eye of the storm

it was pathetic to watch the politics of bailout yesterday, just among the people who were in favor: they couldn't think of a damned thing to say except to blame each other. pelosi's speech indeed seemed pointedly designed to piss people off: she made republicans think that by voting yes they were, like her, blaming themselves for their 'right-wing anti-regulatory extremism' etc. and then the republicans came out, like idiots, saying nothing about anything except pelosi. truly, boehner et al just portrayed themselves as complete pin-heads, a net loss to society. now, everyone is talking about how this might not be the right approach (krugman is interesting on that, e.g.). obama is closeted with rubin, volcker etc etc. if i were him, i'd present an alternative plan tomorrow, incorporating elements of the original. then i'd pass it, if necessary without republican support. at that point, you're already de facto pres, and all that's left is an election to ratify what is already the case.

here's an essay setting out faith-based atheism.

another handout, this one for philosophy of art:

Definitions of art:

(1) Mimetic theory: art is an imitation (representation) of reality. (Plato) (Realism; portaiture; impressionism (?))

(2) Idealization theory: art is an improvement on reality, making it more beautiful, or closer to the ideal or to God, for example. (Hegel) (Baroque art; surrealism; post-impressionism.)

(3) Formal theory: art is to be understood in terms of its formal properties (shapes and colors, for instance) rather than its “content.” Or: a work of art is a combination of shapes and colors (a formal arrangement) that yield an “aesthetic emotion.” (Clive Bell). (pure abstraction.)

(4) Expression theory: Art is an expression, communication, or exploration of emotional states, or is a particular kind of expression, communication, or exploration. (Tolstoy; Croce) (expressionism)

(5) Process theory: A work of art is the product  of a process that is, to an exemplary degree, engaged in for its own sake, as well as for the sake of the product; or: a work of art is the product of immersion in process. (Craft) (Sartwell)

(5) Anti-Essentialism: ‘art’ cannot be defined; or what works of art have in common should be understood as a family resemblance, perhaps shifting over history, rather than an essence. (Wittgenstein)

(6) Institutional Theory: a work of art is an item that is incorporated in a certain way in the institutions of art; for example, that is hanging in a gallery or museum. More precisely: a work of art is an object which has had conferred upon the status of a candidate for appreciation by someone acting on behalf of the artworld. (dada; pop etc) (Danto, Dickie)

(7) Historical theory: a work of art is an object that was produced consciously in connection to the history of art. (appropriation) (Levinson)

ok palin was deer-in-the-headlights with couric. it's a problem. but what i want you to do is imagine palin giving that roosevelt-went-on-tv response. think seriously for a moment about what you'd say. now feel obligated to say exactly that about biden, by minimal standards of intellectual integrity. if you will condemn every mis-step of people you disagree with, and excuse every mis-step of the people you endorse (the usual procedure even of pundits like, say, frank rich), what you say, obviously, cannot be taken seriously. it doesn't have the right relation to truth actually to have any meaning.

this is the same mindless fraud who had to ditch the '88 campaign because of plagiarism. now what was outstanding about that case is that what he plagiarized was *his own life story.* like "grandpa worked all his life in the mines" etc. swiping people's stuff is one thing. but swiping people's stuff and replacing yourself with it is something else. what was really wonderful was the defense that it was "inadvertent," which is truly hilarious. i *accidentally* replaced me with you, my grandpa with your grandpa etc. biden exists only as a kind skin of insecurities stuffed with sawdust. he is whatever seems impressive or important at that moment; there's nothing there but need. really, it is deeply sad and pitiable, a deeply degraded life. however, insofar as out political life and the personae of our leaders are at this point entire fabrications, biden is what we need and deserve anyway.

i want you to imagine what dems would say if sarah palin yapped that roosevelt crap. what would that show about her? maybe she's not ready to be pres or whatever. but she hasn't actually revealed anything like the degree of stupidity, emptiness, dishonesty, and ignorance that that quote from biden displays.

