Bye, Bye Miss American Pie

By Capt. Fogg


Indications are that the Mayans were right and that 2012 is indeed the end of an era, not because of  some change in politics or religion and not because of anything cosmic or tectonic, but because a piece of America as we knew it has died. An America, exuberant in itself, proud, forward looking, confident.  Hostess bakeries died this week and not because of mismanagement but because of what America has become: timorous, ashamed of what it loves and afraid of being provincial.  Our sweet land of phony authenticity.  Of thee I sing.

The Twinkie, the Ho-Ho, the Snowball are gone now, along with the Oldsmobile and the Mercury; with Buddy Holly and the independent hamburger stand. You can't buy a Hostess cupcake any more for much the same reason you can't find anything like Hopper's Nighthawks any more. Your cupcakes have to be 'artisinal,' gluten free, in season, free range and come from a 'cupcakery' just as that cup of Joe is now an 'Americano' and served (artisinally) by a 'Barista.'  You're not à la mode enough though, unless you order something that sounds like Mississippi camp-meeting glossolalia and costs forty bucks for a "venti."  Good God, don't ask for a "large." America's rites of self detestation and the industries that thrive on it the way a tapeworm thrives on weakening it's host have us all scrambling for the plastic, made in Taiwan, European panache that we attribute to lands  that we otherwise pretend to loathe because, of course, they're 'authentic' and we're not. American means fake and we flee from it toward an imported synthetic authenticity.

The Authenticity industry with it's vast smoking factories churning out the local and seasonal and artisinal synthetic-reality products we crave and the flim-flam pseudo-scientist diet doctors selling us low 'carb' gluten free and without fructose and for heaven's sake, not 'processed' foods: we zumba and carb-count our way to South Beach to be fleeced.  In an age most noteworthy for the triumph of scientific method over superstition and fallacious conjecture, we have come more to trust 'alternative' information that comes from movie actors, comedians and people who get rich by insisting, contrary to all evidence, that gluten is poison, that miracle berries and magic beans will let you live forever, that cooking your food is bad and the fructose you get from corn is full of bad and fattening juju unlike the identical Furanose Sugars found in (organically grown, artisinally picked, local and seasonal ) strawberries.

Studies show. . .  I cringe when I see that and nearly always it means that tendentious conjecture based on selected facts might fool you into thinking. . . It nearly always means that there was no real study.  Large scale, double blind and randomized scientific studies that are repeatable and published in peer-reviewed journals don't have a chance against diet doctors, Oprah-backed pundits or miracle food and fake science purveyors, not in a country trained to favor faith over fact, trained to celebrate the notions of celebrities and mistrust scientists; trained to patronize diet doctors who tell us that studies show.

Twinkies have anti-oxidant  "preservatives" which everyone knows are bad because studies show. They contain things like gluten and fructose that everyone knows are bad because studies show.  Twinkies may be authentic, but they're authentic American and that doesn't count. We long for something Tuscan, even if we're not sure where that is -- something from Tuscany where it's all artisinal.  Hostess Snowballs -- they didn't stand a snowball's chance in the new America. Maybe if you called them gluten free Palle di Neve or Boules de Neige and opened chic little sidewalk places in Boca Raton and Park Slope and South Beach and had them served by Ballistas for ten bucks each. . .
Ah well, one can only dream now of  temps perdue.  Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

(Cross Posted from Human Voices)

A culture of fear, a culture of violence

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I live in the Toronto area, and am a Canadian, but, as you may know, I lived in the U.S. for a long time. (I can prove it with my high school and college diplomas.) And while I love Canada, I wanted to stay in the U.S. after graduating college. ('Twas grad school that brought me to Toronto.) If not a citizen, I was still very American -- and I remain so still.

Like many Canadians, and like many around the world, I have mixed feelings about the U.S. It's hard not to. It's a force for good in so many ways but also an arrogant, bullying empire. But I certainly still love America a great deal, in spite of its massive flaws, and, needless to say, I spend a great deal of time thinking about, and blogging about, American politics and culture. This blog, after all, is almost entirely focused on the U.S.

But things have changed. I used to think seriously about going back. Now, not so much. (Not unless, say, Obama offered me a job.) It's partly nostalgia on my part, but America just isn't what it was as recently as 15-20 years ago. There was a period of optimism and hope following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, when I was in high school and college, but that quickly came to an end. Basically, what I sense whenever I go down to the States now is not hope and optimism but fear.

Simply put, the American Empire is collapsing. The manufacturing economy, long the engine of geopolitical supremacy, is struggling and not about to improve. Ever. The political system, both because of its structure (thanks to Madison) and because one of the two major parties, the GOP, has descended into madness, is unable to respond, paralyzed. Income inequality continues to worsen, while a plethora of social problems, including poverty, are tearing the country apart. And the celebrity-entertainment culture has proved to be a narcotic that distracts from meaningful civic engagement.

At some level, I think, Americans know this. They know, if only vaguely, that their time is up, that it will never be the same, that the glory years of the last century will recede further and further into the mists of time. All the flag-waving nationalism, all the stupid talk of exceptionalism, is just denial. You can say you're the greatest country in the world and you can strut around like an unrivaled hegemon, but you can't escape the truth, the force of history that is leaving you behind. It happens to every empire. America is no exception. Like Rome, like Britain, America is crumbling. The gap between perception and reality is growing. And there's no turning back.

Of course, 9/11 only made this worse. It brought Americans' long-percolating fears to the surface. Instead of compelling them to confront who they are and to think seriously about what they're doing around the world, it truly and utterly terrorized them. The mythology built up quickly: They hate us and our freedom. They're out to get us. And so America responded, as you know, by turning itself into a sort of police state. It responded to an act of terror by constructing an infrastructure of terror, both domestic and international, based on, and then perpetuating, the terror that was felt on and after 9/11 and that, more broadly, was an core component of the American psyche long before that fateful day. The Patriot Act, the Iraq War, domestic surveillance, torture -- you know what happened. America decided to defend its freedom by becoming decidedly less free.

