Christmas 2016
It is time once again for a Christmas Eve pixel picture. Accepting the advice of some on these little "art" works that I firmly set and describe the scene rather than rely on the lines alone, I offer this.
A tranquil midnight respite
Here we have Santa on Christmas eve as always. Now; however, Santa has been doing this trans-world present delivery for a number of years now, and he's got it knocked. He can take a break after a certain point of the night. Hey I get two fifteen breaks per day working for McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland. So Santa stops off to have a beer at a convenient bar (that's what this is) He is having a Dogfish Head -- Olde School -- I think, its a little hard to tell. The Reindeer have come in also, they're all having highballs of some sort. Rudolph around the corner is nursing a margarita. Its a tough gig, they all deserve it. Santa, that guy is the real deal.
The bar has a set of large ceiling height windows giving a nice view of the clear Christmas eve night sky. It seems to be one of those tourist oriented lounges in a tropical of sub-tropical setting. I'm thinking it might be the Top of the La Concha bar in Key West. Wait is that place even still around? [Internet interlude] No sadly it is not, it appears to have closed on April 14th 2014. The La Concha is now called the La Concha Hotel & Spa. Well, If Santa can fit down chimneys he can make this bar appear again for one night.
It would be remiss of me not to say, as 2016 draws to a crumbling close, that the tableau for this year is not unrelated to beer being rarely far from my mind these days. In the year that comes I will look more to the resilience of ordinary people, not to so-called leaders, systems, or governments; for the way forward. Never to the self declared extraordinary. To borrow Thoreau: "The rich man - not to make any invidious comparison - is always sold to the institution which makes him rich (Civil Disobedience)".
Wednesday, 21 December 2016 23:30 EST #
Safe as Houses
Early last Spring I took some pictures from the ravine section of the N.W. Branch bike trail; which are you see here. It was evening: low light. A setting or just set sun showing only the houses, windows balanced at the point of receiving and emanating light. My original motivation had been to test out the camera in my new iPhone and play around with the square format and the black & white settings. The best camera is always the one you have with you. This is much more than a truism. Smart phones have allowed the human race to chase the scourge of alien UFOs from our skies. Something the camera on my first generation iPod Touch could never have done.
[Three Houses, just up and across from Adlephi Mill /pb]
The 5s iPhone is more a usable camera, than a minimal afterthought. It offers a whole drawer full of filters for monochrome shots alone. Further there is something approximating aperture adjustment plus focus and aperture lock. It all has to be done on the glass screen, of course. Holding the device, composing the picture and waving your thumbs about to tp the glass at various points. It seemed it took two hands and some concentration to take a standard horizontal shot (vertical 16:9 is an abomination, particularly for video). This was one reason I was trying out square format. And, of course, I lay any over indulgence of my photographic interests at the feet of Slate's Jamelle Bouie whom I've been reading and following on twitter all year.
[Across the half dry creek /pb]
The time of day and year were somewhat incidental. It was my regular commute home from work at around 7:00 pm, and as soon after the winter solstice when I could ride along the unlit bike-trail at that time of day. The sun as it sets, drops over south-west side of the ravine which is somewhat deep in this portion of the trail, setting the houses that line the rim in relief against the sky. These two things came together to produce this set of photographs.
[By the new(ish) footbridge leading to Quebec st. /pb ]
The time of the year particularly the condition of light at that hour contributed to the the abstract quality of the photographs. The trees were still bare stark and black. The houses outlines only, no yards no objects only backs and sides; silhouettes a shaped mass. But it worked I thought, because this illustrated all I know about them. The darkness of the land against the edge of the transitioning sky.
[Six houses in a row, maybe seven /pb]
There I knew lay families, middle class lives, distinct and unique. Yet inside each something the same. This individual focus stayed on my mind as a rode along. Reflecting on watching my friends and siblings nieces and nephews grow up and move out of houses not different. There is an aspiration that each generation succeeds -- does better than the previous. Out to better jobs, lives and houses. Does this still hold, I thought. What might it mean if that doesn't hold.
[Scene from the back of a Cul-de-Sac /pb]
The appearance that these houses in the photographs) are isolated and unitary, as you proceed down the path they appear in clumps and present different edges and angles to the viewer. This is because they are built against the park in courts and loops giving the houses a nonlinear aspect. Surmising this structure you can then see them as the close and connected neighborhoods they are.
[Apartment building above New Hampshire ave and Piney Branch rd. /pb ]
The houses seemed to hang on the edge of the sky, a Siege Periless, caught between merging with the black ground and vanishing into the fading light. Between the present and the rolling earth. For all the lives and dreams within these dwelling poised in this liminal darkness seeming to exemplify the fragility of the future.
[Lone House in color - I took a B+W of this also but liked the color one better /pb]
The toiling world resists the idea of evening quietude of any real degree; too much at any hour is going on. But perhaps there is a twilight pause when the world balances between harmony and chaos, then plunges on.
Friday, 09 December 2016 19:30 EDT #
2016 Rehoboth Film Festival
As we have for the past several years my sister and I have taken portions of the Rehoboth Beach Film festival, a presentation independent films by the Rehoboth Beach Film Society. This is located in southern coastal Delaware. The festival was spread out over two weeks this year (from Friday November 4th to Sunday November 13th) as the society contends with a schedule of dozens of films and a limited number of available screens. At least this year one of the screens is their own at their new CAT center.
I saw six films (and a set of shorts) over four days, out of around forty-five films of the nine day festival Festival Program_pdf.
- The first was an Argentinan film "My Friend from the Park" My Friend from the Park (2015) A story about a young women taking care of a young baby while her husband who seems to be a science documetary filmmaker is off on the edge of some ice bound volcano somewhere. She socalizes with some similarly situatd young women at a neighborhood park. They like her are all of a yuppie hipster cast, but she bonds particularly with another women who is somewhat different. I see in the imdb description that it is Director Ana Katz who plays the friend "Rosa".
- The next film was "A Stray" A Stray Movie Review & Film Summary (2016) | Roger Ebert A young Somali immigrant man living in Minneapolis has hit bottom: thrown out by his mother, dumped by his girlfriend and hanging out with low life friends he ends up homeless. Whereupon the Inman from the neighborhood Mosque tells him he will find a true friend who will give his life direction. Soon afterwards while working a new job as a resturaunt delivery driver he nearly runs down a small stray dog who he then finds difficult to get rid of.
- The next fim Harmonium Harmonium (film) - Wikipedia) Harmonium (2016) - IMDb was a difficult film. A Japanese production and winner of the Jury award for x and Cannes this year it was well made and well acted. A story of an average family - the title refers to a organ-like keyboard instrument their 9 or 10 year old daughter plays, as well as a metaphoric nod to the concept of harmony. The story does go through several changes in tone along the way.
