The Buffalo Beast’s 50 most loathsome people of 2008 list is out. Don’t worry, the viciousness is bipartisan.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The Buffalo Beast’s 50 most loathsome people of 2008 list is out. Don’t worry, the viciousness is bipartisan.
“Don’t worry, the viciousness is bipartisan.”
And religiously neutral – I like #46!
It seems you didn’t work hard enough to make this list.
Not sure why Obama would be on that list,but like the first 4….
And the fact that Stein is on it.
Yeah, what’s up with you not cutting it? I’m a little disappointed!
I see Michelle Bachman made the list. She has turned up as one of the new permanent faces on Hannity along with Al Sharpton now that Colmes has left.
I’m glad to see Obama on the list, it’s a sign of hope that not everyone has been taken in by meaningless bullshit.
Oh, clinteas, the reasons are very clear and listed.
Yeah Joel,I read the reasons.
I just think we could have found someone more worthy than Obama to be on a loathsome people list at this point in time.
Obama’s the US president, he’s got to be in there by default.
I don’t see the pope anywhere. Certainly, a douche with the cahones to decry wealth and power while living in the most opulent palaces on the world and leading the largest religious denomination in the world deserves a place in the top 10.
Is that a porn site, or is my worksite’s filter confused (again)?
Posted by: Joel | January 12, 2009 8:39 AM
“…. not everyone has been taken in by meaningless bullshit.”
Oh, the irony!
Good – but the sentence on Bush is absurdly lenient!
I dunno – ‘most loathesome’, them?
We have just recently been speaking of La Coulter in this place. Can any of these hold a candle to loathsomeness of that calibre?
#10: It’s not a porn site, but my work have blocked it for that reason. They classify it as “Pornography;Humor/Jokes”. I suspect that there has been slightly naked/”offensive” content in the past and it’s gone on some kind of list that companies use.
It makes me wonder how much actual porn is blocked from work but I don’t really want to try and find out.
Guy @ #14:
Our filter’s configured to only show the top category, and it shows as “Pornography”.
(Actual blocked categories: “Government/Legal”… “Reference”… “Computers/Internet” (never mind that I’m a programmer)…)
A list of the 50 most loathsome people in Australia would be much more difficult. I’m not even sure we have that many celebrities! How do you Americans keep up?
I’d subscribe to their blog, but it hasn’t been updated since mid-2008. Love the writing style.
Gorgeous!
One could quibble over the order of their staging, but it would be difficult to argue about the relevance and accuracy of the targets themselves.
Jenny McCarthy really should be on the list. She is doing real harm with her anti-vaccination advocacy.
That was a very enjoyable read. The internet has done many things, but sharpening and expanding this Mencken/Bierce type of razor-edge invective is one of the best.
I especially like this invite into the comment threads:
“send your ill-informed ravings to us here.”
ice
I second Martin @ 20. I was really surprised to not find her on there, but now that I think about it, weren’t all these people associated with politics?
I’d rather see Jenny McCarthy on that list than me. I don’t even know who Miley Cyrus is.
Hilarious and depressing. As to the latter, it’s not just that the experience is sorta like wading through raw sewage. It’s more the being reminded you’ve pretty much been doing so for the past year, but more involuntarily.
Quibble: me, I woulda given Scalia a more prominent spot. That said, his sentence was all good, anyway. Can we maybe have the wheel rotate and go underwater for a minute or two now and then, too, tho’?
MIKE @22:
M. Night Sham… was on the list. I don’t think he was all that political.
Here you go, PZ. They are coming and you are king.
Brett Favre was also on the list, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t done anything in politics this year.
Anyway, I was happy to see the Three Harpies of Michele Bachmann, Nancy Pfotenhauer and Gov. Barracuda Pit-Bull on the list. Palin is probably the most evil of the three, but Bachmann needs to be displayed just for the sheer delusion in her attempting to deny her previous comments. Even Palin at least had the sense to pass off her previous televised hilarity as a joke, rather than deny it outright. Bachmann, however, doesn’t seem to understand the significance of the words, “Congresswoman, we are recording for broadcast.” Stupidity should be punished.
Not sure about Shyamalan. Making a bad film is loathsome? Maybe to the film’s investors. Anyone dumb enough pay $10 to see has only themselves to blame.
Stephenie Meyer? Her crime: writing successful books? Huh? OK< it's not Mr. Beast's cup of tea, but loathsome? And I'm completely sick of the whole vampire chic. Oops, I mean vampyre. Or vahmpyere. Whatever. Other than that, meh... it's an OK list.
OT, but there’s a poll over at Debunking Christianity that really needs crashed.
http://www.debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/
Although we’re winning… it’s a little too close.
How the hell did Ann Coulter not make that revolting list?
That religious creep is revulsion personified.
Guys, I’ve been following some threads that are linked to from the BBC Darwin site, and all through them there is one guy who has a stream of private jokes that nobody else understands. But the really annoying thing is that he keeps insisting that the range of IQ levels that exists amongst humans is evidence against evolution by natural selection. It is here, 3rd from bottom by unregistered, http://open2.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5194&page=5 . Could anyone who has more qualifications in this area than me tell me whether there is anything to this claim at all?
Sorry, I can’t give any respect to a list that doesn’t include Anne Coulter and Bill O’Riley.
How can they not be in the top 10?
Yeah seriously. Way to go MN. yay. :(
But I’m glad M. Night Shyamalan. I loath him so much, even worse is I have a handful of friends who think he is somehow the greatest director to ever live! Because he’s hot! Don’t ask.
Holbach @31:
Scary Ann had previously made the Beasts’ “Most Loathsome” list. Check out 2007.
She does bear mentioning again, but maybe the Beast omitted her for the sole reason of not giving her more coverage. She may be beneath contempt, and makes a too-easy target for satire.
Post #30: No. For the following reasons: IQ is a slipper slope that is very hard to define or measure.Different cultures having different meanings for intelligence. Even with in western culture no one can agree exactly what intelligence is.
Mike in Ontario, NY @ 34
Thanks Mike, and I do remember her making the 2007 list, but my contempt for this cretin tends to cloud current thinking. She is definitely beneath contempt, and I only wish she was beneath the ground with the worms expressing in their final way what she is worth.
#33
Shyamalan’d.
One-Eyed Jack @ 32
Top or bottom of any list of crap is where they both belong. Good to see a like mind concerning these insane religious vermin.
Holbach, huzzah you’re back!
Americans will always surprise me.
The boat is sinking, all the mega-wealthy are already on their life boats, and nobody is asking, “why them ?”
Apart from Maddoff (and he’s really a baaaad guy), not one single one of the mega-wealthy-billionaires who have caused the ruin of this once great land is on that list. Not one. Only journalists, politicians, etc…
Why ? Do they get exemptions for good moral behaviour ?
Americans should really read more Orlov, at least he’s got a sense of humour:
read more…
I almost forgot about that Michelle Malkin / Rachel Ray / donut ad / scarf “controversy”.
Patricia OM @ 39
Hi Patricia! Yeah, that list of the most loathsome cretins was the the impetus to resume my invective against the dregs of religious insanity. Should be here awhile to do battle again with the religious rabble.
#43 …
Best
Rant
Ever …
#43:
Add to that this assessment, “In the end, Palin had the beneficial effect of splitting her party between her admirers and people who can read.”
But I’m glad M. Night Shyamalan. I loath him so much,
Why? The only film of his I liked was Unbreakable, but loathe? I can’t imagine tasking any of my loathing neurons on the man. It seems pointless.
Best Rant Ever
Well, if an stereotype strewn, error laden rant that treats one of the most diverse populations ever assembled as a single self-contradictory mind qualifies as a best rant, I suppose. I tend to have higher standards and give “best rant” titles to rants with at least some level of accuracy, as opposed to combining every extremist position into an imaginary unified hivemind. Some might call that bigotry if a similar rant was made against a different group.
From the sentence for Rick Warren:
“He shalt giveth The Lord a blumpkin….”
Just when I thought I’d heard everything….
I can’t see the actual list — damn filters — but based on the comments here, it seems the primary outcome of this listing is simply to devalue the word “loathsome” to the point of triviality. With so much genuine, deep-seated evil in the world, a lightweight junior popstar makes the list? Really? An overhyped horror film director? A childishly self-absorbed star quarterback? The author of weirdly prudish vampire novels for teens? Really?
All of the above are certainly annoying, and worthy of the occasional snarky rant, but…
annoying ≠ loathsome
Let’s try to catch a grip, here, people.
