lost cause

Today, someone posted this popular quote from Thomas Jefferson as their Facebook status: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the moneyed corporations, which dare already challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

I can't say I disagree with the sentiment. Unfortunately, any attempt to do so within the context of the capitalist system itself is almost assuredly doomed to failure, as history has shown. Even the likes of Thomas Jefferson couldn't stop the ascendancy of the 'aristocracy of the moneyed corporations' and their takeover of the American political system, especially those of private financial institutions.

As for the 'laws of our country,' the legal superstructure is built decidedly in their favour—always has been considering that the Founding Fathers themselves were mainly wealthy, ruling class elites, and the 'aristocracy of the moneyed corporations' was simply the next evolutionary step in a long line of wealthy, ruling class elites.

Like most forms of government centred around private property rights, the basic principle behind the establishment of our form of representative democracy had more to do with the ruling elites wanting to protect the small minority of property owners (including themselves) from the majority of the propertyless than anything else. As James Madison put it in Federalist No. 10, "… the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society."

The only real distinction is that the Founders were holders of landed property while corporations are holders of capital, which for all intents and purposes are the same thing (i.e., both are property). What people like Jefferson seem to fail to realize is that having a political-economic system centred on private property rights, which are considered sacrosanct, actually protects and even promotes the rise of this new kind of aristocracy.

Liberalism links private property to liberty, and through private property rights, secures the liberty of the propertied. Consequently, the greater one's property, the greater one's means of self-determination. We can do our best to enact reforms and try to limit their power and the damage done by their 'enlightened self-interest,' but it's essentially a lost cause seeing as how corporations themselves are now considered 'natural persons' and have managed to acquire certain constitutionally protected rights.

Basically, all this is really saying is that the game is rigged. To fix these problems, we need to change the rules; and to change the rules, we need to change the system.

born this way

I'll admit it, I'm a Lady Gaga fan. I mean, what's not to like? I like her style, her outspokenness and the fact that she uses her fame to promote things like gay rights and support working-class issues. (And I really love the fact that Slavoj Zizek analyzes her theoretical contributions to cultural theory, as well as her "actual theoretical project.") I'm not quite 'monster' status or anything, but I definitely like to dance around the house to "Bad Romance" once in a while. Her music is one of my guilty pleasures.

So it was lucky for me that my girlfriend decided to sign up for Amazon's Cloud Drive the day Lady Gaga's new album, Born This Way, was released, meaning that I got the entire album for only $0.99 via Amazon's Gold Box Deal of the Day. Quite possibly the best dollar she's ever spent. I love it. And I think it's funny that the main thing people seem to be criticizing about it — i.e., its late '80s/early '90s sound, replete with a generous helping of pulsating dance beats throughout — is precisely what I love about it. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

Overall, I think it's a great album, and you can really hear the wide range of influences in her music, from disco and glam, to ’80s synth-pop and techno. And of course there's Madonna. For example, I noticed (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) that the title track, "Born This Way," sounds an awful lot like Madonna's "Express Yourself." I know that Lady Gaga often downplays Madonna's influence on her music for the simple fact that everyone inevitably makes that comparison, but it's pretty obvious here. Compare:



vs.



It could be a tribute to Madonna, since they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I half wonder if Lady Gaga is trolling critics who accuse her of being completely unoriginal and simply ripping off Madonna by making "Born This Way" sound just like "Express Yourself." Personally, I don't really care if it's simply a coincidence or intentional that they sound alike because I like the song regardless; but I think it'd be cool if she made them sound similar intentionally, whether as a tribute or a troll, but especially the latter, mainly because I like to think of it as a musical middle finger to her critics. If so, it's a pretty awesome troll; but even if it's not, I'll still give Lady Gaga props for putting out a damn good album.

'secret' patriot act?

Just read this article from Wired:

"There's a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says"

You know, the Patriot Act should be renamed the We Can Legally Abuse Our Powers and There's Not a Damn Thing You Can Do About It, Especially Because You Don't Know We're Doing It Act. But the, I guess WCLAOPTNDTYCDAI doesn't make for a very good acronym.

