Is Obamanomics conservative or revolutionary? | Salon
Posted using ShareThis
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Mob Rule & Movie Violence
Excerpt from The Blood Poets, Chapter 6, "Crime & Censorship," by Jason Horsley
Let’s open those neural floodgates!
—Nicki Brand, Videodrome
Joan Smith writes, in “Speaking Up for Corpses,” “There are men for whom female terror, experienced at a safe distance, carries an erotic charge.”33 As one of these men myself, I would—for obvious reasons—feel more comfortable amending the above statement, and saying that there are men who are aware of the erotic charge that results from vicariously experiencing (or causing) female terror. And then, there are those men who, through denial, ignorance, fear or saintly purity (this last seems the least likely) are blissfully unaware of this sadistic streak in themselves. Then, among those of us (men) who are aware of this streak, and don’t mind admitting it, there are varying degrees to which we accept it, fight it, strive to understand or overcome it, indulge it or, God forbid, act upon it. Personally, while I’m in my confessional mode, I can say that I have never in my life come that close to striking a woman, much less terrorizing or brutalizing one, and I can honestly add that (be it virtue or sentimentality) I am incapable of killing an insect—one that’s minding its own business at least—without feeling pangs of regret. So—am I a violent person? Am I an evil, sick, depraved, and aberrant man? The moral majority and legions of decency would say, Yes, and resoundingly. But am I to be judged for my thoughts or by my actions? And if judged I am to be—who exactly is to judge me? Who among us is fit to cast the first stone?
I have come to accept, over the years, that imagination is not action, and that the rules and laws are different for thought than for deed, and that those who would most quickly judge another (either for his fanstasies or his acts) are generally those most reluctant to judge themselves, or even to look too closely at their own feelings—for fear of what they might find there. The easiest way to deal with the unpleasant truths about our society is to condemn them as “evil.” The easiest way to live with unpleasant truths about oneself is simply to ignore them, to whitewash them over with positive affirmations about decency and goodliness. Both these “methods” are based on cowardice—they depend on avoidance of the issue through self-deception, and in fact, they serve to reinforce the problem. The more “evil” the other guy is, the safer we can feel about our own souls (we’re pure enough to judge other people, obviously); the more decent and wholesome we pretend to be, on the other hand, the more we can puff ourselves up and point our fingers at the corruption around us. Society—decent, god-fearing society, that is—is made up of such fakers: it’s very maintenance depends upon fraudulence and facades. And so there’s nothing more terrifying, more dangerous, more “immoral,” to these pseudo-saints, these self-appointed guardians of the good and the right, than the possibility of evil being something common to us all. The slightest doubt in the immaculacy of their moral front and the whole thing collapses. And so the notions of compassion, of understanding, of tolerance, charity towards “sinners,” and the moral freedom which such charity implies, become unthinkable. And yet these qualities or virtues or concepts are the blood and soul—and the vocation—of every artist worthy of his station. To enhance our awareness as to the nature of life means being human, which is being fallible, which is succumbing to temptation once in a while, which is sin—the whole, murky question of evil.
A film that causes us, or at least helps us, to identify with a killer—whether to increase our compassion for evil or merely to diminish our pity for the victims—is not an immoral work, but a deeply moral one. For it forces us to assume responsibility for this evil (instead of simply feeling pity for the victim), which is the first, essential step towards understanding it, and perhaps, in time, correcting it. At the very least, it may force us to question our eagerness to judge and condemn what we cannot understand; and maybe, just maybe, it will cause us to pause in our moral outrage for a moment, and lay down our stones.
*
Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.
—David Cronenberg, Cronenberg on Cronenberg
In the above interview from Chris Rodley’s book, Cronenberg continues:
Suppressing everything one might think of as potentially dangerous, explosive or provocative would not prevent a true psychotic from finding something that will trigger his own particular psychosis. For those of us who are normal, and who understand the difference between reality and fantasy, play, illusion—as most children do—there is enough distance and balance. It’s innate. . . . It’s an endless struggle between those who are basically fearful and mistrustful of human nature—and they have ample proof that their version of humanity is right—and those who feel that a truly free society is possible, somewhere. It’s conceivable that in the near future there won’t be anything approaching a free society anywhere. That’s more than possible. Which is why I resist, in any small way I can, any attempts . . . to increase censorship.
