Thanks for your patience, ladies and gents. After moving my sites to a new host and moving my ass to a new house, I'm finally settled enough to start addressing you supposedly "real" people out there on the 'net. Social Memory Complex should be returning to its regular schedule of ranting, meandering, and potlickin' good political economic social cultural analysis. Or at least what passes for it here.
In other news:
- I'm beginning to set my studio back up and start recording the asskicking, 6th density electronica you all have come to
expect forget about. - Some compadres of mine whose company I share commenting on Right Thinking Girl have established a blog on which to vent. Check it out!
In the inaugural post on a new blog, Wrong Thinking Girl, I attack conservativism's disregard for the full scope of the human experience through the prism of the death penalty debate:
Here's the point: society will always have frontiers of fear and misunderstanding, and the deepest abyss of the human heart may always be unknowable. But extinguishing life doesn't remedy anything - it only continues the pointless violence. It does this, furthermore, by empowering the biggest killer by far in human history. Death is not a currency with which to pay back a debt, nor is it a mechanism for teaching a lesson. By promoting the death penalty, RTG is simply showing that matters of human interest are simply too complex to be dealt with in a thoughtful manner and must therefore be swept from the healthy mind. We'd do better to ponder our own weaknesses and savagery - especially with regards to the state - than to simply isolate cases where human nature has failed us and purge these symptoms of a deeper collective problem.
Read more here.
NOTE: If you tried to email me within the past day or two, your email probably got lost during the switch. Please resend, as my 6thdensity.net account is working once more. Thank you.
The Social Memory Complex blog has been moved to Dreamhost. Thanks, Jim, for suggesting them - they look like the perfect solution for me.
I'm going to have a lot of stuff to write about very soon, but right now I need to make sure my other domains are purring along, then we'll be set! Also, I'm in the middle of moving to a new house so bear with me.
Feel free to post comments again!
Just wanted to let y'all know that it's not just my laziness that has prevented me from blogging. I'm currently in the process of moving from ISB Hosting to a new server. Matt has been very generous and helpful for the past two years helping me run 6thdensity.net and my other sites, but now he's getting out of the business and it's time to move on. So please refrain from posting comments here until I give the all clear that it's ok - as of now, no new activity will be registering since I'm moving the Wordpress DB to the new host.
In 1997 I had been back in American for 6 months. My year in Germany as an exchange student with the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program had kick started a personal inquiry into political affairs. Say what you will about social democrats, but when they are given the full reins of government they can give you a really warm, fuzzy feeling about creating a progressive, inclusive, proto-utopian society. It's no wonder that their ideology attracts youthful idealism, finding outlets for surplus angst in the latest government program or initiative. The idea that human nature can be fully and productively harnessed if we can just get the right planning in place is seductive.
My participation in a program of such breadth and variety - a year in a foreign country, paid in full! - convinced me that international relations and diplomacy were where the action was. I wanted to be a player in a system that, while it didn't make sense completely, could at least be made more humane and logical. And I don't deny that I was drawn to the glamor and bourgeois formality of the whole thing. Everybody wants to be upper middle class, liberal, and sophisticated, don't they?
So as I completed my senior year of American high school (another story of depressing institutional despair, having just come from an enlightened country where I could drink beer and go to town on my school lunch break) I was becoming more interested in intellectual endeavors. My high school was the only in Virginia that was offering a new philosophy course, taught by an English teacher I didn't know well but about whom I'd heard. My friends said they enjoyed the class, so I decided to sign up and expand my horizons.
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I'm blogging from the Gosport Arts Festival in Portsmouth, VA. While Tasha is setting up her booth, I'll give you the goods on stuff. Let's go down the list:
- Tasha won an award for distinction at this show! The $500 prize will help out a lot, and it's good that Tasha's massive improvement in her work was acknowledged. I'm very proud of her!
- I'll be able to see Brothers Past next weekend. I was thinking I might not be able to because Tasha would need help at the show in Fredericksburg, but she said she can handle it. So I get to go to a music festival, and I think Bill and Sara are bringing a keg so we should be set.
- My phone is suddenly working a lot better. Verizon Wireless is full of bullshit and should have their corporate charter revoked by the U.N. or whatever. It's actually doing the same thing it's done off and on ever since I've owned it: I have to angle the charger in the port a certain way for the battery to know it's being charged. I'm actually blogging on my work laptop right now, connecting to the 'net over my phone's Bluetooth link (115 kbps ain't bad for free!).
