Re-run

The Carrot and the Stick

All of these fatigued and serious faces showed no evidence of despair…they made their way with the resigned expression of those who are condemned to hope forever.
–Charles Baudelaire, To Each His Own Chimera

Human beings are, necessarily, actors who…can be divided…into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.  
–W.H. Auden

What made my dreams so hollow? 
—Tom Waits, The Train Song 

 You will not be cured. Live long enough and the realization can no longer be deferred. The expectation you’ve sustained–that has in return sustained you–that over time, with work and luck, you will make yourself whole, is a fraud. A necessary fraud, but a fraud nonetheless. It is not possible. You cannot “find” yourself, as the widely ridiculed cliché would have it–we ridicule it only because it’s naïve to speak of it, not because we aren’t each guilty of the conceit–because your self is not out there to be found. A thing can’t be both seeker and sought. The eye cannot turn upon itself. And the conscious self reduces down entirely to point of view. 

But we can’t help trying. Each of us, to the extent we’re not simply waiting out mortality eating, shitting, acquiring, procreating–to the extent we’re human–is a philosopher. We want to know, and the only real object of inquiry left is the conscious self. It’s the last mystery. Everything else is biology, physics, evolution. Technical issues.

The only thing setting us apart from the apes–those living, breathing mockeries of the noble idea of man-in-God’s-image–is our ability and need to form this question. So, if the self is one’s unique identity, and everything else is animal function, then the searching for the self, absurd and impossible, is the only self there is. The physical world, while infinitely vast, is infinitely explainable. Scientific questions will always arise, but so will their answers. We can assume every one of them has a solution, whether we’ve found it yet or not. There is only one question that has no answer: Why? In the first place, why?

Man has gone in search of God and he has found the void. The void will not hear our appeals, will neither love nor judge us, will not put things to rights; it is indifference itself. This pathetic lament is the last argument in favor of the existence of God; but I will not be led by an appeal to consequences–no matter how unthinkable the consequences. I will have the consequences, thank you; you can have the appeal. Take your fairy tale, if it sustains you. But take it somewhere else. I retain my sympathy, even some respect, for the religious. But I’m all out of patience for them.

Should I speak only for myself? Okay then. I will not be made whole; I will die as I was born: unfinished, incomplete, ill-adapted and ignorant. I’m okay with this; whatever the case, there’s nothing else for it, and I’m in no hurry to prove this thesis. And anyway, I could be wrong. Now don’t run off; humor me a bit longer. You’ve got nowhere to go, and besides, none of this is what I came to say. My concerns are of the petty, selfish variety–the only honest kind, in other words.

I’ve always been afraid of two things: beginnings and endings. I’m afraid to “take the leap” into new endeavor; I will stay for years in the same physical or metaphorical place purely out of inertia–often in tormented awareness of the fact. But I fear more finishes and finality–at least some part manifestation of my fear of death. I once took a job selling–or trying to sell–cars. I was thoroughly incapable. I couldn’t “close”. Second only to closing in my dread was opening the sale. Introducing myself. This holds mostly constant for me. The only thing I can bear, the only thing that feels natural to me, is the stringing along of a thing.

I want to fiddle in the middle. Better still to go back periodically, not to the beginning, but to some earlier point. Even as a  young boy I recall wanting to go back in time, to correct mistakes, to retrieve something irretrievable–never anything specific. I’ve just always been haunted by the vague suspicion I’ve screwed up. I don’t defend this. I know it’s untenable; I have paid dearly for it. Still, I despise you for not understanding. I despise your practicality. I despise your literal-mindedness, your impatience with all this, your perfectly logical and correct arguments. To hell with your careers, to hell with your ambition, to hell with your concern! To hell with you, closers, and this world of yours!

I say this because there was another, undeniable aspect to my aversion to closing the deal. Something less flattering still. I don’t understand the appeal of bending someone to my will, of seduction–even of women. It repulses me, almost as much as the idea of being seduced. I always feel guilty about it. It is degrading. Maybe it’s really just pride, pathological egoism–I refuse to play along, to compromise. I will not bow, I will not appeal, and I will not act the part. I have a few problems, you see, with my character as written in the script. I want to know who wrote these lines anyway. I will not read them–they are all trite cliché. I’m not feeling it. What about the audience? To hell with them. I didn’t charge admission. I can’t see beyond the floodlights; I’m not sure they’re out there.

