Chomsky Wept

By in augean stables, media/propaganda, ohferfucksake, waiting for the barbarians No Comments

I am the plan, I am the man who tells you what and when you can. I’m the old one that torments you. I am the voice that tells you to:

“Don’t get caught with your fingers in my pie. Mess with me and boy you’re surely gonna die.
If ever you’re in doubt about who or where I am, I’m here, I’m there, I’m everywhere.
I am your Uncle Sam.”

—Primus

The noive of these guys!

“I’m concerned about the level of frankly subversive activity that the Iranians are carrying on in a number of places in Latin America particularly South America and Central America,” Gates told lawmakers.

“They’re opening a lot of offices and a lot of fronts behind which they interfere in what is going on in some of these countries,” he said.

Seriously! Countries that pull that sort of shit are just begging for a bombing, aren’t they?

It would be as if Iran were to invade and occupy Canada and Mexico while constantly trying to provoke us into a fight and complaining about us “interfering” in other Middle Eastern countries (except we actually are, but let’s just pretend there’s some alternate universe where we don’t treat the world like our property).

Who is this sort of propaganda aimed at? No one else in the world is stupid enough to believe it, so is this aimed at the American public? Is that even necessary? I doubt most Americans would let any vague moral concerns get in the way of sustaining their lifestyle (and even the Great Liberal Hope made sure to stress last week that “we will not apologize for our way of life”), so if you explained that those Persians are standing in between us and one-dollar gas, threatening to behead Ronald McDonald and close down all Wal-Marts, I’m sure the majority would shrug and say “Bombs away,” then. Or is it like Chomsky always suggests, that most people don’t have the courage to face themselves and say, “Yep, I’m a greedy monster, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get what I want,” that when you find yourself with your boot on someone’s neck, you have to find a way to make it their fault? Is this just the story the elites tell themselves to be able to sleep at night?

Don’t Pray in My School and I Won’t Think in Your Church

By in ohferfucksake, religion No Comments

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

— Some Dude

If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.
— Epicurus

Can’t do it. Can’t force myself to watch it. I’m feeling queasy from a headache and backache, so I just can’t take the risk.

Why couldn’t kids just pray in the morning before they even go to school? Would that not cover the whole school day? Do prayers need to be recharged every so often like batteries? Does God forget what you asked for and need to be reminded? Why couldn’t they just take a moment in between classes or during lunch to lower their heads and mumble a few words? There’s dozens of ways that kids could have a private moment between themselves and their imaginary friend if they wanted to, but there’s only one way they can do it while forcing others to watch or participate, otherwise we wouldn’t even be having this argument.

Of course, I shouldn’t say “kids”, because as a former kid who had to sit through a dozen years of daily silent moments with other kids, I can safely say that no one gave a bouncing fuck about contemplating anything – it was just one more stupid rule to be contemptuously followed in a day full of them. No, this kind of stupidity can only come from parents who have no idea what their little god-fearing darlings get up to when out from under their watchful Puritan gaze. It’s a stereotype as trite and worn-out as Republicans in the closet, but in my experience, it was always the ministers’ sons who would smoke or drink whatever was handed to them, and it was always the bible-thumpers’ daughters who were the most eager human mattresses. Amazing how these people just simply never learn.

Kitschfinder General

By in art, bread and circuses, jests japes jokes jollies, music No Comments

This made me think of what it would be like if Amanda Marcotte from Pandagon had a slightly better sense of humor. I stole the post title from a thread I saw some months back where someone called her that – the only other part I remember was one of her own comments, where she (apparently in complete earnest) argued that schlocky art corroded the mind, spirit, whatever, in the same way that junk food affects the body. Spoken like a true straight-edge militant. She has the kind of grim Puritan zeal about attacking artists she considers impure that most people outgrow once they leave high school, but since she refers to herself in an ironic, self-aware way as an “Insufferable Music Snob”, I guess that makes it okay. Or something.

