THE MEANING OF POVERTY

A new exposé of Mother Teresa shows that she—
and the Vatican—were even worse than we thought

From Why Evolution Is True, courtesy of Anne Rice on facebook.  No, seriously, Anne Rice; she's got a Catholic thing going on, apparently:

The criticisms of Agnes Gonxha, as she was christened, have been growing for a long time. I wasn’t aware of them until I read Christopher Hitchens’s cleverly titled book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, which I found deeply disturbing. The book is polemic at Hitchens’s best, and though the facts were surprising, he was never sued and his accusations were never refuted—nor even rebutted. (You can read excerpts here and here, but I urge you to read the book.) In light of that, I accepted Mother Teresa as a deeply flawed person.

In its “criticism” section of her biography, Wikipedia summarizes the growing opprobrium related to her extreme love of suffering (that is, the suffering of her “patients”), her refusal to provide adequate medical care, her association with (and financial support from) shady characters, and her treatment of her nuns.

Now a paper is about to appear (it’s not online yet) that is apparently peer-reviewed, and that expands the list of Mother Teresa’s malfeasances.

More here.

Contemplating the ultimate meaning of Mother Teresa isn't simply your standard, gleeful, atheistic style of clergy-bashing.  Rather, when you consider the celebrated pre-saint's role as a global do-gooder, you're necessarily considering the meaning of poverty, and what society's attitude toward it ought to be.  For Teresa, as far as I can tell, it was something along these lines: poverty will always be a fact of human life, and we can't really do anything about it, but we should be kind to the poor because their suffering is like the suffering of Christ.  Or something to that effect.  Contrast this with the Marxist point of view that the circumstances in which poverty exists are entirely manufactured, which morally compels society to do everything it can to change those circumstances for the better.

If, in fact, much of Teresa's career was a sham, if she had the ability to alleviate a LOT more suffering than she actually did, then this best example of compassion in a capitalist world turns out to be a pretty bad example, after all, suggesting that, in the end, there might not be much room to comfort the suffering in a reality like ours where commerce is society's sole priority.  I mean, if the best was ineffective, then what do we have?  

Not much, really.  All that glitters isn't gold.  

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Defining Prosperity Down

New Krugman:

Friday’s employment report wasn’t bad. But given how depressed our economy remains, we really should be adding more than 300,000 jobs a month, not fewer than 200,000. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, we would need more than five years of job growth at this rate to get back to the level of unemployment that prevailed before the Great Recession. Full recovery still looks a very long way off. And I’m beginning to worry that it may never happen.

And

Put it this way: If unemployment rises from 6 to 7 percent during an election year, the incumbent will probably lose. But if it stays flat at 8 percent through the incumbent’s whole term, he or she will probably be returned to power. And this means that there’s remarkably little political pressure to end our continuing, if low-grade, depression. 

Someday, I suppose, something will turn up that finally gets us back to full employment. But I can’t help recalling that the last time we were in this kind of situation, the thing that eventually turned up was World War II. 

More here.

Click through if you want some more details about why the government is very unlikely to do anything about widespread long-term unemployment.  But suffice it to say that the overwhelming belief among the policy elite in the flawed assumptions of Reaganomics, in spite of masses of contradictory real world evidence, guarantee continued indifference to what amounts to an ongoing depression.  Throw in the fact that voters have to be REALLY outraged for economic pain to have some power in the voting booth, and, as Krugman observes, we're in for stagnation for years and years to come.

So the American Dream is over for most of us.  At least for the foreseeable future.  We live in shitty times.  Because that's what our leaders want.

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SELECT COMMENTS I'VE MADE ON FB IN DEFENSE OF MY SOUTHERN PRIDE POST

As you may know, I've been posting some of my better Real Art stuff on facebook, as was recently the case with my anti-Southern pride screed from Thursday night.  I haven't encountered much opposition, which is a bit weird, I think, but what I've gotten has motivated some further thoughts on my part, which I think are worth posting back here.  

You can probably figure out from context what I'm responding to, but the first one needs maybe a wee bit of introduction: my buddy Doug believes that paying any attention to the Paula Deen thing at all is essentially wasted effort on what he sees as celebrity scandal mongering, which is why he simply commented with some news about an abortion bill being passed in Wisconsin.  But, like I said, the rest is pretty clear from context.

Well, Doug, these legislative initiatives don't spring from the forehead of Zeus fully grown. That is, we can fight continual policy battles or we can bury the cultural cesspool from which the notion that one human being can control another springs. Actually, we can do both, and it really bugs me that activists are tunnel-vision focused on the legislative arena without ever questioning from where these psychotic concepts come in the first place, or imagining that they can be cut off at the source. That is, Democrats continue, even in the age of Obama, to fight a rear-guard action. And it will be this way until they win the war of ideas, which is, unfortunately, a war they don't seem to realize they need to be fighting.

...

Cole, that's not really the point I'm trying to make. Indeed, many, maybe most, of the Southern pride people aren't racist in the sense that they don't like black people. I mean, I take Paula Deen at her word when she says she likes blacks just fine. Rather, it's the view that there was something honorable about the Confederacy, which, in itself, contains countless other views about the nature of reality, about the relationship between worker and business owner, about the validity of black assertions that racism is real and continues to exist, and on and on. So there's Boston racism, which is pretty straightforward, and then there's Southern pride, which is an entire system of ideas, values, and norms. Both are bad. But Southern pride infects the entire American body politic.

...

Bradley and Ronnie, you guys are completely missing the point. And this is fairly typical when the Southern pride people are called on their bullshit. Indeed, saying "there are racists in other parts of the country" is nothing but the old "Look! Over there!"