Yes, I know–the closing must be done; the cars have to be sold. The seductions, and subsequent screwing, must take place. Somebody has to do it. If no one does it, it won’t get done, and if it doesn’t get done, we’ll suffer for it. But must everyone have join in, for Christ’s sake? Modern life increasingly demands we all be closers–or closed upon. Closers run the world. What about creativity, you say? There are creators–like those who invented the car. But notice: they don’t run things. They have some influence, often very much influence, yes, but they don’t have the last word in this world. It’s right there in the contract: they get a percentage of the gross, but they don’t have final cut. Who does? Politicians? Well, that’s what they call themselves, but what they really are is salesmen. Closers. And what they sell is necessarily corrupted. It’s used by various interests. The world is run by used car salesmen. They even look the part, only somewhat better dressed. Their patter is, if anything, less honest. But this isn’t what I came to say either.

I have given up the ghost–now don’t start, it’s not as grim as that. And some day–it’s inevitable–you will too, if only on your deathbed. You fear this like the onset of dementia in old age, or like falling under the sway of a cult. You see it as death itself. Me, I can’t remember truly caring. I have only wanted to escape it. Now I can’t fake it anymore–yet I have to go on living. The battle has been lost but there is no surrender, no merciful slaughter; no resolution. I must go on fighting–I’m not the type to put a gun to my head. I am too jealous, too greedy, too envious for that, after all my gloating disdain for concern. I’m not leaving this all to you bastards. I might miss something! So I am condemned, not to die but to live.

But I have sinned; that’s the worst of it. Because I have not contributed. It was pride that would not let me step onto the wire. I would not risk it. I have been a free-rider the whole time, the worst kind, the kind who consoles himself with the notion he’s been cheated. But I haven’t gotten away with it; mediocrity is its own punishment. I committed the worst sin of the healthy and sane: I held back. I was a miser, hoarding himself. Recently I read about a “hoarder” who’d been found, dead for weeks, buried in the refuse he wouldn’t part with. That’s how they’ll find me, amidst the half-baked ideas, the false starts, the if-only regrets that are my refuse. For what was I saving myself? What did I expect to happen? I made an assumption that isn’t mine to make–that none of it matters. Now that assumption fails too. What’s the first thing to give with age? Certainty.

Those who act are better, nobler; they operate on faith, on the faith there is meaning, despite all evidence to the contrary. It takes faith to buy in without guarantee. And faith is all we ever had to go on in the end, in the absence of signs.
Ironic isn’t it? But faith is all we have left in the absence of God.

Upsetting

Is the Democratic Party becoming more progressive or just browning? Is there a difference?

The Hill:

 The story of Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley’s “upset” primary victory over 10-term Congressman Mike Capuano is a compelling one: young, progressive woman trounces Democratic establishment icon. The district wanted “change.” (At least, that’s how Capuano tells it.) 

Pressley’s victory has drawn comparisons to democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise primary win over moderate Rep. Joe Crowley in New York. But the comparison misses the mark. And the narrative that Pressley’s victory is a harbinger of a progressive ascendancy within the bluest state’s Democratic Party obscures the truth about the results of last week’s primary election. 

The real story is this: Capuano was redistricted out of office. 

Prior to 2013, Capuano represented Massachusetts’s 8th Congressional District. After the 2010 census, however, Massachusetts lost a seat in the House of Representatives. When former Republican Sen. Scott Brown wrote to the redistricting committee advocating the creation of a majority-minority district, Capuano fired back defensively that the 8th was already “majority-minority.”

Why Scott Brown requested the new district I don’t know, but Republicans have been known to advocate majority-minority districts where it helps them preserve relatively white districts elsewhere. But they’re running out of white people and so are the democrats.

Something tells me the bench won’t be very deep on the Democrats’ side when being a minority is all but required.

Axis: Bold as Hate

Bernie Sanders sees in the global trend toward nationalism an “authoritarian axis”, and proposes a new progressive international front to oppose it in an op ed for the UK edition of the Guardian

 At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the world’s top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 99%, we are seeing the rise of a new authoritarian axis. 

 While these regimes may differ in some respects, they share key attributes: hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and a belief that government should benefit their own selfish financial interests. These leaders are also deeply connected to a network of multi-billionaire oligarchs who see the world as their economic plaything.

