Goldman 10:34

All I have to say about the sucker who resigned from Goldman upon discovering that its staff was not composed of peaceful ascetics whose days were spent in quiet meditation and mindful contemplation of the blooming lotus is that he's got a clear future career on the Absolut Swedish Explosive Guilt Commission, wherein he can pass all the rest of the years of his life handing out Peace Prizes to just-elected heads of state who immediately chopper in to proclaim that they come not to bring peace unto earth, but the sword.

A Fish Hook. An Open Eye.

Somehow MJS and I find ourselves receiving the same signals in our fillings; it's a good thing he's notagay; I suspect we'd make the most insufferable couple on earth.  Sanity Clause aside, though, I as yet hold out a halfbarrel of hope that the Oh, Brother administration will have to pack itself off to the Davos-and-Doctoral-Candidate circuit; the American people, in their infinite underabundance of book learnin, have seen fit to blame the Pump Attendant-in-Chief for the rise in gas prices, which is delightfully, poetically unfair.  Obama can no more control the price of unleaded than can the lank-haired Juggalo slinging smokes from behind the safety glass down at the Sunoco--were he to be turned out of office on account of that, we would be assured of a glorious decade of retrospective liberal angoisse; just the other day, a liberal of my acquaintance was nattering on about how Jiminy Carter never once uttered the world malaise; couldn't even spell it!--which is how I know for a fact that this is true.  Of course, I see no prospect for Archevêque Saint-Orum to beat the Mormon Tabernacle (I don't really know what a tabernacle is, but I suspect that one looks like Mitt in profile).  Which is a shame.  Because insofar as I am able to discern any difference between Obama and Mitt, it's that Mitt's kids appear to be male.  Santorum is obviously NOT the money candidate, but wouldn't it be great to see him flail around madly, trying to institute his Handmaid's Tale candyland?  Considering that the guy couldn't even beat Bob Casey, well, it promises to remain in the realm of science fiction.

Oh, Shit. This IS What Democracy Looks Like.

A part of Glenn's point is well-taken; it is crazier, in a philosophical, categorical sense, to believe that the President is some kind of absolute monarch with the power to launch wars of conquest and assassinate his own citizens and so on, but down here in the phenomenal world in which objects and actions must be judged, alas, by their actual attributes alone, the Gulfstream Media is factually and, uh, actually correct: wherefore there ain't never gonna be a motherfucking Department of Peace, therefore Dennis Kucinich wuz nuts.  Sanity and insanity aren't really absolute values, are they?  I mean, they're positional; they stand relative to the times in which they are uttered in judgment.  Or, like, dude: the human condition is insanity, and sanity consists simply of those insane sentiments which, because they are sufficiently widely shared, appear normal.  I don't know; point is: all the things that Glenn says are crazy, the wars and killings and endless so-called failed policies, are not crazy because they are so goddamned real; they have all been prestodigitated by thousands of years of state-backed, taxpayer-funded avarice from sick delusion into total normalcy.  What's crazy is thinking you can unscramble those eggs and put that BOOM back into the stick of dynamite.

On the question of Grand-Slam's larger impact, Glenn seems to be of the opinion that he is a molar, ingrown, subtly undermining the rest of those mean chompers:

For one, enacting legislation is not the only way to have an important impact on our political culture. Shining light on otherwise-ignored issues, advocating rarely-heard political positions, using one’s platform to highlight the corruption of those in power and to challenge their warped belief systems are all vitally important functions. Advocacy of that sort may not produce immediate, tangible successes, but it is a prerequisite for changing prevailing political mores and persuading citizens to think differently.

I have a hypothesis that the word citizen is, for many minds, a safety word; what was whipping along at a fine pace comes to a swift and sudden halt, lest it do any actual damage.  Is this what Dennis Kucinich was doing?  See, here, well, um, I have long been under the impression that what Dennis Kucinich was doing was providing a reliably quote-unquote liberal outlier, a lonely tentpole on the far, far side of the bombing range where the Democratic party pitches its big tent, around which the sort of folks who overpay for yoga instruction and carry their own bags to the grocery store could crowd, having convinced themselves that its slender shadow is the shade.  A few paces to its left is a single, well-occupied dining room chair, upon which rest all of Ron Paul's supporters; it's their seat at the table, get it?  Look, people within institutions serve institutional functions, whether the like it or not, whether they know it or not.  Does Dennis Kucinich help you to continue to believe that you are an, oh, god, citizen?  That by speaking out you are "changing prevailing political mores"?  Maybe all isn't lost . . . maybe . . . maybe I ought to continue to participate . . . it may not produce any immediate, tangible successes, but, given time . . . attitudes change . . . people change . . .

