is this fashion or propaganda?

agitprop for trumpist times

"nothing is certain"..."change is here"...the cover is full of commonplaces...change is pretty much a constant in life...i am certainly not who i was forty years ago...probably not the same as i was last week...and humans have evolved with uncertainty as a paradigm which has enhanced out adaptability ( a true pharmakon...yes it can help you work your way through that "change" thing...you can become inured to death camps and human suffering too... ) and made us unsighted at times as adaptations become habit and we stop considering variables...i have some certainties...i harbor far more uncertainties and doubts which reinforces my skepticism about most things including what the elite is up to...the times is not an elitist newspaper...they have said so a number of times...i am skeptical, finding them to be both a mouthpiece for the east coast liberal elite and for corporate elites as well as being "the paper of record"...the "style" magazine is always a smoking gun that puts the lie to the whole non elitist facade...the economy is at a dead standstill for millions of people whose finances are rapidly disintegrating bogus "executive orders" aside...the stock market does not seem concerned about that...it is chugging right along which, for me, is an index that the elite doesn't much care either...an ayn rand, subjectivist "fuck the poor" viewpoint that elites and libertarians so love...their concerns lie elsewhere and, importantly among them, how they look is one of them...you have to dress the part and indulge in my good friend thorstein veblen's sort of consumption...so...

how about a coat and a dress for a mere $10200...equal to the wages some receive from one of their part-time jobs in a year i'd wager...

or this bottega veneta dress for a paltry $7650...a steal...

and you could accessorize with one of this $28128 worth of purses...one of which, in keeping with the zeitgeist of uncertainty goes for "about" $3150...

and watches...we all need a bauble...choose from $479400 worth with one complementing the current paradigm of dubiety by selling for "about" $186000...about...if you have to ask the price you can't afford it and if you can't afford i'm afraid you are not of the elite you poor sod...and fear is what it is about...advertising has always been fear based...fear that you'll smell bad or drive a beater auto or wear last year's styles..and since politics is all about selling belief in the virtues and intentions of a candidate it's pretty much fear based as well...the current circus certainly is with both side howling about how awful it would be if the other side wins and not one of them actually advocating anything substantive about real issues...true, they are of the elite themselves ( or aspire to be...politics is a gateway to wealth...and a way to protect and expand what you have...ask donny...or mitch...or nancy ) there are any number of issues they cannot touch on because admitting their existence would require acting on them in ways that might be detrimental to the prerogatives of wealth...addressing climate change for instance...the climate doesn't care about their prerogatives...neither, as the majority of the population and as the putative controllers of the government, should we...they would much rather we concentrate on issues that are divisive and we are doing a fine job of that...this is not to deny that there are gross social injustices and that most of them ( but not all ) are based on skin color...what it is to say is that addressing them though existing institutions and leadership isn't going to do much to obviate them since the institutions and leadership are part of the problem...they are using identity politics to divide rather than unite and insuring the continuation of their bogus jobs...and we play along...the majority of us are workers in corporations controlled by the elite and it just might be time to coalesce around the "worker" identity and recognize one another as peers in those concerns and work to address the raft of other issues we face from that basis of equality...this would require the abandonment of political parties controlled by elites...they would not take kindly to that...it would make them fearful and frightened people, as if you need to be reminded by me, can do some awful things to other people..and they keep stoking the fears for exactly that reason...to keep us fighting among ourselves rather than realizing our majority status...think it over next time you see donny or mitch or nancy or alex pontificating.

gourmet berger

"many perform the foulest deeds and rehearse the fairest words." democritus ( time to pay attention to the skeptics )

the new york times is full of "news" this morning...like the rest of the media...and, in what may seem, at first, contradictory to their best interests they are shilling for a competitor in the media world as well...