That's a long and overly general introduction, perhaps, but I think it helps explain this:

According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six days before Christmas.

It was the highest number ever in a single month, surpassing the previous record set in November.

On Dec 23 alone there were 102,222 background checks, making it the second busiest single day for buying guns in history.

The actual number of guns bought may have been even higher if individual customers took home more than one each.

Explanations for America's surge in gun buying include that it is a response to the stalled economy with people fearing crime waves. Another theory is that buyers are rushing to gun shops because they believe tighter firearms laws will be introduced in the future. 

There is no doubt some truth to these surface explanations, but I don't think they hit at the underlying problem. Americans are scared. Understandably, perhaps, but scared nonetheless. Their world is collapsing all around them. The comfort and security of the world they knew is no more. And 9/11 terrified them.

And when you add all that to a violent and gun-loving culture, well, is it really any wonder they're buying up all the guns they can get their hands on?

An antidote to Black Friday: Barry Levinson's Avalon (1990)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So it's Black Friday, the day, at least in the U.S., our consumer impulses are meant to run wild, the day the economy needs to get the holiday shopping season going lest it collapse in on itself, the day we see most clearly what modernity is really all about.

The desire to acquire, Machiavelli, the founder of modernity, called it. But instead of political acquisition, today is all about acquiring shit in one form or another.

Don't get me wrong. I like my stuff, my material goods. I like to acquire as well. But today is the day the lid comes off, the day humanity, or at least American humanity, turns wild again. If you're at a Wal-Mart or a Target today, or pretty much anywhere shit is sold, you and your fellow consumers might as well be wolves fighting over a scrap of meat. It may be a cheap blu-ray player or maybe even a Hyundai. It hardly matters. You have been programmed to shop, to consume, to acquire more and more and more, indeed to identify your very soul with your worldly possessions. It's your drug. And you're being drugged, willingly, by a society, nay, by a civilization, that requires you for its very survival to be thoughtless consumers of shit.

Sorry, is that a bit too negative? Hey, like I said, I like my stuff. I just think that Black Friday, and indeed the whole holiday shopping season, now a year of shopping seasons (Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, etc.) bleeding into one another, is our society at its most fucked up.

So today, why not do something else? Like watch a good Thanksgiving movie. (I assume you were just too busy yesterday with family and football.)

There's Plains, Trains and Automobiles, of course, the very funny (and very touching) "road" movie with Steve Martin and John Candy.

And Woody Allen's wonderful Hannah and Her Sisters, one of his truly best films, the story bookended by Thanksgiving dinners, the first bleak and depressing, the second warm and hopeful.

And then there's Barry Levinson's Avalon, the story of a Polish-Jewish immigrant family in Baltimore. It's an amazingly beautiful film with rich characterizations and a remarkable sense of time and place. It is indeed the story of America: "They shared a dream called America... in a place called Avalon." To me, it's simply one of the best films ever made about what it means to be American.

And, if you've seen it (and even if you haven't), you may recall its famous Thanksgiving scene, when Uncle Gabriel (Lou Jacobi) arrives late and says, enraged and bewildered, "You cut the turkey without me?" It's a funny scene, in a way, with this highly quotable line, but through the drama that unfolds, as well as through the context in which it takes place, we come to see the tension at the heart of the movie -- and at the heart of the American experience.

Gabriel is late because he had to drive out to new suburbs far from the urban core that had been the locus of immigrant life. Avalon, you see, is about family but also about the culture of change and dislocation, the culture of American modernity, that ultimately threatens family, or at least the extended family that is so important to the Krichinskys as to so many others.

In this sense, perhaps, there's a continuum from America's earliest European settlers through the waves of immigrants who were to one degree or another assimilated into modern American life to today's rampant consumer culture. It should be noted that the Krichinskys own a successful appliance store. I'm sure they had, or would have had, Thanksgiving sales. They, too, well removed from their less consumerist origins, would have partaken of Black Friday in one way or another.

But no matter. It's a great movie. I remember seeing it in the theaters in 1990. I was in high school in New Jersey. That opening scene, with Sam Krichinsky arriving in Baltimore to Fourth of July fireworks, pulled me in right away. It's one of the best opening scenes in any movie I've ever seen. And by the end I knew I'd seen something truly special.

If you've seen it, go back and watch it again, because you probably saw it a long, long time ago. And if you haven't, well, you simply must. Here's the trailer:

A post on the Kardashian-Humphries divorce, the saddest event in American history

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Looking for something really good to read this afternoon? I highly recommend Molly Lambert's "The Kardashian Divorce Fiasco: Blame Mom" at Grantland's Hollywood Prospectus blog.

No, I don't care about the Kardashian-Humphries split, seemingly part of a grotesque money grab on the part of the Kardashian Klan, but I do care about what it says about American culture. Not good things -- not good at all. And Lambert provides some astute observations:

People will get sick of Kim Kardashian eventually, because her career is predicated on novelty and her primary talent (being hot, which she is) is transitory. After one possibly staged marriage fails, she becomes the Kim who cried wolf. E! is not exactly in the business of building lasting careers. Rumors that Kris H. was "cast" in order to ensure Kim underwent her first marriage before the dreaded age of 30 have yet to prove true or false, but faked relationships are as old as Hollywood itself (they are as old as 1853). The endless Kardashian family spectacle serves to take focus off the real issues by distracting us with shiny ass-shaped lures. And as long as we continue to pay attention, we lose. Because we all tuned in to her stupid wedding special and allowed her to be a star, Kim Kardashian is the 1 percent and we are all bottom-feeders.

The problem is, there are many, many Kim Kardashians -- with lesser asses, perhaps, but with the same "talent" for achieving and maintaining superficial celebrity status, making shitloads of money, and, if only for a brief time, dominating popular culture.

Which means that the bottom-feeding will continue, and worsen, without an end in sight short of cultural and perhaps civilizational apocalypse.

MTV and the death of democracy

By Carl 

It was thirty years ago today, Robert Pittman taught the band not to play.