Two more serious complaints:
1. If I’m reading Robert W (@43) correctly, Item 43 on the loathsome list is “You”? Leaving aside what a crashing Time-style copout this is, a comment near the end of the quoted rant is just too ripe:
But wait! Aren’t the oh-so-superior compilers of the list taking said junior popstar just that seriously by including her on their frackin’ list?!? The irony, it burns!1
2. Obama. I realize some folks have been disappointed by him, and others expect to be disappointed by him in the near future… but loathsome? Here’s a guy whose life story is inspiring; whose election (by an electoral landslide) was historic; whose message is positive and hopeful (and largely shared by the people, if his 70-80% approval ratings are any guide) … and who hasn’t actually taken office yet. No doubt he will fall short of the loftiest hopes (don’t we all, in the final analysis?), and, owing to the sheer power of the office, there’s always the potential for a POTUS to become loathsome (see also Bush, G.W.)… but in this case it’s way too early for that assessment. If it’s just a matter of being impatient with the hype, get over it: Your jadedness has no power to render others loathsome. I see no other justification for applying that judgment to Obama… unless, of course, you’re part of the Limbaugh/Hannity/O’Reilly/Coulter crowd. In which case, ’nuff said.
1 I realize that if I could see the actual list, it might be clear that this irony is intentional. Even so, it all seems a bit brittle and cynical for my tastes.
A few random comments:
Coulter’s probably not on the list because she’s been relatively quiet in 2008.
Miley Cyrus is not on the list. A few of you seem to think she is. She’s annoying but not loathsome, in my opinion.
I don’t think it’s fair to put those football players (Favre and Burgess) on the list. They’re more pathetic than loathsome.
And…
WHERE THE FUCK IS JENNY MCCARTHY????????????????
Neg (@40):
I agree that there’s something perverse about our tendency to give rich folks a pass when we pass out the snark. That said, while I haven’t had a chance to read the Orlov piece you link to carefully, the list of names he uses…
…strikes me as not the right set to exemplify the Evil Rich™. Yes, they’re obscenely rich, but Gates, Soros, and Buffet, at least (I don’t know a lot about Ellison) strike me (an admittedly fairly casual observer) as having a fairly strong sense of the social responsibility that comes with great wealth. I suspect if you sorted through our currrent loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires, you could find many far more deserving of this scorn.
More generally, while I’m terribly concerned about the structural disparity between rich and poor in our society, I don’t automatically assume that individual rich people are bad human beings. YMMV.
Ooops… I had gathered from others’ comments that she was. As regards the Miley Cyrus portions of my rant-back (@47)… <litella>never mind!</litella>
The Buffalo Beast:Mencken/Bierce :: Katy Perry:Ella Fitzgerald
OT, but since Rick Warren has been mentioned in this thread, note that rather a different cleric is on tap for the opening event of the inaugural week. I realize a priest is still a priest (esp. to an atheist audience), but a gay Episcopal bishop comes about as close to counterbalancing Warren as one could hope for, no?
I’m planning to be in Washington for the inauguration, and I’d been debating with myself whether it was worth trying to get there in time for the Sunday kickoff event at the Lincoln Memorial. Methinks this news tilts the internal debate to “yes.”
Also, since Minnesota politics has been mentioned in this thread (via the execrable Ms. Bachmann), it’s worth noting that Al Franken is fighting for his right to party. Franken may be many things, but apparently “spineless” isn’t one of them. You go, Al!
Cliff (@51):
Hilarious! But… surely you’re not suggesting Ella never kissed a girl? Another fantasy dashed!
Bill @ 47:
1. If I’m reading Robert W (@43) correctly, Item 43 on the loathsome list is “You”? Leaving aside what a crashing Time-style copout this is, a comment near the end of the quoted rant is just too ripe:
Actually, The Beast listed “you” as among the 50 Most Loathsome last year as well, I believe predating the Time magazine’s copout “person of the year=you” issue. Apparently the Beast editors haven’t seen any particular improvement in humanity over the last year. I tend to agree.
You gotta love a hard-hitting parody publication that gloriously takes down Ken Ham’s monument to ignorance AND calls it’s own letters-to-the-editor page [sic].
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You all broke the back of the beast.
@Bill Dauphin
I find it amusing that he uses the names that he does since all four of those people are self-made billionaires who give tons to charity. Gates and Buffet have stated they will give it all away. Ellison may be an ass but he also gives 100s of millions to a medical foundation.
Evil? not even close.
49. M. Night Shyamalan
Charges: This year’s The Happening was dumber than an inbred moth.
*guffaw*
43. You
Charges: You think God zapped humans into existence a few thousand years ago, although your appendix and wisdom teeth disagree.
*double guffaw*
Sentence: Invaded and occupied by Canada
DO THEY PROMISE? Please, please? ;-)
Ken Hammie and Kent Hovie need to be on this list.
Another reason why a range of IQs isn’t evidence against natural selection: the people with the highest IQ don’t get the most children. The IQ simply isn’t selected for (except that the lowermost values are selected against).
One can’t simply take a feature, think “that would be a great idea”, and assume it must therefore be selected for. That’s not how it works.
Quoting myself:
Actually, The Beast listed “you” as among the 50 Most Loathsome last year as well, I believe predating the Time magazine’s copout “person of the year=you” issue.
They also mention “You” in their 2006, 2005, 2004, and 2002 lists. Ann Coulter is mentioned nearly every year, the best one in 2006 where they attribute her neck length to fellating the devil (read for yourself how they phrased it, it’s precious).
Coulter isn’t on because she spent most of the year with her trap wired shut (tht doctor should be on the most loved list) and didn’t get enough at bats to qualify.
Jenny McCarthy?? Now that she’s OLD (by blond bimbo status, anyway) who cares. And she’s on by extension of Ben Stein(s’ Money, which I embarassingly used to watch, at least until Jimmy Kimmel replaced her).
Which reminds me. Why not Sarah Silverstein??
But, in real life, my biggest omission would Libby Dole.
Hell, you could have put Al Franken on the list, for that matter.
Well Coulter isn’t entirely unmentioned on the list:
They’re from Buffalo, they’ve probably surrendered to Niagara Falls already.
People who have it blocked as pornography: There’s a rather saucy drawing of Lieberman screwing a donkey.
Went and read it. waste of time. It’s not rant, it’s whine.
You mean Sarah Silverman? What’s so “loathsome” about f***ing Matt Damon? (I’d include a link if I weren’t on a filtered computer; just Google it if you don’t know what I’m referring to.)
It strikes me that I’m dropping quite a few pop culture references today, for a man of my dignity and maturity [cough]. That’s what comes of having a teenage daughter, I guess….
Call me a traitor, but JUST IN CASE, I hereby pronounce my full support for the Canadian invaders. I totally yield to our Northern Overlords. What is thy bidding, eh?
Hopefully this statement will buy me enough cred with the beaverpelts to stay out of the Saskatchewan maple sugar mines.
Obama loathsome? Maybe not so much.
Well, eh…
1. Replace bacon with Canadian bacon.
2. Use the Metric system.
3. Use REAL Maple Syrup.
4. Sing the Lumber Jack Song at random times during the day.
5. End all questions with “eh”
That will suffice… for now.
For our kindly Canadian overlords.
Ah one, ah two, ah three, eh.
1. Replace bacon with Canadian bacon.
You do that and I will *personally* lead the rebel army that overthrows you.
Site has been 503 for me all day. :(
Dennis Blair? It seems so.
Obama if he backs off on his support for the EFCA? Utterly so.
well, I can’t say anything about the other three, but Gates is the Nerd-satan. Yeah, he does great things for charity (but he donates to the DI); yeah, he does great work to let the developing world catch up in information technology (while creating more customer-slaves; it’s not like he’s handing out OpenSource stuff); his is a new brand of colonialism, and in the long term might end up just as bad (if maybe not as bloody) as the old brand
Gates is not “Nerd-satan”… HE IS SATAN!!!
GNU/Linux FTW!!!
I absolutely hate that for the moment at least, I have to agree with them on PEBO.
I’m really trying to remain optimistic, but…
Bill #49,
they’re all guilty. All these super-rich and powerful men are guilty of the same thing :
The USA is on the verge of bankrupcy. There is going to come a point, not so far from now, when foreign debt holders are going to loose confidence in the capabilities of the US government to reduce its debt without recurring to high inflation and currency devaluation.