It remains a mystery what “democratic norms” are threatened by these elected leaders. Trump’s calling out news organizations by name for their bias remains just that–and has the added misfortune of being accurate. In calling out the press for its treatment of him, Trump calls them out for their history of actively colluding to mislead a public they disdain.

Indeed, the media leveraging Trump’s hostility toward them into an attack on freedom of the press follows a pattern so habitual they don’t see it, the same one by which they make of a thug shot by a cop a national racism crisis, or of a baseless rape accusation a national college rape crisis.

Those of us who believe in democracy, who believe that a government must be accountable to its people, must understand the scope of this challenge if we are to effectively confront it.

 Those of us who voted, who demand our government be accountable, are who you confront.
I would be a lot more impressed with these never-ending screeds about Trump’s threat to democracy if they at least acknowledged the irony of their position. Much less the paucity of evidence democracy or–please!–national unity are more threatened by Trump’s populism than they are by his enemies. the same people who cut Bernie off at the knees when he threatened to make democracy meaningful on the Democratic side. How dare Sanders talk about a threat to democracy after submitting to that and now effectively allying with the same monied and entrenched interests that want to do it to Trump. Bernie can’t see the irony for all the irony.

Megaphone-leveraging: Trump’s imperious persona and combative style are portrayed as authoritarianism, when he’s done nothing authoritarian, and is in fact so isolated he couldn’t if he wanted, or knew how to go about it.

It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States. All around the world, in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to power.

This trend certainly did not begin with Trump, but there’s no question that authoritarian leaders around the world have drawn inspiration from the fact that the leader of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy seems to delight in shattering democratic norms.

Those shattered democratic norms are as fictional as the bed of shattered glass upon which Haven Monahan led his notorious gang-bang.

So let’s hear about this global plot and how it works.

Three years ago, who would have imagined that the United States would stay neutral between Canada, our democratic neighbor and second largest trading partner, and Saudi Arabia, a monarchic, client state that treats women as third-class citizens? It’s also hard to imagine that Israel’s Netanyahu government would have moved to pass the recent “nation state law”, which essentially codifies the second-class status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, if Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t know Trump would have his back.

An Obama Administration certainly would have opposed Israel’s ethnostate law. As for Saudi Arabia, they are embarking on a possibly reckless course of liberalization that the Trump Administration is encouraging. Certainly there’s more to this Vast Rightwing Conspiracy.

Other authoritarian states are much farther along this kleptocratic process. In Russia, it is impossible to tell where the decisions of government end and the interests of Vladimir Putin and his circle of oligarchs begin. They operate as one unit. Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, there is no debate about separation because the natural resources of the state, valued at trillions of dollars, belong to the Saudi royal family. In Hungary, far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán is openly allied with Putin in Russia. In China, an inner circle led by Xi Jinping has steadily consolidated power, clamping down on domestic political freedom while it aggressively promotes a version of authoritarian capitalism abroad.

Russian corruption is not new. Saudi Arabia’s ownership of the country is not relevant to the new nationalism. China’s nationalism is hardly new–and the socialist Bernie completely ignores its origins in the communist party. I agree with Sanders that there’s a global trend toward nationalism in reaction to globalization. But in trying to paint it sinister, he draws comic connections worthy of Alex Jones; Orban to Putin to China to Saudi Arabia…

We must understand that these authoritarians are part of a common front. They are in close contact with each other, share tactics and, as in the case of European and American rightwing movements, even share some of the same funders. The Mercer family, for example, supporters of the infamous Cambridge Analytica, have been key backers of Trump and of Breitbart News, which operates in Europe, the United States and Israel to advance the same anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda. Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson gives generously to rightwing causes in both the United States and Israel, promoting a shared agenda of intolerance and illiberalism in both countries.

Sheldon Adelson as white nationalist. Who knew? It makes one long for a real alliance of affinity between Isreali and American nationalists.

But the notion shared ideology means affinity between nations is wrong: democracies still compete with each other. Chinese nationalism does not naturally ally with American nationalism–quite the contrary. Isn’t a lack of national cooperation the whole problem with nationalism, Bernie?