White Southern culture exists, whether you want to admit it or not. It is not the same culture one finds in Detroit or Boston. It has lines of influence, passed down from generation to generation, going all the way back to the antebellum era. It has embedded in it attitudes about property, honor, right and wrong, national unity, and yes, race. Really, what's wrong with Southern pride can be summed up easily: to celebrate the Confederacy in any way at all is to say that slavery wasn't so bad, to say that Jim Crow wasn't so bad, to say that wealth-driven aristocracy wasn't so bad, and when you're able to reduce the absolute barbarity of those two eras to "not so bad," then you're well down the road to enabling the further oppression of African Americans, indeed, all Americans who aren't privileged in the first place.

Deny it all you want, but refusing to see it doesn't render it non-existent.

...

Wow, Ronnie, you're so steeped in this Southern pride culture I'm talking about that you can't see it, like the air all around you, or a fish in the water.

First off, Chinese immigrant labor wasn't the economic foundation for a massive region of the United States. Indeed, the usage of African slave labor was on such a huge scale in the South that it inspired the Abolitionist movement in the North, which, in turn, inspired the paranoid and resentful rise of Southern culture, complete with an entire system of ideas, norms, and values, all aimed at justifying the barbaric practice of human bondage, and so strongly embraced by Southern whites that it still exists to this very day. It exists in you, in fact. Nothing like that happened out West, with the Chinese, so it's just a lousy comparison from the get-go.

And I'm not looking at this from a modern point of view. African slavery was understood, from the very beginning, in the 1600s with the Caribbean sugar trade, to be an abomination. Everyone knew this. But there was just too much money to be made. So it was done, just as capitalists do today with various destructive forms of enterprise. And once the practice finally encountered some organized and principled opposition in the form of the Abolitionist movement, that's when what had been an informal social system in the South, where whites were more loyal to their state than to their region, became the Southern way of life, justifying slavery with white supremacy, which permeated all activities.

Dude, this isn't about which races were enslaved and where. This is about the abhorrent civilization that arose in the South to justify slavery, one that did not arise elsewhere in the US, and one that should have been eradicated during Reconstruction, but wasn't. I mean, for god's sake, listen to you, man. You're rationalizing slavery by saying that blacks were "purchased." It's almost as though you don't understand what you're telling me, you're so engulfed by Southern pride blinders.

Black Americans ARE owed something. Owed a LOT, in fact. The legal and social institution known as Jim Crow only formally came to and end a half century ago, only a few years before my birth. Everyone in the South who is older than me came of age under that institution, with all the childhood psychological programming that comes with such an institution. And, even though the legal structures have "officially" ended, the oppression continues in myriad ways, the criminal justice system, urban poverty and absolute despair, a massive wealth gap, and on and on.

You do not see this because of the Southern pride culture I'm talking about. The one you refuse to admit exists. The one that controls your very thoughts.

Hopefully, the debate will continue on facebook.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie

Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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Is the South Dragging the Rest of the Nation Down?

From AlterNet:

In 1978, out of college without a job and having failed to establish Birmingham’s version of The Village Voice, I took a job as advance man for the Alabama Republican Senate candidate.

One incident that stuck with me was a visit to campaign headquarters by a young Republican adviser—I didn’t recognize his name, but I remember that he strummed a guitar while talking to us. He told us, “Don’t ever use the words ‘black’ and ‘white’ in an argument. Always say ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative.’ You’ll turn every argument about race into a political one. You do that, and race will start to disappear as an issue.”
 
And

I don’t think racism is the cardinal sin of the South, and it certainly isn’t exclusive to the South. The South’s cardinal sin is in pretending that racism didn’t cause the Civil War, and that racism doesn’t survive as a major issue.

On this point Thompson is unrelenting. “We can no longer afford to wait on the South to get its racial shit together,” he writes. “It’s time to move on, let southerners sort out their own mess free from the harassment of northern moralizers.” This is pretty much what William Faulkner wrote in more eloquent terms some 60 years ago. And, as we approach the 150th anniversary of the battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, Thompson finds plenty of Southerners who think, as one of them tells him, “We’re on the verge of a civil war.” Thompson asks, “Between North and South?” The answer: “Between conservative and liberal.”

More here.

This is why I hate on Paula Deen.  Not because she used the n-word, but because her entire view of what it means to be an American is utterly tainted by teary-eyed sentimentality for an old South that never existed.  This attitude, when multiplied by the millions of deluded white Southerners who embrace it, is why the United States is the profoundly dysfunctional nation it is today.

Southern whites don't side with big business against their own economic interests continually because they've studied neoliberalism in depth and have made rational choices about what's best for the general population and overall prosperity--indeed, as the linked essay observes, nine of the ten poorest states in the US are in the South; clearly, neoliberal policies are SCREWING Southern whites, not helping them.  Rather, white Southerners side with big business because they perceive big business as the champion of whiteness.

This cannot be understated.  The Republican Party, when it realized in the late 60s that the Democrats' embrace of civil rights gave the GOP a massive political opportunity in the South, has been doing everything it can for forty years to transmute "black versus white" into "liberal versus conservative."  Social welfare programs, for instance, enjoyed a great deal of support among white Southerners for decades until the Republicans successfully turned the symbolic face of welfare from white to black.  And "big government," which is hated by big business, because it prevents rampant exploitation of citizens and wanton destruction of the environment, became forever intermingled in the white Southern mind with what is now the antithesis of "big government," and, not so coincidentally, a traditional rallying concept for the old South, "state's rights."  Of course, the "state's rights" over which the Civil War was ostensibly fought are essentially not much more than white privilege and "freedom" to oppress and exploit workers and non-whites, instead of a Randian pro-business notion, but let's not quibble too much over the details.  After all, Southern Republicans certainly don't.  The point here is that white Southerners vote conservative because they think that means they're voting white, whether they have any conscious awareness of this or not.