When this moment happens, it will be a free-fall. They will dump their dollar assets and this will lead to hyperinflation (Weimar scenario).
The USA cannot afford itself a huge Keynesian stimulus as the largest debtor nation in the world, unless, it manifestly demonstrates that it is capapble of reducing its debt. This is an obvious conclusion that nobody seems to want to entertain in the USA.
Having said this, a huge Keynesian stimulus of $800 billion is absolutely necessary, otherwise there will come a point when the bleeding and pain of more than 20% unemployed leads to a violent discontinuity.
How do you solve this problem, reducing the debt AND fund the stimulus ?
Only one solution : repatriate all the funds from the super-wealthy that are lying in offshore accounts and other tax heavens. Executive order of the PoTUS, give X months to repatriate funds, after this, all electronic transfers to any bank in the US are cut.
Then those funds will be justly taxed, and being invested in the US this will reduce greatly the imbalances in the foreign account, therefore allowing the stimulus (I can guarantee you that there are far more funds lying offshore from US residents than $800 billion).
Anybody with a brain can reach this conclusion : this should be #1 priority right now. The European Union has discuused this proposal at the G20 meeting but has come on deaf ears with the US administration.
These super-rich and powerful men, even if I would suppose that they don’t have funds offshore, are guilty of NOT using their power and influence to convince the US government to start this a.s.a.p
Because of this, the Weimar scenario is growing in likelihood every day. I don’t know what would be the consequences for the stability of the entire world if this were to happen.
History seems to be really determined to repeat itself. Except now, instead of Germany, we’ve got the USA.
I thoroughly enjoyed that list…rant. I agreed with almost all of the targets chosen. Great post, PZ.
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Popular blog site strikes again!
Jadehawk #75,
Just to clarify since a lot of folks don’t know, Gates’s donations are earmarked for the DI’s Cascadia Project, which deals with transportation in the Pacific Northwest, not the Center for
the Renewal ofScience and Culture. It’s still far too close to the ID propaganda machine for my tastes, of course. Quoth PZ: “I’ve been over-generous in assuming harmlessness in the Gates Foundation’s contributions to the Discovery Institute’s non-creationist activities, but I think I was wrong: we should be pursuing every avenue to cut those scoundrels off at the knees.”Posted by: Bill Dauphin | January 12, 2009 12:56 PM
“… it seems the primary outcome of this listing is simply to devalue the word “loathsome” to the point of triviality.”
Yes. All of these kinds of lists are to stir shit up. Saying people like Obama and Cyrus are loathsome is just to get reactions and people talking about it.
“Well, if an stereotype strewn, error laden rant that treats one of the most diverse populations ever assembled as a single self-contradictory mind qualifies as a best rant, I suppose.”
Well, just replace the “You” with “People who are obviously less intelligent than you.”
I think some people are taking this list far too seriously. When magazines and other media outlets make “rankings”, it’s just a convenient frame for a retrospective on whatever it is they’re looking at. The order is chosen by whatever makes a pleasing flow to the article, there is some building to the top of the list, but it’s by no means an actual ranking of any quantifiable measure of loathsomeness.
You can’t really expect too much coverage of your own pet hates, like Jenny McCarthy, because how many people have even heard of her anti-vax BS? And perennial favorites like Coulter and Billo sometimes have to be pushed aside for lack of any particular crime in the past year and in favor of some fresh faces with topicality.
Most figures on that list are political, the few entertainment figures can be thought of as sort of “palate-cleansers”. You can avoid having too much heavy actual horribleness in a row by inserting a few figures who cause loathing on a more superficial level and who nevertheless do their part to make this country and culture more toxic and tiring to live in (Stephanie Meyer may have ruined vampires for a long time down the road, isn’t that enough to warrant some mention somewhere?).
And putting Obama on there (at #50) is a good way of keeping the hero worship down. I kind of wish that they hadn’t put Palin at #1, since that gives her too much credit, but you gotta have a big strong name for that final pick.
And once again, Miley Cyrus is NOT on the list. She’s just mentioned offhand in one entry. The trivialization isn’t near that heavy.
Speaking of loathsome… Big Bad Bill has posted another rant. He’s all burned up over the gay priest giving a prayer before Obama is sworn in. This is the same priest that favors ordaining women. *shocked gasp*
The List is mirrored here for those having trouble viewing.
Random Canadian (@70):
Come to New England and say that, and you’ll have a fight on your hands!
SC:
I’m puzzled: My link had nothing to do with Blair (dunno enough about him to argue with you, but the progressive media doesn’t seem to be in a particular swivet), and had to do with Obama not backing off of his promise to close Gitmo. Further, an admittedly very cursory Google search didn’t reveal any suggestion Obama is abandoning EFCA (Solis was apparently lukewarm during her confirmation, but I don’t read too much into that). (FWIW, you’ll be happy to learn that the CT congressman I just helped reelect is a vocal supporter of EFCA.) But in any case, disagreement — even if it’s sharp — over a single appointment or piece of legislation doesn’t strike me as the stuff of which loathsomeness is made.
Jadehawk:
I’m a Mac guy, and no fan of Microsoft, but… if the downside of, y’know, curing disease, hunger, and illiteracy in the third world is that they get stuck being Microsoft customers, that doesn’t strike as quite a return to the lash. YMMV.
Neg:
I’m not competent to argue with you about economics, but I’ve been hearing a lot of interviews with a lot of economists lately, and your apocalyptic take is gloomier than any I’ve heard by a very large margin. I love you, dude, but I’m going to cross my fingers and hope you’re wrong. Not for nothin’, though, but of all the super-rich in our country, the ones we’re talking about seem most likely (least unlikely?) to “take one for the team” in the manner you describe, if they were convinced it was necessary.
Rey:
I reject this. Calling a newly-elected incoming leader “loathsome” in order to keep his (projected) ego in check is like killing mosquitos with handgrenades. There’s a not-so-fine line between encouraging humility and tearing down someone whom we desperately need to succeed.
There’s no link, Someguy.
The List is mirrored here for those having trouble viewing.
If you get an error, just reresh a couple of times and it comes up ok.
President-elect Barack Obama plans to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay as early as his first week in office to show a break from the Bush administration’s approach to the war on terror, according to two officials close to the transition.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/12/obama.gitmo/index.html?eref=rss_politics
Enjoyed the list…but I agree with previous posts regarding omissions.
Michelle Malkin and Libby Dole definitely should have been on this list. And assuming that this list is in order of foulness I would probably have moved someone who committed heinous acts (ie Madoff) ahead of people like Phil Gramm.
Just me, tho…
Wow, maybe Obama is loathsome, after all: Apparently he really is leading a socialist takeover of the government!
;^)
#43: You
*Does best Nelson impersonation at americans reading list*
HAW HAW!
*runs for cover*
Oops…
I should learn to read. Looks like the wretched Ms. Malkin DID make the list.
I stand happily corrected.
Helfrick @23
Don’t worry you were legacied in this year. You makes the list every year.
I had linked several days ago to the two stories about him here (this is part 2, but part 1 was more of a short intro:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/7/obama_nominee_admiral_dennis_blair_aided
Note Nairn’s point that if all he does is try to return US foreign policy to the pre-Bush situation, that isn’t going nearly far enough. According to him and others, Blair supported the massacre of civilians (even later on, when he was acting against orders), and is now lying about it. I’m not especially surprised, but at least Obama’s fans could question this choice.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090126/kaplan
I didn’t say there were clear signs that he was going to back off, but he needs to continue now to be as vocal in his support as he was while campaigning. Her “lukewarm” comments are a concern. This is a big fight.
If the charges against Blair are true, then he is loathsome (if abetting the massacre of civilians isn’t loathsome, few things are); and a case can be made that appointing such a person to a top “security” position is a loathsome act. With regard to the EFCA, it wouldn’t be a disagreement, but a betrayal of people who’ve invested enormous resources in this hugely-important campaign and believed his support was solid. Again, I don’t expect better from politicians, but I do reserve the right to call them out. I sincerely hope his administration follows through on this.
Bill @47: Miley Cyrus did not make the list. However Britney Spears has in past years.
My hometown! And “The Beast” is the thing I’m most proud about it.
I would have put Joe the Plumber a bit higher and, come on, Obama?
I’m quite OT here, but i posted this on entirely the wrong thread, and it was overlooked once. So i ask again (or someone could just tell me “NO!”):
considering this link:
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch.html
Is there anything like that for the New Teastament? I’m afraid i really don’t have the time to research it. Sorry and thanks!