Marx wrote somewhere that the fight against capitalism begins with “the weapons of criticism and the criticism of weapons.” If so, then the triumph of totalitarianism begins with the censorship of crime and the crime of censorship. One wonders about the mass hysteria of the so-called “moral majority” over the “dangers” of violent movies and their effects on children; how they cry out to protect the little ones from “exposure” to such evil, corrupting material, such vile and pernicious images. Where is all this hysteria leading? Is it really motivated by a simple—if misguided—urge to protect the innocent; or is it that old wolf in sheep’s clothing again, crying “wolf,” in order to distract the sheep’s attention from its own lascivious designs? To blame the world’s ills and the corruption of our children on a handful of “nasty” movies seems to me to go beyond mere idiocy, and to approach dangerously close to totalitarian thinking.
Obviously you can’t stop crime by censorship, all you can do is limit the public’s exposure to it, and by extension, its awareness of it. In which case—seeing as how awareness is the only defense we have against crime, and seeing as how aberrational activity (or “evil”) is notoriously wont to thrive and bloom—like fungus—in the darkness of ignorance and denial, then this “protection” policy is worse than useless—it’s downright deadly. Censorship is crime, then, of the most pernicious and indefensible kind—crime against freedom, against truth, and our right to possess it, no matter how “harmful” it may be (and, as every poet knows, truth that’s worth its “salt” is the most dangerous thing there is).
It is impossible to protect children from certain cultural artifacts without, on the one hand, restricting and censoring the culture itself, and, on the other hand, restricting the behaviour—the freedom—not only of children but of adults as well. To go to such plainly fascistic extremes on the off-chance that a movie once in a while causes a crime would strike me as criminally insane, if it wasn’t part of an apparently all-too-sanely-motivated “madness” (though nonetheless criminal for that). How is it that these irate and indignant persons can get so worked up about a few bloody videos—or even a few savage crimes—and be apparently indifferent to the war, starvation and encroaching social tyranny which are an instrinsic part of this very order which they are striving to protect? Never mind that their measures look set to make such ideas as free speech and right-of-choice just faded memories of the past; how is it that these spokespeople can pretend to know, beyond any doubt, what no psychologist or social scientist in the field has been able to establish: namely, the exact manner and degree to which violence in the arts encourages, or even causes, real violence? And why is the question never raised as to the possibility of actual violence—as mediated through the news and other documentary programs—also having such effects? Or children’s cartoons; or Budweiser commercials? How come no one suggests banning TV itself, and going straight to the root of the problem?
The “video nasty” is the bugaboo beloved of the kind of partiarchal, literal-minded petty tyrants that thrive on expressions of moral outrage and the feelings of self-importance which they derive from them. It’s another scapegoat, and the skapegoat is like the patsy—it really doesn’t matter what it is, or does, or says, so long as it is there, available, for the sacrifice. It seems to me that those who “do battle with the devil” are really doing the devil’s work—pouring gasoline on the blaze, as it were. The indignation, the audacity, and the degree of arrogance which this interfering mob displays strikes me as a kind of violence itself, equally as reprehensible and as corrupting as the kind they claim to be opposing, as well as being every bit as “nasty.” In its own way it’s even nastier, because it hides its meanness and small-mindedness behind false smiles and troubled frowns, and words like “decency” and “innocence” and “morality.”
When a film like Child’s Play III or Natural Born Killers is somehow found—however tenuously and spuriously—to have some fleeting connection to a real-life crime, the media, like one single rabid beast, pounces upon the chosen scapegoat and proceeds to tear it to shreds, with all the slavering, sadistic relish of Hannibal Lecter. But when a film like The Lion King is established, more or less conclusively, to have incited, or at least inspired, a child to commit suicide, this same beast barely stirs from its slumber. The boy in question (the case is described in Karl French’s Screen Violence) was Imtiaz Ahmed, and wrote in his farewell note: “I am going to die because I want to be a Lion King. Mom and Dad please put The Lion King film in my grave with me.” He was found hanging from a tree near his home in Stoke on Trent, England; the parents honored his last wish. It doesn’t matter whether or not The Lion King really did drive a boy to kill himself (I’m every bit as inclined to doubt this as all the other claims)—the point is that the evidence here was far stronger than the evidence for any video nasty-related crime, but seeing as the proverbial scapegoat was not involved, and it would be pretty hard for the moral majority to get all puffed up and indignant over a Disney film without looking exactly like the facile dunderheads that they are, the mob kept quiet, and waited patiently for the next scapegoat to come along.