And that's why Paula Deen's brand of bigotry is so extraordinarily key to understanding most everything that's wrong with America today.  She's not some weirdo backward-ass celebrity with bizarre niche attitudes about "liberal" Catholicism and Zionist conspiracies to rule the world, as with Mel Gibson.  That's relatively small scale tinfoil hat stuff in comparison.  Deen's racism, in stark contrast, her elevating of the barbaric and traitorous regime known as the Confederacy to something both honorable and desirable, is part of a massive cultural strain that relentlessly drives American politics in an ever more dangerous direction.

We'll never get off this death-ride until we start telling the truth: Southern pride is suicidal bullshit.  America tolerates it only at great risk to itself.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA!

The text for Ginsberg's poem.



The text for Jim Morrison's poem.



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Racism dead?

The US Supreme Court Thinks Racism Is Dead. What Planet Do They Live On?

From AlterNet:

First, facts that are 40 years old are still facts, and 40 years is not a long period of time when dealing with a centuries-old problem. Apartheid, whether in the US or elsewhere, is a recent phenomenon. Its direct beneficiaries and victims are still alive. Roughly one in five Americans were born after the voting rights act was passed. Deen, who was raised in the deep south, was married that year.

On the rare occasions when my six-year-old son asks questions about the civil rights era, I can point him to his grandparents, who lived through it into adulthood. Nor are its defenders part of some bygone age. Even as the lofty eulogies are prepared for an ailing Nelson Mandela we should not forget that former US vice-president Dick Cheney branded him the leader of a terrorist group in 1986 and the year before his release David Cameron went on a sanctions-busting trip paid for by pro-apartheid lobbyists.

Second, segregation has a legacy – not least because it was so recent. Quashing racist laws does not eliminate racism, only its explicit and codified enforcement. The past has consequences that directly impact the present. History does not just stop because a memory is inconvenient.

More here.

I take white Americans at their word when they tell me they believe that racism is a thing of the past.  Not that I think racism actually is a thing of the past, mind you, only that a lot of white people really do believe that such is the case.  They're totally wrong, of course, and there are butt-loads of evidence right in front of everybody's faces that these race-utopian white Americans are wrong.  I mean, considering the incarceration rate of black Americans in itself is slam dunk evidence that racism, extreme and damaging racism, is alive, well, and omnipresent in the United States today.  So there's really no need at this point to pen a screed countering such mistaken attitudes among white Americans.  They're just wrong, and that's that.

But, like I said, they believe they're right.  They really believe it.  In spite of all the damning evidence, large numbers of white Americans believe that racism no longer exists.  So what's going on here?

Well, obviously, it's complex, and I could go in a lot of directions with it.  But for my money, the biggest part of it has a lot to do with psychology, and how easy it is for human beings to allow their emotions to interfere with their intellectual processes.  In short, these white race-utopians have, very likely unconsciously, so limited their definition of the word "racism" that it removes all personal responsibility.  That is, "racism" is about how you, the individual, treat people who aren't white.  If you're willing to sit down and have a beer with a black guy, how can you be racist?  And if all your white friends are willing to share a table with black people, then all your white friends can't possibly be racist, either.  And if it seems pretty clear that most white people have no problem working, socializing, and sharing the nation with black people, why then, racism must be a thing of the past, over and done with, a relic from forty years ago.

And, bloody hell, a black guy occupying the Oval Office MUST mean that racism is done.  Case closed.  I don't care if you're black, white, brown, green or orange.  I'll have a beer with you.  (Okay, I'm well aware that there are no orange or green people.  Just stay with me on the example here.)  In my heart, I know it's wrong to dislike people just because of the color of their skin, and most everybody I know agrees with me on this, so racism is DEFINITELY over.

At least, that's how I imagine the psychology goes: white race-utopians define racism as an individual thing, and as long as they and their white associates keep up this "have a beer with" attitude, there can be no racism.  Of course, it's all a total delusion.  Racism is alive and well and omnipresent.  But if you define it in a way that excludes institutional manifestations of racism, in a way that equates racism with a white hood, and only with a white hood, then it becomes really easy to look the other way when evidence of racism is shoved in your face.  That is, if "racism is over," then problems African Americans suffer continually must necessarily be THEIR FAULT.  If you have an incredibly disproportionate number of blacks caught up in the criminal justice system, it must be because MORE BLACKS ARE CRIMINALS, not because the criminal justice system serves as the main institutional method for oppressing blacks in the US.  And so on.

Really, the whole "racism is over" attitude simply breeds more racism.  I mean, if racism is a thing of the past, it becomes much easier for whites to ask "What the hell is wrong with black people?  Why don't they just get a job?  What the hell is big-mouth Jesse Jackson going on and on about?"  So these white race-utopians walk around with their smug and self-righteous outlook, voting for politicians who routinely pass legislation that keeps black people down, the whole time being certain that they can't possibly be racist, and both perplexed and angry that blacks continue to assert that racism continues to oppress them. 

At least, I think that's what's going on.  Willful ignorance coupled with some dishonest conceptualizing as a device for avoidance of responsibility.  But like I said, there's probably a lot more to it than that.  I just think this dynamic is at the heart of it all.

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GOING OUT OF TOWN AGAIN...

...for a couple of days, so no posting again until Tuesday night.  See y'all then!