And we should all thank the Tea Party for replacing Russ Feingold, the ONLY Senator who actually voted against this piece of legislation, with Ron Johnson, who, as an opponent of 'big government' supports the Patriot Act.

why the rich love high unemployment

This article reads like Marxism 101, albeit through a liberal/social democratic lens. Capitalism, by its very nature, requires what Marx termed the "reserve army of labour" (i.e., the unemployed), which is one of the tools it uses to create and increase the profit it extracts from the labourer and the commodities their labour produces. What the article calls "labor-market flexibility" is the capitalists wet dream, i.e., an insecure labour pool that can be hired and fired at will, at whatever wage the employer deigns to give. And as the article points out, the mechanisms that the ruling class use to help 'fix' the economy ultimately end up benefiting big capital and the wealthy, not the workers (who make up the majority of the population). Which is, of course, counterproductive when you have a consumer-based economy and very few of the consumers can afford much beyond their basic means of subsistence. However, in the context of a global, capitalist economy, capital can invest elsewhere (whether abroad in foreign markets or in stocks and bonds) and still increase their profits and those of their shareholders, while the average worker is left struggling. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. How anyone can find such a system moral, or simply preferable to something which is less exploitative, is beyond me. /rant

re: frosty woodbridge's "detroit"

Someone sent this article to my girlfriend, who then forwarded it to me to get my thoughts on it/rebut it:

Detroit

By Frosty Wooldridge

For 15 years, from the mid 1970's to 1990, I worked in Detroit, Michigan. I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs and human depravity. I watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on buildings, cars, trucks, buses and school yards. Trash everywhere!

Detroiters walked through it, tossed more into it, and ignored it. Tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing, and food stamps!

With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10, and in one case, one woman birthed 24 children as reported by the Detroit Free Press, all on American taxpayer dollars.

A new child meant a new car payment, new TV, and whatever mom wanted. I saw Lyndon Baines Johnson's 'Great Society' flourish in Detroit. If you give money for doing nothing, you will get more hands out taking money for doing nothing

Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America, outside of Richard Daley in Chicago, rode Detroit down to its knees... He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence, and arrogance. As a black man, he said, "I am the MFIC." The IC meant "in charge".

You can figure out the rest Detroit became a majority black city with 67 percent African-Americans.

As a United Van Lines truck driver for my summer job from teaching math and science, I loaded hundreds of American families into my van for a new life in another city or state.

Detroit plummeted from 1.8 million citizens to 912,000 today. At the same time, legal and illegal immigrants converged on the city, so much so, that Muslims number over 300,000. Mexicans number 400,000 throughout Michigan, but most work in Detroit. As the whites moved out, the Muslims moved in.

As the crimes became more violent, the whites fled. Finally, unlawful Mexicans moved in at a torrid pace. Detroit suffers so much shoplifting that grocery stores no longer operate in many inner city locations. You could cut the racial tension in the air with a knife! Detroit may be one of our best examples of multiculturalism: pure dislike, and total separation from America.

Today, you hear Muslim calls to worship over the city like a new American Baghdad with hundreds of Islamic mosques in Michigan, paid for by Saudi Arabia oil money. High school flunk out rates reached 76 percent last June, according to NBC's Brian Williams. Classrooms resemble more foreign countries than America. English? Few speak it! The city features a 50 percent illiteracy rate and growing.

Unemployment hit 28.9 percent in 2009 as the auto industry vacated the city. In Time Magazine's October 4, 2009, "The Tragedy of Detroit: How a great city fell, and how it can rise again," I choked on the writer's description of what happened. "If Detroit had been ravaged by a hurricane, and submerged by a ravenous flood, we'd know a lot more about it," said Daniel Okrent. "If drought and carelessness had spread brush fires across the city, we'd see it on the evening news every night." Earthquake, tornadoes, you name it, if natural disaster had devastated the city that was once the living proof of American prosperity, the rest of the country might take notice.

