I’m in Savannah for the weekend. How’d that happen? says you. Magic! says me. Or 9 hours of driving alone through five states. Anyway, I decided to surprise my wife by actually coming home for once, so light blogging until Tuesday. Have fun, kids!
As usual, the Onion nails it:
WASHINGTON, DC- The economically disadvantaged segment of the U.S. population provided the decisive factor in another presidential election last Tuesday, handing control of the government to the rich and powerful once again.
“The Republican party- the party of industrial mega-capitalists, corporate financiers, power brokers, and the moneyed elite�would like to thank the undereducated rural poor, the struggling blue-collar workers in Middle America, and the God-fearing underpriviledged minorities who voted George W. Bush back into office,” Karl Rove, senior advisor to Bush, told reporters at a press conference Monday. “You have selflessly sacrificed your well-being and voted against your own economic interest. For this, we humbly thank you.” Added Rove: “You have acted beyond the call of duty- or, for that matter, good sense.”
Thanks to Jenny for the link.
Firefox 1.0 is officially released today. I highly recommend downloading it, and dumping Internet Explorer, if that’s you’re curent browser. Your computer will thank you.
I started this series back in august, but sort of got distracted by some really unimportant political crap. So I’m bringing it back. The movie they’ll never make this time is James Bond.
It’s sad really how far James Bond has fallen in recent years. He used to be a drinking, smoking, cruelly womanizing hero and we loved him for it. But he’s quit smoking, drinks only to ease the pain of his existential loneliness and feels remorse when the latest babe he’s banging dies. Frankly, the soft and cuddly feminized Bond sucks. I want my misogynist back!
The threat of Global terrorism and corporate hegemony is really lame as Super villains go. Remember back in the good old days of the late fifties, early sixties when the Red Russians were hiding nukes under poodle skirts and maniacal geniuses demanded outlandish sums of money, lest total world annihilation ensue? Me neither, but they made for some fantastic plots, full of super cool gizmos and lots of hip fun. In order to see James Bond return to his roots, we have to go back in time. I want to see a James Bond Period Movie. One set in the Cold War days of the fifties, with all the Commies and Beatniks Hollywood can muster.
The plot: A mad genius by the name of Bluto Fang has kidnapped the controversial Psychotherapist, Wilhelm Reich and is forcing the beleaguered Doctor to build a giant Cloudbuster Weather control device. He is holding the world hostage, lest he set the device off and create a new Ice Age. Bond must infiltrate Fang’s base and either rescue or kill the Doctor to save humanity.
It’s just that simple. That’s how the plot’s of a good spy thriller should be, with twists and turns and reversals along the way, mostly invovling several women with little to no clothes and even fewer morals as well as an exotic henchman with a gimmick thrown in for good measure. Most important in a retro movie is the quasi-futuristic details: lasers, henchmen in weird uniforms, secret headquarters designed by Le Corbusier and fast British cars. It’d be beautiful, in ways no movie has been in a long time.
Christian has posted all of his Dispatches on Livejournal so I’m redirecting the Dispatches link on the sidebar to there.
I’m burned out, man. Over it. I’ve hit the wall and staggered off in search of warmth and compassion and found none. This week really brought it home for me. Perhaps my priorities are fucked or I’m just another insulated liberal but I’m tired of this shit. And then I read Scout’s post earlier about the poor kid from Georgia that shot himself because George Bush won the election.
The thing is, I get that kid. If I weren’t a little older and bit more level headed, I could be that kid. The world is just so fucked up right now and the US is acting like the lead lemur. But I don’t want to be that kid because it won’t change things.
So, for a while at least, I’m taking a break from the politics. This may cost me some readers but I don’t care. I need to not be plugged in for a while. So for the next few weeks, it’s just going to be posts like the one below, books, movies, cultural ramblings and thoughts on life. So, prepare for navel gazing.
There’s a new McSweeny’s collection coming out, McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, edited by Michael Chabon ( I swear, once Grad School’s done, I’m going to finish Cavalier and Clay). And while this one’s technically published through Vintage, not McSweeney’s I have to say, the whole imprint is growing on me. They have some of the best designed books I’ve ever seen, and they’re full of interesting well written stories. Which is the point, of course, but still worth mentioning. While I didn’t realy grok You shall Know Our Velocity, I didn’t let that stop me from picking up McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Issue 13, their comics issue, and really impressed with the breadth and scope of the work contained. My friend Viva recently showed me her stash of McSweeney’s books and I was all the more impressed. I’ve been missing out and for no good reason ( yeah, Dave Eggers is kind of a dick but at least he’s got a good head for storytelling and recognizing the talent of other writers).
