continuity

“as the election neared, the papers competed to shake their heads about the disappointing choice the voters faced..” Whistlestop. John Dickerson____________________ here we could be thinking of the n y times and the crypto-fascists at the chicago trib taking pot shots at each other’s favored candidate ( although I cannot find who the trib has endorsed beyond rubio in the primary…they may be in some sort of cataleptic shock in the editorial room…see the conkling quote below )…however we are not… the quote goes on, “…faced between grover cleveland’s private dalliances with maria halpin and blaine’s public scandals”…we are in 1884 and, again, there is nothing new going on in 2016…this is how the system has been since, at least 1800 when jefferson’s attack dogs savaged hamilton and so the federalists…i see that the five living presidents have all stated their intention not to vote for trump ( a rare occasion to agree with old dubya ) ...when, in 1884 roscoe conkling, the republican machine boss in new york state and the man responsible for chester a. arthur being tagged as garfield’s vp [when guiteau shot Garfield he said “i am the most stalwart of the stalwarts and arthur is president now”] after he was run out of the port authority of new York for corruption ) was asked to vote for blaine for the “good of the party” he looked the deputation of nabobs squarely in the eye and said, “gentlemen, i have given up criminal law”…you must admit, there is continuity in american politics.

aside from endorsing hillary...

...and basically calling trump an idiot ( a theme they say they will expand on with tomorrow's op ed section ) the n y times sent along the "style and luxury" issue of the "t magazine"__________ http://www.nytimes.com/section/t-magazine/design?action=click&contentCollection=t-magazine®ion=navbar&module=collectionsnav&pagetype=sectionfront&pgtype=sectionfront _________260 pages of mostly advertising fro things like $15,000 couches and $9 million condos ( heavy on the luxury...possibly the motivation for the clinton endorsement...keep the quantitative easing flowing...design is subjective )...among the many ads there were with web addresses there was this one_______ http://gaggenaurestaurant1683.com/ ______"a sensorial journey of culinary luxury 333 years in the making"...okay...have a look at the web site...beyond " locally sourced ingredients" there is no hint of what actually may be served and i wonder what exactly how local the source is...fish from the hudson? east river? i loathe a foodie...not because they eat or that they are devotees of haute cuisine...pretentious but that is just one more human trait...it's because they are faddish and latch food that are traditional staples in traditional agriculture ( not the "culture" suffix ) and turn them from staples into pricey status foods...quinoa...maca ___http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/world/americas/in-peru-maca-spawns-larceny-and-luxury.html ___ traditional maize varieties ___http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/world/americas/oaxacas-native-maize-embraced-by-top-chefs-in-us-and-europe.html ___ that price the locals out of the traditional foods they grow and consume daily, destroying the local culture to feed some elitist diners at exorbitant prices to prove how hip and trendy they are and what fantastic chefs there are out there...only to find yet another "super food" and move on leaving the maca and maize growers worse off than before they were subjected to the vicissitudes of the foodie way...i read this paper to get some insight on how the elite think ( it is far to late for the times to claim it is not an elitist newspaper...pick up a copy of the sunday paper [if you want to part with six bucks for the privilege] and peruse it closely...it is unmistakable ) and why, if the thinking is clear enough..and just to tie it all back together, neither candidate for the presidency would find any of this reprehensible...they would spout bullshit about "level playing fields" "competitive advantage" and the benefits of the "global economy"...who cares about oaxan or andean farmers or the culture that supports them? it's all about style and "luxury"