The truth is, however, that to effectively oppose rightwing authoritarianism, we cannot simply go back to the failed status quo of the last several decades. Today in the United States, and in many other parts of the world, people are working longer hours for stagnating wages, and worry that their children will have a lower standard of living than they do.

Yes. Immigration’s role in this goes unmentioned, and it’s the immigration issue above all that arouses anti-Trump fervor.

Our job is to fight for a future in which new technology and innovation works to benefit all people, not just a few. It is not acceptable that the top 1% of the world’s population owns half the planet’s wealth, while the bottom 70% of the working age population accounts for just 2.7% of global wealth. 

Immigration plays a role in this, no?

Together governments of the world must come together to end the absurdity of the rich and multinational corporations stashing over $21tn in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and then demanding that their respective governments impose an austerity agenda on their working families. 

Austerity programs. Who Imposes those?

It is not acceptable that the fossil fuel industry continues to make huge profits while their carbon emissions destroy the planet for our children and grandchildren.

Oil companies, just because.

It is not acceptable that a handful of multinational media giants, owned by a small number of billionaires, largely control the flow of information on the planet.

Careful there, mister, you’re ‘wading into InfoWars territory. Next thing you’ll say is they conspire against Trump.

Serene Williams

The most important story in the world last weekend was Serena Williams’ public humiliation by the Man after an embarrassing on-court tantrum at the US Open.

I suspect the crackup originates from performance enhancing drugs. Of course she’s also mother to a one year-old and, still, Serena Williams.

That narrative–the new mother and old champion returning to the Open at 36 years of age–was scripted to include a victory. It could have been amended perhaps to her graciously losing to an admiring newcomer, if she had that in her.

Naomi Osaka had every story element on her side. Black and Japanese, born overseas, young and gracious, the first Japanese-born person to win a major tennis tournament. If only she had been fortunate enough to face off against a white Becky, she would right now be toast of the globe, diversity’s latest It Girl, “empowering” young women worldwide.

Most of the mainstream reactions have been sympathetic to or wholly supportive of Williams, barely nodding to Osaka as an afterthought. It’s insipid to point out the double standard, but just imagine a non-black competitor indulging that disgraceful display. Where you now have apologies for Serena ranging from the slightly embarrassed to the totally clueless (NYT to Lady Noire), you would have calls for the brat’s good-hair sprouting head.

If there’s a marketing Team Osaka they have to be wondering what hit them. Serena didn’t just steal her opponent’s glory (“thief”, indeed) on the court, she’s smothered Osaka’s story with her own. All those headlines, accepting at least somewhat Williams’ bizarre charges of sexism (one of the UK tabloids called it a “sexism row”), have pushed out the host of stories celebrating Osaka. These are time-sensitive. Osaka doesn’t get this time back. She doesn’t get to take a victory lap because Serena is throwing a fit on the track.

This is also monetary: endorsement deals depend on an athlete’s exposure. The hype and buzz surrounding Osaka’s dominant win should be the favorable environment in which she signs endorsement deals. Now she comes in with a weaker hand than she deserves; everyone is talking about Serena. The name- and general recognition she earned is not there. Somewhere an agent is doing the equivalent of smashing his racket.

Serena will suffer no significant loss. In fact Nike should be along with an offer soon.

What they’re up against is a distinctly black American phenomenon of religious hero worship. We see it in the social model adopted by hip-hop, where thousands of petty dictators of a sort claw and elbow each other to be the art’s equivalent of an African Big Man.

There is a female equivalent, the Black Queen, which Beyonce exemplifies. The black appreciation of Bey and such as Serena is religious, adopting the fertility rites of the mother cults of cruder levels of social development. Motherhood for them is transcendent, not mere motherhood; they are queen bees. Pregnant Beyonce embraced this theme on stage, appearing as gilded royalty before worshiping supplicants.

Black Americans, without the aid of Western enlightenment, would ascribe supernatural powers to their heroes and talismanic powers to their bling. In the post-religious age they revert to an earlier religious form, of the god incarnate. Where once royalty made men gods, now celebrity does.

Globonationalism

Ernst Roets of the pro-Boer oranization Afriforum addressing South Africa’s congress

…the ANC/EFF’s argument that “ownership of land by whites should be regarded as illegitimate because Africa is the black people’s continent, then [they] should be prepared to join forces with white, right-wing fascists in Europe who argue that Europe is white people’s continent, and that there is therefore no place for black people in Europe.”