Except for the importing Country Music and Confederate Flags part, I think this is an idea whose time has come:
MY MODEST PROPOSAL: THE U.S.A.R.
By C. B. ShapiroPersonally, I think we made a huge mistake not letting them go when we had the chance back in 1862. Well, no time like the present to correct an old mistake.
Then, they would finally be free to have the kind of society they’ve always wanted; church and state can be fused so they build the kind of theocracy they’ve dreamt of, with Jesus at the helm. Then the new USAR (United States of America Red) can ban books, repeal civil rights, persecute gays and have all the wars they like. They want prayer in schools? More power to them. They can ban abortion and post the Ten Commandments in every federal building in their country. Bring back slavery, if they want. We’ll be free to live with our like-minded countrymen who believe in science, modernism, tolerance, religion as a personal choice, and truly want limited government intrusion in our personal lives. Why should each side be driven mad by the other any more, decade after decade?
Call the Culture War a tie and everyone go home.
Of course, we in the U.S.A.B. get the Gross Domestic Product, businesses and universities of California, New York, Massachussetts — basically the whole Northeast and Northwest (plus Illinois and Michigan if they want to come along). They get Wal-Mart and Duke and most of the Nascar tracks. But they can feel free to import movies, TV shows, financial services, and defense technology. We’ll import country music, bibles and Confederate flags.
I was a wee bit upset yesterday. After drinking myself silly last night, I’ve calmed down. I’m no longer swinging back and forth between anger and despair, but am settling nicely into smouldering cynicism.
To cheer me up, my friend Evviva sent me this article from the Asia Times:
China is rising, economically, diplomatically and militarily, to threaten a displacement of the United States as the dominant power in Southeast Asia. Europe is increasingly choosing the course of independence from the US: it currently rivals US gross domestic product (GDP) and is making joint economic and strategic diplomatic agreements with US competitors Russia, China, India, Iran and others, while the US looks on warily.
South Korea is increasingly irritated with the US military presence and diplomatic posture on the Peninsula and is looking ahead to a settlement of the Korean crisis that could significantly lessen, if not eliminate, US presence and influence. Japan likewise is displaying increasing irritation with the US diplomatic posture and military presence in the region and is moving rapidly in the direction of remilitarization, independence and self-assertion, making its own energy-security deals with Iran and Russia over US objections. Taiwan is also becoming more assertive, risking a conflagration with China, and obliging the US to make diplomatic moves toward China, away from longtime ally Taiwan, in an effort to avoid the conflagration, in which the US would most likely be the prime geopolitical loser.
Russia, in the face of proliferating US military presence throughout the traditional Russian sphere of influence, is becoming much more assertive, charting a course often directly opposed to the US. Russia is making strategic economic (oil/gas) agreements and conducting weapons sales in every strategic region of the world, while the US looks on guardedly at Russian political and diplomatic influence on the rise.
The majority of the oil states of the Middle East have adopted a decidedly anti-American stance in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, and consequently, US influence in the region is suffering a very significant setback. In the past year collective international opposition to the US has been consolidating at the United Nations and within its Security Council, marginalizing and isolating the US internationally. The continuing trends are mostly against the US and are even picking up steam in that direction.
In the face of all these regional and global developments, can the United States maintain its current position of global dominance?
Given the rate that Americans are outsourcing jobs to other countries, undermining education, replacing science with fairy tales, stifling research by foreign nationals in our country and outlawing the importation of foreign research, it’s a wonder our country hasn’t become a second rate tourist trap. But we’re just passing the nadir of Empire, not yet into the downward spiral. Just wait four years, though and the US will be a full blown Banana republic, importing all its critical services and exporting only tchotchkas and bad movies.