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy

Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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CHALK CIRCLE

From RT courtesy of a facebook friend:

California man faces 13 years in jail for scribbling anti-bank messages in chalk

Jeff Olson, the 40-year-old man who is being prosecuted for scrawling anti-megabank messages on sidewalks in water-soluble chalk last year now faces a 13-year jail sentence. A judge has barred his attorney from mentioning freedom of speech during trial.

According to the San Diego Reader, which reported on Tuesday that a judge had opted to prevent Olson’s attorney from "mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial,” Olson must now stand trial for on 13 counts of vandalism.

In addition to possibly spending years in jail, Olson will also be held liable for fines of up to $13,000 over the anti-big-bank slogans that were left using washable children's chalk on a sidewalk outside of three San Diego, California branches of Bank of America, the massive conglomerate that received $45 billion in interest-free loans from the US government in 2008-2009 in a bid to keep it solvent after bad bets went south. 

More here. 

And from Think Progress, courtesy of another facebook friend:

Man Chalks Pro-Health Care Message On Sidewalk, 
Gets Arrested For Writing ‘Derogatory Remark’

A health care activist in Pennsylvania was arrested Wednesday night for writing a message in sidewalk chalk protesting the governor’s decision to block health care for 700,000 residents in the state.

And

At one point, health care activist AJ Marin was arrested for writing a message to Corbett in chalk on the sidewalk: “Governor Corbett has health insurance, we should too.” According to the citation, Marin was charged with disorderly conduct for writing a “derogatory remark about the governor on the sidewalk.”

More here.

To the best of my knowledge, it is not illegal to write in chalk on a sidewalk.  Otherwise, we'd be booking kids who play hopscotch.  I mean, I could be wrong about this, but thirteen years and a $13k fine for doing so?  I think not.  Clearly, this is, in both cases, about what was written in chalk, not the writing itself.  That is, vandalism laws are being used to bust people for expressing what are apparently thought-crimes, criticizing massive banks and Republican governors.

Let there be no doubt that the judicial apparatus does not exist to do justice.  Instead, it exists to do the will of powerful and privileged elites.  The cops and courts only pretend to be on our side.  But they're not.  They never have been.  And as the plutocrats who run everything squeeze more and more blood from the stone that is the United States, it will become ever more obvious.

This really is fucked up, but also not too terribly surprising.

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Supreme Court Reluctantly But Historically Elevates Same-Sex Marriage

From AlterNet:

The Court’s majority sent the message that same-sex marriages and individuals deserve equal treatment. In the first case, it threw out a key part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), saying it was unconstitutional on equal protection grounds for the law to say that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. But it did not declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

In a second and narrower decision, the Court held that a private group did not have legal standing to defend California’s Proposition 8, a same-sex marriage ban that was overturned by a lower court. Same-sex marriages can now resume in California, making it the 13th state to recognize these marriage. Supporters in the state say that they are likely to sponsor a new ballot measure, making same-sex marriage legal, to remove the prospect of further legal fights by gay marriage opponents.

And

While the rulings are an undeniable step forward for LGBT rights, the Court’s rulings were largely on procedural grounds, legal observors noted, which limits their scope.

“The Court’s promotion of same-sex marriage is like a shotgun wedding: done with reluctance, and without the loving embrace of someone fully committed to the sacred union,” wrote Adam Winkler, a UCLA Law School professor, who said the rulings “sound like procedure is more important than people” and were reminiscent of the decisions made by the Court before the heyday of the 1960s Civil Rights era.

More here.

Okay, so today it was good news.  But man, what a week.

Anyway, fits and starts on this.  Not a massive unleashing of civil rights, but then nobody, including myself really expected that, anyway.  Actually, what I expected was that DOMA would be thrown out on state's rights grounds, which would have allowed California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 to stand.  So I'm very pleased that we got both an end to the federal law, and an end to the California law.  I mean, sure, these aren't ENORMOUS steps.  But they are consequential, nonetheless, and the gay marriage snowball continues to pick up speed, ever so slowly.  

And, historically speaking, this is still pretty fucking fast for an American civil rights movement.  Like I said, good news.

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REPUBLICANS TO AMERICA: FUCK YOU

From the Washington Post:

Supreme Court stops use of key part of Voting Rights Act

A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday invalidated a crucial component of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, ruling that Congress has not taken into account the nation’s racial progress when singling out certain states for federal oversight.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the other conservative members of the court in the majority.

The court did not strike down the law itself or the provision that calls for special scrutiny of states with a history of discrimination. But it said Congress must come up with a new formula based on current data to determine which states should be subject to the requirements.

More here.

And from the Houston Chronicle's Texas Politics Blog:

Democrats cry foul over abortion vote, changing record

Their outrage was heightened when the electronic record of the action changed the date of passage from Wednesday to Tuesday. Democrats had said the vote took place after midnight, when the session was due to end. But Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said the voting had started before midnight. The Senate still hasn’t adjourned.

“I guess when you’re determined to have a certain outcome, rules and procedures can just go by the wayside,” said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat who came to the session after her father’s funeral.

Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, said he saw the Senate journal clerk starting the vote at 12:02 a.m.

“It’s handwritten and she has it down in her little notebook,” he said. “I’ve seen it.”

Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, distributed copies of the change, showing both dates. He called the vote “a sham.”

More here.

Some things I said on facebook about this shit:

This has been the worst day in American politics since the Supreme Court gave Bush the presidency back in 2000. While we're at it, why don't we just go back to when white male property owners were the only ones who could vote? That's what the Republicans really want, isn't it? Control the uterus and smack around black and brown people. That's what it's all about.
...

I'll describe it one sentence, Lynn: Republicans in Washington and Texas just took a shit in America's mouth.
...

