Another Empty Commemoration

 

The BBC has run some weep-o-rama special on the Nuremberg Trials held 75 years ago...  The usual: "...crimes that defied the imagination..."  and "... established the principal..."

I donno.  Human beings have been committing crimes that defy the imagination since Cain killed Abel.  There is a level of horror, all too easily achieved, at which point it becomes pointless and even somewhat arrogant to argue over which moral obscenity and whose suffering is more "unique." Suffice to say that the full picture from 1919 to 1945 was not humanity's proudest moment.

As for "establishing principles" lemme offer not my opinion but that of Chief Justice Stone: 

"Chief US prosecutor Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg, I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas." 

Justices Douglas, Murphy and Black agreed stating that he trials were "unconstitutional by American standards."    

And not only American.  Churchill, hardly a sentimentalist, was opposed to holding the trials at all.  He said that it would be better and more honest to shoot the bastards outright and upfront rather the degrade the majesty of the Common Law.

Some people may have heard (although not via the BBC) that convictions were based on ex post facto violations.  But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The tribunal, for example, decided for itself that it would “…not be bound by the technical rules of evidence.” The tribunal thus claimed for themselves the decision whether to admit evidence without any requirements establishing its validity.  Oh and they did... taking "judicial notice" of ultimate facts in issue, which the defendants therefore could not contest or argue against because once a fact is judicially noticed it is the "law of the case."  Yes... "lynching" was the appropriate word.

Worse even than that, the defendants were not allowed access to German government files (which were in the trusty hands of the Americans and Soviets).  They were only allowed to see those documents that the prosecution had selectively picked to bolster its case.   

So... did the trials at least establish "basic facts" even if the procedures were a little "twisty"?  No.  Absent access to all the files, which could contain defences, explanations, contextualizations and so on, there can be no adversarial testing.  Being confined to what the prosecution wants you to see is what is known as a Spanish Inquisition.

The trial even achieved the marvel of trying Germans for diplomatic crimes the Soviets had participated in while the Soviets sat as judges...

The trials established nothing of note except that the victor is always right...which is the one thing in  this world that Goering and Churchill agreed upon.

But does BBC note any of this?  No.  It uses the occasion to trek out yet another morose Auschwitz Special a week before Thanksgiving.  Not a real or even a light discussion of the "principles" of international law supposedly established or of how, in the manner of the making of sausages, the Tribunal at least set the stage for an International Criminal Court, which the U.S. still refuses to acknowledge... Zip. 

.

The Satrap Punches Back

 

In 1911, Col. House, kitchen cabinet advisor to Woodrow Wilson, told the Mexican ambassador, "Your flag will be our flag."  That, pretty much, was the blunt of the matter.

But Mexicans had other ideas. The three-pronged popular revolt which is known as the "Mexican Revolution" was not directly a revolt against American imperialism.  The industrial laborer in the north of the country revolted against oppressive labor conditions and the government's blind eye toward corporate union busting. The peasants in the south revolted against the encroachment on their lands by large agri-business. The middle class in the national and provincial capitals revolted against an entrenched, closed and ossified political system.  But behind all these causes lay the first cause of the United States; for it was American hegemony that kept a perpetual president in power, that gave the economic raison d'etre for the large agricultural estates and that owned the mines in the north... in addition to the railroads everywhere. Despite their internecine and often murderous differences everyone in Mexico understood -- and have always understood -- that behind everything lurks the hand of the colossus to the North. Even boys of 12 understand this, although establishment savants in el Norte are typically clueless.

Back in 2003, I sat in on a working supper of sub-cabinet level officials who had got together to discuss some one or another problem.  After the work was done, and over pan dulces and chocolate, the talk turned to the upcoming election: who would be el tapado -- the Inner Cabal's choice.  As they went through a list of possibilities what struck me was how often someone countered with "... the Americans will never allow him...." They said this without a blush of embarrassment, as if they were talking of the weather.

Thirty years before the American Embassy hosted a luncheon with a gaggle of U.S. bankers, high officials and economists from Harvard.  A group of young up-and-coming Mexican officials were also invited.  At a given moment, the ambassador, got up, stood behind the then young Carlos Salinas Gotari and said, "Gentlemen, I introduce to you the future president of Mexico."

In fact, the Mexican Revolution began when Porfirio Diaz indicated that he sought to diversify investment in Mexico and Texas bankers quickly backed another one of their hitherto unknown Champions of Democracy, Francisco Madero whose sudden candidacy for the presidency was what tirggerd the decade long fiasco.  At the end of the debacle, Mexico reconstituted itself and reclaimed sovereignty over its railroads, mines, coastal waters, and ultimately oil.  Why it even enshrined worker co-ownership in the Constitution!

But, notwithstanding the hysterical reaction in the United States, there was always the fine print, the bottom line of which was to more than adequately recompense American investors and to riddle economic populism with loopholes.  More than that, the fine print allowed, indeed encouraged, foreign (read American) investment.  Mexico did not really want "independence" -- it could hardly afford it. It wanted respect.

Eventually, the ill mannered, bottom-line bone-heads up north figured it out.  It was like teaching basic manners to barbarians.  Just observe the niceties and all will be well.  F.D.R. got it.  J.F.K. got it fantabulously.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) had specified the Rio Bravo ("Grande") as the border between the two countries.  Over the course of a century the river naturally changed its course with the result that 600 acres eventually found themselves on the American side.  Mexico wanted the acres returned.  American Super Patriots resisted the treasonous ceding of "so much as an inch" of sacred Murkan soil.  JFK pushed through a settlement that, in the spirit of things, returned the 600 acres to Mexico. He was awarded a hero's welcome such as no Mexican himself had ever received.

J.F.K. was also smart enough not to get unduly upset over Mexico's "independent" foreign policy; in particular its persistent recognition of Castro's Cuba and official opposition to any intervention (by anyone) in the hemisphere.  The fact was, Mexico was not a big player on the international geo-political scene, so who really cared?  Moreover, it helped the image of the "Free World's" democracies to have an upstart in the room.  It also helped when an ostensibly "independent" nation could act as a go-between or proxy for some initiative that was otherwise embarrassing.

But America's short brush with manners began to fade with the "election" of Salinas Gotari and they faded even more after the passage of NAFTA.  In the aftermath of 9/11, the fade was near total.  The United States demanded and got "cooperation" against terrorist and then against "drug lords."  This cooperation included having American agents working Mexican airports and the FBI and DEA working all but autonomously inside the country,  American officials learned to use the diplomatic "we" instead of the imperial "we" but the U.S. had achieved an effective penetration into the domestic operations of a sovereign state that no Mexican president prior to 1980 would ever have accepted.

Alas, pride always precipitates a fall... or at least a stumble.  The summary arrest of General Cienfuegos, Mexico's former Secretary of Defence, followed by dumping him intp one of the Empire's notorious isolation holes was too much for the Mexican political establishment.  It was too much that the U.S. saw fit to spy on them and not just on drug lords.  The U.S. was allowed "in" in order to combat criminals not to spy on government officials and government doings.  

Of course the American attitude is that a criminal is as a criminal does, regardless of rank and connections.  It would be wonderful if it applied that same standard to its own politicians.  But if the United States were to apply that same standard to its own officials, it would do on the basis that the Government is the Sovereign Power over all its citizens and over the country itslef.  The King is supreme in his own lands.

However, a King is not supreme in a sovereign land.  When his agents are invited in to help a fellow, foreign sovereign they become envasalled to their host. They operate at his “behest” and under his ultimate authority and control.  When they act outside their brief at their own instance, they are turning the tables. They become pro-consuls and, now, it is the foreign state who is rendered subject to the initiatives and directions of a foreign government's operatives.


So AMLO pulled out the stops.  One can only imagine; but the obvious truth of the matter is that he brought sufficient asymmetrical pressure on the U.S. to spring Cienfuegos from Metropolitical Correction Centre.

The New Cry of Mexican Sovereignty is: Our Generals are Our Business!

And more than just "spring."  AMLO made Murka eat grass.  The official communiqué had it that Cienfuegos was being released into the custody of the Mexican Justice Department to be investigated and prosecuted "as appropriate."  Did the United States now feel that Mexico was up to doing what the United States had felt it had not been up to doing before? Or did it simply admit that it had, once again, acted like a total, despotic boor?  

One can imagine AMLO saying: "You will not treat us like Iraq." The fact is that the U.S. treats everyone like Iraq but everyone once and a while someone has just enough of what the U.S. needs to make it observe the goddamn decencies.

Hurray! the Results are in.

Politics

 A house divided cannot stand

  Political Economy

The election results are in! California Proposition 22 won by an overwhelming margin. The status quo perdures!

 Background. The Republican Party was founded (1854) as the party of "Free Labor." What this meant was that workers should be free to freely enter into such contracts of employment as were offered to them by employers. In other words, it meant an un-regulated labor market which, as it just so happens, suited employers just fine.

The country then fought a war to get rid of slave labor.

