RAPHAELLE WRITES THAT I am “too much of a lone wolf -- wolves are pack animals working together for the whole,” adds that I am “a mix of contradictions” and concludes that I “spend too much time alone and have far too much to offer to succumb to bitterness.” He thus raises issues that are vital to my decision to resume blogging. Here is my response:
Thank you, Raphaelle, for the supportiveness that is evident beyond your criticism, especially for its gentle tone. I will try to respond accordingly.
Taking the matter of alleged contradictions first because it is the easiest criticism to answer, I surely understand how my writing might convey such an impression. But I believe if you will take the time to differentiate between ideological principles and more concrete realities -- chiefly history, whether personal, political or both -- I suspect you will find the riddles of the seeming contradictions are very quickly solved.
My recent ouster from a self-proclaimed “Left” website provides a succinct example of how what might be termed “contradiction“ is in fact the result of someone else’s ideological exclusiveness. Based on what I can glean from various apres-ouster comments jeering my contributions to the site, maliciously misrepresenting my views and applauding my virtual execution, it was the self-righteous and smugly irrevocable verdict of the site’s authorities that -- merely because I am an uncompromising defender of the right to keep and bear arms -- I am not only definitively excluded from the “progressive” camp (and thereby eternally denied use of the “progressive” label), I am also forever to be damned as the Enemy. Thus was I ideologically “cleansed” from that particular electronic universe.
However this was not my first encounter with the reflexive hatefulness that proves the adjectives “hysterical” and “fanatical” to be accurate characterizations of forcible-disarmament advocates. The same conflict was in large measure the basis for my far less formal but far more emotionally wrenching divorcement from the Democratic Party 18 years earlier: my Democratic adversaries spitefully claimed my ownership of firearms not only identified me as a “Republican” but proved me to be a “closet Nazi” -- never mind the Left/liberal totality of my values or even my long Democratic political history. (The other 1988 issue was my equally unyielding support for the First, Fourth and Fifth amendment rights so many Democrats were then seeking to undermine, this in the name of censorship measures unprecedented in U.S. history -- a harsh and sweeping purge of literature and art rationalized by feminists as “pornography” suppression -- yet another example of how ideological absolutism had become, especially during those years, far more an attribute of the Democrats than of the Republicans.)
Whether over the right to keep and bear arms or the rights embodied in the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments, the ensuing clashes followed the pattern of all such campaigns of ideological exclusion. It was forcefully asserted as an unarguable truth that my support for RKBA not only contradicted but actually nullified my equally impassioned support for an entire agenda of socioeconomic betterment: universal health care, universal educational funding from kindergarten through doctorate, a national WPA-type crash program to build adequate public transport, restoration of labor rights by repeal of Taft-Hartley etc., not to mention the cause of civil rights (for which I had gone to jail) -- all this and a great deal more supposedly invalidated by my recognition of the historical fact that an armed population is ultimately the only defense against individual and collective victimhood, no matter whether the victimhood is inflicted by criminals or criminal governments.
But from my perspective there is no contradiction here at all: my support for the right to keep and bear arms does not make me any less a leftist. Neither does the ouster so inflicted. Instead the entire affair reflects the fact that the people who run the website in question define themselves as militantly pacifist and therefore -- as a major objective in the achievement of their pacifist agenda -- advocate the forcible disarmament of the civilian population in the United States: a vital prerequisite to the imposition of the mandatory (be-pacifist-or-be-jailed) pacifism that would be inflicted by their favorite Democratic presidential candidate’s proposed “Department of Peace.” Moreover the same forcible-disarmament zealotry demonstrably infects all the Democratic Party’s senior leadership and the entire urban/suburban bourgeois/feminist faction of its rank-and-file. In any case -- whether rationalized by pacifism or feminism -- it is undeniably bigotry-fueled class warfare, proof of the huge fear and contempt with which the bourgeoisie -- the yuppies -- view Americans who are rural, blue collar or simply impoverished.
Because it is the yuppies and their corporate masters who control the language of American political discourse, our stance toward forcible disarmament has been carefully positioned as the signal issue that not only determines whether we are “progressive,” but often whether we will be allowed to call ourselves “Democrats.” Not even the reproductive-rights conflict carries such significance. But then the presence or absence of reproductive rights does not determine -- as the future of the right to keep and bear arms unquestionably does -- whether we are a nation of citizens or a nation of subjects and victims.