- My car is acting a bit better. It still takes five minutes from starting it before it runs anywhere near road safe, but at least I can get around. I drove from Richmond to Mathews just fine. At this point the M.O. is to drive it until it actually breaks down, because then they're HAVE to fix the problem.
And ya know, it's amazing how much worse things could be. You need these troughs in life every once in a while. Otherwise the scenery is boring. So I think everything will be ok.
Oh, crap. Bush is giving a big speech on immigration tonight, and Drudge reports that he's sending the National Guard to the border. I predict future generations will see this as a step on the road to a total police state on an order of magnitude similar to the effect of 9/11. We're all about to become a lot more suspicious to law enforcement.
Because that's the only way this will work: keeping people from crossing the borders of this country will never work. We can't even keep inanimate objects like drugs out. Only now that there's a big military crackdown, the price for getting into the country is rising even more - and the human smugglers will have an even bigger profit motivation to bring people across the border in even worse conditions. All this will ensure is that the people who end up getting across will be even more destitute and desperate, thereby exacerbating the problems illegal immigrants have already been causing our society.
Scarier yet, however, is the precedent this will set for a monitoring of society on a scale we've never dreamed. Suddenly, finding auslaender will be a priority - and that means all of us will be under further scrutiny, even if we're upstanding citizens.
- Expect more random traffic stops as law enforcement tries to cast a wide net.
- Expect cops giving everybody a careful eye, even when you're doing nothing wrong - but especially if you're doing something out of the ordinary. Suddenly, individuality and standing out from the crowd becomes a real hassle.
- Expect random demands to present your papers to officers. And I predict there will be even more hassles if immigration arrests and resulting asset forfeitures are linked directly to funding these operations and the participating agencies and local police departments.
- Expect more crime as the marginalized immigrants become even more desperate and convinced the law has no value whatsoever, while the prioritization of catching illegals crowds out resources for legitimate crime fighting.
- Expect industries heavily depending on illegal immigrant labor to either get shut down completely or form agreements on the down low with government officials, forming de facto cartels and loweing competition.
- Expect thousands of mistaken identity cases. I predict the enforcement initiative will expressly deny rights to non-citizens and any citizens under suspicion of being illegal.
- Expect new appeals for national pride.
- Expect detention camps for the crowds of "untouchables" who will overwhelm an already crowded prison system.
- Expect the prison industrial complex to experience a wash of new fear money as the government tries to keep up with the arrests.
- Finally, expect these activities to be integrated into the "War on Terror" and eventually used against citizens as we become acclimated to living in a police state.
This is all to say nothing of the unforeseeable consequences these policies will have.
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Let's go down the list:
- My car is acting up, and it's the same problem I've gotten "fixed" (supposedly) about 10 times over the last 5 years. So I don't want to take it in and have them arbitrarily replace some functioning part. On the other hand, I'd like for the car to run without jerking back and forth (I think I have a fuel delivery issue).
- My cell phone - the only phone I have - is broken. Verizon Wireless is saying it's water damage, but I know that's not true. It's complete bullshit, and I'm gonna have to either buy a new one or use a really old one a friend has.
- My dog, Tela, has a growth on her ear. She needs surgery and they're gonna take a sample for a fucking biopsy. This is the worst, and it's gonna cost a bundle too.
- Add on top of all this that we're looking to move because Tasha doesn't like where we live. That means I need to have money for when we find a place. Money is, as you can imagine, a somewhat limiting factor.
- Tasha's got even more stress because of business and upcoming school.
- My home computer is freaking out and sometimes won't even boot. I haven't even had a chance to diagnose it. Something really wierd's going on - could be the RAM, b/c the hard disk checked out last time I ran CHKDSK.
Sorry, I'm not the kind to complain about my life, and I know there's so many who have it worse than I. And it just makes it that much more ridiculous that I'm so stressed out over this stuff. But all this has happened in the course of one week.
Just in case you want to know why I might be scarce the next few days or so.
this is scary:
If Hayden were confirmed, military officers would run all the major spy agencies, from the ultra-secret National Security Agency to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Fascism, here we come! I don't care how supposedly non-conformist this Hayden guy is: everybody should be hitting the panic button on this one. It's one thing to have an organization whose number one purpose is the propogation of elite control and management of economic, political, and social dimensions of our existence. It's a whole different issue when that mission - which has been merging with outright military governance for some time - simply becomes another branch of our war effort.