With the Republican Party in ascendance, the country entered the era of unregulated capitalism which culminated in Lochner v. New York (1905) in which the Supreme Court held that the right of contractual liberty was constitutionally sacrosanct. This meant that it was unconstitutional for government to pass health and safety laws regulating work conditions; i.e. "dictating" the terms of a contract of employment.

If a child contracted to work 14 hours a day for a pittance far be it from us to infringe on his constitutional rights to freely contract his labor!

If a woman lost her hand in a machine loom she had, after all, "assumed the risk" entailed in the work. If she was worried about her hands she ought to have freely contracted another type of employment.

If "workers's syndicates" attempted to collectively bargain for wages and working conditions that was not only unconstitutional but an "illegal combine" as well!

Our Supreme Court at work.

And so, when it came to social safety nets and economic regulation the United States lagged behind the Second Reich, the Weimar Republic and even the Nazis until, at last, Roosevelt decided to do something about it, beginning with a federal statute aimed at preventing sick chickens from being sold as wholesome fryers. As a side dish, the statute also regulated hours and working conditions. In what became known as the Sick Chicken Case, the Supreme Court struck the statute. "Tell the president," liberal Justice Brandeis said, "that we're not going to let the government centralize everything."

To the sacrosanctness of contract, the high court now added the sacrosanctness of states rights and separation of powers. Two years later, after threats from the president, the Supreme Court made the "switch in time that saved nine." In NLRB v. Jones etc. (1937) it upheld the right of unions to organize and collectively bargain for wages and working conditions. "That," the Court now intoned" "is a fundamental right."

That same year the Court upheld the Social Security Act, and with that, America's era of pseudo-social democracy began. "Pseudo," because New Deal and post-war social legislation was never as comprehensive or as fundamentally grounded as systems in Europe. It has, for example, never been held in this country that health care is a basic human right integral to the social contract itself. Health care for All Seniors has only been upheld as a matter of statutory policy. Medicare could be repealed tomorrow if the party of Savage Capital put their minds to it.

But they have put their minds to destroying as much of the New Deal as possible, beginning in 1980 with Reagan's crusade gainst unions and with the initiation of what is known as the Gig Economy.

The Gig Economy is nothing less than the return to Free Labor (1854) and Lochner (1905). Only the labels have changed. "Illegal combines" are now replaced with a so-called "Right to Work." What was called a free laborer is now called an independent contractor. An employer can (in the exercises of its constitutional right of contract) choose to employ someone as an employee in which case the latter will be entitled to all the employer-paid benefits the law requires (thanks to Roosevelt and his dead chickens). On the other hand, the employer can, if he, she or it so wants, chose to have his work done by independent contractors in which case they are owed nothing except the "fee" freely negotiated. The result was predictable.

Both government and capital chose the better bottom line meaning that millions in the work force lost unemployment health and retirement benefts. Fuck em! Let em scramble. It's the Murkan Way.

Since, in such a system, wages sink to the lowest possible level, the "independent contractor" simply has no wherewithal to save for rainy days, to pay market rate insurance premiums, to accumulate down payments, or to save for retirement. Let us take a very simple example. An independent contractor must pay 14% of his income toward social security. That's a hefty amount. An employee will pay 7% of his wages toward social security and his employer will pay a matching 7%. The employee now has an extra 7% of income which he can use to buy a home or to invest in a 401k. He gets the present value of 21% without even taking into account the appreciation of assets. If the value of group medical insurance as against individual free market insurance is factored in he comes out further ahead just as the independent contractor is even more fucked.

The ultimate social cost is also predictable: more and more independent contractors are simply unable to withstand the viscitudes of the market place and fall through the proverbial "cracks" and into the sadomasochist world of "welfare." Just as civil law aims to oppress the poor, welfare aims to humiliate them -- to see just much abject compliance and denigration can be extracted at minimum cost.

Much to anyone's surprise, the California Supreme Court -- a sadistic and reactionary institution if ever there was one -- ruled last year that if an independent contractor was to all intents and purposes an employee he had to be given the full basket of benefits to which an employees were entitled. This ruling was then codified into law (2019) by the Legislature.

This is what Franklin Roosevelt called "stepping on toes" and the usual howl of pain and anguish pierced the skies. App-based companies DoorDash, InstaCart, Lyft, and Uber, initiated Proposition 22 aimed at overturning the law. Together they spent $202 million dollars to back the proposition, making it the most money ever spent on an initiative.

And with success. Prop. 22 was passed by almost 60% of the votes. At the same time, Biden garnered 65% of the vote.

So what does that tell you? It tells me that this wonderful "Blue State" -- firmly in the grip of the liberal Demorat Party is about as progressive as 1840 and 1905 Republicans Biden or no Biden.

Gentrified Liberals will raise their usual sanctimonious prattle. Oh but we believe in Freedom of Fetus Flushing! We support Queer Cakes! Black lives Matter to Us as much as our own (almost)! And of course we believe in equal access to this and that. A level multi-cultural playing field for all! Anyone can get into Stanford if they just put their mind to it, like we did!

But none of these cultural and access issues are worth a damn unless they are predicated on a fair and sustainable economic social contract. That is, unless everyone commits to paying his share of another's wellbeing. Yes -- his share of another's. That's the real meaning of community. That's the real meaning of social democracy. But just as much as Republicans, liberal, blue Democrats fail to put any money where their mouth is and the passage of Proposition 22 proves it.

In favor of the proposition, the usual excuses are blathered. A free-wage market will incentivize investment, yield increased productivity and happiness all around. But "productivity" is just happy talk for "profit" since the whole point of a product is to sell it and make a profit from it. So what the blather boils down to is: the independent contractor's loss will be the "non-employer's" gain.

 California is a solid "blue" state. It is also bellweather state. The passage of Prop. 22 tells me one thing: there will be no economic justice under Democrat rule than under Republican. It's all just a lot of stuff and nonsense for the comfortable to anguish over.

Politics 

(again)

Yes, a house divided cannot stand and, as appears likely, the intractable division between Red and Blue will remain reflected in an utterly deadlocked government. This actually suits the wealthy just fine because the less government can do, the less it regulates and the more Liberty of Contract there will be. Hurray for Lochner!

 But the house remains divided in a more fundamental and ultimately disastrous way. It remains divided between the haves and the have-nots. Between upper middle class, who are the happy vasssala of a system which coddles and provides for them and the truly independent poor who are left to sink on their own. Vive la Liberté. 

 © 2020

Tuesday's Travesty

Since states lost their mythical foundations in 1789, they have desperately sought to legitimize their existence by one means or another. The justification cranked up by liberal democracies is that the State is legitimized by the Consent of the Governed, for whose Welfare the government labours tirelessly. In the case of the United States, this vaunted self justification no longers has a shred of plausibility... The issue on Tuesday is whether one wishes to uphold or call out the farce

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At this quadrennial Season of Folly, Barfo's endorsement is simple: Don't Vote.

The standard, hectoring saw is that if you don't vote you don't have any right to complain. In fact, it is the other way around: if you do vote you haven't any right to complain about the systemic unfairness your vote perpetuated. Any vote, whether for one candidate or another, serves one fundamental function: it legitimizes the system; and, in America's case, such a vote simply legitimizes oppression.

Take it from the top. Any vote for Trump or for Biden assumes that there is a difference worth voting for. But beneath that assumption lies another: that the democratic system in which one participates is itself a meaningful reflection of something called “popular will.” Neither of these assumptions are correct. Let me quote an erstwhile statesman,

It is interesting to examine the life in [countries which espouse] democracy, which means the rule of the people by the people. Now the people must possess some means of giving expression to their thoughts or their wishes. Analysing this problem more closely, we see that the people themselves have originally no convictions of their own. Their convictions are formed, just as everywhere else. The decisive question is who informs the people, who educates them? In those “democratic” countries, it is actually capital that rules; that is, nothing more than a clique of a few hundred men who possess untold wealth and, as a consequence of the peculiar structure of their national life, are more or less independent and free. They say: 'Here we have liberty.' By this they mean, above all, an uncontrolled economy, and by an uncontrolled economy, the freedom not only to acquire capital but to make absolutely free use of it. That means freedom from national control or control by the people both in the acquisition of capital and in its use. This is really what they mean when they speak of liberty.

These capitalists create their own press and then speak of the 'freedom of the press.' In reality, every one of the newspapers has a master, and in every case this master is the capitalist, the owner. This master, not the editor, is the one who directs the policy of the paper. If the editor tries to write other than what suits the master, he is ousted the next day. This press, which is the absolutely submissive and characterless slave of the owners, molds public opinion. Public opinion thus mobilized by them is, in its turn, split up into political parties. ... But [these parties] are always one and the same. .... The opposition in [these democratic countries] is really always the same, for on all essential matters in which the opposition has to make itself felt, the parties are always in agreement. They have one and the same conviction and through the medium of the press mold public opinion along corresponding lines.

