"Comrades and friends, let us join hands for the new year in the great work before us."

"Christ gave his blood to enable the churches and department stores to do better business. If, on the right hand of the Heavenly Father, he does not swear and curse over this success to shock the very angels, his heart is a lamb’s indeed. ... Comrades and friends, let us join hands for the new year in the great work before us. The time has never been more ripe. The present is fast nearing its doom. Out of the chaos the future emerges in harmony and beauty."
- Emma Goldman, from "The New Year,"
Mother Earth (January 1912)

"For there is nothing of which the ordinary American man and woman are more proud than of their magnates."

"The American Magnate," from The Saturday Review, 21 February 1903:

For there is nothing of which the ordinary American man and woman are more proud than of their magnates. They are an ideal for them in default of anything better; and though the avenues of success are being rapidly closed by the monopoly of the magnates little people go on dreaming that to them also it may be permitted in due time to become magnates. It is a gamble in which outsiders take part with as little chance of drawing a prize as our multitudes of backers of horses have of making fortunes on the turf. As the bookmaker in England the magnate in America is popular. Mr. Carnegie when he preaches the "Gospel of Wealth" preaches to uncritical hearers who ask no awkward questions; but naively accept the doctrine that with all the virtues a man may, like himself, secure a sum of fifty millions, which will represent the difference between himself and the idle apprentices of society. Mr. Rockefeller at Sunday School becomes a symbolist, and the magnate is presented to the young Christian American under the guise of the "American Beauty rose, which can be produced in the splendour and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God ".

[...]

Bellamy and the "Looking Backwards" stage has been passed, and what the Americans like to have at present is something like this of a Professor John B. Clark who describes the " Society of the Future" as one "which will present a condition of vast and evergrowing inequality. The rich will continually grow richer, and the multi-millionaires will approach the billion dollar standard. If an earthly Eden is to come through competition, it will come not in spite of, but by means of, an enormous increase of inequality of outward possessions ". And a Professor Peck exalting the magnates for the great things they have done, and prophesying their victory over all lesser fry, thus expresses his scorn for those who depreciate the trusts, the creation of the magnates. "Timid minds which are appalled rather than inspired by the vastness and magnificence of the whole thing shrink back and croak puling prophecies of evil. They cannot rise to the greatness of it all because they lack the dauntless courage of the typical American..."

"The idealists, and sociologists, and labour law reformers, and all who were on moral and ethical grounds discontented have had their innings in America. They made a great stir some years ago; but in one way and another they have been relegated to the shadows cast by the magnates, and there they seem likely to remain."
- From "The American Magnate"

"The reason why male privilege is so insidious is because of the insistance that it doesn't exist in the first place."

[source]

Harris O'Malley on geek culture, which has a lot to learn (or unlearn) when it comes to representing women in video games:

The reason why male privilege is so insidious is because of the insistance that it doesn't exist in the first place. That willful ignorance is key in keeping it in place; by pretending that the issue doesn't exist, it is that much easier to ensure that nothing ever changes.

Geek society prides itself on being explicitly counter-culture; nerds will crow about how, as a society, they're better than the others who exclude them. They'll insist that they're more egalitarian; geeks hold tight to the belief that geek culture is a meritocracy, where concepts of agism, sexism and racism simply don't exist the way it does elsewhere. And yet, even a cursory examination will demonstrate that this isn't true.

And yet geeks will cling to this illusion while simultaneously refusing to address the matters that make it so unattractive to women and minorities. They will insist that they treat women exactly the same as they treat guys – all the while ignoring the fact that their behavior is what's making the women uncomfortable and feeling unwelcome in the first place. They will find one girl in their immediate community who will say that she's not offended and use her as the "proof" that nobody else is allowed to be offended.

Changing this prevailing attitude starts with the individual. Call it part of learning to be a better person; being willing to examine your own attitudes and behaviors and to be ruthlessly honest about the benefits you get from being a white male in fandom is the first step. Waving your hands and pretending that there isn't a problem is a part of the attitude that makes women feel unwelcome in fandom and serves as the barrier to entry to geeky pursuits that she might otherwise enjoy.

Bringing the spotlight onto the concept of male privilege as it exists in nerd culture is the first step in making it more welcoming of diversity, especially women.

(h/t The Becker Blog)

"If they looked at the world like public servants, and not like corporate executives...."

[source]

Matt Taibbi:

Geithner seems really to believe that if fraud were aggressively policed, and the world made aware of the incredible extent of the illegality in our markets, that international confidence in the American financial sector would plummet and our economy would suffer – and suffer, incidentally, on Barack Obama’s watch.

