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.