It's a trend that has been going on for some time, with Army intelligence officials rising in the succession order and the bureaucratic integration of the military with law enforcement and intelligence, starting with the Drug War and reaching its latest apex in this War on Terror. The pretense of citizen oversight has been abandonded in favor of a rapid regimentation of all government functions. And what bureaucracy is more orderly and solid than the military? Why not just turn government into the military, avoid even the appearance of independent thought and oversight, and scare the hell out of any potential whistleblowers or leakers?
As long as we keep showing up every four years and picking what flavor of elite we prefer, we can just butt out from the real action. Outrage after outrage: this must be what it felt like to live in Weimar Germany during the latter days. The reaction isn't so much anger: it's a population completely stunned, caught off guard, and unable to process events. I'm trying to determine the maximum amount of time a population can be punched in the face before they wake up from the shock and realize the attack for what it is. Problem is, to date, I can't even muster the credulity to believe what's been going on before my very eyes...
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Well, it's a week late, but I wanted to write something up about my weekend in D.C. and Baltimore. I've been spending most of my time finishing up a few books I've been reading for months, and I'm excited about moving my thinking process onto the blog. But, I also have a life, and I'd like for that life to be a subject of this blog at least once in a while, so here we go.
I rolled up to D.C. Friday evening and took the Metro to U St, where I had some pre show beers with my buds Whitney and Andrew (I don't know if I mentioned this, but Andrew was the guy who married Tasha and me). They had told me they'd meet me at the Metro stop, but then they wanted me to walk the block between the stop and the 9:30 Club which is a pretty sketch neighborhood. Luckily as I was walking across the street, some random girl asked if I'd walk with her to the club, so that was better. Once I met up with Whitney and Andrew we threw back some Schlitzes and made our way to the club. Andrew had tickets for us to see Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, to whom I had listened before but never seen live. We also met some of Andrew's Canadian friends.
All I can say about the show was that it blew me away. I was amazed how much better Antibalas is live than what I remember from the album. The lead singer sings less than any lead singer I've seen before, hyping the crowd and playing the hand drums. They've got a horn section, too. But the rhythms were so subtle and intricate and soulful: it's really impossible not to like them. And there was a great rant about the laughable state of politics, so they quickly endeared themselves to me. I'll be sure to check them out again when next they play this area.
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This installment of Understanding the Neoconservative Gestalt is really kind of a joke, since I really just want to highlight a very interesting discussion at Right Thinking Girl, and this hilarious statement by one of the conservative participants:
Borders ARE real. Borders ARE truth, Jeremy. Try walking into Iran or North Korea.
You see? INS and border security policy are matters of absolute truth. Fundamentalist and authoritarian regimes aren't arbitrarily violent - they're prosecuting the received word. Conservatives are motivated by a desire to realize in politics objective absolutes like borders between nations, laws, etc. There's no room for debate, because if you don't accept A is A then we can't have a discussion.
NOTE: To be fair, I'm not sure this particular dude qualifies as a dyed in the wool neoconservative - maybe neoliberal.
Joe Miller at Bellum et Mores graciously and directly answers my challenge to propose a positive definition of liberalism. I must admit to being caught off guard. Not only did it never occur to me that my criticism would be answered, but I really wrote my post within a left libertarian framework and mindset that didn't anticipate an ideologically wider audience. Therefore, my post probably made some unmentioned assumptions: chief among them, assuming the reader was familiar with my long-running exploration of leftism. After all, I only expected my article would be read by the bloggers in my little marginal corner of the internet. Not that I am ungrateful for the opportunity to engage the wider political blogosphere; but I think Miller misunderstood my point (through no fault of his own), and so I find myself in the same position as he: going back and clarifying what I meant.
This whole issue of leftism vs. liberalism mirrors a larger terminological debate within the libertarian world (libertarians often see themselves as the "true" liberals), and my original post was written in that context. Specifically, part of the agenda of the left libertarian movement is to unbundle statist ideas from concept of "the free market" and "socialism". The conversations are pregnant with the possibility of new priorities within the pro-freedom movement, since they force an audit of old "package deal" terms, clearing out unuseful connotations of agendas. In many cases, I think these bundled ideas do not communicate sufficient stances on what one actually opposes and supports in a thoroughgoing, consistent fashion. However, some do: what I mean is that the full implications of all facets of a given term can and should be rediscovered and reconsidered. Because I believe liberalism is one of these legitimate comprehensive concepts that integrates a variety of values, agendas, and conclusions - where the bundle of concepts follow from one another logically - I see it as an error to "pick and choose" the liberal ideas to incorporate. Indeed, this was the true nature of my critique of Miller's argument.