Shit-talking is fine if done with a sly wink and a smile; with the understanding that ultimately, whatever moves you for whatever reason is fine with me. I good-naturedly tease friends about music taste sometimes, but I’d have to have a major thorny stick up my ass to make a sustained effort to try and convince them to stop listening to an artist I hate or to start looking down on them for musical incorrectness. When you find yourself seriously trying to argue that some artist is harmful to impressionable minds, it’s time to calm the fuck down, shut the fuck up and stop taking yourself so seriously. What makes the music snobs so tiresome is their myopic inability to understand that other people approach from different vantage points and take different things away from a song (or any work of art, for that matter). I don’t listen to bands to receive philosophical or moral instruction; I listen to them because I like the way their music makes me feel. If the lyricist happens to be really inventive and thought-provoking (Beck, Neil Fallon from Clutch, Andrew Wood from Mother Love Bone), so much the better. Mark Sandman of Morphine was a goddamned genius and created some of the most original, hauntingly beautiful music ever, but his lyrics were pretty ordinary; I don’t think I can come up with any that I would bother quoting. I also listen to some cheesy pop because the melody is pretty and prompts me to daydreaming. It doesn’t suddenly make my IQ drop fifteen points and inspire me to go buy framed pictures by Thomas Kinkade.

Rosenbaum said it in a funny way, but really – he hates the guy’s music so much he went out and bought a greatest hits compilation (rather than, say, downloading songs off of LimeWire) just to, um, figure out why he hates it so much? Riiiight. And Ted Haggard was just delving deep into the sordid homosexual lifestyle in order to better understand how Satan could tempt people away from God. Sounds like someone has himself so indoctrinated with ideas of what he is allowed to like as an intelligent, culturally educated man that he can’t just enjoy a melody even if the lyrics are insipid. This kind of rigid insecurity is really fucking sad, that people like this are so fragile they fear being changed for the worse by a song, movie or a painting.

Pulling for Peace

By in germans supported their troops too, language, media/propaganda No Comments

I never “rooted for failure” and I can’t find a record of anyone who did, certainly not in anything close to the blatant terms that Limbaugh uses. Yet, the right used this false claim as a weapon for years to subdue criticism of Bush and the Iraq war and it worked.

— Digby

She complains about how it worked right after she gets defensive and reflexively justifies her own patriotic credentials, which is exactly how it worked in the first place. It will keep right on working until liberals progressives stop taking the bait and stop wetting their pants in fear that someone will call them anti-American.

I’m rooting for failure. I hope the US gets driven out of Iraq and Afghanistan in the most humiliating way possible after hundreds of thousands of troop casualties, and I hope they paddle across the ocean to take their revenge on us here. Then I hope they force us to alter our flag by making the fifty stars spell out the words EPIC FAIL.

I’m also masturbating for peace. Upon reaching orgasm, I send out thoughts of peace and goodwill to all humankind, visualizing an end to strife and conflict across the world.

Do you see the equivalence?

Neither one amounts to a damned thing in reality. As shocking as it may be, no world representative has ever asked me for my opinion or permission about anything. My thoughts and feelings do not affect events halfway across the world. You might think this should be obvious, but here in New Age Nation, it evidently isn’t. As long as you’re paying taxes, you’re doing your part to contribute. I would imagine staying alive and keeping from getting shot or blown up is all the motivation a soldier needs to do their job, so as long as your money is paying for their weapons and armor (and as long as you’re not sending them letters telling them you’re running off with the bag boy at the supermarket), feel free to think whatever you want about it. It won’t make the slightest difference. Typing about your “support” is as meaningful as those stupid fucking magnetic ribbons on the back of every SUV or holding hands in a prayer circle.

The cynical bastards who have made this an issue know full well that soldiers are, by definition, expendable. Getting brutally killed is one of the job hazards. It doesn’t matter whether you want that to happen or not; it will or it won’t, depending on the circumstances there, and unless we’re going to stick to invading countries like Grenada to make the world safe for nutmeg trade, soldiers are going to be maimed and killed. The military knows this, the politicians know this, but they realized that if they can personalize it, make it about Pvt. Hubert J. Motherhumper from Frog’s Balls, Alabama, where his middle school sweetheart and their seven kids await his safe return, rather than about the foreign policy that Pvt. Motherhumper and all his buddies are risking their expendable lives for, then they could fend off criticism by pretending that you care less about him than they do, even though if it had been up to you, Pvt. Motherhumper would be safe and sound at home and nobody here or across the world would be getting vital organs shredded by bullets traveling at high velocity.

