Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

Hello, dear readers. Today I offer for your consideration a wonderful analysis regarding what neo-liberalism/corporatism was always about, what it hath wrought, and what its intentions are going forward.

7 comments:

Debra said...

Edwardo, I read halfway through the link...
I really strongly suggest that you reread the Bard. With a magnifying glass.
The Bard was not stupid at all.
His political analysis (and often in verse, to boot...) really beats the pants off of any analysis our Jack is a dull boy who works society manages to produce in its super and DEADLY SERIOUS moments.
The absolute power corrupts absolutely is a process, not something that springs full fledged from Zeus' head like Athena.
The elites, like everyone else, started out doing business as usual. Like my Mom and Pop started doing out business, too.
Middle class America is just NOT the victim everybody would like to believe. It doesn't happen that way.
Because middle class America always had, and still has the secret desire to... be one of those elites that "they" imagine are screwing everybody over.
And middle class America is raging that the dream of screwing over the poor, and being on the top of the heap seems to be receding every further into the sunset.
So.. I am NOT sympathetic, Edwardo.
Not in the least.
I will become sympathetic the day SOMEBODY on this blog, or elsewhere starts expressing just a smidgin of concern for the poor sods who are getting beaten every day in the obnoxious prison system that the U.S. has. (Yeah, let's not point that finger too hard in the direction of Israel. This is..folie à deux, as I mentioned.)
When we start.. loving our neighbor a little bit instead of pointing fingers, then I will become sympathetic.
Not now. Geez, one of the reasons I gave up my practice was disgust from hearing middle class wankers go on about being victims of mommy and daddy, society, you name it.
It's got old.
Return to feudalism and the dark ages would not be the end of the world, either.
And think about it... if a serious infectious disease arrived in OUR society right now, it would hit US the same way as... the bubonic plague hit our ancestors.

Edwardo said...

Deb, I seriously doubt it is your intention, but your style of debate, if that's what it is, manages to be alternately insulting and stupefying. I know you have an instinctive dislike of Attempter's work, but it's just torturous to try and impose The Bard onto the political dynamics under discussion.

And since I'm able to recite large swaths of Shakespeare from memory, having studied the plays and acted in them professionally, I can assure you that my opinion of the man's work-whoever he was-is reasonably elevated. However, I am not an idolator, and tend to think that the author of Hamlet did not exempt himself from the insight that "There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

I'm afraid that where we find ourselves presently in this America, and on this planet, will not necesarily be best understood by reading King Lear, As You Like It, or any of the other plays or The Sonnets with or without a visual aid.

As for obnoxious prison systems, well, if A Prophet is any guide, The French Prison system would seem to be more than just a tad obnoxious. And I hear that The Turkish one is no picnic either...

Debra said...

Come on, Edwardo.
I knew that I wasn't going to get any brownie points by writing what I did above, but you were inordinately harsh on me.
I did NOT insult anyone nominatively in what I just wrote, so where, pray tell, is the insult ?
I did not insult attempter, who I do not even know, by the way. I said that the Bard's analysis was finer than most of what our deadly serious and hubristic society produces, and I will stand firm by that.
Maybe I am highly irrational in the comparison that I make between French society and American society.
You're absolutely right that there are too many people imprisoned in France, Edwardo, and I scream about that too, when I can.
I'm not selective in my little prophet act, take heart.
Is it just because the U.S. has turned the punishment act into big business that it is selling all over the planet, and trying to foist off onto anyone who will buy that gets me upset ?
I don't like Empire anyway, you know, and I would be denouncing empire in France, if it were here.
But... empire is not in France, regardless of all the time we spend here trying to pretend to ourselves that by aping it WE will be one of the crowd too.
I thought about this rather clearly last night.
I'm going to be more... vocal about warning my French friends about where the loss of sympathy, identification, and compassion for the POOR will lead them.
But, as I also say.. it sometimes seems to me as though the bulldozer of empire rolls over everything. People seem to forget their collective history rather fast.
I do NOT dislike Attempter's work.
That is too strong a word. There you go being... "irrational" again, Edwardo.
You know, this reminds me of a story. About 25 years ago I sat in on professional meeting where French psychoanalysts from two different schools were tussling it out over what Lacan meant.
A fair amount of shouting going on (but it was certainly a far cry from a riot).
In "good" American style I was shocked at the level of.. emotion present. And pursed my lips in judgment, of course.
I have revised my opinion. Now political correctness, and self policing have taken us to the point where we are breaking down individually from not knowing what to do with our anger.
Bad plan. We need our anger to get things changed in society. We can't be groveling in melancolic despair (even if the social body prefers that we do for its own comfort) while the steam roller goes over.
Great news about your acting. Wow, I'm impressed. And ENVIOUS... what roles did you play ?
I'm drooling...
Our largely anhistoric economic and political history (because we don't bother too much, or most of us, at any rate, learning about our history is what's off on the analysis.
I don't know if this holds true for attempter.
I don't belong to clubs anyway, Edwardo...