summer's almost gone ( to quote jim )...and the last spasm of grilling is about to take shape in that paean to labor and the end of fun, labor day...and in celebration of my "gourmet burger" the wall street journal would like to sell ( despite the $60 savings ) a fine california cabernet ( one, perhaps, with a hint of smoky undertones from the raging wildfires out there ) to wash it down with...because election, pandemic, and violet turmoil or not BAU must carry on and BAU is consumption...it is true that advertisers are trying to show their political correctness by withdrawing advertising from venues that are peopled by tone-deaf insensitive louts...they're still advertising though...and the wsj is still pushing wine, fine or not...corporate structures may be flexible in where they shill...but they are committed to shilling...they have an agenda and at the top of the list is a transaction...they will sweat their employees and bend the law every day to increase them and sleep like a baby at night...top down...authoritarian...there's accountability on paper but not much in real practice ( unless you defraud the shareholders...say like enron...then retaliation is swift and thorough )...it's a consequentialist system and profit is the greatest ethical good...the sanctity of the end justifies any means and what comes down by way of instruction on how to achieve that end from the top is immutable law...so...corporate world...top-down...hierarchical...authoritarian...sociopathic disregard for legalities...

why then, would anyone expect a product of that paradigm to be chastened by anything? a self-entitled thirteen year old is about your standard ceo and the corporate world is where donny hails from...how could he even have a clue about the interests of working people? he cannot...his are the interests of wealth...donny is " a little tired" of the nba...i'm a little tired of donny...and liz and kammy and mitch and lindsey and chuck and alex and the two dimwits from this state...weary of a campaign season built on both sides preaching fear and not one constructive thing...again, the interests of working people will never be represented by these people....narcissistic and wealthy ( for the most part ) themselves all they need do is look after their own interests and they will be in support of donny...and isn't it odd that donny is relying on a cadre of "career politicians" to push a legislative agenda reflective of his self-interest? where is the lake of fire? oh...wait...climate change...register...put on a mask...vote...it is the one thing we as a polity can do that makes them uncomfortable...and there is no class of individuals in the nation that more merit a stiff dose of discomfort.

mutability set in stone

stalin's consolidation of political power in 1929 wasn't especially good news for nikolai yemelyanov...when lenin and zinoviev lammed out of st.petersburg during the"july days" yemelyanov hid them out in his barn in razliv for a few days before rowing them across lake razliv to finland...per geert mak in his book "in europe" nikolai was dragged in and out of the gulag because he knew it was zinoviev and not stalin that he rowed across the lake...

it seems clear that lenin was acquainted with nikolai and appreciated his help and tried to return the favor...more bad news for nikolai...references to yemelyanove are sparse ( so far ) and what i can find seems to counter mak's version of a gulag future ( nikolai outlived stalin incidentally, dying in 1958 ) the museum of political history russia ( that's what their website calls it ) says this...

they would maintain that the dispute was over who visited lenin in finland, not who rowed across the lake with him...and that it only took a visit with the ogpu for nikolai's memory of stalin's visit to be retrieved from his aging forgetfulness...either way...rowed or visited...it's the kind of micromanagement of history that comes with an authoritarian obsessed with their place in the hagiography of political myth...history is mutable...uncertain...hard to know factually...so what happens if donny squeaks out a victory, wins in a landslide , steals the election, or loses in 2020...history is initially written by the winners...the losers do not vanish however and they harbor their own version of events...it takes a while before that antithesis works its way into the dialectic of the national narrative...eventually it comes to light...( and, given the ubiquitous nature of social media, the time frame may have significantly shortened )...and whatever happens in november the losers will have a version...if donny loses qanon becomes their gospel ( and someone makes a lot of money selling qanon branded merchandise )...if donny wins it wil be because of gross voting interference ( both in the mails and in electronic balloting ) and/or theft...and the dialectic will grind on..it's going to be an interesting autumn...but it isn't going to be any fun...a welter of recriminations and blowback...but not much progress on anything that really matters to most of us...politics is a clusterfuck of narcissists and fact is about to be trumped by ego...buckle up.

perhaps inescapable

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/technology/kamala-harris-ties-to-big-tech.html

all propagandists know they can pretty much lie and distort at will because, basically, they aren't really trying so much to win hearts and minds as harden attitudes and reinforce biases...