highe and eminent in power and dignitie

“the leaders of Jamestown borrowed directly from the roman model of slavery: abandoned children and debtors were made slaves.”_________ “in ‘a model of Christian charity’, Winthrop declared that some were meant to rule, others to serve their betters: ’god almightie in his most holy and wise providence hath soe disposed the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich some poore, some highe and eminent in power and dignitie; others meane and in subjection.’ lest there be any doubt, governor Winthrop despised democracy, which he brusquely labeled “the meanest and worst of all forms of government.’ for puritans, the church and state worked in tandem; the coercive arm of the magistracy was meant to preserve both public order and class distinctions.” nancy Isenberg. ..”white trash: the 400-year old untold history of class in America.”__________________________ ___ “if shays had not been as desperate debtor, it is much to be doubted whether massachucetts would have been plunged into civil war.” “that damned ass hamilton” federalist VI ___________ “complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good id disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force an interested and overbearing majority.” madison . federalist X_________________________________________________ ___ politics here has always had a puritanical edge to it…while the framers may not have directly come out and said that god said so, they agreed with Winthrop about the desirability of limiting anything that resembled an expression of popular political will…when madison talks about protecting the “minor party” from an “interested and overbearing majority” he isn’t trying to protect those with a small political voice…he is working towards subverting popular political will and so protecting the “highe and eminent in power and dignitie”…the elite…shays wasn’t so much a “desperate debtor” as a revolutionary war veteran ( a captain in the 5th massachucetts regiment ) with a “rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts ( actually burdensome property taxes ), for an equal division of property…”[madison federalist X] which madison calls “improper” and “wicked” projects…because they are the result of an “overbearing majority” infringing on “the minor party…the origins of class here stretch back a long way and the “classless” state of america is a fiction foisted on us by high school civics...high school was over long ago…I would never vote for donald trump…he is divisive, racist, and pretty much a jerk...i want that clear…it is instructive , however, to see how the republican elite ( the standard bearers of class warfare in the united states ) squirm when faced with what is , in the end, an expression of popular will by an “interested and overbearing majority” of putative republican hoi polloi voters…it will be instructive to see how the looming convention plays out as well...this all stands in direct opposition to the well-ordered system the framers of the constitution envisioned…trump is of the elite…his supporters are not…the doyens and doges in the republican party are not pleased…it is un-american…we could discuss the equally thick slime on the other side of this zoo parade…but I believe that can wait for a bit…necessary though it is.

engineered anxiety

"all you have to do is create enough anxiety. then you have your market."_______heard this morning on bbc radio on the way to work.________on some level we all know that this is how advertising works ( although it isn't usually stated so blatantly...but the interviewee was talking about creating markets in the third world...and it is britain...old empires and imperial attitudes die hard )...we are all being manipulated...the consumerist utopia runs on engineered fears...status anxiety...fears of being left behind...of not having enough...primal ,evolutionary fears born out of an uncertain foraging past...if i don't get enough to eat i will die and my chances of finding enough are better with a group..more eyes...more ground covered..but if i'm not eating that status food ( nasturtium garnish for my salad? eating like inca royalty ) am i just surviving and not living? if i don't catch that raise or buy that bmw am i left behind...no longer of the group..a colorless existence...a greyscale of going through the motions of living? i would say not...my life looks like it's in color to me...so, knowing this, what kind of rational response can i frame? turning of the television for a start...this may be sacrilege to some...especially to advertisers and those who make a living from the medium...and on some levels it removes me form the group as i cannot follow the debates and discussions about what was "on" last night...but it does free me from the utopia's prime manipulating instrument ( television not manipulative? beyond the commercials just watch the "news" sometime..objective reporting, never very healthy, seems to be dead...we are being propagandized, not informed )..i need some basic understanding of events so by using a few newspapers ( i can ignore print ads [unless i am trying to gauge the ny times advertising revenue that day ] television commercials are imbeded in the information in a more unavoidable way ) and a selection of on line sites buttressed by information gleaned from books covering subjects with broader and deeper scope than any half hour of "news" could hope to approach i can ferret out something that resembles reality ( remembering that causality i so complex that no one has more than a general idea of what is actually going on...they may try to convince me they do but they cannot )...an imperfect approach..one that relies on some second-hand information and mu own limited cognitive abilities but relatively freer of the biases the consumerist utopia wants me to have..i have left television behind since the fire...john prine was correct.

just being human?