- It was a little harder to come up with information for the next film I saw Dolores, but I eventually came across this review: Dolores (movie) | Francois Schuiten & Benoit Peeters: was based on a graphic novel by a Beligian writer and artist team. Benoît Peeters - Wikipedia the writer and François Schuiten - Wikipedia the artist. There is a little more on the latter here: Francois Schuiten. In the story a expert model maker is hired to make a rich actress's modern architectoral style house as she leaves for Hollywood. From there the story moves toward Felisburto Hernadez (the Daisy Dolls) levels of flight. The graphic novel came out originaly in 1991 and was the original idea of Anne Balthus. It was published in German Dolores Baltus, Anne., et al. Dolores. Doornik: Casterman, 1991. and 2 years latter in French, but not in English or a US edition.
- Command and Control Command and Control (2016) - IMDb is a taut documetary based on a 1980 incident in Damascus Arkansas when a Titan II liquid fueled intercontinental ballistic Missile with an active nuclear war head in the nose cone exploded in its silo after a maintenance accident. The documentary is largely drawn from a book of the same name Command and control : nuclear weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the illusion of safety Schlosser, Eric. Command and Control : Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. New York: The Penguiess, 2013. which covered this incident along with many more. The thing that really gets to me about this incident is that I was a sailor, an IS2, stationed in the Pentagon (CNO-IP) when this occured and have no particular memory of the incident. I don't think the gravity of the situation was bandied about much at the time.
- Youth in Oregon Youth in Oregon (2016) - IMDb: is a film involving an elderly man, A physician as it happens who facing a second round of open chest surgery decides against the wishes of his family to investigated assisted suicide and insists on a road trip to Oregon for this purpose. Frank Langella who plays the main character has also played Richard Nixon and Warren Burger. Billy Crudup, and Christina Applegate play the son-in-law and daughter.
- The festival wrapped up with a series of short films which was this years Sundance shorts program 2016 Sundance Short Film Tour: official trailer on Vimeo These were: Affections -- Bacon and God's wrath -- Edmond -- Her Friend Adam -- Jungle -- Grandfather Drum -- the Procedure -- Thunder Road. The last was probably my favorite , although I will never be able to listen to Thunder Road the same way again. As they say everyone mourns in their own way.
One aspect of the whole affair I would like to touch on is what I call the Festivality of it all. This is a word I made up out of Festival and Conviviality. A word for the social aspect: the big tent which was a marker and symbol of the festival for years. Its worth noting that the manual paper system (where many shoe-boxes of index-card tickets were set up everyday, when the cards in a box were gone it was understood that film was sold-out) was the original primary reason for the tent. Updating the ticketing system from to a modern "e" ticket system obviated the particular need for that. The Festival still seems to see the need or desire for a centrally located "social-center" towards this end they have partnered the last two years with a fine new establishment; the Crooked Hammock. The Crooked Hammock is well situated and hospitable, but is also a competitor on amenities; drinks and food. These formerly were provided for by numerous local businesses, and seemed to be a good opportunity for public relations. Largely empty and un-attended this year and last, these sponsors are less visible and less appreciated.
The other big move by the society which is bring change with it is its permanent new home the Cinema Art Theater (CAT) located off route one behind the WAWA filling station (17701 Dartmouth dr. Dartmouth plaza). Functioning both as office, box office, and screen with its roughly 110 seat theater the society has largely solved the 4k digital screen problem. This reduces the need for the big show. It allows them to conduct routine scheduled screenings throughout the year and become more of a regular Film Society. This in turn allows for the downgrading or at least down-sizing ofthe festival itself. For all I know this may be the direction they want to go in. There is the fundraising aspect, something entirely of there own affair, but of which the outlines are clear. The Film Society currently is dependent on regional and out-of-State base and attendance. One whose outlook is more routine would look more towards local and in-towners (Rehoboth, Lewes, Milton). This would inevitably reset the society as a smaller and less ambitious affair. This lack of a strong social dimension loses the "Fun" aspect of a festival; the conversations and sharing with strangers, the attendant reflection and excitement.
Friday, 25 November 2016 14:00 EDT #
Bretton World
I've been writing this piece since early July most of it conceived in advance of the conventions, when I hoped to have this finished. The connection I see between Britain's EU referendum, which was taking place at the time, and this election reflects that. By the time of the conventions; however, a tidal wave of Trump takes, four or five a day trying to penetrate the miasma surrounding his candidacy arrived. I felt I needed to read every one, and they just kept coming. Most falling short of any true insight to his central persona, only suggesting by this that perhaps he had none. By mid to late September the morphing of the campaign into something utterly without precedent, bereft of democratic sensibility left me feeling that I simply did not understand what was going on. For a tail-end boomer who has paid attention (by degree) to twelve election cycles and voted in nine this was not a comfortable feeling. There was Trump's non-campaign and possible ulterior motivations -- recasting the Trump brand wholly within the media spectrum. Partnering with his boy Bannon (Briebart) with advice and personnel from Ailes -- to monetize the white nationalist movement with a "news" network. Add to this Wikileak's egregious entry into politics with targeted partisan releases of private information. To say nothing of the Russian State's role in the opposition content provision; for their general purposes of kompromat and inducing pessimism in democratic systems.
The over-arching danger is the end of the post war progressive era, the beginning of a Balkanized retrenched one. The Bretton World is ending. By Bretton World, I mean the set of affairs put in place by the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944. The transfers of money, currency exchange rates international banking, and the International Monetary Fund. The structure of trade and payment around which the post war world was to be organized. The ordering principle of the participating world. Freedom, Democracy and Settling Markets. There is always a world order, I suppose. The rise and fall of Bretton World, the US led world order, is particular for me it is the world I have spent my entire life in, and it seemed reasonably well organized and prosperous compared to any other I'd knew of.
This world; though, was always a thing of parts even in its integrating and non integrating divides and now seems on the brink of disintegration, an institutional breakdown Globalization RIP? by Project Syndicate - Project Syndicate. These institutions being the standing organizations of administrative or moral authority, apparatuses of governmental or intergovernmental process in enumerated and unenumerated form. These back the structure of our world and behind these there is nothing but the belief of people of the good they obtain. The West no longer speaks coherently on the world order. There is no narrative to its events. There is no agreement on intractable problems, even to their identity let alone solution. There is no sense that the order is working for the benefit of the world's many people, an increasing doubt that it is simply a smaller structure raised for the benefit of the few The Anti-Globalization Brexplosion by Yoon Young-kwan - Project Syndicate. A world where most live under the choice of others. With the impending quixotic parting of the United Kingdom from the european union (a project of two postwar generations). Brexit in an apt turn of phrase, you have the new balkanization, the flip side of not just empire but inroads of cultural transparency. Chasing some forgone freedom in an act of atomization. This years Republican platform and its candidate are doing their best to match the European mood How Brexit and the Rise of Donald Trump Reflect the Changing Lines Between Left and Right on Both Sides of the Atlantic - The Atlantic.
