Nostalgia – coming to the DSM V

David Sirota asks: Has America Become a Corporate Police State?

yeah.

riotgrrl wrote in the comments:

I was born in ’63.  I remember when anyone could walk in to a high rise office building without i.d.  I do not remember armed men in black walking around amusement parks and shopping areas.  I do not remember men with machine guns on street corners in downtown Chicago when i moved here in ’97.  I remember when you could leave your house, go to work, school, the gym, the grocery store and the bar and never be on a security camera unless you happened to stopped by the bank.  I remember when they showed the war on the news, and you watched it over the dinner table, and how it changed everyone’s opinion about war.  I remember when people protested in the streets because they couldn’t believe their own government would shoot them if they weren’t violent.  Now we know better.  I remember when  President Nixon broke the law and he got called out for it in front of the whole nation.  And although i don’t ‘remember’ this, i certainly remember learning that when the really bad men (i.e. Nazis) were caught, they were put on trial in front of the world, because it was the law, and it was the law because it was the right thing for civilised human beings to do.

I was born in 1962 and I remember all of those things too. I find now, at 48, remembering quite a bit nowadays about the way things used to be. In fact, I woud honestly say that those memories are starting to really fuck up my mental health.

Having a good memory is a bad thing nowadays. It helps to be able to forget things like freedom of expression, cheap gas, due process, good paying manufacturing jobs, free elections, etc.

Like it or not, I have to remember. Perhaps it’s part of bearing witness – like the people in the woods in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. In any case, I’m having increasing difficulty comparing the present day to, say, 1976. Remember ’76? Wasn’t that fun? The whole Bicentennial adventure? Remember we had just somehow sent Dick Nixon packing and peace, no really, real peace reigned over us. In that year we weren’t bombing ANYONE. I know, I know, so hard to believe but it’s true. We were actually having fun. Employment was still good, we made things and you could work in Detroit and raise a family.

Seems like long ago but historically it was only yesterday.

There are things I used to always do that I don’t anymore. For starters – read newspapers. The first thing I used to do when I moved somewhere was start the daily newspaper. Now I couldn’t muster the will to spit on one. When I was 11 I remember waiting outside on a cold February day to get my copy of The Cleveland Press and read it from cover to cover. Now I wouldn’t take either of the two Pittsburgh papers for free.

It’s not just that they’ve turned into colorful celebrity rags with little real news and no investigative journalism. It’s also they’re poorly written and edited. I run out of patience counting the typos and other reporting errors – and that’s in the print editions. Online many major US papers read like they were written by high schoolers from my era. It’s disgusting and depressing so I don’t even bother anymore.

I used to program the radio in the car to get all the stations in a local area over a broad spectrum of formats. Now broadcast radio stations sound the same from coast to coast and the only thing on talk radio are commercials and right wing idiocy. So I plunk down the money for Sirius. But my wife now has the car with Sirius and I’m left with a car that I don’t want to fit for satellite radio.

So I’ve started doing something else. I listen to the local classical station.

I listen to on the way to and from work. I find it consoling. I never used to listen to classical but I’ve figured out why I do.

It’s because classical music is one of the last great manifestations of human cultural genius available to us today. It reminds us of what we once created, and could create again if we wanted to. But there’s little profit in it.

And then it hit me what else was in play here.

In an era where we’re shuttering public libraries, ballets, operas, symphonies and play houses there are still enough people who are willing to pay out of their own pocket to keep a classical station on the air. They just killed the jazz station in Pittsburgh by the way – given it over to Nationalist Public Radio completely. So one alternative college station and classical WQED are all that’s left.

But the handwriting is on the wall. And the barbarians to whom nothing has a right to exist unless it turns a profit will one day claim even this.

And I realized what it meant to me.

In September 1939 when the Germans advanced on Warsaw, Radio Warsaw defiantly played live  Chopin until an artillery shell ended the music. At that point, cultural life in Poland ended, some would say, until the Soviets left.

