Capitalist Fools

Capitalism is an economic system based in fear. If you're a coward, you're a capitalist.

Think about it. According to theory, capitalism is advanced through the "enlightened" self-interest of individuals (I'll get back to the enlightened bit later). Translation: greed. Greed is good in capitalism. Indeed, if capitalism can be said to have any morality, that morality is based in greed.

But greed is based in fear, just as nearly every negative emotion is. Greed is about the fear that you will not have enough, never have enough and therefore must always have more.

Ask anyone who was mixed up in the junk bond bubble of the Reagan years or the dot-com bubble of the Clinton/Bush years or the real estate bubble of the Bush years: it was not about having enough, it was about having more. From the homeowners who foolishly bit into a mortgage they could never possibly handle to the bankers who lent that money knowing full well those borrowers couldn't afford the mortgage to the stockholders who demanded higher earnings every quarter from the bankers who lent the money to the people who couldn't afford it, to the governments who gladly accepted the property and income taxes due on the money that the shareholders demanded by higher each quarter from the bankers who lent the money to people who couldn't afford it, all of this monumental folly was based in greed.

And enabled by countless pundits, analysts, media flacks, and government officials. "Ownership society," Mr. Bush? OWERship society is more like it, you pompous butthead!

Adam Smith in positing capitalism, even tho he called it laissez-faire (French for "leave to do"), spoke for the need for taxes on business activity, strong government oversight, and warned against business combinations of any sort that involved removing the personal responsibility for the actions of a business.

We call those "corporations". You'll never hear this from your immature libertarian friends who read Ayn Rand for the sex scenes and came away with some muddled sense of economic theory crossed with personal freedom.

Adam Smith, in Wealth of Nations, speaks of the "Invisible Hand" precisely once (Book IV, chapter II, paragraph IX , if you're playing along at home). It was in the context of domestic trade being preferable to international trade. In other words, all those "free marketeers" are bullshitting you. And yet, an entire conservative cottage industry has arisen over a gross distortion of Smith's intent.

All to support and justify naked greed. There is no community when greed is involved. You would steal from your neighbors as soon as you'd steal from a stranger if capitalism had its way. And if you don't believe that, pick up any newspaper.

Indeed, on a macro basis, this is precisely what happens. International trade and relations are less dependent upon any sense of community than local and domestic trade, which was Adam Smith's point about the "invisible hand". Why were we attacked on September 11, after all? Was it because we're rich? Was it because we supplied arms to Israel, or Osama bin Laden? Was it because we had protected Muslims in Bosnia? Was it because we helped harm Muslims in Palestine?

Whatever part of the political spectrum you come from, it doesn't matter. Whatever answer to that "why" you feel comfortable with, it doesn't matter. All answers return to the greed of capitalism. Our private industries made money in conflict with our so-called "moral values." After all, if we fear radical Islam, why were we helping the mujahadeen in the 1980s? It's not like we were friends with radical Islam back then. We had just had hostages returned from Iran, for goodness sake!

Once you look at the world around you and do a thought experiment, you understand why greed needs to be in check, and why capitalism is for cowards. If we took morality out of the equation, if we truly allowed capitalism to be laissez-faire, crime would be a booming industry, all drugs would be legal, and porn would be available on the counter of your corner newsstand instead of bowdlerized and forced into dark corners and pay-per-view television.

Is that what we really want?

If capitalism was based on enlightened need, one could conceivably find a lot of good in capitalism. Capitalism presumes that we each have the other citizens of our community in mind.

Sadly, no...

Capitalism is not immoral, but capitalism is responsible for immoral acts. Capitalism is also responsible for the greatest man-made tragedies to befall America and by extension, the world.

In and of itself, capitalism is not immoral. It is amoral. It does not think. It only works like a vast enumbed machine, not distinguishing between friend or foe, between good or evil, between moral and immoral.

And here's the real kicker: capitalism is antithetical to American values, if we define "American values" as freedom, equality, and morality.

Those are in our Constitution. They're declared and demanded in the Declaration of Independence. And yet, self-interest sans enlightenment is harmful to all three of those. Sure, you can say that freedom exists, but is it really freedom when your boss can fire you at-will, and worse, threaten that to hold your behavior in check? Is it really freedom when that same boss can demand you work overtime or put in free hours from home, but then get all pissy when you ask for a few hours to take your sick kid to the hospital?

Is it really freedom without equality? And is it ever equal in a society where greed is honored and acquisition the goal?

And is that EVER moral?

FINALLY! The World Notices Us!

Posted without further comment:

Help Wanted -- 'Arrogant Americans' Need Not Apply

The New Scientist

I was watching Suzuki Speaks on LinkTV the other morning.

If you have DISH Network you can catch it on channel 9410 twice more this week. If not, why in the hell are you handing good money over to corporatist American media???

In it, David Suzuki talks about man's relationship to his environment in ways that will profoundly impact the way you think about your life. I won't ruin his message by summary here, because you need to watch the entire program. Suffice it to say, it got me thinking.

But I digress...

Suzuki talks about how, when he was growing up in London, Ontario, he would spend summer days wallowing in the marsh behind his house. His mother never complained about dirty laundry. His father encouraged his exploration. He would bring home tadpoles and fish eggs and raise them. It's no wonder he ended up not only in biology, but in genetics research.

Which got me thinking: in this day and age of videogames and Avatar-like movies, where do our new research scientists come from? Where is the wonder of picking up a rock and finding a bunch of slugs or worms and spending day after day, picking that rock up and studying their habits? Where is the boy with his Erector set, engineering his first four story scale model building? Or the girl cracking open a hunk of shale and discovering a trilobite inside?

Sure. There will be astronomers. The stars are an awesome attraction, the moon hangs in the night sky like a lighthouse beckoning a sailor upward. And perhaps oceanographers and marine biologists, as children go down to the sea with their parents and build sand castles, discovering clams and crabs as they dig.

But who's going to dig in the muck of an old dump and discover that, indeed, worms aerate our kitchen waste and create compost, and who knows what can come out of some boy or girl discovering a new way of recycling? Who's going to splash around in a marsh and uncover a new beetle that could potentially cure a disease?