What of globalization and its discontents? Globalization and its New Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz - Project Syndicate: What is globalization? A short answer is that it is the realization of what the Bretton Woods architects had in mind. A seamless, lossless flow of capital and goods across the world. At times it is difficult to figure out who is for globalization and who against. It delivers its benefits and costs unevenly. Made in the USA and "look for the Union label." campaigns have been around since I was was young. Still I don't think it was until Seattle that I understood there to be a permanent anti-globalization ideology (a partnership of leftists and unionists). These days galvanized by Trump's anxious rust and dust belters. The question of who benefits from globalization is simple; circling the world chasing hunger and poverty for a low wage (but educated and quiescent) work force, return of investment in automation in higher income localities, Capital benefits from globalization. The importation of low priced consumer goods does not offset the tranche of medium wage jobs lost in this process. There is a world in between these poles; though. Proximity of raw materials, cultural wellsprings of original concepts, and skill sets will always ensure that some things will be built in one place and traded to others, and that there will always be an economic rational for this. But every region if not nation needs a mix of an industrial and service economy and the range of work they provide.
Even more is the quiet benefit of what doesn't happen. By this I mean what flows from this gainful employment being distributed toward the manufacture or agricultural production of local or trade goods evenly throughout the world and the peaceful livelihoods in quiet regions that follow from that.
Turning to the zeitgeist, so to speak, of America today. The question is of the overtness of it all. The broken (Overton) windows. The racism, anti-semitism, bigotry, and fascism. The fascism may be more of the early Italian model of D'Abrunzzio and Mussolini, but reading through Umberto Ecco's Fascism essay from 1994 there is much to recognize. Donald Trump and his Greek chorus of urgers do seem to using some portion of this as portfolio. David Duke ex Klan dragon now running for the Senate from Louisiana has voiced hope that Trumps ascendency will rehabilitate Hitlers image David Duke suggests Trump comparisons could rehabilitate Hitler's image | TheHill.
Since this campaign started I have viewed Trump as merely pompous (a view built up over previous decades) a buffoon, a scoundrel, but now, frankly, a Diabolic of some kind. Something along the lines of Maupassont's Horla. A thing of unnatural psychological state. To play the racist sexist anti-semitic buffoon as strategy, pretending to no personal animosity, but casually allow the trouble that falls to people because of this, incitement of violence and opprobrium, because at end, you truly do not consider these people matter -- is to be racist. Trumpism is a reactionary movement and a political Rorschach. As such it marks the collapse of the conservative attempt to cast conservatism as a revolutionary force in the model of 60's radicalism/liberalism.
For Trump there is nothing, no thing no moment, that is not to be consumed for his own aggrandizement The question of what Donald Trump “really believes” has no answer - Vox. This might not seem altogether different from normal political egotism. Politicians; though, exist as a "public" man or women. Their charge in office can never be thought to represent a private interest civic-minded and service oriented is the creed. Trump is not civic minded or a public servant in outlook or temperament. He is marked rather by ignorance self-absorption and contempt for the rule of law. Yet still Trump represents an American type: a self parodying Babbit embedded in in a passion play of America's original sin The dark history of Donald Trump's rightwing revolt | Timothy Shenk | News | The Guardian. In practice his campaign has collapsed to a near absolute reduction of appeal to white fear.
How much of a unique rupture of norms is this? Donald Trump and the Seven Broken Guardrails of Democracy - The Atlantic Have we arrived at a point that heralds the return of open racism and active defense of racism to American politics? Or is it a passing moment -- the embers of a resentment that has few clear lines of continuance? If the unspoken agreements of discourse have kept stark racism out of American politics are gone, it may take a generation or more to repair these fundamentals Donald Trump's legacy threatens to be return of race politics to the mainstream | US news | The Guardian:. Even then there is now a rear guard within the mainstream that will never go back (albeit too much has changed and the so-called alt-right is not the force the Klan or John Birchers were formerly). Norms more than laws are what hold a culture together. They are the unspoken agreements on what rules are founded on what values, What is beyond the pale, and what isn't. They merge somewhat with formal laws in what are called grund-norms. Which either are written meta laws like a national constitution or those critical norms which obtain universal acceptance and articulation within a culture and are embedded in written laws.
The reality is that the Republican party has spent A generation racing towards the brick wall that is Donald Trump The Republicans waged a 3-decade war on government. They got Trump. - Vox. There is no other candidate that the party today was ever going to nominate The Party of Donald Trump? - The Atlantic. All this is the inevitable endgame of the "Southern Strategy". Where they became home for all non-accommodating southern whites; segregationists, anti-federalists, lost causers.
This campaign has also see the merging of Trump and the two GOPs. The two GOPs are the sedate rational one, the established party which has always maintained they are focused on conservative principles rugged individualism fiscal discipline and small government, and the party of the rank and file as they really exist. Which increasingly seems in no small part privileged anxious white nationalism. His followers and apologists are singularly not inclined toward a democracy not exclusively useful to them. A particular "tell" here is the great efforts in the name of fraudulent voting they cannot specifically point to or identify which in practical effect only amounts to vote suppression.
Over the late summer (and now into the post-labor day fall) some have wondered "Why is a "damaged" republican party led by chaos itself still even with the democratic party in this race? The answer is that the Democratic party is also damaged, not simply presenting a weak candidate. A strong party makes a strong candidate. a weak party a weak one. Like justice institutional breakdown tends to be blind.
This election cycle marks a collapse of party institutions particularly for republicans. Congressional leadership, always comprising a certain ballast to the system, has lost its ability to quietly arrange the budget through earmarks and add-ons to rein for their own horses. The new insurgents within in their party do not care for careers in government and obtain their force and funds from below. For the party as a whole illustrating the perils of the populism they have wedded themselves to.
A prime cause of weakened institutions of politics is money the party's don't control. Political Action Committees have the ability now to funnel money without public disclosure in the millions and hundreds of millions into campaigns. A generation of facile billionaires newly surface as "players" in politics & journalism. Politics is rapidly becoming so un-transparent that its getting harder to apply the prescriptive qui bono -- who benefits analysis to a given statement or situation.
Part of the problem with a political figure like Donald Trump (A political figure rather than a politician) is that he is not only a present demagogue in bloom, but that he represents future demagoguery to this point held at bay. He is an American Caudillo. The version 2.0 which will now inevitably follow, can't be more of a low-life but will be smarter. Chaos has surrounded Donald Trump all his life. He is the chaos candidate. He does not possess an ability to make this nation or anything else truly great. He can only bring what is his nature, chaos, to what he touches. Tomorrow's populist will tread lighter, aim straighter
There was a resistance of the press to acknowledge the nature of the campaign. A disinclination to accept anything was out of the ordinary. Largely the press's pre-disposition is to view and treat each side as being the equal and balance of the other. Even as spokesmen for overt white supremacists Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan voiced enthusiastic support for Trumps candidacy The press maintain their view from nowhere and nothingness. As Professor Jay Rosen points out here Donald Trump is crashing the system. Journalists need to build a new one. - The Washington Post meaningful analysis of the election collapsed.
After the practical lessons of Marius & Sulla (both holding dictatorships around 100bce) the Roman republic was never able to put things back in their box. Administrative rules changes that made the new Roman armies responsive to men rather than the state, and men became the state. The power of unshared rule shone too brightly. The ability to strike out at enemies a-judiciously too useful.