I feel that way in America today. No matter where I am, I’ll find the local classical station, if there still is one, and listen until they finally yank it off the air. As long as that music is playing, some shred of the best of us still survives.

But if I think about it too long, I’ll lose my sanity.

US Attacks Libya; America Yawns

Well, it has come to this.

We’re so used to the US bombing and invading everything on earth that the latest “intervention” is barely met with a shrug by a vast majority of Americans, left or right.

Of course the lefty sites and blogs are in high dudgeon but their readership’s reactions are muted. They’ve marched, they’ve bitched in comments’ sections, wrote letters to their Congresscritters and know that it means exactly squat. Why bother when no one is listening anymore?

The righty blogosphere is a little more worked up because (1) there’s no real stated objective to this mess and (2) it’s on Obama’s watch. They’re right on both counts in this case.

We’re launching cruise missiles on a country in the middle of the civil war while saying (1) we’re not trying to kill Ghaddafi and (2) we’re not going to provide support for the rebels and (3) Obama didn’t even bother sending Congress an email memo stating why he was doing this because (4) I’m not sure even he knows why.

This is what is known as ‘humanitarian assistance’ in the bizzarro world of America-speak. I understand that messages such as ‘we’re really not taking sides’ and ‘the UN made us do it’ were written on the sides of the missiles prior to launch. I guess “Dear John” and “Hi There!” are somewhat passe in this new era of sensitive humanoconflictresolution.

On Saturday night I almost felt sorry for CNN. They were doing their best to kindle some kind of enthusiasm for this latest adventure by waving the bloody shirt that has attracted so much attention in the past. There were the striking graphics, the “TARGET LIBYA” name tag and a nifty new dramatic musical score.

There was Wolf Blitzer, trotted out again to give the government version of the attack, waxing rhapsodic about throw weights and such but it seemed as tired as the 19th revival of ‘The Sound of Music” on Broadway. There was no real zip to any of it and Wolf and gang just seemed to be going through the motions. It’s as if CNN decided to put on the costumes of 1990 and 2003 and try to bring back the fun times but their heart just didn’t seem in it this time. It’s like they couldn’t even recite the lines without knowing it was all bullshit. They couldn’t fake it and it showed.

They didn’t have a lot to work with anyway. I would have taken the name of the action “Operation Odyssey Dawn” and tried to work with that. After all, it’s hard taking seriously a military operation that seems like it was named after a stripper.

There just wasn’t any decent footage or breathtaking scenes of Arthur Kent ducking under a table as bombs fell. It’s all been done and perhaps that’s why this has failed to stir the bloodlust of average Americans.

It’s just another day, just another attack and it means nothing as far as the lives of ordinary citizens go. The same Wall Street and government hustles will continue, no real sacrifices will be asked and, unless you have a service member in your family, no one you know has anything to do with it.

Have we really become this inured to war? If so, this is a watershed moment in US history. And not a good one.

Intellectual Masturbation

Yes, I know, I say it as if it’s a bad thing. . .

I’ve been reading some blogs this afternoon, starting with one linked by Glenn Greenwald (written by a ‘burgher even) and some blogs he has linked. There’s a lot of intellectual firepower in these blogs and even I have to read them carefully since I’m not used to reading anyone writing above a high school level of snark.

It struck me that these blogs, like mine, aren’t really being read by anyone outside of their particular hives. Also, that all that intellectual firepower is being wasted, for instance, writing long manifestos about founding a new kinder, gentler libertarianism which will never come to anything.

Why? Because we’re no longer  building anything in this country on any level. We’re destroying things – humane government, the middle class, health care, elementary, secondary and higher education, communitarianism, etc.

Which is why some time ago, I gave up any notion of not only saving the world, but wanting to. First, it’s not worth it to one’s sanity because, second, you’re efforts will be greeted with hostility, even violence. Believe me, I know whereof I speak.