In truth then my fervent defense of RKBA is not a contradiction but its diametrical opposite: RKBA supports the agenda of true democratic social reformation by its recognition of the distinctly American, distinctly revolutionary constitutional principle (later adopted by Marx) that an armed working class is the final defense against aristocratic tyranny (whether an aristocracy of money or an aristocracy of ideology): the same commitment to liberty that prompts my (admittedly belated) recognition of the historical truth of class struggle and the fact that political democracy is meaningless without economic democracy.
You might be more likely to consider my voting history as contradictory -- perhaps flagrantly so. But given the absolute sameness of the Republican and Democratic parties -- even the Democrats’ oft-boasted commitment to reproductive choice is proven a Big Lie by the Democrats’ knowing and deliberate support of economic policies that increasingly shrink reproductive freedom to merely another of the special privileges of wealth -- where is there any real contradiction in the fact I voted Republican from 1988 through 2004 and straight Democratic in 2006? This year (unlike the other years in question), the Democrats promised to ameliorate economic troubles the Republicans would not even acknowledge, and I took the Democrats at their word -- gambling they would keep it in a bet I have already clearly lost. Not that I am surprised; since the 1970s, both parties have methodically collaborated in the destruction of the New Deal, thereby brazenly flaunting their contempt and even hatred for the poor -- of whom I am one. As it is said often in rural Washington state: “Ain’t a rat turd’s worth of difference between the two parties any more -- but at least the Republicans will (maybe) let us keep our guns.”
Speaking of contradictions, I can think of nothing more contradictory -- absurdly contradictory at that -- than the mistaken, hypocritical and patently self-serving notion that economic security can somehow be achieved without altering the present-day reality of tyrannosauric capitalism. However the maintenance of capitalism may be rationalized -- and in the past 18 months I have been truly astonished by the number of self-proclaimed “leftists” and “progressives” who believe that capitalism represents humanity’s ultimate economic achievement -- the core purpose of this belief is clearly to ensure its proponents the uninterrupted supply of all the trinkets and gadgets essential to their yuppoid lifestyle. Never mind that capitalism is destroying the planetary ecosystem and thus bringing down on us an apocalyptic disaster without any human precedent; never mind that that since the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has been the sole source of war and by far the primary source of all less organized violence as well. The party goes on, even as the party-goers try to ease their guilt by adorning their trophy BMWs with bumper-stickers that command us all to “visualize peace” -- as if we could somehow sloganize ourselves to liberation.
I am indeed a “lone wolf,” but it is because I am thrice isolated: first by the ideological exclusion imposed on me by fanatics; secondly by the alleged sin of my poverty; thirdly by what is allegedly a far greater sin: my defiant refusal to surrender to those who insist that poverty is always the fault of the impoverished and never ever the fault of capitalism itself.
But blaming the poor for poverty is a definitively fascist viewpoint; America’s headlong rush toward fascism is clearly demonstrated by the fact this notion -- now also the cornerstone of our national welfare policy -- is as commonplace amongst those who anoint themselves New Age “progressives“ as it is among the traditionally Hitler-harsh plutocracy of the capitalist ruling class. Because I will not abjure -- because I will not make the my-poverty-is-entirely-my-fault public act of contrition the United States demands of all us poor -- I am considered “uppity”: white trash who does not know his place and is never sufficiently grateful even for the begrudgingly doled-out crumbs of Social Security and Medicare Part D, the latter the DemoPublican Prescription Drug Lord benefit that more than tripled my annual prescription drug costs merely to increase the already obscene profits of the prescription drug magnates.
This -- my brazen lack of contrition for my poverty -- was almost certainly the unacknowledged, under-the-covers issue in my recent ouster from that allegedly “Left” discussion board: just as they say in the fraternity house, at the country club and in the executive suite, I am not the "right kind." And the damning "not" is not merely my support for the right to keep and bear arms (and thus for an armed working class), but the fact I make no secret of being poor white trash and thus too, in the case of the recent ejection, clearly offended not only the board-member bourgeoisie in general but especially their most aggressively authoritarian factions: the coterie of militant pacifists, forcible disarmament advocates and other would-be despots clustered around Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, a politician who (as the mayor of Cleveland, Ohio), was very credibly accused of myriad “Nixon White House” tyrannies -- tyrannies that provide a deeply disturbing suggestion of an utter contempt for the Bill of Rights and American liberty in general -- a contempt that is unquestionably shared by the forcible-disarmament/mandatory-pacifism cult at the core of his supporters.
