antness

"one thing that always strikes me as mysterious is that so many of the northern towns see fit to build themselves immense and luxurious public buildings at the same time they are in crying need of dwelling houses." george orwell from the road to wigan pier_________________________no mystery here george...just an expression of power that is meant to overawe the proles and instill in them what geert mak terms "antness'...a feeling of smallness and inferiority in the face of monumental public structures...

from the hideous "palace of parliament" in bucharest...

to the neo classical kitsch in washington d.c....

to the somewhat less imposing local architecture, the intent is still the same...the message is "power resides here" ( you can't fight city hall...unless you are in this town which has questionable competency in wielding authority ) and you should understand that you are a supplicant ( think kafka's keeper of the gates of the law ) despite the propagandized " of the the people, by the people, for the people" ( asking which people is a valid question ) propaganda from high school civics...why george should find this physical manifestation of bureaucratic power to be mysterious is beyond me...the intent is to snuff out any sort of questioning of the wisdom of the powerful before it is expressed...and if the architecture doesn't quite do the job there is an army of aparatchiks inside to exhaust you with interminable requests for "one more document"...it's all part of the hegemony's institutional diminution of the individual...and it is all for the benefit of a few and has been from the get go...for the umpteenth time, read the federalist papers...mein kampf wasn't the very first blueprint of political intent...it goes a long way in explaining how a kleptocrat wormed his way into the oval office...he isn't the first..just the noisiest.

provincials

"it was the first care of the senate to dissolve those confederacies which taught mankind, that, as the roman arms prevailed by division, they might be resisted union." edward gibbon-"the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire" vol.I chapter II___________________________________it is a fact of human nature that, however benignly we look at our fellows, we still think that the group we define ourselves as "belonging" to is better than those outside our own...this exceptionalism can range from mild forbearance to ethnic cleansing, depending on who is pulling the group['s control levers ( and so community is a pharmakon...in reasonable doses it creates a sense of security and belonging...in larger doses the "other" becomes the cause of all problems and their destruction is the only cure...we have seen this...we will see it again )...the n y times "t" magazine "culture" issue came in today's paper...its focus is "56 months that changed the culture"...the culture of n y city...as if that burg had a lock on what passes for culture here...the n y times is an elitist newspaper, acting as the mouthpiece for the hegemonic culture [gramsci] ( elite, the rich, the 1%..the deep state....whatever you call it ) and their intent is to display to me how uncouth, provincial, and culturally illiterate i am......hegemonic culture is in the hands of a distinct minority and it is ion their interest to keep the population at large deflated and subservient...divided and unaware of the fact that they are the majority...a possibility of self-awareness that so troubled hamilton over shay's rebellion and moved madison to decry and "interested and overbearing majority" as faction...an informed and insistent electorate could gum up the works of extraction practiced by the few..the framers of the constitution tried to present the federal government as a neutral umpire of the special interests that make up the polity...( dividing us into interest group...nra/gun control, pro life/pro choice, coke/pepsi, ford/chevy is a first principle for subsuming the individual voter into a bloc where, like it or not, they are forced to compromise their individual positions to the group's which may not accurately reflect how they feel on all issues...and groups are much easier to control than individuals...orwell understood "groupthink" as a weapon of power...behavioral command and control )...the problem is the government is never neutral...influence is bought and sold every day in the capital and no amount of digging will drain swamptown...at some point it will collapse from its own weight into a simpler form ( read tainter )...it has tried to dissolve itself once...it will try again...comparing this decadent empire to rome may be folly...they are not the same entity ( although the sheer amount of greco-roman kitsch in whoretown does reinforce the perception of the founders as being their heirs )...yet the parallels are striking ( and give fodder in the form of uncertain and disillusioned people to manipulators like david meade and the evangelicals who rant about "the end of days"...planet nibiru tomorrow...i will post photos from the apocalypse ) there are more parallels beyond this, and, for an 18th century member of parliament, ed gibbon had some interesting ideas about religion and it purpose in the hegemonic culture which would be the kiss of death to a political career in these uncertain and interesting times...we will get to those...if we survive tomorrow.

media war

have you noticed the cost of gasoline going up over the course of the last month or so? i have and it can be easily attributed to a small rally in the price of a barrel of oil...fair enough i suppose when a supplier has a panoply of transport addicted customers to manipulate and no credible objective oversight...i want to establish that fact a priori because it is germane to what comes next...refinery workers in 11 refineries across the country are on strike, including those at the bp/ammoco refinery in nearby whiting...they are on strike for some economic reasons but the main union contention is safety factors brought on by employee fatigue due to long shifts...concerns even a manager should be able to see...but obviously oil companies are spooked by an oil glut and employee safety ( not to mention the surrounding neighborhoods' ) are of a secondary nature in these troubled economic times ( did i say that? don't i know the government says things are improving? well...who believes lying whores? )...the corporate ( liberal my alabaster ass...they all have advertisers and editorial boards dominated by said advertisers...they are in business to make money and will sell what you buy and what those boards would like you to think...that is another post and a continuing theme however ) media will take up sides and, in the end, the commuting herd will blame "those greedy union workers" and not the profiteering oil companies...it is the way of hegemonic culture....only their world view is correct ( fucking margret thatcher and " there is no alternative"...someone should have sent that woman a copy of isaiah berlins' essay on "historical inevitability"...she is gone now..but it wasn't soon enough ) and anything that dissents from it is either fiction or treason...i wonder if i can avoid purchasing gasoline until this strike is over...worth a try...no day jaunts into the fields for awhile.

proletarian splendor

"at the time there was a movement in art called constructivism. the name was probably chosen to indicate that its adherents believed in construction rather than destruction. there was a strong input of mechanical civilization, and a preference for the looks of an electrical turbine to the looks of a landscape. human beings were eliminated from their pictures, or, if used, were transformed into a wheel, cylinder, or an obedient puppet subject to the machine." george grosz. "an autobiography"________________________________________________________________george mentions constructivism in relation to a trip he took to the soviet union in 1922 and the similarity of viewpoint between allegedly diametrically opposed socio-economic systems that this passage reveals is striking...whether it is the secular religion of marxism or that of industrial capitalism the view of the industrial worker is as an object.... set aside all the posturing about "the people" and "the proletarian revolution" and "the dignity of labor" ( and you can throw in that calvinist fucking work ethic too ) and the industrial worker is an adjunct to a machine.... a resource to be used...a part...a cog...( human resources taken literally )...a philosophical rationalization of the elite no matter what bogus political system underpins the system...it is a matter of relegating workers to a position inferior to the goods they produce because that production is the socially created wealth that the elite privatizes in a far greater proportion than the those who physically produce it..that relegation is crucial to the functioning of any system of social stratification...happiness is what you own is its public face here...stakhanovite production "for the revolution" was its face when george went to russia in 1922...either way it sets the elite apart________________________________________________________________________speaking of elites, my "right to work" ( for less ) state took out a full page add in today's sunday new york times ( mike pence putting my tax dollars to work...good job mike! ) with the catchy tag line: "new york: if you can make it there, you can make A LOT MORE OF IT HERE. indiana a state that WORKS...it is too large to scan in but i bet you can see it at astatehatworks.com...fuck these people...where is the lake of fire?