Whirlwind
There's a Niagara Falls of analysis flowing out of Blogtopia about The Great Losing. Some is Intra-Liberal finger-pointing (it's the fault of every person who refused to vote for the Lesser Of The Weevils). Other say November 8th was "Whitelash", a vote against Persons Of Color and social progress by an Underclass whose natural racism was called forth by Trump.
Some, like Michael Moore, played Cassandra -- saying, accurately enough: workers in America had been screwed for decades, and were about to rise up. Others pointed out that HRC was manifestly the wrong candidate for the Democrats to have supported -- but didn't go far enough in examining why, exactly, that was so.
The focus in the media and Blogtopia about Hillary was on a private email server, on the FBI investigation; the past priapic antics of her Saintly Billy-o; apparently amoral happenings at the Clinton Foundation; John Podesta characterizing Chelsea in one of his hacked emails as a smiley-faced backstabber, offering the observation that the apple "doesn't fall far from the tree".
This doesn't mean that protest votes weren't a factor, or that HRC giving Henry Kissinger a warm and gentle hug spoke volumes about Realpolitik and the security of her position in a ruling elite. It doesn't mean America isn't founded on racism and genocide and oppression which all Whites must bear and can never be expunged ever until they are punished punished punished in the fire. But there are additional frameworks for understanding the history we're living through.
For me, at least, national elections are a time to observe the collision between different perceptions of our social and political structures. At one end of the scale are variations on the High School Civics Class view of America and it's history: 1776, the Flag, God; WW2; Prom Night. At the other end are Pro-Labor Maoists and Anarchists, where All Property Is Theft, and it's The Cultural Revolution all the time.
(A 1970's joke from the National Lampoon's takeoff on a Free Press-style Hippie newspaper: "If all property is theft, and everything belongs to the People -- why is it the only things we ever get offered are Free Kittens??")
Via The Soul Of America, a post written by Bill Black and offered at Naked Capitalism appeared on the radar, stating plainly that HRC lost because her allegiance is to policies and principles that amount to Fucking The Peasantry so that a class of elites will continue to dominate global finance, commerce, and (in America) national politics.
Black had been attending an annual economics festival at Kilkenny, Ireland, "a festival of economics and comedy... noted for people from a broad range of economic perspectives presenting their economic views in plain, blunt English." And as we all know, there's few things in this life with more ironic, gallows humor in it than Economics.
Obligatory Cute Kitties Photo Courtesy Of The Tip Jar At Naked Capitalism
There's a Niagara Falls of analysis flowing out of Blogtopia about The Great Losing. Some is Intra-Liberal finger-pointing (it's the fault of every person who refused to vote for the Lesser Of The Weevils). Other say November 8th was "Whitelash", a vote against Persons Of Color and social progress by an Underclass whose natural racism was called forth by Trump.
Some, like Michael Moore, played Cassandra -- saying, accurately enough: workers in America had been screwed for decades, and were about to rise up. Others pointed out that HRC was manifestly the wrong candidate for the Democrats to have supported -- but didn't go far enough in examining why, exactly, that was so.
The focus in the media and Blogtopia about Hillary was on a private email server, on the FBI investigation; the past priapic antics of her Saintly Billy-o; apparently amoral happenings at the Clinton Foundation; John Podesta characterizing Chelsea in one of his hacked emails as a smiley-faced backstabber, offering the observation that the apple "doesn't fall far from the tree".
This doesn't mean that protest votes weren't a factor, or that HRC giving Henry Kissinger a warm and gentle hug spoke volumes about Realpolitik and the security of her position in a ruling elite. It doesn't mean America isn't founded on racism and genocide and oppression which all Whites must bear and can never be expunged ever until they are punished punished punished in the fire. But there are additional frameworks for understanding the history we're living through.
For me, at least, national elections are a time to observe the collision between different perceptions of our social and political structures. At one end of the scale are variations on the High School Civics Class view of America and it's history: 1776, the Flag, God; WW2; Prom Night. At the other end are Pro-Labor Maoists and Anarchists, where All Property Is Theft, and it's The Cultural Revolution all the time.