Have we so removed ourselves from nature that we will be unable to see the forest for the trees? Have we lost the wonder of being children in our sophistication and technological savvy?

I guess this is why I enjoy scuba diving so much: it's a new environment and I'm immediately drawn into playing in it...as little as possible. It's important not to damage an ecosystem as fragile as a reef. But to pick up a rock and look at it, and then notice that it lay next to a tiny fish that you would have missed if you had just swum by, or to examine a gorgonian, a soft coral swaying in the current and to see a flamingo tongue nudibranch ("slug", if you will), bright and pink and orange and just sitting there, slowly crawling up the trunk, is to remember why we were kids in the first place: to uncover the world around us.

Sure, there's a place for technocrats and technological discoveries. Math and physics will always be important in understanding the universe around us.

But there's also a universe in a single drop of pond water.

And we've lost that urge.

Why Americans Are Woefully Uninformed

With all that's going on in the world, with Afghanistan and healthcare reform and wars and famine and global warming, this is the headline of the second largest selling general newspaper in New York City.

And it's owned by FOX, no surprise there!

Useful Idiots

You may have missed this, it may have been deliberately timed for a slow news weekend on a semi-national holiday (in that the markets were open Monday despite Columbus Day), but an interesting front was opened up by the Obama administration on Sunday: FOX News

The White House is now fighting a three-front war: Iraq, Afghanistan and Fox News.

I found myself in the middle of that conflict on Sunday when my interview with Anita Dunn aired on CNN's "Reliable Sources." Within hours the thing went viral; stories and video of the White House communications director's remarks spread to the Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Media Bistro, Politico, Mediaite, Hot Air and many other sites.

I had thought Dunn might try to smooth things over with the country's highest-rated cable news network, as guests often do in front of a television camera, but instead she was determined to ratchet things up: "The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. . . . Take their talking points and put them on the air. Take their opposition research and put them on the air, and that's fine. But let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is."

I'm going to ignore the sucking up aspect of Dunn's statement for a moment to take the narrow case with respect to FOX News.

It's no secret that FOX News takes its marching orders in large part from the Republican leadership, if not directly from the party itself.

"Party itself"...sounds so...Soviet...don't you think?

Kurtz goes on to point out that, indeed, MSNBC offers some refuge for the progressive wing of the country in the evening in its opinion round-up: Ed Schulz, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow make no attempt to hide their biases, but misses the point that the daytime coverage of the news on MSNBC is nothing but what FOX claims it is: fair and balanced.

FOX is, in effect, what Lenin used to call the far-left wing of America and the west: "Useful idiots".

I'd add Rush Limbaugh and all the other B-list opinionators who are either too scared or too insignificant to land a gig with FOX television (I mean, my God, Glenn Beck has a show on FOX!), but hasten to add that, in Rush's case, he's the most useful idiot the party has: one who thinks he's in charge!

So what Dunn describes is not only fair, but true: FOX is an organ for the right wing of this nation to hang their idiocies on.

Is that a bad thing?

No. It is true that FOX is the highest rated cable "news" network in the country, but there are many reasons for that, not least of which is the almost single-minded devotion its viewers have to being deluded.

They can't get enough crystal meth, I suppose, so FOX is the next best thing.

That other real "news" networks don't do as well doesn't mean that FOX is better or more informative or accurate. It just means it attracts a larger number of idiots, much like a bug zapper attracts dumb moths.

There's plenty of room on the cable spectrum to support both FOX News and MSNBC's progressive opinion makers (in their own right, useful idiots) and CNN's attempts to ride the middle as far as it can. We've entered an era where if you get your news from one source or one side, you really are playing the idiot, given the choices available to you. You deserve the pablum you get.

"News" has been redefined, in other words, not as the facts carefully compiled to relate a story, but as opposing opinions, often unfairly juxtaposed and imbalanced, and spoonfed to the waiting throngs of yes-people.

"News" has become infotainment, a smear of fact and a little truth, encased in a rich chocolate coating, sprinkled with sugar, then served in a plate of ice cream. Somewhere in their is some mental nutrition, but you'd be hard pressed to find it.

Like chocolate cake has milk, flour and eggs in it.

When the Today Show does twenty minutes with an Afghani widow, instead of Kate Gosselin, I'll start to believe in the news divisions of America's networks again.

Archaeology

The Great Wall. The Pyramids. The Louvre.

In a thousand years or so, archaeologists will dig up the remnants of the great culture that was the Third Milennium, and wonder, "What the hell were they thinking?"

We've learned to accept a certain amount of...kitsch...in our city centers, I suppose. There's a McDonald's across the street from the Empire State Building, as an example, and a block-long shopping center catty-corner to that, with rotating retailers like Victoria's Secret and other mall-centric operations, leading up to Macy's in Herald Square.

Nothing wrong with that. But Pizza Hut and KFC next to the Great Pyramid? That's going to cause some consternation, to be sure.

McDonald's is IN the Louvre, and in a fit of majestic irony, under the Museum of Communism in Prague. Starbucks next to the Great Wall, and I'm not sure if the irony or the coffee is more bitter.

The best of American culture has become so pervasive that historians will debate whether KFC predated Cheops, or if Starbucks was around in the Mongol uprising.

America was always great at absorbing culture and cuisine. Think about it: those great "American" foods-- the hamburger, the hot dog, pizza-- are all European.

And now we've digested them, repackaged and repurposed them, and sent them on their merry way to infest and infect the rest of the world, so much so that I expect we'll start seeing terror attacks involving fast food restaurants more frequently.

We have in our history symbolized great excess and a squandering of wealth, but now we squander majesty and heritage, as well.

That can't be a good thing.

OMG! Just. Go. Away!

I'm really getting tired of the collusionary efforts among the mainstream media to sell us pablum and crap WE DON'T NEED TO SEE!

In fact, as a first step in the twelve step program to wean Americans off shit they don't need to focus on, I'm not going to quote a goddamned thing from that link, and will merely tell you it has to do with a certain reality show that is on the ropes because the couple is getting divorced.