“we are better than this.” Barry Obama in a “white house email” I seem to be doomed to get in perpetuity._____ “…]this]illustrates a general truth: the ultimate aim of the communist system was the transformation of human nature, it was an idea shared by the other so-called totalitarian regimes of the inter-war period. This, after all, was an age of utopian optimism in the potential to change human life, and, paradoxically at the same time, an age of profound doubt and uncertainty about the value of human life itself in the wake of the destruction of the first world war.” Orlando figes. “a people’s tragedy: the Russian revolution 1891-1924”_____ “skinner was a staunch blank-slater and a passionate utopian. His uncommonly pure vision allows us to examine the implications of the ‘optimistic” denial of human nature. Given his premise that undesirable behavior is not in the genes, but a product of the environment, it follows that we should control that environment…why are most people repelled by this vision? Critics of skinners “beyond freedom and dignity” pointed out that no one doubts human behavior can be controlled: putting a gun to someone’s head or threatening him with torture are time honored techniques. Even skinner’s preferred method of operant conditioning required starving the organism to 80 percent of its free-feeding weight and confining it to a box where schedules of reinforcement were carefully controlled. The issue is not whether we can change human behavior, but at what cost” Steven pinker “the blank slate: the modern denial of human nature.”_____ “we are addicted to tribal conflict, which is harmless and entertaining if sublimated into team sports, but deadly when expressed as real-world ethnic, religious, and ideological struggles.” e.o. Wilson, “the meaning of human existence”_____ what if we’re not barry? What if what we are is human and what if there is a human nature ringed with violence? There have been a multiplicity of schemes to change humans from the above mentioned skinner and the bolsheviki…and it doesn’t stop there…the webbs and Frederick taylor wanted to rationalize human work…hippies and other communalists were all about changing views on the individual…partnership for a drug free America wants us all to be clean and sober ( oh how I hate “special vocabularies” they mystify the uninitiated and frame debates…they seek to limit not expand thought )…no end of religious utopianism…ghandi…mormons…the branch dravidians….the pope…all sorts of religiosity that just can’t seem to get handle on things…religion is a product of human nature…not a cure for it…gropup-think as a norm…so what if much of the violence in life actually stem from elite social manipulation in their own interests…what if policy is driving this divisiveness…the politicians from the cretinous trump to the corrupt Clinton to the insider posing as populist sanders will tell you it isn’t…a fair sign it has at least something to do with it…none of them are what the purport to be and they all lie...and, while we are being iconoclastic…how much violence in this country is committed by military and former military personnel who are sucked into police forces and militias after their term of service? They are trained to be violent...and it seems that is difficult to be unlearned…the government certainly doesn’t teach it …No one seems interested in finding out…and as a last kicker...if texas wants to go, let them…the empire can’t dissolve quickly enough….we may never live entirely at peace with one another…Wilson is correct…we are tribal by nature and no matter how politely we phrase it we always think “our” group is a little better…how we define ourselves…and the “other”

bureaucrats

i could go on about how all bureaucracies are stalinist at heart...always diminishing people by asking for that "one more" piece of information...or sending them caroming from office to office in search of that elusive form they must have to remain on the outside of the "justice system" rather than being "taken into the system" and then compounding the diminution by having only a skeletal staff keeping random hours to service the crush of harried form seekers... or they can just send along a request for "more information" with a return envelope entirely too small for the resultant paperwork they want three months after the original paperwork was filed ( on time might i add )...where is the lake of fire? fuck these people.

vote?

this came in the mail today...along with one for every other registered voter in the house...we all voted earlier this month in the primary...we all showed our ids that are compliant with government standards,,,in so doing we affirmed our residence and our right to be on the voter rolls as legitimately registered voters...so why send this? did i move in three weeks? i could have...but i did not...is this miserable state on the verge of a purge of the voter rolls? given the perfidy of the whores downstate i would not be surprised...i wouldn't be surprised to find the whole fucking county had been purged...we are not loved...that's okay...they are roundly loathed here as well..look who carried the state in the republican primary...no...nothing they would do would surprise me.

