Schadenfreudean Slip

RE: "The Romanovs Ride Again"

2011-07-28T02:54:00.027-04:00

Casino Capitalism at the Terminus of Empire

for Matt O.

Q: "so short of violence, what do you think should be done? Let the debt soar? Up taxes? Ban investing? Clearly you're passionate about this stuff. I'd be interested to hear what you think should be done specifically to correct the current state of our economy. Lord knows Washington has no idea."

A: I wish I could tender a simple answer to what, on the surface, appears to be a relatively innocuous and simple question. Short of some sort of modern day Farmer's Rebellion, I feel there is no simple answer because the problem itself is very very complex. This point is not meant to be obtuse or otiose, but simply the truth at the heart of the matter: to "correct the current state of the economy" one needs to analyze what the core causes of the problem really are, beyond the superficialities that we generally accept as answers. Indeed the problems with the economy reflect a rather systematic failure of objective government and corporate self-regulation, both terms seemingly Orwellian, ironic, and oxymoronic in this day and age. One of the key issues here is that the engine of economy has co-opted our political process.

Ideally and historically our economy and government work best when opposed, it is perhaps best to conceptualize this notion as an inverse relationship; if the market is allowed to operate in a vacuum without regulation and oversight things usually congeal in a top down manner, monopolies, conglomerates, cartels, and sprawling corporations form - limiting choice and freedom, which is not to mention that if allowed to exist unfettered the market grows too quickly- (I have a mental image of my mother's tomato plants in the garden: huge tomatoes just destroying a small plant with no root system or stalk capable of supporting them)- and shaky, shady and sketchy practices are allowed to become the norm, forming bubbles and the economy grows rapidly before collapsing like a dying sun. Now the antipode has similar consequences - if the oversight and regulation of the government are too Draconian, growth is inhibited and freedom is again castrated, the market essentially becomes socialized and innovation is stagnant (this however has not been the case in the US yet, historically or at least in the last near century since the establishment of the Federal Reserve system, the market has swung repeatedly from the laissez-faire lack of any regulation what-so-ever to moderate regulation, but never really with any serious handcuffs - the US has never really had to worry about economic socialism as anything but the hyperbolic threats of FOX News Corp). When in opposition gov't and economy can strike a good balance, following the great depression the Glass-Steagall Act provided a healthy environment for slow steady growth which existed primarily until the Reagan administration (I am ignoring the gas crisis of the 70's as it does not reflect the failure of state or market, but rather of infrastructure in building a society completely dependent on an exogenous commodity). Because of the then (Reagan Era) popularity of economists like Milton Freidman and his cronies (contemporaries and predecessors e.g. the Laffer curve, 'The Road to Serfdom', ect.) which immediately followed a period of stagnant growth, supply-side-voodoo-trickle-down economics came en vogue and has remained fashionable ever since despite it's manifest failure. We have since watched the complete unraveling of all the regulation, oversight, accountability and transparency in our financial sectors. Wall Street and Washington are, for all intents and purposes, effectively attached at the hip.