As Carole once sang: it’s too late, baby. It’s like something inside died and I can’t hide and just can’t fake it, you know what I mean?

There’s a lot of babble going on on progressive blogs and message boards about the need to build a third political party truly representative of the American working class. It’s the worst kind of intellectual masturbation because it can’t happen. Unless, of course, you’re counting on someone like George Soros and General Electric funding it. The people no longer have the disposable cash to fund a grassroots political party, let alone make their house payments. So any talk of third parties is that – just talk. The harm it does is raise people’s hopes.

My bottom line is that the country is getting precisely what the country deserves – in fact, asked for. A majority apparently wishes for organized labor to be destroyed and so it shall be. A majority apparently wants to pay no new taxes and fund the star spangled war machine by gutting every single entitlement program no matter whose grandmothers are removed from life support. And so it shall be. Of course, none of them understand the extent they have been conditioned to want those things to happen, but that’s a small matter next to the greater aims of building a society of which both Koch brothers can be proud.

What, in main, we have totally embraced is the ethos of the brute, or, rather, the rugged individualistic brute. If you really want to get trite, we can call it social Darwinism on steroids. But the people who make up a large and vocal percentage of the modern conservative movement fervently believe that they, with their unassailable survival skills, money, education, guns and God, can withstand the social and political cataclysm they’re unleashing.

In the new ‘last man standing’ America, the fittest will eventually get the America they’ve always wanted – white, Christian, capitalist, fascist and broke. But that’s OK – the right people don’t need no stinking social safety net. That’s for the losers that are pulling the country down. Those folks, of course, must be exterminated before Randian America can be realized – that bright shining city on the hill.

Whatever, I digress.

I don’t waste my time dreaming of salvation or writing about it. Mencken knew that eventually the brute would out in human nature, especially in America. It was only a matter a time before the perfect combination of factors came together. And now we are almost there.

I won’t lie – I mourn what is happening despite what I write. Every single day. If I had known nothing other than this era, I may not be so disposed to grieve. But, at 48, I remember too much of the Old America – when we at least gave some lip service to the principles on which this nation was supposedly founded. A society that once made Alistair Cooke’s Omnibus a popular television show (no, seriously, on commercial TV!).

That’s as far into sentimentalism as I will go here. Suffice it to say there is no movement toward a richer intellectual and cultural life in America, in fact, our movement away from those things are actually celebrated.

Like Morris Berman, I basically write this to (1) bitch about a society going mad and (2) see if there’s anyone out there who still ‘get’s it.’ It’s all cathartic and therapeutic or what you will but I harbor no illusions of igniting any movement. That, I suppose, is what makes me incredulous when I find people pouring their heart and soul into writing those aforementioned manifestos, that, maybe, just maybe, might be picked up by HuffPo or The Nation and start a brushfire.

I would think that if Mencken were alive today (1) no one would publish him and (2) he’d probably say ‘fuck it’ anyway and retire to a tar paper shack in Montana with his books, cigars and AK-47.

27FEB11 – Oscar Night!

FLIGHTY Hollywood Type Bemoans Boring Oscars

Julie Gray in Huffpo:

But somehow, a couple of years ago, it hit me — this is not about rewarding good films. This is about rewarding the industry of publicity and hype.

Ya think? And you’re involved in the industry? Gee, I always thought that Hollywood was all about the integrity of cinema, you know, the best films being flicks like Citizen Kane and My Dinner With Andre.

Alas, this flitty follower of film informs us it’s all about hype. Actually, Julie, it’s all about money. The show is boring because the industry is boring and safe, even if most of it’s ‘stars’ are self-absorbed, drug addled twits.

I seriously don’t know why anyone watches it at all. But then again, I have no idea why sentient beings buy People magazine, or any of the other printed matierial staring you in the face at the checkout line. Again, does it really matter to your life which film wins the best picture?