Finally there is that fact that we poor in the U.S. are utterly despised even if we cravenly comply with the most degrading demands of humility and shamefacedness: after all, our poverty is living proof of capitalism's tyrannosauric nature, and in the Britney Spears superficiality of Moron Nation, the great reflexive unspoken mass-mentality terror is that the mere sight of our misfortune is somehow contagious -- that our fate will magically spread to others merely by our proximity. Which is, of course, the hateful truth behind U.S. socioeconomic policy, whether Democratic or Republican, whether in post-Katrina New Orleans or in Iraq: we poor -- especially those of us who are also disabled -- are very literally not considered worthy of any “help” save extermination.
Actually I am not totally alone in my isolation, though it often feels as if I am. This is because I am cut off, almost certainly for the rest of this life, from the intimacy with nature that is my sole source of spiritual sustenance; because the housing regulations under which I now live (and under which I will no doubt spend the remainder of this life) deny me the sweet blessings of canine companionship; because geographically I am so impossibly far removed from the very few surviving kinfolk who do not find me repugnant, I will probably never see any of them again; and because I am always terrified of wearing out my welcome among the few genuine friends with whom I live in geographical proximity -- faithful, longstanding and deeply close friends, but nevertheless fewer friends than I can count on a single hand, and one such friend already years dead of cancer.
Moreover my isolation, though surely not absolute, is absolutely inescapable: I never learned to be comfortable around strangers unless I was shielded by the self-assurance granted by press credentials (or bolstered by the bombast of booze), and in any case poverty now and for the rest of my years limits my socialization to the acquisition of necessities -- trips to the supermarket, the pharmacy, the clinic, sometimes to a book store or the library for source material I cannot access online, very occasionally to a neighborhood saloon frequented by collegial folk I knew in better times but whose successes in contrast to my lack thereof make genuine friendship impossible. To aspire beyond those limits -- to entertain even the faintest hope of making more friends -- is to court disappointment if not rejection: for one thing, my friendships have always taken decades to evolve, and I rather doubt I have that many years left. For another there is what I have increasingly come to recognize as an impassible class barrier: the fact that the inescapable nature of my poverty -- no matter my obvious talent (or that it was permanently thwarted by disasters completely beyond my control) -- marks me indelibly not only as white trash but as particularly worthless white trash at that.
And no friendship will ever compensate for the permanent absence of love in my life.
Though I have surely loved, and deeply, only once in all my years was I ever loved back, and I understand now I was doubly doomed, once by the personal and once by the political, doomed first by the personal fact I am hopelessly “damaged goods” (emotionally crippled by the incurable afflictions of a malevolently dysfunctional childhood -- enough emotionally disfigured I always suspected no woman could ever find me lastingly attractive); doomed next and again by the political and socioeconomic fact that hopeless poverty is synonymous with pariahdom. The latter condition is the unavoidable byproduct of another undeniable political/socioeconomic reality: the fact heterosexual American women are conditioned from birth to be the ultimate arbiters of materialism -- as Madison Avenue discovered nearly a century ago, the final decision-makers in terms of what will be accepted and what will be rejected. For that reason -- the fact that from my 23rd year on I never had any demonstrable "prospects" -- I see now in the clarity of age there was not the slightest possibility any woman would have chosen me as a long-term mate.
Nevertheless, for most of my life I remained vaguely hopeful I would someday be lastingly loved -- hopeful, that is, until a welfare bureaucracy's 1989 proclamation I was "permanently unemployable" condemned me to an even deeper kind of poverty -- poverty so ragged-sleeve, beater-car obvious, that from my 49th year onward it was quite simply unthinkable I would ever again know even the brief blessing of a woman’s momentary passion, much less anything more enduring: an infinitely hurtful wound of banishment the emotional pain of which will haunt me all the way to the grave and perhaps even beyond -- never mind that its physical counterpart was long ago wiped away by the advancing infirmities of old age.