And I don't mean this last point to resonate as hyperbolic or demagogic, I'm not trying to wax Glenn Beck here, but in an objective sense all three branches of government have become compromised by the interests of Wall Street. Congress is of course the most compromised branch of gov't, as legislators basically run as stool pigeons for corporate interests, and then retire to lucrative careers as lobbyists, the very lobbyists they were once influenced by. This is simony by another name, a complete corruption of the democratic process that has only become more obscene (consider the vicious ouroboros: W.S. Lobbyists push hard for deregulation i.e. the repeal of Glass-Steagall and get it. They then translate this new found boon into a windfall, using it in turn to lobby more aggressively with more zeal and capital to relax standards even more to make even more capital etcetera, etcetera. This is the snake devouring it own tail) in recent years, at least in terms of size and scope. And then there is the executive branch which has the benefit of appearing less corrupted but this in and of itself is a facade spun from the fantastic filaments of the PR machine. When 2 of the last 4 last Treasury Secretaries served as chief executives for Goldman Sachs (Rubin, Paulson) its hard not to think of the old axiom "don't piss on my leg and tell me its raining". [Pop Quiz: Rubin was on the board of which transnational investment bank when the mortgage bubble burst? (A)] The heads of the Fed haven't really been anything better than apologists for the S.O.P. or 'business as usual' mentality. All these positions being appointed by the executive branch, a branch that seems increasingly focused on placating Wall Street (Interesting Trivia: Obama's largest donors outside of Google, Microsoft, and I believe Cal U, were large investment banks [although it should be noted the McCain's donors were primarily investment banks, and he had about twice the amount of banks crack his top ten list {although the big banks seemed to hedge their bets by giving them both a shit ton of money}]). Which brings us to the last hope in our system of check and balances: the ever esteemed and always controversial Judiciary. And there is nothing to be optimistic about here..."Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" ...the Citizen's United ruling was a serious punch in the balls to democracy, and things seem to be trending along these same lines, as the Chamber of Commerce seems to hold the ear of the court, due (no doubt) in large part to the scads of lawyers and oodles cash they have at their disposal. This has a two fold effect on the Supreme court: a blatant selection bias in the cases they hear and a skew toward corporate interests. I am not being naïve or provincial in making this point, it is in fact supported by metrics (which I have read about but did not memorize, as is the case with everything that I am saying, I am writing this on my phone and do not have the luxury of being able to go back and forth to link the appropriate data to the relevant points I am trying to argue, but I assure you if you look for it, you will find it, I shit you not [in addendum: apologies for any missing prepositions, spelling errors, erroneous grammar, this being composed on a Blackberry in somewhat of a fugue state]) and relevant data, statistics, ect. ect.

<< Editorial Water Break: Now you may feel that all this so far has been a digression, aside, rant or what have you, and that I am not answering the initial question, which is partly true but I ask that you bear with me a little longer. I realize I may be trying your patience in what may very well read like a shrill or overly pedantic screed, but tone or narrative aside, I am getting to the question, I promise. >>

Now this marriage of business, economy and government is not new, and I do not intend to present it as such. Post World War II was the honeymoon, one only needs to do scant research into the early history of CIA to see that (1) its 'founding' members consisted of a motley cabal of Wall Streeters (2) that securing US interests abroad meant de-stabilizing established governments in the third world to artificially depreciate commodity prices and keep them that way under the puppet strong men of banana republics (3) that espionage was and is used for the benefit of US corporations [I can recall a more recent example of the CIA getting caught in the act of corporate espionage in negotiations in the 90's when Boeing was pitted against Airbus either in Brazil or Japan, I'd have to look it up, but it was rather embarrassing and quickly swept under the carpet *Although I could not find this example in particular, I found several others of the US intervening directly for Boeing, one using the Echelon system another here]. However, this honeymoon was more like lovers eloping, as it was kept secret from pretty much everyone. (The term military-industrial complex seems pretty plangent here but what most people don't know is that this widely used phrase comes from a speech by Ike where the speechwriter had written 'military-industrial-banking complex'. A glaring redaction/omission in history* Correction, could not find evidence for this claim that was relayed to me anecdotally, however, there is much to say about the revisions of this speech). All this to say: this courtship has lasted awhile - American industry/banking ect. has long existed under the shelter and auspices of the gov't's big stick. It is only a recent development, however, that the relationship has grown to be one sided, but that's a mediocre way of putting it... It should be essential when viewing the problem here that this relationship as once symbiotic now parasitic is essentially moot, the boundaries/ borders that exist between these two entities are either completely permeable or do not exist anymore at all.

So then the idea of working through the normal channels to enact reform seems like a farce or at least a portentous exercise in futility (just ask Elizabeth Warren, tasked with the simple chore of tracking the TARP money, she bears an unfortunate resemblance to a modern day Sysiphus). In fact its hard to think of any real economic reformers in the political arena at all. (If someone mentions that half wit Paul Ryan's accursed name I swear to God on high I'll rip off their head and shit down their throat) I'm hard pressed to come up with real historical examples...Andrew Jackson, FDR, JFK, (who, interestingly enough, enacted a rival currency to Fed's dollar through a silver backed note issued by the treasury. A year later he was dead, and LBJ rescinded that executive order. Draw your own conclusions) and most recently -the sheriff of Wall Street himself- Elliot Spitzer. And we know his story, it goes to show that if you go up against the big boys you better have no skeletons in the closet (and if you don't, be prepared for an assassination attempt [and here I'm not being conspiracy theory-esque, but referring to the attempt on Andrew Jackson's life by the banking cartels. This is the stuff of compelling history]). Most 'reform' these days is nothing but whitewashed propaganda packaged into toothless legislation. The Dodd bill is a joke, and even as we speak the largest lobby on Capitol Hill is seeking to send it to an early grave. Working within a systematically corrupt and co-opted bureaucracy to end corruption (i.e. enact reform) seems akin to a fool's errand but let's play it out: what would I do (within the constraints of legal action within the system) if given the chance to fix the problems, and what are the corresponding consequences?

