must be an even numbered year coming up...

...because the early sings are calling for mid-term elections and the campaigning ( which never really stops among representatives ) is about to accelerate to the point of weekly mailings extolling the virtues of candidates..much like this one which "...was prepared, published, and mailed at taxpayer expense" ( have a shufti just below old pete's photo )...it is true that the "town hall meetings" aren't scheduled to begin until next month which is, barely, officially part of election year...still...never miss a chance to hammer home name recognition to the voters...especially when they are paying for the privilege...that aside i have some questions...if he's attempting to defend steelworkers from the ravages of foreign steel he is failing...you can find steel from chins, india, turkey, and who knows where else right here in pete's district...and when it come time to license bp/ammoco to dump more benzine into lake michigan he has a marked tendency to vote "yea"...he has many donors: Industry Total Building Trade Unions $74,792 Defense Electronics $69,500 Defense Aerospace $58,200 Electric Utilities $51,750 Lobbyists $45,894 ...and building trades unions are the largest single donors ( these figure are from 2013-2014 on the "open secrets" web site...the most recent i can find at the moment ) but they are seriously outspent by corporate donors...we should take his "defending workers" claims with a healthy grain of salt...i have absolutely nothing negative to say about those who have served in the armed forces so i would encourage him to continue working in their behalf...as far as "keeping america safe" goes, from what? from church shootings to snipers with bump stocks in las vegas the violence i am seeing appears to be home-grown terrorism...we live in dangerous times, however i am thinking the greater threat is internal...as for the airport. i don't fly much and i don't need L-1011s parked in my back yard...and what public transport do we speak of? i don't know where the train pictured in this mailing is but it isn't in pete's district...neither is that spiffy road...freeways here are a rat's nest of construction and delays...nope..i may be paying for it but i'm not buying it...another foul election season dawns...where is the lake of fire?

one more nail

unlike the behemoths from christmases past ( i.e. "retail season)...

that were a strain on the paper carrier...

today's pre holiday paper weighs in literally pounds lighter...admittedly this is a christmas eve paper and the others were from october and november..however this dearth of heft is and index of what the papers have been like all autumn...light..on content ( sorry ) and advertising...even the high end advertisers seem to have wandered off howling into the wilderness...

the only special "pull out" in today's paper is the history channel's 2018 broadcast schedule...

even the sunday magazine, usually the haunt of high end real-estate and heirloom jewelry ads had been reduced to running ads for "avocado mattresses" and something called chateau gaby...the engineered desires that capitalism brings have not vanished...however this is a sure sign the vector for the orgasmic moment of purchase has changed and amazon doesn't need to advertise...just wait for us all to come to it...and it does eliminate some shadow work...i am not commuting to stores and hauling purchased around...they just land on my deck...true it's not greener but it is easier...another trap...and this may explain the overly familiar letters i have been getting from the contributors tot he times, tucked away in the sunday paper, thanking me for bring a subscriber and supporting the good work they do ( while the editor sends me an email telling me how much more my subscription will cost in 2018 )...it's a fucked up world and no mistake...from a to z.

kleptocratic oligarchy

“[democracy is an] institutional arrangement or arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s votes.” joseph shumpeter. capitalism, socialism, and democracy p.269_________________old joe wrote that book in 1942 i believe ( the quote here is from the 1950 3rd edition ) at the height of frd and the new deal...joe was an economist and a political scientist so, of course, he loathed frd and "the people" every bit as much ass john jay did...he would have taken poor barbra to task for believing in a "common good" which he believed was a smoke and mirrors device trotted pout by competing professional politicians every election cycle to manipulate people into voting and then was promptly stowed away as the pols moved to make decisions based on an entirely different set of motivations ( do i hear echoes of stalin's "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." ? perhaps...certainly holds true in this country at times )...i hear the house of representatives ( representative my ass...last figures i saw showed 271 millionaires in congress...how can i expect them to represent my interests...i would be an idiot to think they would..."public service" is part of the special vocabulary of oligarchy ) have passed the tax bill that represents the greatest upward redistribution of wealth since dutch reagan doddered through the white house hallways..i am not surprised...it will not be defeated...it will pass...wealth will flow upward...there will be celebration...but not here...not among the people i know...acceptance...adaptation...okay...then one adaptation we need to engender is to make the government as irrelevant to ourselves as possible...once they have stolen all they can from below they will turn on one another...that may be the point at which to act....fuck these people.