And the only reason I even reveal that much is to compare the country's fascination with a couple of losers to the "pout"rage the right wing showed because Barack Obama flew into Copenhagen for four hours to try to salvage the Chicago Olympic bid.

Seriously, some of the twisted-panties crowd on the right were taking umbrage...said umbrage is now all gone...at how Obama was taking his eye off the economy, off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other matters of state in order to focus for the briefest of moments on the spectacle of jobs for Chicago.

And yet, here? Nothing. No one would dare criticize the American public for being moronic enough to forget their deliquent mortgages, their lack of health insurance or their jobs dangling by threads all for the sake of feeling superior to people who are one step up from Special Olympians of emotionality.

Indeed, I'd rather the Special Olympics got even half the attention that these two publicity-hungry jackals get!

What is wrong with these people? How can anyone watch this train wreck of a show about a couple who voluntarily decided to drop two litters, and now have to deal with them?

Mind you, this is a show in prime time, which means there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of parents, neglecting the raising of their own kids to be mindlessly entertained by clown car television.

Now Jon and Kate are divorced, a bit quickly in my book given the number of kids involved, and things have gone from embarassing to disgraceful.

Look, there are hundreds or maybe thousands of families who are in similar situations: multiple children, divorce, and struggling to put even $200 in the bank, much less $200,000. Where are their stories? Will Jon and Kate donate the money they've earned to some fund to help the poor families that they are, in absentia, exploiting?

But soft, no, we must pick on the President for trying to improve the nation as we pick at the bones and carcass of a family that had no right being invited into our living rooms in the first place.

I don't mind that TLC has seen fit to take off its mask of being "The Learning Channel" and started showing the most hideous television programs about families and family life ever. But God forbid TLC spend one minute talking about the costs of being un- or underinsured on a family. God forbid they should follow the struggles of a family in a realistic situation: the loss of a job, a catastrophic illness, a divorce, bankruptcy.

You want reality? There's reality! How does a family cope when the breadwinner has a heart attack and can't survive on disability? We did it, when my dad had his heart attack, and I cut back on my college educmacaychun in order to bring some money into the house. And I know I was not alone in this.

And what is this need Americans have to feel so superior to other Americans? We all do it, right, left, South, North, Texans especially! WTF up with that, huh?

We're all in this together, and we can't move a ship of state forward if we're all pulling in different directions.

2 + 8 = 5

Only in America is being a baby factory profitable:

Jon and Kate Gosselin's marital misery sent their TV show soaring off the charts Monday night.

But before they start enjoying themselves too much, they might also want to consider this: If their marriage slides under the bus, it will very likely take their TV show with it and they will have to find another job.

Besides raising eight kids.

Yea. The cynic in me says ol' John here (I have never watched the show, but I feel stupid calling him by his last name) banged his little hottie with dollar signs lighting up his eyes.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that the Discovery networks actively sought out a woman who could, um, be a co-respondent in the divorce.

In the old days, this used to be called "procurement". Now it's called "marketing".

Ratings for this first episode were more than double the final episode of last season.

So the Gosselins took a page out of the Loud family scrapbook.

Undoubtedly, they bit off more than they could chew. I'm sure the novelty of raising sextuplets (are you listening, Octomom?) and two other children wore off quickly, but the bucks rolled in, even as the audience wore thinner.

But this entire episode speaks to American culture: how bland are our lives that we would rather spend an hour watching a young family changing diapers than deal with our spouses and children?

Changing. Diapers.

Or climbing a tree on some remote island just so you don't have to face the challenges of being "voted off"? Or racing through the streets of Rome looking for a clue to the next destination? Or...

It's amazingly sick and twisted, to my mind at any rate, that the best that TV networks across the spectrum can present to us is someone else's life.

They protest that it's compelling drama, that these are real people, and that they are cheap and easy shows to make.

Until you realize they are as scripted as soap operas or even bad talk shows like Jerry Springer. And then the illusion, the same illusion that drives pro wrestling and game shows, vaporizes. Reality sets in, and you realize that you've been hoodwinked into watching one long commercial.

There was one reality show that I not only liked, but watched obsessively: Mad Mad House. (episodes here)

Here was not only a parody of reality TV done right, it was an actual reality show. Yes, it was scripted, to be sure, but here's the thing: there were no heroics, no safety nets. Real people, a cross-section of "average Americans" were forced not to deal with their shortcomings in terms of being overweight or out of shape or less than perfect.

No, they were exposed to an entire new spectrum of lifestyles: naturism, voodoo, witchcraft, primitivism, and even vampirism.

It was "Fear Factor" but without the ick factor. And there was no audience selection, or "democratic" booting out. Your hosts were your prosecutors, judges, and jury, as well as often your defense attorneys.

None of this "AT&T helped select the winner." There were few if any product placements. It was about finding the person with the most open mind...who could also be tough enough to survive all the backstabbing antics behind them.

And frankly, it was compelling. I like watching uncomfortable people deal with a situation that, while not threatening or harmful, forces them out of their cozy little superiority complices and into dealing with other people as equals.

America needs to learn that lesson over and over again.

Fuel Me Once, Shame On You

This was the best they could do?

The Obama administration's sweeping fuel-economy and emissions initiative announced Tuesday reopens a fierce debate over tradeoffs between fuel economy and auto safety.

[...]The plan requires automakers to sell cars that average 35.5 miles-per-gallon by 2016, a little more and a lot sooner than current law. It has been heralded as a brilliant solution to the nettlesome mix of problems related to fuel consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions.

Oh brother!

So many problems in this nation could be solved if we actually broke our addiction to oil (perhaps the one truth Bush spoke in eight years). Right now, we are spending more in military aid and supporting troops in the Middle East than the net value of all the crude we are getting from there.

And the best step we could take at this time is to, you know, tweak things a little?

Here's what should have been done:

1) Raise the CAFE standards to 40 mpg. The 2016 time table is fine, for what it is, but at 35.5 mpg Detroit can meet that with minimal disruption. Since Detroit has been relying on the US government for twenty years as a bailout plan, perhaps a little discomfort for them will go a long way.

