Skookumchuck Notebook

An Ancient Debate

I posted this bit of writing on Facebook a few months ago. It is the culmination of an ongoing debate with a Catholic woman named Kelly Ann who I got into a discussion with via my friend Cressida's Facebook page. I haven't been posting much on my blog because facebook has been where I've been posting most of my writing, but if there are any readers out there left I have decided to start posting my facebook writing here too. 

So here it is, the latest installment of an ancient debate.

You know what has struck me in our debate Kelly Ann? I’m I'm struck by the fact that we are both skeptics. Now stay with me here, all I mean by this is that you and I are skeptical about what we *think* each other's opinion is. You assume I believe that reason and intellect can solve the problems of life; which is an opinion you are very skeptical about and with good reason. I, on the other hand, assume you believe organized religion can provide humanity with the insight it needs, which is a belief I am highly skeptical of. However, I think that while this is true to a point, it is also misleading in some ways. 

First of all, while I definitely am skeptical of organized religion, I also know that, historically, attempts at a purely rational and scientific approach to human existence have proven to be disasterous. So I'm with you in so far as I don’t have any ultimate faith in reason either. It’s just a tool, good for some things and not for others. So I have to object when you claim that mine is an “intellectual path.” 

I don’t know what you call my path. Arguably, I’m even worse than a materialist intellectual, at least the intellectual can put their faith in science and inquiry, but me, I have nothing. I’m a double skeptic; I don't trust reason or religion and I honestly do not know what to do about this. (Though in the interest of total honesty I cannot claim that this position has made my life more difficult, on the contrary It has made me happier than I have ever been. But I can't tell you why. It is less stressful, that much I can tell you.)

You, on the other hand, are a believer and (I’m guessing) though you are skeptical of reason, you are not a total irrationalist. You’re faith is not baseless. You do not simply accept your religion on the strength of authority alone, because you (I’m guessing) are not a person of blind faith. I get the impression that you have had deep personal experiences that are the basis of your beliefs. You claim to have come to know real live full-on Truth in a way that is beyond reason and words, but just because it cannot be proven in a labratory or courtroom dosen’t make it any less true for you. You know what you do because you’ve simply *come to see the truth of it.* Full Stop. And that *really* is perfectly fair as far as I’m concerned, and I mean that. I have no expectation that I could ever convince you otherwise. I’ve just seen too much of this kind of disagreement to think it can be solved by pursuasion.

In a way you have the advantage; you at least *Know* something. Like I said before, I have no wisdom on the subject of god, I simply couldn’t pronounce on the subject yea or nay. And that is why talking to people who do genuinely  *Know* stuff is interesting to me. You have some apparently solid stuff to stand on, and all I have is a bunch of reservations. 

Up to here we have no problems. The the real difficulties all stem from the fact that your innner vision, personal gnosis, spiritual conviction (however, we want to characterize it) can’t be the basis of *my* (or anyone else’s) belief. Each individual’s belief is their own problem, and some of us just haven’t seen the same vision you have. But, I’ll tell you this much, I’ll joyfull believe whatever turns out to be The Truth, but I can’t do that until I *Know* The Truth, which I don't. 

However, not knowing the absolute Truth doesn’t make me a sociopath or a nihilist. As it turns out, my reservations are the source of many of my biggest moral concerns. One of them goes something like this: “You, George, are just a human, and real Knowledge seems to so often be uncertain and provisional, therefore you ought to be careful about judging and condeming others.” (Note that I do not say “don’t condem or judge” just “be careful” about it. And I’d add that I also believe that when I do judge or condemn, I should take full responsibility for it. If my judgement goes wrong I can’t blame any faulty teaching or bad institution, in the end it was me that took the risk of decision, and decision, for me, is always a risk - at least until I come to know the real Truth of existence, should I be so lucky.) 

People who believe in revealed (traditional, institutional, organized, biblical) religions, on the other hand, say something similar about their moral concerns, but with one important difference, and that goes (hypothetically) something like this: “You, Abdul, are just a human, and knowledge is always uncertain and provisional, so you must submit yourself to the Truth of the Koran and the Imam. And because homosexuality is an abomination to Allah it is your duty slaughter your brother because he is gay. You must do this regardless of how you feel about it or whether or not it seems right to you. The moral thing for you to do is to obey Allah, now get out there and clean up the streets. The command to do so is, after all, the absolute truth.” (Actual story, New York Times Wed. April, 8, On the massacre of 20 gay men in Sadr City, Iraq.)

In this context, religious belief seems pure nihilism. It may not be relativism, but it is just as bad as the nihilism any relativist can be accused of: Relativists never think about right or wrong because they don’t believe right and wrong exists, while millitant religionists on the other hand never think about right or wrong, because they are trained not to think or question. They are trained only to take orders.