the dismal science

the second photo is a side-bar from the new york times i scanned into my computer because the answer to that question, while it has several sub-texts, is fairly obvious and my hope is it was rhetorical rather than a literal search fro information...if it was a cry in the wilderness ( and the times can howl out there occasionally ) i will have to rethink my position somewhat ( not much however...all media are pretty much stenographers to power and outright propagandists...joe goebbels got nothing on these folks )...okay...back to the side-bar...economists wonder a lot...they are the theologians of capital and have erected complex structures of bullshit rationalizations for greed and when those structures prove faulty they have to retrench and explain away the "anomalies" that so disturb them..usually they do this by blaming "externals'..inconvenient facts that disrupt the smooth lines of their bullshit theories so they ignore them as irrelevant..which is why the "externals" ( like the environment we all live in and its capacity to provide raw materials and absorb all the ugly by-products industrial capitalism creates...that is irrelevant..or was until quite recently..and they are still trying to get around it..it will be a stubborn issue for them )...so, basically, what i am saying is they are asking that question because they don't have an answer that fits the theories...there is an answer though and it is unpalatable in public relations terms...greed...capitalism is a consequentialist system...it's what people have that matters to it not how they acquire it...so ruthless greed is an acceptable mechanism for acquisition...if workers have more money ceos and shareholders have less...since they sit atop the pyramidal, authoritarian ( how many rights do you have at work? ) they are in a position to write the rules ( and this would include a great deal of monetary influence in the august halls of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government ) and make the distribution of wealth their province and they take as much as possible...wealth is the final ethical good of the system...factor in the amount of money that is being funneled in to repair the damages wrought by the "non-exisxtant" bogey man of human driven climate change and the money supply has another sink-hole developing that will be even more demanding that any scam driven "fiscal crisis"

this photo of a smoky evening horizon sent to me by a close friend in southern california yesterday could serve as an index of where a good deal of cash is going to be going soon..and you will , no doubt, see extensive legislative efforts to limit or eliminate payouts of any sort of remuneration to all but the share holders in the very near future...there is slime in swamptown and they will crawl for their handlers.

calling thorstein bunde veblen

"diamonds are a girl's best friend and dogs are a man's best friends. now you know which sex has more sense." zsa zsa gabor_______"we have your back because you have ours. and that's why it's me writing this letter instead of someone in marketing. because these times demand partnership with dedicated subscribers like you who value groundbreaking reporting and what it adds to their lives..." nick kristof. op-ed columnist in a charming "dear subscriber" leter that came with my sunday times last week_____except for the fact that the alleged "groundbreaking reporting" is the bait for the shills...the lure for the glib advertising that pervades the times...and don't try to tell me it isn't aimed at an elite group of buyers...section f of today's times is a paean to "holiday baubles"...eight pages of articles with titles like "i wear art" and advertisements ranging from "lagos" at bloomingdales to valentin magro on west 48th street in new york "by appointment only" and not a single price listed anywhere...no surprise that zsa zsa showed up...look up "mercenary" and doubtlessly her likeness would be the illustration..."the holidays" are upon us and scrooges "false and commercial festival" is about to lurch into full swing ( unless you have been in a big box store since october in which case you have already burned out on the whole thing )...so as we stagger from one dysfunctional seizure to another let us keep in mind the hegemonic dictum, "work, obey, consume, die" as a focus for the coming month...it's a consequentialist system and material wealth is the ultimate ethical good...it's not who you are, it's what you have...it's what the new york times tells me every time it is delivered to my door ( expecting about a four pound paper sunday )...they are the "paper of record" and have "all the news that's fit to print"...it must be true...one wonders why they hate don trump so though...he is nothing if not of the elite and they are stenographers to power...it is mystifying.

