cheese it, the cops!

believe it or not, this is from the nyt sunday book review.

Khanna’s fear-mongering echoes Robert D. Kaplan’s alarmism in “The Coming Anarchy,” and his cutesy images and painful wordplay recall the worst of Thomas L. Friedman’s columns. So much then for the comparison to the theories of Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama that some have been promoting, and so much for the promise of what his publisher calls a “single paradigm necessary to capture the emerging 21st-century world.”

i have to say: this renews my respect for the times, which does do many excellent things. but that they would publish such a pointed criticism of one of their own top people is unusual for almost any publication at that level, and they are to commended for including such a flamboyant flourish, subversive to themselves.

lala in yemen says the revolution is tomorrow! or at least a big next step. so check jazeera.

best picture, 2012: limping steppes, a deeply human portrayal of kublai khan's bum knee and the physical therapist who helped him conquer asia. starring - i don't know - important shakespearean ack-toors.

watching cnn or msnbc in the daytime is disturbing. a few moments on libya, then exhaustive coverage of charlie sheen. a number of times every day, cnn puts up a psychiatrist to diagnose charlie sheen, as the network sifts in detail through his every utterance. now i feel that the 'lifestyle' and celebrity-culture emphasis of these networks in the daytime reflects the fact that they think their audience is mostly female. that is something they would know. but either they horrendously misconstrue what women are interested in or the whole thing is a devastating indictment of the gender for extreme superficiality.

the problem with the ideology of capitalism, as i see it, is that it enshrines greed as the human condition, or even defines rationality as greed (it models a market as a competition between 'utility-maximizers'). this is really one of the most morally repugnant moves in the history of human thought, as though i defined man as the murdering animal or the rape machine or something, and then spun out centuries of implications from the assumption that everything everyone does is murder or rape. at the very outside, capitalist ideology makes greed a virtue, which is about the darkest and most vicious inversion of values one could imagine.

one thing they'd better think about: is greed (short for 'the pursuit of self-interest' [=wealth]) 'human nature'? in that case we don't have to carve out zones where it can be pursued, encouraged, or pursued freely, and also it would be silly also to count it as rationality, or to criticize actual human beings as irrational if they don't pursue their own self-interest for whatever reason. if it's the substratum of all human action, of course, it cannot be a virtue, or there is no purpose in treating it as a moral category if we can't fail to be pursuing self-interest all the time. is the project descriptive or normative? you really can't have it both ways. so is economics a science or is it a moral theory? or is there anything you won't say to justify greed? it's a sheer fact about all of us that we pursue our own self-interest, and then we have to create/nurture social contexts in which it can be expressed? don't be silly.

now on the other hand i do vote for private property. communist thinkers of all stripes have been constantly surprised that poor people are not opposed to private property; well, poverty is actually lack of private property. that we have a group or zone or region of objects that we can employ or dispose of autonomously is central to any sense that we are acting freely. you can draw up a utopia of collective ownership, but people have to suspect that this is going to mean that people other than themselves (and in effect often the state) are going to be in control of their environment.

so then the question is whether we can detach - to some extent under some conditions - property from greed. that's why i'm attracted to economic models such as josiah warren's. it has many problems, especially of 'realism.' but i do want to note that this 'greed is good' (or rational, or realistic, or inevitable, or natural) thing is a cultural construction, an ideology that emerges at a certain moment, under certain conditions; i don't see compelling reasons to regard it as the only possibility.

i think we'd all soon tire of a trump administration, among other things because it would be the most colossally tasteless - the most grindingly gauche - administration in history. that's saying something, because nixon and reagan, for example, favored simulations of a european royal court: they went all rococo and shit. but that trump tower thing on central park is just the most nouveau-riche blingbling goldmustbebeautifulbecauseit'sexpensive eyesore in nyc. well we are a gauche people in a gauche era; still i feel there are some limits. i can't find an image that really does it justice, but i like the globe out front, suggesting that donald girdles the earth.

nixon's praetorian-guard uniform:

 

 

