"now a very long debate took place about the newspapers. all the printers in the city crowd their papers into the hands of the members. the bulk of the papers consist mainly of advertisements. useful information ought not to be excluded" but this is overdone. the real mean to me appears to be the taking of one or two papers by each member. but one part of the house struggled for taking them all, the other for taking none, no vote could be carried for either, and, of course, the printers will continue their old practice of sending and expecting payment." william maclay journal of the first session of the first congress. june 3rd, 1789.
so i look at my facebook page or yahoo or my new york times and i think how little things have changed in the media world...all pr spin and engineered desires still...old bill was as astute as he was unpopular...heralding from that "radical pennsylvania" with its unicameral legislature and tradition of defying tradition he was targeted from the beginning by "his littleness" and "that damned ass hamilton" but he knew when he was being manipulated and he wasn't shy about saying so...the media hasn't changed much in the intervening 224 years and when i see some buffoon with an "i don't believe the liberal media" bumper sticker i am inclined to think that the corporate entities that media companies are have that poor sod right where they want him...there are liberal journalists and media personalities just as there are conservative ones...and they have a bully pulpit because they earn hard cash for the companies that employ them...if they didn't sell they'd be out on their asses tout de suite whatever particular stripe of political frenzy they were pandering to...surely this is why the new york times give that flesh eating creep tom friedman column space...the drivel he spouts isn't fit for the crapper wall but someone buys the damned paper just to read it...you are at liberty to think what you will about the media and its alleged bias...near as i can tell they follow the first principle and imperative of capital..."more"...and don't give a rat's ass about politics as a rule...ask old bill...he was sensitive to the presence of vermin...media...political...he had a finely honed sense for these things and could find his voice at a moments notice...it's why he's is utterly invisible in high school history books and in the pantheon of "the founding fathers"...he held the truth in more esteem than his peers...the hamiltonian system of political deceit grinds on.
...closed the american western frontier in 1890...like many at the time ( and not a few today...because of the rail splitter's federal legacy and a nativist yahoo mindset among the retired fucks that live in the unstable and utterly unsustainable sun belt ) he thought manifest destiny to be written in stone instead of a transitory experiment in cultural displacement...now the gradual death of cheap energy and the insane overdraft of the ogallala aquifier seem poised to reopen the west to migration and settlement over the next few centuries...phoenix and las vegas are doomed as the hoover dam silts up and lake meade becomes a mud puddle...meanwhile the ogallala aquifier spreads across eight states from southern north dakota to texas and new mexico...it recharges at about an inch a year so that leaves the system that irrigates about a fifth of the cropland west of the mississippi river with an annual overdraft of only 2.7nfeet ( and that is down due to conservation measures )...recent events should show that rainfall west of big muddy is an iffy proposition at best...the old nineteenth century saw that " rain follows the plow " is rank bullshit and has been proved so time and again by things like the dust bowl ( those nice circular fields that have been adapted to rolling sprinklers fed by centrifugal pumps were created by cutting down thousands of trees planted by he ccc during the great depression to act a windbreaks to prevent the erosion that created the dust bowl...they are gone now and as the area turns to dust once again guess what is going to re-occur? )...so as the experiment that released immigrants " from european mindsets" and allowed americanism to flourish retreats the frontier will reopen to cultures that have proved able to live within the limits imposed by the ecosphere...a repopulation of northwestern mexico is in the offing despite john mccain and his yahoo constituents...the border fence will become a joke as the federal government contracts...not because of anything that cretin grover nordquist does but because the overshoot we are going to have to deal with will defy any government...guadalupe-hidalgo isn't worth the paper it's written on but not for the reasons anyone who still believes in the "american century" will ever be able to grasp.