Better, apparently, the Band-Aid the problem now, and let the real mess happen later on, on someone else’s watch, or at least in a second term, when there’s no need to worry about re-election.

Of course, this is exactly the wrong way to go about things. If Geithner and Obama really wanted to convince the world that America’s markets weren’t broken, they would effectively police fraud, and by extension prove to everybody that at the very least, our regulatory system is not broken.

[...]

The problem with companies like Lehman and Enron is that their executives always think they can paper over illegalities by committing more crimes, when in fact all they’re usually doing is snowballing the problem so completely out of control that there’s no longer any chance of fixing things, thereby killing the only chance for survival they ever had.

This is exactly what Obama and Geithner are doing now. By continually lying about the extent of the country’s corruption problems, they’re adding fraud to fraud and raising such a great bonfire of lies that they probably won’t ever be able to fix the underlying mess.

If they looked at the world like public servants, and not like corporate executives, they’d understand that the only way out is to come clean. That they don’t look at things that way should tell people quite a lot.

"When I was young I thought cops were cool."

Nicholas K. Peart:

Here are a few other facts: last year, the N.Y.P.D. recorded more than 600,000 stops; 84 percent of those stopped were blacks or Latinos. Police are far more likely to use force when stopping blacks or Latinos than whites. In half the stops police cite the vague “furtive movements” as the reason for the stop. Maybe black and brown people just look more furtive, whatever that means. These stops are part of a larger, more widespread problem — a racially discriminatory system of stop-and-frisk in the N.Y.P.D. The police use the excuse that they’re fighting crime to continue the practice, but no one has ever actually proved that it reduces crime or makes the city safer. Those of us who live in the neighborhoods where stop-and-frisks are a basic fact of daily life don’t feel safer as a result.

We need change. When I was young I thought cops were cool. They had a respectable and honorable job to keep people safe and fight crime. Now, I think their tactics are unfair and they abuse their authority. The police should consider the consequences of a generation of young people who want nothing to do with them — distrust, alienation and more crime.

[...]

For young people in my neighborhood, getting stopped and frisked is a rite of passage. We expect the police to jump us at any moment. We know the rules: don’t run and don’t try to explain, because speaking up for yourself might get you arrested or worse. And we all feel the same way — degraded, harassed, violated and criminalized because we’re black or Latino. Have I been stopped more than the average young black person? I don’t know, but I look like a zillion other people on the street. And we’re all just trying to live our lives.

"Now our houses they sag with sorrow of tomorrow's fate bestowed."

The Rag Blog:

The Gourds came out this fall with a highly praised and historically resonant Vanguard release, Old Mad Joy. They have four fine singers and songwriters and an astonishing facility with an array of instruments that include acoustic and bass and electric guitar, mandolin, accordion, violin, piano and organ, and drums. They blend strains and echoes of gospel, rock, blues, country, bluegrass, Cajun, even barbershop harmony -- sometimes all of that blended in one song.

The war that never happened

N.Y. Times (Andrea Bruce):

“We don’t put official paperwork in the trash,” said the commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas Richardson, at the meeting at the American Embassy in Baghdad.

The documents were piled in military trailers and hauled to the junkyard by an Iraqi contractor who was trying to sell off the surplus from American bases, the junkyard attendant said. The attendant said he had no idea what any of the documents were about, only that they were important to the Americans.

He said that over the course of several weeks he had burned dozens and dozens of binders, turning more untold stories about the war into ash.

“What can we do with them?” the attendant said. “These things are worthless to us, but we understand they are important and it is better to burn them to protect the Americans. If they are leaving, it must mean their work here is done.”

Forget about it. It didn't happen. It's not worth thinking about. It's ephemeral. It's over. Better to look forward. New conflicts await. News wars from which we will learn nothing and about which we will feel nothing except pride in our troops. Bring on the military parades. Speechify about sacrifice and courage and honor. It's what we do best.

"All too often, police (and U.S. soldiers as well) are viewed by a large percent of the general public as selfless heroes, noble souls."

Phil Rockstroh:

All too often, police (and U.S. soldiers as well) are viewed by a large percent of the general public as selfless heroes, noble souls, protecting life and liberty. And no matter how much evidence accumulates to the contrary, this image holds.

How is it that so many can cling to the illusion that cops and soldiers — grownups, armed with deadly weaponry, and who have shown themselves willing to engage in acts of state sanctioned violence and oppression — are innocent victims of circumstance? Have we, in this nation, lost the concept of free will?

How did the perspective of a people become so upside down that heavily armed, body armor-enswathed men and women wearing uniforms of state power are viewed as blameless innocents while those they perpetrate brutality against are somehow regarded as the aggressors in the situation…deserving of the violence inflicted upon them?