In bitter truth my life has never been more than a constant struggle against one obstacle after another -- the vast majority of its pleasures the ephemeral (i.e., “worthless”) but actually priceless gifts one is given by intimacy with Nature -- and now that I am old and resigned to the inescapable barren my life has become, I no longer feel any need to hide from its wretchedness or deny its bottomless disappointments. My hope for a successful journalism career -- in my youth, even my harshest detractors believed I was destined for The New York Times -- was destroyed by a 1963 civil rights incident in which I was arrested in the newsroom of The Knoxville Journal and charged with “disorderly conduct” for my refusal to write a racist lie: an absurd accusation -- speedily dismissed by acquittal -- that nevertheless forever afterward damned me as “insubordinate” and “untrustworthy” and thus eternally limited me to second-rate newspapers or worse: never mind the undeniable achievements of my reporting. When the 1983 house fire literally destroyed all the rest of my life’s work -- one nearly finished book, the completed research on another -- it was obvious I would never achieve even one of the goals to which, since my 16th year, I had dedicated my entire being. The 1989 blow from the welfare bureaucracy was the final nail in my metaphorical coffin: the end of any and all rational hope I would ever find even an alternative route to a minimally comfortable old age -- the terminal shove by which capitalism (in this instance with the help of its feminist class-warriors and their gender quotas) flung me into the bottomless cesspool of inescapable poverty.
Several acquaintances over the years have expressed their astonishment I am still alive, noting correctly that such unrelenting misery and hopelessness might have driven a weaker or less purposefully defiant person to suicide decades ago -- which is, of course, precisely the rationale behind how capitalist society is structured: to hide the evidence of its infinite malignance and toxicity by marginalizing, exterminating and thus eradicating its prey, whether institutionally (as by aid deliberately denied the victims of Katrina or life-sustaining drugs deliberately cut off via Medicare Part D) or psychologically (as by the despair that leads to self-destruction, slowly by drugs and alcohol or quickly by self-inflicted mortal injury) -- genocide no matter how inflicted, and always the hideous truth behind my assertion that, in this time and place, survival itself is a revolutionary act.
Survival is therefore resistance. And it is precisely by resistance I fulfill my duty as a pack animal. Never mind Marx; my totem is Wolf, and the closest companions of my life were dogs, and though I am now inescapably caged by poverty -- indeed as if I have been isolated from so much I love in what my very isolation suggests is surely to be my terminal kennel -- I am nevertheless doing my best to follow the breathtakingly pure examples set by my canine spirit guides: despite my tainted humanness, working as diligently as possible for the good of the whole. Thus -- and also because it is literally the only pleasure I have left -- do I write.
Posted by Loren at December 27, 2006 04:52 PM | TrackBackNdub,
You really need to change your state of mind on this self loathing routine. Not all women are raised to be the way you proclaim. You are making some very sweeping generalizations. I feel for you bud, but you gotta lighten-up. Looks like you have convinced yourself that capitalism is why you can't ever develop a relationship with another human being. This kind of thinking is wrong wrong wrong. You need a real paradigm shift my man. The only way to overcome your approach anxiety is to realize that the outcome doesn't matter. Who cares if someone doesn't like you. What's important is you stay who you are but become couragous enough to be who you are whether it be a white trash, gun loving, whatever you are or not. People can smell confidence and fear. Which one is more attractive? People react to each other on emotional cues way more than looks alone. If you are worried about the way you look then STOP it. You can't spend the rest of your life justifying your inability to move beyond your introversion. The second you start fearing rejection is the second you succeed in your self defeating feedback loop. Let them reject you, then move on, its a learning experience. The more you do it the less it will bother you. This over populated planet has more people aligned with your line of thinking than you realize. Even the self defeating line. You are a wise man and you do have something to offer. I know plenty of people living in poverty that don't let it stop them. It's because they choose not to let their spirit be as equally impoverished. Be who you are and anyone who doesn't like has something predictably sophmoric to say then just say "F__k your day!" with a smile on your face. Next!
Please don't ever "lighten up." I am awed by your courage. We must start breaking through the conspiracy of silence. Your honesty is inspiring.
Please don't be tempted to "improve" yourself to comply with other people's bourgeoisie sensibilities.
The outcome "may not matter" to some, but I believe that the fate of humanity depends upon those few, such as yourself, to whom it matters very much. You are not only speaking for yourself, and it isn't "your problem" that you need "fix" - though sophisticated modern intellectuals supposedly on the Left will try to force that upon you.
You are speaking - very personally, yes - from the heart of the pain and suffering that all humanity is experiencing as a consequence of a brutal tyranny the likes of which the world has never before seen an equal.