One might well believe that in these countries of liberty and riches, the people must possess an unlimited degree of prosperity. But no! On the contrary, it is precisely in these countries that the distress of the masses is greater than anywhere else. There is poverty - incredible poverty - on the one side, and equally incredible wealth on the other. They have not solved a single problem. The workmen of that country which possesses more than one-sixth of the globe and of the world's natural resources dwell in misery, and the masses of the people are poorly clad.. In a country which ought to have more than enough bread and every sort of fruit, we find millions of the lower classes who have not even enough to fill their stomachs, and go about hungry. A nation which could provide work for the whole world must acknowledge the fact that it cannot even abolish unemployment at home. For decades this rich For decades this rich [country] has had ... ten to thirteen millions unemployed, year after year....

It is self-evident that where this democracy rules, the people as such are not taken into consideration at all. The only thing that matters is the existence of a few hundred gigantic capitalists who own all the factories and their stock and, through them, control the people. The masses of the people do not interest them in the least. They are interested in them just as were our bourgeois parties in former times - only when elections are being held, when they need votes. Otherwise, the life of the masses is a matter of complete indifference to them.

The people as a whole definitely suffer. I do not consider it possible in the long run for one man to work and toil for a whole year in return for ridiculous wages, while another jumps into an express train once a year and pockets enormous sums. Such conditions are a disgrace.

It is unimportant who this statesman was. What matters is the truth or untruth of the thing stated. Does anyone in the United States, whether of the left or of the right, dispute that the “mainstream media” -- that is, the media with the broadest influence -- is controlled by a handful of corporations? “But oh,” it will be said, “these corporations are only interested in selling paper. As long as paper sells, as long as advertising revenues are up, they don't care what is printed and they allow “editorial independence” to the staff. Anyone who believes this nonsense ought to go into the business of buying bridges.

Papers (and we include social media) very much care what gets published on their platforms. It was the hope and promise of the internet that it would extend the “freedom to publish” to broad masses of people, finally freeing so-called “public discourse” from the clutches of a few who asserted the right to print only such news as was “fit to print.” But what has happened to this new “freedom to publish” ? It is has been “moderated” into un-freedom under the pious excuses of “safety” and “truth-in-decency” that censors and despots always resort to.

One has to focus carefully on what is at issue. The printed pages of the New York Times are no different than a 280 character “tweet” on Twitter. Of course the Times will say: “Oh no! We are a newspaper! That is just chatter.” But what the First Amendment guarantees is the right to chatter. From a constitutional point of view there is no essential difference between a pompous, stentorian editorial on the august pages of the Times and a tweet from some yokel in Wisconsin. They are both stating a point of view or asserting a fact. They each engage in the process of forming the opinions of others; and this is precisely what the First Amendment is about. The difference is only in the reach and influence of the one or the other. Stated another way, there is no “freedom of the press” that is different from “freedom of speech.” When, therefore, Twitter or Facebook memory-hole a single tweet from a Wisconsin yokel, they are seeking to control the freedom of the press. And that is indicative of just how totalitarian this control is. It was taken for granted that despots in foreign lands would suppress “opposition newspapers.” One couldn't have a paper with a readership of 200,000, informing and influencing 200,000 people in way contrary to the interests of the regime! Fine and well. But for Wisconsin, Richard? For a single, yokel in Wisconsin whose tweet will soon enough be lost in the vast, interminable babble of the internet?! The same analysis applies to mainstream media who have moderated “comment sections.” No... the people who control information and opinion in this country are not only interested in “selling advertising”... they very much care what gets published on their platforms.

“But oh!” it will be said, “the very fact that the press has become so virulently partisan and polemical gives proof of the vitality of democratic discourse!” Not so. As our Unknown Statesman said: “Public opinion thus mobilized by them is, in its turn, split up into political parties. ... But [these parties] are always one and the same. ....” It was another un-named statesman who observed that censorship could be accomplished in two ways: first by cutting out the offending paragraph and second by flooding the public sphere with so much information that it all become meaningless. The manipulators of liberal democracies follow an intermediate course. They allow the public sphere to be flooded with contentious but ultimately trivial points of view.

James Madison talked about this in Federalist Paper No. Ten when he summarized how “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle [peoples'] unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.” If Madison were alive today he would be bowled over by the heated and hate-filled passions today stirred up over the most frivolous and fanciful issues each of which is jacked up into something crucial, critical and of fundamental importance. And this is what gets extolled as a “vibrant market place of ideas.”

However, Madison immediately went on to state: “But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.” What is truly astonishing is how for all the issues that get bandied about in the press and argued over by politicians, the one issue that is seldom mentioned is the 401k issue. Gentrified Liberals in particular are adept at emoting over all sorts of humanitarian and cultural causes absolutely none of which impact on their investment in the system. The systemic or structural distribution of wealth remains untouched and unaffected. In other words, “on all essential matters in which the opposition has to make itself felt, the parties are always in agreement.”

In the last year there was a tepid -- and by European standards -- centrist attack on this country's entrenched “liberties” that is on its “uncontrolled economy, and ... the freedom not only to acquire capital but to make absolutely free use of it.” Bernie Sanders proposed a few moderate limitations on the absolute Freedom of the Few. He suggested increased taxation on the wealth, a sustainable minimum wage for workers, and of course “health care as a right not a privilege.” The reaction of the press both of the left and the right was swift and furious. The right branded Sanders the socialist Anti-Christ who threatened to “abolish our liberties....” The pseudo left, epitomized by the New York Slime, CNN and MSNBC adopted another tack: they blanked Bernie out. He just didn't exist in the “real world” of “serious” politics. Oh but Kamala! Oh but Pete! Oh but Warren! Oh but Amy!!!!! When they were finally forced to take Sanders into account, he was labeled a “threat.” The Slime publicly anguished over how to “stop” him. And stop him they did.

I do not say democracy is a farce. I say American democracy is a farce. It is a game controlled by a few for the benefit of the few and all the sound and fury that accompanies it signifies....nothing.

And what has this farce produced? When we look at anything we look at a finished product. I do not say technique is irrelevant; but when we behold a perfect athlete or a finished work of art, it is the beauty of the product in the first instance that makes us ask: how did you do that? So what is the product of our wonderful, exceptional democracy?

Is is it necessary at this point to state what has been obvious -- not just during the Trump years -- but for the last five decades? Since 1970 every single objective metric on the quality of life for the majority has declined. This is not an opinion; it is a fact. The percentage of the population that benefits from the system continues to shrink. A smaller and smaller plutocracy at the very top control more and more the country's wealth, but

“The people as a whole definitely suffer. .... one man to work[s] and toil[s] for a whole year in return for ridiculous wages, while another jumps into an express train once a year and pockets enormous sums. Such conditions are a disgrace.”

That indictment was made 80 years ago. And so what has changed? Nothing, except that for a 20 year interlude during the 50's and 60's the United States made a passing effort to erase the disgrace. What the “neo” in neoliberalism stands for is a full throttled return to the days of disgrace.

That the system was failing to produce for the majority was recognized back in the 90's which is why Alan Greenspan deregulated banks and flooded the market with cheap credit. Of course this produced a “miraculous” boom only to be followed by an entirely predictable bust. "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," said Greenspan. But notice how even in the debacle Greenspan didn't give a crap about protecting ordinary would be home-owners or retirement savers.

The failure of the system is not a failure of policy. The performance of an engine can be enhanced by good fuel, good lubricants and good maintenance. But a system can't do more than it was designed to do. When there is a systemic failure the failure lies in the system itself. This semantic point is made in order to avoid talking about “a systemic failure in the system.” Such pleonasms confuse the issue. When a particular “disgrace” has existed for over 70 years, we are no longer talking about a failure of policies but of the system itself.

To put it in concrete terms, the election of Biden over Trump is not going to change a damn thing for the masses of people in this country. We stated back in 2016 that Trump's election was not a “disaster” but a “manifestation.” He represents the system unmasked; whereas Biden and Obama represent the sytem with masks. Either way the system remains unchanged.

The Democrats herald a return to yesterday's normalcy. “Let us go forward, back!” It would be a hilarious clown act were it not so sordid and tragic. Normalcy, as Biden would have it, was not so great for 80% of the country. The “economy” -- by which pundits, press and politicians mean the “economy of the ten percent” -- was doing great. The metrics for them were off the chart. For anyone not invested in the country the metrics were also off the chart, only in the other direction. Under Trump it has gotten worse, but going back to less worse does not equate with good.

In fact, there is no going back. Precisely because both Biden and Trump are symptoms of the system, neither himself has the power to control causes. By definition, a symptom, which is the result of a cause, cannot cause things. The system marches to its own tune on its own time. If one looks at a graph of the stock market over the past 70 years one will see continuous peaks and valleys one after the other. But the “stock market” is the economy of those who own stock. If one looks at a graph of real income over the past 70 years one will see a continuous uninterrupted absolute or relative decline over the same period. “Income” reflects the economy of the working class.

To be sure, there are a myriad ways to measure income and wealth, even without taking into account non-tangibles such as zip codes and “being born with connections.” But there is no dispute in the general trend. The upper 10 percent have seen their wealth increase, the next 10% or 20% have seen minimal increases or stagnated, everyone else has flatlined or declined.