The analogy Americans, and the West, still draw is between black South Africans and native Americans. Whites robbing an indigenous group of its land. But the analogy would only be valid if America’s settlers had set up in, say, New England and created a thriving nation drawing in indigenous migrants, rather than expanding across the continent wiping out the scattered nations. A few local tribes would indeed have a grievance having had their land conquered from them, but the rest would not, and they certainly wouldn’t have a claim to the land.

So, are we establishing historic continental privilege? Because I’d like to invoke it right now.

Can South Africa’s seemingly inevitable consolidation as a black ethnostate be of a part with rising ethnic nationalism globally? It’s like water finding its level.

If you argue that white people in Africa shouldn’t receive equal treatment, but that the rights of black people in Europe should be protected, then you are nothing other than a racist hypocrite,” he declared.

Invoking racism is a loser’s game. Even the Boers of Afriforum accede to some land appropriation, with compensation. But the ANC have effectively led black South Africans to believe they, or someone in their family, is going to get a farm. There isn’t nearly enough land to go around, and probably not enough farming ability in the population to properly run those they take. It’s a question of how appeased the average black South African is going to be by the sight of whites getting theirs. If the ANC actually does start snapping up all the farms, the inevitable food crisis is going to make the appeasement of black South Africans harder still. In that case we can count on the ANC blaming the whites, as we spiral on down.

What South Africa needs is a two-state solution.

Whose Treason?

From that notorious anonymous op ed in the NYT

The dilemma — which [Trump] does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. 

Wait a minute. That part about working to frustrate parts of an elected leader’s agenda sounds like democratic sabotage. It’s the opposite, Anonymous says, without noting the irony

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office. 

Well then, which parts of said agenda are you thwarting? Are they anti-democratic or unconstitutional? Is there a secret agenda you’re derailing? What are these extraordinary crimes for which you’re exercising this extraordinary subversion? Because they are the only justification for what you just said you’re doing, or for writing this. 
Otherwise this is treason.

For all the hyperbole, the various charges against Trump–that he’s an autocrat, literally Hitler, enemy of the press–are based entirely on things he’s said. Nothing he’s done, nothing he proposes to do, has been unconstitutional or, for that matter, irrational or extreme.

The ill-informed mobs that turn out to protest certainly don’t understand this, and it’s not clear the respectable Resistance, for all its condescension, understands.

The nation was convulsed with Pussy Hat protests over Trump’s flippant remarks on tape from years prior. He’s been deemed the worst thing to happen to women since…ever.
Sure, his Supreme Court picks are NARAL’s nightmare, but could have been expected from any conservative Republican, and coming from Jeb would not have had such unfortunate side effects as The Handmaid’s Tale on HBO. The left continues to predicate much of its legitimacy on abortion rights, so their theatrics are understandable as desperate political strategy, but the idea Trump represents a unique threat to women is delusional.

His supposed hostility and threat to a free press, the “autocrat” charge, is leveraged from his bluster in exchanges with a press that had abandoned any pretense of objectivity toward him.
As a genuine populist leader–from the elite point of view demagogue–Trump called out a corrupt press; for shilling for Hillary, for gaslighting the public on immigration, trade, war. A press that pushes the social media companies, already complicit, to silence dissidents. But it isn’t that the press is an ass: Trump has done nothing but use the bully pulpit with extraordinary effect.

Of course Anonymous and the NYT have gone to great lengths here; certainly we’ll hear, finally, about Trump’s secret plan to kill democracy and decency

 The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

That’s it. Trump is not on board with the platitudes.

John Nolte in Breitbart:

Even if everything Woodward’s anonymous sources say is true… So what?

Even if everything the New York Times narcissist says is true… So what?

Look at what these failures and liars and grifters are trying to con you with… Because it has nothing to do with illegality, nothing to do with substance, and everything to do with style.

The corrupt establishment is colluding to head fake America into freaking out over Trump’s style while Trump delivers and delivers and delivers on the substance, on things that actually matter.

Trump has an erratic management style. So what? I’m supposed to care he burns people out, dresses them down, demands they do crazy stuff like at long last win one of these endless neocon wars?

So what?

The elite has escalated the war again, seeking to manufacture a constitutional crisis out of tweets and hysteria.