i guess what i like most about the biden "when the stock market crashed pres roosevelt went on tv" thing is - ok he's just yapping, as biden does, randomly, and starts just making stuff up that sounds historical. the point is to make himself sound knowledgeable about history etc. it's a moment of self-aggrandizing charlatanry, revealing total ignorance. but the astounding thing is that he's actually making no point at all, no point whatsoever. so roosevelt came on tv and said "this is what happened." um. were it true, or were it even possible, would it help? is that different than what bush did? what important lessons could we draw from this ersatz crap we're making up on the fly? none, actually. like when i make up whole swathes of history, and then draw the lessons of what i just invented, when i talk out my ass to gratify my pathetic ego, i'm going to make some kind of point or draw some kind of conclusion. if history can be whatever i feel it should be as i get to the middle of my next sentence, it's going to be profound, or surprising, or funny, maybe.  but as far as i can tell, biden has never made any point about anything. see, if history is just "let's pretend," then you can make it say anything you like. that biden makes it up and then makes it say nothing at all is a kind of beautiful infinite negation of everything.

It is not just painful, but frightening to watch someone who could become the vice president of the United States stumbling around like this in an interview.

(bob herbert on palin.)

meanwhile:

In his own interview with Ms. Couric, Mr. Biden said: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

i don't think these palin-bashers are  actually worried about being ruled by idiots. maybe seeing russia across the strait isn't a foreign=policy qualification. but at least she didn't claim to have seen spain across the strait. or the ottoman empire.

i was at my mom's last night with a dial-up connection and couldn't blog the debate. like everyone else more or less i thought it was  standoff. i do think these are pretty good candidates, not like kerry and bush, in a contest for the world's biggest drip. one would think that the economic disaster would favor obama, but i'm not so sure. once mccain gets this thing onto government spending, he has real credibility, and the question is essential. he said that obama's proposals would cost...800 billion bucks. now i don't know how accurate that is, but there's no doubt that (as is tradtional for the american liberal) the proposals are approximately infinite. along with the bailout, we're getting toward *tripling* federal spending, as the economy (probably) shrinks, which will bust this country down to its underlying dirt. it's ridiculous. mccain should hammer this like a motherfucker all day every day.

many chumps like you ask me: master, what is the meaning of life? there was a time when i answered that the meaning of life was its very meaninglessness. now i teach that the meaning of life is cultivating freakish but entirely uselesss skills. you may ask: is not philosophy itself a freakish and useless skill? i answer: philosophy is useless, but not useless enough. go, thou, and do likewise. you'll need a yoyo or something.

been watching ahmadinejad at the u.n. a bizarre (and typical speech) starting out with defining "beauty" and "justice" and "absolute good," all in terms of obedience to god: a theologico-philosophical disquisition. then proceeding to extremely disturbing material on the zionist conspiracy controlling all our banking and media. i should think it's obvious that it would be desirable or perhaps necessary for life on earth to prevent him and his fellow mental-patient muslims from getting their hands on nuclear weapons.

in the words of rockky rococo: perhaps you are ready for this:

little handout for my students:

Philosophy and its Sub-Disciplines

Philosophy comes from the Greek terms meaning "love of wisdom." It is concerned with questions about ultimate value: questions about reality, truth, beauty, goodness, justice, meaning. These questions are interminable: they cannot be nailed with empirical or scientific data. This is not to say that every treatment of such questions is as good as any other. Some are rich, useful, suggestive; some are arid, fantastic, tasteless. They are questions we cannot answer. But in our dilemma as human beings, I think they are questions we cannot avoid.

Metaphysics is the study of what sorts of things exist and how they are ordered, at the most general level.
    (a) Ontology concerns what sorts of things there are. For example, materialism (or the idea that all things that exist are physical objects), idealism (or the idea that the only things that exist are minds and their ideas), and dualism (or the idea that there are both sorts of things) are ontological theories.
 (b) Cosmology concerns how whatever exists hangs together in a system, including questions such as whether the universe has a purpose or direction. The term is used by astronomers and others to refer to the study of the origin of the universe.

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, concerning the questions of whether we know anything, and, if so, how. Skepticism is the position that we can know nothing, either about some particular subject-matter, or quite in general. Empiricism is the position that the sole source of knowledge is sense perception. Rationalism is the position that all knowledge reflects the exercise of reason.