(Regarding the SCOTUS ruling:) Congress can't even get routine legislation, like the farm bill, or the debt ceiling, passed. There's just no way they're going to fix this. An enormous win for the (white) Republican Party, and a massive loss for democracy.

It's been a shitty day.  I don't have much else to say about it at the moment.  I mean, other than "Fuck you, Republicans."

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WORK SUCKS

Or, at least, jobs suck, for most of us, as they are currently configured.

Courtesy of Eschaton, Balloon Juice quotes the New York Times:

But here’s the surprise: the main factor in workplace discontent is not wages, benefits or hours, but the boss… The survey said there was consistent anger at management types who failed to so much as ask employees about their opinion of the job….

Then she quotes a response to the Times article from a blog called Gin & Tacos:

Business schools have spent 30 years churning out people who believe in motivation by intimidation – work hard or else we will fire you, replace you, move to Mexico, and so on. And yes, an employer certainly has a right to expect employees to fulfill their obligations. This is where we see the large gap between fulfilling the requirements of a job – i.e., doing the bare minimum – and doing a good job. “Work hard and you will get promoted / get a raise” is the natural response, but in many of our workplaces I think we discover fairly quickly that the raises aren’t coming no matter how hard we work (or they come, but with a truckload of additional burdens that vastly outweigh them).

Click here for the rest.

This dynamic is TOTALLY in play for me with my job as a restaurant server.  Indeed, when a manager is verbally abusive toward me, I generally slow down, pull back, and focus solely on my tables, and nothing else.  My thinking is "why should I give a shit about anyone except the people who are actually paying me?"  But then, this is within a context where management, as per the linked blog post, really does see their labor as totally replaceable.  It doesn't matter how good I am.  It doesn't matter that they get a college graduate, indeed, a worker with an advanced degree, for only $2.13 per hour.  It doesn't matter that I could probably do their jobs better than they could.  My opinion in the workplace is irrelevant to them.

And they could get so much more out of me, for free, if only they made an effort to make me feel like I'm an insider there!  I mean, c'mon, after five years, day in and day out.

Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that.  One of the three front-of-house managers with whom I deal I actually consider to be a good friend, and on the shifts when he's in charge, it's a totally different environment for me.  I do, in fact, work harder, go the extra mile, take on tasks that I don't have to take on, just because this guy makes me feel like I'm a valued member of the team.  The pay rate stays the same.  But my psychology toward the work is wildly different.

It would be easy to dismiss this dynamic as being individual or personality driven, or perhaps even as a failure of management technique.  And all that may very well be true.  But it cannot be denied that a dehumanizing attitude toward workers is part and parcel of how capitalism functions in this country.  We have the "labor market," where people are reduced to the status of capital asset.  We have the "race to the bottom" in terms of wages, where workers are pitted in economic competition for jobs against Chinese slave labor and Bangladeshi boys who work for pennies an hour.  I've been telling people for years, when the subject of "two weeks notice" comes up, that because we work in a "right to work" state, a sinister euphemism if ever I've heard one, which allows summary dismissal of any employee, at any time, for any reason, that workers don't owe "two weeks notice" to any employer at all.  That is, if, as workers, we're supposed to be these little capitalistic entities instead of humans, we might as well play the part.  Screw you, buttholes!  I'm out the door!

But really, I'd much prefer to be true to my own values: go to work and be excellent on a regular basis.  It's just that doing so makes me feel like such a stupid f'ng chump.

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SELECT COMMENTS I'VE MADE ON FACEBOOK 
ABOUT THE PAULA DEEN CONTROVERSY

You can probably figure out what the other commenters said from context:

Well, Deen's views are rooted in history revisionism, which glamorizes a particularly brutal and harsh institution, slavery, for the amusement of her white friends and followers. It's total Mammy and Sambo stuff, and there's no way to get around that. The real tragedy here is that I don't even think she understands why that pisses people off, or the problem it poses for the continuing issue of race relations in the US.

...

Oh, I agree. If you're of a particular age and white in the US, there's stuff programmed into your brain when you were a child, and you can't just erase it. You can, however, seek enlightenment, figure out the true racial dynamic. You know, acknowledge that the old South was a regime culturally, economically, and politically founded on the notion that the worst white man is better than the best black man, instead of getting all weepy-eyed Scarlett O'Hara about it. That's the problem with Deen. It's not that she's from an older generation. It's that she has allowed herself to hold onto notions about the world that simply aren't true, and that are damaging to the fabric of American society. Needless to say, Sambo parties are a manifestation of this.

...

The only way she can revive her career, now that her media persona is tied to Sambo parties, is to really get a handle on why her attitudes about the old South are so damaging. This requires letting go, no doubt, of some very cherished notions about her very sense of identity, which I could probably say about LOTS of white Southerners. But she needs to do this very publicly, and maybe even lead an education campaign about how black stereotypes have enabled racism for decades after the Civil Rights era. That's not going to happen, I'm sure. But, as a media brand, she's now the Sambo Woman. And that's a product that just won't sell well on national television.

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Yeah, Steven, Deen's apology, for what it's worth, very strongly indicates that she has no idea why people are pissed off, only that she understands that people are pissed off, and that she'd better say some nice things or she's fucked.

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That's why this is so interesting to me. Nostalgia for the old South, for Gone with the Wind South, is an incredibly strong cultural force among whites in the region. And that, in itself, is mondo bizarre. I mean, we're faced with the spectacle of all her supporters implicitly suggesting that Sambo parties are just fine, and because there can be no justification of such minstrelsy, emotion, bile, and gumption is all they've got. This whole controversy is exposing a particularly vile strain of American culture, which just also happens to be at the center of national politics in the form of Democrats versus Republicans on, well, everything.