Unlike Ms. Gray, I hate Hollywood. I didn’t used to, but I do now. I suppose it’s partly because I’ve reached a stage in my life where every single film (with perhaps a few glaring exceptions), isn’t made to appeal like me. I’m too old and too intelligent.

And, if I hear one more remark about how Hollywood is somehow ‘liberal’ I’ll explode. I’ve seen two films that were truly lefty in the last few years - Igor and War, Inc., both by John Cusack. Igor was deliciously subversive – a kiddie film (I saw with my son) based loosely on the Presidency of George W. Bush. I almost bolted out of my seat with the “you’re either with us or against us” line in the film. But the giant whooshing sound I heard was the message flying 10 miles above the heads of the parents in attendance, let alone the kids.

Neither film made much money, which is something of the point.

Generally, the real Hollywood shows up in movies like Ironman, which was nothing more than a love letter to the military-industrial complex of America. Seriously, watch it again with a critical eye. How could any right-winger find fault with this film? Little noticed (except by cranks like me) at the end of the film were the posters on the wall – lionizing the arms industry as the guarantor of freedom worldwide. Check it out again, you’ll see it. It’s propaganda at its best.

Another problem I have with movies is that comedies ceased to be funny some years ago. The current dearth of laughs leave me nostalgic for Cheech and Chong. At least they we’re upfront about what they thought was funny.

But the average comedy today (paging Mr. Apatow, the Brothers Farrelly), isn’t funny at all – it’s offensive. These movies are made for manchildren with arrested development who look at women like, well, um, you know – things from which one derives pleasure and pain with the trick being maximizing the pleasure. Women in these films have all the worth and depth of women in Lite Beer commercials. It says something about us, of course.

While at this point the average reader might want to launch a ‘lighten up’ my way, I will again make the point that movies both reflect the mores of the larger society AND help shape them through repeated exposure. And, throughout history and not just in the USA, this has always been the case.

Now I’m not a stick in the mud. I still love old Three Stooges slapstick and any of the Zucker Abrahams Zucker films. Heck, I even laughed at There’s Something About Mary. But that seems quaint now next to the truly dumbed downed offerings which appeal to the most puerile sensibilities. I’d forgive all of the screamingly sociological scatological cultural deconstructionism if the movies were actually FUNNY. But they are not, at least to anyone who hasn’t moved beyond booger, poop and vagina dentata type humor.

But that demographic is the one that spends good money going to the movies in the largest numbers. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Check out Dana Stevens’ review of Hall Pass.

In every review like this (which I generally read only to reinforce my own views), there are always those who defend these films on the basis of elitism, which is fine. I do feel superior to people who like this dreck and I make no bones about it. I don’t know why these people whine about thoughtful reviews of idiotic movies – hell, they’re in the majority after all. I think they doth protest a bit too much, if you catch my drift.

But there is something more here which also annoys me:

Horrified at their husbands’ knuckle-dragging humor and incessant ogling of babes, Rick’s wife, Maggie (Jenna Fischer), and Fred’s wife, Grace (Christina Applegate), consult with their pop-psychologist friend (The View’s Joy Behar), who urges them to consider a “hall pass”—a week off from marriage, during which the guys will be free to do whatever they want with no questions asked. With surprising (and implausible) alacrity, the women agree and repair to Maggie’s parents’ Cape Cod beach house for a vacation with the kids. (As in most contemporary comedies, a high level of material comfort is something the characters in Hall Pass seem to take for granted.)

It’s not just Hall Pass. I know of no comedy produced with predominantly white characters in the last eleventy years that wasn’t set in some mythic upper iddle class Pleasantville paradise. The comedies of John Hughes come to mind here. They seem to have been made with an audience in mind no broader than the students and alumni of New Trier High School but since Americans seem to aspire to that lifestyle as the holy grail, the class issues were ignored.

In short, I see little I can identify with. But then I look at America and see little I can identify with.

But you want to know when I really checked out? It wasn’t the rising tide of nauseating logrolling, the were-oh-so-concerned-about-the-world colossal hyprocrisy, the idiot antics of vacuous ‘stars,’ no it was this:

no, no, no, I just saw it again on You Tube and I’m not going to link it.

