got some
champagne. He tells me we just hit 30,000 billable hours on U-North and he
wants to celebrate. So an hour later, I find myself in a whorehouse in Chelsea
with two Lithuanian redheads taking turns sucking my dick. I’m laying there and
I’m trying not to come and I wanna . . . I wanna make it last, so I start doing
the math. I think, “Thirty thousand hours, what is that? That’s 24 times 30.
That’s 720 hours in a month, 8760 hours in a year . . . No, wait, wait, wait!
Because it’s years! It’s lives! And the numbers are making me dizzy and, you
know . . . now, instead of trying not to come, I’m trying not to think, and I
can’t stop. I mean, is this me? Am I this freak organism that has been sent
here to sleep and eat . . . and defend this one horrific chain of carcinogenic
molecules? Is that my destiny? Is that my fate? Is that it, Michael? Is that my
grail? Two Lithuanian mouths on my cock? Is that the correct answer to the
multiple choice of me?</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ll wager that this monologue strikes men and women
differently. I’ll further wager that many men will feel <i>himpathy</i> for Arthur
without giving much thought to how thoughtlessly he has simultaneously
objectified and marginalized two probable victims of sex trafficking4 whom he
has exploited with none of the remorse he now feels for defending his client.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two women whom he reduces without a second thought to two
mouths on his cock, and is that his destiny, his grail, the answer to the
multiple choice of him. Because as we identify with Arthur, in his moment of
revelation, we know that it is all about Me. Man-Me. Those exploited women who
have been ordered by a pimp to stick Arthur’s rich, middle-aged dick in their
mouths are not the equivalent of (virginal) nineteen-year-old Anna, the
Midwestern farm girl who has stolen Arthur’s heart — “God’s perfect little
creature,” Arthur calls her — and inaugurated his redemption. Two throwaway
Lithuanian “redheads” are just part of Arthur’s symbolic background music,
Arthur’s account of probable rape5 being kind of funny and cute. Another “cute”
throwaway line is Michael himself, on the phone with another attorney, saying, “Look,
what can I say? Don’t piss off a motivated stripper.” Whore-Madonna, anyone?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Monstrous Feminine takes a turn with Karen Crowder.
Generally speaking, the term, as coined by Barbara Creed,6 refers to men’s
sexual anxieties with regard to women, to toothy vaginas and castration
complexes. But with Crowder, who is systematically de-sexualized in the film,
her monstrosity is based on her inability to handle man-stuff in a man’s world
without resorting to the worst of the man’s world, in this case contract
killing through a shadowy Blackwater-type security agency. So when one man,
Arthur Eden, suddenly faces a moral dilemma and tries to put justice aright
(albeit by breaking his oath as a lawyer) for the virginal nineteen-year-old
Anna and her family, it is the woman Karen Crowder’s inability to deal with the
crisis that leads her to a fatal escalation — which, by the way, will be put
aright by another man who comes face to face with his own moral dilemma —
Michael Clayton (joining the Insider Becomes Outsider trope).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Crowder’s de-sexualization — accomplished with unflattering
shots of her rubbing her sweaty armpits and non-provocatively half dressed in a
hotel room, emphasizing rolls of fat along her midsection, dressed for work in
suits that efface any hint of sexuality — highlights her loss of (sexually
attractive) womanhood (in the mind of the writer-director) as she attempts to
make it in the world of real (ruthlessly competitive) men.7</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Her loss of womanhood, in contrast to the fair Anna, is
precisely the basis of her monstrosity, monster in its meaning as something
that deviates from the norm.8</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Crowder’s “unexcused” incompetence raises the damning
possibility that women <i>per se</i> may be ill-suited for the world of high-powered
lawyers. This is a more troubling conclusion than other lawyer films that imply
women can be competent lawyers if they reconcile the inherent tensions between
their professional and personal lives. Karen Crowder epitomizes the depravity
that exists once women venture from the private sphere [not the position of the author], where they are thought
to find their ultimate satisfaction, into the public sphere of the legal world.
Stripped of her femininity, she is a shell of a human being with no sense of
purpose, no significant personal relationships, and no redeeming personal
traits. Whereas being a workaholic can be seen as a sign of passion and
dedication in a man, in a woman it is portrayed as a sign of weakness. With no
sense of self, she looks to other people for answers, for confirmation of her
role and identity. With her entire identity defined by her performance as
general counsel of U-North, Crowder does the unthinkable [contract killing].9</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Karen Crowder becomes simultaneously the antithesis of both
sweet Anna and the Hot Chick with a Gun (redeemed, at least, by “fuckability” [earlier reference]).10 Her
character is an expression of men’s sense of dislocation in the face of women
with economic and political power. This male discomfort extends far back into
literary history. Just look at Chaucer and Shakespeare (un-reformulated by
decontextualized modern readings), when the monstrosity of women in power was
codified in philosophy and law, and this same trope re-emerging in <i>Michael
Clayton</i> is as unsurprising as men’s casual acceptance of the story line and the
narrative’s casual misogyny.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
The distorted image of women lawyers in film is fairly
widespread and is the subject of frequent commentary. Most women lawyers in
1980s and 1990s films are unmarried or divorced, struggling to reconcile their
professional lives with their personal lives . . . The prevalent theme in these
films is that women cannot exist in the legal world without sacrificing their
“female self” — their roles as mother, daughter, wife, or girlfriend.11</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Compare this with the spate of popular ruthless (black!)
women-in-power series that now dominates the television scene (<i>How to Get Away
with Murder</i>, <i>Scandal</i>), and we can gain a glimpse of three different, related
phenomena: how reactionary Karen Crowder’s character is, how popular race and
gender decoys can conceal actual power structures, and how modernity’s moral
anchor, stretching its line back into the past, has broken loose and left us
ethically adrift. In <i>Murder</i> and <i>Scandal</i>, two different but both brilliant
professional black women — both trained as lawyers — are portrayed as
successfully playing hardball with the Big Boys, amorally and ruthlessly so,
each with a multi-racial, sexually-diverse posse, who bang their ways through
hyperactive, life-and-death plot twists with the alacrity of Serena Williams
knifing back fast serves at the Australian Open. Annalise Keating (Viola Davis)
and Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), characters created by a very successful
African American woman — Shonda Rhimes — represent black women who have “made
it,” albeit at the expense of nearly all remaining moral ground (a postmodern
conceit), in ways that look remarkably post-racial and post-feminist (both
characters are highly sexualized; and both series use a good deal of fast and
furious sex involving almost all the main characters to salaciously retain
their tempo). In the real world of the audience, however, the majority of
racial minorities and/or women are still getting the shitty end of the stick.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is classic race-gender decoy signaling (falsely) that
if you work hard (and set aside any moral scruples) you can make it (in the
white “meritocracy”). It abandons any and all criticism of the actual system
within which these women are “succeeding.” This, in turn, indicts our
“post-theoretical,” post-modern period. Old moral strictures held on through
the evolution of a political economy based on avarice and ruthlessness, waning
vestiges of some long-forgotten attachment to actual human virtues. Now they
are being discarded in favor of raw power, and that raw power is celebrated as
virtue; just as symbolism (underdogs “making it”) comes to trump reality:
unreconstructed racial and gender inequality created and maintained by the very
system within which that inequality nests.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Karen Crowder is meant as a warning from men to women, an
old fashioned one that predates the MTV kick-and-punch narrative pace and
post-Tarantino moral destitution of <i>Scandal</i> and <i>Murder</i>. It says that at the end
of gender, as a system that divides power between men and women, is chaos and
horror. In a very real sense, <i>Michael Clayton</i> is a 1970s Reluctant Hero
trope,12 and women are seen through that (male) lens. This is why the
predominantly old, white, male Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was
quick to bestow multiple Oscar nominations on the film. It was familiar: film
noir (concrete jungle), hero-lawyer (male), Insider Becomes Outsider (male),
Western (white male, reluctant hero). This is why many of us enjoyed the film
with our first uncritical viewing. The conventions were familiar, the
production values high, and we like those things for the same reason I can eat
a large bag of Twizzlers — they’re tasty, strangely addictive and familiar
satisfactions without much nutrition.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Katarzyna Poloczek makes some interesting observations about
<i>Michael Clayton</i> and Karen Crowder in her essay, “From the Kitchen into the Bathroom.”13 Women characters, prior to the backlash against feminism, were portrayed in the kitchen: the Angel in the Kitchen trope. Think I Love
Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, Little House on the Prairie, and more recently Soul
Food. Poloczek notes that as women were confronted (in the male mind) with the
drawbacks of feminism, the site of their angst became the bathroom. She cites
episodes of House, Black Swan, and Michael Clayton.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Michael Clayton, this happens in the first scene after
the opening sequence in which Michael’s car is mysteriously blown up. We flash
back. On screen: “Four days earlier.” We are in the swarming hive of the big
law firm, “Kenner, Back & Ledeen.” One lawyer approaches another with a
telephone, announcing, “It’s that cunt from the Wall Street Journal,” whereupon
his Big Boss takes this unseen but uppity “cunt” and puts her quickly and soundly
in her place. That’s what the “cunt” gets for playing with the Big Boys. The
next thing the boss asks, during a frantic midnight crisis management scene in
the Big Office, is, “Where in the fuck is Karen Crowder?” Her name called,
Karen does not make her entrance in the film with the protagonist’s first-scene
backlighting. Instead, we find her cowering in a bathroom stall, mouth agape,
overwhelmed with anxiety, lifting up her arm and showing the audience a huge
sweat stain that would have been covered by her suit jacket.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Likewise, throughout the rest of the film, the official game
of (self) deception that the Swinton character plays is interrupted and
undermined mainly in the bathroom scenes where the nearly out-of-her-mind woman
puts aside her professional mask, and we can discern her true emotions. Unseen
and unjudged by others, it is only in the bathroom that Crowder can be in touch
with her body and her real feelings. Karen escapes to the bathroom each time
when the situation becomes too overwhelming and when she is about to lose
control. The audience examines Karen’s exposed body, with all its
imperfections, corporeal fluids, and strained nerves when her entire organism
revolts against what her mind is rationalizing.14</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paradoxically, these are the most compelling scenes in the
film, in my opinion. In spite of the male misogyny that permeated this film and
motivated her scenes, Swinton humanized them with her amazing performance. They
confront us with a reality for women trying to make it in a “man’s world” that
is difficult to acknowledge without setting the stage for certain ideological
confusions. This is where I think we can usefully compare the fictional
character of Karen Crowder with the real politician, Hillary Clinton.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Managing a public persona, especially for people driven by
powerful ambitions, requires the most profound kind of compartmentalization —
the separating out of one’s performances, even one’s professional duties and
obligations, from all other aspects of one’s life that might be categorized as
personal. There is no more emblematic role for compartmentalizing than that of
the combat soldier, who might engage in the most barbarous kinds of violence
and calculated cruelty in a war zone, then be expected to behave in
dramatically different ways as a brother, husband, or father.15</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In an interview, Tilda Swinton explained how she got into
character for Karen Crowder, saying, “For me, she is like a soldier. She wears
a uniform. She follows the flag. It is reductive to think this is only about
lawyers or America. It’s about systems that require people to leave themselves
outside while following orders.” Swinton went on to describe Crowder as a “good
girl” who wanted to do a good job, but in her need to prove herself surrendered
to desperate measures. “My lawyer was at the screening . . .” said Swinton,
“and I said to her, ‘Tell me this isn’t true.’ And she said, ‘Well, I believe
it.’”16</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hillary Clinton began running for the presidency of the
United States sometime between 1992 and 2000. We can’t read her mind about
exactly when she set her cap for it;17 but in 2000, she changed her address to
New York for the express purpose of using her and former President Clinton’s
political capital to run for the safe, soon-to-be vacated US Senate seat of Daniel
Patrick Moynihan. Few people doubt that this move was calculated as the logical
springboard for an eventual presidential run, or she’d have run for Senate in
Arkansas. When she did run in 2008, her willingness to perform in accordance
with the cynical machinations of several of her husband’s former managers
(winning her a reputation as a highly scripted, and even wooden candidate)
backfired in South Carolina, and set Barack Obama on a course to defeat her for
the nomination. Her consolation prize was to be appointed Secretary of State,
whereupon she very predictably threw her hat back into the ring for 2016. What
was going to be a party coronation ran into a roadblock as a populist revolt
threw up Bernie Sanders, an avowed “democratic socialist,” as a serious primary
opponent. The rest, we know, is history, as she was narrowly and stunningly
defeated by the unlikely, terrifyingly stupid, and dimly venal Donald Trump.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Politics is gendered, and when anyone is running for
President, the highly gendered question is raised, again and again, of who is
tough enough (read: macho enough) to be a “strong Commander-in-Chief.” Clinton
knew this, and as a Senator, she was already erring on the side of military
action, voting yes on every military action proposed, including the disastrous
war in Iraq. As Secretary of State, she hawkishly promoted the expansion of US
attacks from two to seven nations, the (again disastrous) overthrow of Libya by
military action, and even facilitating a coup d’etat against a democratic government
in Honduras. No one was going to out-macho her as Commander-in-Chief; and she
amassed a body count to prove it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like Karen Crowder, though, where men could get away with
doing these amoral man things in the tough “man’s world,” women were caught in
a double-bind. On the one hand, when you commit big crimes, you deserve to be
punished; and both women were willing to have others killed to get where they
wanted to be. On the other hand — and this recalls the contradictions of the O.
J. Simpson trial — the public sphere is infected with sexism (and racism), and
there is little doubt that the difference between the way Clinton was treated
for doing the same things that men had done was — for a substantial part of the
population — based on a profound double-standard. So, for some the opposition
to Clinton during the nomination process was based on opposition to particular
policies that were similarly opposed in their male guises by Bush and Obama.
For others, there was explicit sexism. And so many people found themselves
simultaneously opposing Clinton’s policies while trying to defend her from
attacks that were based on sexism, as well as defend themselves from those who
took any opposition to Clinton as evidence that they were guilty of sexism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the film, <i>Michael Clayton</i>, speaking for myself, I had a
glimpse, through Swinton’s portrayal, of the special price paid by women for
that kind of ambition — and I felt empathy for the character as she rehearsed
and rehearsed, fighting always with a kind of latent self-loathing at a
perceived inadequacy drilled into a woman for her lifetime, lapsing into a
terrible sadness between “takes” on her upcoming performance in that bathroom
mirror. And it makes me wonder about Clinton, in her moments of highly privatized
vulnerability, and how unbearably sad she may actually be. Justice aside,
because I’m not clean either. I was a combat soldier; and I committed brutal
actions in pursuit of my own ambition to prove some version of masculinity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The danger here, in acknowledging the moral and emotional
cost for women who are trying to fill what were formerly male shoes, is
twofold.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, by focusing on the cost for women, we might miss what
is wrong with these forms of power in the first place;18 and second is that
anti-feminists will be quick to attempt, as Poloczek points out, laying this
issue at the feet of feminism for “taking women out of their proper roles,”
emboldening the anti-feminist backlash.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Has Hillary Clinton made herself over to be an honorary male
as a route to the top? I would suggest the answer is a qualified yes.
Traditionally male roles do not adapt themselves — or their “masculine”
character — to liberal feminists. The liberal feminist, if her goal is to “make
it” in the existing hierarchies, will be forced to adapt herself to the norms,
goals, and attitudes of the job description, developed by foregoing patriarchal
males within a meshwork of patriarchal social relations, some pregnant with
violence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A related problem is the “cult of success.” For Christians [I
wrote this book from a Christian perspective], who follow
an itinerant beggar rabbi who was killed by the authorities, the notion of
meritocracy, and its “cult of success,” ought to be anathema. Moreover, the
“cult of success” mindset is one that easily substitutes individual and
symbolic success stories for the goal of systemic justice (for all). It is a
powerful temptation, because any group of people who have been systematically
put down by being told how they are unfit to “make it” will understandably
celebrate anyone who proves this particular claim of unfitness wrong —
simultaneously rebelling against the system while accepting and reiterating its
basic premises.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hillary Clinton did make it, even if she didn’t make it to
the very top. And while I wonder about the price she paid, morally and
emotionally, to get there, <i>I would ask the same question of the men who
preceded her</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Recognizing that her status as a woman really was an
impediment in a sexist society, I also have to recognize that the price she
paid may have been steeper than the price paid by men. In real life, I imagine
this is very difficult for her. Clinton did engage in directed violence, though
unlike Karen Crowder, who is represented as pursuing violent goals for personal
gain, Clinton — like all politicians — wrapped her violence in the flag and
characterized it as redemptive. In real life, it is true, she continues to
benefit from her status and power; but I wonder if she might also be sad in her
center.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Karen Crowder, on the other hand, must be made to pay.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ironically, now as a converted neophyte, Clayton executes
the conclusive justice on Karen . . . Clayton triumphantly and patronizingly
preaches Crowder a backlash lesson . . . “For such a smart person, you really
are lost, aren’t you?” . . . Swinton’s character seems to epitomize aptly . . .
the recent backlash against women. Ingenious as the acting performance is, it
does maintain the negative stereotypes of professional women clichés: Crowder
[note the surname, crowding in where she does not belong] is viewed as
desperate; an emotionally disturbed person with no personal life who decided to
build her career over the dead bodies of her competitors — not just for money
or power but to prove to men that she “can have it all.” She is ultimately
overcome and victimized by the very same patriarchal system that she tried to
serve so dutifully.19</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>End excerpt</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 2017, as the Weinstein revelations came out, Hillary
Clinton said of her old friend that she was “appalled.” Her appallment has
never extended to her estranged husband, and she is loathe to mention the name
“Epstein” now, because everyone knows that Bill and Jeffrey were tight.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.naturalnews.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F91%2F2019%2F08%2FJeffrey-Epstein-Bill-Clinton.png&f=1&nofb=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="673" height="194" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.naturalnews.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F91%2F2019%2F08%2FJeffrey-Epstein-Bill-Clinton.png&f=1&nofb=1" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact . . . and this is where the latest from Hillary is
the most indecipherable except as her handlers’ incompetence . . . in the era
of #MeToo, the best thing she would do for the Democratic Party establishment —
up to its neck in sexual predators — is to keep a low profile. So what’s going
on?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s begin with her own history of complicity in defense of
her own spouse. Surely she understands that this just re-exposes her, Bill, and
much of the geriatric Democratic establishment, to exactly the kind of
childishly simple opposition research that could sink political careers. Her
own bourgeois “feminism” is a fallen statue in the wake of #MeToo, a movement
that has put patriarchal sexual relations between men and women back at center
stage. It’s very difficult to say “believe women,” when you’ve tried to attack
and discredit the numerous victims of your own husband’s sexual predation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Say their names: Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Gennifer
Flowers, Leslie Millwee, Kathleen Willey, Sandra Allen James . . . all asking
at once to Clinton’s bourgeois “feminism” what Sojourner Truth asked to the
Women’s Convention of 1851: “Ain’t I a woman?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What’s going on, I suspect, is another Hail Mary play from
the establishment in their absolute panic about Sanders as he is positioned to
sweep Iowa, New Hampshire, and — with that momentum — Nevada . . . prior to
South Carolina and Super Tuesday. And like every play they’ve tried so far, it
will crash on the rocks, because they are using old maps to navigate a new
political terrain. They “really are lost.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I believe they are trying to re-nominate her. Hulu is
featuring a miniseries on her, and the press is going nuts republishing her
remarks against Sanders. I think they’re floating trial balloons for a strategy
that involves inserting her into a brokered convention.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s an idiotic ploy, consistent in every way
with how they’ve snatched defeat from the jaws of victory again and again. And
every attack on Sanders, trying to paint him as a closet sexist over the last
week and a half, has resulted in backlash against the perpetrators, a
continuing loss of credibility among the sycophantic press, and another surge
in support and fundraising for Sanders.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I want to tell them something about being in a hole . . .
stop digging. But they can’t hear. It’s like they’re trapped in a bubble that’s
broken away from the political firmament and started floating away . . .
further and further away from reality . . . and everyone in it listens to
everyone else obsessively saying the same things over and over, in complete
denial about the fact that they are no longer attached to anything.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
###</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
footnotes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. Silverstein, Women & Hollywood.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. Film that portrays this idolatry in men tends to redeem
the male protagonist from his personal failures by making him very good at his
job. Perhaps what will redeem films is when they can portray this idolatry in
men the same way they did for Karen Crowder. But, as it stands in this film,
Michael Clayton — also a failure in personal matters — is stereotypically
redeemed in the public/professional world by solving the whodunit and taking
down Crowder. Swinton’s portrayal does make Karen Crowder come across as a
victim, which I will argue is the truth in many respects about what happens to
women trying to “make it” as honorary men — the moral hazard of “equality” in a
world where men have the prerogative, even the obligation, to engage in
cutthroat competition. However, the film goes on to subvert Swinton’s
performance, and its implications, by depicting Crowder, and not patriarchal
cutthroat competition, as somehow monstrous.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. A trope that Kate Mann calls “himpathy.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4. “It’s lives!” But there are two Lithuanian women whose
lives are incidental.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5. Department of State, “Lithuania.” More than forty percent
of people trafficked from Lithuania are women and girls destined for the sex
trade, mostly in Britain and the United States. These women are under the constant
control of pimps, “broken in” by gang rape, often at the ages of fourteen to
fifteen, and “work” virtually as sex slaves. Therefore, anyone who pays
(ultimately pays a pimp) to have sex with them is engaging in nonconsensual
sex, i.e., rape. This condition of coerced servitude is true of most
prostituted women, and should give pause to the people who try to sanitize this
situation by calling prostitution “sex work,” and try to pass off this vicious
and highly-organized form of sexual exploitation as a “contractual” relation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
6. And seen through a Freudian-Lacanian frame, again.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
7. There is a whole field of psychology, called “disgust
psychology,” studying how disgust is learned as a social policing mechanism.
Who is in? Who is out? There is a long history of hatred for the female body,
sexualized and de-sexualized, reinforced by culturally encoded disgust. This
exists alongside the idealization and sexualization of women’s bodies — which
are infantilized with compulsory hairlessness and thinness, demobilized in high
heels, and silenced in representation (with its opposites represented as
disgusting). The body’s boundaries are policed by socialized disgust; and
women’s bodies, as the boundaries that are breached, by menstruation,
lactation, and childbirth, are represented as disgusting objects. This
body-boundary disgust is symbolically associated with something called
“animal-reminder disgust,” which is likewise associated with the fear of death.
Culturally, the object of disgust is dealt with by expulsion, often using a
scapegoat mechanism. The object of disgust is expelled from within the social
boundary, exiled or destroyed. Karen Crowder will eventually be destroyed
figuratively (as she collapses to the floor) and expelled (arrested and
presumably sent to prison), this being the cathartic moment in the film.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
8. Monstrosity for females comes in several guises:
castrator, bad mother, black widow, ambitious woman, etc. Mythically, monsters
are often “unnatural” hybrids — centaurs, minotaurs, etc. Androgyny, the
manifestation of both “masculine” and “feminine” characteristics, is still
perceived by many as monstrous, or “unnaturally” hybrid.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
9. Banks, “Women Lawyers Betrayed,” 119.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
10. The criterion of “fuckability,” reviewing now, is
related to the maintenance of men’s sexual prerogative, a perceived entitlement
to women’s bodies, and an entitlement to define women as sexual objects,
particularly in the face of women’s “incursions” into formerly male fields
apart from sex, like certain work and sports. It is a way in which men can
continue to “enclose” women, reducing them to a figuratively possessable
object. Where men are seeing their control over women diminished in other
fields, they will more aggressively reassert that control in the sexual realm.