This election has unleashed an resurgent history on the United States. The legacy of issues left not fully dealt with and left half buried in the past. It has unleashed unapologetic forthright racism. The new ways, reek of old ways. Privilege is desired to obtain the license of liberty.
It is here that I see the failure of Bretton World. The failure of the market democracy of an open society. This is not to say that 2016 this is an express turning point or special year like like some remember 1968. A year of breached taboos customs and propriety. Rather a culmination of disintegration and change like the hidden hull of an unkempt ship. We've been patting ourselves hard on the back for too many years on how successful its all been.
There does seem to be a general sense of dissatisfaction within the west. That government is too close to us, and not attuned enough The West on the Brink by Joschka Fischer - Project Syndicate. Francis Fukuyama's End of History (which I finally got around to reading last spring) ends with the borrowed concept of the Last man. A populace with desire for more that pluralistic representational government committed to equality can offer. A desire for domination and outsized ego-honour -- thymos. Market economies do not work well enough, consistently enough, or evenly enough to end history. Fukuyama's concept of history and progress here contains the idea of contradictions. This is what determines stasis or continuance. History is considered over when a society arrives at a set system. Unless internal contradictions within its governance reopen it by revealing breaches within the harmony of the system that leave people desiring radical change.
There is the idea that in all societies that government is power tending towards absolute power: tyranny. That our tri-part governance and separation of powers into neat obedient categories in the US, is only an arrangement that masks this from us. If the Judicial system becomes political it collapses into the executive, and legislative. If there is hesitation, disinclination or intransigence in the legislature it will be subsumed by executive power.
In this striving for effectiveness, this desiring of action, a society will allow this consolidation, and more to happen. With little examination. To get things done. In the name of a disrupting economic process. Despotic progressiveness, and conservative all at once. This is a foundational American message. But beyond all this good lies the terror.
Sunday, 30 October 2016 23:45 EDT #
Millington Sisters
I like the internet for being still, sometimes, a cabinet of curiosities. For having the quality called serendipitous. Things lie within myriad quixotically labeled drawers waiting to be discovered and push their impressions upon you. The way roads and rabbit holes have a way of leading you on to places you didn't know you needed to go.
I like the circuitous manner of discovery. To light on a thing with ordinary interest, pull its loose threads to see what it will become. I put more stock in things I learn in such ways.
This brings us today to the Millington Sisters and their improbably great band you never heard of -- but by way of Brie Howard. On a Saturday a couple of months ago with only the narrow availibiliy confines of broadcast tv I came across the movie Android (1982) - IMDb. It didn't seem to have much to recommend it, but it starred Klaus Kinski who I will watch in just about anything. I would watch him assemble Ikea furniture; because he is Aguirre the Wrath of God. Brie Howard was the second billed playing a character named Maggie. She wasn't a tremendous actress, but had an undeniable screen (or stage) presence. And she was quite pretty.
This led me to hit up the internets while I watched, to find out more about her; this is the great perfection of old movie watching in modern times. I saw that she was a musician of sorts, a drummer. Her imdb page indicated she had been recruited to be in a film called American Girls a Vanity 6-esque movie project. I think they actually wanted Vanity to be in it, but she declined or was unavailable. The band assembled for this never made the movie, but in a unlikely turn of events proceeded on as a real band and toured as an opening act for a couple of years in the late eighties American Girls (band) - Wikipedia. She did a number of other things: she was in three other movies notably "the Running Kind" in 1989.
She did session work as a drummer and has played on a number of well known records. Through all this she was variously known as Brie Berry, Brie Brandt, Brie Howard, and Brie Darling. She has a daughter who has her own degree of notoriety
What caught my eye; though, scanning her biographies was her recurring association with another band. One of Brie's earliest, high school, bands in Sacramento was drumming with the Sveltes, with Jean and June Millington, and she was drummer in a latter version of Fanny, the now nearly forgotten all women rock band from the early seventies Fanny (band) - Wikipedia. Brie shares with Jean and June also being Philippine-American.
Fanny at most junctures would've been no more than an echo of a memory to, but a few months prior, last November, I read an article on June Millington from the NPR music blog which stayed like a tickler file in the back of my mind You've Got A Home: June Millington's Lifelong Journey In Rock : The Record : NPR.
June and Jean were born in the Philippines, raised in an upper middle class family with a Filipina mother and US Navy officer father. The family moved to Sacramento in 60's. Faced with a life as ordinary American teenagers it seems they began acting out a little; trading the ukuleles they had played as children for electric guitars. After their first band the Sveltes ended. The sisters joined Wild Honey a band formed by Svelte's former 2nd drummer (Brie was the first) and moved to LA. It was this band that morphed into Fanny
Fanny put out four albums over their career; {Fanny, Charity Ball, Fanny Hill, (Fanny Live) Mother's Pride]. Five If you count the live album. Six, if you count the late period lp Rock and Roll survivors. At any rate June the guitarist, along with the drummer Alice de Buhr leaves band after Charity Ball. At that point Brie Howard joins band at drums with Patti Quatro (sister of Suzi Quatro) on guitar. She leaves after the Rock and Roll Survivor LP.
At some point in the late 1970's Jean marries guitarist Earl Slick. The band ceased activity gradually around 1977, but the sisters often resurrect versions of it and put it in the studio or on the road often with Brie over the years. Once going by the name the LA All Stars, one of a large number of bands that have used this name.
Fanny was not just an abstraction to me though. As a college radio dj (WMUC-FM) I had actually played Fanny. My strongest recollections associated with them today revolves around the wonders of the record library there. A small enough room towards the back of the station's space ("high atop the South Campus Dining Hall") double-height, with a metal cage second floor and spiral stair-case. And records, thousands and thousands of records. Twenty thousand maybe more. certainly impression making to a guy whose record collection barely pushed a couple dozen. A Fanny record had been in the reshelve bin pulled out for someones previous show. Reshevling was my initial collateral duty there - I set it aside in my own pile and picked out the others. Thats how I prepared for shows in those days.
Going back and listening to thei lps now on youTube (and a lot of their material is on YouTube "Charity Ball" "You're the one" "Butter Boy"). I was struck by their cover of Cream's Badge. This has always been one of my favorite songs, a well formed throw-away with a devastating bridge. There is a slightly muddy black and white video of a live performance of this on French TV in 1972 [Fanny - Badge. The band in its prime incarnation was a four piece with June and Jean on guitar and bass, Alice de Buhr on drums, and Nicole Barkley on 1970's keyboards. This version of the band was tight and by turns within a song surprisingly hard rocking. The early 70's were an apex for rock and roll as a social phenomenon. Fanny exemplified as much as any band of that time.
Today Jean Lives in Georgia and is an herbalist and Resonant Sound Therapist (everyone has their own frequency - you just need to find it). June lives in Goshen Massachusetts with Ann Hackler. Over the years she has worked as producer and founding figure in Women's Music Movement scene of the late 70s and 80s. She also runs the IMA (Institute for Musical Arts Girl Guitar Camp.