Now, I believe, no, strike that, I *Know* that, you, Kelly Ann, find the massacre of homosexual men in Sadr City as horrible as I do. You wouldn’t be friends with Cress if you did not. 

But, what I really truly need to understand is how *you* draw the line between right and wrong. That is, if the Catholic Church ordered a huge burning of withches, or gays or Jews or Protestants (and they have done this in the past and the Bible is also full of stories of massacres carried out in the name of moral obedience to God’s Truth too, so it isn’t out of the question that you might face such a choice.) by what standard would you decide it is time to ignore the institution and the holy book and say, “No this is one of those times in history when the Church has become utterly corrupted. The institution is wrong in this case and I dissent!” 

Your dissent cannot be based on Church authority. In such a case it can only be based on your own personal judgment. Even if you decide to come up with your own interpretation of scripture to support your moral position, it is still *your* moral position and not the truth of your religion, proper. So my question is how do you know when to dissent from religious authority? 

In your reply to me you said:

“And, of course, for me there is ultimate truth, none of the relative 'your truth is as good as mine'. Truth is not a matter of opinion, it's truth. Ya know?” 

Believe it or not, I agree that Truth is not a matter of opinion and I also agree Truth can’t be relative; the very word ‘Truth’ by definition means something that is not relative. But what good is that truism if I have no means of truly Knowing the capital T Truth?

And this is the reason I’m very interested in all those people who seem to have a means of *Knowing* and do get *Big Ultimate Truth* from their religion: maybe they actually do Know something. Maybe I should take their claims seriously. But, to summarize my above observations, I’ll point out that religious people claiming True Knowledge seem to break down into two types: 1. true believers who do what their religion tells them whether it looks right to them or not. (They do not trust their own reason and judgment, they trust bibles, prophets and priests.) And 2. People who take their religion as a loose guideline, but feel free to disagree with it when and where they feel it is being too extreme or orthodox or liberal or conservative and so on. Both types have probably had religious experiences that have convinced them of their beliefs, but they have interpreted those experiences in very different ways. The first type of religionist can't even discuss the matter. Communication ends there. God said it, they believe it, that settles it. However, you *can* talk with the second type, but their position confuses me. They consider their ‘religion’ sufficient moral authority for most things, but on some things they consider *themselves* the moral authority. And I have to ask where they derive derive *that* authority from? 

I’m asssuming they derive that authority from the same place I get mine. That is to say, their best guess about what is Truly Right. So, of the loose guideline religionist I must ask the following question: If, when push comes to shove, we are doing all the difficult decision making and having to take responsibility for the failures, why not cut out the middle man? Why can’t we think and talk and work it out without the priests and sacraments and strange dietary prohibitions and heresies and weird obsessions with human sexual activity and so on? 

In short, if we already consider our own judgment more authoritative than religion, why do we need to resort to organized political religion at all? There are other religious options, you know, ones that encourage us to take personal responsibility for the state of humanity and not foist it off on god. You can still pray, but why not make the informed discernment and careful judgment program an explicit part of our religious commitments as well?

This seems important because we humans do seem to be F’ing it up royally, and all the conflicting accounts of GOD appear to be doing more harm than good. And there is no search and rescue squad to come airlift us out of this woods. _*We ARE the search and rescue team.*_. If god were the authority he claims he is, shouldn’t he get in there and use those miracle powers to destroy or at least provide sudden enlightenment, (like he did for St. Paul,) to all the people who follow the "false" religions so we don’t destroy ourselves and the planet arguing about it?

Whew, I didn’t think that would get that involved. If you read this far I thank you.

Legislative Union Busting

The auto industry goes and the recession turns into a depression. Right? The auto industry goes and some of the the major labor unions, the one institution powerful enough to *somewhat* balance multinational corporate power, lose their one last major source of revenue. That is, unions effectively disappear. Oh, they'll be a few left, but they will be even more in retreat. Senate republicans would like, and I will not soon forget this because they were the first words I heard this morning when the alarm went off, "auto workers in America to take a pay cut to make their wages proportional to foreign auto workers." The claim is that this will make us more competitive. I have for many years feared the rhetoric of "competitive labor markets" because it means that in order to be competitive the American worker must accept the wages of workers in Indonesia or Bangladesh or China. Why, I wonder, do these dyed in the wool patriots think Americans should accept the labor standards of some country? Here's a bumper sticker for you: Globalizing Labor Is Globalizing Poverty. Let's say it again: Globalizing Labor Is Globalizing Poverty. Though I have to say I applaud the sophistry that makes labor markets in places like Laos seem like a goal to achieve rather than a horror to avoid. That it happens to be Japan's labor standards in this particular case does not matter, once labor is unregulated and our entire yearly tax revenues are owed to other countries because of enormous debt, what's the point of even having a government? Oh, right, many of us don't want a government, I keep forgetting. Look, libertarians, your about to get played. This is not a plan that will in any sense make you more free. We'll be governed anyway, it just won't be a democratic form of government. I think I'm beginning to get the picture though: Once auto manufacturers fail, unions may be brought down, and if you add an economic depression, voila, the perfect storm. It's elegant, really. I'm not certain of much but I am absolutely sure the prospect of starvation will make the American worker very competitive. We should think of it as a form of training, it will make us as competitive as all the other starving, desperate people in the world. Charming. And lastly, look, I don't especially like labor unions, they can be corrupt and awful. If they got too much power they would be as evil as corporations. We shouldn't probably even have them. But we shouldn't have corporations in their current form that allows them to accrue so much power, either. So I'll quit supporting unions when the government revokes the corporate charter of corporate enterprises that commit crimes like Exxon, Bechtel, Halliburton.