Here are my simple solutions that will eventually lead to correcting the economy at least by way of restoring faith in the fiscal state of the union:

1) Close tax loopholes to avoid raising taxes which we all know is political poison [Bush Sr. "Read my lips..."]

2) Repeal the Bush tax cuts, or allow them to expire, another political landmine that's sure to get worse the longer we get accustomed to having them around as the norm

3) Balance the budget, if Clinton could do it with a GOP congress, it can't be that hard. Essentially put an end to deficit spending except in times of crisis

4) Reduce Spending:

4.1)Address the glut of military spending...

4.2) While at it remove corn subsidies...

4.3) And reform Social Security & Medicaid? Oy vey!

<< Editorial Flourish: Mind you all this being stated under the assumption that Wall Street and commerce do not up and reform themselves under the cover of darkness and purge themselves of corruption and police themselves to levels that make the SEC and DOJ seem like irrelevant redundancies. I make this assumption as their is no «immediate» profit incentive in this, and as such few companies are willing to take a quarterly hit for the sake of longevity. The "everybody else is doing it" ethos that pervades BODs seems reason enough to make this assumption. The assumption here is that regulation and reform has to be enacted by government (which as stated previously, is already in bed with business) because business (or any entity with greed as its engine) can never be able to or expected to monitor and correct itself. There is no profit motive. >>

Corresponding problems that stem from simple solutions that illustrate the vast complexities in what is a very tangled web of politics and economics:

1) Closing tax loopholes is, on paper, a very easy way to increase revenue without raising taxes per say, it is also has the benefit of streamlining an archaic and convuluted tax code. I do not think this will happen, probably ever. These tax loopholes primarily benefit huge conglomerates (monopolies) and the uber-rich, who as previously mentioned, effectively control the government (if you think this "J'accuse" of plutocracy is hyperbolic on my part consider what would happen if a congressman tried to pass legislation that crippled his campaign donors...where would the filthy lucre come from for his re-election campaign? How many lobbyists would come out of the woodwork to stymie his efforts? You bite the hand that feeds and you lose) and as such it should be no surprise that they will not go gentle into that goodnight. GE pays no taxes. Think about it.

2) I thought the Bush tax cuts would fade into the annals of history, but the support for their extension from Obama on down in times when that revenue seems sorely needed is a slap in the face. It appears that these may become permanent if Republicans get their way, and of course these tax cuts primarily benefit the rich. Of course.

3) Balancing the budget should not be some herculean labor, it should be S.O.P. but we know this is not the case. We have been locked into a paradigm of infinite growth, and this contagion is endemic to globalization. This is, of course, untenable. There are only so many markets to expand into globally, there are only so many resources, id est there are rational limits to expansion in capitalistic markets. This basic and unassuming fact is very neglected and looked over. We exist in a country of debt. We live off of consumer debt: credit cards, mortgages, car loans, leases, to the point where a jingle from an ad for a website that checks your credit rating is known by all. Our nation has the same problem of debt as we do as individuals, it spends far more than it makes to the point where payment of the interest on the money it has borrowed (the debt) is 250 billion dollars. That's just the interest which is "taking up more federal spending now than federal outlays on education, transportation and housing and urban development combined" according to today's NYTimes. Indeed the interest on our debt is more than our actual debt was in 1946 and just a little smaller than it was in 1970. We are now past the point of no return. This is really not reversible without serious austerity, and for the US to do that, the US that is the consumer of everything worldwide, would mean a global recession for decades. Because no one wants that the US continues to raise the debt ceiling and keeps spending like its going out of style. Simply put we, as a nation, live beyond our means and, like an individual with a lot of consumer debt, we keep getting offers in the mail for credit cards unsolicited. They want us to keep spending. And our politicians don't want to stop spending (because constituents love pork belly!) but they also don't want to pay for what they want to enact with higher taxes which are the bane of any re election campaign. Its called a free lunch. Its doesn't exist, and this paradigm of infinite growth is unsustainable. So that being the case the budget should be balanced i.e. we shouldn't spend more than we take in. This is problematic for reasons that will be made clear in 4) but its also disturbing that if we balance the budget all we manage to do is tread water, we pay the interest on the loans we took, but we remain trillions of dollars in debt. We aren't actually paying any of it back. Troubling...