That is, Deen's Sambo-waiters are cut from the same cloth as the Cadillac-driving welfare queens who are the "takers not makers" of GOP rhetoric these days. And so on.

...

That's a good question (about how to change attitudes). But before we can get an answer, I think we have to first admit the problem exists. For too long, people who know what's actually going on in this country have just shut up when white Southerners get their Confederacy on. I mean, I do it, too, for the most part, for the same reasons that exhausted you earlier today in your interactions with Deen supporters. We've got to start calling these Sambo-lovers out on their bullshit. No, the Civil War wasn't about "state's rights;" it was about slavery. No the Confederate flag isn't about "pride;" it's about celebrating a traitorous, racist regime. And so on.

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It's not simply the n-word. Rather, it's the n-word in an overall context of neo-confederate attitudes - you know, hosting Sambo parties, and apologetics for slavery - as well as an apology indicating that she has no idea what all the hubbub is about. It's not a one-off as with Michael Richards: refusing to call her out on this is the same as refusing to condemn Jim Crow or the Confederacy, or everybody today who wears the battle flag as an extraordinarily misguided symbol of "pride." That is, her whole racist thing connects with a much bigger cultural virus we've been allowing to fester since 1865.
 
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Well, I hear your point. But the deposition also comes courtesy of the media, and she's not causing controversy simply because of the deposition. For instance, the Huffington Post piece above is about an interview she did last year. But it includes video of her actually saying the things that are in the article. So that's something, too.

I mean, as the communist former Poet Laureate of the State of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka once said when pressed on his support of the Soviet Union, "Like you were there, man." That is, you have a good point: none of us know Paula Deen, and none of us can stare into her soul to see what she's about. All we have is her media persona that we can judge, some of which is carefully crafted by Deen herself, and some of which is crafted by reporters who offer accounts of what she and others have said about Deen the person. So none of us know the actual person.

But having said that, and it might be unfair for me to make this assumption, I simply figured that everybody gets that I'm only criticizing my understanding of her media persona, this entertainment product that looks and sounds just like the human being Paula Deen, but is, in fact, an important brand for the Food Network.

While nobody has died or been injured as a result of the controversy now surrounding this media product known as Paula Deen, the accusations raised against her are serious and consequential in that, as an apparent supporter of the historical revisionism that attempts to paint the brutal white supremacist regime known as the Confederacy in a much more sympathetic light, she lends institutional credibility, as well as the kind of credibility that goes with fame, to a point of view that really does damage American lives. That is, her Sambo style waiters are coming from the same evil place where we find the fictional Cadillac driving welfare queens which have been a major part of the political rhetoric over the years aimed at destroying important social programs for the poor. And this rhetoric has been very successful.

Now, I don't think she's doing this on purpose. I don't think she understands the ramifications of her statements and views. To her, it's all just like Gone with the Wind. But, of course, Gone with the Wind is a work of fiction - the old South was never like that at all - and it portrays the KKK as heroes who save white women from being raped by animalistic black men, when really it was black men who needed saving from the Klan and angry lynch mobs and vile segregationists.

So the overall point is that this isn't like one's slightly racist, but good-hearted, elderly aunt or grandmother. Deen, or, at least, her media persona, has what amounts to a megaphone. Her views, statements, and actions are all amplified by her status as media figure. So she has a lot more responsibility than just some older woman we might know. Clearly, she has failed this responsibility by, at the very least, not staying ahead of the changing narrative associated with her media persona. That is, she seems to be totally clueless that her apparent neo-confederate attitudes are socially damaging, offensive, and very unpopular outside the South. Hell, they're unpopular in the South if you're a white liberal or black.

But I do think this is far more complicated than simple gossip. There are some very serious issues involved here.

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Paula Deen Defended Southern Attitude Towards Race In Fall 2012 

From Huffington Post:

Though she ultimately says that the abolition of slavery was a "terrific change," she also takes some time to defend the practice. She says, back then, "black folk were such integral part of our lives, they were like our family," and, for that reason, "we didn't see ourselves as being prejudiced." (The first person plural here raises the question: did Paula Deen herself live in the Antebellum South? Is she a vampire?) It's also worth noting that she takes care not to refer to slaves as "slaves." She generally calls them "these people" or "workers."

And her defense of contemporary race relations is just as bizarre. She thinks the race relations in the South are "good... pretty good." OK. "It will take a long time for it to completely be gone. If it'll ever be gone." Fine. But here's where it starts to get weird. "We're all prejudiced against one thing or another," she continues. "I think black people feel the same prejudice that white people feel." Hmm...

More here.

What's really interesting to me is that this is no Michael Richards n-word incident.  As best as I've ever been able to tell, Richards is intellectually anti-racist, but in a stupid and weak moment let loose with some social programming that was embedded in his brain's wiring when he was young.  It was wrong, to be sure, and he seems to have been suitably horrified by his own behavior.  

But Deen is different.  Her racial language over the years seems to have been quite conscious, and part of an overall worldview which glamorizes the old South fictionally portrayed in Gone With the Wind and elsewhere.  That is, she wants to host Sambo parties for the amusement of her white friends and followers because she has great nostalgia for Jim Crow and the antebellum South.  You know, the cultural regime which had at its foundation the notion that the most despicable, pathetic, and rotten white man is always better than the most brilliant, selfless, and humane black man.

Clearly, she has no idea why these attitudes are as damaging to US society as it is to long for the era when a husband could not be criminally charged with raping his wife.  For that matter, her supporters don't get it, either--a facbook fan page created specifically to show support in the wake of the racism allegations against her, has gotten nearly 200,000 "likes" in a twenty four hour period.  