You can have that gun in my story, as long as you meet my “hotness” standard.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
11. Ibid.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
12. Kamir, “Michael Clayton,” para. 23.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
13. Poloczek, “From the Kitchen to the Bathroom.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
14. Ibid.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
15. Real combat soldiers are overwhelmingly men. The same
applies, however, to sisters, wives, and mothers in armed service.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
16. Wloszczyna, “‘Clayton’ revives conspiracy genre,” para.
27–28.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
17. Carroll, “10 times.” She stated in 1994 that she wanted
to be the President, then played it off as a joke. By 2006, she admitted she
was “looking at it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
18. Or the fact that men are, likewise, emotionally damaged
by masculinity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
19. Poloczek, “From the Kitchen to the Bathroom,” 231.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F160909161454-trump-clinton-3-super-tease.jpg&f=1&nofb=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F160909161454-trump-clinton-3-super-tease.jpg&f=1&nofb=1" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--[if !mso]>
<style>
v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
.shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
</style>
<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="false"
DefSemiHidden="false" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="371">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footer"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of figures"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope return"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="line number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="page number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Salutation"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Theme"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="List Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="List Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="List Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
line-height:107%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
</style>
<![endif]-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-75909039401101002012020-01-31T04:26:00.004-08:002020-01-31T04:26:38.433-08:00Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Biden & Bloomberg — Democratic racists<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9356">
<strong class="gv hl">Klobuchar</strong> </div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9356">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://tecake.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/amy-klobuchar-myon-burrell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://tecake.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/amy-klobuchar-myon-burrell.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9356">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9356">
</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
Prosecuting
Attorney Amy Klobuchar, it has been revealed, probably railroaded a
black man into a life sentence for something he did not do. She brags
about it on the campaign trail to show that she, too, can be a macho
law-and-order maven. So much for New York Times endorsements. In the
past two days, Black Lives Matter and the Minneapolis NAACP have called
for her to end her presidential bid, because in 2002, she led the
prosecution of then-teen-aged African American Myron Burrell for a
drive-by shooting that killed 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards. No evidence
tied Burrell to the shooting, and a co-defendent confessed to it and
stated that Burrell wasn’t even there; nonetheless she pressed on and
obtained a conviction. She convicted a minor, put him in prison for
life, then denied his request to attend his mother’s funeral after she
was killed in a motor vehicle accident during a commute to visit him.
Klobuchar said Burrell was too much of a threat to society to be allowed
at the funeral. To add insult to injury, she has repeatedly cited him
by name as the embodiment of evil on the campaign trail to demonstrate
her tough-on-crime <em class="gu">bona fides</em>.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
So,
no surprise there, another prosecutor who’d rather destroy lives than
admit to an error, who’d climb over bodies to advance a career. I guess
throwing things at staffers — legally that’s assault, and if she hit
someone, battery — is the least of her issues.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
Fortunately, Klobuchar has a snowball’s chance in hell of being nominated.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
* </div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
<strong class="gv hl"></strong></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b9cb">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9809">
<strong class="gv hl">Buttigieg</strong></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9809">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fzh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com%2Fs3fs-public%2Finline-images%2Fbutti1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="800" height="196" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fzh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com%2Fs3fs-public%2Finline-images%2Fbutti1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9809">
<strong class="gv hl"></strong></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9809">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9809">
Next
on the hit parade is Mayor Pete, who assumed the mantle of Mayor in
South Bend, Indiana, in 2012. When he took office, there were three
African Americans in key positions: Mayor’s Assistant, Fire Chief, and
Police Chief. All three were soon gone.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9809">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9809">
On
June 16, 2019, racist South Bend, Indiana police officers, under Mayor
Buttigieg, shot an African American resident, Eric Jack Logan. Sergeant
Ryan O’Neill shot Logan with his body cam turned off, according to him,
and Officer Aaron Knepper, as we know from records now, intentionally
delayed transporting Logan to the Emergency Room after he was shot.
Logan died, and after Buttigieg was confronted with the racist history
of both officers, he sat on his hands, claiming he had no power over the
the case.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9809">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="c0ff">
Not
true, because he has the legal power to fire police. For example, in
April Mayor Pete had fired Daryll Boykins, the African American Police
Chief, for marching in a parade protesting the killing of Trayvon Martin
by the loony racist vigilante George Zimmerman. In the case of Boykins,
tapes eventually emerged showing a conspiracy of racist white police
officers and some of Buttigieg’s big donors to rid themselves of
Boykins. Buttigieg and his chief of staff, Mike Schmuhl, lied to
Boykins, telling him he was under federal investigation for a possible
violation of wiretap laws (after the tapes of the racist officers came
out) and that the only way to avoid being prosecuted was to resign.
Mission accomplished, white peoples! Blame the black guy. Admit nothing,
deny everything, make counter-accusations.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="c0ff">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1b87">
In
2019, during his presidential primary campaign, Pete outed himself as a
liar and sneak-weasel yet again. Enter the “Frederick Douglass Plan for
Black America,” a kind of policy paper his handlers ginned up in the
hopes that Mayor Pete could bewilder credulous black voters.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1b87">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1b87">
When
Pete’s campaign unveiled this masterpiece, aimed at the South Carolina
Primary, his campaign announced that it has “400 black South
Carolinians” as endorsers, including some very prominent figures in
South Carolina politics. On November 15, 2019, Ryan Grim of <em class="gu">The Intercept</em> published <a class="bh cp hh hi hj hk" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/11/15/pete-buttigieg-campaign-black-voters/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">an investigative piece</a>
showing a few problems with this claim. Grim could only confirm 297
“signatories” of the “more than 400,” and 62 percent of them turned out
to be . . . white people.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1b87">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e7cb">
Imagine if the Sanders campaign did this and
the media reaction. Of those who signed, including the transmogrified
white folks, several were not South Carolinians at all . . . one lived
in São Paulo. That’s in Brazil. The endorsement of The Plan, of course,
was meant to serve Mayor Pete in South Carolina (where Hillary Clinton
once went to die) by <em class="gu">doubling as a tacit endorsement of Mayor Pete</em>. Okay, that’s kind of ethically sketchy.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e7cb">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e644">
When
called, however, the three “prominent” endorsers — Columbia City
Councilwoman Tameika Devine, Baptist pastor and state Rep. Ivory
Thigpen, and Johnnie Cordero, chair of the state party’s Black Caucus —
said (I’m paraphrasing), “We didn’t endorse shit.” Rev/Rep. Thigpen, it
should be noted, is actually the co-chair of <em class="gu">South Carolina Bernie 2020</em>.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e644">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="3503">
How were the “endorsements” acquired? By email. That’s what I said. Email. Pete’s campaign <em class="gu">emailed</em>
“400” black-not-black people with the plan and asked for their
endorsement of the plan, which he would attempt to pass off as
endorsements of his candidacy. I personally have about 13 trillion
unanswered emails. No phone call, no interviews. He didn’t want to
discuss it, just spin it. In that email, the campaign was already
claiming “400 black South Carolinians” had signed on, as encouragement
one might surmise. It was a bald faced lie, but an encouraging bald
faced lie. In these solicitation emails there was an “opt-out” option
(is that redundant?). One could — provided one answered the email and
provided one read the email carefully, including the fine print — opt
out of endorsing the plan. If anyone they solicited through email <em class="gu">without follow up calls</em> did not reply to the email with an opt-out box checked, Pete & Co. went ahead and listed them as endorsers.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="3503">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="3503">
<strong class="gv hl">* </strong></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="3503">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1cd0">
<strong class="gv hl">Biden</strong></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1cd0">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fthenypost.files.wordpress.com%2F2018%2F09%2F180921-anita-hill-joe-biden-ap-index.jpg%3Fquality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%26w%3D1200&f=1&nofb=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fthenypost.files.wordpress.com%2F2018%2F09%2F180921-anita-hill-joe-biden-ap-index.jpg%3Fquality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%26w%3D1200&f=1&nofb=1" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /><div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="ab64">
Now, let’s move on to Joe Biden — antagonist to Anita Hill, supporter of <em class="gu">de facto</em> school segregation, master jailer, and serial liar.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="ab64">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="59cf">
In
1991, Biden joined his fellow male-supremacist Arlen Specter in
trashing Anita Hill on national television after she had the temerity to
accuse the ultra-conservative Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of
sexual harassment. Biden as kind of apologized, though he’s never taken
full responsibility for his aggressions, including the fact that he
blocked three other women’s testimony against Thomas during the
hearings. But his record goes back further than that.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="59cf">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="2abb">
In
the 1970s Biden worked with arch racists Sen. Jesse Helms and Sen.
Robert Byrd to add an anti-busing amendment to a federal bill. (The
NAACP called it “the anti-black amendment.”) Busing, for those not old
enough to remember, was a method for the racial integration of schools.
That is, some children would take the school bus to out-of-district
schools. It may not seem like a big deal now, but it was a clarion call
to the white racists of the day — and Joe heaped right on with them in
his opposition to “forced busing,” a racial dog whistle. Biden defended
his stance on “forced busing” as late as 2007.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="2abb">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="dd1f">
During
Biden’s law-and-order crusades in the 1980s and 1990s, when he was
pushing for mass incarceration, he referred to black offenders as
“superpredators” and “sociopaths” beyond redemption. Biden was a key
figure in mandatory minimums, powder-rock cocaine sentencing
disparities, civil asset forfeiture, and expanded use of the death
penalty.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="dd1f">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="5ddd">
“Biden worked tirelessly,” writes Eric Levitz of <em class="gu">Intelligencer</em>,
“over several decades, to make America’s (profoundly racist)
criminal-justice system more punitive than any other advanced
democracy’s.”</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="5ddd">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="d4b3">
In
February 2007, while he was considering a run for the presidency, he
remarked about Barack Obama, “I mean, you got the first mainstream
African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a
nice-looking guy.” Hmmm.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="d4b3">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="92b5">
Biden, of course, has bigger problems than that if he is the nominee. <a class="bh cp hh hi hj hk" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTgPbLkh3F0" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">His serial lies are on record and on tape.</a> One of his lies, told repeatedly for decades, was that he marched during the civil rights movement. Nope, never, not even once.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="92b5">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="99f7">
Shaun
King wrote, “For nearly 50 years, Joe Biden has publicly pretended to
have been part of the Civil Rights Movement. He is not ‘exaggerating’ or
‘embellishing,’ he is creating entire fictional story lines to impress
white liberals and connect with black voters.” He lies. Shamelessly and
repeatedly, as we saw recently with his prevarications about cutting
Social Security and Meidcare, <em class="gu">even when confronted with videotaped evidence to the contrary</em>. On thirty-one occasions he repeated the lie that he had participated in Civil Rights sit-ins.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="99f7">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e8df">
We
haven’t even begun to talk about Biden’s history of plagiarism. The
point is, apart from his racist record, all these problems — which the
CNNs and MSNBCs seem to have missed — are going to make great fodder for
the Trump campaign. I’ll say this now . . . if Biden is nominated,
Trump will be reelected. Biden’s record — suppressed now by the idiots
at CNN, MSNBC, the <em class="gu">New York Times,</em> and the <em class="gu">Washington Post </em>who’d
rather have Trump than Bernie — will be broadcast in Republican ads
that will effectively suppress enough voters for Trump to pull another
hat trick.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e8df">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1a63">
Joe Biden is not electable.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1a63">
<strong class="gv hl"></strong></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1a63">
<strong class="gv hl"><br /></strong></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1a63">
<strong class="gv hl">*</strong></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1a63">
<strong class="gv hl"><br /></strong></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="5551">
<strong class="gv hl">Bloomberg</strong> </div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="5551">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F2mjntijv9ph1zqgg835rbyye-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F11%2F54189E48-7198-4A90-9B8D-C3136687A923.jpeg&f=1&nofb=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="800" height="199" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F2mjntijv9ph1zqgg835rbyye-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F11%2F54189E48-7198-4A90-9B8D-C3136687A923.jpeg&f=1&nofb=1" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="5551">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="53ee">
Now,
finally, we come to Michael Bloomberg, the richer of the two
billionaire oligarchs running for the Democratic nomination. Bloomberg
is not in it to win it. He is part of a plot to force the Democratic
Convention into a second round of voting, so the Wall Street wing of the
party can steal the nomination from Sanders using superdelegates. I
mean, I’m sure Bloomberg has fantasies of winning. But there’s the real
deal. That’s why he is avoiding debates — where he might be questioned
on his racist record — and flooding every manner of medium with slick
feel-good ads. More than $100 million worth of ads. Like a miasma that
infiltrates everything. He is buying influence, literally.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="53ee">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e64b">
It
was as Mayor of New York that he proposed fingerprinting low income
housing residents, while he was also implementing the infamous NY Police
policy of “stop and frisk,” a fascist program that heavily targeted
African Americans and Latin@s, and by the way violated the Constitution.
He apologized for it once he threw his hat into the ring for 2020 . . .
how convenient. When federal judge Shira Scheindlin ruled “stop and
frisk” unconstitutional, Bloomberg referred to her as “some woman” who
was incompetent. He hasn’t apologized for that yet.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e64b">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="a678">
We
could talk about his sexism as well, because he has on many occasions
been called down for discussing women in a highly objectifying and
patronizing way, once publicly calling down New York City Council
Speaker Christine Quinn for not wearing high heels.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="a678">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="4b09">
Columnist George Blow wrote in <a class="bh cp hh hi hj hk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/10/opinion/michael-bloomberg.html" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">a 2019 <em class="gu">New York Times</em> op-ed</a>, “No black person — or Hispanic person or ally of people of color — should ever even <em class="gu">consider</em>
voting for Michael Bloomberg in the primary. His expansion of the
notoriously racist stop-and-frisk program in New York, which swept up
millions of innocent New Yorkers, primarily young black and Hispanic
men, is a complete and nonnegotiable deal killer.</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="4b09">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="f783">
“Stop-and-frisk,
pushed as a way to get guns and other contraband off the streets,
became nothing short of a massive, enduring, city-sanctioned system of
racial terror.”</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="f783">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="7086">
*</div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="7086">
<br /></div>
<div class="gs gt bz at gv b gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg dr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="7086">
In
summary, all four of these candidates need to be electorally destroyed,
on the grounds of racism, but also because not a single one of them
will survive a contest with Trump’s scorched-earth campaign.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-72416985475279995862020-01-27T06:26:00.002-08:002020-01-27T06:53:54.775-08:00Contagion Narrative—Sanders, Rogan, and Ideological Impurity<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="false"
DefSemiHidden="false" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="371">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footer"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of figures"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope return"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="line number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="page number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Salutation"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Theme"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="List Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="List Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="List Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
line-height:107%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Contagion is the dominant horror of the 21st century, an
era marked by epidemics of terror, war, and economic crisis. Just as atomic
anxiety infused Cold War-era pop culture, fear of contagion dominates recent
pop culture in the form of apocalyptic zombie plagues, viral pandemics,
infectious vampires, parasitized bodies, and microbe-caused mutations.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Dan Dinello</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhircMn7sQANQTtFqj6h0foVNg-E6s2Q5zJ92h5Kv-Ru8ZvAMEeQYwYi-3jGyz_jj6IMElTABGEgaZsLfxs7mf2qVdV7oj9vGqs2G79Wm_H8_GF3tA5vjNfn5kKtn0oWArWbwt30GHsKXbs/s1600/230162.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="680" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhircMn7sQANQTtFqj6h0foVNg-E6s2Q5zJ92h5Kv-Ru8ZvAMEeQYwYi-3jGyz_jj6IMElTABGEgaZsLfxs7mf2qVdV7oj9vGqs2G79Wm_H8_GF3tA5vjNfn5kKtn0oWArWbwt30GHsKXbs/s1600/230162.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Performative
hyperventilation</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It really doesn’t matter what the Sanders campaign does, the
media and a dispersed company of bitter old sectarians and clueless postmodern puritans
will find a way to denounce Sanders now as a sinner . . . as one who is
contaminated, one of the infected. The campaign’s enemies latch onto this hooey
like hungry little leeches. The latest episode is the endorsement of Bernie
Sanders by radio/podcast host Joe Rogan. Oh, the horror! Sanders is now
contaminated by the touch of the ideologically impure!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rogan, who I—in my pop culture illiteracy—had never heard of
until I saw him interview Cornell West a while back, is all over the map with philosophical
and political inconsistencies. In other words, he is just like 99 percent of .
. . well, everyone. And so he is not tuned into that “woke” one percent’s
interpretive melodies. Sometimes he says things that hit the OFFEND button, resulting
in permanent banishment from the Realm of Woke Liberals.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Formation v. inhering
superiority</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once upon a time, most of us seemed to understand that no
one is perfect, including ourselves. One of the most difficult things about
life in general is dealing with the fact that no matter how hard we try,
everybody hurts someone else sometimes, everyone offends sometimes, and
everybody commits little injustices. I hurt other people sometimes. I offend
others sometimes. I commit injustices sometimes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unless we advocate for a state of permanent war, the only peaceful
way forward is through understanding, compassion, acceptance, repentance, and
forgiveness. We all need the do-overs.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was ten, I had never been exposed to anything except 1950s-white-culture’s
casual racism and sexism. I had no other interpretive tools than what were
passed on to me inside my little bubble. My parents, white culture, and
television were my formative influences. I didn’t have a disease. All of us inherit
a world view, one that is seldom, if ever, “consistent.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Joe Rogan has—by all accounts, because I’ve never listened
to anything except his interviews with Bernie Sanders and Cornell West—said things
with which I disagree, and even committed faux pas that gave offense. But,
backing away from this to get some perspective, I think back on all the ways I
did the same things. Because, though I now count myself anti-racist,
anti-sexist, anti-xenophobic, and anti-capitalist (I really upped the anti’s,
yeah?), I wasn’t born that way, and my evolution from There to Here was marked
by hundreds, maybe thousands, of little experiential dislocations, imperfect
reflections, and a lot of patient people who gave me more chances. And guess
what? I still find ways to screw this up.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Performative virtue</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Joe Rogan’s Bernie-love is not even the main topic today; it’s
just a way to begin an examination of “woke” Puritanism and its petulant
cousin, hyper-moralizing leftism. Regarding Joe Rogan et al, as far as the
Sanders campaign goes, this is an election . . . in case folks have forgotten
in the heat of their virtue signaling. In elections, one side has to get more
votes than the other to win. Now, that can mean two things: (1) we accept every
new vote we can find and welcome others into our movement where they can learn
new things like we had to, or (2) we can establish purity codes that exclude
anyone who has not achieved our level of uber-enlightenment, lose the election,
and bask in our own perfection while the world burns. Politics or exclusive little cliques. You choose.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As to our contagion narratives, let’s take a closer look at
what they are and how they work. A disclaimer, because the Woke Ones will jump
like they’ve been tasered and tell me how there are real forms of oppression—as
if you or I didn’t already know that—and that this oppression is reproduced in
its most granular way through our own complicity and our own lack of understanding.
Duh. No one here is saying that we quit criticizing, quit analyzing, quit resisting
these forms of oppression. We can even hold each other accountable, though the poisonous
and Inquisitional call-out culture I see way too often is absolutely not helpful. It’s
just me telling you that I am a superior being and you are trash because you
were not, like me, born with sociological tracts built into my superior and uncontaminated
neural pathways.<br />
<br />
Something about "casting the first stone."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Everyone lives in the
same swamp</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Capitalism is bad. I can prove that. You may accept that.
But neither you nor I can do anything at all effective about it, with rare
exceptions, through the easy application of virtuous personal choice. Think about
virtuous consumption, as one example. This is not to say that turning plastic
grocery bags into yarn or refusing to shop at (pick your place) is bad. I’m
saying personal choice <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">politics</i> is a
form of self-delusion that makes people feel better. Personal ethical consumer
choices are not bad, but in themselves, they cannot transform unjust social
structures. More to the point, no matter what you or I do, we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">will</i> participate in and reproduce capitalism
whether we like it or not. Did you ride in any fossil-fueled transport in the
last day or two?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This personal choice politics corresponds to the demand for
pre-perfected virtue, which we are seeing with the Rogan-Sanders kerfuffle (hugely
amplified by a Sanders-hostile press). Virtue according to “our own” standards.
Virtue signaling and contagion narrative call-out culture are both forms of
performative virtue designed to remain inside the inner circle; and with them we
have, like any garden variety neoliberal, shifted our critique from the
systematic to the personal, our politics from building power to forming cliques.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Medicalizing
boundaries</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now to contagion narratives <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per se</i>, in a one, two, three.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One. Human groups have always been defined by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">boundaries</i>. Certain people are inside,
certain people are outside, and certain people have standing on both sides of
the boundary. A chess club will likely not have any members who don’t play
chess, so this inclusion-exclusion phenomenon isn’t nefarious in itself. Some
boundaries are drawn for protection of the group, or perceived protection of
the group. But many boundaries are drawn in the interest of accumulating power.
Some rationalize that power by appealing dishonestly to group protection. So it
goes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two. Boundaries are policed. One of the ways, its origins
prehistoric, in which boundaries are policed is through what anthropologist Mary
Douglas (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Purity and Danger</i>, 1966)
called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">purity codes</i>—systematic ideas
about purity as access to the inside and pollution as that which must be
quarantined, or placed on the outside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Three. One of the most effective ways in which boundaries
based on purity/pollution are policed is through the cultural formation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disgust</i> in individuals. Professor of psychology
Paul Rozin has done groundbreaking research on this. Basic physiological disgust
is associated with oral incorporations—the body as boundary, and the mouth as
gateway across that boundary. Certain substances, when put into the mouth, have
a bad taste which elicits a disgust reaction—scrunchy-face, expelling tongue, a
sense of nausea (expulsion of the offending agent). Some disgust reactions are
learned, or culturally constructed within the actual person. I’ve seen recipes
for tarantula, and watched films of people wolfing cooked tarantulas down like
Skittles; and yet most people from this culture have their first disgust
reaction upon seeing a tarantula, much less eating it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Medicalization</i> is
treating a previously nonmedical condition or problem as if it requires medical
intervention by a credentialed monopoly of professionals. This process is an
historical development which corresponds to the elevation of Science—the ideology,
not the practice—as an exclusive and ultimate truth claim. One glaring example
is the over-diagnosis of ADHD . . . even the diagnosis itself. Medicalization
is the (individualized) medical interpretation of problems that actually have
social bases. We drug children to go to school—and rarely question whether
children should be locked into an institution for seven hours a day and forced
to sit still for an hour at a time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Medicalization is one component of the post-nineteenth
century Western episteme. We are no longer sinners (with a shot at
forgiveness), but germ-ridden untouchables.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Contagion war</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Contagion narratives in pop culture—from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Walking Dead</i> to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Contagion</i> (of course) to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">28
Days Later</i> to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Am Legend</i>—redraw
the lines in older good-guys-bad-guys boundary narratives, especially in our
current age of hopelessness in the face of monstrous problems like climate
change and nuclear proliferation, into a boundary between in infected and the
uninfected. Which always become warlike scenarios, because we can’t afford tolerance
or patience or forgiveness in war emergencies. Everything becomes the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tempo task</i>—a fiction convention in which
emergencies force all actors to abandon former rules and principles to meet the challenge of destroying an implacable enemy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These contagion wars are part of our national imaginary, because
war is central to the American imaginary. Central to any war is The Enemy. Once
a person becomes an enemy, we allow ourselves to strip that enemy of his or her
personhood. We expel them into the outer darkness. The Enemy is irredeemable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most subversive of Jesus’ teachings was enemy-love,
because it rendered boundaries porous, threatening the power of those who
police those borders. The Parable of the Samaritan is the story of a new freedom to cross social boundaries.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Cornell West was a guest on Joe Rogan’s show, shortly
before Bernie Sanders gave his interview, he came on the show as “a Jesus-loving
black man,” and he established a deep rapport with Rogan within the first two
minutes of the show. There was no freak-out, because (1) West was not running
for President, (2) “woke” white liberals fear attacking black intellectuals
because they aren’t as “woke” as they think, and (3) the only reason they are
attacking Sanders is to weaponize identity in their quest to blunt the social
democratic rebellion for which Sanders provides a strategic focal point.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Postmodern hipster culture—a small sliver of the actual
population—with its personalized, identitarian standpoint and its politics of exclusion, has adopted the
contagion narrative of the early twenty-first century: zombie war. Joe Rogan is
one of the zombies, one of the infected. He has to be avoided, isolated, or put
down . . . never ever converted, because touching him would irreparably pollute
us, turning us into filthy zombies ourselves.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Postmodernism has been, from the very beginning, in spite of
some of the important insights it has developed, a form of political withdrawal
that invokes purity codes as excuses for inaction, wrapped in a cloak of
satisfying self-righteousness. Politics is transformed from an instrumental
activity into an expressive one. The liberal media—as we are seeing now—have learned
how to play the game; and they’ve learned how to make this form of “politics”
instrumental again, by weaponizing it against the left. Any attempt to engage
and convert—apart from virtue-signaling call-outs—now pollutes us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One way to keep others away from the zombies is to instill
in them a sense of disgust.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Bernie Sanders makes
my skin crawl.”</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So sayeth Mimi Rocah, another obedient talking head for Big
Pharma’s favorite network, MSNBC. We can’t simply expel you from our clique; we
have to make you anathema to all. We have to mobilize disgust.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Christian psychologist Richard Beck, writing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unclean</i>, notes that love and disgust exist
reciprocally in relation to boundaries, which serve as a kind of policed
military perimeter: “As the self gets symbolically extended so does . . . the
primal psychology that monitors the boundary of the body. . . . The boundary of
the body is extended to include the other.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The erasure of boundaries is perceived as a threat by the
Cartesian subject, the mind purified by mathematics. This reaction-formation is
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">objectification</i>, a term that has
grown so familiar in discussions of sex that it is not routinely associated
with its philosophical antecedents in philosophy, that is, subject-object dualism
and the notion of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">object</i>-ivity as
antagonistic to a perilous subjectivity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the aspects of the Christian story that drew me to
Christianity was that Jesus committed serial infractions of the purity codes—by
touching dead people, street people, lepers, menstruating women, and by
exercising table fellowship with the “unclean.” In Beck’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unclean</i>, he says two things in the introduction, one psychological,
one theological: “disgust is a boundary psychology,” and (paraphrasing) that
“sacrifice” inscribes boundaries, while mercy crosses them. For those who did
not immediately get the reference, Beck is writing about Matt 9:13, and Jesus’s
confrontation with the Pharisees over “eating with sinners and tax collectors.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Beck’s focus on disgust psychology aims at overcoming wrongs
that pose as rights because they are felt as right based on learned feelings of
disgust. Of course, feeling that something is wrong (or right) does not
necessarily make it so. Too often, as we all know, the “feeling of rightness”
trumps sober reflection and moral discernment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Disgust is a political weapon that tries to make people
experience physical revulsion for the purpose of foreclosing sober reflection.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Regimentation of thought means we can all be
catastrophically wrong at the same time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The PA</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yesterday, I attended a meeting for a group I shall not name
here, but it was a local leftist group that was being asked for candidate
endorsements. One of the candidates that showed up was running for the office
of the most powerful law enforcement officer in a well-populated county—prosecuting
attorney. His platform, such as it is, included no jail where there wasn’t an imminent
threat of something like escalating gun violence, <i>no cash bail</i>, and grant writing
to develop a network of non-carceral alternatives for offenders aimed at actual
rehabilitation. Then the candidate was asked if he supported prison abolition—a
movement with which I agree actually, but it's not in the cards for a few years yet. He said he was 98 percent there, but had
reservations about particular kinds of cases. Then he was sent out of the room.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Forty voting members. The rule was he had to achieve the
threshold of twenty-one votes to win the endorsement. During the discussion, I
heard it. Things like, “My endorsement means something to me, and I just can’t support
him if he is not an abolitionist. We can’t be seen endorsing someone who
disagrees with us on this core principle.” This came from the identitarians and
the strict sectarians alike—two cohorts who have been at war with one another
in the past.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First of all, goddam principles! Principles like these are
reified idols. This is aesthetic politics, guaranteed to produce defeat after
defeat after defeat. But at least our “principled” individualistic performance
is intact. Endorsing a candidate is saying you want that candidate to win instead of the opponent(s). It is not co-signing that candidate's autobiography or establishing line by line agreement with the candidate's world view. It is saying that this candidate winning is <i>better than the only other alternative</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At any rate, a few people pointed out that he was the best
of three options by a long shot, and that the fates of hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of those arrested—disproportionately the poor and people of color,
by the way—will be affected by who wins this race, and this guy was the
glaringly obvious best choice. I won’t commit the error of amplified
extrapolation by saying that this little group’s endorsement would make or
break his campaign. That would be a postmodern conceit. But for whatever this
group’s endorsement might or might not actually mean (he bothered to ask the
group for it), the vote was 19 for the endorsement, 15 against, and six
abstentions (I have no idea why anyone would abstain). The group’s will was
bent to the will of the most sectarian, who never spoke once during their
denunciations of ideological impurity about the fates of those people who would
be arrested <i>in that county</i> during the next Prosecutor’s term.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Guess what else I noticed at this meeting of forty souls?