4) So what really needs to be done politically is to reduce spending to both balance the budget and be able to payback the debt and reduce the deficit or else the entire budget of the US in 50 years will only be able to pay the interest on our loans (slightly hyperbolic? I don't have the numbers in front of me but I don't think that's far off). So what's the first thing that gets the axe? Probably our biggest line-item that consumes a quarter of our spending...

4.1) The military. Now here's what the scholars call a real shitpickle: if we overnight got rid of all military bases all over the world (we have military personnel in over 200 countries) would we really have the ability dominate economically? For an awfully small democracy that always considers itself an underdog, we do act presumptuously like an empire. We are an empire, and I don't really want to argue this because it is essentially moot, the real question is that if you remove the fangs of the hegemon, isn't it only a matter of time before the buzzards start circling? Before the corporations we built jump ship to the greener pastures of China? It seems a little late to be isolationist, and our economy couldn't handle a change in this direction after been weaned on globalization for so long; the soaring prices of the commodities indices would more than offset the amount of money we saved on our state-of-the-art death machine.

4.2) So it would make sense to just get fucking rid of something completely pointless like subsidies for farmers not to grow on their land so they don't flood the market with their bountiful crop to the point where said crop becomes worthless. Or even to remove subsidies for growing the crop itself, because its a bullshit crop with little to offer humanity besides calamitous obesity. Yet the almighty corn lobby trods forward, and politicians pay lip service to ethanol as a viable fuel alternative simply because of how important the Iowa primaries are in the ass backwards process of securing the party nomination (it seems making concessions «for the sake of a straw poll or caucus» no matter how critical these concessions are to the future, is more important than a telling the straight dope to a bunch of truculent bucolic-pastoral types: specifically that their beloved crop is a very inefficient use of arable land and a threat to the stability of our political and economic infrastructure in the near future). Are you beginning to see how inordinately complex this is?

4.3) Social Security on paper should pay for itself, which is why when you look at your check you should see a sizable chunk appropriated ostensibly for Social Security. SS is actually running a surplus at the moment which should continue in the short term until we see the retirement of the baby boomers en masse. But mind you I said "on paper". The thing is, before our esteemed congressmen decided to drive us deep into debt they decided to raid the coffers of SS, taking all the incoming revenue and swaping it out for junk bonds. They raided the piggy bank and left IOUs (The legality of this is questionable, but it happened so get over it). Which makes SS non-viable, a problem that will only get compounded by the fact that when baby boomers do retire there will not be enough people working to support them sitting on their asses. Because SS has been gutted and its surplus is for naught, it has essentially become a very large pyramid or Ponzi scheme, we need to increase the amount of people working to pay for the increasing number of retirees (This is a symptom of an infinite growth paradigm). This will not happen, there are high unemployment rates, and we can't reproduce fast enough to keep this fucker chugging along. The retirement age should be advanced a year or two, people are working longer, and some serious revamping needs to be done if this monstrous program is to survive. Medicaid and Medicare are also a huge drain on the budget but its not really a a fault of theirs, or SS for that matter. The problem with M&M is that they are forced to acquiesce to the medical industry and insurance companies that have been running a racket for years. The doctors and hospitals have been raising prices that have nothing to do with cost, insurances companies pass the buck to the businesses that insure their employees and everybody wins. Drug companies made sure they weren't left out. Prices spiraled upward, and were of course, unregulated (insurance companies, doctors, nurses & hospitals, and Big Pharm all have their own huge phalanx like teams of men in suits lobbying vigorously for them, just look what happened with a national consensus on health care). I mean its all so fucking ludicrous, M&M could be gutted along with ObamaCare and instead we could all be given some socialized healthcare and not have to worry about horrifying terms like medical debt in country whose health care system ranks below Cuba. Seriously WTF.