In short, this controversy points directly toward a particularly vile strain of American culture.  Deen's Sambo-waiters are cut from the same cloth as the Cadillac-driving welfare queens who are the "takers not makers" which figure so prominently in GOP rhetoric these days.  I'm sure she didn't mean to do it, but her unrepentant attitudes about the old South are effectively exposing the massive-but-ignored cultural rift in this country driving a great deal of our national politics.  I guess we can be thankful for that, at least.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie

Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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Russ Tice, Bush-Era Whistleblower, Claims NSA Ordered Wiretap Of Barack Obama In 2004 

From the Huffington Post:

Speaking on "The Boiling Frogs Show," Tice claimed the intelligence community had ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.

"Here's the big one ... this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois," he said. "You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It's a big white house in Washington, D.C. That's who they went after, and that's the president of the United States now."

More here.

The point is that, once you invest an agency with such power, it's going to use it, whether it's legal or not.  The NSA is currently insisting to representatives in the House that they don't actually listen to phone calls, but FBI Director Mueller flatly rejects that, claiming that his agency has already gotten access to recorded conversations handed over by the NSA.  And, for that matter, NSA Director Alexander isn't even doing that good of a job lying about it.  It was pretty bad when the Patriot Act ostensibly authorized all this Orwellian shit, but that was years ago, and the surveillance state has had plenty of time to stretch out and do its thing.

That is, it all appears to be institutionally entrenched now, and both growing and deepening its roots as each day goes by.  There's just not enough outrage, not in Washington, not on Main Street, to shut this all down.  It's only going to get worse.  Will there come a time when I have to think twice about what I say on the internet?  If so, by then it will be too late to do anything about it.

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THE STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE OF THE MONTH IS...

...evil Sulu from the mirror universe!

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Gov. Bobby Jindal explains what 'the left wants'

Daily Kos excerpts an op-ed piece written by my governor:

"Because the left wants: The government to explode; to pay everyone; to hire everyone; they believe that money grows on trees; the earth is flat; the industrial age, factory-style government is a cool new thing; debts don’t have to be repaid; people of faith are ignorant and uneducated; unborn babies don’t matter; pornography is fine; traditional marriage is discriminatory; 32 oz. sodas are evil; red meat should be rationed; rich people are evil unless they are from Hollywood or are liberal Democrats; the Israelis are unreasonable; trans-fat must be stopped; kids trapped in failing schools should be patient; wild weather is a new thing; moral standards are passé; government run health care is high quality; the IRS should violate our constitutional rights; reporters should be spied on; Benghazi was handled well; the Second Amendment is outdated; and the First one has some problems too."

More here.

And, of course, the writers at Daily Kos then go on to excoriate Jindal's bullshit.  But I figured I ought to try my hand at this, myself.

1. No, the left does not want the government to explode.  This is, in fact, what conservatives ACTUALLY TRY TO DO, themselves, when they obstruct important business in Congress, like, you know, paying our debts.

2. No, the left does not want government to pay everyone.  Nor does the left want the government to hire everyone.  The left does, however, want everyone who wants a job to have one, and if the private sector is unwilling to provide those jobs, the public sector needs to pick up the slack.  The left also understands that a just society ought not allow people to starve in the streets, which means that assistance to the victims of capitalism must be provided.

3. No, the left does not believe that money grows on trees.

4. No, the left does not believe that the Earth is flat.

5. No, the left does not think that "the industrial age, factory-style government is a cool new thing."  I feel pretty sure about this because I'm a leftist, and I have no idea what the hell Jindal's talking about here.

6. The left does, in fact, believe that debts ought to be repaid.

7. No, the left does not believe that people of faith are ignorant and uneducated.  Perhaps Jindal is confusing the left with atheists who are also assholes.  Also, it is undeniable that some people of faith are ignorant and uneducated, just as some of the faithless are ignorant and uneducated.  But all of them?  Certainly not.  Indeed, some of the most effective and accomplished leftists in history have been people of faith: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Daniel Berrigan, Oscar Romero, Jesus, and on and on.

8. Is an "unborn baby" supposed to be a fetus?  Again, I'm pretty sure that this is a concept that the left thinks is VERY important.  But really, it's the born babies that take priority with the left because, you know, they're living human beings who need devotion, nurturing, and care.  If only conservatives cared about the born babies, too.

9. The left thinks only some pornography is fine.  But the left also has big problems with porn that blatantly exploits and oppresses women.  Indeed, free speech leftists have debated feminist leftists on the down low about this for years.  And even the free speech leftists don't advocate porn per se, but rather advocate for first amendment freedom.  Of course, as a leftist, I must admit that the porn I personally like is just fine.  But not the porn I don't like.

10. The left does not think traditional marriage is discriminatory.  Rather, the left thinks denying gays and lesbians the right to marry their own gender is discriminatory, which it is.

11. No, the left does not think 32 oz. sodas are evil.  Rather, they think they're fattening.  And really it's only Bloomberg, a conservative businessman, who's actually trying to do anything about it.  I drink Coke all day long, myself, but I weigh twenty pounds less than I did in high school.  Go figure.

12. No, the left does not think red meat should be rationed.  What the hell is Jindal talking about here?  Oh yeah, it's worth observing that I eat hamburgers, too.

13. No, the left does not think rich people are evil unless they're Hollywood liberals or rich Democrats.  Actually, this is kind of nuanced.  Some rich people are definitely not evil, but certainly benefit HEAVILY from an evil economic system.  Other rich people are quite evil, though, and this includes rich Democrats.  Also, Hollywood liberals aren't liberal.  Neither are rich Democrats.  It's just a role they play on television.