SC:
[sigh] You’re probably right. Certainly I don’t have the evidence to refute you.
But I confess to a spell of issue fatigue. Obama is what we’ve got, and he almost can’t help being orders of magnitude better than anything we’ve had recently. So I’m determined to be happy, hopeful, and nonloathing, at least ’til next Wednesday.
Even if it requires a tiny bit of willful ignorance.
Is this a science blog?
You can find the answer to your question in the header.
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Call this a random biological ejaculation.
Apparently he really is leading a socialist takeover of the government!
What, another one?
Most of Debs’ platform has been law in the USA for decades.
-jcr
#67: I can’t think of anything loathsome about f***ing Matt Damon. Woof!
But the really annoying thing is that he keeps insisting that the range of IQ levels that exists amongst humans is evidence against evolution by natural selection. – Abaeea22 (or something – use a nym like that, you can’t expect people to get it right.)
Ignoring all the evidence that IQ is not a measure of innate intelligence (google the Flynn effect) that might be so if there were no costs to a genetic predisposition to higher intelligence – but there almost certainly are, in terms of resources devoted to the development and maintenance of the brain. The general point your interlocutor is relying on, I would think, is that a lot of heritable variation in a phenotypic feature indicates that it has not been subject to strong directional selection, which would have reduced it. However, this relies on there being no pleiotropic effects involved (genes with multiple effects), and no frequency-dependent selection (where a feature becomes more advantageous as it becomes rarer).
On reflection, one name that should certainly be on the list and isn’t: Ron Paul.
This is supposed to be about creating the kind of country and world we want to live in – not getting people elected. That fight can’t stop because someone friendlier – or who seemed so while campaigning – comes into office. He’s not what we’ve got. We‘re what we’ve got. Obama’s positive contribution (his negative contribution, as you note, being having been a good enough candidate to get elected and keep McCain out of office) largely remains to be seen, and holding him and other politicians accountable is just one part of the larger struggle.
If he doesn’t follow through* and Democrats start making excuses for him, I see it as an admission either that working people are wasting their time fighting in the electoral arena and would do better through direct action and solidarity (which I think history has shown to be the case) or that, for them, it’s become about politicians and elections more than about creating real change.
OK. Enjoy your holiday.
*Again, I hope he does. I think indirect political action, while sometimes necessary, isn’t the best strategy to pursue. But that doesn’t mean that I experience any joy watching the evidence for this mount, especially when so much is at stake. In any case, it’s not a matter of being hopeful or optimistic or giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, as we have the ability to exert an influence. Obama’s facing a pressure campaign from the opponents of EFCA; he needs to hear from people reminding him that this is what he claimed to support and calling for him not to betray the struggle for human rights or his own alleged ideals.
Bill #87,
you mean, the same economists and forecasting community who were completely incapable of predicting this crisis until the very last minute, or the few economists who were seen as cassandras and were trying to alert the community ?
Because the cassandras haven’t gotten any more optimistic, quite the contrary. If of course you’re continuing to seek advice from those who have systematically denied that there was any problem with the US or the UK’s accelerated debt growth and didn’t see this crisis comming, you can rest assured that you are being blindfolded.
And, no, sorry, crossing fingers is not going to work this time. We REALLY have to do something about it, and repatriation of offshore accounts should be top priority if we want to avoid the (very high) risk that both the US and the UK go into a hyper-inflationary death spiral.
If you want to read some serious stuff, check Willem Buiter’s seminal piece : here
I suppose you can read between the lines and understand what the consequences would be for the dollar.
Bill, this is no paranoia, this is reality. Sentiment amongst a growing number of economists is now rapidly deteriorating. You will see that before march it will have evolved extremely rapidly. Robert Schiller has warned this week that we could be facing a real great depression now, a decade long of economic weakness.
Of course right now most people seem to think the cassandras are paranoid, which isn’t helping very much. The consensus seems to be that the recession wll be over within 6 months and that thanks to Obama (you know how Americans love to believe in miracles and heroes) the economy will rebound second half this year. But this has been going on for a few years already, people like Roubini who have predicted this crisis with precision all along have been treated like shit, and now it’s getting worse, we’re going to go through the wall, and nobody is going to do anything serious about it (apart from growing the debt even more, which will just make the problem even bigger).
Even Krugman has now just calculated that Obama’s $800 billion plan is going to be far too little. We need a far bigger stimulus to save the economy. But how do we do this without causing an even bigger fiasco with the debt ? Heck, find the money where it lies, on all those offshore accounts of those fat-cats who made fortunes during the bonanza years through 30:1 leverage, sold everything, didn’t pay taxes, and are on ther comfortable life boats.
Bill, this is not a recession, this is not a depression, this is the end of an era. We simply cannot continue growing our economy by growing our debt faster than our GDP as we have done over the last quarter century. If people don’t understand that simple fact and don’t really want to change this system profoundly, we will not avoid the worst case scenario.
I do not know how old you are, I’m 44, I am extremely worried about the future.
Of course, Obama’s not (yet?) facing anything like this
but it’s not impossible to imagine.
You know, neg, at some point I may just stop reading your posts, which would be a shame.
SC:
You’re right, of course: We are what we’ve got. As it happens, we, as an electorate, have just done the very best thing we could have. Not a miracle; not the best thing imaginable… just the best thing available to do at the time. If your only message to us is “yeah, well… everything probably still sucks anyway,” then you’re the one telling them that “working people are wasting their time fighting in the electoral arena.”
I’m not disagreeing with you about the need for continuing vigilance in support of the issues we care about… but I think you’re undervaluing celebration. Not the trivial celebration of the fact that “our team” won a contest, but celebration that, at least as some level, the people’s expression of its voice has accomplished something. You can’t tell people, “Sit down! Shut up! What you’ve just done doesn’t mean shit! Now… go out and do the next thing,” and expect much positive response.
As it happens, I don’t believe Obama will abandon his commitment to EFCA (nor will my state’s Congressional delegation), and whatever Denny Blair may have been in a previous life, I believe he — and Leon Panetta under him — will implement the policies of Obama… who doesn’t strike me as a war criminal in waiting.
I could be wrong about any or all of that, and if that’s the way it turns out, I’ll be angry, and I’ll write letters and make phonecalls and knock on doors and, if necessary, march in the streets. Being angry with good cause makes sense; being angry in advance of cause, because of things I fear might go wrong even though they haven’t yet, just makes me an angry nut… and I choose not to be that guy.
Besides, optimism has intrinsic value. Just as pessimistic outlooks can be self-fulfilling, so can optimistic ones. If we, as a nation, expect the best from Obama, we stand a better chance of getting it.
Neg:
Well, I’m almost 49 (my birthday’s in May), and based on my vastly greater experience…. [g]
Seriously, I have a job that’s relatively secure, decent health insurance, a mortgage whose payments I can afford (and in which I’m not “upside down”), sufficient income to cover my share of my daughter’s college expenses, no significant consumer debt, a company pension plan and a 401k that’s worth having even after the recent paper losses (and I’m under no pressure to convert any of those paper losses to real losses through forced liquidations). I mention all this not to be smug, but to suggest that I have more to lose from the kind of social collapse you fear than do those who are already in crisis, because as long as your scenario doesn’t happen, I’ll probably be OK.
The thing is, the things you present as the only possible rememdies to forestall impending social Armegeddon are, in my judgment, never going to happen. Just not possible, given the cultural and political legacies of this nation (at least, not possible until things are so bad that it’s too late). So, if you’re right, I’m totally fucked and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Since there’s nothing productive or good that can come from believing that I’m totally fucked and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it, I choose to put that out of my mind and hope you’re wrong. That may seem insanely naive to you, but I see it differently: I have (as do most people) limited personal capacity to worry about things, so I choose to allocate that limited resource to things about which my worrying might do some good.
If you’re right, eventually I’ll be scrambling to learn how to make beef jerky and reload my own ammo… but in the meantime, think of me as Scarlet O’Hara: “I’ll think about that tomorrow!”
And next week, in DC, I’ll be partying and cheering, not carrying a “The End Is Near” sign. Sorry to disappoint.
SC,
mea culpa, I should have written;
(you know how so many Americans love to believe in miracles and heroes)
Bill,
I can understand your reaction, I’ve lived for many years in the USA. I know the motto : Think positive !