2) Remove the exemption for light trucks and SUVs. Factor them in as a fleet on their own right. In fact, I'd go one step further and insist these be reclassified as trucks, subject to the rules of the road and insurance and licensing requirements that truckers have to meet (including bonding).

We can, of course, offer some form of assistance to people whom this might impact adversely, like small farmers or poor people with large families who absolutely must have an SUV, minivan, or pickup truck, but lets face facts: any asshole who drives a Hummer to Starbucks because of that three degree incline on the entrance ramp at the mall parking lot will likely grasp with both hands the right to be called a "trucker". We can even throw in a hat.

This is a legtimate beef, by the way. SUVs and pickups use more gas, cause more wear and tear on the nation's infrastructure and are responsible for more fatalities and injuries than cars.

Yes, I'm aware of the apparent rise in fatalities when automakers increase their car fleet, but look at those accidents more closely.

First, automakers in an attempt to cut corners make vital safety components out of cheaper material, rather than re-engineer a car for safety. Second, many of those fatalities occured in accidents with an SUV or pick up!

Substantially reduce the number of those on the road, and auto fatalities will decline permanently. It's a simple matter of physics. When two masses collide, the smaller mass usually bears the brunt of the damage.

Of course, looking at how people who use four wheel drive vehicles behave, apparently, they believe the laws of physics no longer apply to them.

This is much like the steroids argument: if you want to make it a fair game, then take the supercharged ubersized vehicles off the road.

Ninety And Still Relevant

I remember the first time I heard Pete Seeger. I was a young child, and he appeared on the TeeVee. Maybe it was Ed Sullivan. Maybe it was Hullabaloo. Knowing Pete Seeger, it was likely on the news at a protest.

He turned ninety this weekend.

Pete Seeger was one of the pioneers of the protest-folk music movement. Raised by a father who was a music professor at UC Berkeley, Seeger counted among his influences Lincoln Steffens, a muckraking journalist who worked tirelessly to cover corruptions of power in America, and also was one of the first ardent American socialists.

You've heard Seeger's music all your life: "If I Had A Hammer," "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" and "Turn, Turn, Turn" (still the only song ever lifted whole from the Bible).

Seeger sees injustice, and speaks out. He sees the tragedy of environmental degradation, and speaks out. He sees criminality from those in power, and speaks out.

And he sees dischord and strives for unity. His concerts have always featured bounties of sing-alongs, creating one voice out of many.

The list of people he has influenced is immeasurable, spanning American music from Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to Bruce Springsteen, Rage Against The Machine and Ani DeFranco.

I learned guitar playing his songs. I think I can still, 35 years after setting mine down, play "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" from memory.

I say all this, because I think it's important to note a shift in American culture. With the occasional exception (Springsteen, for one), no artist today has the power that a simple man with a banjo had to shape public opinion.

Sure, you had Bob Geldof and Band-Aid. That was a one-off, tho, a moment in time when the stars aligned and the world came together to unite against a famine in a terrible cauldron of pain and suffering.

And other artists have come together regularly to promote and publicize causes, like Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and the rest for Farm Aid.

Seeger, as well as Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and that whole gang or even John Lennon later in life, these folks could get up nightly and raise the banners of activism, and people were persuaded and went out and worked for a cause.

We don't have that attention span any longer, and I mourn a little the loss of that.

Columbination

No doubt you have heard by now that this is the tenth anniversary of the day when two self-indulgent, twisted, infantile right-wing psychopaths shot up a high school in Colorado.

Much has been written over the weekend with respect to the lessons learned from the Columbine massacre. How can American culture produce this kind of behavior on a regular basis?

Much of it, from both the left (guns!) and right (culture!) has been both simplistic and flat out wrong.

It goes far deeper than that, I fear. It goes all the way to our national psyche.

For example, Canada has a comparable number of guns per household to the USA. It also has as its national sport one of the most physical, violent games played, ice hockey. Guns. Culture. Yet...

You don't hear about Canadians shooting up busloads of people as regularly as you hear about Americans doing it. Why?

The words of the former Premier of the province of Alberta will speak volumes to you:

A few years ago, former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed astonished us by denouncing what he called “the decline of collectivity” in Canada. “We are becoming increasingly Americanized,” he warned, “and this imposes an un-Canadian individualism on our ethic.”

Individualism.

It says so much about this nation.

People only mature when they are exposed to other people on a regular basis, when they can learn to empathize with the plight of others, when the culture around them demands that attention be paid.

If this isn't learned from an early age, immaturity sets in, and you have the fertile grounds for the self-indulgence that sees everything from mass killings to subprime mortgage markets, all in the pursuit of the Material Me.

We used to teach Civics in school, but budget cuts imposed by the Republicans, the very fount of self-indulgence and immaturity, have forced schools to decide whether to raise citizens or drones.

We used to teach ethics & compassion in society, but the greedy bastards who decided that the Fairness Doctrine was unprofitable saw to it that we raised a culture where your opinion doesn't count because you can't raise the money for it to be heard, to ennumerate just one of many hits to ethics we've witnessed in my lifetime.

We used to teach community in our cities and towns, but that was before the word was modified with the adjective "gated".

We used to have neighbors, and now we have co-tenants.

We used to invite the world to our doors, now we make them stand behind fences, gazing in on us, and when we do allow them to enter, we make them jump through so many hoops while dangling the dream of prosperity in their faces, so is it any wonder that after all that effort and time, folks get a little upset when they aren't lottery winners?

We encourage individuality, unless you want to have sex or be married, which is the very essence of individuality. And heaven forbid you need to have an abortion! There, you have to conform!

What the hell do we expect when we insist on conformity in others' behaviors but demand individuality when it comes to our own useless peccadilloes?

Freedom isn't free. It comes with its own long list of demands in exchange for releasing you from captivity. Among these are the responsibilities inherent in any free society best summed up by the saying, "If one man is not free, then I am not free."