14. The left thinks that Israel, like all nation states, is both unreasonable and reasonable, depending on the issue.

15. No, the left does not think trans-fat should be stopped, although that's probably a good idea.  I think Jindal is confusing the left with doctors on this issue.

16. No, the left does not believe that kids trapped in failing schools should be patient.  Again, I have no idea what the hell Jindal is talking about here.

17. No, the left does not think that wild weather is a new thing.  But the left does accept the very strong scientific consensus that global warming is man made and that it causes a lot of the wild weather we've been seeing in recent years, and that if we don't do something right now to reverse course there will be hell to pay for our children.

18. No, the left does not believe that "moral standards are passé."  Indeed, morality is why we're leftists.  It's just that the left prefers a moral code that uplifts humanity, instead of a moral code that justifies screwing humanity over for personal gain.

19. No, the left does not believe that "government run health care is high quality."  The left, instead, believes that sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.  The bottom line is that having health care is amazingly better for Americans than not having health care.  The trick is to make sure that government provided health care, if we're ever fortunate enough to actually get it, is good stuff.  You know, like in Canada.  Or Cuba.

20. No, the left does not think that "the IRS should violate our constitutional rights."  Okay, this is just getting progressively weirder.  The left pretty much always believes that no government agency at all should violate our constitutional rights.  And, again, what the hell is Jindal talking about?  I thought violating constitutional rights is a right-wing thing.  Could it possibly be that I'm the one who's confused and deluded?  Naaaahhhhh!

21. I'm also pretty sure that the left doesn't believe that reporters should be spied on.  This, too, is pretty damned weird: if the news media are liberal, which they aren't, but just bear with me on this, then why would liberals want the government to oppress the "liberal media"?  Is it too soon to start making Orwellian references to Jindal's doublethink?

22. No, the left does not think Benghazi was handled well.  It's just that the left tends to understand the difference between a big screw up and a scandal.

23. Okay, I'll grant this one and only this one: the left does, in fact, think that the second amendment is outdated.  Because it is.  Shay's Rebellion was a couple of centuries ago, after all.

24. Finally, the left, in fact, LOVES the first amendment.  You know, freedom of the press for all that "liberal media" out there, freedom of assembly for Occupy Wall Street and anti-war demonstrations, the establishment clause for preventing religious indoctrination in the schools, and freedom of speech so we can tell such important truths such as Bobby Jindal is either a total f-tard or a pathological liar, or both, but if he's the great white hope for the GOP, then the left can rest easy.

You know, if conservatives actually think that this is what the left is all about, it explains a lot of the success I've had in my facebook discussions with conservative friends: they've never heard or considered most of the ideas that I bring up.  Could it possibly be that all we have, when we get right down to it, is nothing but a communication problem?  If that's the case, we're much closer to solving our nation's problems than seems apparent.

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How The American University was Killed, in Five Easy Steps

 From the Homeless Adjunct courtesy of Eschaton:

Under the guise of many “conflicts”, such as budget struggles, or quotas, de-funding was consistently the result. This funding argument also was used to re-shape the kind of course offerings and curriculum focus found on campuses. Victoria writes, “Attacks on humanities curriculums, political correctness, and affirmative action shifted the conversation on public universities to the right, creating a climate of skepticism around state funded schools. State budget debates became platforms for conservatives to argue why certain disciplines such as sociology, history, anthropology, minority studies, language, and gender studies should be de-funded…” on one hand, through the argument that they were not offering students the “practical” skills needed for the job market — which was a powerful way to increase emphasis on what now is seen as vocational focus rather than actual higher education, and to de-value those very courses that trained and expanded the mind, developed a more complete human being, a more actively intelligent person and involved citizen. Another argument used to attack the humanities was “…their so-called promotion of anti-establishment sentiment. Gradually, these arguments translated into real- and often deep- cuts into the budgets of state university systems,” especially in those most undesirable areas that the establishment found to run counter to their ability to control the population’s thoughts and behavior. The idea of “manufactured consent” should be talked about here – because if you remove the classes and the disciplines that are the strongest in their ability to develop higher level intellectual rigor, the result is a more easily manipulated citizenry, less capable of deep interrogation and investigation of the establishment “message”.

More here.

Probably the biggest impediment to explaining the decline of American civilization is that doing so involves discussing gigantic institutions and systems which are accompanied by assumptions, both true and false, that most of us take for granted.  That is, most of these conversations about "what's wrong with America" are embedded with ideas that nobody really questions.  So, for instance, we talk about how the government is "going broke," which necessitates "spending cuts" to important social programs, but observing that the vast amount of resources and wealth which continue to be under the nation's control might be harnessed to address this "fiscal crisis" is such an out-of-bounds idea that people just look at you funny when you make the assertion, and then go on with the discussion as though you had said nothing.  Going off script to address the things that people don't usually address is an invitation to obscurity, whether you're right or wrong.  Emperor's new clothes, and all.

This is exactly what's happening with what serves for public discourse on the state of university education in the US these days.  When you say something, as the linked essay does, like this, "Within one generation, in five easy steps, not only have the scholars and intellectuals of the country been silenced and nearly wiped out, but the entire institution has been hijacked, and recreated as a machine through which future generations will ALL be impoverished, indebted and silenced," you will very likely be perceived, and immediately dismissed, as a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy nut.  There are just too many unquestioned assumptions that need to be addressed in order to take such an assertion seriously, and most people simply won't do the intellectual work of revisiting those things they think they already know.

All of this is, of course, extremely ironic because revisiting assumptions and questioning beliefs are some of the intellectual values absorbed and embraced by university educated Americans a generation ago.  Not so much today.  Which kind of proves the point.

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