a staggering force

"After a year and a half of erratic tweets and rambling speeches, we can’t be certain. We don’t know how Mr. Trump would carry out basic functions of the executive. We don’t know what financial conflicts he might have, since he never released his tax returns, breaking with 40 years of tradition in both parties. We don’t know if he has the capacity to focus on any issue and arrive at a rational conclusion. We don’t know if he has any idea what it means to control the largest nuclear arsenal in the world." the new york times 9 november 2016_______"the disappointment and pain with which the result of the late animated canvas has filled our breasts would be mere affectation for us to deny, or to attempt to conceal from our readers. wholly unexpected the event took us completely by surprise. not for even a moment apprehended, the blow came upon us with a staggering force." the national intelligencer on the election of james k. polk to the presidency in 1844______________there are winners and losers in american politics just like anywhere else...there were losers in every presidential race and the media that endorsed the losers always has had bitter lamentations the day after..i will acknowledge that james knox polk did not have command of thermonuclear weapons...however he did threaten war with the united kingdom and he did oversee the mexican-american war...which led to him being considered historically as a "strong" president and drove the supporters of henry clay to distraction...they were contentious times...the abolitionist movement was growing..annexing texas and the expansion of slavery were at issue...and the cultural divisions between the north and south of the country were widening...nothing is new in american politics and the losers never disappear...( have a shufti at wolfgang shivelbush's "the culture of defeat" sometime )...to not have expected a backlash against an eight year obama presidency..or immigrants..or gay rights is to have been woefully uneducated in the peculiar traditions of politics in this disunited disparate country...the pendulum always swings back and to deny this is to be foolish...it is a profoundly conservative country and in possession of a delusional exceptionalism...a "splendid little war" almost always distracts people form domestic chaos..polk did it and became "strong"...we have a couple going on right now...no need for the trumpists to start a new one...then again the old ones are just that...old...time, one supposes, for politicians to find a new venue for young people to be killed in...one wearies of politicians...one wearies of lies and distortion...one has found orwell prescient for some time...one supposes that his distrust of the "official" versions of events was predated by other, perhaps less skilled, doubters...as a class, irregardless of party affiliation, politicians are, at best, untrustworthy...at worst they are lying, scum-sucking whores..i know where my sentiments lie

cultural paranoia, class warfare, and you

"however, you are quite at liberty to take food home from the market once the dining halls have been supplied, for everyone knows you wouldn't do it unless you had to. i mean, no one likes eating at home, although there's no rule against it. for one thing it's considered rather bad form, for another, it seems silly to go to all the trouble of preparing an inferior meal when there an absolutely delicious one waiting for you in the dining-hall just down the street." thomas more from utopia._________________a communal society is an observed society..behavior surveillance and modification through peer pressure rather than state coercion...self-policing for the oligarchy...no wonder the teleolgists love thomas more..i wonder if b f skinner read this_______ today's n y times...

had a "special advertising section" wrapped around the outside of the paper so you'd see it first..

it folded out...

into a four page spread...

all about the need for vigilance and security in the face of an increasingly dangerous, divided, and hostile world...

with a kicker on the back to make sure that adrenaline rush of fear ( greatest marketing tool ever! ) grabs hold as tightly as the marketer wants it to be...impelling the purchase...from more to orwell with stalin and hitler's paranoia thrown in, authoritarians and oligarch have always been obsessed with what "the mob" is up to and what they're thinking...it's the source of more's love for the communal...the catholic church's and every secular religion you care to name as well...the 1% are oligarchs and no exception tot his..the want public and private surveillance and orwell's telescreens are not long off ( i am using one of the grates surveillance tools the elites possess at the moment...google is eating this stuff up and laughing all the way to the bank...facebook too..just so we know i am alert to this...i am not feeling naive today )...they need to know...fortunately the are not all that good at understanding the non-linearity of causality..oh they say they do but in their heart of hearts they think they "know" where human history is heading and that they can control it...this is nonsense..human cognition is limited and we are in the environment...part of it...not external as the self-absorbed wealthy and their lackey economists would tell us..they can watch us..we watch as well..and the planet will have the final say.