There was not a single African American in the room. I had seen a few black
faces there before, but apparently few to none stayed. Near the end of the
meeting, there was a hue and cry about how “we reach out” to African Americans (I've hears this lament on the left for, oh, more than two decades now). I dunno. Maybe put
the needs of actual people ahead of your self-limiting, personalized, aesthetic
politics?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am reminded of those puritanical parents who can only catch their kids when they are doing something wrong, never noticing when they've tried to do right. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Wretch</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch
like me.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am that wretch. If anyone wants to encounter one of the
infected, come by and see me. I was an imperial storm trooper for decades. I can’t
even recount how many things I did that were wrong, hurtful, destructive. How
is it, then, that I can be accepted on the left? If anyone is contaminated, it’s
me. I’m a walking sack of sins, including my old ideological ones.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Speaking for myself, I’m grateful as can be for anyone’s
forgiveness, and that forgiveness brought me into the fold.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Purity codes are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exclusive</i>.
Patience and forgiveness are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inclusive</i>.
You can’t win without including more people.<br />
<br />
Don't know about anyone else, but I' tired of losing, and there's more at stake now than at any time in history.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-13765940620012793122018-11-05T06:02:00.000-08:002018-11-05T07:25:51.212-08:00Stability<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bourgeoisie is not the “middle class,” and it hasn’t
been so since around the eighteenth century. Pet peeve, drives me nuts. This
confusion was created during the Cold War, when propagandists wanted to spook
American Suburbia that they themselves were the primary target of nasty communists.
Once bourgeois was re-defined to mean the contemporary middle class, then
quotes from leftists themselves, aimed at the actual bourgeoisie (the 1/10 of
1%), were automatically misinterpreted to prove the imminent danger those
naughty left-wingers posed to Donnie and Marie and their little white weens.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.edgelink.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/IT-Candidate-Job-Stability-255x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="255" src="https://www.edgelink.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/IT-Candidate-Job-Stability-255x300.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The term refers to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">business
class</i>, which was in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">middle</i>,
between the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aristocracy</i> and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">peasantry</i>. If anyone in the US comes
into contact with peasants and aristocrats, clue us in. This was all prior to
the bourgeois revolutions in the United States and France. And those <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">were</i> revolutions on behalf of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">business class</i> against the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hereditary aristocracy</i>. A class struggle
between a waning upper class and a waxing middle, framed as an Oedipal struggle
of brothers against fathers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bourgeoisie is now the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ruling</i> class. You can say it, “The business class is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dominant</i> class,” and it loses some of
that leftist cachet (or threat, depending).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The business class is joined with the state, which is where
we want to focus right now. What are the state’s responsibilities are vis-a-vis
the business class, and how is the bourgeoisie responding to the Trump
interregnum?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The chosen form of government by the American bourgeoisie was
the constitutional republic, with certain ostensibly equal protections for all
citizens. I say ostensibly, because this has never been the actual case.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The highest protection in the US republic is for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">property</i>, and all other rights are
subordinate to that one. So, when we guarantee that all persons have the right
to free speech, we also ignore how property makes this so-called equality a
form of extreme inequality. The press is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">free</i>
to those who own one.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Business class wins.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The flexibility built into capitalist constitutions is
designed in support of the dominance of market relations between people; and
the tension has always been between (a) allowing certain freedoms so that
people will be able to competitively self-select their own exploitation, and (b)
holding the fort when there are popular challenges to business class power . .
. or sudden crises, even of the bourgeoisie’s own making. In 2007, those who
were indebted were not bailed out. Wall Street was.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Business class wins again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The business class and the state have always been partners,
because the state ultimately serves as that class’s armed guard along the
by-ways of commerce. In fact, there is a kind of revolving door between the
business class and state offices. The ruling class holds power by virtue of
monetary wealth. That power was gained through money-accumulation, and it is
sustained through the sustainment of accumulation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
A capitalist state has seven key and yet unstated economic
responsibilities to guarantee accumulation for the business class: (1) to
ensure enough willing or unwilling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">workers</i>
for production at rates that allow for profit; (2) to ensure that banks can
provide <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">finance capital</i> for loans;
(3) to ensure the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">externalization</i> of
costs adequate to protect overall profits, including publicly-financed
infrastructure and freedom to pollute; (4) to ensure markets sufficient to
absorb production; (5) to ensure <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">expansion</i>
sufficient to compensate for saturated or lost markets, whether by financial or
military means, or by opening new arenas of commodification (“privatization”); (6)
to ensure enough general <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stability</i></b> for business to flourish without
major interruptions, and (7) to ensure an adequate supply of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">resources</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
Once these seven requirements are satisfied, then the
coordinated activity between productive activities and financial activities can
“grow” the economy. Failure to expand will eventually result in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">falling rates of profit</i> as markets are
saturated and-or “cheap nature” quits being cheap, and falling rates of profit
will result in profit-based enterprises failing. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://wipfandstock.com/mammon-s-ecology.html">Mammon’s
Ecology</a></i>, 89, emphases added)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Falling rates of profit</i>
constitute crises for capitalists and therefore for the capitalist state. Rates
of non-speculative profit in the US have fallen from 38 percent in 1946 to 17
percent now, and we are set for another downturn within the year. (Roberts, “US
Rate of Profit in 2017”) Financialization (speculation) has developed the
non-productive means for return on investment, but finance capital unleashed functions
like an auto-immune disorder, creating bubble after bubble of fictional value
that pops and demands a fresh bailout on the backs of the 99 percent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Economic disruption can ramify into more general crises that
at certain thresholds and in certain circumstances lead to that most dreaded of
all conditions for the business class—instability. The very value of the
dollars a rich person has can be erased by some forms of crisis, and with that,
the rich person’s power, by certain forms of crisis. Everything is at stake for
the bourgeoisie; so <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stability</i></b> becomes a foundation issue.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stability in a country like the United States—325 million
souls spread over 380 million miles²—cannot be maintained through direct force,
but has to be maintained through the “invisible power” of the consent of the
governed. Gramsci called it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hegemony</i>,
but this is just all of us doing what we do every day without being physically
forced to, based on everything from the law down to Grandad’s care and
medication. Normality is a vast aggregation of norms, and the structures that
underlay those norms.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most times, we aren’t acting out, and so there is a shifting
boundary between exactly where Gramscian hegemony is exchanged for the employment
of armed agents. That alignment is substantially determined by those whose
agitation or desperation has turned them into a threat to stability. We see the
flare-ups. Think Ferguson. Passive hegemony threatens to fail, so out come the
body-armored goon squads like alien insects piloting killer-robots.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because these fluctuations are inevitable and progressive,
with each instance of crisis there is a temptation to by-pass any form of
quasi-democratic or even past-bureaucratic solutions in favor of increasing
executive power.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Presidential authority, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">executive
power</i>, has been systematically strengthened by every single President in
our lifetimes. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/us/politics/obama-era-legacy-regulation.html">Barack
Obama</a> was among those who increased executive authority the most under the
guise of the Bush-invented Global War on Terror and in response to the 2007–8 Wall
Street meltdown. Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers, for example, than all
the Presidents before him combined. And President Obama left that structural
executive power in place.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was like he improved on the Big Gun used on behalf of the
bourgeoisie.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential Election and got
the Big Gun for himself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And now we have entered into a period where discontent has
morphed into seething instability at the street level with all its harsh
resentments. But there has been an anomaly, because the bourgeois-as-a-class
was quite content with the Clintons, thank you very much, and where the fuck
did this mouthy-ass lounge lizard come from?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This attitude is more a bourgeois zeitgeist than a
conspiracy. The bourgeoisie is not a secret society. It is a collection of
me-first competitors who would eat their children to win, so while they always
have their collective eye trained on the dangerous potential of the hypnotized
mass, they take time out to have machete duels with each other. What unites
them is structural, because structures unite their interests, and the most
self-conscious of this class have spokespersons you can see each day on
national television. So some threw in their lot with Trump, but most are popping
valium in advance of the next deranged tweet. Clinton Democrats are now allying
with neoconservatives (Bush II’s ideological orientation) to oppose Trump. They
were never that far apart anyway.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Trump—as a symptom of potential instability—has now created
a crisis for the bourgeoisie that is more political and ideological than
economic (though he is scurrying through the economy like a rampaging rodent,
gnawing away at the seals, shitting in the insulation, stealing food, chewing
up toilet paper, and making periodic appearances to scare the guests).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The business class is on the horns of a dilemma. They want
to make lemonade out of this lemon, so they are pushing through as many changes
as they can to goose the profit lines up a bit, but all the while calculating
how far he can go without undermining the whole edifice or causing a civil war,
whereupon they can ship him off to Mar-a-Lago to steal the female guests’
underwear and snort lines off of Steve Bannon’s ass.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bourgeoisie wants the restoration of equilibrium; and
even though this class itself has created most of their own problems, they will
be happy to brand Trump as the goat and send him into the wilderness. He’s
already pissed off much of his own security apparatus, from the CIA and FBI to
the Department of Defense. Pretty heavy enemies. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The state’s responsibility is to create stability, not
disrupt it; and the ability of the state to do just that reckons on Gramscian
hegemony, not direct force. The state does not have the capacity to contain or
control a hypothetical mass uprising, or a general breakdown of order. And
Gramscian hegemony depends utterly on the confidence of the people in the institutions
of governance . . . which the mouthy-ass lounge lizard is undermining at every turn.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-11007785104676261472018-11-04T05:59:00.001-08:002018-11-04T05:59:53.156-08:00Schrodinger's Popes<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some years ago, I became familiar with companion planting—putting
different plants together in a garden or guild that produce benefits like
mineral accumulation, attraction of pollinators, attraction of beneficial
insect predators, repulsion of pests or larger animals, and so forth. One of
the most common recommendations, even though it has a tendency to become
aggressive in its own propagation, is tansy. Tansy has clusters of yellow flowers
that will attract bees but repel squash bugs, mice, and Japanese beetles; and
tansy draws potassium up into the topsoil and shares with neighbors. Tansy was
also used, way back in the day, as an abortifacient.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/80608.png?w=700" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="700" height="179" src="https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/80608.png?w=700" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179), a saint, polymath, and
founder of German natural science, actually recommended tansy as an abortifacient,
which may strike many as odd, because this remarkable Catholic woman would be
anathematized by that same Church today for making this recommendation. The
twelfth century Church was opposed to abortion, as had most Christians been—at least
since the end of the first century; but not because the Church had “a
consistent life ethic.” It wasn’t until the late sixteenth century, when the
Catholic Church had abandoned its disbelief in witches and joined in the orgy
of violence against accused witches, that the Church—following the logic of
Jean Bodin—accused anyone who provided abortifacients or performed abortions of
being a witch. Only then did the Church categorically call all abortions
murder.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
Witch-killing coevolved with the Enlightenment and shared
many of the beliefs and assumptions of the so-called fathers of the
Enlightenment. First case in point is Jean Bodin. A Catholic, Bodin is
remembered principally as a lawyer and political philosopher. His political
philosophy revolved around social order, which was perceived to be in short
supply during his life (1530–96). He specifically called for the establishment
of powerful central states. He called for dialogue between the various
Abrahamic religions, and he placed minimal emphasis on the church as a
political actor. He is rightly seen as one of the fathers of the Enlightenment,
and yet his life will always be notorious for his enthusiasm for killing women
as witches. [Maria] Mies writes,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in;">
The persecution of the witches was a manifestation of the
rising modern society and not, as is usually believed, a remnant of the
irrational “dark” Middle Ages. This is most clearly shown by Jean Bodin, the
French theoretician of the new mercantilist economic doctrine. Jean Bodin was
the founder of the quantitative theory of money, of the modern concept of
sovereignty and of mercantilist populationism. He was a staunch defender of modern
rationalism, and was at the same time one of the most vocal proponents of state
ordained massacres and tortures of the witches.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
Bodin believed, prefiguring Hobbes and Hegel, in an
absolutist state, whose principle responsibilities included supplying human
beings for the labor force. He believed that witches and midwives were enemies
of the state because, according to Bodin, they caused infertility and performed
abortions. He further believed that “witches” taught women birth control, a practice
he equated with murder. Bodin wrote a pamphlet against purported witches that
was remarkable above all for the cruelty of its recommended punishments for
witchcraft. Witches should be prosecuted, according to Jean Bodin, based on the
idea that women practicing witchcraft outnumbered men by a ratio of fifty to
one. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://wipfandstock.com/borderline.html">Borderline</a></i>, pp. 55–6)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
Prior to these developments, and
still more than a thousand years after the Pentecost, the modern “fetus” had
not yet been invented. The unborn were seen in two phases: pre-ensoulment and
post-ensoulment. Ensoulment was signaled by the quickening, the sensation of the
baby’s movement in the womb, something that happens as early as fifteen weeks
into a pregnancy, and as late as twenty weeks. Abortion was not considered
murder until after ensoulment, or the quickening.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
It wasn’t until 1588 that a Papal
bull from Pope Sixtus V was issued declaring all abortion at any stage to be
grounds for excommunication. Sixtus’ replacement, Pope Gregory XIV, in the face
of the disruptions the bull had caused, reversed Sixtus and returned the Church
to its old standard of no abortion of the “formed” unborn—that is, after the
quickening. Pope Pius IX then reversed the reversal in 1869—four years after the
end of the American Civil War—and this latest prohibition of all abortions was
evaded using various loopholes that returned Catholics as a whole back to the
quickening standard <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i>, of not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de jure</i>. It was not until 1917, the same
year as the Bolshevik Revolution, that Canon law decisively erased the
distinction between “unformed” (pre-quickening) and “formed” (post-quickening).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
“Fetus,” prior to the late fourteenth
century simply meant “birth.” By the fifteenth century it came to mean unborn
(at any stage, “fetus” = inside the womb). Da Vinci’s dissection of corpses led
to him being the first person to publish the idea of fetal development in
systematic stages. The debate about the homunculus (an unborn baby being a
miniature version of its born self) wasn’t settled until the early eighteenth
century. It was only by the twentieth century that developmental embryology
gave us the outlines of what we call a “fetus” today—a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stage</i> of pregnancy, beginning arbitrarily at nine weeks after
conception, that is now recognized in medical protocols and law, even though
there are variances in actual individual pregnancies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
What is interesting here is how
Church doctrine and scientific enquiry perform their dialectical dance in the
twentieth century, when in 1930, Pope Pius XI declared all abortion to be “the direct
murder of the innocent.” And yet by the 1960s and Vatican II, Church teaching stated:
“Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception.” By
1971, we hear the first utterance of the phrase “consistent life ethic,” from
Boston Archbishop Humberto Medeiros, taken up subsequently by Chicago Archbishop
Joseph Bernardin (he of the Church sex abuse scandal), whereupon “consistent
life ethic” came to mean opposition to abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia,
“unjust” war, and economic injustices that resulted in loss of life—the “seamless
garment” ethic, a term coined by Catholic pacifist and civil rights advocate,
Eileen Egan.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
It is somewhat striking that until
1930, “life” was not the issue, and it was not consolidated in the minds of
Catholics—and then others—until 1971 in the run-up to the 1973 Supreme Court
judgement in Roe v. Wade, which transferred the authority to decide about abortion
prior to the twenty-third week to the actual pregnant woman. Quickening was
replaced by a new standard—“viability,” that is, the ability of the fetus to
survive outside the womb—bowing to the equality of women with men with regard
to bodily autonomy, or “the proprietary body,” at the center of liberal
philosophy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
In 1980, the Church focused its arguments
on “pregnant women,” or “expectant mothers,” or “rights of fathers,” for all
the blatant sexism of the Church inhering in virtually every Church document on
the issue of sex, still focusing on actual people and their consciences. By the
1989, however, numerous denominations in Germany had joined the call to protect
LIFE in a joint statement. In English, the title of the joint statement was, “God
is a Friend of Life.” In this publication, the signatories said that Life is “a
complex ecosystem like a forest, the self-development of a human being from the
fertilized egg cell to the newborn and its further growth.” As Barbara Duden so
cryptically put it, “women are eclipsed by something entirely new—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">life</i>.” The Church was no longer using
the term life in any way representative of Jewish or Judeo-Christian tradition,
but in the same was as Erwin Schrodinger—as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">property</i> of a thing, an abstraction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
By 1991, Pope John Paul II,
speaking before 141 Cardinals in Rome, declared war on abortion, saying “death
and life are involved in a momentous conflict,” little realizing how <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">life</i> used this was conforms utterly to
this modernist abstraction, or how, in reality, death is not opposed to life,
but the inevitable outcome of living.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
The Church, when it comes to
modernity, wants to have its cake and eat it, too. And the constant, through
all these changes, as is true with every other change in the history of the
Church adapting itself to politics and power, is that men decide what women are
and what women can and cannot do.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in;">
Do with this as you will. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-74052628648198122582018-11-01T10:08:00.002-07:002018-11-01T10:21:16.801-07:00Life and Science<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
The out-of-control proliferation and use of weapons of mass
destruction is perhaps the worst of contemporary science’s tragic fruits, but
there are others. The misuse and abuse of science to justify destroying the
Earth’s habitability has also become a source of widespread anxiety.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
These and other perils have a common root: the corruption of
Big Science by Big Money. More precisely, they are the consequence of a
profit-driven economic system that hamstrings humanity’s ability to make
rational economic decisions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
Science is presumed to be a reliable source of knowledge
based on objective fact rather than subjective bias. By definition, that
requires research to be conducted impartially by scientists with no conflicts
of interest that could affect their judgment. But a science harnessed to the
maximization of private profits cannot avoid material conflicts of interest
that are anathema to objectivity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
– Cliff Conner<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Historical capitalism
is not only a social formation but an ontological one.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
– Jason W. Moore<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/39558/area14mp/dzd9bc8z-1390308231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="800" height="257" src="https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/39558/area14mp/dzd9bc8z-1390308231.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The above extract is from <a href="https://climateandcapitalism.com/2018/10/31/the-tragedy-of-american-science/">an
article in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Climate and Capitalism</i></a>,
by Cliff Conner, the Marxist author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
People’s History of Science</i>. The rest of the article goes on to unpack the
implications and explications of this premise: that something called science is
a mighty and productive tool for the good of humanity that has been perverted
by the venal pursuit of profit that lies at the heart of capitalist political
economy. The key words here are “misuse and abuse,” which exonerates “science”
and indicts capitalism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m always quite keen to indict capitalism; and I’m more than
a little sympathetic to some form of ecosocialism (the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raison d’etre</i> of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Climate and Capitalism</i>).
Capitalism is horrifically and inherently destructive of the material bases of
our existence, as well as being horrifically and inescapably unjust. But Conner’s
essentially polemical account of “science” here does not square with history,
and it doesn’t stand up to philosophical scrutiny either. If the left wants to
get past its limitations, it has to be willing to play outside the Marxist
sandbox—a useful and intellectually generative box I played in for quite some
time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a Marxist in my past life, I never experienced what felt
like a credible challenge from liberalism; but the entire Marxist conceptual
edifice is constructed on the same ontological ground as liberalism, and where
I discovered gaps and vulnerabilities in both Marxism and “science” was through
post-Marxists like Carolyn Merchant who began to question precisely this
ontology. Engels distinguished the work of himself and his German collaborator
by naming its political expression “scientific socialism.” This new ontology,
shared by liberals and many Marxists, the (masculinist) basis of modernity, is
the subject-object duality (extrapolated as a culture-nature dualism) articulated
first by Descartes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
This ontological rift is the symbolic expression of the
separation of the direct producers from the means of production. Together,
these moments constituted the origins of capitalism not only as world-system
but as ontological formation: as a world-ecology. Humanity/ Nature is a doubly
‘violent’ abstraction: violent in its analytical removal of strategic relations
of historical change, but also practically violent in enabling capitalism’s
world-historical praxis – a praxis of cheapening the lives and work of many
humans and most non-human natures. This is a praxis of domination and
alienation operative simultaneously through the structures of capital,
knowledge and feeling. Humanity/Nature is consequently not only violently but
practically abstract. These are real abstractions: abstractions that work in
the world because we see and act if Humanity/Nature are given conditions of
reality rather than historically constructed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
– Jason W. Moore<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Science—as it is now understood—is not simply a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">method</i> of inquiry. It begins through its
own instrumentation, which is not a morally neutral reality, and proceeds via a
set of premises that proscriptively separate humans from a fetish called “Nature,”
by rendering non-human natures passive and inert through clockwork determinism.
Merchant, the feminist historian, in trying to discern the history of science,
discovered and described how the so-called fathers of the Enlightenment took a
nature that was still “alive,” and killed it. Her canonical work is entitled,
appropriately, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Death of Nature</i>. But
before we examine the historic instrumentation and the original <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">telos</i> of the scientific enterprise to determine
the accuracy of Conner’s polemic, we have to revise the popular as well as
scientific understanding of another fetish—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">life</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In scientific terms, Wikipedia tells us life is “the
current definition is that organisms are open systems that maintain
homeostasis, are composed of cells, have a life cycle, undergo
metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, reproduce
and evolve.” Biologists themselves admit, however, that there is—in a reality
that does not conform to ideas—no “bright line” between some phenomena that are
“alive” and others that are kind of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>. .