On Not Dying

Regarding the Hospital Visit of 12-2-08 This may not seem an entirely reasonable place to start, but I’m pretty sure my brain has re-entered a fairly normal (what ever that is) range of function, so please just stay with me here, it’ll all make sense shortly. Question: Does Fresca (the soft drink) taste like Grapefruit? I really would like to hear responses on this one. To me Fresca just tastes like Fresca in the same way, TAB, the other diet drink so many of our mothers drank, only tastes like TAB. Fresca is citrus fruitish, sure, but in a red dye #2 New Jersey chemical plant sort of way, or so I assumed. By now I’m assuming you are wondering, and quite reasonably, what the hell grapefruit has to do with it. Well, if you were to google the words “medication” and “grapefruit” you will find a large body of research on a chemical called furanocoumarin which interacts with a specific enzyme in the intestines to cause trouble, (it’s always an enzyme isn’t it?) I’ll let the Harvard Family Health Guide give you the short version of the technical specifics for all my neuro-chemically savvy friends like Jeni. “Grapefruit’s culprit chemical does not interact directly with your pills. Instead, it binds to an enzyme in your intestinal tract known as CYP3A4, which reduces the absorption of certain medications. When grapefruit juice blocks the enzyme, it’s easier for the medication to pass from your gut to your bloodstream. Blood levels will rise faster and higher than normal, and in some cases the abnormally high levels can be dangerous.” And, in the case of my particular medication, dilantin, make you crazy, blind, lame, panicky and shit scared and that’s before it goes for the lethal stuff like you heart and breathing. My particular adventure began at some point fairly recently when, for whatever reason, I started drinking Fresca, which I discovered yesterday has a good deal of real grapefruit juice in it. It’s worth noting that I take an unusually large dose of dilantin because I happen to metabolize the stuff quickly and it takes a lot to get me to a therapeutic dose which is somewhere between 16 and 21 somethings (unit of measure for blood level.) So this explains the suddenness and intensity of the symptoms I’ve been experiencing, culminating in yeasterday’s whopper. I’ve felt pretty weird at times over the last few weeks, but when you already have some spooky neurological shit going on it makes it difficult to know when to sound the alarm. There are many things that happen in one’s mind when this sort of thing happens to you. Past a certain point, of course, I thought maybe I should talk to my neurologist. I didn’t have an appointment until January and I called and requested an earlier appointment if one opened up, though it took me awhile to do this. I think this is because, in the back of one's mind there is resistance to this because, well, you already know something is very wrong and you just don’t want the bad news legitimated. (Incidentally Dr. Greg Lipschutz, is a wonderful doc, and I have had some real shit-bird neurologists. And his nurse Ellie, is great too and plays a vital role in my not deadness, which I will explain shortly.) I feel like a bit of an ass for allowing this feeling of dread to influence my decisions: friends please, if you can’t keep your balance and are seeing double a good deal of the time, find a buddy and have them drive you to the Emergency room now, not in two weeks when you are staggering and careening off parking meters on Bay State Rd. and basically taking leave of your senses. I know Deb knew something was up and I told her a bit about it, but went to fairly great lengths to hide it. This too: she trusts me not to be a fucking idiot. However, on the other hand, you don’t want the person you love to have to worry about mysterious symptoms that keep inexplicably disappearing and seeming to have gone away altogether. The long and the short of it is I thought I was toast. Then I thought I was just being paranoid. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Every second Tuesday Deb and I drive in to town. Fortunately, yesterday was a second Tuesday. When I got out of the truck I was having incredible difficulty keeping my feet and my visual field was pitching enough to cause fairly significant sea sickness. It was an order of magnitude worse than anything previous, I could not have walked without Deb’s assistance (she’s strong, it’s hot) When we got to Deb’s office, I called Dr. Greg and he wasn’t in, but the receptionist got ahold of him and he called me back fairly quickly. The possibility of medication toxicity hadn’t even occurred to me, I just thought I was dying or had MS or something. Toxicity was his first guess and he had me come to Cambridge Hospital to have my blood taken. Now at this point I’m doing a bit better and I can walk without assistance so I feel a little less nervous. So Deb takes me in and I get the blood drawn and we are ready to go, but Deb has he presence of mind to wonder aloud, "is there anything we should do?” Though I was operating on impulse power it occurred to me that Dr. Greg’s assistant Ellie might be able to help, and the office is in the building a few floors up. Now, Ellie, is one of those people I like more or less immediately and we get on fairly well. She’s efficient but not overly nurse like, and pays attention to the human details. I thought she would probably take the time to give us a bit more to go on while we waited for the test results. She took a look at me and instantly registered that the situation might be a bit more extreme than anyone thought. It turns out the Deb’s intuition that we ought to get more information and Ellie’s intuition that something was serious made a very large difference. Ellie couldn’t do much but she put a stat on my blood work, it had been priority but she bumped it up. Deb and I got lunch and we went back to campus. She dropped me at the office and went to park the car, but before she could even get back I got the call from Dr. Greg. “Um, hi George, yeah we got your blood work and your dilantin level is at 48. So we’d like to get you in for an EKG.” You know it’s funny, there is that tone a doctor uses when he does not want to alarm you because alarming you could kill you, but he does want to get you hooked up to an EKG machine before your heart more or less explodes. Ok, 48 is so toxic it isn’t even on the chart and there was reason to believe it could still be climbing because I’d had my morning dose only a little while earlier. I had wondered why my heart was pounding, I thought it was just the overall intensity and stress of the day. I started taking very deep breaths and called Deb. She drove back to the office where her trusty second in command Becca had escorted me to Comm. Ave. so I could hop in and go. We got to the hospital, I was treated, I was able to lower my own heart rate and blood pressure myself so I didn’t have to take any unpleasant purgation drugs (shout out to Patanjali for passing that yoga practice my way.) I was observed for some time and sent home, Deb and I both fulla Joy. I’m not going to die. I’m not even damaged. Once again I’m grateful for the luck, and the family (chosen family and regular) in my life, you have no idea how I love you.