 

yeah i especially hear from anarchists the criticism that i always attack the state and not capitalism or the corporation, and i think a lot of people now use 'anarchism' basically to mean anti-capitalism. now i do see the problems with capitalism of course, though i think that buying and selling and private property are important aspects of freedom too. i just want to note that even if i really thought nike was repugnant or whatever, nike does not have an airforce, atomic bombs, a prison system, etc. henry ford was a screeching anti-semite, but he just did not have the kind of operation that could put all the jews on trains to the gas chambers. for that, you needed a state.

i think that if you really could isolate these forces from each other, then the corporation would be considerably less problematic than the state; that seems obvious to me, in spite of all the terrible effects of corporate capitalism. but the problem is that exxon/mobil actually does have a military wing, i.e. the united states government. now we could try to re-isolate (or, isolate for the first time) these forces and pit one against the other. that seems unlikely to me and even if so they'd both be problematic, especially the state. but if you conflate them then you just get total tyranny: stalinism. so if you're constsntly arguing for more state control of the economy, it seems to me that that's the direction you're heading. communism as it actually was practiced just put capital and political power in the same hands: an utter nightmare. really that is also the system of a mubarak and a gaddafi. that was completely predictable outcome of state communism right from the initial theorizations! that's why anarchists couldn't hop on board with marx.

paul krugman/naomi klein statist leftism vs. right-wing corporatism presents us with a horrendous dilemma: state or corporation? it articulates a stark choice between forms of subordination: state control of the economy (along with and backed by military or police coercion), welfare-state regimes of total surveillance and public housing vs. horrendous economic inequalities, third-world exploitation, and every surface plastered in advertising. choose a spike for your impalement. but i suggest that this opposition is anachronistic, still based on marxist vs laissez-faire models as they squared off in the 19th century. seriously, on which horn of this dilemma do you place china? both at once, and the u.s. and the eu are constantly approaching the condition of squishy totalitarianism: the merger of corporation and state into a single overwhelming power (well, they were never as distinct as the ideologies made them seem). the point has to be resistance to power. if the choice is state or corporation, we had better colonize a new planet and start again.

say your strategy to reduce the power of goldman sachs was to give more power to the treasury department...you'd merely be naive and confused. 

nyt reports stuff like this:

Distrustful of even his own generals, Colonel Qaddafi has for years quietly built up this ruthless and loyal force. It is made up of special brigades headed by his sons, segments of the military loyal to his native tribe and its allies, and legions of African mercenaries he has helped train and equip. Many are believed to have fought elsewhere, in places like Sudan, but he has now called them back.

Witnesses said on Wednesday that thousands of members of this irregular army were massing on roads to the capital, Tripoli, where one resident described scenes evocative of anarchic Somalia: clusters of heavily armed men in mismatched uniforms clutching machine guns and willing to carry out orders to kill Libyans that other police and military units, and even fighter pilots, have refused.

meanwhile nick kristof, whose reporting from the middle east has been courageous by any measure , suggests steps to "nudge" gaddafi from power, such as...sanctions? (well at least also a no-fly zone.) um, well, then we're going to be watching an unbelievable bloodbath. i really think the u.s. and britain, or the u.s. and the eu, or nato, needs to nudge gaddafi from power with high explosives and special forces operations.

meanwhile, obama upped the ante yesterday, deploying 'outrageous!,' which i'm sure caused gaddafi much pain and embarrassment, just as it did for cee lo when commentators applied it to his performance at the grammys. they still haven't escalated their rhetorical intervention to 'inappropriate,' which they're holding for the moment when no rational course of action remains but mutually assured destruction.