The NPR article last November (link above) was occasioned by June's memoir Land of a thousand bridges : island girl in a rock & roll world -- which Mckeldin library, where I work, still has not bought. Most of the information I possess of the Millington Sisters today comes from reading that article. The only caveat I have with the NPR article is the lengths it goes to understand the band as nineties or aughts Riot Grrrl style indie rockers. This may help as a hook for todays readers (even fits well in a way with their pre-Fanny bands), but also serves to make a little harder to understand them in their own time. It is a minor quibble really. I was struck particularly by June's comment that the band kept getting better as they went on which gave them the moral equivalent of "fuck you" money against would-be detractors. That and being able to set up a stage for a show, and back a truck up to a loading dock themselves. One of the best parts of that article is the short embedded video at the end which was the teaser for their 2011 Rock like a Girl album and also a look at the Rock and Roll girls camp.
For the shows they did backing that release they played with a young musician, Lee Madeloni, In a photograph over on their website June and Jean Millington Lee wrote the caption "Me mom and Auntie June." Here I note that Frank Madeloni was David Bowie guitarist Earl Slick's real name.
It is a little harder to tell what Brie Howard (Darling) is up these days. Her Wikipedia page is sparse on recent details Brie Howard - Wikipedia. The IMBd page fills in her movie rolls. She seems to be living in Southern California. Her current band, the Boxing Ghandis which at one point included her husband David Darling, has put out four records over the years, the first of which had considerable success and an ep that came out just a year or so ago. As a tail-end baby boomer I've always regarded the early boomer cohort as living the most realized quintessential American lives possible.
Well, that's the end of this little tale. It is often when you are not looking for anything in particular that you find the most interesting stories, when you see the connections and interrelations among things. It's always best to hold few fixed ideas about what is to be discovered.
Thu, 30 June 2016 19:00 EDT #
Information Wars
Over the last month or two (three) I've been following the pas de deus between Apple Corporation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation over the San Bernardino Shooters iPhone. I wasn't initially going to write about it here on Atomized because the issue is complex technical and seemed to be well in hand by many others What’s Really at Stake in the Apple Encryption Debate - ProPublica:.
But after several weeks reading and listening to an overly credulous press NPR Search : NPR: I changed my mind.
It is not likely that this is as the Government insists just about one case terrorism and one iPhone. It is about many iPhones in criminal cases and iPhones in general - something they don't hide well was there a link for this point. It is about a door, a back door. A private permanent port into Apple's device world for American law enforcement and everyone they choose to share it with going forward. It is about the concept of privacy of the individual at all. It is a re-fighting of the crypto-wars and yet still a battle of public opinion Apple versus the-FBI understanding iPhone encryption the risks for Apple and encryption. Law enforcement and the various intelligence agencies simply do not want public to have encryption. The modern world; though. which is no longer digitally the same as the '90's world will not work without door lock of digital economy. Even then it wouldn't seem so bad if whether national or internal security those simply critical of the government were not targeted.
A smart phone is not just a telephone, it is the primary computer, comunicator, and document keep of the modern person's life. It is their home their castle their private realm.
To some degree this assault on privacy is just another effect of small wars rebounding. The result of processes developed against populations overseas regarded as having no civil rights, no written out rights, gradually being imported back home to use against domestic "others". Once in play this only naturally expands and moves to the homeland.
The preferred result for many in the security services is complete containment of the citizenry, i.e. the subjects, of their critical attention. The government in all its loosely attached facets would have there be no privacy, no personal information, no personal identity without their leave. A Smart Phone is not just a fetishist telephone, as the President seems to see it, it is the primary computer communicator document keep of a persons' life. It is their home their castle. A door barred without a warrant, used in the breach as they see fit and after they lose control of such door, forever without. Little is less secure than a security) secret. For individual autonomy the lesson is Pwned is owned.
Under pressure from both security state apparatus and private enterprise personal information is becoming the final mass commodity of the Capital system.
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Sometime after this Apple/FBI situation had developed I saw a tweet that referenced the phrase "Surveillance Capitalism". It may have been this tweet -- I made no particular note at the time. The tweet indicated the deleterious effects of surveillance capitalism fall mostly on less wealthy segments of society.
About a week after that I saw a tweet linking to an article in the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) a piece on "Surveillance Capitalism" Shoshana Zuboff: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism:. This likely was the ur document of the Jacob realm tweet I saw earlier. I'm not sure when I first read this, my browser history tells me 06 March. I know I had formed some idea on this by 24 February because I remember discussing it with a guy on the U. Maryland shuttle bus that week. Significantly; though, writer William Gibson retweeted a link to this and a biography of its author link on 09 March from there within a few days I think a quarter of my twitter timeline had retweeted this article.
My first impression of the piece was how solid it was. I've been reading too many Open Democracy dot net pieces that are often poorly written and sorely reasoned. In the bio of this one I saw that the author is a retired Harvard business school professor Wikipedia. She sees behavioral information about people as being the primary commodity of the markets going forward in the new century. The driver and battleground of the economy.
Late Stage Capitalism Late capitalism - Wikipedia, the setting that many suppose that Surveillance Capitalism takes place in, is a phrase that comes out of Marxist (or neo-marxist) criticism. It seems to have two largely related meanings (1) Simply a synonym for the industrial age economy. (2) more specifically for resurgent post-war consumer capitalism especially toward the end of the 20th century when it became a de-facto world-system. Economist Ernest Mandel conceived of this arriving post-industrial society as a more completely -- generalized universal -- industrial society. One marked by multinational corporations, globalized markets and capital flows. A period of increasing commodification and industrialization. He conceived of it as well as being potentially stable if at end transitional.
A couple of quotes from the Zuboff article that give an idea of it:
(1) The goal of everything we do is to change people’s actual behavior at scale. When people use our app, we can capture their behaviors, identify good and bad behaviors, and develop ways to reward the good and punish the bad. We can test how actionable our cues are for them and how profitable for us”. (A chief Data Scientist of a SV company to her)
(2)The assault on behavioral data is so sweeping that it can no longer be circumscribed by the concept of privacy and its contests. This is a different kind of challenge now, one that threatens the existential and political canon of the modern liberal order defined by principles of self-determination that have been centuries, even millennia, in the making."
The question is is information a commodity now? A commodity by standard definition is any item of a market that varies little or not at all between suppliers. Rice, nails, for instance, or your internet fascinations, medical histories. Has information as a commodity replaced the material commodities of the consumer society -- taken a controlling position among them, necessarily temporarily? Has this changed our, private citizens, relationship with private enterprise.
Fortunately Ms Zuboff has a book coming out later this year or early next year for which this article was a precis. About the wholesale trade in information I can offer only some anecdotes from where I stand. Many web sites, Journalistic entities, have recently become insistent about ad blockers. They don't like them and require you turn them off to view their content. Wired is one of the most insistent. I don't run an ad blocker but rather NoScript, a JavaScript blocker (and set to whitelist any page's top-level domain), and EFF's Privacy Badger. It quickly becomes apparent that Wired and fellow companies are really talking tracking cookies (multiple dozens per page) when they talk ads and ad blocking. their non dancing ads are getting through. Similarly I read that print book publishers giving away e-readers preloaded with advance publication works for survey purposes; the desire to gain the same information Amazon gets from the feedback its e-readers send home on how its books are read.