But Detroit, once our fourth largest city, now 11th and slipping rapidly, has had no such luck. Its disaster has long been a slow unwinding that seemed to remove it from the rest of the country.

Even the death rattle that in the past year emanated from its signature industry brought more attention to the auto executives than to the people of the city, who had for so long been victimized by their dreadful decision making."

As Coleman Young's corruption brought the city to its knees, no amount of federal dollars could save the incredible payoffs, kickbacks and illegality permeating his administration. I witnessed the city's death from the seat of my 18-wheeler tractor trailer because I moved people out of every sector of decaying Detroit.

"By any quantifiable standard, the city is on life support. Detroit's treasury is $300 million short of the funds needed to provide the barest municipal services," Okrent said. "The school system, which six years ago was compelled by the teachers' union to reject a philanthropist's offer of $200 million to build 15 small, independent charter high schools, is in receivership. The murder rate is soaring, and 7 out of 10 remain unsolved. Three years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, unemployment in that city hit a peak of 11%. In Detroit today, the unemployment rate is 28.9%. That's worth spelling out: twenty-eight point nine percent.

At the end of Okrent's report, and he will write a dozen more about Detroit, he said, "That's because the story of Detroit is not simply one of a great city's collapse, it's also about the erosion of the industries that helped build the country we know today. The ultimate fate of Detroit will reveal much about the character of America in the 21st century.

If what was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the nation has been brought to its knees, what does that say about our recent past? And if it can't find a way to get up, what does that say about America’s future?"

As you read in my book review of Chris Steiner's book,"$20 Per Gallon", the auto industry won't come back. Immigration will keep pouring more and more uneducated third world immigrants from the Middle East into Detroit, thus creating a beachhead for Islamic hegemony in America. If 50 percent illiteracy continues, we will see more homegrown terrorists spawned out of the Muslim ghettos of Detroit. Illiteracy plus Islam equals walking human bombs.

You have already seen it in Madrid, Spain, London, England and Paris, France with train bombings, subway bombings and riots. As their numbers grow, so will their power to enact their barbaric Sharia Law that negates republican forms of government, first amendment rights, and subjugates women to the lowest rungs on the human ladder. We will see more honor killings by upset husbands, fathers and brothers that demand subjugation by their daughters, sisters and wives. Muslims prefer beheadings of women to scare the hell out of any other members of their sect from straying. Multiculturalism: what a perfect method to kill our language, culture, country and way of life.

I PRAY EVERYONE THAT READS THIS REALIZES THAT IF WE DON'T STAND UP, AND SCREAM AT WASHINGTON, AND OUR STATE, CITY AND LOCAL LEADERS THIS IS WHAT AWAITS THE REST OF AMERICA. IF YOU THINK MEXICANS AND MUSLIMS AND OTHER FORIEGNERS WILL EVENTUALLY FIT RIGHT IN THEN YOU ARE AS BIG A PART OF THE PROBLEM AS THEY ARE.

IF YOU THINK THIS IS JUST A BUNCH OF HOOEY AND YOU FEEL NO DUTY TO FIGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY, THEN I'M SORRY, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT WILL TAKE FOR YOU TO STAND AND FIGHT.

My initial responses was, "Sorry, but this is the most blatantly racist and xenophobic piece of trash I've ever read, and I'm not sure if I can even bring myself to write a rebuttal."