 

somehow, we must rid ourselves of thomas friedman. one problem is that you always know what he's going to say before he says it, thus rendering his saying of it always already redundant. how has he addressed the total revolutionary upheaval of a whole gigantic region? his first suggestion was coating the region in no-child-left-behind schools. and now he takes the bold step of suggesting as a solution a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax, a position that, for friedman, every event of the last three decades has demanded. his world is flat indeed: it has no terrain whatever since he coated the whole thing in a homogeneous layer of horseshit.

this piece, about a guy who sold miracle anti-terror software to the bush admin, is very hilarious, but also very revealing. their response to 9.11 was a total freakout accompanied by extreme stupidity, useless random thrashing and pointed brutality. and one characteristic of bush, cheney, rumsfeld etc was that they could only hear what they wanted to hear: everything confirmed them in their prepossessions. like i say, power makes people stupid, which is one reason it does no good to elect "the best and the brightest" (not that that the bush admin featured the best and brightest). one feature i like is that the guy claimed his package could detect the secret terrorist messages on al jazeera. if you had any doubt that we were targeting al jazeera reporters here and there for death and destruction, this should reduce it. shit, people, ain't you even got no common sense? when dick cheney wanted to communicate secretly (like every few minutes) did he do it on good morning america? at any rate, it certainly was an excellent piece of software, a kind of flattery machine. it couldn't detect al qaeda submarines (well, nothing could), but it provided affirmations that pumped everybody full of self-esteem: you're so good; you're so right; you're so effective; you're so pretty.

it's almost absurd that the american "law enforcement community" is trying in an extremely woolly and total way to make sure it has a way in for surveillance of internet communications (and presumably a way to intervene in or stop them) while another part of the gov is extolling total internet freedom and its role in various uprisings. we trust our government and regard it as completely different than authoritarian regimes. well, it is, in some respects, but putting it mildly that huge powers it amasses have been and can be abused, even unto tyranny. 

in his book republicanism: a theory of freedom and government, which i regard as one of the most important works of political philosophy of the last, say, twenty years, philip pettit defines 'liberty' in terms of 'non-domination.' it's not that they do interrupt your voluntary action all the time; it's that they can. in this sense, none of us are free. and uncritically handing more powers to the american state increases this domination. indeed, we are something like completely dominated already: if they come for you, resistance is ridiculous; the american state bestrides the globe with a total annihilating power. that they sometimes limit its use, especially with regard to their own citizens - that i can say whatever i want on this blog, for example - is good. but it doesn't decrease the total dominating power that they wield over me. i exercise my freedoms completely at the sufferance of the authorities. as pettit argues, that is among other things humiliating.

but to the extent that state (or for that matter corporate) actors cannot control these means of communication, to that extent they constitute a zone of non-domination. and you see the kinds of possibilities that this opens up.

it ought to go without saying, after myriad similar cases, that you should regard the navy's account of what happened to the yacht quest with skepticism. not that they're not telling the truth, but the fact that they're saying it should not make you believe it, either. of course, in the cnn piece just now they swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, complete with a computer-generated re-enactment.

from gadafi's inspiring address to his people (calling on "all those who love gaddafi"): "i will fight to the last drop of my blood." i'm down with that. let's drain him thoroughly. i'm grooving on the 'strong and united' international response, spearheaded by hillary, who said that his actions are 'unacceptable.' strong words indeed! perhaps we will escalate our commitment even unto the teacher's ultimate term for seething evil, "inappropriate.' even the mere threat of deploying 'inappropriate' would surely make him resign in disgrace. they're not willing to go so far as an arms embargo, which i suppose entails that we're still shipping him weapons? well that would be a strong step, though perhaps not so strong as 'tsk tsk.'

as i've often said, nothing is more stupid, yet more funny, than a dictatorship. power makes people stupid, and absolute power makes them absolutely stupid; power insulates you from reality and immunizes you against reason or even meaning. but stupid people are funny! just rent a will farrell movie and you'll see what i mean. indeed i'm not absolutely certain that gaddafi isn't being played by will farrell. he vows to die a martyr. to what? his own greed and megalomania? heroic! his son, of course, in the time-honored tradition, warned that 'anarchy might break out' if the protests continue. now perhaps you are not an anarchist. but even if not, you will perhaps agree with me that anarchy looks pretty good compared to a situation in which the airforce of your own country is calling in strikes on your baby sister. i guess that's 'order.' trailer for will farrell's new film:

our media really are incredible. as the libyan airforce bombards its own cities, and reports swirl that qaddafi has fled, etc, npr leads with wisconsin, then goes on to weather. who edits this crap? al jazeera is all over this stuff. truly i would urge an international military operation in this case and it needs to happen yesterday. anyone who has military resources that could be brought to bear and doesn't is complicit. berluconi and the italians are straight-up ill on this. i wish i could find a good link; al jazeera english reporting berlusconi's comment as being something like: i'm not really going to do or say anything against my buddy.