The US, much of the world really, is in the grip of an authoritarian impulse at the moment. The reasons differ but within the West it is about fears of lessened status for privileged groups, conceived of large and small. A disenfranchised working class (a white working class who aren't really disenfranchised, and not really a working class but in their fragility equate parity with abandonment) Trumpism to give it one name, but the current electoral exercise does show us its intensity and the focus point it comes to.
Democracy and Rule-of-Law are not, never been the cherished values we have told ourselves they are. Privilege and patrimony always lay just beneath the surface. Politicians facing the public are eager to applaud liberties virtues. Self-pleased bureaucrats; though, assume ownership of the individuals thought and conscience as an ordinary matter of state.
The FBI eventually dropped its case to force Apple to formally write a work around to iPhone 5 and 6 encryption The Apple-FBI Battle Is Over, But the New Crypto Wars Have Just Begun | WIRED. Because they had "another way" (which later turned out to consist of handing over one-and-one-half million dollars to a hacker for a zero-day) in more likely the FBI saw they did not have enough of a margin in the court of public opinion to make the whole effort worthwhile. [They've dropped a couple of other lesser cases since: With its retreat in New York, the FBI has lost the encryption fight | The Verge:] But they're not inclined to give up and this should be understood as just beginning The FBI may have dropped one case against Apple, but the battle is far from over | Trevor Timm | Opinion | The Guardian:.
Governmental degradation of privacy is not limited to national security matters, but is swiftly diffused to criminals and communities of ill-regard and uncooperativeness Surprise! NSA data will soon routinely be used for domestic policing that has nothing to do with terrorism - The Washington Post:. Opposition to favored projects of elites (pipelines), favor for opposed projects (Black lives matter). And through all this the trade in information. National Security concerns pass it to law enforcement, even as they bargain with the private sector for it. Any information useful for identification or prediction is drawn in as state and private entities play tag team on methods of acquisition offering beads and trinkets - security from low measure risk some unasked for consumer convenience to push the frontier of what intrusions the public won't revolt against. Arrayed together in a unity of interests.
What is the relationship between market entity treatment of; desire for information and the governmental one, and the simultaneous appearance of other market entities to sell privacy as a product? The ability in the digital era to accomplish individual level rather than demographic level information collection is what has fundamentally aligned national security and commercial interests. This coupled vector of individual behavioral management is increasingly also an trans state alignment. One of international mercantile and security bureaucracies. Anti-"terrorism" mechanics and information increasing is lent to ordinary law enforcement with the understanding that they will undertake double tracking investigation -- where they will create a a parallel investigation using the information they have been given essentially for the purpose of obfuscating or plausibly denying it.
In all this in government and economic spheres we have those who appoint themselves our protectors our controllers, managers, overseers and in disagreement adversaries. The balancing of rights held in rooms beyond our admittance. It is fair to ask does the public have a champion? And who would it be; politicians, non-governmental institutions, the press, some collective of anarchists? It is at the very least a redefinition of public to a body mute, not in process, not in dialogue with the exercise of political power. A public that things are decided for. A moment that may mark the beginning of a very long period of authoritarian style rule.
Sunday, 15 May 2016 19:00 EDT #
the Best Tweets (and classy)
I have some notes for use upon the occasion when twitter finally flips people's natural timelines to algorithmic ones.
That inevitable moment has arrived. The moment of opt out, not opt in. Apparently this was sometime last week. From The Next Web:
The feed’s documentation was also quietly updated on March 7... [The] company started turning it on it across the service as early as March 15...Some users received a notification on mobile advising them of the change, while others we talked to claimed they hadn’t seen anything.
Twitter's new algorithm is now on for everyone. I haven't seen a lot of commentary on this so far, Gizmodo:
Twitter's New Timeline Is Now the Default—Here's How to Opt-Out and The Verge:
Twitter’s algorithmic timeline is now on by default weighed in on this as well. Perhaps twitter users already knew how they felt about this change and their reaction was muted. Perhaps twitter trying to sneak this past us as quietly as possible contributed as well.
I was viewing twitter through a list at work this last week, and on Twitter for Mac (ie tweetie Maverick edition) at home and didn't see this. I had not known it happened at all. Knowing; I hit up that opt out radio button with due speed. In Twitter's browser application, within settings there is a new line "Show me the Best tweets first". My list that I was on "mf", Which stands I assure you for monday through friday, is my existing solution for twitters occasional resemblance to a firehose of nonsense. I have a feed and two lists, each 5/8ths of the next larger. Friends, family, and sensible smart people populate all three. Chris Cillizza, @TheFix of the Washington Post, for instance, is only on two of them. Simply put lists are good, I even find quality tweets by folks left off a list percolate in as RTs from people who made a list. I will say one additional thing I don't see Twitters ads/promoted tweets when view on a list (I don't on twitter-for-Mac either, nor gifs vines videos also -- its wonderful). It leaves me thinking I'm not playing fair, but on the other hand that really is their problem not mine.
I will admit on browser twitter some things seem improved recently. Clicking on timeline objects (images gifs videos embeds) work better now, pop-ups rather than timeline resetting page-outs. Of course using Firefox with both NoScript and Privacy Badger running. Sometimes do not know how people's pages are actually supposed to look and act. Further it is true that for a casual user a "best tweets" algorithm may not seem like such a bad thing. Even for me, overwhelmed by the product of even only some 200+ follows every time I step away. I almost dread "Big Nights" for the lot I follow, this is journalists and various manner of political events for me. I always come back to lists; though, an occam's razor of potentiality. Used adroitly they solve many of twitters outstanding problems. I wish twitter would work as hard to 1) make them easier to create populate and manage 2) mix people (accounts) and keyword tags in lists as they do machine blending timelines hoping some sugary froth will rise to the top. An algorithm might be profitably put to work on event markers such as hash-tagged sports or other television events, for instance, where raw tweets will come far in excess of one hundred per minute.
But. Twitter's management, Jack Dorsey etc, seem not to realize how dependent the whole edifice or ecosystem is on it's core users and a real time feed. These core users utterly rely on real time and directional time-flow for their understanding of events and statements -- and the conversations that unfold about them. This is the content that the casual users feed on that gives the whole its value and substance. While it is true the average or casual user is not that sensitive to strict time order, the creation of the content they value is. These new users will quickly understand this, see they are getting a degraded product and leave in greater droves than they arrived. Twitter must always allow the preference for a real time unmediated feed, and not depreciate it and try to gradually disappear it.
A lot of technological hubris even arrogance was on display the other month when this was announced. "Best tweets" they claim, but they disregard adjacency and look only at your past. What makes a tweet, what gives it its particular value is the tweets it is among. A tweet you may have chanced to view at some point prior however related or unrelated gives or denies another what significance it may ever have. The world unfolds only in the way it does.