I am running out of steam writing this, trying to make it somewhat cogent and lucid while writing with my thumbs on a 3 inch screen but I'll try to wrap this up coherently.

So what would I do to fix the problem? What can be done to correct the current state of the economy? I have tried to show that working within the system to reach a workable solution to our contemporary problems of economy is impossible and infuriating. I have tried to do this in a laconic matter (seriously, I did not really delve into the media and contemporary thought, the concept of a central banking system, globalization and the environment or the dynamics of fiat currency) and I hope my earnest attempt was able to demonstrate in some way, shape, or form the state of late-stage capitalism we exist in. This is not at all what Adam Smith envisioned. This is Casino Capitalism. It can't be saved (well maybe it could if you took FDR's heart put it with Teddy Roosevelt's balls in JFK's body, and created an über president that would smash the shit out the banks and tell congress to shut the fuck up and fall in line, and regulate all big business until their were none left just small business and no corporations). If you play the game you lose (I conceptualize it as a chess match, and going through the near infinite permutations the best outlook is a stalemate - a draw in which the status quo is able to continue to maintain itself, which seems highly unlikely). The only way to win is to throw out the rules, throw out the board, and re-conceptualize the game itself. The best way to fix the economy is to not fix it, not adhere some band aid to a lost limb, not dream that a paltry stop-gap solution is the answer to our prayers. The system is broken, the faster we acknowledge this the faster we can implement real stratagems. Short of violent uprising I advocate: large scale organization to show our dissatisfaction with government (wait... the Tea Party did this, and it was funded by the billionaire Koch bros. to advance a conservative agenda under the guise of populism...let's just scrap this point entirely). Hmm so what I would advocate is a reworking of economy in general, a change from profit-driven economy to purpose-driven economy, a *resource based economy*. This is all pretty radical stuff, and I don't expect you or anyone else to immediately get enthralled or jump on board. What I do expect is a collapse of the global economy within my lifetime, and the resulting life changes we will all be forced to make in order to survive. We need to live in sustainable communities with a focus on self sufficiency. The idea that its somehow cheaper to pull up oil from the remote corners of the world, spend endless amounts of energy shipping that oil across the world to be molded into a plastic fork to be thrown away in a landfill where it will not biodegrade because its non biodegradable, the idea that this is somehow cheaper than washing a fork needs to die. We need a better way to live. We really do, and call me a pessimist, a hatchet man, a naysayer, a paranoid doom-and-gloomer, call me what you will but I don't think we will find a better way to live on our own, not without some external impetus to get our collective shit together, if you will. It will take something catastrophic to wake us from the catatonic states of slumber and delusion we are cloistered in now. Luckily for us its just over the horizon. Calamity, that is.

Sincerely, DJV

Post Script: I don't know if you are one for scripture but my favorite part of the bible was when Jesus freaks out on the money changers outside the temple. There was a time when usury was considered a sin. Now its the norm. Sign o' the times.

*This was edited to remove my phone number, and to add formatting and much needed citations on Sunday Aug 7th, 2011

Modern Liberal Hypocrisy

2011-03-29T05:17:00.000-04:00

I hate celebrities.

There are many reasons why, but probably the most significant is how celebrities have this ceaseless way of taking-up pet causes. These causes are always different and always the same. Always. They are: liberal activist causes based on giving humanitarian aid to some poor afflicted people in the third world after some form of calamitous catastrophe (man made or natural) has occurred. This aspect of celebrity is particularly annoying because this cause is then paraded around by vapid beautiful people (George Clooney, Angelina Jolie) who promote it in way that makes a whore out of the cause itself, coating the cause with a thin film of sleaze, using the cause as a disposable commodity to further the perception of themselves as deep and sympathetic people. These causes are taken up and forgotten and changed with a dizzying pace, the political accessories of celebrities. But the smugness this breeds, or this idea of charity as vanity is not even what upsets me the most about these celebrity "endorsements". What bothers me the most is that they really highlight the greatest fallacy of modern liberalism in America, one that is the elephant we ignore, the Baluchitherium in the room.