MTV launched on August 1, 1980, and literally changed the face of music forever, although you wouldn't know it from the first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles, a band composed of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, both later joining Yes. In the video, the lighting and the costuming and set were all designed to be particularly unflattering to a band whose members were not exactly Hollywood star-material.

OK, so Downes was not ugly, but... did you know that "Video" charted at #444 years before MTV used it?

I digress.

The immediate impact of MTV's popularity was the development in earnest of the music video. Prior to the launch, artists since the 1960s created promotional films for top 40 songs, sometimes even albums. The first true "music video" was for "Surf City" by Jan & Dean in 1964. The later Beatles' albums featured several of these, which were distributed to variety shows worldwide so that "The Beatles" could make an appearance on the show.

These were mostly performance clips of the band, although with the release of Sgt. Pepper, The Beatles went a little avant garde with theirs.

More and more, bands provided short films for their record companies to show in movie theatres, on television variety shows and to various conferences and conventions to promote a band's music.

The music. Not the band. MTV changed that.

I noticed this over the weekend while watching an old Journey video for the song "Seperate Ways," and realizing, damn! That band was uggggggggggleeeeee! The song was released in the MTV generation, to be sure, but the band predates it.

No longer was it enough to be able to sing or play an instrument and/or write a song. Now you had to have "it." You had to be good-looking enough to wet panties and cause wet dreams worldwide. Or, failing that, you had to hire a really expensive and really creative producer to set up your video so it featured really pretty men and women. That means money and that means your record sales and music were beholden to the suits at the label. There was corporate rock before MTV (hello, Monkees!), but the visual aspect and the brand spanking new markets it opened up to songs made corporate rock inevitable.

There weren't bands anymore. They became brands. Brands, the goal of so many people in the blogosphere and even Blogtopia (© Skippy).

Sure, there were exceptions and parodies, most notably "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits, but these were few, far between, and badly needed.

Corporate music begets a bland, pablum of ear candy designed and honed over the years to not offend but to not excite either. It's meant to not make you think: no longer did you have to ponder the lyrics to a song. All you had to do was turn on MTV and voila! Some suit had decided what the song means to you. It moderates everything. There is no radicality except in small pockets of outliers who never really gain acceptance in the mainstream.

To me, it's no surprise that we haven't had another Beatles since MTV. Nor have we had a significant new direction in music since punk, pre-1981. Sure, there was rap, but rap rose without the benefit of MTV and the moment MTV got its hands on it, that was the death knell for bands with a point, like NWA. It stopped being about the music and started being about the heavy rotation.

We all started listening to the same things. Maybe not identical, but all the same things in form. We all needed like-minded entertainment.

It gets worse. MTV created an entire new requirement for filmmakers, who had somehow to reconcile movies and TV to the new form of entertainment. No longer could the camera linger on a scene, establishing mood. Two cigarettes burning down in an ashtray meant two people making love. Now that all had to be established immediately and undeniably. You couldn't infer. You had to state. The attention span of America was quickly narrowing and no one wanted to think anymore.

Maybe you've already guessed from the headline where this is going, and maybe you've started to put the clues together. I'm tempted to stop here but like I just said...

MTV gave us reality TV, too. It started with "slice-o'-life" videos depicting the singer/band in a real-world scenario (usually lost love, or famously Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," about teen pregnancy). It moved onto the Real World programs and continues to this day with Jersey Shore. We've become conditioned to accepting, no, demanding a titillating look into people's closets from MTV. We won't accept a thick line between the public persona of someone and their private life. We *know* there's something illegal or illicit or just plain immoral going on behind the scenes that they must be hiding and we want to know, if only to celebrate the fact that, there but for the grace of God, go we.

Birthers are the logical outgrowth of this. Birthers and shrill harpies of the right who find boogeymen in little children camping on an island.

I could probably go on, from talking about how MTV made it possible for fashion to become really pretty crappy to the fulfillment of Andy Warhol's "fifteen minutes of fame" prophesy to any number of terrible impacts on society.

That's not to say MTV has been all bad. For instance, it was MTV that broadcast Live Aid to try and fight famine in Ethiopia, and it was MTV that gave Bill Clinton the youth vote (and probably Barack Obama as well.) And Jon Stewart got his start on MTV and became a nightly treasure on a spin-off of MTV's Ha! channel. I'm sure if I really sat and thought more on it, I could probably balance this post out with more positives.

But that would make this corporate blogging. :-)

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

You forget I'm in America

By Distributorcap

Did you know that the United States doesn't have any rich people? There are no millionaires, no billionaires, no nouveau riche. If you listen carefully to the words of such brilliant orators as Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, they never mention the wealthy, never say anything about the monied class.

If you listen very carefully to the recent speeches from the man of 1,000 chins and the man with the bronzed male member, what we have in the United States are "job creators." Rich people -- puh-leezee, this is America, not the French aristocracy of 1788.

Here is where Anita breaks out into song:

"I like to be in America, Okay by me in America, Everything free in America" -- where Bernardo keenly observes, "for a small fee in America."

You have to give the GOP credit for adherence to the Prime Directive -- the only good public is a stupid and misinformed public. It sure has paid off well for the Job Creator class of America.  Phase 1 began in 1981 with the ascension of the genteel and amiable Lucifer himself, Ronald Reagan, the first step in the nation's climb back to the landed gentry.  Reagan gutted social programs, proclaimed welfare queens drove Cadillacs, declared ketchup a vegetable, stated trees cause pollution, and made education (along with fat tub of lard William Bennett) a very, very evil thing, even more evil than that nasty evil empire with its evil headquarters in Moscow. Phase 2 was ushered in by the creative marketing genius of Lee Atwater. If you are going to lie, cheat, steal, misinform, and mislead to get ahead, make sure you do it consistently and convincingly.  And use lots of video and pictures, like people sitting in a tank.

And the final phase, Phase 3, was the inevitable mainstreaming of the politics of  hate -- it's us vs. them, it's the winner takes all, it's knowing the only good compromise is a non-existent compromise. Using the valuable lessons (or is it lesions) from Phase 1 and Phase 2, the King of Tiffany Despicable himself, Newt Gingrich, marketed Phase 3 into a profitable and influential cottage industry known as Fox News.