. mmmm, dunno. Self-replicating proteins? Alive? No? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Knowledge is not a simple mental mirror of what is.
Knowledge is not fixed and permanent. We no longer “know” our bodies through
humors, or “know” the stars through celestial spheres. Half of all scientific
knowledge today will likely be considered somehow wrong in forty-five years. We
know things in different times and places in a particular way, knowledges that
are a less than stable potpourri of history, practical experience, cultural
norms, social “roles,” language complexities, etc. The challenge of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">genealogical</i> approaches to the history of
knowledge (taken up by postmodernists) to the post-Enlightenment hegemony of
more <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">encyclopedic</i> account of
knowledge, predominating from the sixteenth century on, was its attention to
the dynamics of consciousness at the mysterious interface between “reality” and
“consciousness.” Phenomenology laid bare the inescapability of the very
subjectivity that the Cartesian post-Enlightenment epoch claimed to have
transcended. Even now, for most of us who are not engaged in scientific inquiry
24-7, it is an “intellectually arduous task” to set aside our confidence in the
“objectivist” episteme that grows directly from the subject-object duality that
Descartes foisted on us during the emergence of capitalist modernity (Descartes
lived in the Dutch Republic, arguably the first genuinely capitalist
nation-state). This lengthy excursus is to say, “life” has not always been Life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Life, as we now use the term fetishistically—the abstraction,
LIFE—did not exist prior to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Homo economicus</i>
and the ascendance of Baconian science. There was no word in the pagan world
for it—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bios</i> meant something akin to
one’s destiny in Greek. What the Hebrews did to universalize <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">life</i> was not define an abstraction, but
to make life an articulation of God’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">breath</i>
(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">spirit</i> meant <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">breath</i>), shared throughout a creation that was itself a unitary
matrix understood, as it has been by most pre-modern cultures, as a great womb.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even in the Aramaic used by Jesus and his Judean cohort, the
term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">abwoon</i>—translated subsequently to
mean simply <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">father</i>—meant something
more akin to “birth-giver” . . . like a womb. The vitality of the universe
remained unquestioned, and there was no existent perception of “life” as a
property <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">possessed</i> by a particular creature.
What emerged with capitalist modernity—and science, its conjoined twin, which created
the conditions for life-the-abstracted-property, was the modern idea of . . .
property, and with it, a proprietary individual—the very basis of capitalist
political economy. Ivan Illich wrote in 1994:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
The ideology of possessive individualism progressively
affected the way life could be talked about as a property. Since the 19th
century, the legal construction of society increasingly reflects a new
philosophical radicalism in the perception of the self. The result is a break
with the ethics which had informed western history since Greek antiquity,
clearly expressed by the shift of concern from the good to values. Society is
now organized on the utilitarian assumption that man (sic) is born needy, and
needed values are by definition scarce. It becomes axiomatic that the
possession of life is then interpreted as the supreme value. Homo economicus
becomes the referent for ethical reflection. Living is equated with a struggle
for survival or, more radically, with a competition for life. For over a
century now it has become customary to speak about the "conservation of
life" as the ultimate motive of human action and social organization.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This recapitulation about life is preface to grasping
Merchant’s metaphor in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Death of
Nature</i>, because she is not saying nature “possessed” the property of life;
she is saying that the pre-capitalist perception of the universe as a vital
matrix, very like a womb, was effaced by Baconian science, a philosophic move
that could not have been accomplished without the accompaniment of the Cartesian
separation of Man-the-subject and Nature-the-object. Nature became a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing</i> when Nature became a thing apart—the
object of domination by Man (and they meant <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">males</i>
in this case).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bacon himself boasted that his project was the outworking of
the human “domination of nature” expressed in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Genesis</i>, unaware of how his own episteme was so alien to that of
the authors of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Genesis</i>, that this
comparison was between a steam boiler and a womb.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was no doubt that the Hebrew account of creation was
organized hierarchically, and that humans had been granted authority within those
hierarchies as stewards of a creation that belonged always and ultimately to
God. But all creation had God’s vitality. Mountains will occasionally leap.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a very real sense, one might say that Bacon, in trying to
fulfill his interpretation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Genesis</i>,
actually reproduced the sin of the original couple—trying to become omniscient
and omnipotent like God. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bacon was a lawyer for the Tudor Court and an enthusiastic
witch-hunter, in addition to his natural science pursuits.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This critique of life-the-property also goes to the heart of
the whole pro-life/pro-choice polemic that agrees, if on nothing else, that life
is this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">property</i> (as defined
scientifically), though they diverge decisively on when an actual unborn human
life qualifies for the protections of citizenship.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Prior to the invention of the fetus, a life (not Life) was
not signaled by an event that required instrumentation (medical “tests”) to
discern. The real “beginning” was the quickening, that first sensation of the
baby “kicking” in the womb. Since the appearance of the fetus (now also a
polemical term for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">denial</i> of
citizenship to the unborn), given that every pregnancy progresses at its own particular
rates within normal limits, the legal difficulty of determining <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">when</i> an abortion is or is not a
violation of the “rights” of citizenship is resolved by mapping. Time is
subdued by space, divided onto a calendar; and the process is subordinated to
arbitrary periods, or trimesters, that roughly correspond to the ability of a
prematurely born infant to survive outside the womb—and this marker has
likewise been determined by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">instrumentation</i>
of medical intervention.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So what about instrumentation? I write this with an instrument.
I wear reading glasses to do it, another instrument. What instruments facilitated
the rise of the hegemony of Cartesian science? Well, it might have begun with
those maps, and the instruments of mapping. Literally. The beginnings of
private property, as it is today understood, as well as the colonial conquests
upon which capitalism developed, required surveying and cartography. Always the
maps, eh?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cartography combined with shipbuilding to give conquerors
range. Shipbuilding and weapons construction, in turn, required huge inputs of
resources and fuels. Some merchant ships had main masts that exceeded 175 feet
in height, requiring a single tree with enough mass that the wrights could acquire
that length in a straight line with the girth and composition to survive high
winds. Forests were cleared until the British landscape had become denuded, not
just for lumber but for the fuel to make iron cannons. Competitors cleared
forests all the way into Norway and Poland.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The development of new instruments for conquest and
expansion, then, predates Baconian science, because that new practice was an
attempt to improve <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the technics of war
and conquest for profit</i>, using a paradigm familiar to the lawyer Bacon
himself—the trial.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Comparing nature to an irascible woman, Bacon described the
scientific enterprise as an interrogation to rip away her secrets and plunder
her treasures. Seldom realized now, the peak period of the the European witch
hunts was not Late Medieval, but early Enlightenment; and Bacon was ardent in
the prosecution of witches, which was preceded by interrogations, often using the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">instruments</i> of torture to reveal her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">truths</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">instruments</i> of
science, from the very beginning, were not designed pursuant to a modern
hallucination like “pure science,” but precisely and specifically for profit and
war . . . a history that appears inconvenient to Conner and other eco-Marxists
making the erroneous claims above, like “a science harnessed to the
maximization of private profits cannot avoid material conflicts of interest
that are anathema to objectivity.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The illusion of this “objectivity” is precisely what was
necessary to prosecute the colonial capitalist enterprise. Without this
conceptual firewall, the rapacious speed with which capitalists transformed the
earth’s landscapes could not have happened. One term that Bacon used to
describe the witch-interrogation of (feminized) Nature was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">extraction</i>. We will <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">extract</i>
her secrets and plunder her riches.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After Descartes, the stewardship that defined that archaic
Hebrew “domination” of nature disappeared with along with Nature’s vitality.
Afterward, there was only property.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even many socialists still see “society” (read:
subject/culture/human) in this separate and proprietary way. The laudable focus
of socialists on justice—taken not just as fair-play, but also through the
surviving Christian idiom that every human alive has some foundational equality
with all others (each equally precious in God’s sight)—has apprehended the
fetishization of the commodity, but left on the loose the fetishization of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">life</i> and of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">instruments</i>. It’s only climate crisis—with its terrifying shadow
now stretching over the world—that has shaken us out of our torpor and nudged
us to re-examine that Cartesian ontology.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Overcoming liberalism was nothing compared to what
overcoming Science-the-Idol will be. <o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-47345665180578577612018-10-20T10:07:00.001-07:002018-10-20T10:13:52.934-07:00To African Americans and Latin@s in UniformIf you are in the military, you are now effectively serving as muscle for a white supremacist government that is days away from trying to consolidate white supremacy in the US for the long term.<br />
<br />
You salute a flag that was designed for a slaveholding nation, you stand for an anthem that has explicitly racist lyrics, you allow yourselves to be the servants of a crackpot cult leader named Donald Trump. Meanwhile, your government is deporting your friends and relatives, scrubbing them from voting rolls, and imprisoning them at astronomical rates for a bunch of bullshit.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/issue_area_images/SPLC-hate-and-extremism-1280x720.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/issue_area_images/SPLC-hate-and-extremism-1280x720.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<a name='more'></a>I know its hard to resist in uniform. I wore one for a lot longer than I like to remember. You have kids in school, a mortgage, your own continuing education, health care, job security, and a nice regular check. I get that. I am writing in some cases to people I know, people I am related to--black or brown in uniform--and I am not about to say an easy thing.<br />
<br />
But remember that you will be asked, as many of you have already abroad, to do things that challenge your own moral beliefs. It is only a matter of time before you are deployed, however, to support white supremacy by aiming your power at your fellow residents of the US. It might be oblique. It might be direct. It's coming.<br />
<br />
(If you are unfortunate enough to be Muslim in uniform, I don't even know where to start . . .)<br />
<br />
Because you--African America and <i>Hispano-Latina</i> America (<i>menos algunos de los cubanitos derechistos</i>)--are one of White America's colonies. Many of you grew up in occupied territory, among your own culture with white cops roaming the streets. Many of you grew up among people who had far less and therefore worked for less than most white people. Many of you have seen the business people who live in the high-dollar neighborhoods extract wealth from your own people's neighborhoods and farms. That's what happens in colonies--good stuff is extracted and exported, and bad stuff is imported to be dumped.<br />
<br />
Used to be, the colonies abroad were in the gunsights--that's what I did in the Army--but as the ability to project US power waned abroad and the wealth-streams were exhausted (they never have <i>enough</i>), the white ruling class (that is what they are . . . they rule with their wealth, and we obey) has had to turn in to the home territory, and in the racial pecking order, as if you don't know already, well . . . last in, first out.<br />
<br />
The military is the ultimate go-along-to-get-along culture. I understand that. I was on active duty for a very long time. One troop--enlisted or officer--is a powerless entity against the greatest bureaucracy in history. And in a world where people's options are being slashed, income and doctors for you and your family cannot be discounted. You are not indispensable. You know that. You know that <i>someone</i> will do that job, <i>someone</i> will collect that check.<br />
<br />
So you may listen without protest--as I have seen among those in uniform for whom that job is crucial to supporting a family--as your own white associates in uniform spout off the racist talking points of the Trump Cult.<br />
<br />
You may keep your mouth shut among your white colleagues about Kaepernick's problem not being flags and racist bar ballads, but about the fact that you or someone you love stands too good a chance at being gunned down by mean cops.<br />
<br />
You may keep your mouth shut among your white colleagues with regard to children being ripped from their mother's arms by men, like you, with American flags velcroed to the sleeves of their uniforms.<br />
<br />
You may be one of the women of color in uniform who listens without protest as your colleagues systemiatically and incessantly pass along all the woman-hating cultural cues that are now routinely shat from the lips of your Commander-in-Chief.<br />
<br />
I remember keeping my mouth shut with one eye always on survival for my family. Powerless.<br />
<br />
For anyone in uniform, there is always a menu you receive every working day, asking you to prioritize which forms of humiliation to which you will submit. Or what kinds of authoirtarian control you will be obliged to exercise.<br />
<br />
I hated that, the obligation to be an asshole. I was mean to people I actually would have liked.<br />
<br />
But for me . . . this may be something you share . . . the little poisonous cyst in my belly that I tried hardest to ignore was what I did downrange. You think that's bad, wait until they ask you to do a replay of Kent State! Wait until they ask you to put down the people you swore to protect! Here's what the cyst in my belly encapsulated so I'd never have to see it: The military asked me to outsource my morality. And once I consented to that, the slope just got slippery as hell.<br />
<br />
So I'm giving you a heads-up. You may be doing fine with it now, maybe see your way through to that pension before it gets too bad. But you need to start thinking about where your un-crossable line might be, because it is getting more likely with each passing day.<br />
<br />
Your government is fixing elections, actually trying to recuscitate Jim Crow. Your government is enabling white militias all over the country, one of them with five million members, called the National Rifle Association. Armed white vigilantes are being allowed to roam the Southwest killing people for being brown. I don't know how it is now, but when I was part of Special Operations, that whole swamp was teeming with white supremacists.<br />
<br />
Your Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump is an arch bigot, a xenophobe, and an utterly self-absorbed child with access to nuclear codes. He is a liar and a cheat and a bully, but the really scary thing--considering this from the standpoint of people in uniform--is he is colossally stupid . . . with access to nuclear codes.<br />
<br />
It is easy to be reassured, too. For those in well-integrated units, you have friends across all these boundaries. Folks from your unit show up with thier families in tow when a child has a birthday or there is a promotion party. You can look around--those of you who are fortunate enough to be in <i>that</i> kind of unit--and the existential threat that is Trump and his base of 63 million white supremacists with a five million strong white naitonalist militia . . . well, it just doesn't really compute.<br />
<br />
When you return from combat missions, it is difficult to reconcile the reality of that place with the more pacific reality of home and family. We all know that feeling. In the same way, we have difficulty reconciling the easy friendliness of a diverse shop with the creeping horror that looks to this next election for a squeaker win that will allow it to move us closer to one-man rule in what is already an explicitly white supremacist government. And so we cling to that local reality as reassurance that the other reality can't reach you.<br />
<br />
But it will, one way or another. It will reach you in the form of white power or it will reach you in the form of terrible moral choices.<br />
<br />
I am praying these days. Quite a lot. I recommend it when there is a lot to think about.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"My punishment is too great to bear! Behold, You
have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will
be hidden . . ."</i></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Genesis 4:14 </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-1262455425290252052018-10-19T12:27:00.000-07:002018-10-20T04:43:43.165-07:00Honduras, just so you knowHonduras. In 2009, the Obama Administration supported a coup d'etat in Honduras, which was papered over by the administration and a servile media as "a constitutional crisis." Even Wikipedia calls it that. President Zelaya was kidnapped from his own home, with his family, at gunpoint, in his underwear, and spirited to Costa Rica <b>via the US Sotocano Air Base</b> in Comayagua. Zelaya was popular for his reforms that aimed to assist the poor and give them greater political agency. This was anathema to the Honduran ruling class, a collection of thuggish families from around the world, and to the US neoliberal estsblishment, as well as John McCain's favorite sponsor, AT&T, for years now eying Hoduran telecommunications for a juicy privatization.<br />
<br />
Hillary Clinton, then the Secretary of State, hired the fascistic <i>gusano</i> John Negroponte as her Deputy for this hit job. Negroponte already had an impressive body count as a violent Cold Warrior in Latin America, including a stint under Reagan as Ambassador to Honduras. Google or Duck-Duck it: "negroponte" "death squads," and you'll get almost 39,000 hits. He loved them, and they loved him, and anybody who wasn't careful could find herself at dawn laid out on some central plaza with her head chopped off.<br />
<br />
Behind ther scenes, the Honduran ruling class unleashed a wave of terror to consolidate their post-coup grip on power. Mostly, it went unseen to the rest of the world, because for a time, Honduras became the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist. Not Afghanistan. Not Colombia. Not Yemen. Honduras.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSi8-bdxSGauHhqwbqkzMD1wn9czSlvTrzrpkgSd5Lq0GFWnPjxsg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="271" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSi8-bdxSGauHhqwbqkzMD1wn9czSlvTrzrpkgSd5Lq0GFWnPjxsg" /></a></div>
<a name='more'></a>Honduras still holds another record: most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists, with 125 assassinated (c. 10-19-18) since the coup. Most well-known and well-loved among them was Berta Caceres, the leader and one of the founders of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, who had led the fight to defeat a dam project on the Gualcarque River. She was killed on March 2nd, 2016, as Hillary Clinton--who has assisted her killers into power--won Primaries in Tennesee and Alabama.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/__export/1457113115201/sites/telesur/img/news/2016/03/04/berta_18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="789" height="212" src="https://www.telesurtv.net/__export/1457113115201/sites/telesur/img/news/2016/03/04/berta_18.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Accompanying this violence, which has targeted organizers, women in particular, and anyone suspected of working with them, every family lives in fear for someone they know. This insecurity has been compounded by regressive taxation, rapacious land grabs, and a general downturn in the Honduran economy that features extremely high unemployment. So many Hondurans have decided to throw in their lot with this migrant caravan poised along the Guatemala-Mexico border to the chagrin of the proud misogynist, xenophobe, and would-be autocrat Donald Trump.<br />
<br />
Plenty will be made of the caravan, because Trump is trying to get his base all shit-scared about a brown invasion (nearly all these folks are indigenous, and some African too). But, given our reluctance to play Nathan to our own Davids in election season, the Davids that were Obama and Clinton won't be called into the dock by our chattering class.<br />
<br />
So, as a voice in the wilderness who once enjoyed Honduran hospitality, I'm pointing at both, and I'm saying, "You are that man."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-71518572622868486622018-10-16T12:13:00.000-07:002018-10-16T13:57:30.450-07:00DSA, Democrats, and Sectarian Fabulism<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nothing but the
avalanche!<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Democratic Party of the United States has around 44.7
million members. The Green Party has 248,000, or one half of one percent of the
membership of the Democratic Party. The Working Families Party has about 53,000.
In 2016, 137.5 million Americans voted in the General Election.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the Green Party candidates in my state is running
this year with 9-11 conspiracy-mongering (calling it a “false flag” operation)
right in his campaign literature. And some on the left continue to embosom this
sectarian, self-marginalizing party as The Alternative to the Democrats.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a recent article by Carl Boggs in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Counterpunch</i> called “The Democrats and ‘Socialism’,” he says the
following: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez_July_2018_(cropped2).jpg/220px-Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez_July_2018_(cropped2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="220" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez_July_2018_(cropped2).jpg/220px-Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez_July_2018_(cropped2).jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In the U.S., “socialists” aligned with the DSA envision no future
beyond an extensively reformed capitalist order – roughly equivalent to what
European social democracy realized at its peak a few decades ago.
For the moment, their goal is to refashion the Democratic party – that is, push
it leftward primarily through an electoral strategy. The DSA program,
according to official statements, anticipates a “humane social order based on
popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable
distribution, feminism, racial equality, and non-oppressive
relationships”. Entirely laudable, to be sure, but hardly rising to
the concrete features of a distinctly socialist politics. In other words,
something considerably short of a Marxist avalanche.</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
There is so much wrong in the article, and so much wrong
with even this paragraph, that it is difficult to know where to start. I’ll
start with the scare-quotes on “socialists,” meant to signal to the initiated
that “we” know what real socialism is, and that whatever “we” are describing now
is not it.<br />
<br />
Why is <i>it</i> not it?<br />
<br />
Well, because Marxists have a monopoly on
socialism—oh my, that’s a given, an article of faith—and because the DSA
program falls short of “a Marxist avalanche,” it’s like a cute puppy that
we just don’t want to take home. It’s enough, this oblique critique, to scare
off those on the left whose still-early ideological development compels them to
ask their comrades, “What is our position on this issue?”<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boggs’ article is boundary-policing. He has joined the ranks
of the ideological gate-keepers of “Marxism.”<br />
<br />
There’s my scare quote.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In this case, the article is a retrenchment from earlier
claims that “the Democratic Party” is impermeable to interventions from the
left. Boggs should not be singled out here. This crap is ubiquitous in the still male-dominated
sectarian-left semiosphere.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.riaanwilmans.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Semiosphere-by-Riaan-Wilmans-2017-01-16e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="585" data-original-width="800" height="233" src="https://www.riaanwilmans.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Semiosphere-by-Riaan-Wilmans-2017-01-16e.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In this piece, Boggs grudgingly acknowledges that the
Sandercrat left has made inroads into the Democratic Party that were unlikely
prior to 2016.<br />
<br />
<i>“They won’t let you, because they are run by Wall Street, a
capitalist party, organized to block the left”</i> . . . duh . . . has turned into
<i>“These are good changes, but they fall short” . . .</i><br />
<br />
of “a Marxist avalanche,”
whatever the hell this means in the fabulous universe of the would-be vanguards
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Revolution</i> . . . what De Certeau
called:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
. . . the scriptural project at the level of an entire
society seeking to constitute itself as a blank page with respect to the past,
to write itself by itself (that is, to produce itself as its own system) and to
produce a new history (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">refaire l'histoire</i>)
on the model of what it fabricates (and this will be ‘progress’). It is
necessary only for this ambition to multiply scriptural operations in economic,
administrative, or political areas in order for the project to be realized.</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The central fabulist narrative of this particular
fraction of the left in the US—small, tiny in fact, though energetically vocal
and literate—is that so-called “avalanche.” This is code for “revolutionary
civil war,” which is still spoken in reverent tones behind closed doors by
would-be vanguards.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.davno.ru/assets/images/posters/big/poster-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.davno.ru/assets/images/posters/big/poster-4.jpg" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="492" height="320" width="196" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Behind much of this nonsense is this particular instance of
fabulism—heroic war as the cathartic midwife of the New World we have mentally
rewritten on the imaginary “blank page.” This, in many ways, accounts for the predominance
of long in the tooth men in these circles. Boys will be boys, as they say, but
nothing is more threatening to a boychild (even an old one) than the loss of a
really good, really butch fantasy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ten years ago, the same fabulous revolution types were
saying that the Democratic Party was an impenetrable fortress for the left, but
now that this rail switch failed, they’ve moved onto the next one . . . which
is, by any means necessary, keeping the left as far away from tactical
electoral politics as possible. This is the historical context of Boggs’ op-ed,
shored up with selective and inappropriate analogies from the past.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are two main groups who do not want the left playing
at the game of thrones inside the Democratic party: establishment Democrats and
sectarian leftists. Think about that!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://tootallfritz.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/think-about-it.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="380" height="320" src="https://tootallfritz.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/think-about-it.jpg" width="310" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boggs writes, “The modes of exit from a narrow parliamentarianism—factory
councils, Leninist party, fascism—are well known to anyone paying close
attention to the first half of twentieth-century history. Exactly one
century later, little has changed.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a Christian, I am well acquainted with know-nothing
proof-texting. Here, instead of Scripture, we have the proof-texting of
history. From the unwarranted (and arcane) accusation of “narrow
parliamentarianism” leveled against DSA, we leap to the “only three exits” from
this terrible strategic error (“narrow” tipped us off that this is a Bad “ism”) . . . wait, a hundred years ago!?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Did he really write, “Exactly one century later, little has
changed.”?<br />
<br />
So today, the only exits from (icky ick) parliamentarianism are “factory
councils, Leninist party, fascism”?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What he meant to say was “Exactly one century later, none of
our own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">abstractions or schemae</i> have
changed.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It must be what he meant, because I am looking now at 1918
and 2018, and I see that world population in 2018 was less than 2 billion. The
US was 103 million then, compared to 326 million now. American life expectancy
was 51 then, and it is 80 now. Horses were still the main means of
non-pedestrian transport. The first rotary dial telephone had not yet been mass
produced, and the Netherlands owned what is now Indonesia. 100 million people
were killed by Spanish flu, Palestine was a British protectorate, and US troops
were still fighting Yaquis in Arizona. The Republican Party was still the preferred
party of African America.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://yesteryearsnews.wordpress.com/files/2009/02/1918-woman-horse-buggy.jpg?w=300" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="191" data-original-width="300" src="https://yesteryearsnews.wordpress.com/files/2009/02/1918-woman-horse-buggy.jpg?w=300" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We could do this for hours.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unless what Boggs meant to say was, “Exactly one century
later, even though everything <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">else</i> was
different, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">politics</i> has the capacity
to exist independent of all these other circumstances, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">politics</i> is essentially unchanged.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still, one ought never rebut the easiest of one’s debate
opponent’s arguments, but challenge their strongest arguments. In this case, I
have to anticipate that (I am an alumnus of this kind of thinking, so it’s
easy) the argument hinges on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">capitalism</i>
still existing. Fine.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are certain features of capitalism that remain
constant to make capitalism capitalism. The business class has power based on
money and enforced scarcity, not land or status. This ruling class accumulates money through
appropriation of value from unequal exchange/colonial plunder, merchant activity,
production and sales (surplus value), and rents (interest and other “royalties”
apart from actual production). It’s all return-on-investment in a process that privatizes
gains and socializes losses.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The capitalist ruling class’ political expression is the
nation-state, state’s purpose is to ensure accumulation for members of the
business class. Even the administrative and security responsibilities are
fundamentally designed to support accumulation. Again, this is never stated
explicitly, but can be inferred from the sum of its laws and policies and their
intents. As a capitalist state, the United States, in coordination with its
fifty sub-states and its external possessions, ensures profitability by
ensuring the conditions for those modes of accumulation listed above, and
ensuring what Jason W. Moore calls the “Four Cheaps”: cheap labor, cheap food,
cheap energy, and cheap raw materials.<br />
<br />
With financialization—which is pretty
different between now and 1918—the state has also taken to providing cheap
credit to speculators and buying up their crappiest assets.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/moore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="195" src="https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/moore.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The actions of the state are then mediated for the general
population through civil society. Civil society is comprised of people mostly from
the professional classes, employed as trained spokespersons and cultural interpreters, through the various
media to shape public thinking and gain acquiescence to the agendas of the business
class.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pretty general stuff. As someone with a passing familiarity
with tactics (see <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uD2KeGqTRRJOopwafbYMStWfu7vMT60h/view">my free-book on strategy and tactics</a>), however, this is
utterly useless unless we describe exactly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i>
these things are accomplished. The complexity of that answer will pretty
quickly discourage many would-be revolutionists and send them running for the
easier and more fabulous answer. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Avalanche</i>.