Even if I were able to believe that humanitarian aid addressed the source of the problem (the systematic root problems that precipitate crisis), even if I were to believe that this cause of giving aid was something more than putting a bandaid on a bullet wound, even if I accepted all that as true, I would still be faced with the greater truth - that merely by existing and consequently, consuming, one is always participating in systems of exploitation and abuse that far outweigh any ethical choices one can make throughout a lifetime. This is the great fallacy of modern liberalism in America, that while one espouses human rights and liberty for all individuals, one is doing this while actively participating in a system of commercial and political exploitation that intentionally deprives those affected people of any greater agency, all for the betterment of this great nation. Even if one were to be the greenest humanist philanthropist imaginable, involved in a myriad of causes to help the less fortunate, one would still be participating in a system that made them less fortunate to begin with, and one would still be supporting that system by innocuously consuming products with no knowledge of the greater consequences that small act of consumption will have.This liberalism in thought and conservatism in action is doublespeak, and most liberals don't know they guilty of it, mainly because living in America means being totally divorced from the knowledge of where what you consume comes from, and what what you consume is made out of. This is not a rhetorical flourish, for those incredulous allow me demonstrate:

Lets consider 3 seemingly harmless items that are ubiquitous in our quotidian lives: Chocolate, Plastics, and anything that uses a microchip processor like an iPod, computer, or cell phone.

1. Chocolate. Delicious right? It comes from the Theobroma cacao tree, which is a tropical tree, a temperamental tree that takes years to cultivate before bearing beans to be harvested. About 80% of the worlds supply of cacao beans comes from West Africa - mostly from the Ivory Coast - where child labor is used to harvest the beans. A UNICEF report from the late 90's reported that some farmers in the Ivory coast use slave labor, child slave labor. What's even better is that the chocolate industry instead of self-regulating, and offering organic slave labor free chocolate as a commercial alternative, decided to fight legislation tooth and nail against a slave free food label. Thanks Nestle! This ensures that when we bite into our next candy bar we can be pretty sure a child slave helped contribute to our satisfaction.

2. Plastics. Life would suck without 'em right? They are in everything these days-from the cellophane on my cigarettes to the cars we drive. And speaking of cars, plastics also use petroleum, because plastics come from petroleum. Which comes from oil, that limited natural resource that only grows in scarcity. We can only manufacture plastics from natural gas and petroleum, both of which will run out sometime in the near future. But plastics have another similarity with cars, in that they offer their own special, largely ignored ecological disaster. Plastics are one of those few man made creations that are non-biodegradable, meaning they stick around forever slowly breaking down through erosion and sunlight into smaller polymer chains, until they are small enough to be runoff from a landfill and enter our tributaries and lakes and streams where we consume them and then they play a new role in our bodies where they act as estradiol and make our endocrine systems go crazy or make us infertile. Depending on which number plastic it is (1-7) it can also be toxic. So there's that. Then there's plastic island in the pacific ocean that covers a surface area 2X the size of Texas. This is a large ecological disaster that remains widely ignored, the consequences of which are unconscionable. Oh did I mention this is only one of the 5 great garbage patches in the gyres of the worlds oceans?

3. Cell phones, iPods, and computers. These are essentials in the ever increasing digital lives we lead. Necessary at this point. The motherboards and microchips that power these devices come from basic minerals we are relatively familiar with - gold and the three T's: tin (cassiterite), tungsten (wolframite), and tantalum (coltan). Now tantalum is wonderful because it used in almost every form of electronic capacitor in small devices - it stores the energy. Tin is the soldering on the motherboard, tungsten allows your phone to vibrate, and gold coats the wires. Now all this is important because all these resources are in abundance in one country in the world, the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire). Now if you don't know anything about Congo, you are probably not to blame, in the US there has been a conspicuous media blackout concerning the Second Congo War which began in 1998. Since it started over 5.4 million people have died making it the second most deadly conflict since World War II. Now despite clear ideologies at the beginning of the conflict it degraded into just a deadly power grab for all sides involved, and all of DRC's neighbors got involved in some way shape or form, Rawanda and Uganda playing the biggest roles, but not to be outdone by the troops of despots Mugabe and Gaddafi. Burundi, Sudan, Namibia, Chad, and Angola have at various points entered the fracas for their own self interest. Several different factions and militias control various parts of the country where they tax the mines and smuggle the minerals out to buy weapons to perpetuate an endless cycle of war. As if this wasn't atrocious enough, rape has been institutionalized by ALL sides in the conflict as a means of control and fear. This has driven up the rates of HIV and vaginal fistulae due to gang rape. And rape is not just against women, rape is also against men. The DRC has the highest incidents of sexual assault in the world. If this wasn't atrocious enough all sides have also engaged in the hunting of pygmies as sport. Pygmies are regarded as subhuman and often eaten in acts of cannibalism loosely associated with the magic powers supposedly embodied in them. This is, without a doubt the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, it makes Darfur look ike a walk in the park yet remains absent from the news and absent from Clooney's armchair activism.