Hey, I leave you with this beautiful piece by Barbara Ehrenreich :
How Positive Thinking Wrecked the Economy
Bill,
btw have fun in DC, there’s always time for party.
And sorry if I’m a bit bitter right now. I just don’t get it.
I really don’t get it. Nobody wants to move a muscle, the general selfishness, where are the ego-less servants ?
Nothing personal against you, I love you too, it seems to me that you are a really intelligent guy. But honestly, your country is going down the drain and can’t you think of ways to get more actively involved ?
Is there really nothing that can be done in this age of internet ?
I am actively involved. I campaign. I contribute. I canvass. I phonebank. I blog/comment. I write letters to the editor. I write letters to my congressman (who actually knows my name and might listen). I support progressive advocacy groups by attending their events. I serve on local boards and commissions, and as an officer in my local Democratic Party. I’ve been doing some level of campaign work more or less constantly since the Summer of 2006 (i.e., since the Ned Lamont primary), and in just a couple months, I’ll be gearing up for a new round of local municipal elections (in which I might even be a candidate, depending on how things break). What I can’t think of a way to do is convince Bill Gates to give all his money to the government (instead, BTW, of using it to feed starving children)… and you’ve just told me that’s the only thing that can work.
[sigh] For just a couple frickin’ weeks I’d like to allow myself to think it’s all been worth something, and the country isn’t necessarily doomed no matter what I do.
After all, a wise man once told me that, “there’s always time for party.”
BTW, I don’t think of myself as a deluded optimist, but a pragmatic one. It’s not that I’m lying to myself that nothing’s wrong; it’s that, to paraphrase Orson Welles from his commercial hack phase, “I will worry about no wrongness before its time.” And even then, I will only worry about wrongnesses that my worry stands a chance of redressing. (And BTW, optimism is not inherently the exclusive province of “mystics, lay healers, and transcendentalists.”)
The “grim Calvinism” Ehrenreich describes (aka “the Protestant work ethic”) is not as ennobling as advocates sometimes make it sound; indeed, as Ehrenreich makes clear, it involves “a weight of guilt and foreboding that sometimes [breaks people’s] spirits.” Call me crazy, but I’m skeptical about how much good ultimately gets done in the world by people with broken spirits.
As an addition to my comments @116, I’ll note that my notion of pragmatic optimism (which, I concede, might well be considered willful naivete by some) was crystallized by my daughter’s illness.
It was always possible that she might die (even after it seemed likely we’d whacked the cancer, there’s always the risk of fatal complications from cancer treatment)… but there was nothing my worrying about that could do to change the odds: She was already getting the best care we could find. So I simply willed myself not to worry about it. To this day, I fear that my wife interpreted my optimism as lack of care, but I’m convinced it was the best thing, not only for me but for the whole family. Not having me seem worried around her did far more good for my daughter than anything my worrying might have done (which is to say, almost certainly nothing).
I’m not afraid to be worried or angry, or to raise the alarm, when there’s something constructive to be accomplished thereby; absent that, my baseline position is unapologetic optimism… because that works for me.
YM(quite clearly)MV.
Bill,
Then, you’ve misread me : cf my comment #78
Simple, the USA should work together with the European Union on this. The EU has already proposed this at the G20 meeting last Nov, but the Bush admin has of course said no.
You should lobby so that this get done. Bill Gates too. Every American should do the same. There should be no tax heavens and offshore accounts. This is the major reason why the USA has such a huge foreign account deficit. The super-rich have parked their fortunes on their lifeboats going offshore, the boat is sinking. Not nice.
There’s far more people in the EU who understand the severity of this crisis and the urgency to take drastic measures of this type than in the USA. Unless there’s a influx of realism in the USA from the bottom up, you’re going to go through the wall and take us all together.
Have you read David Cay Johnston on the offshoring (and myriad other) tax legal thefts ?
Neg:
Forgive my flippant and obfuscatory phraseology about convinced Gates to turn in his money; I got your point better than I made it appear. I think the problem is that you’re talking economics and I’m talking practical politics. Any U.S. president who reneged on past promises to nationalize private wealth (and make no mistake, that’s how it would be seen) would instantly be impeached… if not (I shudder to even speculate, but I don’t intend this as hyperbolic) assassinated. That’s just waaaay too far outside the American sociopolitical mindset.
Further, simply repatriating the funds and taxing them normally wouldn’t help: Since we “normally” tax income and not assets (aside from real property, and even that isn’t taxed by the federal government), all repatriating the funds would accomplish would be to provide the promise of future tax revenues on investment income. Unless, of course, the Executive Order included confiscatory (again make no mistake, that’s how it would be seen) back-taxing… in which case, refer to my cautions above re impeachment and assassination.
Ironically, Gates, Buffet, Soros, et al., might go along with the scheme voluntarily (they’ve been known to argue, for the good of the country, against tax policy that favored them in the past); it would be the conservative upper middle class (who all imagine they’re going to be Gates, Buffet, Soros, et al., someday) that would revolt.
If we end up taking the world down, you can have my abject apologies on behalf of my (in that instance) sorry excuse for a country… but even so, I refuse to worry prospectively about something I have no power (beyond what I’ve already done) to change.
What I’m saying is that as political actors, we are not just an electorate – to reamin within the nation-state framework) we are a citizenry. The electoral arena is only one of many in which we fight, and in my view one that is highly overrated and sometimes entirely counterproductive.
What? I thought I had made my message fairly clear. Guess not. And I’ll mention, since you were just talking about the blithertarians and the narrowness of their outlook being due to a privileged position, your own comfort may be blinding you a bit to the real suffering and struggling around you.
I am telling them that, to a great extent, because I believe that. While electoral action may be appropriate or needed at times, it should not be granted any undue respect. Strikes, boycotts, factory occupations/takeovers, community action, publicity and other means are often more effective in the short term and definitely the best choice in the long term. I’m an anarchist, and this is consistent with my political philosophy, but you’re not. You want to convince people to focus on electoral politics regardless of whether it’s working for them (laws are being passed that are favorable to them, politicians are following through, legislation is having positive effects on the ground…).
Vigilance of elected officials is only one small part of it. (Pressure from below is an even bigger part, but still just one piece.)
By the way, Howard Zinn said in a talk recently (I paraphrase): “I don’t get this about not criticizing Obama. It’s my job. I like the guy. I wish him the best. But it’s my job as a citizen.”
The Democratic party isn’t my team.
Not really. Aren’t you electing people in the hopes that they’re going to do something?
When did I tell anyone to sit down or shut up? I also think we have different ideas of what constitutes a positive response. And the people I know were doing things before and after this election.
I had a similar conversation with brokenSoldier recently, by the way. The interview I linked to here with Chomsky sums up my views fairly well:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/what_do_you_imagine_rick_warre.php#comment-1281795
And I hope you’re right. If that’s the case, it shouldn’t hurt him to be clear about it now.
If he’s going to appoint criminals and carry on US foreign policy as it’s been practiced since well before Bush, he will be guilty of quite a bit.
Excuse me, but I’m angry, with cause, if the guy he appointed is guilty of what he’s reported to have done. I thought you understood my anger at Obama’s appointing him (again, if the allegations are true), so that’s also with cause. I said Obama would be loathsome if he went back on his support for the EFCA (read my first post) – not that I’m angry about the possibility.
You seem to want to focus on getting someone elected, then go to some parties and sit back passively and hope for the best. You might as well fucking pray. You don’t have to be angry to want to make your voice heard – you can and should do all of the things you mentioned above (and more) as a means of doing so now, while politicians are making their decisions. It’s a basic part of being a citizen. (If it helps, just be angry about the current situation for workers’ rights in this country.)
In politics, the power of wishful thinking is nonsense. We stand a better chance of getting things that we fight for. Then I’ll celebrate.
sorry, but I see a charity teaching people to use proprietary software as equally bad as the libertarian free-trade bullshit the West is pushing in the developing world. it’s a setup for dependency. i’m not saying that everything he does is completely wrong, but neither is everything Rick Warren does completely wrong, but both of them are assholes and I’d rather see the welfare of people’s future in other hands than those.
No, what you should have written* is
or just not added it at all. Do you think that parenthetical remark added anything to your argument? Or was it merely gratuitous? Why are you compelled to make this remarks so often?
neg, your view of the US is distorted, and here you’re talking to two Yankees. Bill and I may disagree about the best means, but you’re not going to find a culture that prizes being active and getting things done more than Connecticut’s or Massachusetts’.