What this objective metric means is that despite the revolving door election of republican and democrat presidents and members of congress the economy remains the same. The election of one party or another may correlate with a bump or dip in the economy of the rich, but it has no effect on the economy of the working class. In fact if one were to graph the asset accumulation of the rich over the past 70 years, one would see a continuous upward trajectory.

One chart of particular interest was the disparity between the minimum wage and productivity.

The chart shows that since baseline 1970, the minimum wage worker produced twice as much in value as he or she received. And one does well to remember that “productivity” represents someone's “profit” and hence wealth. Marx called this the “economic alienation” of the worker; which was to say, that the worker was “alienated” from the wealth he produced.

But do the Democrats talk about economic alienation? Hardly. They yap about all other sorts of “alienation.” The alienation of a woman from the right to control her body; the alienation of blacks from the Wonderfulness of Amurkan Life; the alienation of gays from wedding cakes of their choosing; the alienation children from parents at the border... One alienation after another except the systemic alienation inherent in capitalism. The 401k Issue.

The Republicans, speaking through the hideous mask of Senawhore Lindsay Graham, say that they are opposed to raising the minimum wage because to do so will make workers too lazy to slave away 12 to 14 hours a day. {CRACK} The best one can say is that at least Lindsay is upfront about his economic sadism.

But on what reasonable basis, can one say that the election of Biden will produce a systemic change? Oh, to be sure, there might be some of the usual fringing -- tinkering around the edges that shaves off a some chicken feed for the excluded have-nots. But look at the graphs. Where has that sort of “incrementalism” got the working class over the past 70 years? On what basis can one say that Biden's election will even result in a deceleration of the trajectories of income disparity or real wage value? Not only do the Democrats not have a progressive record, the Biden campaign is now trumpeting how it is building a coalition with (supposedly) decent Republicans. Even a person being torn on a rack will hope for change but at some point one has to say that hope is no more substantial than...well...hope.

I have focused on the economy of the matter because all the supposedly inclusionary civil rights in the world don't amount to a hill of beans if you are too impoverished, too desperate, too harried by creditors, landlords and police to even make it too the fabulous “playing field”. The Democrats can “extend” opportunity to one cognized group after the other but the cognized group they ignore is the have nots of whatever gender, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. When the Democrats do worry about the poor it is only to indulge their self-primping by adding some “program” to the Sado-Show of America's so called “safety net” the real object of which is to force the poor to rub their own noses in their social failure and the abjectness of their condition. Contrast the typical 12 page (small print) welfare application with the one page TARP application: Name, Title, Corporate Address, Phone & How much do you want? Sign and date. What kind of sadistic country taxes unemployment benefits as “income” and then turns around and revokes food assistance on the ground that the “recipient” is now making “too much” money?

There are of course other issues, most notably climate, on which neither party will do anything remotely sufficient to avoid the impending ecological catastrophe. Obama himself said so explicitly. The Paris Accords, he said, “will help avoid some of the worst effects of climate change.” That's three weasel words in one sentence. If you don't get it when he said, think now of the recent month long fires in California. What part of “some” and “worst” was that? And those fires took place even before that treaty has gone into effect.

Democrat Jerry Brown's response to those fires was typical of the ruling class. “Millions,” he said, in the wake of the fires, “will be heading north to Canada.” Which “millions” was Brown thinking of? The two million which represent 10% of California's working population? Canada is certainly not going to open its doors to millions of America's huddled masses and wretched refuse yearning for bread. But it will open its door to investors from other lands as it did to China's nouveau riche. Yes, Jerry Brown will arrange for a real estate swap of his 2, 500 acre ranch in the California foothills for something equivalent in the Canadian Rockies... but the millions of Californians in the 90% will be left to suffer “some” of the “worst” effects of climate change. But hey! “I got mine Jack; fuck you.”

This is the way our “progressive” Democrats think. Benjamin Appelbaum of the New York Slime, writing about the housing crisis from his second home in The Wherevers, no doubt. Elizabeth Warren talking about “jes' folks” from the enclosed garden veranda of her home in Cambridge. And of course, there was always Nancy Peelousy talking about the Comfort and Joy of her designer chocolate bon bons while millions lined up for “food baskets” choc full of cheap carbs and yesterday's produce.

No. I have focused on the economy because in the end, there is no freedom without economic wherewithal and there is no country without economic equality. As I have said before, you can't commit treason against the United States because the United States does not exist. What exists, in the form of “government” is a user interface for corporations. What is called“country” is simply a class -- a class to which the vast majority of Americans simply do not belong.

So no. Barfo has no recommendation except abstention. Anything more simply endows, the predators among us the legitimacy they desire. It was said that path to the Forbidden End always begins with a first step. Likewise, when the Forbidden End is finally reached, the way out also begins with a first step -- a Step of Repudiation. 

©barfo2020

High Priests of Sacrificial Rites

Unlike other prosecutors who worked themselves up into a fury over how the defendant is the worst possible person who should be given the harshest possible sentence, I really never gave a shit about sentencing and I can't recall ever arguing over it.

My rationale was that it was the judge's job to fashion a sentence as best he saw fit and he didn't need any back seat driving from me.  But the truth of the matter is that the whole thing seemed rather pointless, rather like swatting flies at a picnic.  Of course, society couldn't be expected to do nothing at all when its rules were flaunted; but a longer or shorter sentence wasn't going to make any difference and wasn't going to cure anything. If one miscreant was "taken off the streets"  there would, as sure as the sun rises, be another one on the street on the morrow.  So let others argue over pointlessness.

I may have opposed waiving a fine or something in drunk driving cases.  I recall one attorney arguing that I should give his client a break on the fine because he had already paid a hefty legal fee. My reply was: "Why don't you give him a break on your fee?" 

I just liked winning trials, but i never deluded myself into thinking that I was doing much, if any, good.

Most prosecutors did not share in my laissez aller attitude.  They saw themselves as Lord Protectors, upholding the very foundations of society and, worse yet, cleansing the world of evil.  The defendant on trial became the object of their crusading wrath and inflicting pain (which is what poenishment is) on him became their overriding purpose and raison d'etre. 

For them, every criminal at bar was the worst of the worst who deserved the worst society could meet out in retribution. "They are just animals!."  This attitude seemed to me to be lacking in all discrimination.  I tended to agree that the men (and it was mostly men) we prosecuted were just animals.  But that, it seemed to me, mitigated in their favour.

I remember one morning riding the elevator up to the courts.  Crowded into the box were: myself, one of our judges, a defence attorney, a criminal in chains and his jailer.  We all stared away from one another as if ashamed of something.   Indeed.  We were all equally human beings trapped in a box headed to the same place.  "What shall I be pleading when the just are mercy needing?"  What, I asked myself, was the difference between us, the difference that made for the difference in our fated positions?

I took a quick look at the defendant -- a young, somewhat pleasant, ordinary looking man. He certainly didn't appear to be a Saturnian monster. The thought suddenly crossed my mind, in one of those intuitively truthful ways, "He's missing a screw."  A screw most of us have that enables us to .. to what? to understand causality? the difference between impulse and consequence? 

Some people say that criminals lack empathy. I am reluctant to put it that way.  Criminals often have highly structured senses of right and wrong and loyalty.  It is rather that their sense of identification with a fellow human being fails to fire at the right time.  The criminals who consistently and periodically fail to empathize with their fellow human beings are the big time racketeers who are engaged in the crimes known as "banking," "commerce" and "business." Most prosecutors don't go after those criminals and, if they did, they would bring the country down.

It occurs to me now that "Criminal Justice" is really just a form of sacrifice, like ripping hearts out for Huitzilopochtli or tossing babies into the fire for Moloch.  It is something we have to do because... because...because it we don't the heavens will fall.

At the time, my attitude then was that it was just a game like cops and robbers. The gist of the matter was to keep the whole thing -- on both sides -- within reasonable, sporting bounds.  So long as the crime was not utterly depraved and cruel there was no point in getting all worked up over it.

In fact, before the irredentists got hold of it, the system as a whole operated on a kind of sporting principle. Most felonies were punished by a range of 16 months to six or seven years, with the mid-term of 2 or 3 the most common. With good conduct half time, that resulted in a prison sentence of about a year and half or less with credit for time served prior to trial.  It wasn't that different from tackling the robber and making him eat some grass.

All that changed when MADD -- Mothers Against Drunk Driving -- hit the scene.  Their intent was to "tighten" the screws against drunk drivers, not only by increasing the penalties but by making it impossible for a jury to acquit.

It had been the law, that no matter how high a driver's  blood alcohol was, the jury could still acquit if it believed that, pickled as he was in alcohol, the driver's driving ability was not impaired.  No more.  After MADD got hold of the system: three drinks and you're out.

There was only one small problem with this approach: it rendered the entire process of jury trial utterly irrelevant.  If you were going to punish people on the basis of a machine read out, why bother with all the rest?  In fact, why criminalize it at all? 

What MADD did, in a subtle but ineluctible way, was set the criminal justice system on a course where it was regarded as a mere mechanical device for wreaking ever harsher punishment in the name of victim vindication.  There was a direct line from three drinks and you're out to three strikes and you're out.