You will be accused of being a "malcontent" and in an "ego trip" and having "personality problems" and "taking things too seriously" and everything else under the sun. They all boil down to the same thing - "you are not our kind of people." That hateful and dismissive attitude is the essence - the wellspring - of the injustice that is corrupting us and driving us to destruction. It is the precise way in which the liberal intellectuals, while claiming to be in opposition, are promoting and defending the injustice that is the root cause of all of the nightmares and horrors we are facing.
Posted by: Mike Berst at December 28, 2006 12:29 PMMugafuga, there is no "self-loathing" here, only accurate reporting. We poor -- because we allow ourselves to be shamed and intimidated to silence (and all too often bullied into parotting Big Lie denials of our wretchedness) -- are the most methodically censored minority in the United States: another reason my mere survival (which implicitly includes my survival as a writer) is a revolutionary act.
Posted by: Loren Bliss at December 28, 2006 04:02 PMYou know the one thing I think muga hit on correctly in regards to self-loathing is that the poor are conditioned and expected to hate their condition and their station and thereby themselves for their personal faults that condemn them to their pathetic, miserable existence.
It is not just intimidation and shame it is the bald-faced assumption that you hate yourself because you are defective. Even if you demonstrate otherwise or don't exhibit 'loser' characteristics, you are just in denial
FUCK THAT
If they want to shut us up, let 'em come. If they do I hope they bring their own body bags.
Posted by: Kid Of The Black Hole at December 28, 2006 04:17 PMWell, you are a much more decent sort than I who won't even put on a pretence of niceness.
So much for progressive INDEPENDENT, huh? That independent part really scares them--and when Tinoire came right out and defended the bourgeois who were getting uncomfortable with the discussion of class- her true colors flew. Apparently, those touchy subjects were a threat to potential consumers of her product---which is basically DU without the Zionist clamp down. Kucinich Democrats basically, still willing to excuse his "present" votes as politically expedient. For what, I ask? It boggles the mind that they wail about injustice, human suffering and then excuse Kucinich's "present" vote giving Israel permission to invade Lebanon-(which he now charecterizes as "diabolical") and, they don't like it when you have to constantly point it out. Basically, the status quo is agreeable and peace is a fashion statement--without those unpleasant reminders of possible sacrifices necessary to bring true peace and justice--why they might have to allow undesirables into their gentrifried social gatherings! They ignore political realities because there is nothing they can say aside from a blindered focus on singular issues. Peace, whatever the hell that means, is the latest fad for the pc in crowd. The Kucinich groupies had free license to suggest that we should find another place for not getting with the program.
Though, I have to ask, do the Palestinians--or the Iraqis have the right to bear arms? Someone needs to point out to the peace camp that if the bulldozers roll right over a widely-mourned fair-haired American girl, what's going to stop them from stopping for a nameless dark Palestinian who lies in the road as an act of non-violent civil disobedience? Surely, the US would be more than delighted if Iraqis had no way to resist the Occupier. And yet, they will bleat their pc platitudes about peace as if it was isolated from economic and social realities and bully those who don't conform because, ironically enough, they are too independent. Yeah, they preach peace, while behind the scenes they display catty cruelty--suggesting that my good faith donation would be better spent on that "sweet lady with the Parkinson's, or buy some ginger-ale for my Mother--or get myself a pedicure, dearie". My mother happened to be dying. Maybe I should show her a photo of my mother in the hospital bed hooked up with all the wires, unable to eat, wasting away. I wonder if it would rate up there with her war horror shots?
So, I am starting to think that elitist Democrats who babble about poverty and education but vote the way their corporate benefactors instruct, aren't actually the lesser of two evils. The Right connects through wedge issues, the Democrats posture as representing economice issues--so who is more dishonest--who is the greater hypocrite?
"Political Affairs" a marxist publication, actually ran an article recently about working through the Democrats as the only option. My question then is, why bother? Why not just be Democrats then with necessary political expediencey and all? Because ultimately, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I am a "she" btw and the poor are the most vulnerable among us. You write with such eloquence, your role as advocate is priceless.
Rich versus poor.
Are we tired of lying about this and putting up with lies about this? Rich and poor are not morally neutral. The exact things *required* for appeasing the market in order to make money are themselves the problem. The market determines rich or poor, and it is the market itself that is the immoral thing. It is not possible to make money and be successful without being complicit with the root cause for the suffering. This isn't theoretical. This is a corrupting daily influence over every aspect of people's lives. It is *the cause* - the only cause - of all of the ills that people are concerned with. Human beings are for sale. To participate in the market one must place the market above being human. The market destroys all humanity. This is the nature of capitalism.