fortress architecture

"but in a computer driven, knowledge-based world economy, educated americans may have more in common with ( and, ultimately, loyalty to ) their highly educated friends and counterparts in europe, latin america, and asia than they do with their less educated fellow americans a few miles away...'foreign' might eventually mean...no more than a fading memory of a time when cultures ( and nations ) were distinct and colorful, as on today's map, rather than the free floating aggregations they will have become at the upper end of the world economic spectrum and the unpromising sludge they will become at the bottom." robert d. kaplan. an empire wilderness:travels into america's future._______________a kulturkampf between the "highly educated" and the "unpromising sludge" that is certainly apparent in the 2016 presidential zoo parade...the populist volk who see themselves being left behind ( the volk are demonized as a rabble however, despite elite distortions they are not stupid...only poorly educated [ or indoctrinated if you prefer]..we will be getting to that shortly ) and the "rootless cosmopolitan" elite who are actually rooted in urban pods...living in high rise luxury ridden condos that isolate them from the mob...migrating between european and asian pods electronically as well as physically..and some may be "highly educated"..there may still be elite private universities that specialize in turning out the future ruling oligarchical cadres...but mass education in state universities has taken a turn for the so so...in my experience state schools have dumbed down the syllabus, begun replacing permanent faculty with adjuncts, opened an "office of retention" to keep enrollment up, and gone into the debt creating business..more misery for the "unpromising"...control through penury...so as the gap between the "volk" and the "cosmopolitans widens the latter flee to the safety of the fortress architecture of gated communities and high rise condos in urban and suburban pods...kaplan should not be so quick to sound the demise of culture though...even if a billionaire has persuaded some of the volk that he is not the problem and the debt saddled youth migrate towards a political insider with a leftist cachet that disguises a quarter century among the whores there are still distinct cultures on the continent..with clear geographic boundaries and social mores...adaptation to local environments..and a marked distrust of "outsiders" be they "volk" or "cosmopolitan"..the weakness of the system is that one of these bozos has to be elected...there cannot be a vote of "no confidence"...and they will achieve that by widening and deepening the gap, not bridging it...eventually the distinct cultures will find their ties to the idea of some illusory central "americanism" a detriment..they will go their own way.

and a thousand slimy things lived on, and so did i...

“mccarthy was a master of ‘framing’, the technique of gaining control of a complex and possibly threatening situation by means of a few turns of phrase, reducing it to a simple and attractive falsehood. the reporters loved him. every day he furnished them with news and easily manageable quotations, and they swallowed everything, even when they knew better,’mccarthy was a dream story,’ one of them recalled later, ‘i wasn’t off page one for four years.’” geert mak. “in america: travels with john steinbeck”_____________ ___ how familiar does this sound to you? in a political season that has seen the zoo parade of freaks and geeks coming out of what was once the party of lincoln that reinvented itself as the party of the elite run through a sausage grinder of puerile schoolyard innuendo and sullen invective the front runner fits the prototype pioneered by “tail gunner joe “…and the stenographers posing as an “independent press” have availed themselves of the same cheap and easy headlines…to their benefit and the detriment of us all… if you bother to mine this blog you will find i have never been a particular fan of the political punditry or the whores they cover and, so far, the 2016 circus has done nothing but vindicate that stance…the fourth estate has always been part of a corporate system that sold a product…mencken be damned…they work for corporate entities that have editorial boards, mostly comprised of advertisers…they have a vested interest in distortion and dissembling…from tawdry coverage about genitalia and venereal disease to the eating habits of john kasich this campaign coverage has set a tone that the national enquirer would find questionable…even jerry springer…and it goes on because what these clowns say sells news…and the candidates will continue to wallow in this behavioral sump because ink is ink…and the media will be obliging...i have voted in every presidential election since nixon stomped mcgovern flat in ’72…and every one of them has been a negative choice…the stench rising from this particular round is so overpowering i am not sure what the outcome will be…are there enough hate filled people to elect trump to the presidency? many i know say “impossible”…i am not convinced…the options emanating from the other side are the unelectable versus the oligarch…the choice is unpalatable…..either way the interests of the “people” are subverted in favor of the elite ( this is, of course the crux of the system…it was designed to neutralize the “interested and overbearing majority”[madiosn…federalist X ]..it was, however, never intended to be such a blatant disenfranchisement, it was intended to seem as if the “will of the people” mattered...something is amiss with the 227 year old wiring…perhaps money has caused a short )…i voted yesterday…i will hold my nose and vote again in november…i have never been sanguine about the outcome of elections…politicians are whores…journalists are either hired propagandists or lazy bastards…joseph shumpeter was correct…elections are not about the “common good”.