And this is how you end up reliably offering your consent to one or other gang of murdering psychopaths.  So who's crazy, here, the murdering psychopaths, or the fella who keeps handing them the keys to the gun cabinet?  The old saw about the real definition of insanity is the truth: it consists of the endless repetition of the same action with the expectation of a different result.  If the Democratic party can contain a Kucinich, it must be less evil than the evil rethuglican menace, right?  If the Republicans have a Ron Paul, they must be at least somewhat, marginally more committed to some kind of reasonable limits on the reach and scope of the federal government, right?  No, wrong, wrong!  If a fucking candy bar contains real coconut, that does not make it a fruit; if you fruits drink enough Miller Ultra Lite, you will still get fat.

Sick as a Dog

Therefore, no blog.  Back next week or so.

Centrifugal State

The Times threatens to become a drinking game.  DRINK every time you see a story wondering what sort of aggressive, warlike actions Iran will take if we start bombing Iran.  The Lady's ability to churn these things out, selfsame, with only the most minor variations in the ornamentation ("'Is 40 missiles on Tel Aviv nice?' the official asked, summing up the Israeli calculus. 'No. But it’s better than a nuclear Iran'"), is something to behold, a high-in-dietary-fiber regularity that suggests a ceaseless diet of grassy bullshit. And yet you find it makes some people totally deranged, even people who love to hoist the jolly roger and proclaim the end of liberty in a second-rate food columnist's suggestion that the government regulate fatty foods and sugar. Well, I also regret that the government wants to stick its long nose into my salad bowl, but to read a do-gooder's crusade to confiscate my ranch dressing as an intolerable affront to the principle of individual autonomy while simultaneously declaring that it is morally imperative for the world's most aggressive expansionist state and its Club-Med airstrip to launch a devastating air war against a nation that has not attacked anyone because that nation's sixth most influential politician has made jingoistic agitprop a cornerstone of his permanent campaign . . . well, I would like to call it insane, but it is worse: it's stupid.

Crispin tries to mock some leftists-manqués because they "dearly love a theocracy as long as santorum isn't running it," but let me suggest that if you can't even convincingly make fun of your own straw men, then you have found a line of argument in need of immediate retirement. And yet the comparison is apt, because divining the ultimate malevolence of the Iranian regime from what Ahmedinejad says is very much like taking Candidate Rick's pronouncements as the direct expression of America's national soul. Ahmedinejad is not an absolute monarch; he isn't even a Speaker of the House. Treating him as a Machiavellian prince is odd.

It's all fine and well to proclaim that it's somehow intolerable--and let me ask you to consider the real meaning of that word and then ponder if it actually applies at all--for Iran to have The Bomb. And I actually happen to agree: it is no counterargument to say that America has the bomb; France has the bomb; Israel has the bomb; everyone has the bomb. Its existence itself is undesirable; therefore its existence anywhere is undesirable. But it in no way follows that those states in possession of this intolerable object possess the right, let alone the affirmative duty, to launch an aggressive war in order to prevent the commission of a sin that they themselves have committed tens, hundreds, and thousands of times over. I do not believe that Iran is developing a bomb; everything about their actions suggests a program of general nuclear research with just enough ambiguity to deter the type of attack we find our nation contemplating. Even if Iran were to possess a bomb, its only benefit would be precisely that same deterrence.

Iran is not some fictive evil empire; its rulers are not Mings the Merciless. It's a nation full of people trying to lead decent lives in spite of the corruption and madness of their state, just as America is a nation full of people trying to lead decent lives in spite of the corruption and madness of their state, just as all nations and all peoples are, in their own way, such. War is an unmitigated evil. I'm going to repeat myself here. Accepting (and I don't) that some wars, sometimes, are truly necessary doesn't dissolve the evil or absolve people or nations from their participation in them; they can never fully be atoned for or forgiven. And I am talking about, you know, fighting the Nazis! Invading some country for the hell of it, supporting that invasion because you find yourself incapable of mustering sufficient skepticism toward the reporting in the New York Times, for god's sake? Good lord, don't quit your day job.