Fast forward to 2010 and Social Security (an insurance program everyone pays into) is only known as an "entitlement." (Entitlement is so mainstreamed now it doesn't even register as doublespeak on any scale any more). So is Medicare. But corporate subsidies, economic breaks for oil companies, Big Ag, Big Pharma, defense contractors etc. -- not so much entitlements but "economic engines."

In 2011, we can now add "Job Creators" to the lexicon of a society hastening its descent into a world driven by five-second bytes laced with Orwellian language and insidious totalitarian tactics.

I am no economist, but one day some TV pundit, one who is not as concerned about the theater of the government and as about the governing of the government, is going to publicly state that tax cuts for Job Creators simply do not create one fucking job. Tax Cuts for the class known as Job Creators creates money for Job Creators.

There is really only one thing that creates jobs, and that is demand (Middle English demaunden, Anglo-French demaunder, Medieval Latin dēmandāre) -- period.  Demand for goods and services (do I sound like my Econ 101 professor or what?) creates a need for someone to supply those very needed goods and services. Giving more money to people who already have more money than they know what to do with is just not going to create jobs. Or enough jobs. Yes, it will create a few more gardeners, maids, and nannies and maybe a few mechanics to service the Cadillacs driven by the corporate welfare queens. But millions of jobs for a humming 14 trillion dollar economic engine -- that and a few crumpets will get you dinner with Marie Palinette.

John Boehner and the Man of the 1,000 Chins can ramble on and on and on about how tax increases now are the worst thing ever and that more tax cuts to those billionaires will really, really, really create more jobs (insert red slippers and click 3x). And since mumbling tax cuts (like mumbling entitlements and Job Creators) makes such a melodious soundbite, the great Reagan Uneducated Class (RUC for short), now in their 30s-40s, who were trained well in Atwaterian Marketing and Gingrichian Sociology (or rather sociopathology) - still think that giving the top 1% (who earn 24%of the income) more money will all of a sudden make America the land of milk and honey and paved roads and bullet trains.

Skyscrapers bloom in America

Cadillacs zoom in America (without welfare queens)

Industry boom in America

In 1980, the top marginal tax rate was 70%. In 2005, the top marginal tax rate was under 40%. For the top 1%, after-tax income rose 176% in those same 25 years, while for the bottom 40% it rose just 12%. In 2008, the top 10% on the economic scale held 80% of all the financial assets. Seems equitable, huh?

Can someone please ask Chins, Boehner, Cantor, and even Grover Norquist exactly what jobs those Job Creators are going to create with all that extra money to generate enough demand to get the economy going? Salespeople at Prada and Gucci aren't going to allow America to keep pace with a world more interested in their internal infrastructure than external police actions. Everyone (including teabaggers) knows that tax cuts for the wealth simply cannot create enough (or any) jobs to correct the economy of 300 million Americans. Only creating the demand for real services and industries and goods will.

People (and there are millions) who continue to fall for the continuous Orwellian horseshit being pitchforked by the Republicans simply fail to see that the only jobs those Job Creators are creating are permanent (and cushy) jobs (with a pension and health care for life) for McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, DeMint, and the other assorted lunatics of the GOP. 

Anita: Free to be anything you choose.

Bernardo: Free to wait tables and shine shoes.

The thing is

By Capt. Fogg 

It's not any one thing. It's never one thing. All the things that have led up to my crisis of caring are old things; have been around a long time and I've been aware of all of them all along. Whether things have become so crazy that some trigger point was passed or whether being chronically weak because of a strict diet or a passing virus or whether somehow, the realization that all suffering comes from believing, from having faith that things can ever be all right in the long run, finally seeped through from that repository of things I always say to whatever core of self awareness exists deep down somewhere. 

The thing is -- I just don't care. Neither more or less than the last time I said it, but I don't care. Someone apparently got away with murder? What's it to me? My country is making strides toward being neo-feudal, toward a police state, a corporate oligarchy with no collective concern for anything but maximum profit and maximum exploitation by those who can make the most of it? So what? The great accomplishments of science? That's over, unless it's the science of sales and manipulation and the technology that exists only to make people buy it. I don't give a damn. I don't even give a damn that I don't give a damn and I've forgotten why I ever believed in the progress of man and the slow climb up from the insanity of animals toward enlightenment and civilization -- or even decency. 

But it's always something. 

I got a phone call the other day. It was a recorded voice asking to contribute to the fight against the persecution of Christian parents' rights to raise their families as they saw fit. I have no idea what they meant but I can have some confidence in the assumption that it has to do with interfering with some other group's right to do the same. I pushed the "never call me again" button. I don't care, it's someone else's fight after all, and if they do win, it will take so long they might as well just wait for the next asteroid or gamma ray burst or solar catastrophe. 

I got a flier in the mail, too. Cover photos of grey haired people smiling like they were drugged under a headline of "happy Seniors." Now I hate like hell to be called a "senior," and it damned well is a gratuitous pejorative. I'm still a man and no less entitled to be one than when I was an idiot teenager, fulfilling my duty of buying things to be hip. But no, these happy folks were just in ecstasy because Representative Tom Rooney and his friends Mr. Ryan and Governor "Medicare Fraud" Scott were going to keep Medicare and Social security from being taken over by "unelected bureaucrats" and presumably given over to those entitled by party affiliation to a big Goddamn profit from it. You know, the Republican peerage, the elect. Happy, happy days, but I'm not going to be able to do a damn thing so why worry? 

I bought one of these little flat screen portable HDTV's recently. Figured it would be a good thing for hurricane season, but trying it out today, I was was disappointed to find nothing on the air but Jesus and informercials, but I shouldn't be, of course. That's all there really is in this episode of the Truman Show and all there will be allowed to be because all this amazing technology has no other purpose than to sell to those at the bottom of the pond. The people already borrowing at 400% from Wells Fargo payday loan stores to meet the mortgage payment to Wells Fargo Bank and the credit cards they maxed out at Wal-Mart and who just found out they have to die because they have no insurance and can't even get welfare because they can't pass a drug test because they had to take something for the pain and they can't afford a prescription or prescription drugs. Yes, it's gonna be all right after we 'save' Medicare. 