A Yankee chastised for a lack of realism and pragmatic thinking by a Frenchman?
*guffaw* ;)
SC:
I think the horse is just about dead, so I’ll only beat it a little bit. You’re clearly not buying my rap, so I won’t burden you with too much more of it. Here, I think, is the nub of our (probably irresolvable) disagreement:
No, I want people to focus on elections, when it’s election time, because I believe elections are part of a system of self governance that is working — not perfectly, and not in terms of winning every single battle, but in the long-term aggregate — to the benefit of all. But as you say, we have a fundamental disconnect: I’m advocating for the best available systems approach; you, as an anarchist, apparently not so much.
Absolutely. But because I did elect them in that hope, I’m willing to wait for them to actually take office before I jump to the conclusion that they ain’t gonna.
Consider it constructive feedback on how you sound… and feel free to ignore it; what the hell do I know?
I know you’re passionate about this stuff, but I assume you didn’t mean this to be as personally insulting as it sounds. I get that my style of activism isn’t what you’d choose, but don’t confuse it with passivity or laziness.
Well, that’s always a risk when you have the good fortune to not be wretched… but I really don’t think so. If anything, I think my relative comfort has made me even more acutely aware of the challenges faced by those who lack my (sometimes arbitrary) advantages (see also cancer, daughter, health coverage). It has not always been so, but we do eventually mature.
optimism ≠ wishful thinking
Then you’ll never celebrate, because there will always be something else to fight for: Imperfection is endemic to the human condition. I can’t speak for you, but I must find occasional things to celebrate even while we’re not yet perfected, in order to keep myself sane.
Airline emergency briefings always instruct you to put your own mask on first, because you can’t help anyone else if you can’t breathe. Some measure of hopefulness is my oxygen mask, which I avail myself of so that I might remain fit to most effectively do my meager part to save the world.
[Not as brief as I imagined when I started writing; sorry. In any case, I’ve had my say on this now.]
Jadehawk:
Conversely, I have not drunk the open-source Kool-Aid, and don’t see proprietary software as intrinsically evil. Perhaps we should just agree to disagree? We’re getting along so well over on the other thread!
oh, we can certainly agree to disagree, and I don’t think OpenSource is the holy grail. but if you’re going to really try to help people, then maybe not making them dependent on a specific product would be a better way to go.
I’d like to compare it to farming: a good teaching program would show people how to farm local crops, how to keep seed for next planting season, etc. basically teaching independence. a profitable program would teach people to buy trademarked GM seed, use it, sell it, buy more the next season, etc, thus basically building a dependent customer base.
that doesn’t make GM foods bad, it just makes proprietary stuff a really really bad starting point for getting people out of poverty. hence the new-colonialism comment.
Well, perhaps you can explain that success to American workers, because it sure isn’t looking that way (in relative – historical or comparative or absolute terms). The declining situation over the past several decades is evident in just about any measure.
It does in politics, because your optimism concerns the actions of politicians. The only way you can have an effect is through action.
No, I’ve celebrated a real success (for a union, winning recognition, getting a contract, a successful strike)that’s going to have immediate and tangible consequences, and I would celebrate the passage of the EFCA (recognizing the fragility of these victories and the work that has to be done just to maintain). I don’t deem election results worthy. I recognize that you do.
It’s of no importance to this discussion, but I’ll point it out anyway: In RL, I’m extremely bubbly, positive, enjoy too many things to list here, and laugh, well, a lot (MAJeff was saying how funny it was imagining me stoned). That I think we’re in a huge struggle that demands that we remain active doesn’t mean I’m dour, joyless, angry in general, or incapable of relaxing. This is not a question of positivity/optimism vs. negativity/pessimism.
w00t! I get the last word. :)
You really should check out my link to the discussion with brokenSoldier, though – at least watch the Chomsky talk.
Dammit, I lied. Sometimes I just can’t get myself to shut up. ;^) But briefly (really, this time)…
…This is what comes of the election results I deem worthy. Not the most brilliant oratory, I’ll confess, but that guy is fighting for what you want fought for… and in part because I helped put him there the ring.
BTW…
Arrgh! Multiple FAIL! You can figure out the blockquote thing, but this…
…makes no sense as written. It should have been:
Yeah, like I mind.
Uh, a guy talking? That’s what you got? I mean, I don’t really need an excuse to have a good time, but if I did that would be a pretty lame one. Note the date of that. Are you really putting it up against a decades-long downhill slide containing probably hundreds of examples of such rhetoric?
I do not like that analogy. I do not like it at all. Either there is no ring, or we’re all in it. Either way, we’re all, or we should all be, fighters.
Aw. Likewise.
Yeah, that’s what I’ve got, and proudly so. People talking is how civilized societies govern themselves; you’ll forgive me for being glad I don’t live in some other sort. Or perhaps you won’t? Maybe that’s really our point of irreconcilable difference?
You brought up EFCA… which is legislation; where other than a legislature did you think that battle would be fought (and fought, and fought, and fought again, as your comment about the date points out)? If my “guy talking” loses the fight this year, he’ll just fight it again next year (and I know for sure he will)… instead of being carried home on his shield.
Sure we’re all fighters. The difference is that I see it as a campaign of many battles, and many types of battles, fought on many different battlefields (I like the war metaphor even less than that boxing metaphor, but it feels like we’re stuck with “fight”… at least it remains just a metaphor, thanks to “guys talking”); not a single mass melee.
We don’t all have to fight in every single battle in order to win the war, and we don’t have to win today in order to win eventually. And… scheduled R&R and the occasional victory celebration will help keep the troops fresh and motivated.
I won’t presume to judge the battles you choose, nor the battlefields on which you choose to fight. And I won’t fail to celebrate your victories.
PS: I haven’t watch the Chomsky interview because I’m usually Pharyngulating from a computer on which video from outside the firewall is blocked… but I promise I will watch it.
SC,
Oui, c’est le monde à l’envers !
And sorry, no, I really don’t think the “culture of the hero” and “positive thinking” is something that fits in our national psyche in France. Not at all. We might not be pragmatists (what’s “pragmatic” when the system is broken ?), but we don’t let ourselves fooled endlessly by our leaders. You probably don’t realise it from where you are, but the readiness for revolt and general dissatisfaction with the system of finance-lead-capitalism is close to its breaking point in France.
Sarkozy is extremely worried with the power of “the street”. Can you say the same in the US of A ?
SC,
here, read some french “realism” :
Revue de la régulation:
A Primer on Finance-Led Capitalism and Its Crisis
Whilst on one side of the pond you have been so busy de-regulating, some others have to be busy thinking about re-regulating, no ?
I stated several times above that I think organizing and direct action in the workplace and community is often the more effective strategy in the short term and definitely the better in the long term,* and listed several forms of action. As that Nation article, which is not written by an anarchist, notes, community organizing has succeeded in getting card-check and recognition even under current inhospitable system; also, the Chicago Republic factory occupation has done more to advance workers’ rights than thousands of speeches by politicians.
I’ve posted this by Voltairine de Cleyre before, but I don’t think it’s ever been in a conversation with you:
http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/decleyre/sp001334.html
I can’t imagine how you could possibly be proud of pointing to that and the fact that the legislative fight goes on and on as something of which to be proud while ignoring the objective condition of working people and workers’ rights in this country, which has been declining for decades and is pathetic (the proportion of workers who want to be in unions vs. the percentage who are, the joke minimum wages across the country and low pay people receive, the exclusion of huge classes of workers from any protections, the lack of necessary benefits, the fact that workers had to occupy a factory to get compensation legally owed them, the large and growing disparities between rich and poor, the lack of unionization rights, terrible working conditions, the lack of protection or justice for workers or their families when they are sickened, injured, or killed…I could go on). This has been the result of declining workplace militancy and the focus on electoral politics.
Resources that could be spent on struggles at the point of production (which may themselves, as they did in in the 1930s, drive legislation in any case) are directed toward the enactment of legislation that may or may not ever be passed. Even when legislation is passed that appears to be or is initially favorable to workers, it can be enforced in such a way as to work in the opposite direction (captured) or not enforced in any meaningful way at all. Institutions like the NLRB that were put in place to help workers have turned into a joke.
Now, the EFCA recognizes what are fundamental rights of workers and makes it more difficult for employers to oppress them. I support it because the situation is so bad, and I think it will – at least initially or for as long as workers remain active – provide a more hospitable context in which to engage in local workplace struggles and build up the strength of unions. But I don’t see it as the be all and end all. The decisive struggles are and always will be in the communities and workplaces.