Syria Is Not Syria

The above clip shows a recent planning session during which Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professional drill instructor at Princeton, lays out her plan for no-kill zones in Syria. Interestingly, the first step in establishing no-kill zones is arming everyone to the teeth. Gentlemen, you can't kill in here! This is a no-kill zone!

The First Syllable in Context

Primitive superstitious Afghan people are rioting because we burned the Koran.  It's like this guy says, "This is not just about dishonoring the Koran, it is about disrespecting our dead, and killing our children."  Like he said, it's just about dishonoring the Koran.

A Bunch of Fuckin Crybabies

“Will you be the generation that sat on the sidelines and watched as candidate after candidate comes up, and the national media takes their whack at them to try to destroy them in every way possible, as they’ve done with every single Republican candidate, and as they will between now the election? Will you sit on the sidelines and say, 'Boy, that’s not fair,’ or will you stand up and fight for freedom?”

-LA Times

I like that Rick casts this in world-historical terms, like: it is the generational struggle of those now living to stop the media from taking whacks at Republican candidates in an overstuffed primary contest.  I am going to start using this formulation at home, I think.  "Honey, will you be the generation that sat on the sidelines while I folded all of this laundry?  Will you complain that I mixed your vintage tees with polo shirts?  Or will you come over here and fold it yourself?"  But voters love to be hectored about this sort of thing; it gets their essential juices flowing.  Well, shit, if fighting for freedom involves hauling my ass down to the precinct and yanking a lever, you can call me Che, or Edmund Burke, or Joan of Arc, or whomever.  The essential derangement of democratic systems comes alive every campaign, wherein participation in the accepted, prescribed, normative civic forums is cast as a revolutionary act.  Obviously the Oh, Brother campaign did just the same back in its preadministrative phase, and I expect them to pull it out again.

It is a little sillier, if only a little, coming from the supposed conservative candidate, which only comments once more on the tragicomedy of the whole American political taxonomy.  Our conservatives may or may not be totally atavistic, but they do proclaim allegiance to a certain revolutionary creed.  They say they despise and abhor all the existing institutions of government and wish to through their Dr. Scholls into the machinery.  Meanwhile, the liberals defend all the state's traditional institutions, which they claim to have erected with nothing much more than gumption, a fiat currency, and their very own wartime dictator, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Thus does every worm, um, turn; the agents of so-called progress, having built their society, become with the swift passage of years the conservative defenders of it, and the former conservatives become the prophets bringing a new gospel, even if it harkens ever back into some Edenic past.

None of them are sincere, of course; Rick Santorum no more wants to destroy the institutions of American state capitalism than Barack Obama--this restaurant may be getting lousier and lousier reviews, but it's still making money for the owners and not yet fit for an accidental grease fire ifyaknowhadahmean.  So there's that.  I've said it before and will again: I truly do admire the genius of our system of superficial consensualism, a system whereby we are forever assenting to our present circumstances in the belief that we have any option to do otherwise.

Diving into the Dreck

Most libertarians and anarchists are not really concerned with freedom or liberty or self-determination or property or the nonexistence of property or any of their other infinite set of synonyms for autonomy per se.  Their philosophies of personal freedom are quite literally personal.  The old insult that libertarians are in it for the weed is reductive, sure, but it has the element of truth.  To some degree or other, we are all in it for the weed, the guns, or the butt sex.  By we, I mean men, and I'll come back to that.

Most libertarians will tell you that they would be willing to countenance a more randomly dangerous world and most anarchists will tell you that they understand that their philosophy, were it somehow to become actual, would result in what we late-modern materialists would regard as poverty and material privation.  It is supposed to be a mark of bravery and/or sincerity to embrace a philosophy that would see you knocked down an economic peg or two, giving up the iPad in exchange for the ploughshare or what have you.  But ironically those reduction in circumstances do not lead to a decline in the advocates' position within the structures of power; quite the opposite: the dismantling of traditional hierarchy and authority advances the lower orders in which the anarchist imagines himself.  No number of caveats about a more horizontal world, a declined West, an equitable distribution of wealth or property or political determination undermines this fundamental truth in any way.  To some degree, all you dudes imagine an advancement in the advancement of your interests.