er, um, I will die eventually, of course, it just looks like my life expectancy has returned to normal.

A case in point...

Just look at this: "An estimated nine million new voters have registered for the hotly contested November 4 election, and the Obama campaign says Democratic registrations are outpacing Republican ones by four to one. The McCain campaign contends that an untold number of those registration forms are false and warns that illegally cast ballots could alter the results of the election and undermine the public's faith in democracy."

In my last post I pointed out the peculiar tendency of Republican campaign strategists to use a kind of reverse projection technique for manipulating discourse. One common version of this is to spend ungodly amounts of public revenues in questionable ways, but accuse your opponents of being tax and spend liberals. Here again in the quotation above is another good example of the reverse projection technique. This one involves doing very questionable things pertaining to elections and then accusing those you cheat of doing the very same thing. That is, create the impression that *everyone* is a nihilistic power hungry fraud just like you are, which makes you perfectly justified in doing what you do. This quietly suggests to your partisans that your crimes are a form of self-defense. And in doing this you create the impression that the cynics are right, and lying and cheating is normal, and that anyone with any power got it by nefarious means. After all it's no more than good honest folks *have had* to stoop to in order to remain good honest folks. "Just look at the corrupt mess liberal democracy has wrought! What we need is a leader!" Here's a tip, should you start hearing explicit talk of that kind on CNN it is time to flee the country, if you hear it on NPR don't stop to pack a bag. Seriously, just get out. It's not happening yet and there is still time to turn this ship around, mind you, but should you start hearing that kind of talk get out while the getting is good. It bears repeating. Should you hear the following formulation, run for your life: democracy is fatally flawed + we need a real leader/ this guy (and it's always a guy) is the great leader we've been waiting for = flee. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this particular application of the reverse projection tactic (election fraud hoaxes) is not designed help reach the goal of being elected to political office. It is, I think, a very well orchestrated attempt to create mistrust and disorder. The neo-conservatives, scoop Jackson democrats and Lacud party operatives (if you look at the venn diagram comprised of members of these three groups the results are fascinating) behind all this are actively trying to bring down democracy in this country. Their goals are not policy related in any way we commonly understand policy, though that fact is nearly impossible to prove, which is part of the brilliance of the movement. What I want to point out is that this election fraud brouhaha is not the sort of thing you bring up if you want to win elections, it is rather the sort of thing you do if you want to create two permanently polarized enemies who believe each other to be totally untrustworthy. If you want to win elections you cultivate trust in the electoral process. Period. No one wants to win a disputed election. Increasingly, people are viewing the loss of an election as the loss of their way of life, and not a mandate for one set of policy initiatives over another with the overall goal being the *freedom to pursue one's way of life*. What I'm suggesting is that many people have been actively trying to fuel this dynamic of polarization and mistrust. I suggest that this is far worse than anything *ANYTHING* at issue that can be rendered in the form of a "talking point." Anyway, that is about as Robert Anton Wilson as I get. Just remember the bad magic is in the words. Demand that political statements have clear meanings. It is important to notice when a word is being used in more than one sense. Pursue every equivocation. Tedious, I know, but easier than having to flee the country. BTW, on an unrelated note; what the fuck is a "talking point" anyway? Is it a topic of discussion, a policy suggestion, a formal argument??? If so why not call it those things. I think we in the media consuming audience are intended to think the use of this kind of terminology makes us a little bit more in the know, like we're sharing info with real live media professionals and political insiders. But, in reality I think this usage is intended to make the people one is bullshitting think they are smart. This is a well known con artist ploy, make the mark feel like he is in on the deal, make the mark feel like a real sharp guy. Make sure he knows the talking points... But keep your real intentions hidden.