And I do hope you watch the Chomsky video. It did, I think, bring brokenSoldier and me closer to a state of agreement (or at least agreement to disagree).
*Most importantly, through it people get in the habit of promoting and defending their own rights and of governing themselves, rather than alienating their political power to others. This is the essence of democracy.
neg:
History hasn’t shown the ruling classes to be very good judges of threat levels from below. The wealthy who supported fascism in the 20th century out of fear often faced a threat much smaller than they believed, but they took to and supported extreme – even self-harming – measures to stave it off.
I hope the street (or at least the “good” street :)) is rising in both countries, as it has in, for example, Bolivia. Go street!
You really should come live here in Boston for a year or two to get a different view of the US. It’s a large and diverse country, you know.
“Intrinsically evil” is too strong a term, but when there are multiple examples of clinics in the developing world who can’t afford to upgrade to newer and better medical software because their obsolete donated proprietary OS doesn’t support it, and they can’t take money out of operating budget to pay for an upgrade of the OS, I would at least call that a serious problem.
People electing and paying other people to go talk on their behalf in the hopes that they will be represented in policy (in a capitalist state, no less!) is most definitely not the best system, as far as I’m concerned, no. I “forgive” you, whatever that means, for believing that it is, but I am an anarchist, so your identification of capitalist republics with “civilization” and dismissal of any alternative as a “single mass melee” isn’t going to fly with me.
SC:
I haven’t been willfully ignoring you; I just sort of lost track of this thread today, as I was busy defending public education.
It’s late, so I’ll be quick, and maybe get back to this later… but I just wanted to clarify what I meant when I equated people talking with civilization: I wasn’t (in that instance) exalting the U.S. “captitalist republic” system over other models; rather, I meant to be praising human self governance by peaceful negotiation (in whatever forum or configuration) as opposed to “governance” by violence and mayhem (a la Somalia or Darfur). I wasn’t saying, “talking in Congress is better than talking in the streets or the factories”; I was saying, “talking is better than killing each other“… which humans have been wont to do throughout much of our grisly history.
That’s not to say we don’t really disagree, though, because I really do believe the representative/republican democracy is a good model for social organization (and its policy failures don’t prove otherwise, IMHO, because I don’t believe any human model can ever be free of policy failures).
I know this will make me sound wildly dense, but I confess it’s just now sinking in that when you say you’re an anarchist, that means something more fundamental and structural than “I’m a bit more radical than you, boyo!” [sigh] I think you were wrong when you said I might not be able to see the world through the eyes of the less “comfortable”; what you were really picking up on, I’m afraid, is that I lack the knowledge and understanding to see the world through the eyes of an anarchist. I don’t lack empathy for the people you have empathy for; I lack comprehension regarding what it is you want to do about them.
But hey, I’m not yet 50; I can still learn a new trick or two.
SC,
And it’s precisely its size and its diversity that will make it so difficult for it to adapt to this new era.
Unless it transforms this inefficient short-term-profit-seeking-debt-creating-institutional-machine into a long-term-oriented-resilient-network, it will fail.
The USA may be diverse and large, but the policies of its vayrious governments and other institutions (corporations,…) haven’t been that very diverse. There’s been litteraly no social-democratic alternance, no left of any sort for the last 30 years. I don’t see any signs whatsoever that this is going to change with Obama (and you know how I supported him).
SC, this is not a recession, not a depression, this is the end of an era. Finance-led-deregulated-capitalism that dominated our world for the last 30 years really is dead. We cannot continue to exteriorize all kinds of costs (environmental, societal, unfunded liabilities, debt accumulation) and ignore them, leaving them to future generations to solve. We are already there, the shit has hit the fan, we are already that generation that needs to face the harsh reality and pay for all the excesses of the past. I’m not sure if a majority of Americans already understand this. I don’t get the idea for the time being that US policy makers have gotten the message, because if they did, that’s not the kind of change they would be proposing.
SC, granted, I’m not in Boston, but I’ve lived long enough in the states (3 years in NY+ 3 years in SF), still have many friends there, and even an aunt in … Boston. I just think there’s too much history behind, it’s a colossus stuck in the past, not flexible enough to adapt and I doubt it will, I think your only hope is that it breaks into pieces.
Well, it’s kind of strange to hear praise for the US system of peaceful negotiation in the midst of an invasion and occupation that has cost possibly over a million lives, in a country with military spending vastly exceeding that of the rest of the world and a history over the past century of bloody imperialism and support for the most brutal dictatorships. You should also remember that capitalist economic relations (domestic or global) aren’t democratic. Real political debate could take place if democracy characterized the economic realm – if land and productive facilities were cooperatively owned and democratically managed; anarchists want for democracy to hold in all of the important realms of our existence. Getting there, though, requires action, and even when such action isn’t itself violent (as with the MST in Brazil), it is usually met with state or private violence. The people in power – the ones who see card-check as “Armageddon,” for example – do not want to talk. This is what the history and present of the union movement in the US shows, I’m afraid.
And what I was trying to point out is that it’s not a matter of representative democracy vs. chaos and mass violence, as you seem to believe. First, there is violence and coercion at the very heart of the system you laud, which you’re ignoring. Second, there are models of democratic governance other than the one with which you’re familiar (well, I’m sure you’re familiar with local, more participatory democracy in your town). C. Wright Mills defined democracy as (I’m paraphrasing) people’s real and effective participation in the making of decisions that affect their lives and their future. I want to see this approximated in our practices to the greatest extent possible. Anarchists are radical democrats.
I don’t know why you’re using scare-quotes there, but I was suggesting that you seemed to be ignoring the reasons many people have a) not to be in a celebratory frame of mind, to put it mildly, and b) to put Obama’s election in a broader and frankly more realistic perspective. I wasn’t saying that you’re not able to see it – merey that you didn’t appear to be doing so.
Well, you could start by watching the Chomsky talk. :)
neg,
I have no idea what you’re on about. Are you confusing me with some other SC? Have you forgotten our conversations in which I linked to Lennon on finance capitalism and argued, against your more reformist position, that in the long term it was not possible to save capitalism from itself and that the entire system needed to go (but that I supported more extreme Bretton-Woods-type controls and other measures to protect people now)?
No elites are going to change anything. The kinds of dramatic changes you’re talking about have to come from below. That requires work on the ground everywhere. I don’t deny that these movements are weaker in the US. My point is simply that your gratuitous stereotypes and anti-American slurs are inaccurate, annoying, and not accomplishing anything. You’d do better to support or collaborate with groups and organizations in the US that do the kind of work you agree with.
SC,OM
Don’t forget to send me an email.
SC:
And if you’ve been listening at all during my tenure as a commenter here, you’ve heard me decry that invasion, and the vicious, simplistic, and wrongheaded foreign policy it exemplifies. I am ashamed of my country.
But my shame motivates me, more than anything, to work to change the things I find shameful. Note that my comments that you quoted refer to self governance, not to external policy: No aggregation of any significant number of humans — no matter how it governs itself — is immune from the temptation to gang up on other groups and fight with them, and every human aggregation will inevitably have leaders — whether born, appointed, formally selected, or self-made through the deliberate arrogation of power — whose predilections and prejudices will shape the group’s policies and actions.
I’ve personally watched cranky libertarians move to the woods to “get away from the government”… only to almost immediately seek out their neighbors and join together to form quasi-governmental groups and subject each other to the same sorts of controls they were ostensibly trying to escape. My observation is that this tendency to form into groups and pick leaders is deeply rooted in the human animal.
That being the case, it seems incumbent upon us to have careful ways to select leaders, and to change them (esp. when they’ve gone horribly wrong), and to make law… all without having rival would-be kings putting armies in the field to war over the throne (as has too often been the case throughout human history). That — the ability to change the course of our government and our society without a literal fight — is what I meant by peaceful negotiations; I would have to have been a fool to suggest we, as a society, have behaved peacefully toward our fellows. I don’t assert that the model contained in the U.S. Constitution is necessarily the best way to accomplish it, but having some organized, repeatable, accountable system for transitioning from one set of leaders to the next (in this case, from horrifyingly bad leaders to ones with at least the potential to be quite good) is IMHO better than not having one. Maybe there’s some potential future way to accomplish that without elections, but elections are what we have right now, and IMHO the very best thing I, personally, could have done over the last few years to, in my small way, help make the world a better place was to work to elect people like Joe Courtney and Barack Obama.