Some "Practicing physician" as he continually reminded me had the ultimate cure and preventative for heart disease which "we now know" is only caused by "Toxins" that need to be chelated out of our blood stream with his snake oil pills. "I don't wancha getting a bypass. I don't wancha getting a stent." He just wants to sell pills that will stop the "epidemic of sickness overwhelming all of us." It would take more than a pill to stop the irony, but nothing will stop the two born every minute. 

Another channel appeared to be a cooking channel, showing children how to cover apple slices with sugar sprinkles because, as the nice Church lady tells us, "God wants children to eat healthy food" unless of course the fruit contains knowledge of morality. Perhaps that's why so many children are hungry - not enough red and green sprinkles -- or maybe, like me, God doesn't give a shit -- at least not as long as he sells enough air time. And he does sell it. Four stations available on the indoor antenna and three of them have Jesus, or at least so they say. They don't show him, but perhaps he's tied up in the back room while those polyester puffballs strut and parade and chant and solicit money. JEE- Suss! wants you to be rich so buy my prayer towel and my blessing -- call now. 

So why feel sorry for myself. I don't need to if I don't care. I don't feel sorry for America either, they're fed all the crap they can chew on and they will die, or at least make sure you do, rather than make anything better. If I feel sorry for anyone it's people like poor old Jesus who not only thought they could, but tried -- only to be defeated, have their history stolen and used to sell product, to support tyranny and exploitation and persecution, the fleecing of the poor, the fearful, the desperate and to stifle knowledge, damn decency and prostitute hope. 

But who cares? 

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Thoughts on Osama bin Laden's porn stash and American freedom

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So pornography has been found on those computers taken from Osama bin Laden's hideout. Does this prove his hypocrisy? Yes, if it was his, but, even if it was, I'm not sure it's such a shocking revelation. Would we really be surprised to learn that Osama didn't always live up to his extremist ideals?

Sure, he criticized the West for its lax morals and open sexuality, but hypocrisy aside, was he wrong? Consider, without prejudice (if possible), what he once wrote to the American people:

Your nation exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools, calling upon customers to purchase them. You plaster your naked daughters across billboards in order to sell a product without any shame. You have brainwashed your daughters into believing they are liberated by wearing revealing clothes, yet in reality all they have liberated is your sexual desire.

I realize it's not a popular to defend anything about the man, but was he wrong about this? I remain committed to liberal principles and to a liberal way of life, including the liberation of sexual desire and freedom to express ourselves however we please, but I am also troubled by the exploitation of women and sexualization of children that are polluting our culture and interfering with the mature, reasoned expression of our liberty.

This is a far more important issue than Osama's alleged hypocrisy. But try telling that to the media, which prefer titillation to any sort of mature, rational discussion of sexuality and, more broadly, of American and Western culture.

Another visit from Captain Obvious: Song lyrics getting more narcissistic and hostile

By Carl

Song lyrics are becoming more and more narcissistic:

Now, after a computer analysis of three decades of hit songs, Dr. DeWall and other psychologists report finding what they were looking for: a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music. As they hypothesized, the words "I" and "me" appear more frequently along with anger-related words, while there's been a corresponding decline in "we" and "us" and the expression of positive emotions.

"Late adolescents and college students love themselves more today than ever before," Dr. DeWall, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky, says. His study covered song lyrics from 1980 to 2007 and controlled for genre to prevent the results from being skewed by the growing popularity of, say, rap and hip-hop.

Defining the personality of a generation with song lyrics may seem a bit of a reach, but Dr. DeWall points to research done by his co-authors that showed people of the same age scoring higher in measures of narcissism on some personality tests. The extent and meaning of this trend have been hotly debated by psychologists, some of whom question the tests' usefulness and say that young people today aren’t any more self-centered than those of earlier generations. The new study of song lyrics certainly won’t end the debate, but it does offer another way to gauge self-absorption: the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The researchers find that hit songs in the 1980s were more likely to emphasize happy togetherness, like the racial harmony sought by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder in "Ebony and Ivory" and the group exuberance promoted by Kool & the Gang: "Let's all celebrate and have a good time." Diana Ross and Lionel Richie sang of "two hearts that beat as one," and John Lennon's "(Just Like) Starting Over" emphasized the preciousness of "our life together."

Now, all this has to be placed in the context of a culture in which Andy Warhol's "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes" seems surprisingly less of a throw-off absurdity and more of a piquant observation.

Think about it: If you're reading Simply Left Behind, you're reading my blog, which I'm writing because I have a lot to say and all of the Internet to say it in. I get a couple of hundred hits a day. If I were forced to go out and find a publisher, I might sell a couple of hundred books in a lifetime, after getting laughed out of nearly every publisher in town. I'd probably be humiliated into silence (although knowing me, I'd never shut up, but I digress...)

I get to be narcissistic, in other words, because it's available. Similarly, I can display my limited photographic talents on Flickr and Qoop (see sidebar of my blog) or my even more limited talents on YouTube. I'm planning on rolling out a radio station sometime this year... errrr, that's supposed to be a secret between you and me, K? I may even record an album.

None of which will be commercially viable. It's all a vanity project (except my book, but that's a different column.) It's all designed to leave a mark on the culture, however dim and distant it may be.

In a world where 16-year-old girls debase themselves and embarass their families and get pregnant just to have a season on television, where parents will pimp their toddler children out for beauty contests, or subject their brood to the scrutiny of reality television, it's no wonder that song lyrics have become more narcissistic.

It's what sells. It's what creates role models. Ask William Hung, who managed to squeeze a minor sensation out of being a horrible singer of a song that was carefully focus-grouped and overproduced for another factory-made "artist". Or the cast of Jersey Shore, who don't seem to get the fact that the joke is not near them, but is them.