The hysteria over video nasties and movie violence in general is the worst kind of false alarm—it’s not only crying wolf (because when an actual case does come along, who will believe it?), but a deliberate attempt to blind the public to the true dangers facing them, dangers represented not by the forces of anarchy or artistic irresponsibilty, but by the forces of censorship and control. The “mob” wants to rule not only our actions and our decisions, but our thoughts and feelings and our desires also. They want to protect our own children from us, and in turn protect us from ourselves, from our own negligence or faulty judgment or bad taste, or whatever is they consider us guilty of.
The obvious question here is—who asked them to? The worst kind of tyrant is the tyrant that elects itself to rule. And the majority that declares itself to be moral simply because it is legion, the people’s own consensus of tyranny, amounts to nothing less than the rule of the mob.
British Blogger : London's Martin Huxter
President Obama's GIVE Act: Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act: H.R. 1388
" To Reauthorize and Reform the National Service Laws" : More on this bill, which goes before the House on Tuesday, and has received robust support from Youth Service America and many other organizations:
MyGoodDeed :: Groundbreaking National Service Legislation Introduced in U.S. House of Representatives Advocates Establishing September 11 as an Annually Observed National Day of Service
Posted using ShareThis
MyGoodDeed :: Groundbreaking National Service Legislation Introduced in U.S. House of Representatives Advocates Establishing September 11 as an Annually Observed National Day of Service
Posted using ShareThis
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Alice Miller: The Political Consequences of Child Abuse
Just read a series of fascinating essays by Alice Miller, found online. Among them, some on the childhood and generational complexes which helped form Hitler, as well as the passed down trauma and abuse on a national level - masked as conventional values - which formed the collective psyche of his myriad of followers. And a little child shall lead them cuts both ways: In can be the child like Messiah, or the twisted child psyche in the adult body of a national leader. And Obama: If Wordsworth was correct in saying that the child is father of the man, who is the child Obama?
H.R. 1388: Obama's "Give Act" Introduced to the House
Friday, March 13, 2009
Prepare for the Noble Blast of Obama's Youth Corps : Uniformity Rising
Our Fourth Turning President : The resurfacing of Obama's idea of a civilian national security force - duly noted by blogger at "Doug Ross @ Journal" blog - is something I have been watching keenly for. That it is making its subtle reappearance in Obama's discourse now, reveals the seriousness with which he takes the whole issue. It had not been forgotten or shelved, but only temporarily abated. His Youth Corps as well is something I have been contemplating in many ways, and interpreting as a fourth turning phenomenum , as defined by historians Howe and Strauss.
That there would be a "pre-war" feeling and tone to this ascension is to be expected. FDR and his Civilian Conservation Corps fused with 21 st century globalism: A formidable mix, one capable of much good and only to a lesser degree, ill. . Barack Obama is in accord with the time and riding the change he spoke of. One is very wrong to presuppose that Obama is a 90s-style Democrat, or a throwback to a '70s one. In many important senses, he is the antithesis of a Clinton; even more so, a Carter.
He is the Democrat of the historical apex, and his style will be a decided, even a radical, break with all that has come before. This seeming antagonist of conservatism, this agent of liberal change; he with the sparkle in his eye and the lilt in his voice, and the determination in his stride, has many features which are far from liberal. At least not in the 1990s glitzy and laissez faire meaning of the term. Conservative scholars like Gertrude Himmelfarb and Patrick Buchannan could scarcely have hoped for more; least of all from a Democrat. What was mere talk from W Bush is becoming earnest in Barack Obama: A framework and an underpinning are already in place, like the foundation of a house, built under the guise of Homeland Security. Note, too, that the expanded Presidential powers enacted under W Bush did him very little good, but may have set the stage for the breadth and scope of an Obama undertaking.
It would be one more mistake to expect this uniformity to flare up all at once; surely it will build under some smokescreen. But come it will. Later to gather force and speed, it now rolls and builds like the onset of a silent , creeping fog. The aforementioned blogger took due note of the fact that overseas deployment, first used in the Clinton directive regarding the civilian security , issued in the early '90s, had vanished from the 2009 directive. Didn't Howe and Strauss prophesy of civic resurgence? Didn't they predict a cultural cleansing? And looking to our inner cities and our suburban schools and the splintered chaos of a million cable channels , one wonders if this is perhaps not long overdue. . .