Silly Man Reads Too Much News, Has Conniption. Wife Says More Ranting To Come.

Joe Wurzelbacher: American Dick.

The following quotation as well as a recording of the exchange between the two men (Barak Obama and Joe "dick" Wurzelbacher) can be seen here. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7673170.stm

"After the debate, [noted dick] Mr Wurzelbacher told CBS News that being mentioned in the campaign was "surreal" but that Mr Obama's answer to his question had left him feeling uneasy.

"I've always wanted to ask one of these guys a question and really corner them and get them to answer a question... for once instead of tap dancing around it.

"And unfortunately I asked the question but I still got a tap dance... Almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr," he [noted dick Joe Wurtzelbacher] said."

Problems with this:

1. Mr. Obama "tap dances like Sammy Davis Jr." 

Um, WTF?! Just consider *that* remark for a moment. 

2. This is a very well played use of media on the part of the McCain campaign. (yes, I'm saying I really do think Joe Dick was given his lines.) In this kind of situation Obama is required to explain his entire plan but noted dick, Joe Wurtzelpenis is not, he can simply demand that his needs be met while Obama must balance the needs of many with those of Joe Dippensticken. Joe's needs, on the other hand, can be construed any way necessary to get the desired effect, in this case the desired effect is: uppity, over educated, elite, black man screws over honest salt of the earth, hard working white guy.  

3. It appears king Joe Kockenschtuppen takes no thought whatever of the larger community he is a part of and the needs of that community. In fact he seems to have no idea whatever that his success in business is contingent upon a larger community full of other solvent people who need to have some plumbing done. 

Those the newly nationalized insurance companies and banks we just bought are going to cost us unfathomable amounts of money. We all gotta help pay for that if we want the goose to keep laying those morally questionable golden eggs. Joe Assendoofen, does not understand that no matter how hard working he is, if we fall into another great depression people will put their bathroom remodel plans on hold for a good ten years. And should that happen, I suspect mindless Mr. Dickendoozer will blame the most convienent scapgoat he can find for his sudden loss of business, (an actual tap dancing black man, perhaps?) 

He will behave this way because he is a selfish ass, hard working, maybe, but lacking any knowledge of, well, anything beyond his dickish little self and his bullet headed little world. It would not be difficult for noted dick, Joe Schlongendoinker to obtain the knowledge he lacks, as he is not stupid. If he were merely stupid this would not be so upsetting. He is not stupid (he's no genius either, mind you) he's simply incapable of thinking of anyone one besides his dick swinging self and this is the problem. Perversely, it is for this reason he doesn't really know what his own interests, politically or otherwise, actually are. It is not stupidity but selfishness that makes it easy for various demagogs to manipulate noted dickhead, Joe Assenheimer. He's the perfect mark for the Karl Rove's of the world. Just tell all the Joe Dickenwankers out there that they could have everything and be a big rich man if it weren't for the liberals or immigrants or Jews etc. keeping the prosperity down.  Sad, because democracy doesn't work when people think like Joe Wurtzelfucker. 

3. Obama's answer to noted asshole, Joe Wurtzelstuffer was clear consise and well reasoned. There was no equivocating or dodging or even any rhetorical flourishes. Really, watch it and tell me. Whether Obama was right or wrong we could debate, I guess, but if Obama's answer was not clear to Joe Wankenhammer, then perhaps we ought not to spend any more time thinking about his great struggle to understand fiscal policy, which seems to amount "to no taxes for me ever." We could call it the Joe Wackendrivel doctrine. 

10-17-08

This just in: 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7675278.stm

4. Turns out Dick Fuffendoinker doesn't even have a plumbers licence and owes a few grand in back taxes - god knows how much to his bookie. Oh, and it turns out his name is Sam. 