who knows how to spell 'gadhafi'? at any rate, we might not have to worry about it. al jazeera reports rumors that the man has fled to venezuela. also that military aircraft are firing on protesters in tripoli. what a mind-numbing combination: i flee and order a slaughter simultaneously.

update: ok now they are attributing the venezuela thing to william haig, the british foreign minister.

here's a pretty good summary of the situation in yemen.

the basic problem with the notion of government is displayed in the "massive show of force." only it can do that. but even worse than that, only it can subject you to the indignity of using your own resources to intimidate and/or shoot you. surely it is occurring to someone this evening in libya or or iran or china as the helicopter gunship riddles his mom's twitching corpse with bullets that he paid for himself that maybe this wasn't the very best idea we ever had as a species. we are all in a position where that can happen to us at any time, where people stand over us with a massive slaughter-machine at their disposal, funded by our ourselves. oops!

dispatch from yemen: "the protestors have taken over the university square, looks like they plan on staying there 24/7 starting with the biggest slumber party tonight!! they have surrounded and blocked the area and volunteers are searching anyone entering their controlled area, they have set up tents for multiple tasks (documentation, media, food, etc). the police left at 9:00, and this looks promising. We won't know what happens until tomorrow morning!"

like i say, china can get roiled too. despite the fact that we all wish we were china and that we worry all the time that little chinese children are smacking our little children on standardized tests, and conclude from that that we should emulate the chinese merger of state, education, and economy in our glorious quest to win the future, they have a leetle totalitarian prob.

frank rich has a lower credibility index than bigfoot. he's still hinting broadly that loughner shot giffords because of sarah palin. it's very typical of him to gloat about falling poll numbers or ratings or ticket prices for glenn beck or palin; this argument would of course have constrained him to despair when they were riding high, and will constrain him to despair when they're riding high again. if people he liked were polling low, would he think that refuted their positions? no, he'd argue that people's opinions were manipulated by demagogues such as palin and beck, an argument which he'd buttress by their high ratings or ticket prices. really, there just is nothing there. it's precisely as if he can't think.he is unable argue at all or doesn't think he should bother; it's pure propaganda aimed at people who already agree with him, and of course discourse like that has no purpose or use.

this is what people need to understand: merely strategic political speech, and our tendency to accept it from our own side, just discredits us. that you and rich agree on every piece of political ideology - that you both endorse the entire democratic platform, let's say - should make you no likelier to accept that these are good arguments. indeed, your agreement might could make you examine them more critically, lest you be seduced by that agreement into endorsing a chaotic skein of jive. you want to argue for your own position in a way that really should convince someone that it's true; the point can't be just to work on them psychologically with keywords or whatever. this is what our politics needs depolluting from; this is where our self-examination needs to set in; this is where we need just that bit of honesty or rigor that makes the difference between no reasons for anything and some reasons for some things. 

As relatives buried their dead, they fell victim to a mixture of special commandos, foreign mercenaries and Gadhafi loyalists armed with knives, Kalashnikovs and even anti-aircraft missiles trying to quell the demonstrations, witnesses said.

libya is probably the very most problematic regime and the most problematic situation now. it's already a bloodbath, and could become kind of unimaginable. the protesters are begging for foreign intervention. were i nato or something, i believe i might try to give it to them, or at any rate express a direct threat to gadhafi.