Collectivism, in this area, is individuality. If you take care of others, you will be free to be whom you want, whom you need to be, because the responsibility is on them to help you when you need it.

Won't work, you say. True. This is America, and no one trusts anyone else. THe Colonial motto should have been, "I got mine, Jack, now you go get yours," instead of "Don't tread on me."

Which means we have to change America, or we will not survive. No man is an island, and that goes double for a nation of wannabe islands. We have to learn to give a damn about everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, else.

We fake it. We pay attention when Madonna falls off a horse. We geet into a tizzy when some woman in Arizona has fourteen children. We throw a fit when our President tries to fix the problems of this nation.

And we spend trillions on a war in a land where people hate us, where most of us will never visit, and will soon be useless to us for any potential natural resources, but to spend a few thousand here to bail out a neighbor who is losing his house?

And there's the rub.

Twit-Ters

Twitter is for twits.

I'm not basing this on Jon Stewart's breathtaking analysis of the phenomenon. I'm judging this solely on the seat-of-the-pants reaction I have to a) the concept and b) the fact that the Republicans are treating it as the end-all and be-all of the next wave of politics.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

The idiotic concept:

Jack Dorsey had grown interested in the simple idea of being able to know what his friends were doing. Specifically, Jack wondered if there might be an opportunity to build something compelling around this simple status concept. When he brought the idea up to his colleagues, it was decided that a prototype should be built.

Now, how many people could possibly be so vain that they think the rest of the entire fucking planet gives a rat's ass about what they are doing on a blow-by-blow basis?

People are dying in wars in Africa and Asia. People here at home are hanging onto their homes by their fingernails. We have a budget crisis unlike anything that's ever come before, coupled with an economic disaster the size of the universe and you mean to tell me the most interesting thing you can think of is some friend missed brushing his teeth this morning????

My god, and then you wonder how the hell the Republican party remains relevant to the national dialogue?

The folks at Twitter will tell you this is just another means of "staying connected".

Right. Maybe that's a really bad idea? Maybe the ability of someone to instantly beam that they've just masturbated to your phone or e-mail is invasive, nasty, and just too much information? Maybe the idea that I need to know what my Congresscritter's thoughts on bass fishing is a bad one?

I'm sure, if used properly, Twitter makes sense. Maybe if you are keeping track of some sales agents in the field or something. But here's the thing: we're humans. We don't USE things properly. We alter them, distort them, and customize them to how we see fit.

And so you have enormous amounts of bandwidth wasted on messages that tell the rest of the planet "Hey! I'm eating pasta for dinner!"

My god, how lonely do you have to be to send that? Worse, how lonely do you have to be to read that?

The Republicans have jumped on the Twitter like flies to shit, and here's why: you can soundbite your way to renown. You don't have to explain, you don't have to detail, you can send messages to your followers, errr, such as they are, without saying a whole lot.

In effect, Twittering is the American Idol of communication. Soft, plump, fluffy, and intrusive and ultimately without any merit or value and likely destructive in the long term. Like a marshmallow Rambo.

If there was no other reason available not to Twitter, the fact that the "Know Nothings" have jumped in with both feet should be enough to give you pause.

Now, I know I've just pissed off a bunch of people who I like and even respect, because I see Twits all over the place. They can consider this an intervention, if they like, a shaking at the shoulders and a slap across the face saying, "Good god, where is your humanity???"

Or if they want to continue in denial, then they can consider this the cranky rant of a crackpot. Either way, it makes no difference. I've got it off my chest, and I could do it in more than 140 characters.

I Am A Real American

I was born in this great nation. I was born to two people, one of whom was born here, and moved abroad as a young girl, the other born abroad and moved here after the war to find his opportunity, to two people who loved this nation.

My father was awarded one of the most prestigious civilian awards for his service to both this nation and his homeland, a value he made certain to instill in all of us from a young age.

I won't get into the myriad of accolades I've received as a citizen of the United States, but they started as a young child, and have continued into adulthood. I shouldn't have to wear my various medals and post my various certificates on the wall of my house.

But according to some in this nation, I am not a real American. Indeed, according to some, I am anti-American.

Sarah Palin:

Speaking at a fund-raiser in North Carolina, the Alaska governor said: "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation."

Michelle Bachmann:

“Absolutely. I’m very concerned that he [Obama] may have anti-American views,” she said.

It seems to me that some small-time hoodlum Congresscritter from a flyover state once ran this scam on America. Lemme think...Joe...McDonald? McCasey? McCain?

I can't recall.

In Palin's defense, she offers up an apology:

Democrats and others immediately criticized Palin, alleging she was saying that some part of the country are more patriotic than others.

Palin denied that was her intention in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.

"I don't want that misunderstood," Palin said. "If that's the way it came across, I apologize."

To put this weak-kneed response in perspective, say Sarah Palin ran over your dog:

If indeed it was my car, it was not my intent to run over your dog and if I did happen to squash Fluffy under the wheels of my Hummer, and there's no proof of that despite the word "Hummer" tattooed on his ass, if that's the case, I apologize for your misperception

What is it with Republicans and responsibility that they simply can't take any?

If this meme was limited to these two rather desperately moronic Republicans, then I'd be tempted to say "justice will be served on November 4," and ignore it.

But it's pretty clear that the Republicans have decided to declare class warfare on America:

On MSNBC this morning, McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer asserted that “real Virginia” does not include Northern Virginia:

I certainly agree that Northern Virginia has gone more Democratic. … But the rest of the state — real Virginia if you will — I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain’s message.

MSNBC host Kevin Corke gave Pfotenhauer a chance to revise her answer, telling her: “Nancy, I’m going to give you a chance to climb back off that ledge — Did you say ‘real Virginia’?”

But Pfotenhauer didn’t budge, and instead dug a deeper hole.

Real Virginia, I take to be, this part of the state that’s more Southern in nature, if you will.

Corke ended the segment noting that Pfotenhauer was appearing via satellite from Northern Virginia. “Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior policy adviser for the McCain campaign, joining us from Arlington, not really Virginia.” “Alright, I’m just gonna let ya– you’ll wear that one,” Corke responded. Watch it:

So this was not a slip of the tongue. This was not a tossed off insult in the heat of the moment, when one might get worked up and exaggerate one's point.