Let's examine Miller's answer to my challenge. How does he distinguish liberalism from the Left?
So if I'm not really a slow-moving leftist, then what am I? That's a bit harder to say. Indeed, this is a part of Jeremy's challenge: if I want to distinguish liberalism from leftism, then I really ought to start by explaining what I take liberalism to be. Roughly, then, I take liberalism to consist of three main theses:
- Respect for individual autonomy.
- A commitment to equality of opportunity.
- State neutrality.
What these theses boil down to is that I have to allow people the freedom to choose for themselves how they will live their lives (that is, allow each person to determine her own conception of the good), treat each person equally regardless of those choices, and not use the state to privilege some conceptions of the good over others. Pretty straightforward, right?Read more...
Holy shit, this is a great album. When you hit that trifecta of authenticity, catchiness, and beauty, you know you've made a good record. I imagine Wilco fans would say this isn't nearly as good as A Ghost is Born (which I've own and like) and Yanke Hotel Foxtrot (which I've never heard), but for the past few months I've been coming back to A.M. off and on and everytime I do it just feels really, really right.
I dunno, I think if I were a professional musician, I'd be proudest of an album that flies under the aesthetic radar and hits you directly in the heart. I'm prone to admire really intellectual music (and create such) but I just think it's interesting that the albums I always return to are the ones that are highly emotional. Spine-tingly and tear-jerking are consistently underrated by me as a music maker and a music fan.
I don't really have any decent description of this album other than it's a great way to get into Tweedy's post-Uncle Tupelo stuff. Writing about music is always hard for me, but it's that much harder when the songs hit you in an unexplored area of the heart. How do you communicate a mystery you're still trying to figure out yourself?
From the San Diego CityBEAT comes a great interview with Scott Ritter about his new book and his opinion on the war in Iraq. He makes many excellent points - most of which will be familiar to libertarians (or at least acknowledged). I have to admit that he's been pretty fearless in standing up to the Administration, and looking back he's been 100% right. His lack of political angles, however, puts him over the top on this subject. When asked about the Clinton Administration's belief that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction - a fact cited by apologists for Bush's use of faulty intelligence - he does not equivocate in the slightest:
I'm not going to defend the Clinton administration. I fully believe that the Bush administration should be investigated for lying, and lying in the course of official duty constitutes a felony, and I believe that there are many members of the Bush administration who could be brought up on felony charges for misleading Congress, misleading the American people-but don't stop at the Bush administration! This goes back to the Clinton administration. Sandy Berger is a liar every bit as much as Condoleezza Rice is. Madeleine Albright's a liar every bit as much as Donald Rumsfeld is. I mean, they've all lied about the same thing, which is that Iraq represented a threat in the form of weapons of mass destruction that warranted military action. I would agree with anybody who said Iraq [could not be certified] as being 100 percent in compliance with its obligation to disarm. That's why I was always in favor of letting weapons inspectors back in to finish the job-but letting them finish the job in accordance with the mandates set forth by the [U.N.] Security Council, not the unilateral policy object of regime change that was embraced by both the Clinton administration and Bush administration, thereby corrupting the integrity of the inspection process. But, no, Clinton's just as bad as Bush-the only difference is, he just bombed them; Bush invaded. But let's never forget: Under Clinton, another form of warfare took place, and that is the economic sanctions that the United States would never allow to be lifted regardless of Iraq's compliance level with its disarmament obligations. And these sanctions have killed far more people than George W. Bush's war has.
Anytime we can remove partisan politics from the conversation on Iraq, we have an opportunity to better understand this war. Because one thing that is important to understand is that American elites wanted this war. Democrats and Republicans serve these elite interests, sometimes at cross-purposes, sometimes in tandem (the Congressional authorization of force against Iraq is a good example of a compliant Democratic Party). However, don't think for a minute that Gore Administration would not have done the same.
We don't need a Democratic version of the same policies anymore than we needed a Republican version in 2000. We need change. And until a real alternative is provided us, we should operate as if we lived in a one-party state. The sooner we acknowledge the lack of any pretense of self-determination and authentically democratic control, the sooner we can begin the painful but necessary process of healing.
NOTE: This is the type of post (me pointing you towards another article I like) that normally will be going into the LinkBlog. I reserve the right to post about whatever the hell I want, but I'd like to keep original writing and mere linkpimping separate.
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My brother John responds to my posts on his tour of duty here and here.