Yes, plenty of great songs are about narcissism, usually in the context of a relationship. I think of The Beatles "In My Life," an overview of a surprisingly mature songwriter who is trying to tell a woman, "Listen, I've gotten laid a lot, but baby, you're the greatest!" Or Leslie Gore's "You Don't Own Me," perhaps the original "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar."

And perhaps this trend is part of why music sucks lately. Certainly, it feeds into the mass culture of "I got mine, Jack" that gave rise to the Teabaggers (thanks a lot, emo!). If we can't have a great anthem to mass participation like "All We Are Saying (Is Give Peace a Chance)" because we're writing songs about "Fuck you, you're losing me," then how in the hell can we gather around a movement and progress?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Fasten your seatbelts

By Distributorcap

Because as always, it is:

 

Funny business, a narcissist's personality -- the things I have said on my way up the ladder so I could move faster. I often forget that people who are not entranced by my beauty might really be listening to me. That's one trait all self-absorbed quitters like me have in common, whether we like it or not: the complete inability to feel anything except how it affects me. Sooner or later, someone is going to catch on, no matter how many careers I have ruined or lies I have told. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before your servants serve you dinner or turn around in bed, and there he is -- Glenn, um, I mean Todd. Since there is no one with my mixture of incredible charm and tiger-like slinkiness, there is no one else that could be president. You might be able to lock and re-load, you might be able to see Russia from your window, or maybe you went five colleges, but you're not a real Republican unless you can blame the other side and prove you are always the victim.

Nice speech, Sarah. But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can easily fit that award where your heart ought to be.

Fasten your moose straps, there is bloody libel to pay tonight.

While I laud President Obama for an incredible and moving speech, I fear it is only a matter of days before America goes to back to work -- being the same divided nation, with each side (one a lot more nasty, armed & dangerous than the other one) hunkered down.

You cannot ignore the fact that America today is a country brimming with anger and strife. For years, we have ignored the rotting outer core in the pursuit of satisfying the inner one. The collective effort we had in building a great nation for over 200 years has slowly been dissipating since we turned the keys over to über-right and religious fanatics in 1981. Our country is broke and our society is broken. What we have been witnessing for the past decade is a carnival act of vultures using politics, religion, and jobs to abscond with all the spoils.

In just about every statistic that is measured, we are below average when compared to the rest of the world.  The only places we come out as leaders of the pack are in military might and waging war -- and even those two have not had a good ride as of late. Look at the state of education, health care, savings, tolerance, happiness, poverty, and manufacturing in this country -- nothing we do anymore screams innovation or leadership. All it screams is how much money it can make for the investor class. The politicians can rile up the crowds with American exceptionalism all they want. All the facts prove they are wrong.

Where we are exceptional is in the amount of guns we own.

You have to wonder, is there anyone really trying to re-build and invest in our country, not just take the lion's share and leave the crumbs for everyone else? It really seems that the few who control so many of the assets of our wealth just want to plunder what is left before the leeches cling to their skin. It is a sad time, and it is a dangerous time.

We are a nation that loves instant gratification at the expense of our future. We put our heads in the sand when it comes to making hard decisions. And finally, we have become a country where sacrifice and compassion have actually turned into a dirtier words than liberal. It is hard to believe we want to live in this kind of country -- but in a place where a complete dolt like Sarah Palin is acceptable as a leader because she is hot, it really does appear that the the future of the noble experiment called America is shaky at best.

 

The next two years will be nothing but frustrating. We have learned nothing from the past week. We never do. Louis Gohmert, Virginia Foxx, and Trent Franks have already gone back to slinging the dirt. The teabaggers are blaming Giffords herself. And right-wing pundits are tripping over themselves defending their heated and gun-filled rhetoric.

Meanwhile, as her adoring fans struggle to get food on the table, Sarah "Blood Libel" Palin laughs all the way to the bank. Some country.

Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, and your vote placed upon the GOP line

By Distributorcap

The U.S. likes to pride itself on having the freest and fairest elections in the world. (Cough now.) After all, whenever other countries vote -- we are always there to insure the process is valid, the count is accurate and voters can choose without intimidation.

Well, maybe we need to get the electoral boards of Somalia, North Korea, or the Third Reich to monitor the elections of this country -- specifically in Ohio (which we all know is the shining example of electoral honesty based on its 2004 performance).

From Think Progress:

Along with their recent paychecks, employees received a pamphlet from their employer on company letter head that stated "as the election season is here, we wanted you to know which candidates will help our business grow in the future." While pointing out that the vote is the employee's "personal decision," the pamphlet explicitly states, "if the right people are elected we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above our present levels. If others are elected we will not."

In explicitly endorsing gubernatorial candidate John Kasich (R), Senate candidate Rob Portman (R), and House candidate Jim Renacci (R), the pamphlet — which was directly inside the envelope with the paycheck — appears to directly violate Ohio Revised Code regarding elections.

Of course, a shitstorm ensued (when will people learn that NOTHING is secret anymore, especially overtly political things) and the franchise owner, Paul Siegfried, was forced to backtrack and issue a statement admitting to an "error in judgment" and "apologizing to those he offended."

McDonald's does not own the restaurant, which is a franchise, but the corporation could pull the rights. Of course, they won't -- they also want to see the end of things like the health-care bill. Siegfried apologizes for offending people -- NOT for breaking the law, threatening his employees, or practicing Gestapo tactics (like his fellow Ohioan Richard Iott) on one of the most basic American rights.

As an independent business owner, my employees are a top priority for me. I work hard to create a positive restaurant environment for everyone. I greatly value my employees and the contributions they make to my business, each and every day. Without a doubt it's my employees' right and his or her choice, if they decide to vote, and if so, for whom. I strive to comply with all laws, including state and federal election laws. Distributing this communication was an error of judgment on my part. Please know, it was never my intention to offend anyone. For those that I have offended, I sincerely apologize.

Somehow Siegfried is retaining the right to make money by treating his employees as chattel.