No, all three of these have been a coordinated attack on anyone who is Democratic or lives in a blue state, which means this is a campaign tactic. I'd say "strategy" but it's clear McCain has none.

You know what? After six years of "real Americans" running the Congress, the Presidency and the courts, and after eight years of "real Americans" running two thirds of this government, maybe "real America" just ought to take a hint from Jon Stewart's reaction and shut the fuck up already.

Real Americans, you know, the ones who built and shaped this nation into the greatest economic power that the world has ever known, into the most innovative and progressive knowledge base in the history of the frikkin' universe, who created and destroyed and rebuilt this nation over and over again, are getting a little tired of listening to people decide who is American and who is not.

Real Americans, who own your gas stations, and teach your kids, yes, right through college, who fight your wars, who do your plumbing, who hope for that one shot at the brass ring that is the American Dream, are tired of being pitted one against the other to determine who is a patriot and who is not, as if America was some horribly tragic reality show, "Survivor America".

Real Americans live in cities and suburbs and small towns, and on farms and in mansions.

Real Americans drive jalopies and bicycles and ride in limos.

Real Americans don't criticize their fellow Americans because real Americans understand that as great as this nation is, we each of us still have to survive day to day, all the time watching our money get stolen and off-shored by the cronies of the Palins and Pfotenhauers and Bachmanns, who let it go without protest, because their money is safely invested with those folks who take our money and deposit it on Bermuda or the Cayman Islands.

Real Americans are us. Not you, Sarah Palin, not you, Michelle Bachmann, and not you, Nancy Pfotenhauer.

And me. I am a real American.

UPDATE: Seriously, Republicans, shut the fuck up!

Fat, Fat, The Water Rat

If Michaelangelo's David had been sculpted in 21st Century America

Most kids' meals at top restaurant chains have way too many calories to be healthy, according to a report released yesterday.

Nearly every possible combination of the children's meals at KFC, Taco Bell, Sonic and Chick-fil-A are too fattening, the report on meals at 13 major restaurants found.

The average 8-year-old should eat about 1,200 to 1,300 calories a day, or about 430 calories a meal. But 93 percent of the meals at the chains had more calories than that. Instead of fried and fatty foods, restaurants should offer more choices that include fruits and whole grains, the report said.

Although some chains including McDonald's offer apple slices as a substitute for french fries, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said many restaurants make it hard for kids and their parents to make healthy choices. Subway fared best, with 12 of its 18 kids' meals having fewer than 430 calories, although that's in part because Subway meals don't include beverages.

Tall In The Saddle No More

Well, here's another chart we've fallen off the top from:

America used to be the tallest country in the world.

From the Founding Fathers through the industrial revolution and two world wars, Americans literally towered over other nations. In a land of boundless open spaces and limitless natural abundance, the nation turned increasing wealth into human growth.

But, as it has in other arenas, America's predominance in height has faded. Americans reached a height plateau after World War II and gradually fell behind the rest of the world.

Wait till you read who we've fallen behind...

Young adults in Japan and other prosperous Asian countries now are almost as tall as Americans.

You may recall that the stereotype Japanese during World War II was a short stocky fellow with buck teeth and slanty eyes. Aside from the short, not a whole lot of truth to that image, however, the short part was true.

So how come Americans have fallen so far down the list, heightwise?

Like many human traits, height is determined by a mix of genes and environment. Experts agree that, aside from African pygmies and a few similar exceptions, most populations have about the same genetic potential for height.
That leaves environment, specifically the environment children experience from conception through adolescence. Any deficiency, from poor prenatal care to early childhood disease or malnutrition, can prevent one from reaching his or her full height potential.

OK, so here goes: The United States has an infant mortality rate of 4.6 deaths per 100,000. That sounds pretty good, and in fact, is the best of any country that doesn't have nationalized health care.

But is just behind Cuba in terms of worldwide infant mortality rates (which average somewhere around 36 deaths per 100,000), and factoring out stillbirths doesn't do much to improve our standing (meaning that most developed nations have better post-natal care than we do, something to think about the next time a "pro-life" person wails to you about dying babies). Further, if you look at the odds of a kid under five dying in the United States, we're much worse than Cuba.

Michael Moore seems to have a point, you begin to think.

But back to this article. What does this all mean? Well, the richer a country is, the taller its population tends to be, what with improved health care and nutrition available to them. And the taller your population is, the longer it tends to live.

Note a particular word in that paragraph, though: "nutrition." That doesn't mean more food, it means better food, and clearly the American fast food diet is contributing more than its share of this trend. Fast, fatty foods contribute a lot of calories, but not much in the way of nutrition.

Finally, there's a factor at play here that gets talked about a lot in the media but never really gets looked at: income inequality. Richer countries where all people are benefitting economically tend to be taller than countries that have increasing poverty levels and increasing economic inequality.

So that's one more feather in George Bush's cap: he's made us a shorter nation, figuratively AND literally!

A New Hope

Today, in case you missed it, is the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars.

So much has been written about the cultural effects of the film: we can begin with the introduction of Buddhist concepts imbued in The Force to a western audience in palatable form, to the reintroduction of old mythological icons along with a revival of Joseph Campbell's career.

We can talk about the linguistic effects it's had: "I have a bad feeling about this," or "May The Force be with you."

We can talk about the dreamery that was incubated by George Lucas and all those marvelous toys, set against the backdrop of what is essentially a western (basically, The Searchers). If Star Trek's communicators brought us flip cell phones, one can only imagine what Star Wars lightsabres will bring us!

Actually, that's a chilling thought, what with Republicans hel-bent on world domination.

We can talk about how filmmaking changed, going from a story-driven, reasonably cheap medium to an overblown, special effect laden blockbuster crap shoot, just in time for the VCR. Star Wars might actually have saved Hollywood. How this movie spawned Raiders of the Lost Ark, Terminator, even Titanic is the stuff of a history of filmmaking course.