Friday, 18 March 2016 09:15 EST #
n the Gretch Hungry Dark
A late start to a 2015 music listening list. But since my lists are only things I heard that were new to me in 2015, it doesn't make that much difference. There is no Spotify, Pandora or the like involved here, just radio listening, mostly radio over the internet -- my primary concession to modernity.
The necessary condition is a dj, the sufficient condition freeform. Pick the music, play the music, talk about the music. Towards this end a favorite radio show the second half of this year is Mayuko Fujino's on one of WFMU's subsidiary streams; Doug Schulkinds "Give the Drummer some". Her show airs 5:00 to 7:00 pm on Mondays WFMU: Play Vertigo with Mayuko: Playlists and Archives. She is paper cutout artist by day and there are occasional examples of this on her playlist page. In the best tradition of WFMU and what it aspires to, her show is utterly unique in practice and spirit. A thing about free form radio is often under-considered is that it requires several times more djs than regular radio and therefore is often dependent on a cohort of well-behaved volunteers.
A List
- Professor Elemental. "Enter the convention" the Giddy Limit (2014). Had this record out in late 2014 , but now has a new record out "Apehquest, the search for Geoffrey." Which is about his missing monkey butler, and pairs with a co-release comic book. Professor Elemental - Wikipedia
- Aphrodite's Child. "Four Horsemen". Greek prog. band from the late 60's early 70's. I knew about this band and had even heard some songs previously, but it took til now to put it all together. A musical retelling of the apocalypse. This is the band that Vangelis came from. Aphrodite's Child - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Dengue Fever. "Rom say sak" the Deepest Lake (2015). They've been around for a few years now and are still as consistently good as ever. 60's and Cambodian flavored Psychedelic Pop Rock.
- Melt Banana. "Trintenda de Luna". Japanese experimental rock band from Tokyo. Active from the mid 1990's on. Melt-Banana - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Sir Lord Baltimore. "Master of dreams". Proto stoner-metal band from Brooklyn and the 1960's. Sir Lord Baltimore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Girl Band. "Paul" / "Eating pears for lunch" Holding Hands with Jamie (2015). Possibly my favorite band this year (and it is a release from this year. A noise rock combo from Dublin whose keen videos on partially part the veil of their songs. I admit I heard about Girl Band first off NPR's All Songs Considered twitter feed. First Watch: Girl Band, 'Paul' : NPR
- Zombies. "Care of Cell 44". The Zombies reformed this year to undertake a tour where they played the "Odyssey and Oracle" album through. I saw them on Colbert, but they didn't play this song.
- Wimple Winch. "Save my Soul". Mid Sixties British band, British version of a band like the Sonics or the Count Five. Garage rock here in the states but in England a nation apparently without garages it seems to attract the label "freakbeat". Wimple Winch - Save My Soul - YouTube:
- Chasity Belt. "Joke" Time to go Home (2015) Very strong song by a fairly new all female band from Seattle Chastity Belt - "Joke" [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube
- Grimble Grumble. "Only point of entry". A '90s alt band from Chicago still around I believe. This song is a lovely slow burn of pulse beat psychedelia. Grimble Grumble - Biography & History - AllMusic
- Francoiz Breut. "la Certitude" Une Saison Volee. She has been releasing records in France for I think ten years now without my being aware of it. Francoiz Breut - Françoiz Breut | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic.
- Krocodil. "Odyssey / Dabble in om". Heard this one on Matt's Wednesday show on WZBC. Not a lot of information on this band -- as much as you'll find you'll find here virshla rock blog: Krokodil - The Psychedelic Tapes [1970 - 1972].
Notes on the passing of David Bowie:
I was never the biggest Bowie fan growing up. I always thought of him as coming from glam, and of glam in general as a bit before my time. Though he and it really weren't. Glam was a very particular thing of a narrow particular time in the history of rock and roll. More so than punk I feel. Although punk for that matter was in many ways just so much distressed glitter. As I've gone over his catalog and listened to the various radio tributes I've found I knew more songs that I figured, without know all of them by a long shot.
People I knew in college, working at WMUC the University of Maryland radio station, who were big Bowie fans, the ones with intimate knowledge of every song on Ziggy Stardust; however, were generally younger than me, but often turned out to have brothers or sisters older than me. I was aware of Bowie as an early teen or tween (that concept didn't really exist back then), I didn't really pay attention to him until a latter teen by which time what he was doing didn't interest me that much. All this was true except for the hits which I knew but couldn't have placed in any order. I was unaware of his first four records. My understanding of Bowie was largely centered on the song Rebel Rebel and Changes. Low (or Low Profile I read now the album jacket designer was signifying) came out my senior year. I recall talking with friends that this record formed a significant and notable departure of some kind even if we had no context in which to place it. Heroes came out within a year and the title song from that remained my favorite Bowie song from then on, validating the attention others placed on him.
I've spent the last several weeks devoting Friday afternoons at work to listening through Bowie's recordings. In the process of which I learned likely why there is a drawing of the Cane Institution on the American cover of "the Man who Saved the World). After Lodger I bounced out to the the Talking Heads' "Remain in Light" as a point of departure. This is not quite right; though, It should have been out to "Fear of Music", "My life in the Bush of Ghosts, then to Remain in Light. The effect of all that Eno, Fripp, and Adrian Belew, in these 1979-1980 recordings.
The other week I caught the Bowie documentary Five Years which was playing on Maryland Public TV (rather late on a Friday for some reason) which made the point that Bowie was not more than a cult act (as they used denote the lesser mainstream back in those days) until he achieved mass appeal with the stadium tours of the early eighties -- which is also when he became one of music's very wealthiest performers. Something that was an unlikely read out from the days when he was writing songs like the Bewlay Brothers. There are only a handful of popular music figures in which it's worthwhile to undertake a close reading (listening) of their work in relation to the popular culture of their world. David Bowie was one of those people.
Monday, 29 February 2016 19:21 EST #
Newly Exceptional
The temperament of public dialogue in United States the past few months is sour, toxic, and flirting openly with fascism. At the same time as this corrosive dialogue is washing over the early political campaign for President a certain minor rigidity is settling over academic student culture.
I would like to pretend to surprise at the former, but I have always been aware that the chest thumpings of liberty and freedom often mask a desire for authoritarianism -- along with the unshakable belief among those complaining over the state of things that they would be giving direction in the new order.
What all this is about I can't fully encompass. I harbor the suspicion that the securities desired by students and the reactionary nativism of some conservatives represent, that is are symptoms of a single phenomenon. A breakdown of civic culture.
These would stem from (among whatever other misunderstandings exist) from basic perceptions of un-fairness in society. A multiplicity of anxieties. feelings of relative deprivations that announce themselves in the expectation of certain entitled freedoms and securities. Freedoms familiar to the American story: life liberty happiness, and as much freedom of expression.
In addition to these freedoms (or securities) of the individuals body, well being, and belongings -- property. Increasingly it seems to involve freedom from discomfort, particularly from merely being disagreed with.