and the times is no slouch at telling me they have the goods and know how i should think... ( and here let me stop to point out that i know i bang away at the times a lot, however it is only because it is 1.)"the paper of record" and, 2.) it is representative of ALL MEDIA...from fox news to the "home of cubs baseball" they all have a core audience, an editorial board, and supply a product to a group worldview...none of them are unbiased and they are ALL in business to MAKE MONEY...you may substitute the name of your most loathed media outlet for the times and it still holds true )...sophisticated propagandists are wont, on occasion, to let some ray of fact through to cleanse the palate and reinforce their "objective" bona fides...and the times may be rinsing out our mouths today...or some editor punted this one...

the link at the top will get you the whole story...

or you can just run with the first few paragraphs..."I've been wanting to come because I want these relationships and I want to cultivate them." is sort of a smoking gun for me...do i want a vp who is a lawyer...was a prosecutor ( always a negative in my book...nothing wonderful about a lawyer enforcing draconian and vindictive drug laws let's say...a rule crazy control freak ) and who is cozy with, and, no doubt beholden to, big tech and would be a stalwart opponent of any sort of regulation/reform ( no matter how cosmetic that might prove to be ) and with a distinct possibility of being president at some point if "old" joe shuffles off? the answer would be no...however, as always in american politics, this is not about my needs or my desires or my interests even...it is about the elite retaining control ( and all the bullshit debate about the electoral college can be answered by, its purpose is to ensure than no one inimical to the interests of the elite can be president...read the federalist papers..end of debate...the electoral college remains )...and so is, as always, not about what i want more, but about what i find less burdensome and another four years of donny trumps the kamala cozy with facebook...i will vote...perhaps the mask will lessen the stench.

whose hope?

"one is constantly being thrown out in one's calculations because one listens to the articulate minority and forgets the other 99%" george orwell.diary entry 9 october 1942

this was in the n y times op-ed section this morning...

beyond the fact that she is married to a politician and, by dint of that relationship,thinks like one, i don't have much to say about michelle obama...don't know her...not especially interested in knowing her...we move in different circles...that she can so well illustrate ( in frank bruni's eyes at least...i would point out that frank is a pundit and is, as such, one of the articulate and convinced he has a better grasp of the subtleties of what passes for representative government these days...i am fairly sure he has an agenda as well ) why we should all get off our dead asses and vote for joe biden and that cortez woman ( should you be a constituent ) because the country is going to hell in a hand-basket if we don't...well michelle...i have voted in every election since the 1972 presidential election and, nearly as i can ascertain it hasn't changed much of anything...i don't know where you live ( and i am not asking ) but where i am at things haven't exactly been all sweetness and light over the last forty years as the rightward thrust of the alleged american democracy has systematically undermined the ability of large segments of the polity to make a living wage by, among other things, waging a legislative war against unions...beginning with that misery reagan politics here has skewed so far to the right that the "liberal" wing of the democratic party resembles nothing so much as the republicanism of the 1950s ( where nixon was born, incidentally...along with "tail gunner joe" )...another four years of donny would be a disaster...joe biden isn't all that much of a step up and i wouldn't expect much beyond some cosmetic changes...the federal government is bankrupt...fiscally and ethically...cosmetic is all they can do...the "articulate" are doing their best to sell us a bill of goods that, in the end...after all the hanging chads find the floor and the votes are counted and judicial decisions rendered and some damned politician is sworn in by the chief justice ( and i would like to point out that, while donny may indeed not be a career politician [ it shows ] his handlers are...and they have agendas too ) things are still going to be fucked...because, among other things, the window for preventing the "worst case scenario" for climate change has probably already slammed shut since the deniers won the battle of political will and as masses of people begin to flee the uninhabitable portions of the earth things are going to get dodgy, if not downright brutal...put on your realist caps and ponder the blowback from all that need for "better science" and inhofe's goddamned snowball...so i am left wondering whose last best hope we are dealing with here...mine? yours? ours? or are we being led in the interest of that 1%? and not, of necessity, the "articulate" 1%.

meanwhile back at the times

while the times is providing me with the correct perspective on the choice of kamala harris as a vice presidential candidate it is worth reflecting that they are also...