The fact of the matter is, a culture as individualized and fractured, and riddled with competing and conflicted identity and grievance groups and trivia and economic disparity as ours, stands in need of a good dose of uniformity and unity in service. Anyone who recalls our great American philosopher of pragmatism, William James, and his piece, The Moral Equivalent of War, should see how clear, how palpable, is our need of such.
Cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war. . .
when the blast. . . blows in our ears , then imitate the action of the tiger,
stiffen the sinews, disguise fair nature with hard favored rage. . We few,
chosen few, the Band of Brothers . . . from now until the end of the world,
we and it shall be remembered. . .
That there would be a "pre-war" feeling and tone to this ascension is to be expected. FDR and his Civilian Conservation Corps fused with 21 st century globalism: A formidable mix, one capable of much good and only to a lesser degree, ill. . Barack Obama is in accord with the time and riding the change he spoke of. One is very wrong to presuppose that Obama is a 90s-style Democrat, or a throwback to a '70s one. In many important senses, he is the antithesis of a Clinton; even more so, a Carter.
He is the Democrat of the historical apex, and his style will be a decided, even a radical, break with all that has come before. This seeming antagonist of conservatism, this agent of liberal change; he with the sparkle in his eye and the lilt in his voice, and the determination in his stride, has many features which are far from liberal. At least not in the 1990s glitzy and laissez faire meaning of the term. Conservative scholars like Gertrude Himmelfarb and Patrick Buchannan could scarcely have hoped for more; least of all from a Democrat. What was mere talk from W Bush is becoming earnest in Barack Obama: A framework and an underpinning are already in place, like the foundation of a house, built under the guise of Homeland Security. Note, too, that the expanded Presidential powers enacted under W Bush did him very little good, but may have set the stage for the breadth and scope of an Obama undertaking.
It would be one more mistake to expect this uniformity to flare up all at once; surely it will build under some smokescreen. But come it will. Later to gather force and speed, it now rolls and builds like the onset of a silent , creeping fog. The aforementioned blogger took due note of the fact that overseas deployment, first used in the Clinton directive regarding the civilian security , issued in the early '90s, had vanished from the 2009 directive. Didn't Howe and Strauss prophesy of civic resurgence? Didn't they predict a cultural cleansing? And looking to our inner cities and our suburban schools and the splintered chaos of a million cable channels , one wonders if this is perhaps not long overdue. . .
The fact of the matter is, a culture as individualized and fractured, and riddled with competing and conflicted identity and grievance groups and trivia and economic disparity as ours, stands in need of a good dose of uniformity and unity in service. Anyone who recalls our great American philosopher of pragmatism, William James, and his piece, The Moral Equivalent of War, should see how clear, how palpable, is our need of such.
when the blast. . . blows in our ears , then imitate the action of the tiger,
stiffen the sinews, disguise fair nature with hard favored rage. . We few,
chosen few, the Band of Brothers . . . from now until the end of the world,
we and it shall be remembered. . .
Forced to Leave, Freeman Speaks Ominously of Israel Lobby
Forced into withdrawing his candidature for NIC chairman, Freeman spoke ominous words about the brutal smear tactics of the Israel Lobby. Will President Obama be unable to enact badly needed Change in the Middle East? James G. Abourezk wrote during the primary campaign season of the dangers of then Senator Obama "groveling" before the Israel Lobby, saying that continued "unquestioning support of Israel's criminal objectives is a real threat to world peace.".
Charles Freeman's Victory - by Justin Raimondo
Posted using ShareThis
Charles Freeman's Victory - by Justin Raimondo
Posted using ShareThis
Thoughts on Government DayCare and a Return to a Consensus
I happened to be trawling through articles on Obama from back in the campaign days, and came upon a speech of his about government daycare. In it, then Illinois Senator Obama was speaking about something called "Zero to Five", about a Children First Agenda which would help families with children under five. This is very worrisome. Unless he was speaking of a partial plan which would help the neediest, it sounds too much like the 1990s agenda of feminism and family breakdown and government sponsered childhood. America should be a nation of free and independent families. A return to a consensus should encourage traditional marriage, mothers as the primary care givers for the children, and decent jobs for the husbands.
Using the Howe and Struass model of the historical saeculum, this was always my intuition regarding Barack Obama: That he was not a third turning candidate (as was Hillary Clinton), but a fourth turning one, and thus would be an old-fashioned Democrat, opposed to the neo-feminist agenda which wreaked havoc from the 1970s up to now. Nothwithstanding the negative comments about his Youth Corps, this idea always struck me as a conservative one. It is wholly different from the day care feminist mentality. It would strengthen families, and not the reverse. My intuition is also that Obama , being a Democrat, is having to play into some of the leftover feminist ideology and agenda. My hope is that he is biding his time, waiting for the moment when he will break from them, and distinguish himself as no friend of their agenda.