Debra said...

I reread what I initially wrote. I said "analysis our Jack is a dull boy SOCIETY produces".
I was NOT talking about attempter.
As it turns out, I have a somewhat COHERENT vision of things right now, even if I couch it in some occasionally outrageous language.
I believe that individuals are even more influenced by the social context they find themselves in than we would like to believe.
On Sudden Debt, in the last comment section, Tiago and I discussed polarization in American debate.
Up until very recently I have not seen polarization going on in French political debate (not name calling INDIVIDUALS, and I have NEVER done that here, by the way...). It is rampant in the States.
But granted, maybe I am not looking hard enough over here.
Polarization is a big problem. The Manichaen take on things.

Edwardo said...

Patronization is a form of insult, and telling me to read the Bard -with a magnifying glass-when I'm more than a little familiar with the works of WS veers too close to patronizing for comfort. Don't be envious of my acting. I've been off the boards for quite a while. in any case FWIW, I played multiple roles, none of them leads in Dick 3, RnJ and various and sundry other productions.

I'm glad to hear that you don't dislike Attempter's work, but you sure spilled a lot of ink without managing to say one positive thing about it.

Dysfunction, a word I'm not terribly fond of, since everything functions, and it's just a question of how, has many forms, so, if Europe doesn't sport polarized debate in the same way it occurs here, doesn't mean that somehow, someway politics "over there" isn't badly malfunctioning. It seems to be in a crisis from my vantage point.

I think U.S. political debate is less polarized than simply impoverished and degraded. One thing that has happened to make it so is that terms like "liberal" have been rendered the equivalent of curse words. This is a particularly despicable achievement of the Karl Rove/Grover Norquist/Newt Gingrich contingent.


The minute such words are invoked they elicit an emotional response that, at best, cheapens any discussion. We can agree that language is the first battlefield. The U.S. electorate hates, in the main, absolutely loathes complexity in any form, and constantly seeks out ways to deride complexity in human affairs. Unfortunately, we are complex and so squashing our complexity under a fusillade of rhetoric that denounces or otherwise trashes the concept of complexity is self defeating. Of course I have another problem which is when individuals or groups hide behind complexity to obfuscate their intentions. See the banking sector. But I digress.

And this puts me in mind of the U.S. "imprisonment culture", and the criminal justice system in general, whose functioning is the hall mark of our culture's infantile rage against complexity in human affairs.

Locking people up left right and center is the penal equivalent of sweeping dirt under a cheap rug that is stapled to the floor. Unfortunately, because of our the near total victory of the U.S. corporatist system, and here Attempter's forensic work is at its most valuable in my view, we incessantly create the conditions that insure there will always be a steady supply of convicts, many of whom are simply mentally ill.

End of rant.

Debra said...

But you KNOW that I don't patronize you, anyway.
I think that you really HAVE to read the Bard with a magnifying glass to see all the finesse he is capable of. Probably unintentionally, by the way. i read the Bard with a magnifying glass. I can spend... 2 hours on the first two scenes of "The Winter's Tale", for example. I LOVE reading the Bard with a magnifying glass...
Every time I go back to "Macbeth" (once a once, for translation, with the OED by my side..) I see something I hadn't noticed before.
We're in a globalized society. If you read what I write on Sudden Debt, you will see how outraged I am that OUR sycophantic, impoverished imagination leaders are desperate to jump on board the economic/financial Titanic as it sinks.
My gripe with the U.S. is the gripe that I ALWAYS have had with it : IT is empire, and when you are the world's biggest bully (oops, I meant, the world's biggest leader), in my mind that entails OBLIGATIONS to show others the way that go beyond dropping bombs on Irak from 5,000 ft for SECURITY reasons.
And mindlessly repeating the "democracy" word is just not convincing me that the U.S. government (note that I said GOVERNMENT...) is bringing democracy to the planet in its little military endeavors, for example.
I think, from our previous encounters that you will have no problem granting me the above points.
I have no opinions on attempter. I do not read his blog.
You will have to grant me credit that I NEVER use the L word. Because I said I do not stick labels on myself. That is... the door open to polarization.
Look what happened to me the time I refered to myself as a Christian mystical anarchist....
My analysis on what is happening is that the religious right started breaking through the stranglehold of the politically correct assumption that we must all be RATIONAL all the time, and that being rational PRECLUDED being emotional. All this with the "ideal" goal of being scientific...
We need reason AND emotion, but sticking them together is not easy.
Particulary when it is getting harder and harder for us to know what the word... "and" means.
Even with secondary roles, I'm STILL impressed, by the way...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the good word, Edwardo!

While few are likely to come out winners if they have to compete with Shakespeare, I suppose it's flattering to be mentioned in the same breath. :)