Now, this... this is scary. Obama's plan would be directly beneficial to this monumental ass. Apparently Joe, um, I mean Sam Dickenkugel subconsciously pines for more of the very taxes he appears to be so incensed about. Does he think he doesn't deserve a tax cut? ...Or maybe he just needed some quick cash, but let's leave that possibility aside for the moment.

Maybe the problem is that Sammy Dippensticken thinks the schlubby ordinary version of himself he looks at in the mirror every morning doesn't deserve a tax cut because he hates that self for not being rich. He's advocating for the rich self that will one day run the show; the self that will win the big game and give the big kiss off speech that finally puts it all in perspective which sets the stage for him to punch his old boss in the face and... cut to tropical beach, blue sky, drink w/umbrella, steel drum music, hot babe, maybe that chick who does the news at the whitehouse, oh yeah, the press secretary, what's her name? 

It's Dana Perino, Dick. 

And fade to black. 

What I take from all this:

The tone of political debate is completely manipulative, it's like dealing with someone who has a personality disorder. For example in the debate wednesday evening McCain expressed concern that the democrats might institute 'one party rule' what with Obama supporting all those liberal policies democrats seem to like so much. Hmmmm. What a whopper of a desperate move. "One party rule?!" Check the worn out cold war rhetoric on old Johnnie McCain!!! I bet he could still pull off a leisure suit too. But that, of course, doesn't mean he should do that either. 

This, friends, is a manipulation technique: do some unethical thing (i.e. eight years of disastrous one party control, unconstitutional levels of executive authority, installing conservative supreme court justices, mismanagement and conflict of interest everywhere you look et cetera) and then accuse the person you just victimized of intending or doing the very same thing. It is a form of reverse projection that abusers and borderline personalities use to make their victims feel crazy. They hit you in the face and tell you if you would just stop trying to harm them they wouldn't have to resort to violence. 

"But? But I didn't..." 

In the end you have to spend huge amounts of effort clearing yourself of something you didn't do before you can even address the crimes of your accuser, and somehow the conversation just...  never...  gets...  there.....

Silly of Obama to try to refute McCain by claiming he has bi-partisan intentions. Why try to claim he intends to 'reach across the aisle?" The right answer would be best framed in the form of a question. Senator McCain "What aspect of foreign or domestic policy isn't at this moment a pile of smoking wreckage owing to barely intelligible republican policies?" Then tell the cranky old man that he'd be more than willing to support republican policy initiatives as soon as they come up with something that is worth supporting. I think that'd be enough.

Boys will be boys...

I hate to have to get into it, but I've been thinking about the fact that Wall Street and the financial markets in general are all run by emotionally underdeveloped men with a 'gotta win the big game!' mentality. I was listening to a slate podcast the other day and some twitty little thing chirped optimistically to the effect that she believed these smart guys would (close paraphrase) "find a way to take advantage of all this turbulence and make ton of money." And that somehow that would "get us out of all this."  I don't have time to listen again and get the exact quotations, but check it out here. 

This kind of thinking is epidemic, and very dangerous. People don't seem to understand that this kind of clever perseverance is just what the 'smart guys' have been doing for decades now and if they succeed again with yet another smart coup we will have an even worse problem down the line. It will only temporarily stave off the collapse and make it even worse. 

I thought the culture commentators on slate were supposed to be 'smart' too, so what gives. Also, notice that how our cheery little journalette assumes it will be some 'smart guys' who will solve everything, and that she need not really trouble her pretty little head about it. Ok so feminists, time to regroup, ok? "Help me Princess Leia you're my only hope."

This also reminds me of the sort of silly non-think I've been hearing in the debates. The non-think comes from both sides, but the side with the long history of supporting dangerous deregulatory policies seems to be resorting to this more than ever. This approach suggests that we should accept the notion that everything will be just fine if we only have a bit of FAITH in god, smart guys, the honest hard working American, Joe Six Pack, our fighting men, the financial markets, faries or what the fuck ever rhetorical myth worked in the most recent focus group; as long as we don't think about it but have lots of enthusiastic FAITH it will all work out, just like in the movies. 

The dance goes like this:

Democrat suggests policy alternatives. Then republican mouths mindless high school forensics dodges and peppy rhetoric about the ingenious and hardworking American worker. "Don't worry the smart guys will save us! It'll all be great! These dark times will only prove our strength of character! Don't listen to the liberal panty waists, they eat pork from barrels, I'll make them famous, burble gurble upr belch frowgog smak frog fromog wocka wacka wocka wacka...

Here, on the other hand, is a suggestion from a woman quietly being sane and reasonable in Merry old England.