official business...

that's what the envelope the letter from my "friend" representative pete visclosky arrived in yesterday said ( it also meant you and i footed the bill for the mailing...but what the heck...perks of the office, fight? )...he said he was co-sponsoring a house bill to stand up to those doggone chinese and their continued "currency misalignment" which he would define as, "...a prohibited export subsidy"...he is doing this to, "support american manufacturers and steelworkers"...no doubt...and no doubt in order of their importance in pete's philosophy...all fine election year rhetoric....probably not to be taken all that seriously...i have no doubt the chinese are unfazed...probably unaware...it's not their election after all...utterly bored with the campaign gibberish i began to scan the screed for something of interest...anything that would redeem the time i had invested in this nonsense...when i saw the header on the left side that said old pete was on the appropriations committee and, better still, the "ranking member" on the defense and energy and water development subcommittees...with my interest piqued i decide to do a bit of research so i went to: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cid=N00003813 to have a look at who pete's donors were....the top five were all corporations ( "american manufactuers" )and tops on the list? lockheed-martin...huh...imagine..a defense contractor...boeing was there..and northrop-grumman..all in the top five...nisource was there too...that's the parent company of the local utility corporation ( "energy and water development" )...my union is in there too...down the list...a "gift" of $10,000...so i am party to this whether i like it or not...and , it should be clear, i do not...the "steelworkers" business was pretty much a campaign afterthought...real workers do not fit well into pete's worldview or donor list..the unions do..they are in the business of selling industrial peace in contract sized bites and they do fairly well at it despite having the politicians they support turn on them routinely...it is the price the unions paid for being taken "into the system" by the wagner act in 1935...fdr pulled their teeth and they hardly noticed...old bill maclay said he was serving in " a nest of vipers" during the first congress because of the venality he saw there...there has been little change.

the unwary and uninterested II

"the immediate election of the president is to be made by the states in their political characters. the votes allotted to them are in a compound ratio, which considers them partly as distinct and coequal societies, partly as unequal members of the same society. the eventual election, again, is to be made by that branch of the legislature which consists of the national representatives; but in this particular act they are to be thrown into the form of individual delegations from so many distinct and coequal bodies politic." the federalist papers XXXIX ( madison )_______________ this authentic "founding fathers' " gibberish is quoted verbatim...perhaps jim had been out on the town or was sleeping badly the night before he penned this screed...no one will ever really know...history is a tough nut to crack sometimes...palms were greased...lies were told...corruption and venality were rebranded as a form of provisional patriotism...1789 was a watershed in american politics...a new elite was enshrined and the mob effectively disenfranchised for good and all...not what they teach in high school civics, is it? so this sorrowful electoral season is continuing this hallowed precedent...i have heard nothing but gibberish in months and it continues...propagated by the media and, even more emphatically, by social media...i am frankly weary of the whole fucking thing...it is argument based on a tissue of lies told from the beginning by an elite in much fear of "the mob" that "we the people" actually represented for them and it has lost none of the impetus over the last 227 years...stop for a moment and think about it without the incessant drumbeat of partisan propagandists...who, exactly, are the "main contenders"? on one side a hellbent, bible thumping, very junior texas senator and product of the ivy league and an entitled scion of wealth who is accused by many of being a nazi but is probably too stupid to make the cut...they were insane but they stuck to their standards...some of that clown's retinue would never have gotten past julius streicher much less martin bormann...on the other there is a once failed presidential contender...former first lady and secretary of state...wall street is the only street she could possibly represent...they loved bubba there and face it, if it weren't for term limits they'd still be behind him...he was well liked there during his tenure..so why not the mrs.? her direct opponent has the leftist cachet of "socialist" attached to him..odd for someone who has been a member of congress for a quarter of a century...another insider...i hear a lot of talk about how this election is "rigged"...if you bother to look they've all been rigged...contested by certified members of the status quo..thoroughly vetted and not about to make substantive change a part of the presidential agenda...it's taken you this long to realize this? that explains quite a bit...this is my fourth and probably final screed directly tied to this miserable travesty...i can't find the words to express the real depth of the loathing...it needs a whole new vocabulary..i will vote in the primary and the general election...it will make no difference...it was rigged from the get go.