Those devoted to something other than making money - producing food, caring for the elderly, being an artist or a writer and *telling the truth*, nurses, teachers - all of the people who want to produce something of true value or contribute to the welfare of humanity - are punished. One must have no other God but money, or one will pay the consequences.
This represents tyranny on an unprecedented scale, worse than anything ever seen before in human history. It will destroy us - and soon. This is the fight - saving humanity. It is the only fight.
PI has made the choice - the market over human beings. They want to "grow" the site - promote it, advertise it, sell it, make it a big rollicking success. They seek to eliminate the ugly features of market capitalism - the Iraq war - while keeping the market enthroned and ruling over all of us, and they are basing their "success" on the logic of the market. That can't be done. The war is the logical and inevitable outcome of the mentality and delusion that PI itself is now aggressively promoting.
We are given money in exchange for something. It is the only way to get money. We must agree to put humanity - our humanness - second to the tyranny of the market. If we are willing to do that - and to the degree we are willing to do that - we will be lavishly rewarded, regardless of whether or not we are doing anything else worthwhile or valuable. The ultimate ideal capitalist does nothing BUT make money, as the returns on investment roll in ad passive income. The "work hard and get ahead" bullshit is a lie to keep the peons in line.
Taking a stand on principle, putting human beings ahead of dollars, anywhere at anytime is a threat to the tyranny. The cries in response - "you are on an ego trip!" and "you are making a mountain out of a molehill!" demonstrate that it is in fact a "mountain" - that it does matter. Otherwise, why the hue and cry and the need for banishing the offending parties? Should one oppose the logic of the market - which is inevitable if one is opposing what is happening in the country - one will be punished and one will be forcibly impoverished. Poverty is the most effective tool for silencing any who question capitalism. Only winners are to be given money, and only those with money are to be considered winners, and only winners are to be considered fully human. How does one become a winner? Merely by agreeing to promote and defend this idea that the logic of the market should trump the logic of the imagination. The logic of the imagination is the essence of what it means to be human. So, if one is willing to attack and destroy humanity, one is rewarded. If one attempts to defend and protect humanity, one is punished.
The poor are corrupted by this society, but in relatively minor ways - all of the "red neck" stuff that the liberals love to hate about blue collar people. But the are mostly innocent and virtuous. The more wealth a person has, the more corrupted and the less virtue and the more guilt.
This is so obvious - the evidence is everywhere. Avoiding and denying this causes so much stress and confusion. It would be so effortless, and rewarding and positive and constructive to stop lying about this. People resists this thinking to the exact degree that they wish to protect their own material well being and status, or hope for future material well being and status.
This is not because rich people are bad. This is because our system requires a person to be corrupted and compromised or it will withhold resources from them. It is not that poor people are good. It is that they are less corrupted.
I could tell you hundreds of stories about being on the road, and being helped out by poor people, while being turned away by the better off. We all know this. We pretend that it isn't true.
Otherwise, we would have to re-open a painful personal subject - the moral compromises we have each made to get ahead. But we all know this. We pretend we don't. We pretend that it is "radical" and that it is all theoretical. We keep a safe distance from the truth, and make sure that it can't impact us in any way. It still does impact us, though. We have headaches, we can't sleep, we are unhappy, we are angry, we are stressed. It takes a lot of lying to keep all of that buried, and the lies further corrupt us and make us more and more miserable. Then we start looking for scapegoats. Then human beings are burned or gassed or tortured to death, Then, and only then, do you have "war." Being "against the war" and yet ignoring all of this is insanity.
The poor are corrupted by capitalism, just as the wealthy and those who are sycophants to the wealthy and wannabes, but the corruption takes different forms. The corruption of the poor we call "crime." The corruption of the wealthy we call "success." The wealthy prey on the poor every hour of every day, with impunity. The poor only occasionally strike back, and they strike back with the weapons they have at hand. As the old English poem says it is a hanging offense for a peasant to take the goose from the common, but the wealthy are free to take the common from the goose.
The poor are therefore more virtuous, since unlike the wealthy they do not spend most of their time destroying others and only occasionally strike back. True, they *are* lacking in decorum - that is the crime for which people are being banished and excluded from the liberal community. "Lighten up" means "could you please stop bleeding on the expensive imported carpet."
Here is a saver:
http://www.isreview.org/issues/43/PDA.shtml
Interesting that so many of these PDA activists were right out of the Kerry camp--including William Rivers Pitt - which the author may not have even been aware of.