Well, since we all deserve a break today, I will say that I'm loving it that Paul Siegfried's McDonald's in Canton, Ohio has given us more fodder and more examples of why Republicans are nothing more than 21st-century versions of brownshirts.

Like the anti-gay rant from the guy in Arkansas and the Rand Paul stompers, the Republican brain trust has taken "there is no such thing as bad press" to a new level. And it is working like a charm. Here is their M.O. Through their chain of unsuspecting lackeys (mainly the morons known as Teabaggers):

1. Have them say or do things so outrageous, so insane, so fearful, or so vile it is bound to get coverage.
2. Know that the media -- especially Fox News, with its magical audience of Stepford voters, hungry to fill all their air time with entertainment to generate ratings -- will cover it to no end (even if they are being critical).
3. Then issue half-assed, lame, and worthless apologies to cover your ass.

Voila -- the "negative" parts of the story go away, but the "good" parts (a.k.a. the underlying GOP message, like in the McDonald's case, we make jobs) becomes the narrative.

This tactic is nothing short of brilliant. It is a strategy that is helping push the GOP to victory on election day.
 

Myth America

By Carl 

We all know the fable: the rugged individualism of small-town America, where you can make a go of it on your own, where neighbors sit out on the porch and talk away the hours at night over iced tea, a gun is your best friend against the varmints that infest your woods, where the local high school still holds sock hops and the church is the place to go if you need a hot meal or some clothes. 

Um. Bullshit:

Our 100 largest metropolitan areas constitute a new economic geography, seamlessly integrating cities and suburbs, exurbs and rural towns. Together, they house almost two-thirds of our population, generate 74% of our gross domestic product (GDP) and disproportionately concentrate the assets that drive economic success: patents, advanced research and venture capital, college graduates and Ph.D.s, and air, rail and sea hubs.

America is not an agglomeration of small towns where girls still wear gingham and boys seek tadpoles in the crick. Sarah Palin's "Real Americans" are the true sheltered disconnected elitists.

Real Americans complain about traffic jams. Real Americans complain about take-off vectors from the local airport. Real Americans get on a commuter train or the highway every morning to their job in a cubicle, where they have to worry about losing that job to outsourcing or the economic crunch. Real Americans worry about their lawns. Real Americans have kids that play soccer, and hang out in malls.

Neither Sarah Palin nor the Teabaggers speak for Real Americans. Real Americans, for the most part, don't really care who is running, so long as they can be secure in their jobs. They don't mind paying taxes so long as they see something back for those taxes: better schools, better roads, more police and fire fighters and trash collectors.

Real Americans don't pay attention to politics, not because they're apathetic, but because Johnny got a "C" in algebra. Real Americans want to see a clean subway station before a clean Congress. They want to be able to sit around the dining room table and discuss the next vacation they can afford, not the bills and definitely not the Muslim terror scarifying that the right wing specialises in.

And there's the rub: so long as the right wing of this nation is cowardly, the nation itself will be cowardly. The right wing, aided and abetted, with comfort given to the enemy by the right wing mainstream media, like NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX, has so bullied and badgered the nation by being the squeakier wheel.

Progressives have to start getting louder, yes, but more than that, we have to start pointing out the major flaws in the right's ideology.

This, that the overwhelming number of Americans, the overwhelming values of Americans, reside within a few miles of our cities, should be number one on that list. "Small town values" have their value, in the dwindling population and economic activity that makes up small towns (only three states in this nation can claim that the majority of their economy is derived from rural areas). But those values do not represent 21st-century America. Those values are as outdated as buggy whips and oil lamps in this nation.

We have to march forward, not backward, because that is how time marches. We resist time at our own peril.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Bye Bye Miss American Pie

By Distributorcap

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not religious, that I do not believe in any sort of afterlife and that if there was a God, he would have found another planet to oversee a long time ago.

But in that mix of atheism, agnosticism, apathy and doubt, I do believe that a society (as opposed to just one person) is judged by how it treats the various members of that said society. Being that no society since the dawn of civilization (a term used very loosely) has even been so homogeneous to include just the privileged - that judgment will almost always manifest itself in how the weakest are acknowledged and cared for.

"Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members."
-- Pearl S. Buck, My Several Worlds [1954].

"A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization."
-- Samuel Johnson, Boswell: Life of Johnson

"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities."
-- John E.E. Dalberg, Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity [1877].

"...the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped."
-- last speech of Hubert H. Humphrey [November 1977]

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man"
-- Mahatma Gandhi 

The above quotes highlight five groups from which any society will be ultimately be judged based on how they are treated and integrated (in no particular order):

1. Children
2. Elderly
3. Sick & Handicapped
4. Needy & Poor
5. Animals

Somewhere in the past 234 years we have come to believe that anyone who was weak and could not stand up for themselves was really a just a parasite and cancer on society. (I will go out on a limb at date the inception of that philosophy to January 20, 1981).

As spokesperson from the any of the 5 groups above will tell you - America in 2010 has failed or is failing on all five. If you are a rich white person with good health - you probably do not have a lot to complain about. But based on how our business, spiritual and political leaders have acted during the past 30 years, Judgment Day is not looking like a July 4th Celebration.

Again, anyone who knows me knows how cynical I have become about this great American Society. I have some very strong doubts about this country's long-term survival as a union of 50 states. The glue that holds a society together - a common bond for the good of all its citizens, a national purpose to better the entire society, and a way for those on the outside to be welcome on the inside - has come undone.

As things turned sour, instead of looking to ourselves for solutions (which ultimately means acknowledging mistakes), many Americans began to turn its back on the 5 groups above. The most hated group in the US today is not minorities, not immigrants, not gays, not Palin-worshippers, not atheists, and not doves - but the poor (although a disproportionate amount of the poor are minorities and immigrants).

The anger toward health care reform, the hateful talk about those collecting unemployment insurance, the indifference towards the ecological disaster in the gulf (the only disaster talked incessantly about on the right is the economic disaster, not the ecological), the trauma in passing S-CHIP, the resentment at immigrants (legal as well as legal), privitization talk about Social Security, the continuing choice of guns over butter - all prove beyond a shadow of a doubt how much this country hates poor people.

