returning to its destiny

after a hiatus of several weeks ( and with the dow tanking last week there may be another extended moratorium on this sort of propaganda...something i have been pondering recently...advertising as propaganda...it is ubiquitous...almost unseen...virtually subliminal...but there all the same, indoctrinating...engineering the desire to consume...supporting the hegemons...there's a reason why joe geobbels admired madison avenue minds ) the n y times has returned to its bedrock, elitist roots...

"residences" in new york and miami starting at $2 million ( some with expected tax breaks to go along with the "gimme" zietgeist of the current kleptocratic government )...

charles shwab wanting to give investors a "satisfaction guarantee" ( i hear bernie madoff in the background )

eulogizing barry obama's administration...which in no way pandered any less the interests of the hegmons...he was just more subdued about it...less of an attention attracting jerk...

and lauding billionaires as privatized social activists...( we will see if and or how the whole "health care" rigamarole pans out...best bet is there's a profit in it somewhere )..you simply cannot go wrong with the "paper of record" a s a social barometer...pay attention people...they are trying to tell you something.

5:16 p.m. and what the fuck is this pray tell? it is page 16 of today's nyt arts and leisure section and it seems to be an ad for coca-cola...or maybe jusy coke and they're adding an "alkaloid crisis" because the "opioid crisis" is getting stale.

community? collective? both pharmakons

"in fact, when i consider any social system that prevails in the modern world, i can't, so help me god, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich to advance their own interests under the pretext of organizing society. they will think up all sorts of tricks and dodges, first keeping safe their ill-gotten gains, and then exploiting the poor by buying their labor as cheaply as possible. once the rich have decided these tricks and dodges shall be recognized by society, which includes the poor as well as the rich, they acquire the force of law. this an unscrupulous minority is led by its insatiable greed to monopolize what would have been enough to supply the needs of the whole population." thomas more. "utopia" i have read utopia any number of times rather closely and i still cannot decide if it is serious, satire, or subversion...more was under sheriff of london and i could see where he would want as much behavior as possible to be public...peer reinforcement of the prevailing social structure by self policing drones..it is, in some ways, a very catholic ( or maoist...take your pick ) document with tinges of the authoritarianism that the overly collectivized society brings along with it...true collective action can help the majority resist the control of a wealthy minority, however, in the end, the focus becomes maintaining the individual's loyalty to the collective by coercion...that "peer reinforcement"...still...this is as concise an explanation of hegemonic culture as gramsci could ever hope to come up with...the collective and the community are closely related and both are pharmakons...panaceas in small doses...toxic in overdose...henry may have had more reasons beyond his refusal to recognize the supremacy for wanting more dead.

some musingss from bill maclay

" 'if our new government does well,' said our vice-president, 'i shall be more surprised than ever i was in all my life.' mr. carrol said he hoped it would be sufficiently powerful. if it is,' said mr. adams, ' i know not from where it can arise. it has neither rewards or punishments.' mr.carrol replied that the people of america were enlightened. information and knowledge would be the support of it. mr. adams replied, information and knowledge were not the sources of obedience; that ignorance was a much better source. somebody replied that it had formerly been considered the mother of devotion, but the doctrine of late was considered rather stale. i began to think of what mr. morris had told me, that it was necessary to make mr. adams vice-president to keep him quiet." william maclay's journal of the first congress 28 may 1789...so...donnie dimwit wasn't the first american politician ( is he a politician? if he wasn't he is now i believe ) to "love the uneducated"...you can see why_________________"lawyers have a keenness and a fondness for disputation. wrangling is their business. but long practice in supporting any cause that offers has obliterated regard to right and wrong. the question only is, which is my side/" william maclay's journal of the first congress 5 june 1789...according to the congressional research service 170 representatives ( 39% ) and 60 senators ( 60% [as if you couldn't figure that one out] ) are attorneys...so 42.9% of congress has experience at "wrangling" as paid advocates who, in bill's eyes, might be ethically suspect...wondering who is doing the paying...not the salaries we taxpayers foot the bill for...i am talking about the "real" money.

ozzie has their number

“everyone demands something of the rest. We say thou ‘shalt’ in the conviction that so-and-so, in fact will, can, and must be changed or fashioned, or arranged conformably to the order, and our belief in both the efficacy of and our title to give such orders is unshakable…in the ethics of the West everything is direction, claim to power, will to affect the distant. Here Luther is completely at one with Nietzsche, Popes with Darwinists, Socialists with Jesuits ….he who teaches or thinks otherwise is sinful, a back-slider, a foe, and he is fought down mercilessly…even Nietzsche, that most passionate opponent of ‘herd morale’, was perfectly incapable of limiting his zeal to himself. He thought only of ‘mankind’ and he attacked everyone who differed from himself [and] he breathes from end to end the pain of seeing men to be other than he would have them be, and a deep, un-Classical desire to devote a life to their reform, his own sense of the word, naturally, being the only one.” Ozzie Spengler. decline of the west A couple of things…1. We are all mired in an ego viewpoint and struggle to see others’ viewpoints…2. Hegemonic culture is so structured that any substantive threat from below will unite disparate factions of the elite in defense of privilege and prerogative, and…3. Any attack on “the system” using its institutions or cultural vocabulary only validates it…the only way to escape it is to make it irrelevant and ignore it to the greatest extent possible…this may be the perceived ethos of the western united states…unfortunately they are guilty of using the hegemonic culture’s cultural vocabulary ( be independent, stand on your own two feet, work hard, prosper ) as a basis for that attack…they are inseparable from the mainstream and have no inking of it.

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.