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(A 1970's joke from the National Lampoon's takeoff on a Free Press-style Hippie newspaper: "If all property is theft, and everything belongs to the People -- why is it the only things we ever get offered are Free Kittens??")
______________________________
Via The Soul Of America, a post written by Bill Black and offered at Naked Capitalism appeared on the radar, stating plainly that HRC lost because her allegiance is to policies and principles that amount to Fucking The Peasantry so that a class of elites will continue to dominate global finance, commerce, and (in America) national politics.
Black had been attending an annual economics festival at Kilkenny, Ireland, "a festival of economics and comedy... noted for people from a broad range of economic perspectives presenting their economic views in plain, blunt English." And as we all know, there's few things in this life with more ironic, gallows humor in it than Economics.
The audience was ... surprised to hear two groups of economists explain that Hillary Clinton’s fiscal policies remained ... (austerity forever)... Austerity is one of the fundamental ways in which the system is rigged against the working class. Austerity was the weapon of mass destruction unleashed in the New Democrats’ and Republicans’ long war on the working class. The fact that she intensified and highlighted her intent to inflict continuous austerity on the working class as the election neared represented an unforced error of major proportions.
As the polling data showed her losing the white working class by staggering amounts, in the last month of the election, the big new idea that Hillary pushed repeatedly was a promise that if she were elected she would inflict continuous austerity on the economy. “I am not going to add a penny to the national debt.”And, he's just getting started. As gets said, read the entire piece. Happy Thanksgiving!
...She also famously insulted the working class as “deplorables” ... a bizarre approach by a politician to the plight of tens of millions of Americans who were victims of the New Democrats’ and the Republicans’ trade and austerity policies. As we presented these facts [at the conference] to a European audience we realized that in attempting to answer the question of what Trump’s promised fiscal policies would mean if implemented, we were also explaining one of the most important reasons that Hillary Clinton lost the white working class by such an enormous margin.
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property/theft/free kittens
ReplyDeletei don't believe that "all property is theft" - but i find "behind every great fortune is a great crime" more plausible - not always true, i guess, but at least sometimes true
i consider that there is a continuum - a pair of slippers can be someone's private property; a pair of steel mills, not so much
i read once in a book by idries shah the saying "you only really own what would be safe in a shipwreck" - one way i understand this is that it is a reminder that when you leave this life - which you might do if you in a shipwreck - none of your belongings come along with you - only the consequences of your good and evil actions
but it is not just our inevitable mortality that is the shipwreck we cannot escape - life its ownself even under current conditions is like a shipwreck - we live in a world of radical contingency in which we are subject to the actions of others
from a pragmatic point of view, you only own those things which you - or society - can compel others to return to you or compensate you for
"property" is a social construct, and how it is implemented differs across time and space
our president-elect, for example, is notorious for his practice of making agreements with vendors, receiving the goods he agreed to pay for, and then getting away with paying less than he agreed to
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free kittens - as the joke could go - first prize, a free kitten; second prize, two free kittens - a kitten is an asset if you can sell it or eat it or enjoy taking care of it or breed it to eventually produce expensive kittens you can sell or eat - otherwise it is a liability
nature is red in tooth and claw, as the poet says - most of large animals subsist by eating smaller animals - not exclusively, however
i have obtained from our friends at amazon, but not yet read, the following book - my willingness to part with money for it is an indication that i still have the perhaps vain hope that i will know more later
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The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
by Nick Lane
The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies and cities. Yet there’s a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.
For two and a half billion years, from the very origins of life, single-celled organisms such as bacteria evolved without changing their basic form. Then, on just one occasion in four billion years, they made the jump to complexity. All complex life, from mushrooms to man, shares puzzling features, such as sex, which are unknown in bacteria. How and why did this radical transformation happen?
The answer, Lane argues, lies in energy: all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a lightning bolt. Building on the pillars of evolutionary theory, Lane’s hypothesis draws on cutting-edge research into the link between energy and cell biology, in order to deliver a compelling account of evolution from the very origins of life to the emergence of multicellular organisms, while offering deep insights into our own lives and deaths.
Both rigorous and enchanting, The Vital Question provides a solution to life’s vital question: why are we as we are, and indeed, why are we here at all?