helping ( or trying to help ) sotheby's international realty fob off $72,962,500 in real estate with an average price of $9,120,312.50...although those two pricey ones in the hub of the tech industry rather skew the average...and that pittsfield massachusetts "price upon request" would likely skew it even more...still none of these are your minimum wage three jobs to make ends meet running like a hamster in a wheel dwelling...there is no affordable housing on minimum wage ( or just above it )...a brutal fact of life that drives homelessness ( shall we talk about califonia? assuming the homeless have been driven out of woodside and palo alto to some less gentrified califronia municipality...an important california contributor to this blog informs me that in the recent looting the homeless were hanging back and not engaging in looting "vital consumer goods", but rather waiting until the looters had left and taking the plywood that had been ripped off facades by looters to improve their living spaces...yes kamala hails from the land of milk and honey and she will show us the fucking way...might i suggest a close reading of mike davis's "planet of slums" and/or bill kaplan's "an empire wilderness" or both better yet)...the times says it is not an elitist newspaper but that is pure bullshit..so is the fiction that american politicians represent anything but the prerogatives of wealth...this will be an ugly autumn and it will not end in sweetness and light...buckle up...wealth feels threatened and the yahoos feel empowered...people will believe almost anything and the unscrupulous are more than willing to turn that belief to their own miserable ends...whether it's qanon's or the times ownership's...one would hope that profound skepticism is due for a comeback...time to dust off the democritus.

pollyanna

this ad from Represent.US showed up in yesterday's new york times and while there may be some veracity in the claims it makes the overall tone strikes me as profound political naivete...

the overall effect...

and..

three parts...

you can actually read to get the full impact of how utterly unrealistic this is...donny and his cadres, foreign and domestic, will do many things to undermine the election before the fact and there will be a welter of disputation and lawsuits in an effort to discredit and undo any results that would indicate the great american polity has lost it ardor for the trump brand...buckle up...the vitriol and vituperation of american politics is about to intensify to jacksonian levels of foulness...the only thing missing will be the whiskey and the last thing donny has in mind is resignation...remember those new york indictments are null as long as he is president and he is desperate to evade those and that dank cell in sing sing...fearful people are prone to do extreme things...they are dangerous and the system is anything but foolproof...i believe i have pointed to two stolen presidential elections in my lifetime and he wasn't called ruthrefraud b. hayes because people thought he beat tilden fair and square...a tradition of shady deals in presidential politics...as well as lawsuits, recriminations, and outright theft...november third is just another chapter, not the end by any measure...

there is some dispute over whether stalin actually said this or not...i am uncertain since stalin died before i was born and i couldn't ask him about it...that isn't the point...people counting, or not counting, "hanging chads" have had a direct impact on recent politics here ( remember, i am old...two decades ago is "recent" ) and once precedence has worked it way into the political dialectic it tends to hang on like grim death..as if politics here wasn't wearying enough it is about to become more so...and voter fatigue is another strategy in an effort to win...register and vote while being alert to the fact that nothing is certain ( uncertainty has always been the hallmark of human life...recent events have reinforced it as the paradigm/zeitgeist ) ..however, the greater the turnout the more convincing the results will be

a fair subject of public discussion

"the issues" have always been egregious to american politicians...if you start talking issues you might have to address them realistically and no one wants to hear that...reality is a tough place to be and the proles, so goes the thinking in elite circles, are too dull-witted to effectively deal with it...so, if the issues are off limits, all that's left is personality...the federalist writer william cobbet wrote, "once a man comes forward a s a candidate for public office every action of his life, public or private, becomes the subject of public discussion."...and so the smear campaign was born...the 1800 presidential election set the precedent that turned presidential elections away from the unpalatable "issues" and towards back fence gossip...and religion has always been a hot topic for slander...in 1800 the gazette of the united states wrote..."THE GRAND QUESTION STATED. At the present and solemn and momentous epoch, the only question to be asked by every American, laying his hand on his heart is 'shall I continue in allegiance to GOD AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT; or impiously declare for JEFFERSON AND NO GOD!!!"