HEADLINE: ADOLESCENT DICK SWINGING IN GLOBAL FINANCIAL MARKETS FUCKS OVER ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING

Biosphere, women, children, poor and innocent to suffer a majority of the consequences

Haven't checked in lately, but boy howdy there sure is a lot going on. Woke up the other day to realize that the nihilists really truly are at the controls. Oh, sure they have some weird marketing ploy or half-assed alibi to justify the indulgence of absolutely every thoughtless conceited impulse they (the nihilists) happen to have: i.e. "Everything is ethical if it is done at GOD’s mysterious prompting.” Or the mirror image of this Abrahamic nonsense: "It's ok to do whatever you want in the interest of winning." Corollary: "If the rules get in your way; change them to suit your purpose."

I have to quote Rich here because he nailed it so concisely:

"Anyway, today Lehman Bros. went tits up, and various economists are advising cautious optimism, trust the smart men who are running the show, and try not to be bitter about the deregulation of the banking and mortgage system that brought all this about. That particular 1999 travesty overturned the strongest piece of Depression-era protection (the Glass-Steagel act) we had left, and no matter how many people at the time cried foul, it was a fait accompli."

Check in to this, read up, it’s important. Just as soon as the last of the depression era voters were dying or slipping into dementia, wealthy idiots simply changed the rules back to the way they were before the last disaster. They bought senators and changed the rules, the Grandsons of those we bailed out back in the depression and many times before put everything back in place just like it was before. More from Rich.

"Ever since the wall between banking and mortgage came down, the industry felt they could take increasingly crazy risks, and promise even more stupid things to their customers, who had been told that basically, you can use your house as an ATM. And Wall Street piled on the dirt. We were so busy artificially driving up the stock prices of often non-existent and certainly non-proven web-based businesses that it was bound to fall apart, as boom markets always do. Speculation Destroys Markets, as I always have said, although like guns n' cancer, it's not like it's a new thing, and will probably be with us always."

Important thing to remember is that this wasn't just irresponsible consumers unwisely taking on too much debt, becoming over extended and getting foreclosed on. That we could handle, it was the speculating that did the damage. I remember reading about a thing called CFO's or "opaque packages." Masses of bad paper so complex it takes mathematicians weeks to even estimate their value. This is a means of detaching the value of the debt from the price paid for it. For example, my own debts have changed hands five times in the last 7 or so years. Each time that happened they were sold for more money. In many cases these debt packages are actually being sold for more than the amount of the loans they represent. Rich again:

"Say it again: Speculation Destroys Markets... You start artificially inflating prices, there will be a fall. Especially since those doing the inflating were not actually concerned with the long-term well being of the market and its clientele; they were only concerned with profit, and that poisons things. I don't mean that in any holistic sense, either. I literally mean that you grow economies to grow and sustain communities; not profit is bad.

So we're at a place again where people's 401k's are disappearing, pension funds dismantled, people defaulting on house and car loans, and the market keeps talking cheery bullshit. The big lending houses (and pretty soon, insurance companies) are getting bailed out, the Chinese own all of our debt that isn't owned by India or Saudi Arabia...And why the fuck is the Stock Market even legal? To put it shortly, there's a boom and bust cycle at work in every market, and their whole job seems to be to make people forget that little fact. If you or me had so routinely driven the U.S. economy in the ditch, we'd be in prison right now, and rightfully so."

That is: profits and markets are only good if they serve some clear well defined end, not an ideological glorification of self-interest (however, 'enlightened' said self interest may be.) 

Ideology killed millions and millions of people in the 20th century and near as anyone can tell, none of it did us much good. I suggest that he reason for this is that ideologies don't have clear concrete goals, only abstract 'values' to be implemented regardless of the human cost. "Everything will be good and right and true once", oh, let’s say, "the proletariat owns the means of production," to take one famous example. The problem here is that no one had any clear idea what good and right and true might actually look like, but it is assumed we will all know once the great sky-pie is manifested. Remember now, it doesn’t matter which sky-pie it is, National Socialism, evangelical christianity, racial purity, Maoism, Alaskan Separatism or any other nationalist bullshit, it’s the same logic in all cases: once people get high on ideology they tend not to consider horrific results a problem as long as it is the fruit of correct ideology. The weird neo-conservative anti-government libertarianism (anarcho-capitalism is another fine word for it) that is killing us currently is much the same thing and could well yield the biggest humanitarian disaster yet if we don’t wake up soon. Problems arise when people lose track of the point of the exercise and start thinking about the 'end of days' or the 'golden future' or some such messianic or milennial fantasy. Let me hum a few bars of this one for you:

All will be well once we pare down government to the minimum. In addition to making us manly again, this will confer on us true freedom ( in some apparently metaphysical form) to be what ever kind of loner cowboy we want to be, packin' whatever kind of tactical rocket launcher we prefer. 