The entire system got calibrated so as to find more and more lockstep ways to inflict maximum punishment with minimal chance that someone might -- oh horror of horrors -- fall through the cracks.

It would require too many pages to detail all the ways that this policy of irredentism took place.  It was, suffice to say, the result of persistent efforts, by prosecutors, legislators and judges,  geared to inflicting maximum punishment on as many occasions and for as many reasons as possible. 

Not only were sentences increased, but a form of creative accounting allowed them to be doubly and triply increased.  For example, in California it is a crime to assault a person with a gun. That crime is "enhanced" with an extra additional term of imprisonment for "personally using a gun during the commission of a crime."  The courts see no problem with this.

Half the time, when I was prosecuting, we had only half an idea whom we were prosecuting.  Records in general were, to put it, lax. People could easily get multiple drivers licenses. Interstate records were laxer still.  Every D.A.'s office had its teletype machine which rattled out a "yellow sheet" of a name's criminal record.  To say it was "incomplete" would be an understatement. 

With the advent of computers in the 80's, things got "tightened up."  Not only was there no place to run, there was no place not to have come from.  People were tagged for life and could never escape their past.  This enabled the system to punish them for their past. 

It had been a commonplace dictum that "do the crime, do the time."  It was a pay-as-you-go system.  Now, it became a payment with compound interest.  For every crime committed, the defendant paid for that crime, plus a kind of surcharge for the previous bought and paid for crime.  The courts had no problem with this either.  Pages of sophistical burble blathered away "double jeopardy" issues.  On no! he's not being punished for the prior crime. Fie! Fie.  He's being punished for being an habitual criminal, in addition to being punished for the current crime.  

In this manner the system subtly shifted from punishing for crime to punishing the defendant for being a criminal type.  The doctrine of criminal types has always been resorted to by the most totalitarian of regimes and once that became incorporated into our criminal law, our courts lost their liberal character.

One of the rationales used to justify this prosecution on steroids was that the "rights of victims" were being ignored.  Actually they were, and rightly so.  The entire theory of criminal law -- in England deriving from Norman times -- was that public crime violated the "King's Peace."  It had nothing to do with violating Ethelred's enclose or trespassing on Tristan's wife.  The harm was not to an individual but to that abstraction called the peace of the realm.

In the older Saxon system, all "crime" was personal.  If you stole someone's cow you paid for it and for the doing of it.  Alternatively, you got to be the victim's slave for a term of years doing all sorts of humiliating things at his beck and call.  Or, he had the right to cut off your hand.  But whatever the case, it was between miscreant and aggrieved.  There was a lot of practicality and wisdom in this system and it still survives in our civil law. 

The idea of some abstract crime to "society in general" is a very tenuous one indeed.  It is hard to see how the robbery of a gas station harms everyone.  The syllogisms to extract a harm that "everybody pays for" if only in the amount of 0.00072 cents per occurrence is rather stretched to say the least.

Alas, the law of the King's Peace is here to stay.  But, if so, then one ought to be consistent.  The role of the criminal law is not to vindicate the victim or to give the victim his revenge (or as it is more evasively put, his "closure"). The role is to restore the King's Peace and the victim is but a witness in this affair.  If the victim wanted to pursue his or her personal revenge he could take the case to civil court and sue for damages.   And this was the traditional view up until the 1980's

The problem was that as the sentences got longer and longer, the chances of getting damages from the defendant became more and more remote.  Instead of limiting the criminal side of the system, it got extended so as to incorporate and represent victims as such.  Private "restitution" got built into the criminal penalty scheme. 

Worse yet, "victim advocates" began to participate in the trial and "victim comfort poodles" got to accompany the victim to the stand -- all of which tended to turn the trial into a victim weepfest. Still worse, in certain types of cases, cross examination of victims was legally limited and "expert testimony" which effectively vouched for the "truth" of the victim's story to admitted into evidence. 

The ultimate result is a system which maximizes the criminality of any misconduct and which strives to impose the maximum amount of punishment for that enhanced criminality, all the while turning the trial into an emotional cleansing process of Victim Vindication. 

What good does this actually do?  None that I can think of except that it enables prosecutors to sleep snug and sound wrapped in the conviction that they have brought God's justice down from Heaven to Earth.  The attempt to do, like Satan's original pride, only creates hell on earth. 

 ©

Gemeinschaft

The other day, I came across a Deutsche Welle documentary on the founding of  Germany as an independent vassal state of the United States.  It should go without saying that, in 1945, Germany suffered not only a defeat on the battlefield but was devastated and destroyed in near entirety.  If one could draw and quarter a country that was what was done to Germany whose inhabitants were left to scrounge around in the rubble and out of which a viable civil society of citizens had to be created anew. 

The documentary focused on four illustrative cases of individuals trying to restart their lives. The first was a young man of 22 who decided on going to Heidelberg in hopes of earning a degree.  The narrative explained that he, along with others, had no money for food at the university's board, so the people of Heidelberg got together to scrounge up money so that students would be able to eat and being able to eat, study.  It is necessary to stress to Americans that the paradigm at issue was not “helping those who, through no fault of their own, are in need.”  The entire country had “fallen on bad times” and was “in need.”   The logic at issue was gemeinschaft.   A rebuilt Germany would need teachers, lawyers, physicians, engineers and indeed (since this was Heidelberg) even philosophers.  One could not have a society without professionals any more than one could have a society without bakers, mechanics, carpenters and singers.   The good people of Heidelberg were helping themselves through helping others; and they understood this intuitively without deliberation or discussion

The second illustration concerned another young man also 21 who, upon release from a POW camp in the Soviet Union, returned to his homeland a dedicated communist and determined to rebuild his country.  He settled in Leipzig, joined the Party, and went to work in a factory dedicated to rebuilding locomotives.   Because of his political affiliation, he was made foreman of the factory floor.   His fellow workers called him “the Russian” but, although they were at best skeptical of his ideology, there was no doubt between them that they were all, above all else, Germans... and, of course, the locomotives needed to be rebuilt.  They understood that brotherhood “in heart and hand” is the pledge of fortune.  (Third stanza Deutschland Lied.)

It is typically said that the word community is an inadequate translation of gemeinschaft.  That is not quite correct.  The difficulty is that the English speaking world has lost the original sense of the word. Community derives from com (together) + munis (a burden, duty, obligation, gift, service, favor).  It refers to the mutual sharing and exchanging of usages - or, in Marxist terms, of use values. Similarly, gemeinschaft derives from gemein (together) + schaft (-ship).  Now the suffix “ship” has a broad range of applications; e.g. freundschaft (fellowship), priesterschaft (priesthood), Leserschaft (readership), and so on.  It can be seen that the suffix schaft or ship really denotes a practice -- what Thomas Aquinas would call a habitus.  Thus, gemeinschaft refers to the habit of being together and belonging.  

According to the German sociologist, Ferdinand Tönnies (1887),  a gemeinschaft is comprised of personal social ties and in-person interactions defined by traditional social rules, commonly held sentiments  and a shared sense of mutual moral obligations.  In his view, a community was necessarily small in size and homogeneous in nature.  But that was not correct.  The German historical experience both before and after the war indicates that a subjective sentiment and practice of mutual recognition and obligation both between members of society and toward society as a whole can exist on a larger than village scale.   It ultimately boils down to self-conception: does one think of society as a community or simply as a place where one can enjoy one's individual pursuit of happiness. 

Now, fulminating Kumbaya Liberal outrage aside, it is a practical fact that ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural homogeneity promote a sense of community.   It is very strange indeed that a functionality that has been recognized from time immemorial should suddenly become an impermissible thought.  Most people feel comfortable with things that are recognizable and similar to their own manner of being. This does not mean that differences cannot be appreciated; it simply means that “oneness” is exactly that.

But it is equally a mistake to think, as the Nazis certainly did, that any one commonality is a sine qua non of community.  It is always a question of mix and degree.  In this regard, it is not only a question of how much of each commonality is present in the mix, but how much difference exists with respect to a single common element.  For example, the differences between Protestants and Catholics, or by the same token, between Orthodox and Reform Jews, is less than the commonalities they share.   To obsess on any one common feature within a community is just plain stupid.  It ignores the deep seated human want to be in communitatis regardless of differences.   To paraphrase Anne Frank, people really don't want to hate one another.

It was, at least in the mid 20th century, the hope that an American gemeinschaft was possible despite fairly pronounced dis-commonalities in the population (sub nom “diversity”).   There was a great push to minimize ethnic and religious differences while emphasizing linguistic and cultural commonality.  As the sociologist Erich Fromm pointed out, the cultural element was glib and largely commercial -- a superficial artifact.  But, since real culture is a slow-growth phenomenon (the various national cultures of Europe fermented over a thousand years), the hope was to jump-start the process. 