I know people who have been talking about that avalanche for fifty years now,
and they still have to organize mightily to put 200 butts to chairs in the same
place.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boggs writes, “the ensemble of structural and ideological
obstacles posed by the grand party of neoliberal globalization and imperialism
[Democrats] is sure to be insurmountable,” but we could say the same thing
about the whole system, only far <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more</i>
insurmountable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As it turns out, however, while the obstacles within the
Democratic Party are tough, to be sure, they are finite and—as many people who
actually tried have found out—discernable, as well as either surmountable or
by-passable. No, it is not “sure to be insurmountable,” which is exactly what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> said (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mea culpa</i>) about the early stages of the Sanders campaign, at
which—channeling my own inner-sectarian—I scoffed.<br />
<br />
What was insurmountable was
my own preconception.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s take a moment to talk about what exactly is the
Democratic Party, apart from an example of reification. Well no, first let’s
talk about reification, if we want to get down and dirty with some Marx . . .
well, and some Lukács, too. Gavrilo Petrović wrote:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The act (or result of the act) of transforming human
properties, relations and actions into properties, relations and actions of man‑produced
things which have become independent (and which are imagined as originally
independent) of man (sic) and govern his (sic) life. Also transformation of
human beings into thing‑like beings which do not behave in a human way but
according to the laws of the thing‑world. Reification is a ‘special’ case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">alienation</i>, its most radical and
widespread form characteristic of modern capitalist society.</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Switching up subjects and objects.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://internationalist-perspective.org/images/reification.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://internationalist-perspective.org/images/reification.jpg" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="617" height="186" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, when someone says things like, “The Democratic Party
thinks it can have its cake and eat it, too,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">e.g</i>., this is treating a thing (we’ll get to what kind of thing) as
if it has person-like characteristics. Now, we can try to figure out what kind
of <i>thing</i> the “Democratic Party” is. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is comprised of people. Pretty basic, but pretty
significant, because that means 44.7 million people, none exactly alike another, and
each having a particular history and a particular set of motives, not all of
them always clear even to themselves, for being members of the
Democratic Party. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that doesn’t make it the Democratic Party, which is also
an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">organization</i> (a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing</i>, immaterial but still a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing</i>, now, not persons)—a group
coalescing around a shared purpose. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is also an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">institution</i>,
which is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing</i>, meaning an
organization with a strong level of establishment—that is, materially supported
longevity and a measure of real influence. We’re still high up in the
abstractosphere, so of what exactly does this institution <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">consist</i>, apart from 44.7 million souls? And how <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exactly</i> is it organized? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, we have infrastructure—here in my town, that’s a set
of quite valuable databases, a decent meeting place, access to various
functions by officer/delegates and-or members, name recognition, and full
ballot access in every election.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Officers and delegates are elected locally. As you work your
way up the chain, there are more of those obstacles cited by Boggs, where
higher-up gatekeepers are less democratically vulnerable to challenges, and
where funders have the greatest access. The party is “run” by the Democratic
National Committee, which is just over 200 people. Out of 44.7 million people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By “run,” we don’t mean dictate to, because the DNC not only
does not have that kind of absolute authority, they have little control over
who actually comes into the party, and—with the exception of some hugely
populous areas—who runs local affiliates. Here in my town, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our Revolution</i> took over the local party with less than a dozen
activists; and here in my state, using the state and party’s own rules, they
also seized the nomination for State Attorney General—a lefty defense attorney,
running against a corporate tool former prosecutor. I filled out a card and
gave them ten bucks, becoming a member just to vote in that nominating
convention (not a statewide vote).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.nationaljournal.com/media/media/2015/08/28/cdn-media-nationaljournal.jpg.optimized.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://www.nationaljournal.com/media/media/2015/08/28/cdn-media-nationaljournal.jpg.optimized.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So there is another <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing</i>
that the Democratic Party “is”—an adjectival <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing</i>: it is permeable. A lot more permeable than the larger
bipartisan system is, even though it is contained within that larger system
where it “holds up half the sky.” So, which is easier, for example? Gaining
ballot access for a non-duopoly party? Or winning a nomination in a Democratic
Primary?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rather than answer this, what sectarians do here is
premise-shift the argument. “Once, you are in the party,” some will say, “you
will inevitably compromise yourself away from truly-true Socialism to (fill in
the ick blank with something like “social democracy”). Boggs himself went there
by comparing US politics now with European parliamentary systems past (no
account here of the reach of US international hegemony) and delving into the
archives for pre-WWII Germany . . . because “little has changed.” The subtext
here is a kind of contagion narrative: the Democratic Party is a communicable
disease against which we must be inoculated, because once you are so much as
scratched, the wound will fester into full-blown sepsis.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/sepsis-1527871947.jpg?crop=1xw:0.9166666666666667xh;center,top&resize=480:*" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="480" height="195" src="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/sepsis-1527871947.jpg?crop=1xw:0.9166666666666667xh;center,top&resize=480:*" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is an effective technique according to anthropologists,
because it establishes a (sectarian) community through purity-pollution codes,
mobilizing a kind of disgust (the disease metaphor) that forecloses the
discussion. And it has been effective on behalf of sectarians for precisely that
purpose.<br />
<br />
For all the talk about mass-this and mass-that and mass-party (they
love the mass party thing), this purity-pollution code has placed a kind of
epidemiological barrier between the purified mini-parties and 89 percent of
African American voters, 54 percent of women voters, 55 percent of millennial
voters, 66 percent of Latin@ voters, and a quarter of all independents.<br />
<br />
Jill
Stein received one percent of the total presidential vote in 2016, with little
to no support from anyone who identifies as a Democrat.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings us to our next point, and that is that “being a
Democrat” is not an identity. Reification works both ways. You can transfer the
characteristics of living creatures to non-living entities, but you can also
transfer the characteristics of non-living entities onto living persons. The
Democratic Party platform has characteristics that support Zionism, for
example, but many people—myself included—who hold a formal membership in the
party are anti-Zionist. So why would I vote for Democrats or join the party, if
I don’t agree with its platform or program?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s why. Read slowly if you need to. (a) Because there is
a tactical advantage in doing so for socialists, and (b) because we can.<br />
<br />
Even
when we broaden the tent to include non-Leninists in the socialist mix, like
DSA and Our Revolution and their sympathizers, support for any form of
socialism is still not enough to overcome existing obstacles to win a
legislative majority. Nonetheless, the balance of forces is already locked into those
struggles within the old frameworks, and the stakes are very high. This is not
a soccer game, where the final whistle is blown and one team becomes
unequivocally the winner. The Democratic Party is not a team, but one interacting phenomenon among several, some of which are less desirable and more dangerous than
Democrats.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This kind of sectarian nonsense was more understandable
before the 2016 elections revealed a shift in the balance of forces, and a
bifurcation in the historical process. Everything they believerd was wrong. But . . . everything we believed was wrong, too.<br />
<br />
Now, we are seeing the Republican
Party—taken over by one demagogue—being bent toward right-wing
authoritarianism and one-man rule, with a mass base in the tens of millions, a
subset of whom are literally armed and dangerous. And unlike pre-Hitler
Germany, we don’t have a couple million armed communists with war experience to
balance things out.<br />
<br />
In fact, with the debacle of the Kavanaugh pseudo-hearing,
we are getting a clear glimpse of just how central the preservation of male
supremacy is to the energy of that reactionary mass base, and the upcoming midterms
will test its real strength . . . and the strength of . . . what?<br />
<br />
Well, in a
situation where a plurality is in power with the capacity to consolidate its
rule against the majority, and when there is no majority possible without the
Democratic Party itself and its candidates, then tactical alliances need to be
formed.<br />
<br />
Yes, there are downsides, this is life, grow up—to blunt that drive
toward right-wing authoritarianism precisely to give people like us room to
breathe and organize and, more importantly, to <b>take the heat off the most vulnerable in this society, because they are getting their asses kicked right now</b>!<br />
<br />
Failing to do so will almost certainly make things much
worse and increase the time, resources, and work that will be necessary to
reverse the effects later on. Now you can call it “lesser-evilism.” Olde Tyme Sectarians
identify any violation of the purity codes by attaching an –ism to it, because
abstractions are more important than that granular mess called reality. The
other sectarians will understand immediately that this puts the practitioners
of lesser-evilism into a kind of quarantine so the vanguard doesn't get infected.
I’m having a flash on one of my favorite zombie-contagion narratives, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">28 Days Later</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQrHn0jYpSBirXKlVbXlcb_EXZllTqUONNtmYpZvhB0T9FNRjm3" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="164" data-original-width="306" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQrHn0jYpSBirXKlVbXlcb_EXZllTqUONNtmYpZvhB0T9FNRjm3" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In effect, what the sectarian is saying, since other options
are now foreclosed, is suck it up for now until we see the “Marxist avalanche,”
which will happen as soon as you all get together and follow the sectarians . .
. except that there are so many among so few. We will lead you all in the
revolutionary civil war. (Hint for this kind of covert adventurist: the right
has more guns than you ever will, and the American capitalist state has a lot
more.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now comes the sectarian devolution into a kind
of evidentiary hearing of all the things “Democrats” (no other distinctions!)
have done. Democrats support Wall Street. Democrats support wars. Democrats
support (name your sin). Which is all true, and all sinful, but it is utterly
fallacious as an argument because it suggests that being a Democrat (person) is
synonymous with the positions taken in the platform or by other individual
Democratic elected officials. Congresswoman Barbara Lee has consistently voted
against war and militarism, and she is a Democratic elected official.
Furthermore, this fallacious gambit has a subtext that reads: Voting is <i>an
endorsement</i> of (a) everything a candidate says or does and (b) everything
officially endorsed by the party. This unspoken subtext is unspoken because it
is such obvious bullshit. I vote, and its never been an endorsement.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQzH4XFnGJ64S2sXpew0tClvIua_TeLMFcNU-_edDy5YAdvvd4YtQ" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="159" data-original-width="318" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQzH4XFnGJ64S2sXpew0tClvIua_TeLMFcNU-_edDy5YAdvvd4YtQ" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hate war and militarism, because I was immersed in it for
so long and because war is an obscenity and abomination. But elections are sublimated wars, so I’ll
take the war in which I don’t have to kill anyone over the kind where I do, if
that is the only option available, and if it might reduce the risks of violence.<br />
<br />
Jesus said, "be wise as serpents and gentle as doves."<br />
<br />
There are some lessons I learned
studying war that are pertinent to this discussion of elections based on the similarity between war and elections. That’s the
main things that American political parties are organized for—elections. So how
do we think about an election as a war, employing what we know about war as a
practice?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First of all, there can be far more than one faction
fighting in a war. The US did not lose the war in Iraq (they lost it to Iran,
paradoxically enough) fighting one group, but a shifting and often unstable mix
of forces—some of them taking time out to beat each other up—of Ba’athists,
Iraqi nationalists, pan-Arabists, Salafists, Shia Mahdis, and Iraqi socialists.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
War like an election is an instrumental not an expressive
activity.<br />
<br />
You don’t get to choose the situation. You inherit it when you get
there.<br />
<br />
Wishful thinking, including trying to speak new realities into
existence with propaganda, is the enemy of success, because all operational
failures are ultimately intelligence failures . . . the misapprehension of the
granular realities of the battlespace.<br />
<br />
There is no more important component of
a good intelligence summary than one’s own actually-existing weaknesses and
one’s opponents’ strengths.<br />
<br />
This becomes doubly important when you are an Iraqi
partisan or an American socialist.<br />
<br />
You need to assess every other
combatant for strengths and weaknesses as well as when and how you
will ally with them or oppose them. You don't categorically refuse alliances
because a potential ally on today’s battlespace may have been on the other side
of yesterday’s battlespace. You are not initially looking for the win
(avalanche?), but to survive and thrive in order to get stronger. This requires
the kind of hard-mindedness that quickly accepts one’s own weaknesses and the
strengths of opponents and even the sketchiest of allies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The elections are the battle. The parties and other
institutions are the figurative <i>terrain</i>. The objective is some center of
political power. DSA and OR and others are not, as the uberlefter detractors
constantly claim in a straw-man fallacy, trying to convert the Democratic
Party.<br />
<br />
Slander.<br />
<br />
That shows up in some rhetoric, but among actual DSA and OR people I
know, there are less than zero illusions about the Democratic Party. Certainly,
there are those who hope for that (and parties <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> changed and kept their names in the past), but to claim this
is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raison d’etre</i> of these
socialists is to claim the ability to read minds <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en masse</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When you read the party as part of the terrain upon which
you are fighting, it takes on a different aspect. It is the least
well-protected capitalist terrain that gives us greater proximity to that
center of political power via less well-defended pathways and lines of
communication. Whether one holds that terrain is a purely tactical
consideration; but in the current milieu, we’d better be on it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://scottmingus.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/28_fallin2002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://scottmingus.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/28_fallin2002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that not everyone will consent to every proposition
in the sectarian program, but if a politics is <i>actually</i> a politics of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actual</i> masses, then it requires numbers
that qualify it as such.<br />
<br />
The Green Party is not a mass party.<br />
<br />
DSA/OR (or the
nascent social democratic coalitions they are developing in various places) is
not yet a mass organization, but it has shown that it is big enough to conduct
insurgent operations.<br />
<br />
Jill Stein failed.<br />
<br />
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez succeeded.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings me to my final quibble with sectarians, of
which their reaction to Ocasio-Cortez is emblematic. Rather than move in to
support her—a political neophyte with maybe more chutzpah than experience—they
choose to parse everything she says and does for heresies (and she made a
couple of little blunders). Which is interesting, because now these aging sectarians,
who have never won shit in their lives, are telling someone who just knocked
off a Democratic party heavyweight how to do politics. Sectarians, and this
will get worse as the social-democratic fusion continues to make gains (barring
that one-man rule we talked about that Trump might get if Democrats lose in
2018), are highly adept at rejecting anyone who “violates” a jot of the purity
code. Again, this is fallacious bullshit deployed to defend arguments that have
become pretty much indefensible on logical terms.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The sectarian motto: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nothing
but the avalanche!</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Basic infantry chronology again—first you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">seize</i> the terrain (and you might mess it
up in the process). Then you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hold/defend</i>
the terrain. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Then</i> you begin improving
your position. It might be a salient in the Democratic Party today. Tomorrow,
we’ll see what comes, and evaluate the next move. If you aren't stronger than you main opposition, it may not yet be time to shed your less-than-perfect allies.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Some day, I expect, based on how things are moving right now, the Democratic Party extablishment, which is shrinking, will make an alliance (they've already started) with Bush Republicans (neoconservatives). The trick now is to gain enough strength within to make an eventual break after the reactionaries are defeated. And remember, strength is not measured in ideological purity, but in warm bodies willing to vote they way you want them to. That means you have to (a) persuade or (b) be persuaded (perish the thought!). That means you have to expand the circle of trust; and that means rethinking your ideas about purity and pollution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the time being, let’s close with one very important fact
that bears on the question of the ostensible impermeability of “the Democratic
Party.” Its purpose is to win elections, and elections can be managed, even
fudged through dirty tricks, but they are hard to control. There is space there for tactical gain.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No one said it was easy. But I’ll be damned if I’m waiting
for “the avalanche.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-3998605395058863602018-10-15T10:19:00.001-07:002018-10-15T10:19:09.711-07:00Pocahontas: Blood quantum rant<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Elizabeth Warren has apparently had her DNA tested to “prove”
she has “Indian blood.” Which has naught to do with being representative of any
actual First Nations people, culture, or experience.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2018/02/06/gettyimages-71264208_sq-b017b2e975405b08513c3348ea1a76ac721d135c-s800-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2018/02/06/gettyimages-71264208_sq-b017b2e975405b08513c3348ea1a76ac721d135c-s800-c85.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Awhile back, my maternal
first cousin had one of those DNA tests done, and it showed we had markers not
just for First Nations, but more specifically people now called Salt River Pima
Maricopa, neighbors of the Apaches. Arizona Indians.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was a surprise,
because our Great Grandma, Minervia Isom, had become Cherokee-maybe-Choctaw in
the family’s informal oral history. She’d married my Great Grandpa, a white
man, in Mississippi . . . and it probably wasn’t talked about a great deal. Which
may be how Grandma Minervia got switched from being one of those Mexico Indians
into being one of those Black Belt Indians. There were Cherokee and Choctaw
down that way . . . but as the story goes, Minervia was a res-jumper who had
been in Oklahoma before she stole a team of horses and ran off to Mississippi
and her future family.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’d not known it until after Cousin Anne decided it was
time to get nekkid with the family DNA, but Arizona Indians were shipped off to
Oklahoma, too. So, there you have it. I’m sure the real story is different. I might be 1/8 Salt River Pima Maricopa.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But
I’m not saddling up to attend powwows or appropriate my Great Gran by sitting
with other white dudes in mythopoetic sweat lodges because I have a “blood
quantum” of 1/8 or whatever that is—Minervia may not have been “full blood.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First Nations are a history and a people constituted by a specific
experience, an experience in relation to other peoples, and to power. DNA has
jackshit to do with that if the bearer of that DNA—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mwa mem</i>—has lived his entire life as an Anglophone white guy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I
know the “real story” of the sly Elizabeth Warren—whose devotion to her First Nations “heritage”
hasn’t compelled her to stand up for Palestinians, whose treatment is so
similar to that we meted out to effect our Westward expansion. The "real story" making the rounds is the Bad Orange President (the real story every damn day, Lord have mercy!) derided her claim to “Indian blood” (I wonder if
Great-Gran had A-negative like me) by calling her Pocahontas and challenging
her to take a DNA test. Cool, she did it, there was something, Agent Orange owes $1 million, but the asshole never pays his debts and lies about it. So . . . back to DNA.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I find DNA testing to be exceptionally creepy in
many respects, so it triggered me to rant about the thing concealed in our
great and justified desire to be rid of Trump, which is how DNA can get
conflated with some kind of “authenticity.” Lived experience. Full stop.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rant over.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-52633284066779925012018-10-07T10:04:00.001-07:002018-10-07T10:04:48.316-07:00How the left lost the women<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was a Communist for a couple of years, a member of the
very conservative leftist CPUSA. We parted ways over gender, mainly. When I
cited bell hooks to Jarvis Tyner, he dismissively called her an “ultra-feminist.”
When two of the guys came down to Raleigh from New York, I heard them speculate
derisively about which of the women didn’t shave their legs. When I wrote an
article that emphasized the dynamics of gender I’d seen in Haiti and the
Dominican Republic, I was called onto the carpet to demand repentance for
putting “the woman question” before the “primary contradiction,” which is of
course economic class. One of the more astute fellow travelers at the time,
Gerald Horne, who was teaching at UNC then, was more internationalist in
perspective, and he claimed at a meeting once that “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">US imperialism</i> is the primary contradiction in the world.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Video/201711/nn_khu_al_franken_allegations_171116_1920x1080.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Video/201711/nn_khu_al_franken_allegations_171116_1920x1080.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I left the party and ended up after a fashion with a less “democratically
centralized” formation called Freedom Road Socialist Organization (the NY
faction after a split). They were more than happy to discuss gender, because
they’d already broken from orthodoxy once through a close association with
leftist black nationalism. But they embraced a kind of fuzzy postmodern version
of feminism, based to some degree on the guys finding that a friendlier version
of feminism<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>. . . for men. I left them,
too, though I still have great affection for the people I knew there. They
still looked at class as the “principle contradiction,” but that taxonomy had
already been eroded by their careful and pretty principled approach to race and
nationality.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then I joined the most radical cult of all: Jesus chasers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wrote for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Counterpunch</i>
quite a bit during the anti-war upsurge of 2001–2008 (ending with Obama’s ascension
to Commander-in-Chief). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Counterpunch</i>
is a leftist zine—kind of a modern-day <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Iskra</i>
with many left perspectives—but I also found a good deal of pushback about my
obsession with gender as a system of power and an ideology, this time from
people coming out of a more Trotskyist tradition. I was flirting with heresy
still; and I even had one fella joke about how the women had taken me hostage
and another who called me “pussy whipped.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The whole radical feminist movement rose directly out of
Marxism (they still use a Marxist idiom), because women within Marxism began
using the same analytic frameworks as their comrades used for class and applied
it to men and women—as classes divided by antagonistic interests based on cultural
and political structures or norms. The result was a backlash on the male left
(you can still see it, but it fades corresponding to age—older fellas are more
sexist for the most part) that attacked the rad-fems on the one hand and
embraced postmodern accounts (which they rejected with regard to class) of
gender, now redefined, often in ways that erased embodied women as a political collectivity
. . . and which was much more tolerant of the kinds of sexual objectification
that lefty men had come to cherish as much as their righty counterparts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The crux of what radical feminism uncovered was that women quite
often suffered some of their worst oppressions not in the setting of employee
v. employer but in the practice of sex. Andrea Dworkin, a kind of foremother of
radical feminism, was demonized by the left because she voiced those concerns
with righteous anger (and women are not supposed to do that), and the way she
said things discomfited the lefty boys.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She was right, though.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are seeing women by the thousands confirm exactly what
Dworkin described.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another thing I share with radical feminism is the
conviction that if there is such a thing as a “primary contradiction,” sex
beats out class every time. Sex relations like class relations are always in
flux, always adapting; but both are meta-stable, because the power gradient
itself never changes. Capital is always more powerful than labor. Men (as a
whole) are always more powerful than women (as a whole). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is unaccounted for here is the fuel of male domination,
which is enculturation from birth into gender norms. When I told people fifteen
years ago that masculinity was driving politics with more psychological heat even
than accumulation. More than that, however, the sociocultural <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">structures</i> of male-female relations are
co-rooted with other relations in such a way that revolutionary change—if it is
possible and desirable—presupposes a fundamental change in sex relations. Or those
relations, that consciousness, will return society to its former defaults. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was dismissed by quite a few lefty men.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was right, though.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are seeing the masculinist reaction against the illumination
of what Dworkin described with the recent judicial coup, yes, but also in the
re-ignition of the Trump base, which elected Trump precisely on a narrative of
white male victimization (loss of privilege) . . . and what is the call? “It
has become a dangerous world for boys.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At every juncture in the long history of failures on the
American left, when the issue of male domination came up, that issue was
shelved for the more urgent issues at hand . . . which were anything except
gender. And so first the rad-fems, then more and more and more women—put off by
our bad habits, our internalization of our own privilege, our own predations,
our own macho warspeak, our own mansplaining, and our own open hostility—disengaged
with the left, because—from that standpoint—the left is just another boys’
club.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings us to today.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before we all run for the hills of Other Issues with our
hands clapped across our crotches, if the left wants to regain the trust of
women, it will stfu for a while, listen to the women who are raising their
voices right now, police our own, and figure out how to best support the #MeToo
movement.<br /><br /><br />(PS - Al Franken is not a leftist, but the picture speaks volumes.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-45107774193623538942018-10-07T06:44:00.000-07:002018-10-07T06:54:44.682-07:00Ferrets, Electioneers, DA’s, Scavengers, Grubstakers, Maroons, Barristers, Civilians, Attachés<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Behold,
I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be
wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">-Matthew
10:16<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Asymmetric struggle
presupposes an epistemic break.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">-Jake
the Snake<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So
now all three branches of the US Federal Government are in the hands of
reactionaries, who have backstopped themselves for around thirty years in the
high court.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://funtimesmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/queen-nanny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://funtimesmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/queen-nanny.jpg" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Betsy
Rose recently wrote: “The Kavanaugh vote liberates us from dependence on the
federal level of government—we must turn our attention fully to the grassroots,
local, and (for now) state levels, where systems are lighter on their feet,
influence-able, and where there’s room for genuine progressives and radicals to
seek and win office, occupy positions of power from school boards to City
Council to Mayorships to state legislatures to Governships. It’s already
happening! And we downplay this progress at our peril. WE MUST NOT FOCUS ON THE
FEDERAL LEVEL. We must withdraw from this trance-like fixation on the
appearance of power, the trappings of power, but not a power that can or will
bring any meaningful policy or change to our decaying society. I don’t mean
don't vote in federal elections, don’t vote for president etc. Not at all. I
will continue to vote, I hope you do too. But my FOCUS, where I let my precious
attention and energy go, cannot primarily be there. It’s a waste of valuable
time and activity.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">She’s
onto something; but we want to take that a step further.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Notes on Strategy and
Tactics</span></i><span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> was an overview. Now let’s cover a provisional division
of labor in a hypothetical movement that corresponds to our specific
circumstance. We begin with those premises laid out in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Notes</i>; Tactics, not strategies, are the strong suit of weaker
antagonists. Strategies, with tactics subordinated to strategies, is the strong
suit of more powerful antagonists. Strategies, however, begin with a form of
self-delusion, which is enhanced by the delusory characteristics of
self-isolation—also an inescapable aspect of strategy (a “self-isolating
calculus”). Tactical agility is the forte of the weaker, and its advantages are
compounded by a degree of decentralization that never provides a critical
target to the strategic opposition. The strategist cannot cut the head off the
snake, because there is no head. This was the conundrum for US military forces
in Iraq and Afghanistan—two historic strategic failures. The strategist is
compelled to control the environment; and the tactician dances with the
environment, making an ally of “chaos,” or unpredictability.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
other thing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Notes</i> covered was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">practice</i>. In short, so long as the
struggle is (a) ideological and (b) electoral, these two aspects relate only to
themselves and one another . . . the error here is in believing that these come
first, and nothing else can be done without the eventual development of centralized
power first.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We
can suggest the self-organization of a tactical agility network through seven
key practices and their practitioners: Ferrets, Electioneers, DA’s, Scavengers,
Grubstakers, Maroons, Barristers, Civilians, Attachés.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ferrets
do what the military calls intelligence: information organized and analyzed
with an eye to increasing the efficacy of actions. Intelligence, to be
effective, must be (a) as rigorously accurate as possible and (b) analyzed by intel
mavens who have demonstrated the greatest ability to predict outcomes. Ferrets
gather intelligence, crunch intelligence, make intelligence accessible, map intelligence,
graph intelligence, update intelligence, etc. Every operational failure is an
intelligence failure. The enemies of good intelligence are (a) wishful
thinking, (b) defensive egos, (c) lack of detail, and (d) agendas. Intelligence
must be made available to all other practices. Speaking for myself, I was a DA
(explained below) when I was younger (45-60, the army before that), along with
an occasional electioneer, but I’m more of a ferret now that I’m old. The first
priority of Ferrets is to map the networks of Ferrets, Electioneers, DA’s, Scavengers,
Grubstakers, Maroons, Barristers, Civilians, Attachés, and make them available
to the Attachés, Electioneers, DA’s, Barristers, and Grubstakers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Electioneers
are people (DSA is moving this way) who become the political mavens of a movement.