Logic is the study of the forms of correct reasoning, and treats questions about validity in arguments and about probability and scientific method. Deductive logic concerns reasoning by conceptual necessity, while inductive logic concerns drawing conclusions from observations. Questions concerning the relation of faith and reason are logical/epistemological questions.

Ethics concerns questions of how we ought to live and behave, of what is the good life and what is right action. Utilitarian ethical theories assess actions morally by their consequences. Deontological moral theories assess actions by the rules from which they proceed.

Political Philosophy concerns how we ought to arrange our lives together, that is, what makes a society just. It includes questions about the legitimacy and legitimate scope of state power.

Aesthetics concerns the questions of art and beauty: the nature of these things, and their source, value, and interpretation.

Philosophy has as many sub-disciplines as there are disciplines, more or less, which address the sorts of questions just spelled out with regard to various special subject-matters. These include philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, philosophy of law, philosophy of language, and so on.

so here's a moment with a very underappreciated transcendentalist: nathaniel rogers.

It Rains

[From the Herald of Freedom, July 4, 1845]

 While I am writing, it is raining most magnificently and gloriously, out doors. It absolutely roars, it comes down in such multitude and big drops. And how refreshing! It waters the earth. There has been but little rain, and our sandy region had got to looking dry and distressed. Every thing looks encouraged now, as the great strainer over head is letting down the shower bath. The grass darkens, as it drinks it in, with a kind of delicate satisfaction. And the trees stand and take it, as a cow does a carding. They hold still as a mouse, while they "abide by its peltings," not moving a twig, or stirring as leaf. The dust of the wide naked street is transmuted into mud. And the stages sound over the road, as if they rattled on naked pavement. Puddles stand in all the hollows. You can hardly see the people for umbrellas - and the clouds look as if they had not done with us. The prospect for the Canterbury meeting looks lowery. Let it rain. All for the best. It is extraineous, but I could hardly help noticing the great Rain and saying this word about it. I think the more mankind regard these beautiful doings in Nature, the more they will regard each other, and love each other, and the less inclined to - enslave each other. The readier abolitionists they will become. And the better. The Rain is a great Anti-Slavery discourse. And I like to have it pour. No eloquence is richer to my spirit, or music. A thunder shower, what can match it for eloquence and poetry! That rush from heaven of the big drops - in what multitude and succession, and how they sound as they strike! How they play on the old home roof and on the thick tree tops! What music to go to sleep by, to a tired boy as he lays under the naked roof! And the great low bass thunder as it rolls off over the hills and settles down behind them - to the very centre, and you can feel the old Earth jar under your feet - that is music and poetry and life. And the lightning strikes you - what of that! It won't hurt you. "Favored man," truly, as uncle Pope says, "by touch ethereal slain." A light touch, compared to Disease's, the Doctor's - or Poverty's. I am no trifler with human destiny - but nothing that naturally happens to a man can hurt him.

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers

next we'll devalue the dollar.

you're gonna create a debt/program to the tune of social security or medicaid, but for the purpose of a one-time bailout. it's like being tied to a cinder block and tossed overboard.

a trillion is about federal spending for a year.

this might be as big as, say, the new deal. truly, we are merging into state command capitalism, a la china. essentially, the us gov is taking over the circulation of money, which is precisely how the chinese state retains control of an entrepreneurial business sector.

wait. did you just say a trillion? what, exactly, is the source of this infinite wealth?

But why do freshmen bursting to change the world morph into investment bankers?

“I guess the bottom line is the money. You could be going to grad school and paying for it, or earning six figures. And knowing nothing about money, you get to move hundreds of millions around! No wonder we’re in this mess: turns out the best and the brightest make the biggest and the worst.”

roger cohen  this morning. and the real answer is: these freshmen are not at all bursting to save the world, though they may occasionally mouth idealistic platitudes. they're bursting to embrace the values of their culture, their parents. they're bursting to conform. if they didn't care above all about money and the status it confers, they couldn't be purchased with money, now could they? in my experiences, freshmen care a lot more about frat parties than saving the world. if you think that we in america are raising idealistic youngsters with stars in their eyes, i'd like to see the evidence.

cohen's "answer"? students "need to rediscover the public sphere," which i suppose means that they should become government bureaucrats. then if they're still bursting to change the world, i guess they'll simply have to burst.