2006: best original song – It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.

Yeah, I know. I’m too old, too white, too first world, etc. etc. etc. But as far as I could see, songs like this denigrate women and lower the common culture down even further by glorifying destructive lifestyles. When I saw this, I checked out. I see cultural decline every day when I leave the house, I don’t need it celebrated at the Oscars.

Yet. Ms Gray writes:

There are films that are RELEASED just in time to be eligible for the Oscars. The sober, “important” films. Please.

The Academy Awards need to become relevant and meaningful again. More of a people’s choice, I think. Industry nominations, people’s votes for best pic, anyway.

I agree with her. Let’s just drop the pretense of class, dignity and filmcraft because they aren’t really part of the Hollywood equation anyway. Remember Precious? Remember the ridicule and derision that film received (while making what, fifty bucks)? Won’t see that again. No, let the barn doors open and nominate the most popular films. I’d love nothing more than seeing the Farrelly Brothers accepting the best picture Oscar. It would be a true moment of Contemporary Americana.

Meet the New Boss. . .

From Foggy Bottom to Times Square, you can hear the sighs of relief:

On Saturday, the army said it would uphold Egypt’s international obligations. These include a peace treaty with Israel, whose defence minister has been in touch with his Egyptian counterpart, who heads the military council.

Because, you know, that was the major worry among members of Congress:

The new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said “Mr Mubarak should immediately schedule legitimate, democratic, internationally recognised elections”, adding “the US should learn from past mistakes and support a process which includes candidates who meet basic standards for leaders of responsible nations – candidates who have publicly renounced terrorism, uphold the rule of law, (and) recognise Egypt’s peace agreement with the Jewish state of Israel”.

The M-I complex can breathe easy as well – the hideous head of socialism will not be reared:

Egypt’s new military rulers will issue a warning on Monday against anyone who creates “chaos and disorder”, an army source said. The Higher Military Council will also ban meetings by labor unions or professional syndicates, effectively forbidding strikes, and tell all Egyptians to get back to work after the unrest that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

And all the idiots that claimed this was the second coming of the fall of the Berlin Wall can shut up now. You can read the examples of this idiocy in the rest of Zogby’s column, linked above.

As soon as it becomes evident that the Egyptian Army has no intentions of allowing ‘free and fair elections’ (are there such things in this world?), the US media will go back to wall to wall coverage of Lindsay Lohan’s latest larceny.

I mean, the ‘revolution’ toppled the dictator, the optics were great, the world was made safe for the US and Israel so why ruin a happy ending by sticking around? Americans need to believe in the triumph of democracy around the world and who are we to ruin the illusion?

Need I remind you of Maxwell Scott’s closing quote in that most quintessential of American westerns:

“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Face It – Do You Really Care?

Fine Steph, drag me out for more.

So let’s talk about tomorrow’s exercise in abject futility.

One could yammer on about the coming triumph of the booboisie but what would be the point? I keep having to remind myself (since no one else is listening) that they’ve always been with us since the days of the Know Nothings.

The men and women who are proud of their ignorance and now wear it as a badge of authenticity. The tea party is as American as apple pie and balloon payments. It’s just this time, they’re better armed and the nation isn’t what it once was.

What I mean by that is there aren’t the jobs that used to provide for the masses – jobs that for one brief shining moment in US history allowed GM assembly line workers to buy summer cottages.

It’s all gone now. What seems incredible is that most Americans, although they sense something has been lost, don’t really know how bad it is. Over at the Federal Reserve, like a scene from The Three Stooges, they’re running out of buttons to push. Both quantitative easing (writing checks to ourselves) and a worldwide currency war are in the offing.

I have read speculation of late that the tea partiers will be subsumed into the corporate mainstream the same as the Christian conservatives have been straight-jacketed by the GOP for decades. It may well happen but consider that these same angry people expect ‘change’ every bit as fast as their Democratic counterparts did in 2008.