"Americans at the 95th income percentile or higher can expect to live nine years longer than those at the 10th percentile or lower."

Elizabeth Gudrais:

There is little question that it is bad for one’s health to be poor. Americans at the 95th income percentile or higher can expect to live nine years longer than those at the 10th percentile or lower. The poor are more likely to develop illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and cancer, and there is evidence that relative deprivation and the stress it engenders are involved. When high inequality and rising top incomes shift society’s accepted standards of living upward, it seems that people experience deprivation even when they have adequate food, clothing, and shelter.

[...]

The excesses of the Gilded Age led, in the decades that followed, to a backlash in the form of the minimum wage and other labor laws to protect workers, business and financial-market regulation to protect consumers, social safety-net programs—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid—and infrastructure investment to benefit all. But as the United States moves from a period of relatively balanced income distribution back into higher inequality, it remains to be seen whether these twentieth-century developments will enable the country to escape the problems that often accompany high inequality.

"Buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs. O Baker Farm!"

Cornelius Browne:

Thoreau talks of an Irish immigrant drawn to the dream of America as the land of the golden goose, where butter, bread, and money are plentiful. Although denied these things, he still dreams of potential access to material wealth, to things. Thoreau counters, ‘‘But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.’’ Thoreau’s retreat into a life of physical simplicity and mental complexity is an act that has great potential to undermine the structures that he understands as threats to ways of living that exercise the mind and respect the integrity of all life within and around it. Americans’ insatiable appetite for material things, the culture of consumption, does not contribute to a richer life; on the contrary, it contributes to a government that condones slavery and wages a war of aggression on Mexico.

Thoreau:

I tried to help him with my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in a month or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his system, — and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he had rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.

[...]

I told him, that as he worked so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he might think that I was dressed like a gentleman, (which, however, was not the case,) and in an hour or two, without labor, but as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as many fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough money to support me a week. If he and his family would live simply, they might all go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amusement. John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms a-kimbo, and both appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough to begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to make their port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail; — thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle.

"In the end we can look back on our lives and remember all the great shows we watched on television; the great virtual escape from alienation."

MWC News:

The values and ethics of the most dominant forces have a tendency to find their way to the majority. If the individual is valued not as a mother or father, not as a friend or lover, not as a human being, but instead is valued as an object of work and not valued in terms of use value but instead in terms of exchange value, this will have a significant impact on the identity of the individual. Further, the outward display of exchange value may become the highest priority. Status symbols such as new cars and big homes come to represent ‘who I am’ replacing substantial qualities such as kindness, community spirit or intelligence in work. The world of substantial human contact is reduced and the world of facades and masks take over. The world of shared subjectivity is replaced with a world of crass objectification.

Popular and mainstream media contribute to instilling and propping up values that otherwise would be suggestive of psychopathology. They worship idols with glib and superficial charm, self centered ego-maniacs, economic parasites, blatant liars, con artists, and so on. We learn to worship the Trumps, the Murdochs, the self serving psychopaths, the merchants and the movie stars.

The impact of capitalism on our individual identity affects us directly thorough the organization of the work process and through the larger cultural milieu as well. And it is through the formation of identity that we develop out ideological sense of values and priorities.

In this process, we learn to sacrifice our lives to acquire more stuff and better stuff than those around us. We aspire to be like those at the top of the heap. We spend our lives housed in our suburban tombs and rather than living life, we watch television. We virtually live our virtual lives and are alienated from our work, our peers and all too often, from our families and ourselves. Too blind to see our malaise, too brainwashed within the cult of capitalism, we push our children to do exactly the same thing.

And in the end we can look back on our lives and remember all the great shows we watched on television; the great virtual escape from alienation.

To go with that, a C-Realm interview with Duncan Crary, who is building community spirit in Troy, New York.

"Capitalism is ... a religion which offers not the reform of existence but its complete destruction."

"This is a cult that engenders blame. Capitalism is ... the first case of a blaming, rather than a repenting cult."
- Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin, from "Capitalism as Religion" (1921):

Capitalism is the celebration of a cult sans rêve et sans merci (without dream or mercy). There are no “weekdays.” There is no day that is not a feast day, in the terrible sense that all its sacred pomp is unfolded before us; each day commands the utter fealty of each worshipper.

[...]

Capitalism is entirely without precedent, in that it is a religion which offers not the reform of existence but its complete destruction. It is the expansion of despair, until despair becomes a religious state of the world in the hope that this will lead to salvation.”