They focus on candidate recruitment, election-organizing, campaign tactics,
voter education, voter turnout, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">et al</i>.
This is a full-time practice that will improve the longer the same people stay
at it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">DA’s
are direct action practitioners. They certainly participate in mass
mobilizations (like the protests in Washington DC yesterday); but their focus
needs to be (a strategic focus here, without falling into the strategy trap) on
what Jason W. Moore describes as “frontiers.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frontiers</i> are where capital is digging out cheap stuff—labor,
resources, energy, and food. The old labor organizing has stuttered to a halt,
as the Boss is now some vague network of people one never sees. The strategic
idea that used to pertain was that capital could be successfully confronted at
the point of production, but capital as organized around that. What went
largely unrecognized is that capital depends absolutely upon these forms of “cheap”
extraction, where accumulation is more “primitive.” Surplus value happens at
point of production; but the points of production require feedstocks—which are
frontiers. As we said in Notes, “water politics, food sovereignty, energy
extraction, labor politics from the grass of the grassroots. Standing Rock is
emblematic. Flint is emblematic. Black Lives Matter is emblematic. The teacher
strike wave is emblematic. Everything is local.” A key arena of frontier direct
action is environmental justice—where environment meets poverty, race, and war.
The other key frontier is food sovereignty, because this is the most
fundamental form of dependency that captures us within the monetized (and now
financialized and weakened) grid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Scavengers
are the McGivers of a movement. They scavenge useful things, repurpose old
things, repair things, dumpster dive, learn to live off the land (even and
especially in cities), and run in small packs. Food Not Bombs is a kind of
scavenger group. Scavengers are not only valuable for what they find and do,
they could be remarkable intelligence assets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Grubstakers
are financiers, people who have money to give, or people who are good at
finding money. The best of grubstakers would be those people who are good at
it, but who themselves use as little money as possible. Their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raison d’etre</i> is to fuel the movement
with cash.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Maroons
are those people who are experimenting with what we will call, using Maria Mies’
notion, “the subsistence perspective.” These are the new farmers, the
permaculturists, the agroecologists, the urban gardeners, what my friend
Meleiza Figueroa (a Filipina-American geographer/activist with long experience in
Brazil) calls <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quilombo</i>—Brazilian “maroons,”
African folk who ran away from the plantations and made their ways in the
forests and hinterlands. Maroons are pioneers, but they have full time jobs
that don’t let them spend a great deal of time doing politics. Crops don’t wait.
Nonetheless, what Maroons are doing right now is making changes and
experimenting with changes that will become the practical basis of any form of
ecosocialism. They are creating facts on the ground, which means something
materially defensible. There are already thousands of Maroons in the US, but
they haven’t been approached by most political ideologues. And yet, this is the
dog that should be wagging the tail of politics. As Betsy Rose says, we have to
de-emphasize the centrality of that over which we exercise the least control .
. . and I would add, emphasize the centrality of that over which we have the
most control. (Maroons do what <i>Notes</i> called "ineterstial work," see the searchable pdf below.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Barristers
are . . . well, lawyers and policy experts. Their jobs are to (a) help people
out of legal shit storms and (b) to participate in the development of policies
that assist Maroons, Electioneers, and Civilians. Eventually, they will be the
architects of laws and policies that we can put into effect if we achieve
political power. More importantly over the longer term, they will begin
preparation for a new Constituent Assembly to rid of us of that antiquated
white male capitalist Constitution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Civilians
are all of us who cannot devote a great deal of time to any of those. The
civilians that intelligence and operations need to study are (a) fellow
travelers, those sympathetic to whatever our goal is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now</i> (NOT NOT NOT ideological conformity!!!!!!!!!), (b) civilians
who are actively opposed to our immediate goals, and (c) civilians who are for
whatever reasons politically inert. This latter group is very large, and for
many reasons, most are never likely to become active. “Those who are not
against us are with us.” Jesus said that. No shit. If there are civilians who
are inert now, but have the potential to become active, let your practice be your
preaching. The key is to mobilize the active allies, win over what you can in
the middle, and isolate the active antagonists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Attachés
are the networkers. They are those people who are natural diplomats, who can
talk with anyone, and who have friends and associates in common across these
rough divisions of revolutionary labor. The connect people when they need
connecting, and they create opportunities for new connections, especially
between these various arts.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Note there are no soldiers. That's because killing is the weapon of the weak. It's easy to pick up the gun, but harder to get someone to put it down again. The reason past revolutions turned into their opposites. In any case, violence is what the establishment is already very good at; don't play to their strong suit (sorry, all you adventurist lads, this is the land of tricksters and mothers and geeks and carpenters, not gunfighters).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Supplemental
reading:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://chasinjesus.blogspot.com/2017/01/development-big-lie.html">http://chasinjesus.blogspot.com/2017/01/development-big-lie.html</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="http://republicart.net/disc/aeas/mies01_en.htm" style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">http://republicart.net/disc/aeas/mies01_en.htm</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uD2KeGqTRRJOopwafbYMStWfu7vMT60h/view" style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uD2KeGqTRRJOopwafbYMStWfu7vMT60h/view</a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-77819712366731089342018-10-05T05:48:00.002-07:002018-10-05T05:48:29.384-07:00Dear Baby Boomer White Guys,<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am one of you. I was born in 1951. And because it gives me
unearned cred with your bitter, indoctrinated asses, I am a veteran—retired from
the Army in fact—which is relevant only because I went through the same
indoctrination you did, which has trained us like organ monkeys to genuflect
before all things military. If you are one of those weird outliers for whom the
shoe fails to fit here, move along or share with one of your dumbass acquaintances
or relatives.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/02/video-undefined-20FD6F5900000578-784_636x358.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="358" data-original-width="636" height="180" src="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/02/video-undefined-20FD6F5900000578-784_636x358.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I empathize. I get it. You look at the span of your cramped
little lives, and you see Death holding the carriage door open for you not far enough
up the road. And things didn’t turn out the way you’d fantasized. I know those
fantasies, too. I was raised on the same TV Westerns during the same Cold War,
when white people didn’t have to think much about anyone but white people,
because we were the universally acknowledged norm. Every planet revolved around
the White Male Sun. The fantasy was that we would somehow prevail in heroism
(against what, it doesn’t matter, it’s the prevailing that is probative of our
masculinity), then have an adoring woman who fucks obediently, keeps the house <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>spotless, and watches our adorable children who
also worship us.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The measure of our general disappointment is the distance of
those fantasies from our actual reality—remembering our pills, dealing with wives
embittered themselves by years of our stupidity, posturing, control-freakery,
and neglect, children who have absorbed just enough of our self-centered
meanness to keep us at arm’s length for the rest of our lives, soaking up stupidity
from the television, and sharing our bitter disappointment with other old white
guys via a scapegoat mechanism that identifies the disruptors of our dreams as
dark people . . . and women. You are so disappointed with the distance between
fantasy and reality that you can’t even see what a pathetic, dependent,
overfed, and pampered existence you really have, and there is nothing that
pisses you off more than someone pointing that out . . . that you are privileged,
entitled assholes. And, of course, the proper male reaction to that is to dig
in deeper, to cherish your own stupidity, and to flaunt that stupidity like petulant
four-year-olds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not surprising really, because we are the first fruits of
the post-WWII consumer bacchanalia. We did stamped out jobs, lived in stamped
out houses, and bought stamped out age-appropriate toys, as the most infantilized
generation in history. We called it Progress, and we built an idol for it that
was a big ivory phallus, and we gazed at it adoringly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We never matured in the way that was once thought about, when
Mine-More-Now wasn’t an ethos, but an indication of immaturity. The captains of
the business class are our leaders, and we are their obedient kiddies drinking
the Kool-aid. And wow, did you all drink down great draughts of it with that shit
stained, combed over, carnival barking jackass, Donald Trump. In your fit of
collective pique, and in your terminal refusal to grow your asses up, you
demonstrated to the world and posterity that you still don’t understand, or
accept, the fundamental fact that actions have consequences. And you don’t give
a damn that others will bear the brunt of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you give a child a bulldozer, the child will run over
things. But that’s what you wanted to do anyway, because this is a tantrum. You
look old, like I look old, but your mentality accords with someone not far out
of diapers . . . and may I remind you all, we’ll be back in diapers soon
enough.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Vulnerability is part of our existence as humans, and the
basis of morality. And every human being is vulnerable at some point. It’s how
we respond to vulnerability that determines our characters.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But in that psycho-bubble of probative masculinity,
vulnerability is Bad. Toughness is Good. And so every shred of morality must be
driven out to protect a pure masculine essence the light of which we chase like
bewildered cats pursuing the red dot from a pointer. This is how you’ve fallen
into the trap of cruelty and its celebration.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So now, in ten years when you are shitting into your Depends
and talking to dead Aunt Jenny between lucid intervals, you will take your turn
at human vulnerability, and it will be too late. Your Medicare gone, your
Social Security gone, you’ll go through the inevitable devolution that awaits
any of us who hang around long enough and watch your family go broke trying to
keep up with the demands of the same predatory institutions that have run your
lives since birth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hey, at least we showed those black people, those
immigrants, those women a thing or two. Mess with White Men, mess with our
entitled masculinity, and we’ll tear everything down.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the center of the center of your creepy little universe
is your hatred of women, because that is what you’ve spent your whole lives
trying not to be. Compassion is for pussies. And from that, we can now unfold a
whole architecture of vandalizing stupidity—a world that is burning around the
cries of billions—a damaged, impoverished future for those we will leave behind
soon enough. But you don’t care about them either.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which more morally attuned people, then, will be by your
beds as your bodily systems crash, showing you the empathy you withheld from
others? Will you still be entitled? It’s coming.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here is the good news. Grace is a door held open
indefinitely. In Greek, the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">repent</i>
means turn around. You can still turn around. It is never too late for
contrition. One way or another, I’ll see you in that carriage.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Your friend,<br />
<br />
Stan<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-45672071285988736942018-10-03T11:33:00.002-07:002018-10-03T11:37:33.218-07:00Semiosphere of backyard birding<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
We have surrounded the house—thankfully surrounded by mature
sugar maple, elm, mulberry, fir, birch, and Norway spruce trees—with bird
houses and bird feeders; the latter of which, as any bird feeder knows, is also
seconded to the squirrels, lots of fox squirrels and a few red squirrels. I
spent the money last year to get one big feeder equipped with a squirrel
baffle, which works very well, but we came to a kind of truce, the squirrels
and us, in that they feed around a few obstacles and occasionally suffer the harassment
of passing dogs and we buy extra (sunflower) oil seed, the only thing we use in
the feeders, except suet—which keeps the four different kinds of woodpecker (downy,
hairy, red-breasted, and flicker) happy. Chipmunks, like the doves who are too
fat to perch on the feeders, feed on what falls to the ground. We get seasonal
birds—always looking for that passing rose-breasted grosbeak, always
associating the arrival of juncos that summer in the Upper Peninsula with the
arrival of frost and snow.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.birdsandblooms.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/tammy-anderson-junco2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.birdsandblooms.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/tammy-anderson-junco2.jpg" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="628" height="211" width="320" /></a></div>
<a name='more'></a><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last Spring, I bought lumber and studied YouTube videos in
order to build a deck in the back yard, where we have three cage feeders and
one suet feeder, one bird house, and a shade garden. Now, on a nice day like
today, one can sit quietly on the deck, and within minutes there is all sorts
of visible animal activity. A few minutes ago, I looked out from the kitchen
window and counted five fox squirrels, a nuthatch, three house finches, and a
hairy woodpecker. Recently, we’d take a week to camp and fish in the Upper
Peninsula, and the feeders ran dry. Some days ago, I went around a filled the
feeders. It was around forty minutes before the first sparrow showed up. Within
two hours, the place was again boiling with activity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some of them are very brave. A one-eyed goldfinch landed on
me once out there, his handicap causing him to mistake me for something less
animate. But the chickadees will come and take a seed out of the feeder almost
with your hand on it sometimes. Downies will let you get within a couple of
steps, less if you are obviously just passing. It’s like they are each
surrounded with their own force fields. And they have an apparent means by
which a certain number of squirrels and a certain number of birds can be
content to forage for fallen seed within a fairly predictable circumference.
And you begin to see it, that there are in fact force fields of a sort in
operation; that is, these creatures, including the trees and bushes and ground
cover and soil, are all in a dance we can call a semiosphere.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every thing (material constitution) is, by being constituted
in a particular way, aware in a particular way. But awareness is not purely
some kind of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Umwelt</i>, or “self-centered
world”; each <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Umwelt</i> involves signs
and countersigns that reach out to and bring back from other beings (ht to Jakob
von Uexküll and Thomas Sebeok), a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">semiosphere</i>
that is the self-regulation of these exchanges.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-20079023793331603062018-10-03T06:23:00.002-07:002018-10-03T06:41:28.827-07:00Democrats<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
This year I joined the Democratic Party.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://550cord.com/land-navigation-training/image138.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://550cord.com/land-navigation-training/image138.gif" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="504" height="260" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was easy. I gave
up ten dollars and filled out a little form. I did so for a reason. In
Michigan, there are two Democratic Primaries. One is the regular primary, the
other is the State Endorsement Convention, where those who show up with Democratic
Party ID in hand can vote. The latter <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>is
far less Democratic, but it is also how the MDP selects its nominees for
Secretary of State, Attorney General, and the State Supreme Court. So it’s an
event that required getting as many people as possible to Detroit (this year)
to cast a ballot. In this case, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our
Revolution</i>, the loose formation of activists coat-tailing the Sanders
challenge in 2016, who recruited me for this as well, had also joined the party
across the state, and were intent on nominating Dana Nessel, a social
democratic outlier and former defense attorney. That was easy, too. Here in my
little county, OR essentially joined, outnumbered, and took over the local
Democratic Party. And it worked. The Democratic nominee for Michigan Attorney
General is Ms. Nessel, who beat out Pat Miles, the Democratic establishment
candidate. Now labor, environmentalists, African Americans, immigrants, and
women in general have a candidate who, if elected, will actually represent
their interests for four to eight years.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The perennial crabs of the uberleft, philosophical idealists
posing as historical materialists, have turned categorical opposition to any “cooperation”
with Democrats or the Democratic Party into a kind of purity code. Not
surprisingly, the vast majority of these particular folks are men, and a goodly
number of them are—like me—on or approaching the geriatric end of the age
spectrum. As Mary Douglas and Paul Rozin have shown, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pollution</i> in purity-pollution codes is dose insensitive . . .
meaning even the tiniest contact results in wholesale contamination.
Everything, then, that constitutes pollution must elicit a disgust reaction as
a kind of prophylaxis against that contamination—stay away!—because a single
scratch can turn into gangrene. (People who haven’t studied <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528731-800-the-yuck-factor-the-surprising-power-of-disgust/">disgust psychology</a>,
an actual and valuable thing, are missing out.) Democrats! Ick!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These folks stood on the sidelines and threw polemical stones
at those (mostly young) people who managed to nominate Dana Nessel; and I’m
quite sure they were proclaiming the superiority of their standpoint throughout
the country where similar insurgencies broke through. I have been guilty of
this approach often enough myself to know, this is born of decades of
frustration and despair, hardening serial disappointments into a defensive and
impermeable scar.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is also born of uncorrected errors, because the left
(until recently, with the infusion of youth energy) has been hamstrung by the
failure to adapt its various political schemae to emerging realities. I myself
scoffed at the Sanders campaign when I saw it meeting with twenty people on
someone’s lawn; but within three months, Sanders was pulling in standing room
only crowds. I was depending on my past experience; but in the meantime,
something that had not been visible—some shift in the public mood—had occurred,
“out of sight” for those of us whose windows on the world were otherwise restricted,
that found its expression during the elections, where breakaway candidates in
both parties suddenly came to the fore—in the case of Republicans, seizing the nomination
for POTUS.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sanders, as many Democratic establishment folks will remind
us, wasn’t even a Democrat. And now I am a member of the Democratic Party—me, a
pacifist Christian socialist and an anti-imperialist. I’ll be working a table
this Friday during a small town street party to promote Proposition 2, to
reverse Michigan’s Republican gerrymandering that has essentially absorbed and
neutralized the African American vote in places all over the state.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is an American political party?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can look up the answer on Wikipedia or something, but how
should we see it from the left? Here is where I want to challenge uberleft
thinking, not only as a former uberlefter but as a former career soldier.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Democratic Party is not a “vehicle” or a “building” or a
“person” possessed of its own agency. As a former “operations” guy in the Army,
someone who collected intelligence, analyzed intelligence, and wrote operations
orders, I see this cumbersome old institution—which is both structure that
resists change and membership that invariably changes—as terrain. And terrain
is a key component of tactical planning. (Those who are
interested in the distinctions between tactics and strategy go <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uD2KeGqTRRJOopwafbYMStWfu7vMT60h/view">here</a>.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Terrain can be simultaneously what we want to gain and hold
and what we need to occupy to conduct further operations. In analyzing terrain,
we used an acronym OCOKA (now changed to OACOK): observation and fields of
fire, avenues of approach, cover and concealment, obstacles, and key terrain.
Terrain analysis is essential, because terrain is something <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">upon</i> which operations are waged.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My contention is that the Democratic Party must be seen as
one of several terrains upon which political struggle is unfolding. We are not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">within</i> the Democratic Party, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">upon</i> it. Taking that analogy a step
further, <i>when you make gains on one piece of terrain, you don’t abandon the
battle after the first skirmish, and cede that terrain back</i>. This is giving me flashbacks,
but the old basic tactical intelligence formats I memorized to construct
operations orders in the army keep popping up in front of me.<br />
<br />
Acronym METT-T: Mission, Enemy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Terrain</i>
and Weather, Troops Available, and Time.<br />
<br />
The “enemy” is not a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">party</i>, it is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">class</i> that is spread across both
parties, but which is now making a play through one party to consolidate a
mailed fist and depending on the other party to catch the ratchet if that fails
then establish the new more neoconservative (Clintonite) normal. When you see
the DP as one of several protean institutional webworks of relations that we
can analogize as terrain, as part of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">landscape</i>
upon which we fight. That landscape, or fortress, or whatever analogy you like,
has been <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shaped</i> by the ruling class,
but it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> the ruling class.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Terrain is incorporated into the larger intelligence
summary: Mission, Actually Existing Capacity, stuff like that. And Time.
Strategy tries to reduce time to space. Tactical agility makes an ally of both.