Again, as long as you keep accepting that framework, they’re always going to have you over a barrel. The fact that this “support the troops” bullshit didn’t even become such an issue until after Vietnam, when it became impossible for any halfway-intelligent person to pretend that we were doing something noble by attacking peasant countries thousands of miles away who posed no conceivable threat to us, makes it more imperative that you stop letting them bully you into silence like this.

But perhaps people like Digby and all the rest of the liberals progressives who feel a need to compulsively stress their support for our brave men and women overseas should consider: isn’t it going to take some sort of “failure” to prevent these sorts of imperial adventures from recurring? If we “win” every engagement with few or no casualties, and corporate and government fat cats get exactly what they wanted from it, is it realistic to think it’s ever going to stop on its own? Germans supported their troops too – at least when they were winning.

Blink. Blink.

By in bread and circuses, fresh hell, jests japes jokes jollies No Comments

“…because, well, Mark Wahlberg, to me, can almost do no wrong.”

Holy shit. I didn’t think I’d ever see someone who would proudly identify as a Mark Wahlberg fan. Motherfucker is so lifeless he could have played the corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s and fucked that up. Motherfucker is so wooden he makes Keanu Reeves look like Jim Carrey. Jesus. People go to see his movies on purpose?

I’ll leave the last word to WWTDD? with one of my favorite summaries of Wahlberg’s acting method:

I hate Mark Wahlberg and his wooden line reads and the way he furrows his stupid brow and tries to look intense but just looks confused, like a caveman poking a turtle with a stick.

Thanksralph!

By in augean stables, extraordinary popular delusions, ohferfucksake, thanksralph No Comments

I’ve never been much of a fan of August Pollak. I would occasionally follow links to his site from Tom Tomorrow, but didn’t find anything compelling enough to make me a regular reader. But I was pointed to this cartoon the other day, which has gotten a rise out of me.

Not being a regular reader, at first I thought this was actually a funny jab at the herds of obsessive N8r H8rz who will never let go of their favorite counterfactual history story. I guess it counts as a little extra humorous irony to realize that no, Pollak himself is one of those assholes who was so eager to make Joe Lieberman the vice president, and he’s being completely serious here. His first cartoon of the Obama presidency is one more sneer at Nader voters from eight years ago. His first cartoon of this oh-so-historical epoch of hope ‘n’ change is one more cheap shot aimed at settling the score with heretics who dared deviate from the Democratic party line eight years ago.

I know this issue has long since entered the mythic stage – mythic, in the sense that it’s not about facts, it’s a story that gives meaning to people and explains their position in the big scheme of things. As always, people like to put themselves at the reasonable center of things, with the “extremists” on either side of them – or, as America’s greatest philosopher George Carlin pithily summed up in a vehicular analogy, everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac. But still, it doesn’t seem like it should be that hard to grasp a few things:

Of all the actors that influenced the outcome of the 2000 election, Nader played one of the smallest roles. You could just as easily single out a dozen other things that, taken individually, could reasonably be credited/blamed for that result. First and foremost, you could actually blame the people who stole the fucking election – you know, the Republicans who staged fake voter riots made up of campaign staffers to attempt to give an impression of a public opposed to the recount, the people who illegally purged thousands of black voters from the rolls in Florida, Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, and the Bush family buddies on the Supreme Court.

You could, à la Bob Somerby, attack the media for their catty high school-like treatment of Gore, and for their portrayal of him as the sore loser, the spoilsport who needed to step aside for the good of the nation. Or you could even criticize Gore’s own weak campaign, his halfhearted feints towards populism, and his inability to win his own state of Tennessee.