Harvey Cox in The Atlantic (March 1999):

At the apex of any theological system, of course, is its doctrine of God. In the new theology this celestial pinnacle is occupied by The Market, which I capitalize to signify both the mystery that enshrouds it and the reverence it inspires in business folk.

[...]

Divine omnipotence means the capacity to define what is real. It is the power to make something out of nothing and nothing out of something. The willed-but-not-yet-achieved omnipotence of The Market means that there is no conceivable limit to its inexorable ability to convert creation into commodities.

[...]

A Japanese Zen master once said to his disciples as he was dying, "I have learned only one thing in life: how much is enough." He would find no niche in the chapel of The Market, for whom the First Commandment is "There is never enough."

Obama makes James Inhofe very, very, very happy

If Obama thinks it's essential to please his Republican colleagues, he's succeeding admirably.

"I am making this announcement from Washington D.C., where I am confident the only person left talking about global warming is me. The message from the Washington to the U.N. delegates in South Africa is this, we could not be any clearer: You are being ignored."
- James Inhofe

But let's not forget the moment when Obama sealed the nomination for president and said:

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

(h/t Doug Henwood)

Who needs Jesus when Capitalism is our saviour?

Jason Drew thinks capitalism will save the world from climate change:

It’s a business world. It’s capitalism. We need people to buy our goods. If people don’t buy my goods, I haven’t got a business. So, therefore, we need to save those things. Two, three, four hundred thousand people in the Maldives, they all buy iPads, Coca-Cola, all the products we know. If they don’t exist anymore, the market’s gone. This is about market economics.

Is there any virtue that capitalism doesn't have?

"Why do they hate women so much..."

A N.Y. Times commenter:

Disgusting and humiliating.
The pregnancy and childbirth carry many more risks than taking this pill!
The girl who cannot get Plan B WILL NOT go to the doctor, because it's too much hassle and she hopes she didn't get pregnant anyway, or because she has no insurance, or because she is illegally in this country, or because she has no money to pay for doctor visit. So she will end up pregnant and devastated by it.
It all just pains me. Why do they hate women so much...

Another N.Y. Times commenter:

Mr. Obama, why are you continuing the war on science? I voted for you because I thought you believed in rational thought and logic. I voted for you because I thought you had the courage to stand by your convictions. I knew that you had gone thorugh a period of intense thought on the question of abortion, but I never thought you would ignore science.

Stop trying to appease the Republicans. They won't like you, no matter what you do. Instead, try to appase Democrats. You might be able to win us back, but you will *never* win the Republicans over.

"Moving beyond capitalism and the rule of corporate power and its machinery of profit making."

Do you do the Extraenvironmentalist? I hope so. This weeks episode is with David McNally, author of Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance.

From the book reviews:

"In this book, McNally confirms – once again – his standing as one of the world's leading Marxist scholars of capitalism. For a scholarly, in depth analysis of our current crisis that never loses sight of its political implications (for them and for us), expressed in a language that leaves no reader behind, there is simply no better place to go."
--Bertell Ollman, Professor, Department of Politics, NYU, and author of Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method

Bye Bye, Mr. Pizza Pie!

[source]

"It is so easy to lose personal freshness."
- Samuel Beckett, Murphy

"Americans seem to have lost the capacity to think seriously about the structure of their own society."

Lawrence Goodwyn, from The Populist Moment (1978), p. 315-322:

Americans seem to have lost the capacity to think seriously about the structure of their own society. Words like 'inevitability,' 'efficiency,' and 'modernization' are passively accepted as the operative explanations for the increasingly hierarchical nature of contemporary life.

[...]

Inexorably, the consolidation of economic power in corporate America has shaped an entirely new political landscape, one in which the agenda of possible democratic actions has shrunk significantly. Modern politics takes place wholly within the narrowed boundaries of the corporate state. In most circles, it is now considered bad manners to venture outside these boundaries. While most Americans do not venture, they also do not celebrate the limits.

[...]

Today, the values and the sheer power of corporate America pinch in the horizons of millions of obsequious corporate employees, tower over every American legislature, state and national, determine the modes and style of mass communications and mass education, fashion American foreign policy around the globe, and shape the rules of the American political process itself. Self-evidently, corporate values define modern American culture.

"Modern politics takes place wholly within the narrowed boundaries of the corporate state. In most circles, it is now considered bad manners to venture outside these boundaries."
- Lawrence Goodwyn

(h/t Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund)

"A serious shortage of women."

Broadsnark:

I moseyed over to Occupy K Street last night for the general assembly and the action committee meeting. Not much to say about the GA – except maybe to mention that there was a serious shortage of women. Of the two that spoke, one offered to take notes and the other was reporting back from the committee that cleans and does dishes. I’ll let you make your own comments.