Me, I'd rather talk about how the film changed my life, coming as it did just as I was leaving adolescence for adulthood. The ultimate "good versus evil" film, it showed me that good is not always pure, and that evil is not always it's own creation (indeed, the arc of the story from film #1 through #6 bears this out: evil is as evil does, and sometimes, one can renounce evil through sheer force of will). Thus, A New Hope.

It helped teach me to trust my own feelings, even when the world around me whispers urgently into my ear that something else is right, just because it's more popular.

It helped me, just after Vietnam and Watergate and the cancellation of the moon landings, to see that there could be a bigger future for this world, not just this country, one where science and faith live side by side. Mankind would survive, no matter the forces arrayed against it.

Most important, and a theme that keeps popping up lately for me, it shows me that one man in the right place at the right time can make a difference.

Even if that place is the voting booth or a office holder's Inbox.

Good luck today, and hey, may The Force be with you!

Oh, before I forget....the story ain't over, it seems...(hat tip, yet again, to MissCellania for pointing this out)

The Hunger

Question: What is the single greatest tragedy to befall humankind?

The Holocaust? Darfur? The tsunami of Christmas 2004?

I believe the greatest tragedy to befall humankind is the creation of "want".

I was watching the Today Show this morning, and as part of the set, the staff constructed a 40 foot long aqarium, in which they placed the usual suspects for a North American reef: surgeonfish, a moray eel, a stingray, a couple of horseshoe crabs, and a black tip reef shark, along with a plethora of other reef fish that, to put it bluntly, are herbivorous. Bait, in other words.

You might think that this would make for some compelling television. After all, Shark Week on The Discovery Channel gathers some of their highest ratings each year. People like to tune in to see nature in the raw.

Surprise, surprise: no one got eaten. Why is that?

Animals eat when they need to eat. Period. There's no forethought that, gee, in five hours, I'm going to be hungry so let me pre-feed. Animals live in the moment, mostly because otherwise their watches would be wrong.

Only humans seem to demonstrate the capacity to think about the future, and to plan for an abstract event. Similarly, and I think hand in hand, humans devised a clever precept: "want."

Humans have the same basic physical needs as any animal: food and shelter (we need clothing too, but that's more because we find hairy backs repulsive), and procreation of the species. Once you've satisfied those basic needs, the human mind can kick in and explore its environment. It's this "mind" place where things get tricky. Suddenly, we've constructed a mass of neuroses and paranoids: does he like me? Will she have sex with me? Can I keep this job? What about the people dying in Iraq?

Does any of this matter? Well, yes, some of it does: global warming is a very serious threat to the sanctity of both food and shelter. So is having sex and passing along your genetic material, which means a bigger shelter and more food.

Most of our day to day concerns are pretty abstract, though, and speak more to the comfort of our existence as opposed to the singluarity of it. Just look at any war if you want an example.

There's a book and a movie that are very popular now called The Secret. I confess, I spent ninety minutes and downloaded the program. It's pretty interesting stuff, all about the power of intention and how just asking for what you want can bring it to you, if you clear negative thoughts from your life.

And that's where I started laughing and haven't stopped. "Negative thoughts" are....what, precisely?

For isn't "wanting something" in itself a negative thought? Life is, after all, a zero sum game, and for every Nintendo Wii I buy, that's a) one less Wii for others to own, b) all those lost resources and clean air and water spent to provide me with that Wii (plastic doesn't grow on trees, you know!) and c) money spent that could have been spent elsewhere or better still, saved for a real need.

Now, I know what Rhonda Byrnes (and her carafe of teachers) means: negativity=hatred, to be replaced by love. And yet, it's still about want. It's still about that mass of neurons called a "mind". It's still about ego. And it's still about weakness, a desire that is overpowering your better sense.

The secret of The Secret is that by disciplining yourself to let go of what is holding you back, you will magically (and I do mean magically) find yourself being what you want to be and having what you want to have.

OK, nothing wrong with that, except...what do you want to be? What do you want to have? Is being rich, or having an Academy Award, or marrying the most beautiful mate, something you really want?

And if it requires a carrot at the end of a stick for you to undergo the self-examination needed to find out what you want and to put aside the things that hold you back, then what kind of discipline are you really pursuing? Emotional brainwashing?

It sounds like this to me. Humans are, well, human. We're all kinds of feelings and emotions. We're "beings". And this kind of stuff is about "doing". And it scares me a little to see that we're encouraging this in a society that needs less wanting and more being. All around us is a world that cries out for our participation, and yet here we are, cocooning ourselves in a blanket of self-indulgent pseudoscience, and pulling the covers over our heads. And paying for the privilege of doing so.

Better we should get out in the world, and as our long-dead ancestors risen from the veldts of Africa did, explore. In the exploration, we will discover who we are.

And what we want.

Balance Of Power

Sometimes, events happen that make you think there truly is some plan, be it divine or Bilderbergian, to the world. Disparate seeds of information that innocuously land nearly simultaneously, and you know that they came from the same fruit.

And sometimes, randomness prevails, and we struggle to form some basis of rationality out of it.

Ultimately, both of these scenarios collapse to a unifying theory of the world: control. There's an almost fracticality to our lives: the world sets limits to our achievements, and we set limits to a small part of the world's achievements. I can't fly on my own, but I can clear a forest and build a house.

In both instances, however, there's illusion at work. I can fly, if I get an assist from technology. Gravity still exerts influence, but it no longer controls me in this regard so long as I can keep my airplane up.

Likewise, I have to mow my lawn and weed & clear brush often, or my house will eventually be reclaimed by the forest. Not in my lifetime, of course, but the world operates on time scales that you and I cannot begin to imagine.

This is the ultimate fantasy for an intellectual being like a human, however, that there are controlling forces at work in some respect that have power over the entire world. We seek order where there is chaos, and we find it, because that chaos holds still for an infinitesimal moment on its scale, but for an entire lifetime or life of a civilization on ours. We build cities on multiple fractures in the earth's crust, complacent in the knowledge that it "can never happen here".