imbued with its images

“as for smith’s greatest adversary, marx, it matters little how loudly one protests against english capitalism when one is thoroughly imbued with its images. The protest is itself a recognition, and its only aim is, through a new kind of accounting, to confer upon objects the advantages of subjects.” oswald spengler. The decline of the west.________________________________________________________________________ of late i have been thinking that if don trump can actually be taken seriously as a presidential candidate the time for the demise of the executive branch may be at hand…how could that help? it can’t near as i can tell…but are any of the of the other alleged candidates any better in real terms? i am skeptical at best…looking out over the wasteland of the campaign i can see only profoundly negative choices…from cruz to rubio to clinton or sanders…they are all of the hegemonic culture…all “of the system”…true believers… and none are truly concerned with my interests or well being..all enamored of power and a massaged ego…if i hold my nose and vote for one of them as the lesser of two evils i am part of that system as well…”imbued with its images”…attacking the system in its own cultural idiom…it frames the debate…it provides the choices…if i want to participate i must choose…i do not possess a method of opting out…no way of saying “none of these bozos is fit to represent my interests because their interests and mine are nearly exclusive of one another”…all i can do with my vote is validate the current system on its terms…my “civic duty” insists i choose , even if it is the lesser evil ( and i have never seen a presidential election with a positive choice )…no way of rejecting the candidates as a group…of saying anything that does not reinforce established institutions…when john quincy adams said that the adoption of the constitution would be a victory for the “aristocratic party” he was prescient…i could ignore it all…abstain...but i will vote…if only because the thought of a strong voter turn out terrifies them…that might inject some accountability back into public office…mark a return to issues instead of the production of innocuous, meaningless, dissembling, vapid, insulting, inferential, dismissive, or degrading sound bites…i loathe them enough to want them nervous.

an elite perception of work

i have been perusing the new york times sunday magazine "work issue"...a weakness, i know...but i am always interested in what the elite thinks and i have a difficult time thinking any periodical as elitist as the nyt magazine...trump hates them...he has called them, among other things in tweets, "incompetent", "dopes", "poorly run", and maintained, "allows dishonest writers to fabricate stories"...i know...the times published a slew of his tweets a few weeks back...don is a hater and unfit to be a small town code inspector, much less president...he thinks libel laws should be patterned after some arcane and byzantine system akin to what the brits labored under for years...he thinks the times should be sued...primarily, i believe, because the times has labeled him what the "uneducated" he so loves would call an asshole...may be true in don's case...and someone should hip him to what happened to mussolini...pompous blowhards are ultimately very unpopular...however i am digressing from the point....in between ads for $50 million condominiums designed by zaha hadid ( the cheap rat holes go for $4,895,000...steerage among the elite ) and $10,000 sofas there are articles about what the times perceives as "work"..about how to build a better "focus group" or why meetings are so horrible, or the travails of diversifying the workplace...and how people are being replaced by robotics...or the demise of "lunch" as people eat at their desks because a "lunch break" wastes valuable corporate time...all valid points i imagine...some work must get done in offices...but in all that there in virtually no mention of what most people would call work ( well...there is an article about janitors...the people who clean up after the people who do the "real" work...a tossed bone...or,perhaps, the only "workers" the office folk come into close contact with )...but no mention of transport...or construction...or retail..or fast food..or manufacturing..or heavy industry...all of which, presumably, the stuff that goes on in offices is actually related to...or are offices like the stock market? utterly detached from reality of most of daily life? going by what the times focuses on as "work" i'd have to think so...or...just maybe...the times has a distorted vision...crawled up its own ass and died...i find don loathsome...but i may have to grant him some valid points about the times...by the way...the design director said she wanted the "work issue"..." to have "the feel of a corporate manual " what a giveaway........and as a post-script...there should be a special place in hell for madeleine albright...probably condi rice and fucking henry kissinger too...fuck these people.