And so I’m proud to have done that. I understand — finally — that you have a profound, fundamental disagreement with all of that… and so be it. I will, as I promised, try to learn more about your point of view… but don’t expect me to become a convert.
Also, don’t expect me to start studying in the next week or so, because I have plans to be celebrating. This conversation started (it seems like weeks ago!) because I objected to the application of the word “loathsome” to Obama. I’m not as naive as my deliberate optimism must make me seem: I understand that Obama is, and we are, vastly far from perfect, and our society provides seemingly endless reasons to be ashamed.
But we can’t live by shame alone… or at least I can’t…. Next Tuesday evening we’ll still be vastly far from perfect, but on the continuum from loathsome to perfect we will, in my judgment, have taken a big step in the opposite direction from loathsome. And that’s worth a moment of celebration; I’ll get back to being ashamed (though a little bit less so) on Wednesday.
BTW, as a quick aside:
Bad example with me, as my experience so far is that small town governments, despite the popular notion that they’re more participatory and closer to individual voters, are far more venal and corruptible, and susceptible to cooption by business interests, than larger governments, if only because of their lack political inertia (which I mean in the Newtonian sense, and not at all as a pejorative). Our SOB Republican mayor (whose day job is as a personal injury lawyer) keeps trying to stack the towns boards and commissions his lawyer friends and business cronies, even though many of them don’t even live in town. And he consistently circumvents the Town Council (even though he has a working majority of the votes) in an effort to maximize the power of the mayors office. So what do you think? Should I not participate in the coming campaign to try to unseat him, on the grounds that elections don’t matter?
That’s a completely meaningless distinction. Self governance includes decisions about the use of resources (on weaponry and “security” vs. other things), whether we’re going to send our young people to foreign countries to be injured or killed or commit horrible acts, whether we’re going to support brutal regimes or warlords, the internal “security” regimes we’re going to institutionalize, and many other critical issues. There’s no line of demarcation between external/war/security policy and domestic governance.
That’s a copout. These statements are so broad as to be meaningless, and completely inattentive to variability. US imperialism is historically and sociologically determined. No policy simply reflects human biology in this simple way.
Whether or not it is inevitable that there are leaders is an open question and shouldn’t simply be asserted. There’s a great deal of historical and cross-cultural variability in political structures and levels of hierarchy. (I’ll note that there are no necessary human features that make good leaders – the qualities that determine a good leader depend entirely on the goals of a group and the circumstances.) What anarchists, as radical democrats, want is for these positions not to be institutionalized but to remain informal. To the extent to which leadership positions are formalized (and again, this needn’t be the case), they should be subject to mandates, vigilance, and recall. The effects of the institutionalization of positions of power are clear from history. Communications technology is making it increasingly easier for people to govern themselves without the need for formal middlemen, and for us to have truly federal systems of self-governing units. Whether or not leaders arise in different contexts, we can have systems that allow people to participate directly without need for representatives. Leaders need not equal bosses.
Incidentally, one part of anarchist “building the new society within the old” is creating anarchist organizations (such as unions) characterized by the features I described above. (I wouldn’t argue that these are perfect or without problems.)
Anarchists are not blithertarians. Bliths are idiots. If you learn more about anarchism you’ll understand how irrelevant this is.
Again, this is a simplistic biological argument that doesn’t get us anywhere. And forming into groups has no necessary relation to picking leaders.
I dealt with the first part of this above, but, again, there are many models of democracy that have existed throughout history. There is no reason we can’t choose and create that which we see as best. “What we have right now” is unacceptable to me, and there’s nothing inevitable about it. I don’t have to accept it or refuse to consider alternatives just because I was born into it. (Incidentally, I have great-…grandfathers among the “founding fathers” of both the US and your state; I disagree with them about a lot, but I do appreciate that they didn’t simply accept the existing political reality.)
Of course I won’t! (I’m pretty optimistic about brokenSoldier, though. :))
I don’t expect you to start studying at all. You were the one who mentioned that you were planning to watch the Chomsky talk. I’m going to defend my views when I think they’re being misrepresented, and I’m going to proselytize a bit, but you’re under no obligation whatsoever to learn more about anarchism. I totally appreciate that you would even consider doing so, though.
That hasn’t been my experience, and I think the level of corruption depends on a number of factors. But the largest factor here is capitalism. This would not exist in an anarchist system. It’s what I spent weeks trying to explain to SfO, who was under the mistaken impression that if political power were devolved to the local level in a capitalist society it would give greater power to the citizenry. In fact, corporations (and even local businesses) run roughshod over and corrupt local governments. Moreover, mayoral power should be reduced (until, of course, the office can be eliminated :)), and means of more direct citizen participation strengthened.
No, I think you probably should. But you shouldn’t see replacing him as primary or decisive. At the local level, you can watch elected officials more closely. But you can also participate more directly in the making of decisions, and also try to develop and enhance mechanisms for greater community vigilance and prticipation.
Enjoy your celebration! (I’m not being at all sarcatic – I really hope you have a great time.)
SC,
No SC, they are not inaccurate, they correspond to reality. I agree with you, the dramatic changes that are needed will need to come from below, but this process will need ego-less servants who understand in details the world of the elites but have placed themselves on the sidelines. I hope to be one of those linch-pins.
I have already made my choice, I have been getting politically involved in my country, France, with the anti-capitalist party (yes we have such a party, unlike the USA, where you can only dream of having any semblant of democracy).
SC, I just don’t think there’s any chance I can collaborate with any groups in the USA for the time being. I wish I could as I love the USA as much as I love France, but there’s just nothing happening there for the moment as it is far too much fixated in the past, and I think you personally have far too many illusions about its capacity to reinvent itself.
Right, negentropyeater. You’re the true vanguard. Great – the New Leninism.
*rolls eyes* Your ignorance, nationalism, and prejudice are showing.
That’s too stupid even to answer.
That’s funny, because I receive about 50-75 emails a day updating me on events and movements here in Boston alone, including radical organizations, and it takes me hours just to sort through all of the ones from elsewhere in the US. Alas, they, and my own activities, must be figments of my imagination.
It has nothing to do with my belief in any country’s “capacity to reinvent itself,” but with what I believe is the best and most pragmatic approach to social change. The radical movements of a century ago survived and grew because they practiced transnational solidarity. Radicals in Spain didn’t say, “Too bad, British radical movements are small and weak. They’re never gonna make a difference. Better to ignore them.” And they were right not to.
I really am sick of you. I think I will stop paying attention to you for a while.
It’s funny. Last week I was arguing with someone on another science blog who was suggesting a US invasion of Iran (or a blockade of food and medical supplies) was in order and claiming that “of course” there were no non-violent social movements there. A day later I received, among other emails about activists in Iran, one with a link to this story:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/idblog/2009/01/08/irans-revolutionary-guards-take-on-the-internet/
Seems people see what they want to see. Trying to support or work with movements in Iran is complicated and difficult, and they’re up against great odds. Much easier to deny their existence.
SC,
SC, I don’t understand you, we’re on the same boat. I know we both have similar views on how to build a better world.
You and I differ on some details, but on the most important things we agree, there’s no point comming up with these kinds of conclusions.
SC:
…whereas I do not believe it’s possible for large groups of people (as opposed to small collectives and coops) to govern themselves functionally, responsively, transparently, and sustainably with informal systems.
And that, I believe, is a fundamental philosophical divide between us that is unlikely to be bridged… so I’m going to leave off talking to you about this particular thing (really, this time).
It would be tempting to try to answer your last reply point by point, because I still feel I’ve been misunderstood in some cases, and that in at least one case you’ve taken my comments quasi-personally in a way I didn’t intend (i.e., I didn’t mean to be comparing you to a “blithertarian”… honest). But we’re both smart people, and on further thought I’m convinced that any continuing misunderstandings are reflections of our underlying philosophical distance, rather than any failure to communicate.
And I enjoy our exchanges on other issues too much to let this conversation turn cranky (as it seems to be doing between you and neg; y’all need to kiss and make up!). Even though I can’t share your position, I respect it; we should be double-teaming the SfOs of the world, rather than spatting with each other.
Thanks, I will. Starting with Bruce Springsteen at the Lincoln Memorial! What’s not to love?
To clarify: I’m talking about federations of smaller units, and I’m not suggesting that the entire systems be informal – only that positions of power not be institutionally cemented (preventing which itself requires formal arrangements).
Have fun!