But it has. And it will. We just haven't witnessed it. Moreover, there's little we can do to prevent it. This is how life is: it is aggressive, violent to the point of catastrophic. The world responds in kind. Eventually, random events occur that prove the theory of evolution, and a dominant species falls and a subordinate species arises.

God blessed us with short attention spans (and cursed me with a slightly longer one). A man is arrogant enough to believe that history began twenty minutes before he was born, and then he learns (one hopes) about people, civilizations, and societies that preceded him. Man as a whole is arrogant enough to believe that history started twenty minutes before the first man-ape swung down out of the trees (or Adam was created, if you believe that). Man as a whole, including most major religions, arrogantly believes we have some special purpose on this planet, that God or nature put us here for a reason.

The most arrogant belief Man has is that God put him in charge of the entire planet. God may have the werewithal to control the planet (omniscience and omnipotence are advantageous here), but he did not invest Man with that power, and nor has he given us the keys to attaining it.

Yet, we act as if we had them already.

All this is a prelude to my thoughts on the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech yesterday. Many have called for better control of guns. Many others still have said "if only guns were more widely available".

Both positions are wrong, of course, in the context of what I wrote above. There is no reason to believe that if the entire college campus was armed, that there wouldn't be 32 students dead this morning. Likewise, there's no reason to believe that, if every gun in Virginia was taken away Sunday, those kids wouldn't be dead anyway.

None. Any presumption otherwise is flawed by the fact that this played out the way it played out, but in a different world based on the additional rule that either side wants to impose on this scenario, it would have played out differently. If the entire campus was armed, for example, who's to say this gunman wouldn't simply have gathered a posse of friends and together, 32 people die? Similarly, in a world where guns were banned from campus...well, a bomb in a crowded gymnasium could easily kill 32 people. Same outcome, different initial conditions.

It's the illusion of control, and the obvious lack of it, that has people grasping for explanations to support their viewpoints.

A gun is the illusion of control. There's a great line in the movie Grand Canyon:

Simon: Look, I don't know nothing about you, you don't know nothing about me. I don't know if you're stupid, or some kind of genius. All I know is that I need to get out of here, and you got the gun. So I'm asking you for the second time, let me go my way here.

Gangbanger: I'm gonna grant you that favor, and I'm gonna expect you to remember it if we ever meet again. But tell me this, are you asking me as a sign of respect, or are you asking because I've got the gun?

Simon: Man, the world ain't supposed to work like this. I mean, maybe you don't know that yet. I'm supposed to be able to do my job without having to ask you if I can. That dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you ripping him off. Everything is supposed to be different than it is.

Gangbanger: So what's your answer?

Simon: You ain't got the gun, we ain't having this conversation.

Gangbanger: That's what I thought, no gun, no respect. That's why I always got the gun.

And yet, that gangbanger has no control, because he can just as easily lose the gun as get it, and even having it, there are bigger guns out there just waiting to be trained on him. And bigger guns on them, and so on up the scale. Eventually, you reach the biggest gun, but so? That gun, too, can be lost.

Or Simon could decide, "You know what? Fuck it, I got a job to do, you want to shoot me, shoot me." Now the gun isn't control. If anything, it's just randomized the situation (if this had been a real life situation, of course. In the movies, Simon likely would get shot to advance the plot).

Essentially, tho, I suspect this is what was going through the gunman's head yesterday: he felt in control, and yet his actions tell us he was desperately out of control, to the point where he shot himself dead (at least that's the current version of events).

Likewise, our attempts to make sense of a senseless act are an illusion of control. None of us will ever know what went on in the gunman's head, so none of us will ever fully understand this horror. What demons lurked there? What pain, real or perceived, had he suffered?

We'll try to understand, because we must, because all the gun control in the world or for that matter, all the guns in the world, will not prevent a tragedy like this from happening again. We probably ought to replace the Second Amendment with a Second Suggestion, for all the good those legal guns have done and will do for this country.

Life is aggressive and violent, and will find a way to destroy what it has to destroy in order to create new life. And man is life, just as life is man. The difference is, in life itself, chaos creates a rearranged order.

Only man can destroy for the perverse pleasure of destroying. And we're armed to do it on mass scales

Virginia Tech
guns
violence

In Memoriam

A great man in the annals of American male history has died:

The co-inventor of the TV remote, Robert Adler, has died.

Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made the couch potato possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday.

His funeral can be see on CSpan, CSpan2, and if you're lucky enough to have picture in picture, TNT.

Seriously, think for a moment how much different your life would be without this invention?

Without a remote, you'd have to get up and change the channel. Television would have remained something that the entire family gathered around to watch what, well basically, the parents wanted to watch. The kids would have found some excuse (except homework, of course) to wander off and do something else, like read a book. TV would not have become the central focus of the home.

So there'd be no reason to develop cable, the VCR, the DVD player, satellite television. You wouldn't have component stere systems. Hell, even my computers have remotes! You'd have to get out and open your garage by hand, even on the coldest snowiest winter evening. The next morning, you'd have to stagger out to the car and start it with a key, braving the subfreezing cold while trying to move around enough in the seat to stay warm while the engine warmed a little.

Movies would still be in vogue. Because there'd be no cable, there'd be no videos, so no Britney Spears....wait, that's a good thing!...no Paris Hilton!

Of course, no Daily Show or Colbert Report, either. Or CNN. Or the Weather Channel. Or LinkTV or FreeSpeech TV.

People would have to talk to each other.

The NBA, NHL, and MLB empires would be much smaller shells, focused on serving local markets, especially during football season when the NFL had locked up TV coverage on CBS and NBC. There'd be no Fox. No Simpsons. No "Married WIth Children."

Kids might actually go outside and play in the spring, summer and fall (and maybe even in the snow!) rather than watch the X Games on ESPN. No ESPN.

So I'm thinking that, today, as you tune in the Flyers/Rangers game, or the Army/Navy basketball game, or prerace coverage of the Daytona 500, you might want to mute the sound for a minute out of respect for Robert Adler.

I'll be outside, however.

tags technorati : snarky, snarcasm, snarkasm, American culture