Now, tell one of these freedom lovers that every interaction with the state rests on a foundation of violence, and he will nod in considered agreement, but tell him that every interaction between women and men rests upon a foundation of rape, and he will throw up his hands in genuine bewilderment and cry that he is never going to rape anyone!  The theory is disproven.  This suggests that he is at the end of it willfully opposed to considering, really considering, his own supposed principles, less yet to actually using the analytic tools of his philosophy to observe and consider the world around him.  It is true that not every man rapes; indeed, most do not.  Most officials of the state do not enact violence; the IRS is full of pencilnecks; the cashier at the city-county building is not going to blow your head off when you're late to renew your dog license.  Still, we have no difficulty in recognizing the web of coercion underlying even the most banal interactions with the various agents of the state, even as we are astonished at the suggestion that the patriarchy functions in precisely the same way.

The difference is that men, when confronted with the specter of Woman, Ascendent, perceive the potential for an actual, relative decline in their own status, a meaningful giving-over of their own privileged position in the world to the benefit of someone else.  Never mind that the decline is meaningless within the context of a real equality; indeed, it is the currency with which we might all buy a better world.  Instead, they yelp like a gang of talk-radio benchwarmers confronted with the nightmare that some black guy, somewhere, got a job that might've gone to a white.  Suggest that we must fundamentally reorder our very civilization, and they are all on board; suggest that this might involve a total renovation of our ideas of sex and gender, and suddenly The Women are coming in a genocidal program to cut off all their johnsons.  Watching a group of soi-disant radicals circle the wagons against the very suggestion that men rule women--a statement so banal as to be a truism in any other circumstance--is one of the most laughable and pathetic sights imaginable.

If this most ancient and unyielding form of human inequity is of no interest to your philosophy of the destruction of all authority, then your ersatz philosophy is mere affectation, and your protests to the contrary are lies.  If you find yourself confronting the word feminism with questions about how there can be a feminism if masculine and feminine are false categories, and if you are impressed with your cleverness in this regard, then I invite you to consider your own anarchy, wherein the whole object of your obsession, the State, is a metaphor and an abstraction.

Nothing is as disappointing as discovering that one's self-described compatriots are fools.

But last night, plans of a future war, was all I saw, on Channel 4...

CORUSCANT - Should the League of Non-Aligned Worlds decide to launch a strike on the Romulan Star Empire, its pilots would have to make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs through Reaver space, resupply their Tillium reserves en route, disable the shield generator, and attack multiple Borg unimatrices simultaneously using at least 100 White Star vessels.

That is the assessment of a bunch of nerds making mash-up space battle videos for YouTube, who say that the planet-killing device in The Doomsday Machine from TOS was obviously more realistic than the Death Star, although the Shadows' planet-killing cloud of nuclear warheads from B5 is really the only plausible device of its type, since obviously no directed energy weapon could ever blow up an entire planet--I mean, the whole idea is ridiculous--I mean, how could a beam weapon generate energy in excess of the kinetic energy of a massive collision between two planetary bodies . . . and, like, even that wouldn't necessarily break up an entire planet . . . like, how could you induce a planet to explode? It doesn't make any sense! Maybe you could drop a singularity into its core and make it implode, like in the Star Trek reboot, but . . .

What? Oh. "All the trekkies are like, 'Oh, yeah, our deflector shield technology is obviously superior to anything in the Star Wars universe,' but that doesn't mean that a Galaxy Class vessel is going to go up against a Star Destroyer," said Greedo175 during a wide-ranging debate at Memory Alpha.

-Elizabeth Bumiller, The Times

The Grey Lady reveals itself as one of the finest fanfic sites of the current era as it hungrily fantasizes about war between Israel and Iran.  Were I a pessimist, I would perhaps view this as laying the groundwork, but I have lately been feeling an unseemly sort of optimism, and all this jingoism toward Iran is sounding increasingly impotent and fantastical.  I say this with full knowledge that we are making cross-border incursions and doing drone strikes and plotting assassinations.  Nevertheless, the scifi quality of our major propaganda organs' coverage of the future war suggests that we are stymied, that low-level conflict is the best we can manage.  It's still hell, but it's a higher circle of hell.  Baby steps.