Being from Detroit, I can sympathize with the lamentations of whomever wrote this (if they're indeed sincere, since many of these types of emails are often written or rewritten by someone and attributed to another) over its continual decline; but these conclusions ignore a lot of other relevant data. For example, the '67 riots and subsequent 'white flight' from Detroit that followed was due to years of racism and police brutality inflicted upon the Afro-American population, not to mention a host of other factors such as economic inequality, lack of affordable housing, racially discriminatory FHA policies, etc. Detroit was, and to some extent still is, a very racially divided place. To cite just one example, a 1996 article in the Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law looking at the issue of residential racial segregation and the phenomenon known as 'white flight' notes that:

In a [1976] sociological study done in Detroit, Michigan, a large percentage of whites surveyed indicated they would feel uncomfortable living in communities populated by equal numbers of blacks and whites. More specifically, 84% of white respondents stated they would not move into a community composed of 60% black residents, and 64% of whites indicated they would definitely move to another neighborhood. Perhaps more disturbing is that greater than 50% of whites said that they would not move into a community consisting of only 20% black residents. It is also disconcerting that 40% of the whites surveyed indicated that they would move out of an area that became integrated, fearing a decline in property value.

It also seems to gloss over the fact that Detroit's decline wasn't just due to decades of political mismanagement and corruption (although that was certainly a large part of it), but also things like urban sprawl (e.g., sprawling infrastructure wastes resources, and with no real public transportation system to speak of, just trying to find a decent job can be a struggle in and of itself) and building its economic base on a single industry, motor vehicle and parts manufacturing. It's not the fault of Detroit's large Muslim and African-America populations that, through trade deals like NAFTA and our involvement with the WTO, things like auto manufacturing and assembly have become cheaper to outsource, thereby giving the auto industry an incentive to ship these jobs elsewhere (e.g., China, India, Mexico and places in the south where wages are lower and there's a strong anti-union sentiment), or the fact that multiple economic downturns have severely affected the auto industry in general.

I think it's also unfair (not to mention dishonest) to blame the illiteracy rate solely on immigrants when the public school system has little-to-no money, meaning scarce supplies, extremely large class sizes and underpaid teachers, and are unable to effectively teach anyone, which is partially due to the fact that there's no income via taxes because they're not enough good paying jobs; and they're not enough good paying jobs because they're being outsourced (either to surrounding suburbs or out of the state entirely), plus they're hiring in more qualified people for the jobs there are from outside of the Metro Detroit area because the public school system is in such bad shape.

And the whole thing about the growing Muslim population "enacting their barbaric Sharia Law" in Detroit is little more than alarmist nonsense, in my opinion. Detroit (well, Dearborn, MI, actually) has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, and I've never seen or even heard about anything remotely like this going on there, and I sincerely doubt that I ever will besides a few potentially isolated incidents. Furthermore, plenty of white, predominately Christian men kill their wives all the time, yet these same alarmists don't have much to say about that; but as soon as a man who happens to be Muslim does it, it's the end of the world as we know it: Sharia Law is being enacted! And it's all because he's Muslim, of course; as if all the white Christian guys who murder their wives or beat them and treat them like property somehow don't count, which to me is basically laying all the blame on their different religious and/or immigrant status (read, 'skin colour') and ignoring the general patriarchy and misogyny that still pervades much of society.

In addition, the author(s) insinuates that the growing Muslim population will result in more illiterate Muslims and become a hotbed of terrorism, but statistics show that many terrorists are often highly educated and come from what we'd call a 'middle class' background. Just because someone happens to be poor and Muslim doesn't necessarily mean they're going to automatically turn into a terrorist, and the author(s) presents no evidence that Metro Detroit area Muslims are either uneducated or radical. Moreover, the author conveniently neglects to mention all the white, Christian terrorists that have arisen in the past few decades, some of the most notable coming from Michigan (e.g., Terry Nichols, who helped Timothy McVeigh bomb the Oklahoma City federal building; Hutaree, who was apparently plotting to kill a police officer and then bomb his funeral; not to mention the plethora of other militia groups that make their home in the woods of northern Michigan).

All this article really does is take a few facts and statistics and makes them into a simplistic narrative that essential blames stupid, violent Muslims and African-Americans for Detroit's decline — ignoring everything else that disagrees with, or contradicts, its overtly racist ad hominem against Afro-Americans, Muslims and immigrants — and implies that this is what's going to happen to the "rest of America" unless we we fight back (against non-whites and Muslims, I guess). All in all, a disgusting piece of right-wing propaganda if you ask me.

the futility of violence

My first response to the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by the US was: "Ten years, thousands of lives and billions of dollars later, and the US has finally succeeded in making Osama bin Laden a martyr. Good job?"