donny is dusting off the federalist tradition of libel and it is getting air time because it is low entertainment with a long history of acceptance in american politics...an effective way to diminish your opponent ( and i have to ask if anyone else sees irony in donny's appeal to religion ) while seizing the bible thumping high ground...there's nothing new in this...there has been nothing new in donny's presidency...another example of the grand tradition of the american political smear...and, incidentally, we are back to fear as a motivator in making political decisions in electoral politics..."hide your bibles, the atheists are on the prowl" is another layer of anxiety in these already anxious times...if they can induce you to think emotionally, they win

selling the fear

i was preparing to empty the wastebasket in my room...a receptacle that fills through the week with the mail that does not need to be addressed, filed, or shredded...when i saw this sticking out of the detritus...

and i thought to myself "these people are gaslighting me"...placing the onus for the failure to utilize their product on me rather than the fact that their product might not, a) meet my needs ( and these days needs are outdoing desire,mostly, not for economic reasons, but more from an age induced shift from the kinetic to the katestemastic ) or, b) is either utterly pretentious or completely shoddy...advertising ( whether it is political or commercial ) is pretty much fear based...if i don't do this, buy that, or vote this way i will be behaving in a socially reprehensible fashion while the real failure, in the advertisers' eyes, lies in my not engaging in a transaction with their product/political view...my last two posts have both been about politics here having become completely fear based...whether it is peolsi wailing about the horrors of a second trump administration or donny whining to his base because he sees doom in a fair election...both are trying to drag me down into their camp by playing to fears which leaves me thinking that all they are actually interested in is staying in office/power because it is a paying gig and strokes their massive egos all at once...it also leads me to believe there will be nothing much in terms of substantive change to the system...they see discontents as vehicles to office, not as issues to be addressed..business as usual is the agenda and part of the agenda is keeping the polity balkanized by pandering ( publicly at least ) to the interests of sub-groups as opposed to policies that might benefit the mass as a whole...such as finding the "political will" to do something serious about climate change rather than deny it ( although i think it is probably too late..that window has closed ) or finding an immigration policy that humanely deals with the mass of climate refuges that await beyond fortifying the borders and letting people die trying to cross the sonoran desert ( official policy since clinton )...this might be too much to hope for..it has been so far...so let's do some alterations that more honestly reflect what hegemonic culture is really saying...

that elusive reichstag fire

"With Universal Mail-in Voting ( not Absentee Voting which is good) 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely, and safely vote???"

"But I am frankly appalled by the president's recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election. Until recently I had taken as political hyperbole the Democratic assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president's immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal by the senate." Stephen G. Calabersi, co-founder of the Federalist Society in today's new york times op-ed section_______________donny knows he's toast in a fair election ( and what's this "securely" bullshit don? your buddy putin will be all over this like a cheap suit ) and that new york is going to try to toss him in the dankest cell sing sing has to offer the minute biden takes the oath...he has nothing left in terms of cogent thought and in flailing about looking for a way out has begun to alienate even the most faithful of the faithful ( who held their noses against the rankness of the administration as long there was the chance of profit in it ) who are bailing and leaving him to wither like a snake in a brush fire...that he does not have the authority to delay the election must be a shock to his corporate ceo world view...and that a majority of the polity believe he never should is probably beyond his limited cognition...he will try to steal this election any way he can...frightened people are liable to come unhinged in their desperation and donny has the fear ...you can smell it...so can the republicans and they are scrambling to cover their political asses...whatever actually happens on november third ( and the chances of any sort of objective reality filtering through are fairly slim since no one in the media or on social media is objective and, probably, only a small handful in real life are actually willing to set aside comforting world views to be realists about much of anything ) the whole affair is going to end in a welter of recriminations, lawsuits, and the best chance of sustained political violence since 1860...despite that...or. perhaps because of that, i will do what i did this past may...put on a mask...go to the polling place...and vote my conscience...they're all whores, narcissists, and they all lie...it is always a negative choice between people who think they know better than i do what is in my best interest and what i should be doing about it...this too is manifest bullshit on manifold levels...still...i can see at a glance what the lesser evil is...donny is finding the reichstag fire difficult to set...that doesn't mean this will end well.