You see, son, whatever comes to be once we get rid of all of these, effeminate government regulations, soft headed environmental concerns and oppressive taxes, will be by definition good. I don't know what that will look like, mind you, but you just gotta have faith (read: belief without evidence) because it will be really really great! Everything you see around you right now. All that is wrong. So lock and load. That's all got to go if we are to usher in the new dispensation

This is killing us. I'm not exaggerating.

We can't afford another major ideological struggle. If we want our markets and profits to do something for us we have to specify some simple humble little goals. It isn't as exciting as working toward some grand metaphysical manifestation, but hey, you can do that on your own time. As for the public agenda lets keep it to simple stuff like balanced budgets and stable economic cycles everyone can participate in. Let's minimize the desperation and suffering, say (it's not just a bleeding heart compassion thing either, desperate people are very very expensive) provide education, build a nation with bridges that don't collapse and an interstate system to truck those goods around. And, hey, since we pride ourselves on ingenuity, how's about we get us some technologies that make this program sustainable, healthy and whatnot. I guarantee you such technologies will be very profitable. Build it and they will come. Come?  Pal o' mine, they're already lined up down the street.

Somehow we have chosen not to do these things in the name of 'freedom.' Will somebody please tell me what this kind of freedom this is, because I am baffled? Define the word freedom for me, give me something... anything. I don't think that word means what these guys think it means.

But, it looks like we are a little too far down this chute to get out now. I hope this barrel is sturdy because we're going over the edge of Niagara fucking Falls.

These items too:

Looks like some evil fuck in China put a chemical very similar to cyanide in huge quantities of the powdered milk supply. Several babies are dying and it looks like some of that milk may have found its way into chocolate and cookies made in Europe. Bravo! Why was this chemical put in the milk? I'm glad you asked: to artificially increase the protein count in nutritional tests. See, desperation is expensive. And excessive centralization of food production is suicidal. This powdered milk is in countless products all over the world by now...

Finally, David Foster Wallace died. He killed himself. Part of the reason I didn't post for so long is that I wanted to post something about it, but I didn't know what to say. It saddened me in a way the death of a public figure never has. I was and am surprised by my reaction; I didn't think he mattered that much to me. I found myself actually feeling his absence. I didn't feel this way even when Ken Kesey died. 

I'm not sure I understand it and all of the usual 'voice of a generation' 'too brilliant for this sorry world of ours' bullshit is so wrong it makes me want to scream. That may have actually been part of what made it hurt. He wasn't Curt fucking Cobain or Keith goddamn Moon, or some shit, he was the opposite of that, at least for me. DFW was a bit of oxygen let into the stifling atmosphere of over romanticized self-absorbed cynical outsider bullshit your Cobains and Moons and Sid Vicious's and Janis Joplin's represent. A variety of bullshit that entranced too many of us for too long while the christian right, neo-conservatives, Lakud party operatives, young republicans, Scoop Jackson Democrats, innovative financiers and AM radio talk show blatherers were getting organized.

Look, I have nothing against the Cobain and Joplin end of the spectrum fundamentally, they are great as such, important even, and they did mean something to me. I don’t mean to take them to task in and of themselves, that's not the point. But for so many people it was too easy to use that detached disillusioned turn-on and drop out rhetoric to just stop trying. And I also think many people didn’t fully appreciate the degree to which the choice to even go that route is a luxury.

However, on the other hand we can't forget that part of the reason this outsider thing was and is so attractive is that it does provide an option that doesn't require you to switch your brain off, slap a smile on your face and live with the rich putrescent smell of some institutional bullshit (that is: lie to yourself for money.) DFW was still trying but he didn't sacrifice his honesty and clarity. It's the tough path, the path with no path, and it took real ingenuity but he managed. 

We are lost right now, culturally, socially, spiritually, economically, morally... you name it. We are lost deep in some wilderness, and we need to realize that no one, no savior, no ideological program, no religion and no leader is coming help us, *we are* the rescue squad. We get ourselves out, or we don't get out.  This is not the time to panic.

Regardless of whether of not I’ve communicated any of this right, this much I still have to affirm: Don’t count the sane people out yet, and despair isn’t an option.

DFW's dead and I hate it. That's that. It's a gap that needs to be filled and there are already so many gaps. Part of this is anger. I'm sure he suffered. I can never know what he suffered. I know it isn't necessarily charitable or right to feel this way, but I wish he'd figured out how to hang on. He had no goddamn business killing himself.

Look, I don't know if I've said this at all right, but there it is.

Harpers magazine has been generous enough to make all of DFW's articles available as free PDF'sThe best of them (in my opinion) is an essay called "Shipping Out" later renamed "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." If you read this on your computer avoid drinking anything, as you will likely spew it all over your screen in spasmodic irrepressible laughing.

Finally: I have had to edit this post countless times in the last two days for various reasons technical and otherwise but I think I have finally got the final form. I usually wait a day or two to post, and I remember now why I do that.