Within academia, the student world, it has become popular to identify a series of assaults on their sensibilities, and to work then to insulate themselves from them. Here we have triggers warnings, safe zones, micro aggressions, white privilege incorporating white fragility, and cultural appropriations of various kinds. It isn't as though these things aren't real or speak to real things, but that there is something inherently self defeating in seeking to avoid dialogue, ordinary confrontation, and possibility of encountering offense Universities 'are killing free speech', says group of leading academics | News | Student | The Independent.
None of this secures in the pantheon the supposed palliative effects of free speech. "Dialogues" that serve to perpetuate an existing illegitimate status quo are not by themselves better than no dialogue at all. They are likely worse. Free speech as a overarching principle is no panacea if in the end its tendency is to provide a platform for dominate voices. For those underneath it is "Decolonize or die".
Against these charges of systemic disparagement is leveled the cry of politically correct. A term of disparagement by those who believe in incorrectness, a point of pride in their courageous iconoclasm. Yet it functions as politics of resentment and victimization The Political Incorrectness Racket - Bloomberg View.
In some ways this desire to control the conversation represents a mis-reading of free speech. Freedom of viewpoint is not freedom from response or return, a point almost universally lost in practice. It is also I think a mis-reading of human society the limits of government. In most instance we are on our own with the force of our own ideas, in loose alliance with those holding similar ideas in the opinion spectrum. There is little universally agreed on to construct a leviathan with. I hesitate to mention, but I occasionally encountered a strange paternalism in the middle class collegiate left (when I was in college in the 1980's). Conversations that would end in "if I were president I would order that...I would have the army come in and... they are wrong, therefore their opinions do not matter... I generally subsume this as the "there oughta be a law" school of political science, and regard it merely a classic American gripe.
From the hothouse of the academy to the angry general public -- the noisy side of the street --there is a glowering ugly mood tangled in yet unresolved racial issues that more than any other issue define what it means to be an American Are Trump supporters driven by economic anxiety or racial resentment? Yes. - Vox. It can only be called a new Jim Crow. A desire for some plan, de jure or de facto, to halt the inexorable move towards equality and integration. Towards towards stalling a unified American of universal dignity. A program to allow and reinforce a poverty barrier that creates prejudicial distinction.
This new mood is more a new fascism. Scapegoat populations are identified and tied to an ostensible broken America that needs to be reborn. By some leader of necessary vision. The talk is of "us" and "them" the "others" Hate speech is going mainstream - The Washington Post:. I have little use for the view of some writers that no figure or movement is fascist unless someone involved has a little mustache or a tall fez. If you meet the preponderance of Umberto Eco's fourteen marks of a fascist you're probably a fascist. It is what makes its home in the territory of reactionary authoritarianism. For the politician it is a well spring of resentment, for their disaffected followers political cover to discriminate. Behind the banner of politically incorrect is merely racist speech and the desire not to face disagreement. There is also the desire to move what is publicly acceptable. I can recall in Holliston, the small Massachusetts town I grew up in in the 1970's and a few years latter in the Navy, people trying to draw myself and others into a type of conversation. It would always begin with simple almost ambiguous statements -- a searching look shot round the rooms faces. Without immediate push back it would quickly escalate into stark and open racism. I was always aware of the expectation, the anticipation of these people for political or celebrity cover to stifle and bully oppositions into silence. This is a known practice and goes a number of names and explications: Hallin's spheres - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: to describe the realms of consensus controversy and deviance the Overton Window referring to libertarian opportunism. Both are descriptions of the mechanics of what is normative, and what isn't.
That an aging white minority might press against democracy for continued privilege I scarcely imagined until the past few years The Election and the Death of White Male Power -- The Cut:. Not just older white males either, I recall seeing a description of a poll indicating a comparative willingness of younger Americans -- for the sake of stability and security -- to allow degradation of Rule of Law (relative importance democratic principle and security) in return for the accustomed (material) well being Are Americans losing faith in democracy? - Vox.
In this atmosphere of inflated fear of terrorism, fear of the faith of a billion people, of the idea of migrating populations, but never the idea of climate change. Fortunes and our privacy are sacrificed to the least likely. There is in this a strong and strange rejection of empirical risk assessment, and at end of empirical science in general.
Against the imagined gathered terror, we transfer a pathology we have grown in long and far-flung little wars back to home.
With such a heightened level of discussion it might seem silly to talk of a vanishing public space, but this country may come out of this election cycle more divided than ever. I would say that is exactly what we are seeing. Specifically we see the failing of the institutions that bound the public space and the norms that inform them.
One odd form of cynicism, an example of this failure, is the tendency among journalists to champion the low life scrum of some current politicians. This betrays a belief that politics in the end does not matter, not that much. That something else, a thing sometimes called the deep state or some other undecipherable paternalism, some castle on a hill, actually runs things. That politics is or its best use is that of low entertainment. That that is all it ought to or can matter to the people.
Most of what transpires in a large scale western democracy is guided by its institutions. Formal, like the structures of government and its laws, religious and academic organizations. Informal like social conventions and practices. Some of this lies simply in the way we approach history. For instance the Great Men historical consensus, the presidential synthesis Historical Commemoration and the Age of Marble - The Atlantic. This is an idea that Great Men of the past, especially Presidents were more dedicated to American values -- equality among the classes and races -- than perhaps they really were Should We Honor Racists? by Peter Singer - Project Syndicate:. But just the idea of thinking of them embodying these ideal creates a venerated past like some marble-scribed ideal for the present and future.
Stripped of stabilizing concepts across the whole of American culture arguments proceed widening out from one realm, geographic and cultual, to another; relative support for the engaged sides shifting from one side to the other as it does so.
The conversations are never better, stronger, more authentic, healthier for lack of a better term than trust and belief in these institutions. An appeal to populism has given us opportunistic, morally unmoored and ideologically vacant, authoritarian tending campaigning. A churlishness and violence in danger of being taken for the real American Exceptionalism. That is to say an idea of ourselves that is too easily understood in our not having to struggle to find balance and moderation to be better, but just be. That justice and right can be found in emotional extremity and un-examined passion. This is American Exceptionalism the idea that we are unique, but in what way, in that the institutions don't matter. That we are good, by magic or some assumed.
The Habermasian public space, public sphere, is a mediated one -- through these social institutions. What both share right and left is the rejection of any possible legitimacy of "others" opposite, and therefore right to apply coercion. For their leaders to lead past, or through, the opposition.
The demand of the day is for a politician who will "lead past" all those you disagree with. Those opposed will either magically fall into line or not have forfeited their share of the compact and cease to have rights. Current thinking about what can be accomplished with political revolutions right and left progressive or regressive reactionary has much in common with the thinking that accompanies rapture eschatology.
This is the thinking that accompanies the breakdown of the civil process. The desire for a leader who will command the opposition is really a desire not to engage constructively in the conversation yourself. It leads people to considerations on the attractiveness of coercion -- those that choose not to see wisdom will be made to. Eventually everywhere you turn you see nothing but mounting apologies for the descent to governing by fiat.
Sunday, 31 Jan 2016 18:59 EST #