You could blame the 200,000 registered Democrats in Florida who voted for George W. Bush rather than the 97,000 Greens who voted for Nader. How is it that a party so feeble and inept as to not even be able to count on the support of its own fucking registered members has the chutzpah to act entitled to the votes of people who don’t even identify as Democrats? On that note, instead of taking as an article of faith that those Greens would have voted for Gore otherwise, you could try thinking for a few moments before realizing that most likely, they just wouldn’t have voted at all. They were probably only voting in the first place because of Nader being on the ballot, given that they saw the system as a hollow fraud representing the two wings of the Big Business party (and man, haven’t Congressional Dems like Nancy “Impeachment is off the table” Pelosi and Harry “Give ’em head” Reid done so much to prove that theory false these past few years. I suppose the party’s systemic windsock behavior is Ralph’s fault, too.)

Speaking of non-voters, you could blame the 60% of the electorate who didn’t bother to vote at all, especially since it’s more than fair to assume that out of such a huge number, there had to be enough people in there who were perfectly fine with the idea of four-to-eight more years of the same policies, but just didn’t bother to get off the sofa. But no, that might smack of “elitism”, and nothing scares the party built on vapid DLC marketing slogans, p.r. and compulsive focus group polling more than the thought of being judged condescending towards the consumers. Forget I said anything so crazy.

What cracks me up the most is how this endless obsession with berating Greens suggests a fundamental insecurity among these kind of heresiologists. They’re apparently aware that their party has an image as a 98 lb. weakling that would rather attack its own base than fight back hard against Republicans, but rather than address that and actually give people a reason to be proud of belonging to it, they rely on the “lesser of two evils” mentality to carry the day while simply enforcing orthodoxy and trying to hector and guilt-trip the actual left wing of the party into supporting it.

Credit Where Due

By in atheism, religion No Comments

Sure, it’s always nice to hear that we’re not the scum of the earth, but, you know, as much as I hate to give the man credit for anything, I recall Dubya himself making a pretty astonishing statement (to me at least) during the third presidential debate with Kerry:

And my faith is a very — it’s very personal. I pray for strength. I pray for wisdom. I pray for our troops in harm’s way. I pray for my family. I pray for my little girls. But I’m mindful in a free society that people can worship if they want to or not. You’re equally an American if you choose to worship an almighty and if you choose not to.

If you’re a Christian, Jew or Muslim, you’re equally an American. That’s the great thing about America, is the right to worship the way you see fit.

This, of course, stands in stark contrast to what his own supposedly more tolerant father said once:

Sherman: What will you do to win the votes of the Americans who are atheists?
Bush: I guess I’m pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me.
Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?
Bush: No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Sherman (somewhat taken aback): Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?
Bush: Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I’m just not very high on atheists.

So given that there was really no benefit to GW saying such a thing and no real repercussions for politicians treating atheists dismissively or condescendingly, I have to assume he actually did mean that. Strange.

New Age

By in extraordinary popular delusions, religion, spiritual-not-religious No Comments

(Are you there, God? It’s me, Starchild Moonflower.)

Yeah, now that you mention it…

Among the set of concerns (let’s call them) that led me to start Mystic Bourgeoisie, was the question of why certain New Age types — especially those who most vehemently deny that’s what they are — seem to believe that the answers to all life’s most profound questions are to be found, you know…

{{{ WITHIN }}}

Even if your literary masochism amounts to but a fraction of my own, you can’t avoid running into this bizarre concept if you read anything in this genre. Look within, my child, and your questions shall be answered!

I don’t have an answer for that either, but my hunch would be that it has something to do with the general narcissism that pervades all forms of what you could loosely group together under the New Age rubric. A more generous interpretation might be one that considers the way hermits like (the possibly mythical) Lao Tzu, after a lifetime of watching the human tragi-comedy, retired to a life of quiet contemplation, realizing that at a certain point, the patterns stand out more vividly than the individual elements, the big picture seems more relevant than the minutiae, there’s nothing new under the sun, plus ça change, and all that.But that’s probably too generous for most who make a fetish out of that notion.

New Ageism/spirituality: religion soaked in jejune, mawkish sentimentality.