All sarcasm aside, I realize that many see bin Laden's death as a cause for celebration, but I think it's worth reflecting on Lao-Tzu's words on war, especially the part about treating victory in war as a funeral:

Where the princely man abides, the weak left hand is in honour. But he who uses weapons honours the stronger right. Weapons are instruments of ill omen; they are not the instruments of the princely man, who uses them only when he needs must. Peace and tranquillity are what he prizes. When he conquers, he is not elate. To be elate were to rejoice in the slaughter of human beings. And he who rejoices in the slaughter of human beings is not fit to work his will in the Empire.

On happy occasions, the left is favoured; on sad occasions, the right. The second in command has his place on the left, the general in chief on the right. That is to say, they are placed in the order observed at funeral rites. And, indeed, he who has exterminated a great multitude of men should bewail them with tears and lamentation. It is well that those who are victorious in battle should be placed in the order of funeral rites.

A similar sentiment can even be found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them. (Pro 24:17-18)

Personally, it saddens me to see so many people celebrating the death of another human being, even a not-so-nice one like bin Laden. It reminds me of Gandhi's saying: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." In fact, one of the main things that originally attracted me to Buddhism was its attitude towards violence, e.g.:

"He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred.

"He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.

There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels. (Dhp 1.3-6).

And:

Killing, you gain
your killer.
Conquering, you gain one
who will conquer you;
insulting, insult;
harassing, harassment.

And so, through the cycle of action,
he who has plundered
gets plundered in turn. (SN 3.15)

I think Howard Zinn, a WWII vet and political activist, came to a similar understanding — that war can't end war, that violence can't end violence — from his experiences in WWII; an idea which he expressed in part of a speech he gave in 2006:

I was talking to my barber the other day, because we always discuss world politics. And he's totally politically unpredictable, as most barbers are, you see. He said, "Howard," he said, "you know, you and I disagree on many things, but on one thing we agree: war solves nothing." And I thought, "Yeah." It's not hard for people to grasp that.

And there again, history is useful. We've had a history of war after war after war after war. What have they solved? What have they done? Even World War II, the "good war," the war in which I volunteered, the war in which I dropped bombs, the war after which, you know, I received a letter from General Marshall, general of generals, a letter addressed personally to me, and to 16 million others, in which he said, "We've won the war. It will be a new world." Well, of course, it wasn't a new world. It hasn't been a new world. War after war after war.

There are certain -- I came out of that war, the war in which I had volunteered, the war in which I was an enthusiastic bombardier, I came out of that war with certain ideas, which just developed gradually at the end of the war, ideas about war. One, that war corrupts everybody who engages in it. War poisons everybody who engages in it. You start off as the good guys, as we did in World War II. They're the bad guys. They're the fascists. What could be worse? So, they're the bad guys, we're the good guys. And as the war goes on, the good guys begin behaving like the bad guys. You can trace this back to the Peloponnesian War. You can trace it back to the good guy, the Athenians, and the bad guys, the Spartans. And after a while, the Athenians become ruthless and cruel, like the Spartans.

And we did that in World War II. We, after Hitler committed his atrocities, we committed our atrocities. You know, our killing of 600,000 civilians in Japan, our killing of probably an equal number of civilians in Germany. These, they weren't Hitler, they weren't Tojo. They weren't -- no, they were just ordinary people, like we are ordinary people living in a country that is a marauding country, and they were living in countries that were marauding countries, and they were caught up in whatever it was and afraid to speak up. And I don't know, I came to the conclusion, yes, war poisons everybody.

I know that we're not a nonviolent species by nature; but as naive as it might sound, it's my hope that we'll eventually see the futility of violence in the long run.