(Again, see <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uD2KeGqTRRJOopwafbYMStWfu7vMT60h/view">Strategy and Tactics</a>.)<br />
<br />
Enemy Situation (another intel category) includes Strength, Composition,
Disposition (matched to terrain), Capabilities and Limitations, and Probable
Course of (opposition) Action.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You can begin to get hold of that tactical mindset, and it
becomes apparent that regarding the terrain itself as the enemy is a form of self-delusion
that underwrites failure after failure.<br />
<br />
I have to go take mushrooms or something now to get all this Army crap out of
my head again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-71068754064088184822018-10-02T11:44:00.000-07:002018-10-02T13:11:52.975-07:00Rocket Fuel—2018, US Referendum on Patriarchy<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“Sex is the rocket fuel of the political psyche.”</i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lordy, I’ve heard it all. The silly call-out culture of
postmodernity that can say in a cyberblink all the sins left unaddressed by
this or that . . . guilty of it myself at times, I expect . . . “Taking this
action will not address questions (a), (b), or (c).” On the question of
elections, this can get even sillier with an array of guilt by association arguments
and scarecrows to ritually denounce and tear up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2018/09/AP_18270756093307/lead_720_405.jpg?mod=1538083351" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="720" height="180" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2018/09/AP_18270756093307/lead_720_405.jpg?mod=1538083351" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are some things that elections are, and there are some
things elections are not. That is true ontologically, but it is also true
personally, and the last time I checked, the actual act of voting in an
election—while certainly a strange and highly complex public ritual—is accomplished
by actual persons. The claim or implication that participation (for those
persons) is (include declarative statement here . . . like, “an endorsement of
an evil process,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">e.g</i>.) is false on
its face, unless someone can convince me that the perennial curmudgeons who
market this stuff have learned to read minds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ever so often, however, history conspires to make a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing</i>—like an election—drift into a
unique position where it ramifies through whole societies. It is still all the
things elections are and aren’t, but it suddenly connects in such a way that it
pivots history a bit, throws it onto a different azimuth. I think 2018 is that
way, just as 2016 was in a different way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of those interactive phenomena are social movements, and
even in naming this, we open up some controversies about what social movements
are and aren’t. Not here. The re-ignition of sex as the subject of feminist
grievance and analysis defines 2018 in much the same way that the re-ignition
of a nascent political left marked the 2016 bifurcation. In many ways, this is
far deeper, because sex is the rocket fuel of the political psyche. We observe
Donald’s agitated, defensive displays of hypermasculinity again and again, only
occasionally noting how driven they are by gender norms that associate women
with weakness and taint and men with hard-heartedness and violence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Donald Trump was arguably elected by perceived threats to (white)
masculinity. If someone takes the time, I bet s/he could prove that. Seems
pretty glaringly obvious from here. White male victimhood is the central
narrative, the opening scene of which is male victimization; the concluding fantasy scene is the teleological
restoration of order through the restoration of the national masculinity. It
was the heartbeat of the campaign. People don’t get that because they keep
listening to what these people say—which is a dim and distorted reflection of
the terror-stunned insecurity that writhes in them like gutworms of the soul. Sexual
identity expressed as masculinity is deeper in many men than their dimmest
memory, more sacred than any spiritual practice or confession of faith.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These flashes of authoritarian white male rage that have
saturated the media in the past few days have seriously triggered a lot of
women I know, most of whom have had one or more brush with Man-the Sexual
Predator. And that is where I’m looking right now: at the reactions of women.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Believe me, this is more than about Republicans, even if at
this conjuncture—this trick of history—defeating Republicans has become more
than defeating Republicans and coincidentally—for the next few weeks—the most
important thing in the world we can do together.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Democratic establishment—housing
more than its share of Man-the Sexual Predator—is milking it now for the same
elections, as is to be expected. Fly’s gonna fly. Wolf’s gonna wolf. Tree’s
gonna tree. I was more active in the antiwar movement (younger, for one thing),
and I remember the oceans of Democrats, led by their civil society entrepreneurial
class, joining us in demanding an end to Bush’s war. We needed them, but when
Obama was sworn in, the war continued, and we became radioactive to them. Be
warned.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But an election is not about “I vote Dem, therefore I
endorse the institution (and all that is in it).” An election is an event with
consequences over which we do still exercise an element of control . . . though
we are approaching a period where failure to use that limited power might result
in losing it all. Moreover, an election has the power to mobilize and aggrandize
social movements, just as it did in 2016 with the Sanders challenge.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Elections are tactical. I know plenty of people who knew how
utterly awful Hillary Clinton was, based on her fundamentally neoconservative
world view, and who voted for her nonetheless, because they were afraid of
Trump. They’ve been vindicated, but there we are. Now we have Trump . . . and
Kavanaugh . . . and the double whammy of the powerful consciousness-raising and
solidarity-building #metoo and #whyididntreport suddenly energizing women and women’s
allies to use that energy as a test, perhaps a display, of the newfound power
of that movement, in a tangible, even quantifiable, way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is at stake is not just a chance to rebuke the power of
Trump by demolishing his party in the elections, it is—as these old white men
have been pretty clear—patriarchy that is under threat when the subject becomes
sexual harassment, sexual humiliation, sexual domination, sexual assault, and
rape.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If women continue to mobilize and deliver a decisive blow to
the Republican Party, they can turn 2018 into a referendum on patriarchy. That
kind of power cannot be ignored, and it will not only slash at the psychic
foundations of the Right, it will serve as a reminder to all others . . . get your
houses in order. You could be next.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-65128279669743720212018-10-01T09:53:00.000-07:002018-10-03T15:43:15.517-07:00Three-steps to 'gender' fascism (gender being a verb)<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Ungendered</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<<Fascism is a revolutionary species of political modernism originating in the early twentieth century whose mission is to combat the allegedly degenerative forces of contemporary history (decadence) by bringing about an alternative modernity and temporality (a ‘new order’ and a ‘new era’) based on the rebirth, or palingenesis, of the nation. Fascists conceive the nation as an organism shaped by historic, cultural, and in some cases, ethnic and hereditary factors, a mythic construct incompatible with liberal, conservative, and communist theories of society. The health of this organism they see undermined as much by the principles of institutional and cultural pluralism, individualism, and globalized consumerism promoted by liberalism as by the global regime of social justice and human equality identified by socialism in theory as the ultimate goal of history, or by the conservative defence of ‘tradition’.>></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Roger Griffin</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5bae543e87834306acdc6747/master/w_768,c_limit/brettkavanaughABA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="768" height="213" src="https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5bae543e87834306acdc6747/master/w_768,c_limit/brettkavanaughABA.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Gendered psychoanalytically</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<<The crucial element of fascism is its explicit sexual language, what Theweleit calls “the conscious coding” or the “over-explicitness of the fascist language of symbol.” This fascist symbolization creates a particular kind of psychic economy which places sexuality in the service of destruction. Despite its sexually charged politics, fascism is an anti-eros, “the core of all fascist propaganda is a battle against everything that constitutes enjoyment and pleasure.” … He shows that in this world of war the repudiation of one’s own body, of femininity, becomes a psychic compulsion which associates masculinity with hardness, destruction, and self-denial.>></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Jessica Benjamin and Anson Rabinbach</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://assets.rbl.ms/14235390/980x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="620" height="212" src="https://assets.rbl.ms/14235390/980x.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Gendered by political masculinity</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<<In gender terms, fascism was the naked reassertion of male supremacy in societies that had been moving toward equality for women. To accomplish this, fascism promoted new images of hegemonic masculinity, glorifying irrationality (“the triumph of the will”, thinking with “the blood”) and the unrestrained violence of the frontline soldier.>></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
R.W. Connell</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-73635268380357900822018-10-01T05:31:00.000-07:002018-10-01T05:31:00.368-07:00Election Reflection on “Interference”<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Outrage is a commodity, one that gets hotter with the
increasing polarization of metropolitan politics in our faltering neoliberal
epoch. Somewhere between those poles lies MSNBC as a neoliberal bastion now
cobbling together the neocons of the Weekly Standard (their arch enemies when
they supported Republican Bush II) with the neoliberals of the Democratic Party
establishment. I want to rename them MSNeoBC; and I find myself watching them
several times a day now, like a soap opera junkie, in a psychic state somewhere
between weird fascination and slapstick mirth. I am convinced they are issued
cocaine before each broadcast to maintain the machinegun pace of their chatter.
“Russia,” they say, “Russia, Russia, Russia.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://thehill.com/sites/default/files/article_images/russia-kremlin-getty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="179" src="https://thehill.com/sites/default/files/article_images/russia-kremlin-getty.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Robert Mueller plods through witness after witness, Russian
“electoral interference” as the ostensible goal of that investigation, we see
every day more clearly that the Russian government has taken a page from the US
playbook on electoral interference. Will it stick? Who knows? It’s like a clown
show, but the clowns are all drunk. What will get Agent Orange in the end?
Maybe something as pedestrian as money laundering or (It’s a trap!) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">obstruction of justice</i>. If the blue
tsunami fails to emerge in the midterms, all bets are off, and the vandalism
continues. If the wave materializes, Donnie is in very deep shit.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Few American voters know anything about the ways the US
fixes foreign elections, because we are so insecure, overworked, busy, and
distracted by a semiosphere bubbling in bullshit that we are left at the end of
the day with only the hope of sleep and the attention span of a grass fly. And
as Chomsky pointed out recently, the settler state of Israel interferes in US
elections so effectively that very justifiable anti-Zionism is almost a third
rail. The emerging social democratic left in the US has a problem with this
that it needs to solve, but that’s only an intermediate point here.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a recent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker</i>
article, Jane Mayer, author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark Money</i>,
breathlessly acclaimed on MSNeoBC, that the issue is essentially
settled—whether or not “the Russians” exercised enough influence on the 2016
General Election to swing it into Trump’s column. Settled because
Communications Professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson said so. Jamieson’s hagiography
in Mayer’s article, subtly entitled “How Russia Helped Swing the Election for
Trump,” takes many paragraphs in a blatant appeal to authority. Jamieson proves,
says Mayer, that Russia’s meddling (no one denies there was some element of
this, but as a veteran of US foreign policy in Latin America, what surprised me
was how surprised anyone else was) was decisive in a close election where the
tactical accumulation of states trumped (irresistible pun) the popular vote.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And again, duh. But more than duh, because this inferential
case cobbled together using indirect data is architecturally unstable, built as
it is on the sand of complex cause-and-effect. I can dip out a bucket of water
from the mouth of a river, and there are certainly upstream origins for each
molecule of that water, but I challenge anyone to figure them out. Everything
that contributed—seen and unseen—to the outcome of the 2016 election was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">decisive</i> in the larger scheme of things.
The preoccupation with this one thing—Russian interference—is an ideological
and tactical choice already aimed at one thing: taking down Donald Trump. I
approve of that goal wholeheartedly, but selective “honesty” now for tactical
advantage will likely come back to bite us in the ass later.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So we’ll see this thing through, the blue tsunami (let it be
so, God!) seems our last best hope for the time being of at least slowing the
bleeding, so yeah . . . get everyone you know to the polls. And bring on that
outrage. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what about the left? What’s next?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If the Mueller investigation yields results (let’s hope it’s
half as decisive as MSNeoBC think it will be for the election), then we are
left with a teaching opportunity about US electoral interference abroad, as
well as dealing with AIPAC, BDS, and the intentionally convoluted issue of
Zionism, and agents of the Israeli government with full time jobs trying to
sway US elections, that still holds sway within a sector of the emergent social
democratic left. There is work to do to persuade more and more people. Make
that hay while the sun shines.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s all I have to say for now. I’m going to watch the
“Bobby and Donnie Show” on MSNBC.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-59322352803413459542018-09-28T08:01:00.002-07:002018-09-30T06:05:21.476-07:00Sex is natural sex is fun . . .<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
. . . goes the old song. Bringing me back to a pet peeve in popular culture,
even on the left . . . the aphorism that “rape is about power, not sex.” The
Ford-Kavanaugh sham hearing tells us something a good deal more difficult. Rape
is sexual, and sex is always inflected with power. I know it’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">passé</i> to truck out a fossil-phrase like “patriarchy,”
but it does stand for a form of systematic power that is still with us, as we
saw in bold relief on September 27<sup>th</sup>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2018_39/2581106/180927-brett-kavanaugh-speaking-ew-325p_681bebce1cac5a67596a11a3d3f96d6c.fit-760w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="760" height="213" src="https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2018_39/2581106/180927-brett-kavanaugh-speaking-ew-325p_681bebce1cac5a67596a11a3d3f96d6c.fit-760w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Even the left has been captured by the naturalistic fallacy on sex, first
because the left is still dominated by men who are all for sexual liberation as
long as it increases male access to female bodies, or it plugs into the post-critical
narratives of hedonism disguised as intellection. I went to a big DSA meeting
some time back, where women were well represented in the front of the room, but
the men still outnumbered the women in the rest of the room, and of fifteen
people who spoke up during the meeting, twelve were males.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
I’m not lumping DSA (with whom I affiliate) in with the white-male
gerontocracy that is the Republican fraction of the Senate Judiciary Committee;
but note how patriarchy (or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">andrarchy</i>,
as I’ll explain further down) is still the elephant in the room, with the Lindsey
Graham assholes planted on one side of male power as its defenders and the postmodern,
“post-feminist” erasure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">women</i> as a
class of political subjects on the other. Women, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as women</i>, can never catch a break, never say no, never stand their
ground.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
First of all, sex is anything but natural. We don’t even get around to
it, barring sexual exploitation during childhood, until we’ve had a decade and
a half, more or less, of intense gender socialization combined with each person
trying to find her or his accommodation to the actually-existing gender order
as it is expressed in particular lives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“Natural” evokes something quasi-sacred, like the picture of a bucolic
farm on the side of packaged, manufactured food that assures potential buyers
the product is “all natural.” Gamma rays are natural. Everything that “obeys”
physical laws is natural. Even our species-nature as an animal that requires a
highly plastic, closely-nurtured enculturation to survive is . . . <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">natural</i>. But not in the way that divides
nature and nurture, merely two interpretive frameworks imposed on the same
phenomena.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Sex has not been the same thing to different people in different times. Even if the procreative act responsible for each of us who are reading this now
involves (natural) sexual dimorphism all the way down to the gametes, a
uniquely modern understanding of procreation that didn’t exist for most people
in most times. Sex didn’t bear the same meanings in different times and places,
and likewise, sex has never borne the same consequences for men and women.
Ever. Which is why I find it curious how so many people on the left have been
so quick to adopt an approach of puerile rebellion against the white
patriarchy/andrachy—a kind of in-yo-face hedonistic celebration of “sex” that
finds the critique of, say, Andrea Dworkin, “feminist, not the fun kind,”
terribly inconvenient to this fundamentally libertarian account.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“A commitment to sexual equality with men,” she noted, “is a commitment
to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the
murderer instead of the murdered.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Sex has always been transmogrified by the power of biological men over
biological women (and the demonization of sexual minorities), which in many ways is a more fundamental, persistent, and intractable
form of power than class. (Sit back down and rest your nerves, as Mom used to
say. Class is important, and sex and class are inextricable. Thank you, Captain
Obvious.)<br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Ford both went to the same elite
prep school, and guess what? The creepy frat-boy sexual aggression there is
extremely similar to the same kind of aggression among the less privileged.
What makes class and sex different is not that class trumps gender (a system
dividing power based on compulsory heterosexuality). What makes class and sex
different is that sex involves both biologically-sourced desire and the
complexity of males and females being in otherwise intimate relations. The
class-boss does not live in the same home as the class-worker. The class-worker
does not experience physical attraction (even desire is </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">learned</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">) for the class-boss. The strength and limitation of radical
feminism—to which I owe a great intellectual debt—is how it has taken the Marxian
account of class and applied to gender.</span><br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
At least, they historicize it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i2.wp.com/www.breakingburgh.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/lindsey_graham_brett_kavanaugh.jpg?resize=777%2C437" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="777" height="179" src="https://i2.wp.com/www.breakingburgh.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/lindsey_graham_brett_kavanaugh.jpg?resize=777%2C437" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
What was all that above about “andrarchy”? Heterosex for women was once
associated with the likelihood of maternal death, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">e.g</i>. Not for men. Widely available birth control helped with that.
But something funny happened on the way to the Sexual Revolution of the nineteen-sixties
and seventies, beginning with the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth
century. First, white Atlantic patriarchy was overthrown by andrarchy.
Patriarchy was rule of the fathers, which figuratively applied even to kings.
In a kind of Oedipal twist, the republican revolutions (United States, Haiti,
France) explicitly called itself a band of brothers (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fraternité</i>) rebelling against their political fathers. Women, of
course, were still defined into nature (the ultimate object of masculine
conquest), but their status changed. From being the ward of a father, then
husband who becomes a father (patriarch), women became hypothetically available
to all sibling-men, the solution for which (from the men’s point of view) was
protective ownership. Men wouldn’t fight over women if each respected the
proprietary rights of other men. And so women were tossed out of the frying pan
of patriarchy into the fire of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">andrarchy</i>,
the rule of fathers transformed into the rule of men, where their best accommodation
was often to submit to one man in exchange for protection from all other men
(the sexual protection racket). Some women, beginning at the turn of the twentieth
century, began demanding “equality” with men, and as time marched on, women
began to filter into fields of endeavor previously closed to them. This was
particularly pronounced in professional arenas (medicine, law, etc.) and with
the introduction of every more sophisticated business machines (computers) that
women could operate as easily as men. White gender—the prevailing white sex hierarchies
and norms—transitioned from the “separate spheres” framework of the nineteenth century
to a system in the metropolitan states where the public distinctions between
masculine and feminine work were being erased, whereupon male power over women
within compulsory heterosexuality became increasingly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sexualized</i>—that is, focusing the domination of women by men more
and more within sexuality itself. Associated with the generally felt need for
revenge among many men for their loss of power elsewhere, men came to eroticize
women’s humiliation and degradation. Male prerogative was increasingly focused
on sex itself. If women were going to become honorary men, the thought goes,
then we needn’t afford them the formal “respect” of yesteryear. This was one major
factor in the development of modern (now postmodern?) rape culture.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The libertarian account of sex, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">differentiating</i>
sex from power in order to exonerate all “consensual” sex as just harmless fun
reminds me of what one fella I knew writing during the disastrous Duke Lacrosse
episode who described strip shows as “playing with the erotic.” Zero account of
objectification. Zero account of gendered power. Zero account of how dangerous
and humiliating this “job” might be, or the forces that pressure a woman to
take off her clothes to be ogled by drunken men. And yet now, in this
historical moment that includes Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein and Roy Moore
and Bill Cosby and Brett Kavanaugh, women are resurrecting that insight from
the past—the personal is the political. Politics is about power; and for many
women, their worst experiences of power have been intensely personal: pressure
for sex, unwanted sex to maintain bad but inescapable relationships, coerced
sex, sexual harassment, sexual humiliation, sexual assault, and rape. #MeToo
and #WhyIDidntReport are a watershed in American politics; and one that will be
met (even sometimes on the left, when it is less tactically convenient) with baleful,
writhing backlash like the outburst from Lindsey Graham and the whining outrage
of Brett Kavanaugh.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5a5dac741f00009a00db8e1f.jpeg?cache=qwmxboctaw&ops=scalefit_720_noupscale" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="495" data-original-width="720" height="220" src="https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5a5dac741f00009a00db8e1f.jpeg?cache=qwmxboctaw&ops=scalefit_720_noupscale" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Gender is a keystone of power. These nascent movements, growing up around
women simply comparing experiences, are threatening that power by giving the
lie to the notion that sex and rape are not the same thing. Even “consent”
cannot take on a fulsome meaning so long as there is a power gradient between
men and women. Sex is not always rape; but rape is always about sex. I heard a
Democrat man once say to his workmates, “I want to hate-fuck Sarah Palin.” I
would now invite readers with the emotional endurance or the detachment
required, to look at the comments sections on articles about women and sex and
review this highly sexualized ways in which men—protected by the anonymity of
the web—attack women.</div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-60358313531248724362018-09-12T10:45:00.003-07:002018-09-12T10:53:56.003-07:00The Threat of Suburbia<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
In 2016, Donald Trump received 62,980,160 votes in the General Election.
We often hear that Trump voters correspond to education levels, but that is on
true in that aggregate. Forty-two percent of Trump voters, that is 26,451, 667
in the United States in 2016 . . . which is 13 percent of registered US voters,
when voter turnout was 61 percent (200 million are registered). If we claim
that lack of education is what leads to reaction, then these numbers are hardly
convincing. One might discount a million college graduates voting for Trump as
anomalous, but twenty-six-and-half million is something much bigger than a mere
anomaly. People often forget, based in part on the influence of a media
commentariat that is constantly spinning some “working class” theory about
Trump and the Trump cult, that the majority of Trump’s votes, raw votes, came <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2016/11/22/donald-trump-clinton-rural-suburbs/#20a158f838b5">out
of the suburbs</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://assets3.thrillist.com/v1/image/1896735/size/tmg-article_default_mobile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="325" data-original-width="480" height="216" src="https://assets3.thrillist.com/v1/image/1896735/size/tmg-article_default_mobile.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The subtext of this “working class” (read: redneck) narrative, a classist
pile of steaming excrement that oozes petit bourgeois contempt for actual
working class people, is that these people are not only unfit to govern
(lacking the key ingredient, which is Education™), they are unfit to choose who
governs them. Subtext continues . . . what is required is a continuation of the
pre-Trump “norms,” a new word in the mouths of NPR denizens, technocratic
governance by the managers of the security state. Note how the entitled Dupont
Circle wannabe hipsters of MSNBC are ignoring the disaster that is Trumpanomics—a
disaster for most people, not the stock market which is brazenly touted as a
sign of economic health—to focus on whether or not Trump is a threat to
national security (or national security institutions, suddenly transformed from
historic bad actors into our saviors). This is a classic ratchet act, being
performed now ever since Nixon. The Republicans throw everything from normal to
hard right, then the Democrats catch the ratchet part-way back to the new
normal which is now to the right of the old. They work for the rich who are a
parasitic class, and the parasite is exhausting the host. The rich have to constantly
deepen their parasitism to get the same benefits, and to retain the power that
accrues to those benefits.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
I am studying Lisa McGirr’s book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10488.html">SuburbanWarriors—The Origins of the New American Right</a> </i>(2001—but this one has a new
preface that ties to the Trump cult), alongside which I would recommend a
similar book published in 2006, called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8044.html">TheSilent Majority—Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South</a></i>, by Matthew
Lassiter. These books are to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">suburbanism</i>
(the interdisciplinary study of suburbs) what someone like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Davis_(scholar)">Mike Davis</a> is to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">urbanism</i> (the interdisciplinary study of
cities). There is even more overlap there, if readers haven’t read Davis—because
Davis (who I recommend) writes about Southern California, as does McGirr. What
both these books do is provide detailed historic narratives that show how
formative of consciousness is the built environment, for one thing (and this is
hardly inconsequential), and to describe the development of a political colossus
in the US that is coyly called “the middle class.” It all begins in Levittown,
as a postwar re-segregation scheme, but for reasons shown in these books, the
suburbs are now the majority in the US. For politicians, when they’re happy,
you’re happy; and when they’re not happy, they will make you unhappy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Lassiter shows how the suburb went metastatic in the US South, still
squirming in its racial hierarchies. McGirr shows how the Western pilgrims that
came from the Midwest and the Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas region and settled into
the Orange County, CA suburbs imported a small army of evangelical wingnuts,
some of whom proved to be persuasive cult-builders themselves. The Prosperity
Gospel started there . . . a perennial favorite among up-and-comers because it
showed how God smiled down on rich people, making them even richer as a reward
for their faith. Take as much as you can becomes an ethical imperative. Wow, this
sells to children, like the candy positioned next to the checkout, so you feel
compelled to avoid a scene in public by giving into the now squalling child.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Modernity has infantilized us.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
But that’s for another day. In reading McGirr, she shows how this “modern”
thing really breaks down; the narrative, that is, that the Trump cult—which includes
a goodly number of those 26 million college educated USians—is comprised of know-nothing
flat-earther nitwits. They are pre-modern, and-or anti-modern. I can attest to
the falsity of this from first-hand experience, as can readers. I know plenty of people
from suburbia who voted for Trump. They are also enchanted by and addicted to
what I’ll call modern-shit. Go to their houses and behold technological wonders
enfolding you in an infantilizing bassinet of entertainment and reassurance and
convenience. And these people have degrees, and a lot of them have nice-paying
jobs that they’ve come to depend upon to maintain the lifestyle—which is
designed in many cases to keep the kids out of trouble. We can miss this, but
McGirr explains that the structures of suburbia gave rise to problems with
children that the new suburbanites felt compelled to counter through a systematic
boundary strategy. Everything becomes about getting the right leg up for your
kids, as well as insulating them from all the catastrophes that might befall
them if they venture out into the us-and-them world without a net. Church was
embraced by the new suburbanites as s key battlement against the danger of the
other.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“While many of these [suburban] activists hailed from rural and small-town
backgrounds in the Midwest and border South, it is misleading to characterize
their mobilization, as contemporary observers often did, as a rearguard action
against ‘modernity.’” (McGirr, 94)</blockquote>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
They were leaving small towns to settle in cities. They were separating
from their homes of origin as free-ranging employees. They were vigorous
boosters of technology, and every awful gadget that came along, as well as
vigorous civic boosters. There way of life became a kind of boosterism, which
all in all, given their mobility, their separation from roots, and their
technological optimism, made them uniquely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">modern
</i>subjects. They epitomized modernity, and were its poster children: white
nuclear family with a quarter-acre lawn, polishing their toys on weekends, and
dutifully pulling at that salary the rest of the week. Patriotic and
church-going because when children grow up in suburbs—speaking as a once-child
who spent ten of his first eighteen years living in suburbs—they are bored out
of their skulls, disconnected, restless, and always in search of something that
feels different from that . . . which is generally something that is unhealthy,
dangerous, stupid or all of the above. Structure, structure, structure. If you
shuttle your kids to enough “activities” over a period of eighteen years, you
stand a good chance of them (1) surviving, (2) staying out of prison, and (3)
graduating high school. If you shuttle them enough to get them that far, and
you pack away some money and figure out some loans, you can even go to (4) get
them a college degree. Sounds pretty modern to me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
What’s modernity? Some would say it’s a euphemism for capitalism, but I
think it is an aspect of capitalism that transcends the economic. Speaking for
myself, I date it beginning around the sixteenth century. Scattered out over
that period, and a little before and after, are all sorts of historic bifurcations,
dramatic pivots, in war, politics, trade, industry, art, family, philosophy,
and ecology—and this gestation of modernity was all these of a piece. The
Disses, I call them. Disembodiment, Disaggregation (and reduction),
Disembedding, Disenchantment. It’s more than capitalism, but it sure can’t be
separated from capitalism—and capitalism, as process, has proven rapaciously
formative of every other aspect of modernity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Marx’s great counter-narrative, in which modernity passes through
capitalism on its way to a peaceful communism, tries to keep the technological
goodies—energy slaves, basically—and throw out the bathwater of privatized
accumulation. Marx’s critique of capitalism was fully within the larger self-congratulatory
post-Enlightenment narrative of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Homo
faber</i>. Marx claimed Hegel, but the right claimed him, too. The problem goes
back at least to Bacon, if we are talking about modernity’s philosophical justification
for itself, when Natural Science became the deity of modernity by “killing Nature,”
as Carolyn Merchant described the scientific reduction and objectification of
nature that opened the way for a far more wanton plunder of the biosphere. THAT
is modernity. It still has Charlie Marx by one leg.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
We may have mixed up some babies with bathwater and bathwater with
babies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Nowadays, the narrative is that Education™ is our panacea, which shakes
out pretty well for those who are the achievers in that low-intensity war which
is the Academy (re-read the four Disses above). We shall make the world over in
our image.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The “half-life of knowledge” is a notion from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scientometrics</i> (sounds pretty modernistic to me). It’s the amount
of time in a particular field of scientific endeavor for half of everything
formerly believed to be true is proven untrue. Overall, they say around 50
years. This is more generally true about all forms of knowledge, including all
the things we “know” right now that are pure bullshit.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Educated men conducted experiments in phrenology. Laypeople didn’t do
that. Having an Education™ does not make anyone a better judge of politics than
anyone else unless part of that specific education was a study of politics, and
even then, Political Science becomes the discipline, or its specializations
upon specializations—comparative, international, methodology, et al. Which
becomes a course of study for credentials as a technocrat.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
A lot of educated men and women supported Donald Trump. Most were from white
suburbs. What McGirr and Lassiter want us to see is that this cannot be
accurately described without attention to the identity of these people, and in
particular their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">political identity</i>.