“We are expecting a massacre,” Ali Abdallah said. “We are sending an SOS to the international community to step in.” Without international efforts to hold back Qaddafi, “there were be a bloodbath in Libya in the next 48 hours.”

you know, now's a little chance for david cameron and hillary clinton to throw down a little payback for that al-megrahi fiasco, to say nothing of the lockerbie bombing itself.

getting some reports from my friend in yemen. she's angry at the protesters for explicitly excluding women. she and her friend, they said, 'were causing a riot,' just by being there. she reports that just now police had barricaded the university in sanaa. protestors broke through and police opened fire. no clarity on deaths or injuries. she also says that the city of taiz is more organized and that there a tens of thousands of protesters.

just listening, on cnn, to the 'special envoy' from bahrain, where there has been a brutal and fatal response to the protests. extremely disturbing. he was claiming that the response was proportional and within the rule of law, etc. he claimed the protesters were armed and violent. putting it mildly, the available information does not support these claims. i'd say mubarak's response was honest and circumspect by comparison, and this response suggests that the brutality will continue or increase.

one thing about 'naturally authoritarian' societies (often said of arabs, before they were infected by twitter or whatever your causal account is, and constantly said about 'confucian' china and other asian nations): i assume that the enthusiasm of the population for obedience would allow the regimes to disarm entirely. you already have the enthusiastic capitulation of your population through their inherent cultural character. the guns and clubs and internment facilities would seem to be otiose. 

it is is astonishing that this person is in the senate, much less as a republican. he's like a chinese dissident in the politburo. one thing that makes you radical, intolerable, dangerous: saying what's obviously true. even worse is if you actually believe the principles they profess. john boehner and mitch mcconnell ought to hear rand paul as an indictment of their very beings, a decisive refutation of their existence.

 

it's amazing how nothing ever happens and then everything happens at once. i am particularly psyched about libya. now i want to see this stuff spreading to other 'naturally authoritarian' societies. china can go down, y'all.

demonstrators, including wendell berry, have been occupying the kentucky governor's office to oppose coal extraction by mountaintop removal. i have a deep love of the appalachians, and i leave you to ponder, for example, how a swiss leader would be greeted who proposed to let corporations level the alps, and what such a procedure might do to the people who lived there. i have seen this, as i blogged a couple of years ago; i have never seen a more disturbing sight, except perhaps by brother bob's bullet-ridden corpse. i am not going to try to develop a moral theory on which mountains have rights, for example, though i will say that people are not fully distinct from the places they occupy, and that we are destroying ourselves. but i do intuit that something like a mountain or an ecosystem makes its own instrinsic claim to exist.

thanks, lisa; i hadn't heard about this protest.

a few notes on the grammys:

obviously we are in a very gay, second-coming-of-glam era. feel liberated or irritated, as the case may be.

still i'd scrub off the women: miranda lambert's face was invisible behind a make-up mask, e.g. gwyneth paltrow used to be a really interesting looking woman; now she's indistinguishable from faith hill, a wasp kewpie doll.

and surely we've gone as far as we can in the direction of extreme eyelashes. cf aguilera and katy perry. people take drugs now to make their eyelashes grow. 

speaking of gay, that 'bieber loves usher' man-boy interracial love thing was rather unedifying. usher supposedly told him, after meeting him in a parking lot, 'if it's meant to be, we will meet again.' and be subject to arrest.

i was tired of usher before he was born.

the initial tribute to aretha was very excellent. aguilera actually threw down something worthy of the queen, but they were all really good.

i actually was grooving on muse. at least it had a touch of rock and was political. sorry!

lady gaga is insufferable, and 'born this way" didn't slay me. but fame monster is a great pop album.

eminem is the best rapper that ever lived, even sober. i hope he stays alive.

at least that whole dylan and young alt.country thing didn't feature prosthetic horns or plexiglass bubble skirts. i didn't see any evidence that dylan is swallowing pills to extend his eyelashes. on the other hand, it didn't sound good either, and i kind of like that in music.

oh you ain't gonna do too much better than jagger doin solomon burke's "somebody to love" (covered first by the stones on one my fave albums ever), the rolling stones, now!

alright i guess that's it! i was too busy texting with my daughter to liveblog.