However, the success of the New Deal and of the immediate post-war prosperity was bought at the expense of the Blacks.   For the sake of gaining Dixiecrat support, Franklin Roosevelt, made a conscious decision to exclude Negroes from virtually all New Deal programs.   The decision to put an end to segregation and to push for racial integration put a very serious strain on the sense of national community.  Too many people  were not ready or willing to go “that far.” 

Although the task was greater than perhaps was realized, I do think racial integration could have been achieved without sacrificing community, but only provided one really understood what community entailed.   Americans did not.  Instead of focusing on mutuality of obligation, they focused on and obsessed over rights of individual indulgence and acquisition -- the very thing that is incompatible with community because it reduces society to merely the occasion and material for personal enrichment.  And no one should make the mistake of thinking that capitalism is not a zero sum game.  Every one man's gain or appreciation in asset value is another's loss.  All the rest is simply legerdemain.

The deviationist mis-focus was perhaps a tragic mistake.  Rights for the Negro became the paradigm for a sequel of other cognized group rights:  for women, for Hispanics, for the handicapped, for gays and lesibians and so on, serially individuating society instead of focusing on rights for all as a birthright, which is to say, mutual obligations of all for all.   For well known historical and socio-economic reasons a special affirmative action was required with respect to the Blacks in the United States.  But it was utterly misbegotten to turn that exception into a rule of policy.  Under the seeming appearance of “improving” the conditions of “more and more” special cases or victimized groups, it actually undermined the true sense and practice  of gemeinschaft.   Instead of asking what we could do for our country, more or more people were guided into asking what rights of getting they had as women, as gays, as Hispanics, as... whatever.     As de Tocqueville pointed out near two centuries ago, American individualism was always problematic.  In the 70's and 80's it became fatal.

The case was even worse.  At the same time that the establishment elites forced integration on the country, they drove a wedge between the supposedly “universal” middle class and the working class. The policy of exempting middle class college kids from military service while drafting blue collar kids to go fight in Vietnam drove a wedge of disparagement and resentment into the  country's future generation.   The difficulty with dodgeship is that it inevitably became a habit.   The “haves” of the Boomer generation became accustomed to living for themselves, acquiring for themselves and enriching themselves without any sense of paying for others.   Instead, they convinced themselves that they were doing some kind of social good, by removing prejudices from their hearts and personally accepting the wonderfulness, of Blacks, the equal worth of Women, and the (we won't think too hard on it) affectional rights of gays.  Hey, I'm hip! 

In sum, the only way America's ethno-cultural diversities could have been overcome in order to achieve the reality of community was by ending economic disparities and replacing a culture of pursuing individual happiness with a culture of mutual obligation for one's own sake.   The country's failure to do so has resulted in the colossal cluster fuck of its present circumstance.  Americans do not realize it because, unlike bombed out rubble, the devastation is moral; that is, it has destroyed  the understanding, sentiment and commitment to gemeinschaft.    America needs to seriously acknowledge the rubble of itself and strive for an auferstanden.

 ©

 

Bernie's Cock-a-Doodle Doo

 

In the Blue Angel (1930), Herr Prof. Ratt, a distinguished secondary school teacher, is curious to find out what is distracting his students from their studies.  His curiosity leads him to the town's cabaret where he encounters Lola, the show's star performer backstage.   Lola flirtatiously, teases the portly bearded professor.  It's all innocent enough; as she says, that's who she is, she can't help it.   But Ratt, a serious man, takes it seriously, falls head over heals for Lola, gives up his professorship and joins the troupe.   By degrees, he looses his grip and self-respect until, at last, he his reduced to a performing stage clown forced to emit hoarse cock-a-doodle-doo's as eggs are cracked over his head.  

Suddenly realizing what he has become, he stumbles back to his darkened classroom, slumps at his desk and dies. 

There ain't nuthi' like German films for pathos.  Except of course, the Democratic National Convention where, Herr Professor Sanders, toodling after his “good friend Joe,” has been given his cockadoodleoo moment as the first speaker on the first night.

All that is missing is the cracked egg.  Anyone who knows how these political cabarets work understands that the “first slot” in the speakers' roll is the last.  The spots that count are those that are closest to the Epic Moment, when the Annointed One, is acclaimed as saviour of the Republic, who is going to right all wrongs and make Amurka that Better Place it was destined, some day, some day, so-ome day,  to be.

The defeat of Bernie's vaunted “political revolution” could not be more viciously humiliating. The party, ever more firmly in the grip of its militarist, corporate elites, is going to nominate two creatures who could not more perfectly represent everything Bernie and his Millenials opposed and ran against.  And now?  Bernie compliantly inaugurates his own defeat.  

©

Come, Let Us now praise Ineffective Men

The funeral would not be complete without the flawless O'Bambi lending his aspirational tones to the affair.

"The march is not yet over... the race is not yet won."  We persist onward ever beating paths of righteousness through the wilderness toward that hope that springs eternal, and that day when we can truly say that all men and women, (regardless of where they came from or who they love or the color of their skin), are free at last, free at last, and, thank God Almighty, endowed with equal access to the pursuit of their happiness....

Doesn't this treacle nauseate anyone?  It's not even good rhetoric.

Now...just the other month, the Flawless One, said that change is not possible without making people "uncomfortable".   Well... I suppose riding along in a rickety cart as it bumps and wobbles toward the Place de la Revolution would make one "uncomfortable"...  but I shan't quibble.  I agree that the threat of change makes people in power 'uncomfortable." 

Okee dokee....  Do people who are "uncomfortable" turn out in mawkish mass to do honours to their inconveniencer?  I don't think so.  The fact that the entire establishment has turned out to sing praises to John Lewis tells me that he didn't threaten them with change.  And not threatening them with change did not do much to lead "his people" out of the wilderness in which they continue to find themselves after all these years of beating paths of righteousness....

Now to be fair.  Lewis did significantly participate in the Civil Rights Movement.  As a founding member of SNCC (pronounced "snick") he made J. Edgar Hoover and Strom Thurmond at least distinctly uncomfortable.   In fact he made Saint Jack uncomfortable too.  In fact, in fact, Lewis made the Holy Martin Luther King a tad uncomfortable as well.  All fine and well.  It was a great step forward on the path of righteousness that this country at last allowed Negroes to sit in the front of a bus and to sit at all at a counter. 

But then Lewis got rewarded with a seat in Congrease.  This is exactly what gets done in Mexico.  Take someone who is making you uncomfortable and coopt him into government, where he will become instantly emasculated and compliant all the while giving lip service to... well to hope and change....

What did Lewis accomplish in his 30 years in Congress?  I can't find a thing in Wiki.  Roll Call magazine saith, "He has been called "the conscience of the U.S. Congress,”  I suppose the way Bernie will be eulogized as the conscience of the Senate....  Yeah, but what did he DO?  What, in the all important scale of Incrementalism did he get accomplished? 

He (like Bernie) voted against Cumstain Clinton's "saving" welfare from destuction at the hands of lazy Black Baby Punchers.... He (like Bernie) voted against Banker Biden's Tough on Ni***rs Criminal Justice Deform. He (like Bernie) voted against Shocking and Awing Iraq.  All well and good. But I can perhaps be forgiven for observing that Lewis' protests outside of Congrease were far more effective than his consciencing from within. 

The point is not to dump on Lewis, although I do think that allowing one's self to be used as a feel good sop to the oppressed electorate he was elected to represent falls short of qualifying as "heroic".  The point really is that it is IMPOSSIBLE TO WORK CHANGE WITHIN GOVERNMENT. The system was too diabolically crafted by Madison to prevent precisely that.   As radical AOC now compliantly bleats her support of Biden, we might do well to consider whether electing progressives "to congress" is not the one sure fire way to defeat the progressive struggle for change. 

Consider the past 200 years a defective first draft.


©

American Goon Staat

Thugs from the Department of Homeland Goons debarked in Portland to quell the protests, disturbances and riots that have taken place over the last month.  Shocked and awed, complacent liberals have woken up to the reality of Goon Staat Murka.

This was nothing not foreseeable.  Back in 2008, Barfo discussed (and decried) the militarization of the police forces.  [The New Constables]

But this militarization of the police forces was the inevitable concomitant of a national foreign policy based on  full spectrum "power projection" around the globe.

In 2002 and 2003, Barfo wrote a series of articles parsing Neocon-speak and analyzing the elements of its brutal foreign policy. Barfo observed that "power projection as policy is fundamentally antithetical to the cellular structure of civilization."   Part III of "Thug Politik" concluded as follows:

"It also follows fom the entire “security-based” mentality. “Security” begins at home and since the Homeland is the preeminent zone of democratic peace, it requires its security environment to be shaped as much as any other

"If the neocons are willing to turn U.S. soldiers into drugged up killers, they will see no objection to pharmaceutically enhancing domestic security forces. The images we see in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq today are a foretaste of the Homeland tomorrow. It will be so."

It was obvious.  What one does abroad one ends up doing at home.  Not because "what goes around comes around" but because what one does one becomes.  The images of goon staat in Portland is what we, as a country, have become and we did so of our own conscious or indifferent choice.

When the mayor of Portland takes to the airwaves to decry Trump's using DHS goons as his "personal army" for "political purposes" he misses the point and is simply using the outrage to score partisan political points.