And at some point, the American people are going to realize that ‘throwing out the bums’ isn’t getting them anywhere. The powers that be know it as well which is why you’re seeing the gradual increase of police state tactics in the USA. The owners are nervous. The anger may be undirected but it can still cause a hell of a mess.

Muting and directing the anger and the aspirations of the American people has been the entire reason for the existence of the two party scam. Like every other confidence game on earth, the mark eventually figures out he’s been had.

I will watch the results tomorrow strictly for entertainment purposes. I hold to no such suckers game as ‘hope’ because the economic engine that backed the centuries long hope of the American people is giving its last wheeze. What follows now is either chaos or farce or perhaps equal measures of both.

This is YOUR American Dream Captain Clauer

Homeowners Association forcloses on Army officer fighting for the sacred rights of capital, or, this is what you get for living in an exclusive community.

Capt. Mike Clauer was serving in Iraq last year as company commander of an Army National Guard unit assigned to escort convoys. It was exceedingly dangerous work — explosive devices buried in the road were a constant threat to the lives of Clauer and his men.

He was halfway through his deployment when he got a bolt from the blue — a frantic phone call from his wife, May, back in Texas.

“She was bawling on the phone and was telling me that the HOA [homeowners association] had foreclosed on our house, and it was sold,” he says. “And I couldn’t believe that could even happen.”

Clauer had a hard time understanding what his wife was saying. His $300,000 house was already completely paid for. Could it be possible that their home was foreclosed on and sold because his wife had missed two payments of their HOA dues?

In many states it is not difficult for an HOA to foreclose on a member’s home for past dues even if the amount owed is just a few hundred dollars.

“I was really in a hurry trying to get home before my family was living on the streets,” Clauer says.

Sold For A Steal

But by the time he got back to Texas, it was too late. The Clauers’ four-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot home had been sold on the courthouse steps for just $3,500 — enough to cover outstanding HOA dues and legal costs.

The new owner quickly sold it for $135,000 and netted a tidy profit.

So captain . . . did you think the fact that you owned an expensive piece of real estate would save you?

Did you think that fighting for your country would save you? Ever been to a VA hospital? Could you not have wrapped yourself in Old Glory and gone on bended knee before your psychopathic neighbors and begged for mercy?

Get it through your star spangled little heads folks – the ONLY thing that matters in the Good ‘Ole US of A is profit, theft, greed and, oh, let’s throw in evil masquerading under the guise of law and regulation.

We now live in a country where “E Pluribus Unum” has been replaced by “Screw thy neighbor.” From Goldman Sachs to BP to some shitty little Texas HOA, it’s all the same.

Ironic is it that while fighting for, what CPT Clauer convinced himself was, the American Dream, back home his ‘dream’ was stolen from him for the sake of a few missed HOA dues payments which should have been forgiven for the family of a man in uniform.

Can you imagine the sheer maniacal glee the members of the HOA must have had when they notices, as a cobra regards a rodent, that the Clauer family had missed a dues payment? Can you imagine how fast they must have raced to the court to file the papers when the family missed the second payment?

And of course, in capitalist America the law is completely on their side. You can’t castigate them in public. Not only would they probably sue, overall the public will take their side – bidness is bidness and rules are rules and Jeebus put us here to screw each other and die with the most toys. This is our sacred system and if you don’t like it, you can take your loser commie ass and go live in Cuba.

We get the country and the society we deserve.

Every day in a perhaps mortally wounded hole in the Earth, 500,000+ gallons of pure crude – the thing we kill for, spills uselessly into the Gulf of Mexico, slowly, relentlessly killing that body of water and, if it doesn’t stop, the 1-2 billion barrels of oil reputedly under the surface with all of those volatile gases, will inexorably poison the entire planet.

Judging by the way we treat both nature and each other, perhaps we have it coming.