You got to wonder about the agenda and Kucinich's role in it. Either he is supremely naive--and that isn't good, or it is studied calculation--which wouldn't surprise me in the least.
"Yeah, they preach peace, while behind the scenes they display catty cruelty--suggesting that my good faith donation would be better spent on that "sweet lady with the Parkinson's, or buy some ginger-ale for my Mother--or get myself a pedicure, dearie". My mother happened to be dying. Maybe I should show her a photo of my mother in the hospital bed hooked up with all the wires, unable to eat, wasting away. I wonder if it would rate up there with her war horror shots?"
Wait, Raph what is this about? This is fucked up. I am sick of the self-righteous crap about how nobody else is doing as much as them.
Posted by: Kid Of The Black Hole at December 29, 2006 05:34 PMSo Mike,
What the hell was the closing act? Since I left PI honoring your picket line, I ought to know what the final act was. I don't even know if the fat lady sang... (Fucking Wagner, you have to wait 8 hours to find out how it all comes out).
anaxarchos
anaxarchos -
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it!"
http://populistindependent.org
Ponder this - an autocratic, ownership society, some animals are more equal than others, free speech isn't free, workers (contributors) are a dime a dozen and have no rights, get to the back of the bus or we will throw you off, what makes you think you are so important? Why should you be so popular if no one who is anyone likes you and besides you aren't paying for all of this, and like it or not in the real world it takes money to get things done – this approach is justified and rationalized because it is allegedly all for the glorious cause of building a more just and democratic society. The means are inevitably contradictory to the presumed goals, and the result is that the members, the community and the discussions are all seriously corrupted, precisely in the same way that the national political discussion is corrupted.
Here is a radical notion – why not run the community upon the principles that we advocate for the society at large?
Posted by: Mike Berst at December 30, 2006 11:10 AMSo Mike,
Curiosity matters. What the hell was the closing act?
This is what I wrote to KBH (hopefully he doesn't mind):
"PI? PI was potential on a very small scale. There is a need to talk in a broader group across tribes and generations and pitifully few opportunities to do it. Huge swaths of the Left are missing on PI and it was culturally so narrow as to almost abort the effort from minute one, but there were few other good alternatives. The odd part is that it was only the talk that mattered (the "action" was laughable and you can stuff the "social interaction" with "moral outrage"). It in no way represents "the Left"... merely a potential service to the Left that appears to have been stillborn. Oh well."
The idea of a board done as a "collective" occured to me when we left DU. If a "voice across the tribes" is intended, the problem is that leftists are born faction fighters (a plus in other times). What is the protection against temporary majorities and coup d'etats?
Of course the counter argument is the obvious landlord problem. The landlord can ALWAYS declare that half the users are enablers of mass murder, or redefine "classist" to mean "you can't be mean to the ruling class", or demand, "Omigod, everyone stop what they are doing and do this and that...". Under the current conditions, it is probably not only plausible, but inevitable.
So... how do you propose to deal with the contradiction?
Who is PPLE?
anax
@anax
Why I never...! No, I thought it was a good, compact description and almost had distributed it to a couple people myself.
Anyway I'm pretty sure PPLE is IlliteratePres from PI. Any bets that it stands for Po Po Law Enforcement ;) ?
Posted by: Kid Of The Black Hole at December 30, 2006 01:05 PMWould someone please ask the admin of populistindependent to validate my registration? Presuming you don't object to my being a member, of course (if you do object, do please tell me so that I don't wait in vain!). Either the software didn't mail me when I registered, or "for my inconvenience" AT&T's curséd anti-virus checker ate it. And, naturally, the phpbb folks never considered the possibility that someone, someday might want to mail the admin because they can't log in.
Thanks.
Posted by: Mairead at January 1, 2007 05:50 AM@mairead: they emailed me and told me that they changed things so the board was separate from the homepage and the db was lost in the process, meaning you might need to re-register. Thats what I had to do so maybe thats the problem?
I just checked and it shows you on the memberlist so maybe you got it corrected already. I will make a post on there asking about it for you though.
Posted by: Kid Of The Black Hole at January 1, 2007 08:37 AMThanks, K! I apparently did make it into the database after its reconstruction (as you noted), but since I never got the validating mail, I couldn't go and auto-bless my registration. So I'm in limbo, able neither to get in nor to re-register.
