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.