That political identity is based on the material concerns of this “middle
class,” swimming in consumer goods for the time being, but fearful (in
acknowledgment of that secretly held knowledge of our own infantilized
technocratic dependency) of any sense of instability. Not structural instability,
but things that destabilize their grid, their homes, their families. They are
consumers, mortgage-holders, taxpayers, and school parents. It is that
subterranean fear of instability that makes them so susceptible to xenophobia,
negrophobia, as well as hostility to feminism. They are the nine percent, that
layer of managers and supervisors and specialists who get extra scraps from the
Master’s table. Above them are the one-percent, and below everyone else. If the
cord is cut between the one-percent and the “middle class,” the middle class
falls into the pit with the rest. This, and not antipathy to modernity, is what
constitutes the biggest pillar of the Trump cult—scared out of their wits and
compensating by jutting out their figurative chin and putting a giant chip on
their figurative shoulder named Trump. It’s a kind of cosmic belligerence, a
political “fuck you” pushed out there as a threat.<o:p></o:p><br />
Remember that philosophical superstar Martin Heidegger was a Nazi.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The Trump cult is not a product of lack of education or even an attack on
the God of Science or the God of Progress. To portray this period as such,
however, is a very modern form of propaganda.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-48932287259007828122018-09-09T12:21:00.002-07:002018-09-09T15:40:28.955-07:00Calling All Lawyers—Toward a New Constituent Assembly<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Climate change and peak-everything have moved the clock up
on capitalism, outrunning those more abstract contradictions of old. Mark Jones,
attending well to these heretofore secondary environmental matters, called the
final stage of imperialism “exterminism.” For good reason. People are
going to get killed or left to die in great numbers, along with every other form of life. It has already begun. We
are living in a dangerous pre-interregnum in which the existing powers are too
entrenched to remove and increasingly too ineffectual to govern. We begin to
sense that something long and hard and ugly may be coming that will last for
generations after things fall apart, and we feel the pull of the tempo task—Eisenstein’s
film convention when the direness of an emergency calls for a suspension of all
the civilized rules for its resolution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.lakecountyil.gov/ImageRepository/Document?documentID=23634" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.lakecountyil.gov/ImageRepository/Document?documentID=23634" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="800" height="280" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every day, the Lenin question comes to the fore: What is to
be done? And with each day, the answer becomes: A hell of a lot more than what needed
doing yesterday. Over, under, around, and through every order of existence and
practice there is self-organization. The mind of a person is self-organized,
each aspect relating particularly with each other aspect, and that mind is
likewise self-organized with other minds, other bodies, other things and happenstances,
knitted together in a kaleidoscope of semiospheres, social structures,
buildings and roads and power lines, institutions, enterprises, layers of
management and governance, and so it goes. Even in that realm where practice
theorists dwell—between personhood and culture, combining them—there is
self-organization. Different practices and combinations are tried until entire
systems become cyclic and comparatively stable, each individual practice demonstrating
agency, but agency constrained, and within those constraints is
self-organization . . . which remains until it doesn’t, but until it doesn’t it
resists change by wrapping the status quo in layer upon layer of self-organized
protection. Resistance need not be crushed. More easily, resistance is
swallowed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some of us are pretty sure that whatever people do as this “exterminist”
phase in global governance plays out, it will require tremendous change
precisely because self-organized systems are full of micro-articulations that
relate to and ramify through many more micro-articulations. No “system” can be
corrected superficially, or the deeper secular stability of self-organization
will simply swallow it. We can’t even talk about these things, because the
conversation leads us down a very hard path.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s pretend, then, that in a few years, one of the least
bad scenarios plays out, and that is one where a re-energized and environmentally
literate left gains sufficient political power to actually effect policy
changes. If I didn’t think this was at least possible, I wouldn’t bother
writing this down in the first place. My optimism about that, of course, is
tempered by my conviction that this re-energized left will inherit a massive,
broken system for which no one can honestly promise the perennial “better
future” of 1950s US white capitalist boosterism, as well as an absurd claim made by every
political campaign on record. There is no better future. That is disappearing
at the same rate as non-extinct species, ocean-side real estate, and fresh
water aquifers. I hope we heed that caution and not make silly promises like
this, because political enterprises can get pretty tangled up by failing to
deliver. The choice is between nose dive and controlled crash landing, and
about that I hope we remain honest. Progress is a blood-drenched cannibalistic
myth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pretending as we are that we have been democratically seated
to deliberate on and develop policy, we confront in every potential policy its
likely effects, the likely responses it will draw, and a whole host of
unintended consequences. At a national level, this process is even more
fraught, even if every single elected official is on board for the common good
(f’real), because the greater the scope of any policy or practice, the more
unforeseen exceptions that disrupt the reason for the rule (lack of
granularity), the more layers of management and administration (which tend to
become the tail that wags the dog), and the more unintended (and potentially
problematic) consequences, from whence come unintended responses, and so forth.
We are going to talk about the Constitution in a bit, because that’s where this
post is headed, but for the time being, just consider all the unintended consequences
of our current Constitution, because every consistent failure of compassionate
humanity in the history of the US is failure unfolding beneath the overarching
legal edifice of the US Constitution. The potential for unintended consequences
at these grand scales demands that we observe some version of the precautionary
principle: “an expression of a need by decision-makers to anticipate harm
before it occurs. Within this element lies an implicit reversal of the onus of
proof: under the precautionary principle it is the responsibility of an
activity-proponent to establish that the proposed activity will not (or is very
unlikely to) result in significant harm.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When we talk about emergency transformation, then, and
contextualize that in a self-organized system that is riding its mass and
inertia into the abyss, then any restructuring in one aspect will have to
anticipate how that restructuring will interact with every other aspect. What
happens when you decide to abandon one transportation grid and begin
development of an alternative? How do we most effectively organize a public
work force that attends to the most critical needs in redesign of the built
environment and rehabilitation of biomes? What happens to Los Angeles as the
water dries up? How do you redesign a food system? This stuff doesn’t happen
using existing models with simple redistribution.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Key among those legal challenges that will accompany
redesign challenges—let’s be clear, leaving capitalism will require dramatic
redesign of pretty much everything—will be the definition of property. And property—along
with every other legal question—takes us to the Constitution. Which in turn brings
us to the main point: We’ll need a new Constitution. The old one won’t work,
because the Divine Judge at the center of American law is a seventeenth century
white male bourgeois notion of property.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Backing up a little here, big stuff that will have to change
to have a prayer of mitigating the misery of billions for a century and
salvaging enough of the biosphere to eventually recalibrate its climate systems
. . . includes watershed restoration and management, the development of
regional and local sustainable food systems, topsoil replenishment,
reforestation, nationalization of all critical enterprises as public utilities
(beginning with banks), the transformation of the Department of Defense into a
Department of National Service overseeing a national public works jobs program
(aimed at biospheric remediation), free public health care, free public
reskilling training, and a power-down strategy that moves toward dramatic
energy conservation as well as conservation-as-principle (old fashioned supply
economy . . . thrift) being incorporated into the new constitutional ethos. (For
reasons outlined in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://wipfandstock.com/mammon-s-ecology.html">Mammon’s Ecology</a></i>,
I think we also need a multicentric money economy, but I’ll point readers to
that little book for the details.) Any reader who’s stayed with this so far is
already thinking about other things that have to change so the people you see
every day around you can go through what you might imagine without ever being
terrified or further immiserated in the process. When you redesign a
transportation grid, without its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raison d’etre</i>
being business, what does it look like? If you had fifty really smart people on
many of these issues and how they relate to one another, within a few days you
might begin to be able to map out what a new constitution might require to
escape the errors of the past and minimize the new errors in the future.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s where you might need some lawyers whose job it is to
listen to the fifty smart people and begin to design a legal constitutional
edifice that most closely approximates the combined wisdom of your fifty smart
people and some smart lawyers. Put together fifty more of these groups of fifty
smart people and some smart lawyers, and you have the beginnings of a New
Constituent Assembly. By smart people, I don’t mean academics and experts. I
mean practitioners of many kinds. Small farmers, designers, doctors, builders,
craftspeople, parents, students, people who have practical insight about how
things are done where they live and about how people might best begin to change
the way things are done. Local, local, local, local.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know what I’d want to see, based on one conviction—if you
disagree with this conviction, then you can throw out everything else I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Conviction: For socialism to succeed, it must be the basis
upon which several dramatic changes are made in policy and practice to be as
proactive as possible in dealing with the emerging reality of a simultaneous climate
and economic crisis. For reasons governed by unshakable physical laws, the
regime of global capitalism cannot be sustained, but for those same reasons
capitalist practices that rely on high flows of energy and materials across
long distances cannot be sustained. Redistribution does not solve this problem,
when people are utterly dependent on those flows. Practical economies quite
simply must be re-localized as far as is possible in any given period. If you
want to summarize the practical problem, think of production and consumption.
No matter what kind. Re-localization is the process of systematically moving
every form of production as spatially close as possible to those who consume
it. Move production and consumption closer together in space.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We need this restated by a bright legal mind into a
constitutional principle that guides all other decisions, not as a Kantian
imperative (can we get this guy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out</i>
of the law, please), but as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">telos</i>
that assumes there are (there are, demonstrably) a host of social, economic,
cultural, and ecological benefits that accrue from re-localization alone.
Relocalizing is not The Silver Bullet to slay the monster; but it makes a
pretty handy compass.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Other thoughts on a New Constitution developed by a New
Constituent Assembly (would that we had a water group, a food sovereignty group,
an energy group, a home economy group, etc etc etc etc…..).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Something else suggested in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mammon’s Ecology</i> comes to mind—watersheds. Constitutions draw
lines, but those lines once drawn—think US states, counties, municipalities—create
their own reality. For ecologic concerns to be integrated into a new
Constitution, it seems somehow essential that those older lines be allowed to
languish and new lines be drawn for local governance along the boundaries of
watersheds. In my state, iirc, we have 83 counties, and 63 major watersheds.
Somehow, over time, through a series of policies, portions of responsibility
and jurisdiction between the old and the new would have to be transferred, but
the end result would be an actual integrated geographic feature that has the
most direct impact on its residents. All politics comes down to water in the
end. There’s a reason for that. Water is life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Inviting others to think about it, a bluesky exercise.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What are the problems we might see eight years from now?
What would we want to see if the left won? There’s a better chance they will
succeed after they win if there’s already some thought put into it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-8895666921534673332018-08-31T09:57:00.001-07:002018-08-31T09:57:43.278-07:00The idea of Africa<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Africa is a big country.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">-George W. Bush</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://answersafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/africa-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="572" data-original-width="800" height="228" src="https://answersafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/africa-4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The term, the idea of “Africa” creates
more confusion than clarity. Africa is a continent, one that covers 11.73
million square miles. North America, by contrast—and this includes Greenland,
Canada, the United States, and Latin America to the border between Panama and
Colombia—covers 9.54 million square miles. In the present day, there are
fifty-four sovereign nation-states and ten non-sovereign territories on the continent,
and almost 2,000 languages and dialects that represent at least that many past
cultures. Geographers divide Africa into eight major regions—Sahel, Sahara,
Savannah, Swahili Coast, Ethiopian Highlands, Rain Forest, Great Lakes, and
Southern Africa.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Generalizing
about “Africa” now, then, is comparable to generalizing about all of Eurasia.
Generalizing about Africa’s history is even more problematic. Because there was
a sort of continuity of record-keeping in the Judeo-Christian West, not least
because of conquests, we have more access to “Western” history than we so to
“African” history, except beginning with the violent Mediterranean and Western
colonization of large portions of Africa—which presents a whole new set of
problems, those histories themselves written from the limited points of view of
a few conquerors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This
set of problems impinges with special force on any speculation about the many
different forms of organization of kinship, gender regimes, and political
structures that preceded colonization. Speculations about how “African” customs
were imported into and modified by the institution of commodified slavery in
North and South America, then, are highly tentative. Patricia Hill Collins rightly generalizes about pre-colonial Africa engaging in widespread subsistence agriculture, a fairly safe
conclusion for many peoples living throughout Africa, for the same reason that
we can speculate beyond the various European “histories” of kings and generals,
that tend to ignore the overwhelming majority of <i>peoples</i> (also with many subcultures,
languages, and dialects) throughout Europe and West Asia as being subsistence economies, too. Subsistence was the
only means of survival that was available to the majority. Even early
proto-states and states were unable to administer most territories in any
detail. And they exercised political authority in ways that were more or less
compatible with the plethora of prevailing customs. So what Collins says also applies to most “Europeans” prior to nation-state formation,
capitalist development, and its attendant industrialization/urbanization.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
history of “Africa’s” lack of “history” pivots on the trans-Atlantic slave
trade inaugurated in the sixteenth century. Any study now of the importation
and modification of “African” customs into slave populations has to pass through
these catastrophes. And North American slavery differed in several key respects
from slavery elsewhere. For example, by the time of manumission in the United
States, no slaves had been born in Africa, and few if any knew their own
genealogies. By contrast, when the Haitian Revolution began, in which former
slaves successfully gained independence, around seventy percent of Haitians had
been born in the African continent. During my own numerous travels to Haiti, it
was no uncommon for a Haitian to know that he or she was, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">e.g</i>., Kongo, Fulani, Yoruba, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">US
slavery accounted for only around six percent of the total slaves born in the
African continent, because after the trans-Atlantic importation of slaves was
prohibited in 1804—a direct response to the Haitian Revolution that succeeded
that year, provoking terror among US slave holders—US slave owners “bred”
slaves. Over the next six decades of selling, re-selling, and general
suppression, US slaves were effectively cut off from their own histories in any
significant detail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What
we can know is that more than half of all US slaves’ ancestors originated in
the Western continental area generally now known as Senegal, Cameroon, Gambia,
Guinea Bissau, Mali, Angola, Gabon, and Congo. The rest came variously from the
zones that include modern Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Eastern Nigeria.
These same areas, prior to the trans-Atlantic slave trade were kingdoms and
empires including the Wolof (who were the first to cooperate with the
Portuguese in the trans-Atlantic slave trade), Songhai, Ghana, Kangaba, Mali,
Akan, Yoruba, Benin, Hausa, Kongo, Lundy, Musumba, Fulani, Nri/Igbo, and Luba.
While there were, just as in Medieval and pre-Medieval Europe, many conquests
and cultural interchanges that defy clear lines of demarcation between many of
these earlier social entities, there were also distinct, and now largely
unknowable, distinctions between them with regard to kinship, gender regimes,
and political structures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
first thing in history that gave any coherence to the notion of “Africans” was
the diaspora created by colonization and slavery, which began to homogenize
slaves through the horrific experiences of that practice and institution, a
homogenization that corresponded, in the United States after its independence,
to the systematic erasure of the cultures and histories of the enslaved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There
were certainly matrilineal (not matriarchal) groups, as Collins also notes, and
there are many East and Central African cultures that are matrilineal to this
day (our reason for making educated guesses about pre-“history”). The same kind
of educated guess applies to marriage forms (in some areas) that include
monogamy, polygamy, levirate/sororate, (rarely) polyandry, and even in a few
instances woman-woman marriage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I'm working on a book about gender relations and race, ergo this preoccupation with kinship and gender, that will concentrate first on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Western</i>
social evolution of family, gender, and marriage in light of the public-private
distinction, because the history of the Roman and post-Reformation churches is
largely Western,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Stan/Dropbox/Public-Private%20Book.doc#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
and the hegemonic global Western-designed economy we have now grew directly out
of Christendom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As
is evidenced by the contradictions between Black and White experience, even
those who were not of “the West” (white capitalist Atlantic state patriarchies)
have been pulled into the orbit of the West by conquest, military and economic.
On the other hand, we cannot incorporate the invention of race and Black
experiences without incorporating speculations about this general pre-“history”
of people’s who were swept up in the slave trade. The invention of Whiteness as
normative is, in too many ways—note the example of Haiti, absolutely dependent
on the corresponding invention of Blackness as definitive of what White (or in
liberal evasions, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">normative</i>) is not.
And while we can but speculate based on what evidence there is about the
unrecorded past,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Stan/Dropbox/Public-Private%20Book.doc#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> we
have ample evidence from historical records with regard to the actual
adaptations and accommodations that have been made, with regard to family,
gender, marriage, and law, by African Americans during and after slavery, up to
the present conjuncture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
purpose of this particular constellation of subjects in the book draft, from an interdisciplinary
standpoint, is twofold: to begin unpacking the public-private dichotomy with
attention to how the idea has differed in our racialized society, and to
denaturalize the subjects of family, gender, marriage, and even law as seen
through the public-private lens(es?). Gender, as custom and structure dividing
power, remains the core issue for the book, and it cannot be separated out from
kinship, marriage, law, and, in the case of the capitalist metropoles,
especially the United States, race.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .2in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.2in;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Stan/Dropbox/Public-Private%20Book.doc#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> With the spread of neoliberalism
through globalization, what was once Western ideas and culture are growing in
influence around the world, especially through consumerism. Urban Chinese, for
example, are experiencing an explosion of childhood obesity and diabetes rates
with the increasing popularity of McDonalds and other junk-food outlets. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5129322/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Stan/Dropbox/Public-Private%20Book.doc#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> All pasts are selectively recorded,
at any rate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-32532580956082526572018-08-30T14:00:00.001-07:002018-08-30T14:02:34.006-07:00Status of Forces--Left, Right, CenterThis is a 12 page word document on the state of play between left and right before the November elections. <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=162k-qWiJP7GX4ikKQrS2FkFPJ5ZKsrBL">Click here for the document</a>. Share, but please do not modify.
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifFA-oYfhh9vbTXJb9oLhqFajN3KTxH8m1hAetk1zHZabR2QGaOiGFePWDhOXehyphenhyphenhdnkUrm6mFQ3ZFdsfgxQeJcksV34VNR4l_Wnfbvvw6UaM512uE_nNPiTUr2dHwYQhOnSXbYJuXHeBj/s1600/guns+paul+fat+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="349" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifFA-oYfhh9vbTXJb9oLhqFajN3KTxH8m1hAetk1zHZabR2QGaOiGFePWDhOXehyphenhyphenhdnkUrm6mFQ3ZFdsfgxQeJcksV34VNR4l_Wnfbvvw6UaM512uE_nNPiTUr2dHwYQhOnSXbYJuXHeBj/s320/guns+paul+fat+3.jpg" width="231" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
The Master Race</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078157424531850345.post-64766925615453265202018-08-24T09:24:00.000-07:002018-08-25T12:08:27.008-07:00Trump, Pedophile Priests, and Molly Tibbetts<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivOrLZjwJakL5LvGgs2zDu5DhAS4v_urOCIxrOgs2Xk77b2Hj23__zv-SGKON91XZvuSTDEAEQnZAfRwgXC1C2QcJr97_Ss9unMdN0v5pzXBOSg8fgCdWPWr2-C7wge1DU25Ph8qd_eRg/s640/DolanObamaRomneyChrisMAtthewsOthersOct2012AlSmithDinnerReuters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="634" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivOrLZjwJakL5LvGgs2zDu5DhAS4v_urOCIxrOgs2Xk77b2Hj23__zv-SGKON91XZvuSTDEAEQnZAfRwgXC1C2QcJr97_Ss9unMdN0v5pzXBOSg8fgCdWPWr2-C7wge1DU25Ph8qd_eRg/s640/DolanObamaRomneyChrisMAtthewsOthersOct2012AlSmithDinnerReuters.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What could possibly be the common denominator between the
President, the cover-up culture of the Catholic hierarchy, and Molly Tibbets—a young
murder victim from Brooklyn, Iowa? Here is the answer . . . lean in close now .
. . the common denominator is . . . men. We are taught to devalue women almost
from birth. We are taught that to become a man we must detach from Mother
(woman). We are taught that we are entitled to sex. And we are taught that our phallocentrically-enculturated
desires, including the eroticization of power, is a “natural” male entitlement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now some will object that women in power will be as
predatory and abusive as men, but that is a liberal dodge. Liberal, because it
has no respect for the inevitable concreteness of history. It’s a little like
speculating about humans evolving with three arms instead of two, or saying
that DNA testing proves there is no such thing as race (therefore we have
solved racism). It substitutes abstraction and speculative hypothesis for what
actually happened, how it actually happened, and how that determines what is
happening right now.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In some parallel universe, where men and women were exactly
the same in every respect except procreative roles, women might match men in
sexual “entitlement,” sexual exploitation, and rape . . . not. It can’t <i>be</i> that way, because it <i>was not</i> that way, and in space-time
there are no do-overs. Time’s arrow travels in only one direction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Men acquired progressively greater power over women,
especially after the dawn of mass agriculture and early urbanization (which corresponded
to war, where men’s entitlements were magnified alongside entrainment to
violence as male prerogative).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Men violently subjugated women as property; and rationalized
their power in two ways: the naturalization of male power and devaluation/hatred
of women. They sacralized their power, too. They are defending that power to
this day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We congratulated ourselves during the so-called sexual
revolution on how liberated sex had become. Men could no longer trade women,
give away women, own women. But as women gradually made inroads into formerly “male
spheres,” the system of power that was gender shifted its focus from economics
and “family stability” and proof-texting to sexual practice. Back to the
default. There is an entitled dick at the center of the universe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“As soon as older feminists had won sexual liberation,”
writes Van Badham, “patriarchy reframed it as sexual availability for men.”
But, of course, we know that men’s sexual entitlement goes beyond women. It
hits children, too. Entitlement is not determined by the object of desire, but
by the one who desires.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s why the sexual abuse scandal rocking the Roman
Catholic Church right now is comparable to Trump’s serial sexual predations,
his proud misogyny, and his infantile belligerence, as well as the male entitlement-rage
that led to the murder of a twenty-year-old woman in Iowa. Male culture is
still hegemonic, because male power is still hegemonic, and the Catholic
hierarchy is—just like my old units in the Army, where rape culture was
celebrated and misogyny the norm—an all-male institution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So that sense of
entitlement (to whatever one desires) is amplified. A lot. And covered up,
because general knowledge of what was happening threatened to undermine the institutional
Church narrative about Nature and the inferiority/perversity <i>of women</i> upon which the all-male
hierarchy is founded. The irony is staggering.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Power and its abuses are historically male, and therefore
maleness—as historically constructed—is about abusive power. Women can never be
or become carbon copies of men, and power cannot be teased apart from gendered
power.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gendered power is rape and rape culture. Gendered power is war.
Gendered power is politics. Gendered power is fascism. Gendered power is the
subversion of charity. Gendered power is the mass shooting. Gendered power is
sexual harassment. Gendered power is sex tourism. Gendered power is women and
children being prostituted. Gendered power is the Trump Cult. Gendered power is the church scandal. Gendered power is the murder of women. Gendered power is implicated in all forms of actual power. Everywhere we turn, there it is. Because gendered
power is MALE power, and with all forms of power comes a sense of entitlement,
an obligation really to assert that entitlement into existence, or we will be
forced to admit that what we are is a vast pool of potential sexual predators,
petty despots, and killers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And until we acknowledge it, we will continue to sit inside
it and talk, talk, talk . . . about anything but the power men have as men, and
the ways that this power corrupts us and victimizes so many in so many ways.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0