After all poor people are nothing more than a drain on society. For every dollar they contribute, they are pulling $3-$4 dollar out of the our pockets. The government is nothing more than a cash register for the needy. These are people who do nothing and would rather lie around watching American Idol than earn $7.15 an hour flipping burgers or unpacking crap made in China. Hard-luck stories or event beyond their control (like shipping jobs over to China to make the crap they don't want to unpack) mean nothing. Anyone on the government dole is a tumor that needs a strong dose of chemo.

If you read between the lines of Beck, Palin, Hannity, Limbaugh and especially the teabaggers - shipping these leaches off to a place like Poorschwitz would make this a better place - there would ultimately be more for society's most productive members.

Since hating the poor is not socially acceptable, Palin and the teabaggers have disguised their hate towards society's bloodsuckers with resentment towards groups that have virtually no voice and practically zero allies - immigrants, animals and the infirmed.

I really wonder how long any society can stay together when the commonality is rejection and hate as opposed to inclusion and betterment. And exactly who are Palin and Limbaugh going to hate when they get rid of the poor.

With the mass mainstream media continuing to drive the narrative that paranoia is the panacea ("how can the world hate us? but since the world does hate us, we just have to destroy everything that is making our lives so miserable) sure as I am sitting at this kepboard - you can expect that the threads that hold America together will continue to come undone - and the 5 groups that reside near the bottom of the ladder will suffer the most.

Why did I pick 1/20/81 as the day the music died?

"What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, [are there] by choice."
-- Ronald Reagan [1984]

Capitalist fools

By Carl

Capitalism is an economic system based in fear. If you're a coward, you're a capitalist.

Think about it. According to theory, capitalism is advanced through the "enlightened" self-interest of individuals (I'll get back to the enlightened bit later). Translation: greed. Greed is good in capitalism. Indeed, if capitalism can be said to have any morality, that morality is based in greed.

But greed is based in fear, just as nearly every negative emotion is. Greed is about the fear that you will not have enough, never have enough and therefore must always have more.

Ask anyone who was mixed up in the junk bond bubble of the Reagan years or the dot-com bubble of the Clinton/Bush years or the real estate bubble of the Bush years: it was not about having enough, it was about having more. From the homeowners who foolishly bit into a mortgage they could never possibly handle to the bankers who lent that money knowing full well those borrowers couldn't afford the mortgage to the stockholders who demanded higher earnings every quarter from the bankers who lent the money to the people who couldn't afford it, to the governments who gladly accepted the property and income taxes due on the money that the shareholders demanded by higher each quarter from the bankers who lent the money to people who couldn't afford it, all of this monumental folly was based in greed.

And enabled by countless pundits, analysts, media flacks, and government officials. "Ownership society," Mr. Bush? OWERship society is more like it, you pompous butthead!

Adam Smith in positing capitalism, even tho he called it laissez-faire (French for "leave to do"), spoke for the need for taxes on business activity, strong government oversight, and warned against business combinations of any sort that involved removing the personal responsibility for the actions of a business.

We call those "corporations". You'll never hear this from your immature libertarian friends who read Ayn Rand for the sex scenes and came away with some muddled sense of economic theory crossed with personal freedom.

Adam Smith, in Wealth of Nations, speaks of the "Invisible Hand" precisely once (Book IV, chapter II, paragraph IX , if you're playing along at home). It was in the context of domestic trade being preferable to international trade. In other words, all those "free marketeers" are bullshitting you. And yet, an entire conservative cottage industry has arisen over a gross distortion of Smith's intent.

All to support and justify naked greed. There is no community when greed is involved. You would steal from your neighbors as soon as you'd steal from a stranger if capitalism had its way. And if you don't believe that, pick up any  newspaper.

Indeed, on a macro basis, this is precisely what happens. International trade and relations are less dependent upon any sense of community than local and domestic trade, which was Adam Smith's point about the "invisible hand". Why were we attacked on September 11, after all? Was it because we're rich? Was it because we supplied arms to Israel, or Osama bin Laden? Was it because we had protected Muslims in Bosnia? Was it because we helped harm Muslims in Palestine?

Whatever part of the political spectrum you come from, it doesn't matter. Whatever answer to that "why" you feel comfortable with, it doesn't matter. All answers return to the greed of capitalism. Our private industries made money in conflict with our so-called "moral values." After all, if we fear radical Islam, why were we helping the mujahadeen in the 1980s? It's not like we were friends with radical Islam back then. We had just had hostages returned from Iran, for goodness sake!

Once you look at the world around you and do a thought experiment, you understand why greed needs to be in check, and why capitalism is for cowards. If we took morality out of the equation, if we truly allowed capitalism to be laissez-faire, crime would be a booming industry, all drugs would be legal, and porn would be available on the counter of your corner newsstand instead of bowdlerized and forced into dark corners and pay-per-view television.

Is that what we really want?

If capitalism was based on enlightened need, one could conceivably find a lot of good in capitalism. Capitalism presumes that we each have the other citizens of our community in mind.

Sadly, no...

Capitalism is not immoral, but capitalism is responsible for immoral acts. Capitalism is also responsible for the greatest man-made tragedies to befall America and by extension, the world.

In and of itself, capitalism is not immoral. It is amoral. It does not think. It only works like a vast enumbed machine, not distinguishing between friend or foe, between good or evil, between moral and immoral.

And here's the real kicker: capitalism is antithetical to American values, if we define "American values" as freedom, equality, and morality.

Those are in our Constitution. They're declared and demanded in the Declaration of Independence. And yet, self-interest sans enlightenment is harmful to all three of those. Sure, you can say that freedom exists, but is it really freedom when your boss can fire you at-will, and worse, threaten that to hold your behavior in check? Is it really freedom when that same boss can demand you work overtime or put in free hours from home, but then get all pissy when you ask for a few hours to take your sick kid to the hospital?

Is it really freedom without equality? And is it ever equal in a society where greed is honored and acquisition the goal?

And is that EVER moral?

(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)