and just to show we are dealing with an paper aimed at an elite audience, here's an advertisement from today's n y times magazine for a watch no one on my block will buy...some wanna-bes may like the idea...but it is not in their price range and not nearly utilitarian enough.

the great proletarian revolution

28 April 1919 1. Require the Moscow Cheka to carry out merciless arrests among the strikers and delegates, ignoring previous considerations. 2. Call Khalatov to the Council of People’s Commissars by nine o’clock. 3. Require Kamenev immediately to send for Red printers from Petersburg. N. Lenin____________________ clearly is there is no room for disputing the utopian nature of the “worker’s paradise”…even if the edenic nature is disputed by the workers themselves…if there is dissent it isn’t a utopia so send for “reliable” printers to keep the presses rolling while the secret police deal with the malcontents and restore the teleological balance. the great proletarian revolution wasn't about workers any more than the trump presidency is about making the nation "great" again...revolts by the masses are always co-opted by one elite or another...be they leather clad chekists or quasi-legal swindlers in business suits...always someone who "knows" what the masses need.

ho...mao...the original 20th century undead has company, if not competition...nosferatu lives...

please remember the fifth of november

"by excluding men under thirty-five from the first office, and those under thirty from the second ( president and senator respectively ), it confines the electors to men of whom the people have had time to form a judgement and with respect to whom they are not liable to be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism, which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle."-john jay federalist LXIV_______________________"the exhaustion of the masses is unquestionable."-grigory zinoviev, 15 novemmber 1917 in a central committee meeting__________________today is guy fawkes day...a quasi diminution of an act of rebellion/subversion/treason/terrorism depending on who is writing about it...and i usually don't need to wait for some particular day to express an opinion about the sorry state of hegemonic culture in these once united states...that the last election offered a dismal choice of the venal and corrupt for high office ( yes...that woman is no better...fucking sue me ) is an unquestionable fact and i am wondering just how that came to be...partly because the "masses" are "exhausted"...not so much by lying whore politicians...those have been around since the beginning ( we will get to jay in a minute ) but by the dead end appearance of the economy...the erosion of economic middle ground...the gig economy and the inability to make ends meet, seemingly no matter how much one might work...so they rebelled at the polls and installed , incredibly to my mind, just another member of the hegemonic elite who was posing as a regular guy...a "meteor" that "mislead" if he didn't "dazzle"...then again when hasn't a member of the hegemonic elite people the white house ( no dissent...obama was of that elite and he will not be unwealthy for the rest of his days..and "honest" abe may have been a rail splitter once but the house he lived in before his turn as president was a prosperous lawyer's, pot a cabin in the woods )..bear in mind that the franchise was limited tot he "better" men in jay's day and he was all for that...who knows who the hoi polloi might elect...his rants about the masses are manifold in the federalist papers..so the "people" he wanted to form "judgements" about the "electors" were not the common folk...candidates were vetted by the interests of the elite and the real decisions about who stood for what were made in an arena removed from public scrutiny...sound anything like the recent past? people believe in this system mostly because of high school civics..i have been out of high school for nearly fifty years ( 1971 ) i was skeptical about these people then ( there was viet nam and watergate ) i find them loathsome now...odd that "lock her up" ( which i am inclined to think she should be on general principles ) was such a refrain in 2016 and mat apply to that cretinous freak in say 2017 or 18...fuck these people...fake news..alternative facts...just the same old political lies and dissembling...smoke and mirrors...slight of hand...they keep us divided and they win until the system collapses from its own entropy ( shall we talk about an eroding tax base and the consequences in terms of infrastructure? climate gentrification of areas higher above sea level and the displacement of the poor? that climate change...there's the outside, objective force that will not be placated...collapse is there...take a look ) time to start looking to forming alternative cultural structures.