Posted by: Mairead at January 1, 2007 08:42 AMHey I sent an email to PPLE so as soon as he sees that, it should hopefully get fixed. I think Mike reads here, so he should also be able to correct it for you if/when he sees your post.
Posted by: Kid at January 1, 2007 09:01 AMmaidread: did you use me@example.net as your email to register? PPLE says thats not a valid email addy so he has no way to contact you.
Personally you might consider just re-registering using a freebie service like yahoo. The activation got through the yahoo filter fine for me. I know all about wanting a particular username though :)
Posted by: Kid Of The Black Hole at January 1, 2007 10:07 AMI just mailed you with my real address! (I didn't want to post it here as I already get enough spam :( )
Posted by: Mairead at January 1, 2007 10:43 AMOh, I thought your email meant you'd already gotten in. I will go ahead and forward your address to PPLE and either he'll activate or acct or contact you. Hopefully.
Posted by: Kid at January 1, 2007 10:50 AMFirst, apologies to Loren for using his blog as a community bulletin board.
Mairead? How on earth did you find us? Nice to hear from you. Email me at mike@kingorchards.com
Posted by: Mike Berst at January 1, 2007 11:19 AMNo apologies necessary, Mike. Glad to be of service.
Will be enrolling at PopulistIndependent myself -- that is, as soon as I get through dealing with yet another divine lightning bolt of disasters, which is also why I've not responded to any messages left here since Friday. The car has broken down again -- total electrical charging-system failure -- not only that but an aggravating left-eye problem that started at the same time, something that because of the holidays, they can't do anything about until Tuesday (doctor says its either a detached retina or a detached vitreous layer), and now since this morning also the flu (or worse, the return of the pneumonia I had a month ago). I've never had such a run of bad luck in my life, and that in a life has never been anything more than a run of bad luck. Happy New Year from the gods: obviously I'm accursed -- which means that after this, the only prayerful gesture I will ever again make is that of raising my uplifted social finger to the heavens.
Posted by: Loren Bliss at January 1, 2007 01:36 PMWolf, buy a bike. A used one. Seriously. I've driven my car 2x in 6 months. Everything else I've done by bike.
Posted by: Mairead at January 1, 2007 02:10 PMMairead, to bike in the urban Puget Sound area is to commit suicide by automobile: the motorists not only despise you but use you as a target, and the problem is many times worsened by the fact we have the highest incidence of alcoholism (and thus the highest incidence of drunken driving) in the nation. Believe me, I won't even get on a bike here: I tried it for a couple of weeks when I lived in Seattle and will never, ever do it again -- not here. (And I biked all over Manhattan without ever a second thought.) Anywhere else though yours would be a superb idea, for which thanks.
Posted by: Loren Bliss at January 1, 2007 02:24 PMLoren
I'm not sure obviously, but the two things that scream electrical failure to me are the battery or the alternator. If its total power failure not much else could be at fault since if it was a short or a fuse box or somethng like that not EVERYTHING would fail. It could technically also be wires going to or from the alternator I guess, but that is less likely and also would normally evidence some weird, erratic behavior as a tip-off (like sometimes charging and sometimes not)
Don't know if that helps or not, I'm not an auto mechanic
Replacing an alternator is a bastard but it can be done in the AutoZone parking lot as a last ditch resort.
Posted by: Kid Of The Black Hole at January 1, 2007 02:30 PMSo what's with the eye problem, Wolf? Any news?
Posted by: Mairead at January 3, 2007 08:36 AMMairead, the eye tests were put off a day by my sudden respiratory affliction, which has now resolved itself into an especially nasty chest cold -- no doubt the result of being drenched to the skin and chilled to the bone while dealing with the car trouble. In any case the eye problem has shrunken to utter insignificance in the face of yet another looming crisis: the probability the work by which I was supplementing my Social Security pension is coming to a premature end due to the grave illness of the principal. If this happens, there is absolutely no possibility of finding any other income, which means that (because of the inadequacy of my pension), ruin is unavoidable: first bankruptcy, then homelessness -- no longer a question of "if" but "when." In this context, caring for my vision dwindles to absurdity, though because I still have insurance, I am going through with the opthamological appointment. I will let you know the outcome. Meanwhile thank you for asking.
Posted by: Loren Bliss at January 3, 2007 01:32 PMBummer on the chest cold...it seems to be going around. Every third person I've come across lately sounds like they need to be in hospital.
Posted by: Mairead at January 4, 2007 07:08 AM