Using the Howe and Struass model of the historical saeculum, this was always my intuition regarding Barack Obama: That he was not a third turning candidate (as was Hillary Clinton), but a fourth turning one, and thus would be an old-fashioned Democrat, opposed to the neo-feminist agenda which wreaked havoc from the 1970s up to now. Nothwithstanding the negative comments about his Youth Corps, this idea always struck me as a conservative one. It is wholly different from the day care feminist mentality. It would strengthen families, and not the reverse. My intuition is also that Obama , being a Democrat, is having to play into some of the leftover feminist ideology and agenda. My hope is that he is biding his time, waiting for the moment when he will break from them, and distinguish himself as no friend of their agenda.
Obama as Receiver of Projections of Hope and Fear
Obama looked good as Washington on this New Yorker cover. He has been compared to Geroge Washinton, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, James Madison, and many others. Obama is the receiver of projections. Jung called this talent for serving as the canvas for others to paint on, numinosity. This makes him very special, and beloved of millions in America and around the globe. From Shepard Fairey's famous Hope and Progress poster art, to a myriad of street artists and journalists, Obama has received the projections of hope and excitement from the collective well of the consciousness of the new millennium. One could say without exaggeration that President Barack Obama is the archetype of these changing times, with all the good and ill which that implies; the Hegelian hero, seizing the kairos, that moment where all seems possible again, where "everthing is new and yielding"; where things reach the apex and reversal, and a new era is born within the baptism of fire.
Of course he has also served as the slate on which paranoia and suspicion are holding a rendezvous with bigotry and hatred. There is always the underside, and the human shadow will also have its dark contents come to expression. Fears of facism, socialism, covert ties to Islam and terrorists and a mysterious birth and fatherhood: These have also been projected onto him. But thus far, he has received all in that elegant and understated way which distinguishes him in all things.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
From the Wilderness, A Voice of Reason: Mass hysteria is not a constitutional crisis | Obama Conspiracy Theories
This man has spoken it: "Mass hysteria is not a constitutional crisis. It is a mental health crisis." The COLB (certificate of live birth) hysteria always struck me as having a two-fold strangeness to it: 1. It seemed symbolic of some other issue ( as though Obama's biracial heritage were making him seem alien, threatening). 2. There was an odd verification, coming from Obama himself: A defiant, perplexing refusal to clear that matter up ( as though somehow he could not). And yet, seeing as last Thursday a federal court judge lost his patinece with the matter, calling it "foolishness", and the writings of the gentleman in the link below, I think this is trickling out its last drops:
Mass hysteria is not a constitutional crisis | Obama Conspiracy Theories
Posted using ShareThis
Mass hysteria is not a constitutional crisis | Obama Conspiracy Theories
Posted using ShareThis
Progressive Eruptions: FEDERAL JUDGE CALLS OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE CONTROVERSY A WASTE OF TIME
I thought this had died, but is apparently still dying. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Progressive Eruptions: FEDERAL JUDGE CALLS OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE CONTROVERSY A WASTE OF TIME
Posted using ShareThis
Progressive Eruptions: FEDERAL JUDGE CALLS OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE CONTROVERSY A WASTE OF TIME
Posted using ShareThis
AP Blasts Obama 'Hope' Artist in Copyright Flap | Threat Level from Wired.com
AP Blasts Obama 'Hope' Artist in Copyright Flap | Threat Level from Wired.com
The Revolution Has Already Occurred
Social theorist Christopher Lasch once said that there was a flaw common to many people, when speaking of scary futuristic realities: They project onto a distant future, said Lasch, cultural elements which have already taken firm root in the daily environment which surround us. If as The Nation says, the revolution has already occurred, then those who speak of Obama's sinister agenda are falling into this failing described by Lasch:
The Revolution Has Already Occurred
Posted using ShareThis
The Revolution Has Already Occurred
Posted using ShareThis
Who's Afraid of Socialism? - The Plank
Amidst a flood tide of rising economic insecurity for millions of Americans, the accusation of "socialism" may not carry the weight it once did: Who's Afraid of Socialism? - The Plank
Posted using ShareThis
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)