The phenomenon -- the image of the state as a boot in the face -- well antecedes Trump.  It was a national culture nurtured by the Flawless O'Bambi as well as by Chimp, Clinton, "GHW," and Reagan.  The first SWAT teams were put together by L.A. police chief Gates in 1967.  In 1981 U.S. Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, giving police access to military intelligence, infrastructure, and weaponry in the fight against drugs. Reagan subsequently declared drugs to be a threat to U.S. national security.  Federal assistance, training and cooperation followed. 

Even before Barfo started his blog, he decried slogans like "war on crime" and "war on drugs."  The reason ought to have been obvious: a state of war is not compatible with civil society which is premised on trust, friendship and cooperation.

People said Barfo was quibbling and being pedantic. "It's just a slogan."  Plus ça change.  Americans are as indifferent to "how you say it" as they are towards everything else except the number of axe cuts to fell a tree. But how you say it determines how you think it and how you think it determines how you behave.  Le voilá.

The Kevlar-encased thugs on the streets of Portland feel no social kinship with the people they are "containing."  They wouldn't think twice about breaking your wrist or shooting your grandma.   They have been likened to "invaders."   Indeed, in Thug Politik, Barfo labeled the neocon movement as an "invasive disease."  He was wrong.  There was nothing invasive about it.  In the 18 intervening years Barfo has come to realize that the end-stage of the neocon national security thug staat is implicit in what this country always was.  The truth is we only become what we are.

In 1788 the Count of Aranda wrote a memorandum to King Charles III, decrying the American "pygmy" which he said would soon turn into a devouring colossus.  He understood that in 1776 the English Colonies in the Americas had embarked on empire, notwithstanding the pretty and magical words they used to cover their shame.  Words which the Flawless O'Bambi never tired of intoning...

The predictable Amurkan response will be: well what's wrong with that?  Rome was an Emipre and Rome was cool! Well... listen to what Saint Augustine had to say about that:

In the first place, man is separated from man by the difference of languages.... heir common nature is no help to friendliness when they are prevented by diversity of language from conveying their sentiments to one another; ...  the imperial city has endeavored to impose on subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace,   This is true; but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity! And though these are past, the end of these miseries has not yet come.  the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description-social and civil wars-and with these the whore race has been agitated, either by the actual conflict or the fear of a renewed outbreak. If I attempted to give an adequate description of these manifold disasters, these stern and lasting necessities, though I am quite unequal to the task, what limit could I set?

Less charitable was the German leader, Arminius: "Rome creates a desert and calls it peace."

Yes, by their nature, empires impose "bonds" of custom, law, language, commerce and this, in itself, is a good thing of sorts.  But it is a deceptive good because it is founded on violence and the holder of the Faustian Bargain will always demand to be paid in the end.

The vainglory of those who puff up with pride at the analogy of a Pax Americana  (as neocons certainly do), might have second thoughts if they actually thought about the analogy being made.

In short, the images of the Goon Staat in Portland were first depicted in the Colonial raids on French and Indian villages in the Ohio Valley.  The forbidden end always begins with a first step. 

What is needed is not simply "reform" of the police, not simply voting Trump out of office,  but national reckoning and repudiation.

©Barfo 2020

  

Mask-exploitation

California's governor Newsom gave a press conference the other day about how the state was meeting the Covid Challenge.  His report was full of statements about how the state was "meeting needs on a matching criteria protocol that began to take shape..."

It appears that among those matching criteria protocols was coordinating with private enterprise to increase the production of masks. According to the WOKE Guardian, in late March Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, the city "partnered with numerous local companies to produce protective gear from frontline workers."

Yay!

But one wonders just how the city and local companies "team up."  Does it mean that city workers will join with other workers on the frontline of sewing machines?  You know an admin clerk or an emergency medical technician taking turn at sewing masks? 

Nah. 

Whenever government and private companies "team up" what is meant is that government provides some form of capital incentive to private enterprise on a "matching criteria protocol" of some sort.  In other words, taxpayer money is shoveled toward capitalists making them even more capital-enriched than before.

Well that's the way capitalism works.  Yep.  And the great thing about this is that as well as providing masks, this "protocol" provides jobs.

Yay again!

Jobs like those at F&G Sewing where one worker said "she makes five cents per mask and eight cents per robe – if she works hard enough during her 12-hour shift, she can make about $5 an hour. She describes workers toiling in a basement with small windows, no ventilation, no soap in the bathroom, and only one or two feet between workers;"

Not surprisingly, Outbreaks at factories now making masks speak to the scale of the problem. LA Apparel has been forced to close its three factories, where county health officials report at least 300 confirmed cases and four deaths.    At F&G  more than a dozen people have sickened. And that number is probably low because F&G has trouble finding out where its subcontracted basement sweatshops are, exactly.

Labor activists say the coronavirus pandemic is "exacerbating longstanding industry issues such as low pay, poor working conditions and the lack of a safety net."   You know, as when one worker lost her mask sewing job when she got sick and then got kicked out of her three-to-a-room shared apartment because her roomies considered her a health risk.

This is what Treasury Secretary Mnuchin meant, also back in March, when he said that Covid-19 presented "great investment opportunities."

Can Murka do ANYTHING without exploiting people and treating them like trash?

No. The country is rotten to the core. 

©barfo

Fact-washing

The Woke World News reported that a French bus driver in the city of Bayonne was viciously attacked and beaten to a pulp by five men when he asked them to wear a mask, as required by law. The driver was unrecognizable to his wife and was taken off the ventilator.

Who were these "men"? Why did the MSM mudia refuse to disclose their race? Why was it my 95% hunch that they were migrants?

The MSM doesn't want to report on the assailant's race because it is determined that nothing interfere with its social agenda. Anything which calls into question its agenda is labeled "irrelevant." But of course the passengers knew, the wife knew, the neighbours knew. Six months from now the factually sanitized pundits in the press will be genuinely shocked at anti-migrant protests which they will then piously label as "racism."

They started this back in the late sixties when they substituted "inner city youth" for "young black man in his early 20's." To tell the truth, they argued, would "perpetuate a stereotype."

Bullshit. No it doesn't. What perpetuates a stereotype is how you react to the facts, not the facts themselves. If you say to yourself. "Typical! That's what Muslims (or Blacks) do" then you have resorted to a stereotype. But the facts didn't cause that. You caused it by your thinking.

If on the other hand, you say to yourself: "Hmmm, I keep on reading about Blacks (or Muslims) attacking people, I wonder why that is" then you have confronted a social reality and have tried to understand its social causes. Without the fact being published you would not do that because you wouldn't see a pattern and a problem in the first place. Race, religion, gender, is never "irrelevant" any more than the valence of atoms is "irrelevant"

This is why I began to despise the liberal press in the late 60's. They resorted to massaging realities to conform to their expectations. The result was a world in which nothing was connected to anything else. "People" just attacked people on buses or in the street for who know what reason. Oh Gee. Life is full of such "random violence." That's awful... but at least I don't have to think about whether my political vote or my economic cluelessness has created that "random" violence.

And it doesn't even have to as broad and general as that. Knowing that the men in this incident were Muslims, is it possible, just possible, that the driver made a derisive remark when he "requested" them to wear masks? That would not excuse the assault, but it would be part of the explanation for it.

By the way... I think it's Lincolnshire in the UK that has a "random violence" problem. Every week there were stories about "youths" attacking people in public places. Damn Jamaicans, right? No.... they were all ruddy faced Brit Boys. So like maybe Conservative Party policies are creating Clockwork Orange?

Sanitizing facts is no better than abusing them.  We need more factual reporting.

©barfo

Make America Contemptible Again

In January, I bought a box of masks at Walmart.  The box cost $4.79.  After that, there was a shortage of masks and no boxes at all.  Then, three days ago, a fresh supply of masks had arrived.  They were prominently displayed, at $17.99.

Ah yes... Our Free Market at Work!

At the same time, our state (finally) passed a requirement that everyone where a mask "when outside."  Our wonderful government went even further.  For those who could not afford a mask, they could apply for MASK ASSISTANCE.

All they have to do, after finding which agency took care of this, and standing in line for six hours, is fill out a six page

 PROOF OF NEEDFULNESS 

application, detailing just how poor, wretched, and lacking in even a decent amount of minimal funds, they were.   After sufficiently groveling and humiliating themselves and proving to the welfare office that, no, there wasn't an extra nickel being hid under some cushion -- God forbid! -- they might qualify for some sort of voucher they could use to buy masks while at the same time letting everyone in line know that they were too poor and wretched and forsaken by fortune to afford a mask on their own.

NEVER PASS UP AN OPPORTUNITY TO HUMILIATE "THE LESS FORTUNATE."

It never occurs to the whores that run the (not our) government to force manufacturers and billion dollar retailers like Walmarts to sell the damn masks at cost pro bono publico.  Why.. that would run contrary to the the Free Market, the greatest "tool" ever invented for the good and progress of mankind.  What would we want another socialist failure?