Actually, I think what annoys me about the whole New Age/spiritual thing is that it seems to combine parts of Romanticism with the naïve, typically 19th century, faith in progress.If Romanticism was mainly an aesthetic reaction against what was perceived as a stifling rationalism and Enlightenment obsession with order, it seems fair to me to see parallels with the way people today prefer to be “spiritual” in opposition to “organized religion”. Don’t worry about what religious leaders and holy books say, go with what moves you and feels right. The difference being, the Romantic artists were willing to go to extremes to be authentic and prove the vitality of their vision, even if it meant drinking and drugging themselves into a stupor, going insane and dying young. Can’t quite imagine OprahChopra and Neale Donald Walsch approving of all that.

No, they seem to accept a version of the notion of teleological progress people used to have; that life was on a constant upward trajectory, there was little that couldn’t be solved by education and technology, and every year was an improvement on the one before it. Maybe it was like the sunny side of Social Darwinism, where “evolving” meant constant improvement in a moral and intellectual sense (and there are lots of people who still use it that way), even though, in the Darwinian sense, it only means adaptation, not progressivism.

So, if negativity is acknowledged at all, it’s only as a learning experience on your path of personal growth, which winds its way through a neat and tidy scheme where “everything happens for a reason” (another one of those clichés that makes me grind my teeth), and everyone and their mother’s a fucking “survivor”.

You Lost, Get Over It

By in ohferfucksake, old dixie No Comments

Here Come the Bastards

I had to travel to Lexington this weekend, where I was reminded that we Virginians just so coincidentally happened to have another holiday to celebrate right around MLK Day. Yessir, it’s a day where livestock breathe a little easier, knowing that southwestern Virginians are going to be too busy solemnly honoring the memory of treason in defense of slavery to get up to their usual ungodly shenanigans. The hills are alive with rebel yells as the menfolk play the customary game of butt-nekkid-grab-ass with their sisters before everyone gathers around the still to sing southern rock songs while chowing down on freshly scraped flatmeat and getting blind drunk on ‘shine.

(above: the morning after. Roadkill should be cooked well-done to avoid food poisoning.)

It’s been said before, but it sure is funny how, out of hundreds of years of ancestry here, they only seem interested in celebrating four years in particular of their “heritage”. And, of course, it had nothing to do with hate, which is why there was a near-century of Jim Crow and unofficial slavery after the Compromise of 1877. They didn’t want to treat their colored brethren so poorly, they just had to teach Billy Yank a lesson about stickin’ his nose in their business, that’s all.

If You Wanna Be Me, I Don’t Give a Damn

By in atheism No Comments

(Thus spake the Indian Ropeman.) Anyway…

The examples of the gerbil and the polar bear also help to illustrate why the enthusiastic arguments of the popular atheist proselytizers haven’t succeeded at much more than preaching to the choir. According to these Dawkins- and Hitchens-style arguments, religious belief of any kind — belief in anything transcendent and unprovable — is akin to the stereotypy displayed by a neurotic gerbil. As we’ve already noted, no one likes to be compared to a neurotic gerbil, so this is perhaps not the most winsome starting point for these arguments, but let that pass.

Yet it seems Christians are fine with being told that they were born incorrigible sinners who need divine forgiveness to keep from being roasted for eternity. Go figure.

Ebonmuse already handled most of the objections, but I would also add that the importance of the “New Atheists” – at least to me – is that they are a very visible cultural presence. They’re carving out a public space where it’s acceptable to be an atheist and talk about it. That’s the kind of thing that will lead to normalization. I don’t know if Dennett, Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens are trying to actually convert people per se, but even if they don’t convince thousands of people to abandon their churches and start reading Robert Ingersoll, they’re removing much of the ignorance and mystery as to what atheism is all about. I don’t care if people are atheist or not; I’m only interested in making it so religion doesn’t have such an influence on public policy, so that it’s not accepted prima facie that belief and faith are good things and those without either are to be pitied or feared.

Personally, I would guess that with most people’s tendency to always split the difference between two strong positions (and mistake that for some sort of intellectual independence), atheism will always be a distant second to a sort of weak, mushy, milquetoast agnosticism no matter how eloquent the spokespeople for it.

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