dystopian relativism

anyone who has sat on a jury knows that "truth" is a slippery subject..."the facts" may be lurking in the courtroom but that's not what you are there for...they are obscured by the manifold versions of "the truth" that everyone, from witnesses, to plaintiff, to defendant are trying to sell you on ( when i was a juror a husband and wife pair of witnesses who were in the same car could not agree on whether the scene was lit by the cars headlights or a porch light which probably wasn't on since it had been established there was a power outage due to a storm )...it is true we are all mired in an ego viewpoint...stuck behind our eyes and no matter who hard we try, in the end, everything is relative to us...so there's a kernel of truth to the relativism academics have seized on as a basis for explaining almost everything and even questioning the validity of "self" ( which is patent bullshit by the by...someone needs to tell these poor sods they are actually deconstructing themselves and so their crack brained hypotheses about who and what we are...get a grip...where's g.e. moore when you need him? in intellectual disrepute because he would have agreed it's all fatuous and lame academic self-aggrandizement )...so it shouldn't be a surprise that the current resident of the white house seizes on relativism to explain away disquieting "facts" with "alternate" ones...so his inauguration wasn't mobbed by millions..a media conspiracy to discredit him..and those photos? digitally manipulated...and in an age where that sort of trip down the memory hole is rampant..or ,at least, reasonably possible...even the n y times can photo-shop...what can you know? well...i know instability when i see it...and condescension...and arrogance...and disregard for the rights and prerogatives of the bulk of the population...an elitist take on the character of the wealthy and the implied lack there of of the less well to do ( and the non-existence of the indigent )...if it is a government "of the people" i have a fair take on which people...and that "for the people" business? those "people" comprise a distinct minority of the polity...and their bought whores are in charge of the legislature and if the judiciary...products of the same elitist universities as the rest of the ruling cadre...are "independent", they are independent of a sense of justice...something very different than the current state of "the law", or the government as a whole.

constant enforcement

“the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.”-- grover Cleveland in 1887 in response to request for drought relief from texas. “for that matter, it never occurs to apian that his class as such needs defending, rome is imperiled by plebian violence. likewise when the dictator sulla give fortuitous birth to himself, saving rome from herself, by means of easy bloodshed, his tools demand ‘that the voting should be controlled by the well-to-do and sober-minded rather than by the pauper and reckless classes; there would no longer be left any starting point for civil; discord.’ sulla and apian do not conceive of mass revolution, only of mass disorder.”__william t. vollmann from rising up, rising down. "the convention...have directed the president to be chosen by select bodies of electors to be deputed by the people for that express purpose; and they have committed the appointment of senators to the state legislatures. this mode has, in such cases, vastly the advantage of elections by the people in their collective capacity where the activity of party zeal, taking advantage of the supineness, the ignorance, and the hopes and fears of the unwary and uninterested, often places men in office by the votes of a small proportion of the electors." the federalist LXVI ( john jay)_____________ most politicians have distanced themselves from “the demos”…”the mob”…never fully trusted it not to turn on them like a pack of jackals half-starved by b f skinner for one of his twisted experiments in “operant conditioning” ( a form of behavioral amendment and control that lures elites like moths to flame…skinner is still a very popular man in some circles…and starvation is a useful tool when it comes to behavior…from the potato famine to the great depression [ with some truly gruesome refinements by stalin] it had its uses )…oh they are more than happy to divide “the people” and turn a well indoctrinated and controlled “mob” loose on real or perceived threats to their hegemony…but a populist mob with a reform from below agenda scares the crap out of them...so from apian and sulla through john jay and grover Cleveland the elites have cloaked their interests in the guise of national interests”…make resistance to those interests tantamount to treason and allowing them to bring down the full weight of the legal system and a group of raging “patriots” down on anyone who might have thoughts about a “different way” or some sort of alternate distribution of wealth and power…violence isn’t always necessary and, usually, isn’t really productive…indoctrination ( we are back to skinner again ) can be more effective and less costly and if violence is deemed a necessity it will ensure a nob of properly aimed and controlled goons who won’t question their handlers too closely…at least at first…those three guys in the photo…they are hegemons…don’t let the bubbaness of two of them ( one an ivy leaguer and the other a rhodes scholar ) or the hopeful ethnicity of the other ivy leaguer fool you into thinking they were any less bent on a class oriented agenda than the current denizen of the white house ( who has displayed some skill at energizing a mob of dilatant thugs but seems oblivious to the mood of a seeming majority of the nation…he is also, i might add, a profound devotee of the ideas expressed by Cleveland…”the government” and the elite he surely comes from are on in the same...in his mind [ oddly much like the attitude of richard Nixon] we owe him unstinting loyalty and the recognition that he is above the law and can do what he pleases)…the history of the interests of wealth as the national interest have a long and fabled history…all that neo-classical kitch in the nation’s capitol is an indication that the early republic and its later celebrants saw themselves as the true heirs to rome..in many ways they still do…a close reading of gibbon or tainter might be illuminating for them…one presumes they are not interested in anything emanating from “neo-mathusian nay sayers”…well…denial will bite you on the ass every time…i have to wonder what hunter would have made of all this.