Then what will the world look like? It’s always hard to predict the future and given my stellar record of prediction this week, I’m not feeling comfortable making anay concrete statements. One thing I am certain of, is that by the middle of the century, the US will bare more resemblance to the shanty town at the bottom of the hill, rather than the glittering city on top of it. And what will we have to blame for our woes? Eight years (at minimum) of Voodoo Economics dressed up like a Rober Baron, swaggering in its snake skin boots and smoking cheep cigars. I’m talking about The Ownership Society. This was the newfangled bit of PR that the GOP unveiled at the convention this year. But what exactly is it? No one seems to know. But if you ask any Konservative Koolaide Drinker, they’ll blather on about how it’s going to save the economy, and make us all (and by us all, I mean, upper class white males who already have an investment in the power infrastructure) rich! You may even be dazzled by the prospect of owning your very own genuine piece of Society. In fact, most Americans seem to have been so dazzled by the rhetoric, that they never noticed that no one ever really defined what the bloody blue hell this Ownership Society really is. That is, of course, on purpose. The Republicans don’t want you to look too closely, because what Bush means when he says “Ownership Society” is really Anarcho-Capitalism:
…a view that regards all forms of the state as unnecessary and harmful, particularly in matters of justice and self-defense, while being highly supportive of private property. It synthesizes certain ideas from the tradition of classical liberalism (see libertarianism) and arguably from individualist anarchism as well. It opposes “traditional” anarchism on the issue of private property; while anarchists such as libertarian socialists and individualist anarchists reject all property beyond personal possessions as a form of authority, anarcho-capitalism embraces the established forms of property as an element of liberty.
Anarcho-capitalists promote individual property rights and free markets (in the sense of freedom from government interference) as the most just and effective way to organize all services.
So the next time you hear Bush or some pointy headed Think Tanker blathering on about the Ownership Society, keep in mind, what they’re saying is, “We own your body and your job and we’ll send either wherever it makes us the most money, be that to a tech services facility in India or a bunker in Iran.”
And it will make them money, for a time. But ultimately, once the means of production have all been moved overseas, the US will be at the mercy of every other country in the world, who sells us our shit. Once they realise this (and, according to the Asia Times article, they already have) they’ll figure out that we’ll have to play by their rules. Because, however wrong Marx was about everything else, he was right about one thing: whomever controls the means of production, controls the world. And if the factories are in Singapore, India and Bangladesh, it doesn’t matter where the CEO sits. Because as long as it isn’t in the same room as the machinery that he feeds on, he’ll be starving, real quick.
Welcome to the new world, folks. Better start learning Chinese.
By now, you already know: Kerry conceded.
You let us down, John Kerry. You promised that all the votes would count, and all the votes would be counted. But after only twelve hours, you’ve conceded the election. You have ten more days, guaranteed by law, to count all the ballots. And you threw them away. Well, I guess it’s a good thing, as my friend Jenny pointed out this afternoon, that we learned this about you before you became our president: that you have no spine. That you and your Democratic buddies really are just a bunch of whiney liberals and you left your spleen back in Vietnam.
And however mad I am at Kerry and Edwards for being pansies and not fighting it out ’til the bitter last ballot was counted, I’m really pissed off at 50% of my fellow citizens. Way to go, idiots. Despite all signs pointing to Bush as a miserable failure, an incompetent Machiavellian and the Worst President Ever, you took that taste of fascism he fed you over the last four years, said, “Gee, I like the smell of that!” and heaped four more years of that foul shit on your plate. TBogg sums it up nicely:
Four more years of American soldiers being used as cannon fodder.
Four more years of scientific decisions being made by people who believe in a ghost in the clouds.
Four more years of debt that our children and grandchildren will have to pay off.
Four more years of racists and lunatics for judicial appointments
Four more years of looting the treasury and squandering it on corporate cronies.
Four more years of making enemies faster than we can kill them.
Four more years of fear and darkness and racism and hatred and stupidity and guns and bad country music.
Especially the bad country music. Everything bad and wrong with America can be found in bad country music: homophobia, jingoism, fear and pride in one’s own ignorance. It’s all there. And it’s all in the White House for four more years.
Because now, we’ve legitimately elected that baboon, so we can’t explain it all away by saying he cheated his way in. It was a bloodless coupe, I swear. Won’t happen again. This excuse won’t fly anymore. No one will believe us. We can’t say any longer that we didn’t know what he’d do. We know full well and gave him a blank check to double it.
I hope you motherfuckers are happy.