vangardism

“with the political press is bound up the need of universal school education, which in the classical world was completely lacking…in this demand there is an element of desiring to shepherd the masses, as the objects of party politics, into the newspaper’s power area…no tamer has his animals more under his power…unleash the people as a reader-mass and it will storm through the streets and hurl itself upon the target indicated, terrifying and breaking windows; a hint of press-staff and it will become quiet and go home…the press today is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers…the reader neither knows or is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play…a more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined…formerly a man did not dare think freely, now he dares and cannot…the competitors strive by means of money to detach readers…nay, peoples, en masse from the hostile allegiance and bring them under their own mind-training…a higher will put together a picture of their world for them…there is no need now, as there was for baroque princes, to impose military service liability on the subject…one whips their souls with articles, telegrams, and pictures until they clamor for weapons and force their leaders into a conflict to which they were willed to be forced.” Oswald Spengler. “decline of the west”_________________________________________ sometimes ozzie's writing is so impenetrable i have to wonder if i am just dense or if he is shamming...then again sometimes he knocks me out of my chair...the idea of universal public education as a method of indoctrinating citizens into the world-view of the hegemonic culture and teaching children to stay in one place for eight or more hours ( we are evolved as nomads after all...walking is life ) is a familiar theme...that it is a mechanism to educate the masses to the reception of the tools of manipulation is, for me, strikingly new...( and spengler was writing at a time when newspapers were still the main mass medium...commercial radio wasn't around yet, much less television...films were, however, and i am wondering if the rise of the "visual learner" coincided with the rise of the first visual mass medium )...certainly humans are social animals who have an innate desire to belong...vangardists seize on this and "detach" the masses from previously held identities and being them "under their own mind training"....and the sense of "belonging" to a group can be manipulated into an intense hatred and fear which can translate into mob action against "the other"...anyone not "of the body" which is conveniently defined by mass media...the current zoo parade of a presidential campaign certainly falls into the category of manipulation of fear...and frightened people do extreme and ugly things...this is the fourteenth presidential campaign in my life and the eleventh of which i was ( and am) politically aware enough to draw conclusions...and those conclusions are that 1) there is a concerted effort to manipulate us through fear by virtually every candidate out there...even bernie, who may simply be using it to contrast himself with the others, and, 2) that effort is being aided and abetted by mass media who, as for profit corporate concerns as interested in their bottom lines as disseminating anything like factual information, are giving free reign to this bullshit because it is lurid, cheap, easy news and serves the purposes of a "higher will" rather than anything like even representative democracy...hamilton's governmental ponzi scheme grinds on...i'm not sure even he would be comfortable with this