reading the n y times ( sort of )

today's n y times weighs in at a hefty three pounds twelve and three-quarter ounces...who knew there was so much news? i mean i knew there were climate related issues ( i talked to my brother in florida yesterday and will try to do so again today ) and the assorted tererorists and diplomats and batshit crazy north koreans ( well complimented by the current swamptown crop of loons cast in ideological concrete...where is the lake of fire? ) but an almost four pound newspapaer? then i opened it and things began to gain perspective...lots of inserts..the usual sunday magazine and the quarterly "style" magazine ( more on those soon enough...patience )..additionally there is a "special offer from the economist to n y times readers ( i can, if i act quickly, save $321.87 off the twelve week regular subscription rate of $333.87 by claiming the unheard of low price of a buck a week...that's right...twelve weeks for twelve bucks because i am a n y times reader...astonishing...you can see my response in, i believe, the sixth photo...the only people who believe economists anymore are other economists and "free market" geeks with their heads up their asses )...there is an entire brochure for wonderful cruises and another for "eight exceptional days" of $9590 sofas and $7180 dining room sets...a pattern was becoming discernible...so...armed with the latest times advertising rates for color and black and white advertising i began to look at the magazines..the "style" magazine (http://nytmediakit.com/uploads/rates/CRS-9040_2016_Rate_Cards_TMag_EC3.pdf there's the price list url ) had advertising worth $7,200,322 and, as a side note, turned an article about the travel writer and novelist bruce chatwin into a vehicle for selling outdoor clothing...everything is for sale at the times...while the sunday magazine "education issue" ( educating whom to what i wonder ) had a measly $1,927,350 (http://nytmediakit.com/uploads/rates/CRS-9040_2016_Rate_Cards_Magazine_EC2.pdf )...interestingly enough milton hershey, fordham, uc davis, ucla, nyu, harvard medical school seton hall, adelphi, pace, and loyola marymount universities accounted or $1,177, 825 of that total...you have to spend money to make money...every university bean counter knows that...my news is distorted and my desires are engineered ( at least that is the hope )...we all live in the memory hole now and everything is spun to the point of unrecognizability...i never looked for "truth"...it is too subjective...sifting through all this blather and self-serving crap for fact is a tedious business...i keep trying though...everyone has an agenda and the world is replete with liars, grifters, and swindlers...america in the 21st century has tapped into the main nerve of that...the "hog butcher to the world" is turning into a nation of gated communities and flea markets...we passed the crossroads a ways back and i wonder if the street us wide enough for a u-turn.