No... just that our whores in charge act like Roman Emperors....

Rome had a grain problem.  The free market (subject to natural fluctuations and shortages) could not do the job of feeding the populace. by itself. The city’s politicians therefore intervened in the grain supply, or annona, beginning in the second century B.C.

There were direct interventions, like Augustus’ purchase of grain for distribution, and also laws which mandated grain sales at subsidized prices. The first such law was passed in 123 BC.  In 58 BC grain was made FREE and the eligibility for receiving it broadened. Augustus and his imperial successors maintained this system at enormous cost (as we have seen); In order to bring down the market price of grain and, in addition to direct price controls, Claudius built the port at Ostia and insured the cargoes of grain carrying ships.  He began various infrastructural projects aimed at increasing arable land.  In the early third century AD Septimius Severus added olive oil, and later on Aurelian added pork and wine.

It speaks volumes about our ever more exceptionally loathsome country, that Roman Emperors stand in a better light than our government.

Images of the State - 2020, Ch. 3

One of the images of the state in 1984 is that of the windowless, faceless ministry.  The ministry can see out at and into everything but no can see into the ministry which remains impenetrable to the outside.

The windowless ministry symbolizes the abolition of civil society; for civil society -- at least in the sense of burgertum -- presupposes openness and comity, a willingness of citizens to be exposed to one another and being exposed to engage.  Civil society is a matrix of two way streets.  You may not be agreed with.  You may be criticised and opposed but you will be heard.

In 1984, no one exists to be heard but only to be barked at and told. The ministry can see and extract what it wants but the denizens of Oceanea exist as units to be informed and worked, manipulated and excited.

The windowless ministry is a grim image of a grimmer perversion of society. But in the United States of 2020 we have learned to make the ministry cheerful, colourful, accessible and seemingly open.  In 2020 the ministry goes by the name of Webpage.

The Webpage is first of all colourful.  Depending on the department its portal shines with pictures of Scenic Natural Vistas, Alabaster Monuments, Glowy Mornings, Happy People with Glowy Faces,  Towering Trees, Radiant Parrots and Butterfles,  Grizzlies and Polar Bears, Breathtaking Bridges, Happy Silver Birds ("managing" their health or portfolios) in the active, ongoing honeymoon of Glowy Retirement, shiny appliances, gadgets, cars, sports equipment handled and driven by handsome, pretty, zesty (and glowy faced) youths... or simply pictures of "our team" always smiling and on the go.  Twenty-twenty is out to prove with a vengeance that life is not bleak.

Webpages are of course the mainstay of all types of merchants, as they are a cheap, effective, and a mass way to hawk goods.  But webpages are also the mainstay of banks, insurance companies, corporations, non-governmental organizations, the media, academia, ecclesiastica,  government agencies and last but not least elected officials.  To perpetuate the illusion of transparency and openness, everyone one of these ministries has some sort of contact or feedback form where, in exchange for disclosing your name, title, age, sex, address and phone number ("tracing information") you can ask questions of your bank or insurance company or express your views to your local media "outlet" or elected official.

But consent and comity end there.  Your "feedback" will never be read.  You will have written it, perhaps even laboured over it, but when you "hit enter,"  are reminded to fill in a "required field" you preferred not to answer, hit send again, answer and pass the CAPTCHA test and finally hit enter one last time... your missive will immediately be shit-canned into a memory hole. 

Of course, even here, Amurka in 2020 offers an improved version of 1984.  Wonder of wonders, the Memory Hole actually answers back!  If you are truly stupid enough you can rest assured and contented that your thoughts have been considered by to whomever they were addressed.

This new improved Memory Hole offers two options.  The first is the non-answer which gives the impression of more or less engaging with whatever it was you had to say; the second is the more brutal direct brush off.  This usually goes like this: "Thank you very much for writing to the editors of The Daily Times-Mirror-Herald. Every day we receive hundreds of letters from readers around the world. We regret that because of the large number of submissions we are not able to respond to all of them, other than by this automated reply. Because of computer security concerns, we do NOT accept attachments; they will NOT be opened..."

In other words: thank you for your missive; we want you to know that you are an insignificant worm among worms not worthy of our time much less attention.  You can renew your $ubscription at paynow@sellingpaper.com

It is hard to say which one of these is worse.  The answer that calls you a nothing or the answer that takes you for a stupid nothing.

It will be said that I complain unrealistically. After all... how can anyone expect that Senawhore So and So, or Chief High Editor Poo Baum would really have time for everyone...  Not even Mr. Us has time for all of us.

There is a story that addresses this point.  A woman once approached the Emperor Hadrian with a petition.  He waived her aside, saying "I haven't the time...."  She snapped back, "If you don't have the time, then don't be emperor." He heard the petition.

Why?  Because the early Roman Emperors were very solicitous to preserve the image of a free republic within a civil society.  In Hadrian's time the Empire covered an extent about the size of the continental United States.  It had an estimated 100 million inhabitants.  Every day thousand upon thousands of incidents of one sort or another had to be managed by local, regional, senatorial and imperial governments.  But the emperors were keen to maintain the promise made by Augustus that he had "restored the Republic."

Of course, he had done no such thing.  The image of a free republic was history's most colosssal joke.  But it was joke they put genuine effort into.  In Gibbon's inimitable words, "the Caesars concealed their powers and expressed themselves the humble servants of the Senate whose decrees they dictated and obeyed."

Needless to say, Rome had its webpages too; the Ara Pacis being one of them.  But the earlier emperors put genuine time and effort into maintaining the illusion... They mingled with and exposed themselves to the public and heard their concerns.

Did they really give a damn about Marcus Anonimus and his petty problem?  No more so than the Queen of England today gives a rat's ass about the thousands of people she meets in a year.  But they and she do put time and effort into seeming otherwise and, paradoxically, to that extent, the illusion is not quite an illusion.

The United States in 2020 puts no effort into the illusion and to that extent the reality is that it is not a civil society but rather a conglomeration of hermetic power clusters, each open entre nous, but otherwise  blaring at and manipulating the drudges outside the circles. 

To be clear, this is not a criticism of just corproations, ecclesiastical bodies, media and government.  It is as  much a criticism of so-called grassroots movements, the most recent example of which was Bernie's "Not me, Us!" campaign.

How very engaging!  But try to reach anyone in Bernie's campaign and one was confronted with the widowless facade of the Ministry of Love.  Nowhere on Bernie's campaign page was there a who's who list and nowhere could one find out who was in charge of what.  Nowhere was there an email except a small window for input to "info@bernie.com" 

I sent input to Bernie, via the Input Window and via hardcopy snail mail to the campaign P.O.Box  (not even a fucking street address).  Not once did I get so much as a robo-reply.  Not once.

Of course, if you donated money, you got a chance to write something in a comment box.  But if anyone thinks that anyone gave the comment five seconds for $27.00  he or she needs her I.Q. checked. 

Bernie's windowless Webpage was state of the art.  It even sent out pretty please requests to answer questionnaires asking for your views.  Click.  Up popped a window asking four questions:  (1) do you want Medicare for All; (2) are you concerned about the climate; (3) do you support free tuition; (4) do you support a livable minimum wage.  Now, how about donating... HERE. Pure Pogey Bait for political junkies.

This was far more denigrating than the New York's Slime's thank you for writing we haven't got time for you.

At around the same time, I sent two email "feeback inputs" to my state senawhores.  The one who was running for re-election robo-replied with a one page non-answer. The one who was not running for reelection did not bother to reply at all.

No... the windowless ministry is ubiquitous. Every institution, every corporation, every organization, every political or religious agroupement shields itself behind impenetrability, pretending to be open and engaging but hiding the "inner Us" from the rest of "Us."

What this actually reveals is the total breakdown of civil society. Everyone is selling and pushing and getting their message out.  The illusion is bi-directional but the reality is uni-directional.  Citizen Q exists to be prodded and plucked but not to be heard.

It will be said that it is physically and temporally impossible to listen to everyone, to engage with everyone, to answer every letter or comment.  That may in fact be true, but such an answer only reveals that our society is no longer built to human scale. 

The lack of human scale shows itself in our buildings, in our one way media, and our webpages and, increasingly, our algorithms.  We are in fact no different that Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.  The citizen exists merely as a receptacle for one way communication.  There is no engagement, no burgertum.

Madison wrote that the Republic he envisioned presupposed a certain limitation in size and extent; and, among historians, it is commonplace that burgertum ended around the time of Woodrow Wilson.  In many respects the United States did a decent job of masking the realities of a mass society. This was due in part to the agricultural nature of American society and to small towns in large spaces.  It was also due to the fact that "society" in the United States always meant a very small segment of the whole which might be summarized as "college and above." The World War (2nd) and the post-war consumer society put an end to that.  When the internet burst on the scene in the 1990's the hope was that it would re-open and equalize civil society.  Alas, the oligarchy found a way to make the internet an instrument of mass control and exclusion.

The question now is not how to improve or reform this mass configuration but how to abolish it.  That is not a progressive task but a humanist one.

©Barfo, 2020