conflict of the orders

"the upshot of the conflict of the orders was not popular revolution but the creation of a new governing class, composing rich plebeians and patricians. the first qualification for most political offices was wealth on a substantial scale. no one could stand for election without passing a financial test that excluded most citizens." mary beard. "spqr: a history of ancient rome"__________________________it is true that the framers of the constitution did not impose any financial qualification for office seekers...it's also true that washington was the first president not only because of his service in the revolutionary war ( or war for independence for you all who cannot tolerate the idea of a revolution....and that actually may be more accurate since one elite supplanted another...but i love a good goad ) but because he was one of the richest of the new elite...and when madison goes off on a rant in federalist X about protecting the "minor party" from an "interested and overbearing majority" he isn't talking about defending those with a small political voice...he's talking about defending an elite...it's a republic on purpose...more tractable to manipulation...the word democracy is rooted in the word demos...which means the "common people"...for madison, hamilton and jay "the people" were a mob...common rabble...so where does that leave us viz the current foul zoo parade of elitists and elitist wannabes? well...we have one incredibly self-absorbed and pretty much baselessly arrogant billionaire up to his nativist, jingoist ass in the campaign and another threatening to join in because even he sees that this bozo is just that and he could easily cash in on the general disgust of the republican old guard by luring them away from the party..hillary may not have billions but she did stop river traffic on the hudson for her daughter's wedding reception...i'd call that the power of the elite...they would have laughed me into some star chamber somewhere if i tried that...labeled "terrorist" and tossed into some oubliette somewhere and conveniently forgotten...old jeb has $100 million and can't seem to buy a vote and bernie can out fundraise old hildegard but unless she shoots herself squarely in the foot ( again ) he'll lose because her status can be cashed in...money and power are fungible commodities...same difference...so the election pretty much comes down to who has the most capital...who's richest..toss in the fact that in this particular state my vote in both the primary and the general election isn't going to much matter because the results aren't proportional, but "winner take all" and you have set the stage for my ( and your, like it or not ) exclusion from any meaningful participation in the government that allegedly draws its authority from the mob...it is a foul and miserable political season even by whoretown standards...my disgust is seemingly infinite...fuck these people....2:15 p.m. addendum___the new york times endorsed hillary clinton for the democratic nomination today...they also ran ads for upscale hotels, a $68,000 table and condominiums at 53 west 53rd avenue so pricey there wan no cost printed in the ad..."if you have to ask you cannot afford it" the elitist paper of record endorses an elitist because she'd be good for them...the rest of us can go pound sand...fuck these people...twice.

throughout history

"wilhelm promised the church leaders he would make berlin a second vatican. so much has happened in this church since then, the benediction for the armies of 1914, the weekly prayers for hitler, goring's wedding, that it is a miracle that the building itself did not go completely, despite the heavy damage it incurred in the second world war, by the sword." geert mak " in europe "________________________"i haven't done anything," says the child. "yes," says the chaplain, "but that's not the question now. you must get ready to die properly." "it can't be that no one understands me." "i am your friend and, perhaps, i understand you. but it is late. i shall be with you, and the good lord will be to. you'll see how easy it is." the child turns his head away. the chaplain speaks of god. does the child believe him? yes. he believes so hence he knows that nothing is as important as the peace awaiting him. but that very peace is what frightens the child. " i am your friend," the chaplain repeats. the others are silent. he must think of them. the chaplain turns towards the group, turning his head away from the child for a moment...the child leans against the canvas covering, which gives a little. he notices a narrow space between it and the truck body. he could jump if he wanted. the chaplain had his back turned and, up front, the soldiers are intent on finding their way in the dark. the boy doesn't stop to think; he tears the canvas loose, slips into the opening, and jumps. his fall is hardly heard, the sound of running on the pavement, then nothing more. he is in the fields where his steps cannot be heard. but the flapping of the canvas and the sharp, damp morning air penetrating the truck make the chaplain and the prisoners turn. for a second the priest stares at those looking at him in silence. a second in which he, as a man of god, must decide whether he is on the side of executioners, or on the side of the martyrs in keeping with his vocation. but he has already knocked on the partition separating him from his comrades. "achtung!" the alarm has been given. albert camus. "second letter to a german friend"_____________________________________________"the theologian and the hangman have been intimates throughout history." michael wood "legagcy"__________organized religion is spiritually bankrupt and a font of behavioral control...we have enough of that in political public relations and the eternal advertising...keep your proselytizing distance...you can keep your teleologies too.