pharmakon

being neither a logician or an academic will not deter me from thinking: 1.) humans are tribal and territorial by nature. 2.) that being tribal imparts a sense of security and “belonging. 3.) that belonging is not universal…it is exclusionary…it is a pharmakon and, eventually, it poisons…there is always “the other”. 4.) that any treaty promulgated by the united nations banning nuclear weapons is irrelevant to those who possess nuclear weapons. 5.) because of an evolutionary predisposition to tribalism the hegemons who control their various socio-political system will not surrender what they see as an ultimate defense of “us” against “them”. We have a multitude of ways of disposing of ourselves as a species that we actively engage in on a daily basis because it is structured into the institutions we were born into…whether it is me recklessly using resources and emitting carbon dioxide ( despite the carbon offsets of the coniferous trees and deeply rooted perennials in my yard ) or kim jong un and his increasingly unstable counterpart unleashing a nuclear exchange and a general war ( and don’t doubt there are those here who would favor a “first strike”…the military mind is the uber-tribal mind )…are we doomed? may be…perhaps not…humans are adaptable too…we may find a way to live with our destructive ways ( we have always been deleterious to the environment ) but I wouldn’t expect idealism to trump weaponry…if you have it the impetus is to use it…add in the ascendancy ( or, perhaps, their assumed ascendancy ) of life-hating christian nihilists and you have a dangerous and lamentable combination of human hubris mixed with flat stupidity…trump and kim may dispose of themselves as they see fit…I care for neither…they should leave the rest of us out of their puerile posturing.

a 99% possibility of distortion

"hello, just a question someone can answer if they can find the time...are the photos you publish in in your newspaper ( as opposed to on line ) derived from digital or analog cameras? thanks for your time and attention."__________that is an email i sent off to my friends ( as long as i am a subscriber anyway ) at the n y times asking about the photos they use in their print edition ( obviously the photos in the on line edition are all digital )...i have been reading a lot of philosophy recently and there is a lot of verbiage in that discipline devoted to discussing how we know what we know and why we believe what we believe and i was wondering about the sources of what i was looking at in the media...a couple of days later this arrived in my mailbox..."Good Morning Fred, Thank you for contacting the New York Times. The Photographer has the choice of digital vs. analog. But I would say that 99% of the time they end up being digital. Have a great day today! Chuck Arnold III"__________this was not comforting news...i have something of a distaste for the digital ( i know...i know...this is digital...everything i do here is digital..my cameras [except the vivtar] are digital..i know...i know )...partly because i was born near the middle of the last century i suppose...however there is reason to be a bit concerned...with analog photography there was a mechanical transference of light to chemically treated film that created the negative for the image...things like a flaw in the chemical coating could occur or double exposures, however whatever image was transferred to the film had to be there...it had to be physically present...true photos could be "retouched"..flaws smoothed or removed...stalin had a passion for that and it is part of what inspired orwell's "memory hole" and his conceptualization of the mutability of history ( and his stint at the bbc in the second world war sensitized him to propaganda as news )..some efforts were exceptionally crude ( see photos ) and even yezhov's becoming an unperson was not perfect...you could discern the changes..it was clear things were not as they seemed...digital images and photoshop have rendered the "memory hole" obsolete...images can be seamlessly altered by editing the digital code that is the basis of the photos...you can remove or insert anything and there is no real way to tell...distortions of perception can be had easily and, given the fact that media outlets are, in the end, corporate entities, i don't doubt that some manipulation in the interests of the editorial board ( read advertisers ) or the politically motivated ( all politics are an extension of economics...why do you suppose the "dismal science" began its life being called "political economy"? )...so..what media do i trust? none i am thinking...i can no longer be sure if what i am seeing is real ( if you can manipulate digital photographs one supposes digital video is not immune )...so? so i continue reading the times..and philosophy...and orwell...and i compare what i read and hear with what i see and hear in my own locality ( trust me, the news about the economy is pretty much fiction )...and i make my own judgements.