The fact is the destabilization of this region is great for business (just as child slavery is great for chocolate), if DRC were allowed to have a coherent government they could nationalize the mines and demand a fair price for their resources, which would consequently damage the economies of all first world countries that rely heavily on technology in their infrastructure.

Now here is the fallacy: try going a day without chocolate. Easy enough? Now try and repeat the process with technology? Very difficult. Now try and do that with plastics? Impossible. Even if trying to boycott these things one finds it impossible and unbearable because we have created a reality so thoroughly based on domination and exploitation, one so pervasive, that we simply cannot escape it even if we want to. There is no way out, and we choose to remain ignorant to these issues so we never have to confront the hypocrisy of our liberalism, that while calling for justice we are actively contributing to injustice. I own a Blackberry and I am currently writing on this laptop, and I have to recognize that to even be able to share this with you today someone was either raped or murdered. This is the hidden brutality of the world we live in, it is too late to even bite the hand feeds, at this point you would just be biting yourself.

But maybe I am too harsh on celebrity maybe there can be a purposeful use for it after all. Because here I am in the check out lane of a crowded super market and I'm starring at People magazine and they have one those Clooney causes as one of their many subheadlines next to his smug face and then I look over and see all the chocolate bars next to the Tic Tacs and random AAA batteries wrapped in plastic next to the register that is ringing up my order, the register that is made out tungsten and tin and tantalum, and I don't want to think about what I'm looking at, I don't want to consciously agree that I am a bad person, I want to laugh and be distracted and I need that mindless celebrity that says nothing of any importance but is still a manic disorienting 24/7 source of entertainment. At times like this, as much as I hate to admit it, I need Charlie Sheen.

WINNING.

-DJV

The Racial Biases of Duke Hating

2011-03-26T02:30:00.001-04:00

While its hard to disagree with most of the conclusions of this article, there are notable glaring omissions, the most significant being exactly what jpbuehner alludes to: The Corey Maggette Scandal.

There is a very clear double standard. Because of Chris Webber, Michigan was forced to vacate its wins, Yet, Corey Maggette (who left Duke for the NBA after one year like Elton Brand [compared to "Coach K recruited kids who had every intention of staying in school for four years"] and Will Avery) received money from AAU Coach Piggie, which, if logically following NCAA guidelines, rendered him ineligible to play and essentially forfeits the wins of which he was apart, mainly the 1999 national runner up NCAA title. This is all a matter of record. The NCAA looked the other way, plain and simple.

The greater issue encapsulated in all this nonsense is one of semiotics and not semantics, Duke represents white establishment through and through - from their tobacco endowment, to their predominantly white teams, to their well behaved and cultured black athletes - all of which serve as a stark contrast to the swagger and authenticity of the Fab Five, a contrast that is night and day, black and white. It is no wonder that when culpable of the same crime, the institution that more closely represents white patriarchal hegemony goes completely unpunished and untarnished.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

A Love Letter From Afghanistan

2011-03-21T20:09:00.004-04:00

The following is a letter from Lance Corporal Cullen J. Barrett, United States Marine Corps., currently serving a tour of duty in Afghanistan. The letter has been edited (by me) for grammar, and redacted by the United States Government to remove all sensitive information. All photos ©Cullen J. Barrett 2010, 2011 are available for reproduction upon written request. - DJV

The Dull Empty Life You Live:

You are boring.

Where are you going with your life?

You haven't changed a day since we knew each other, those days when we were young and dumb and in high school, or maybe I knew you from somewhere else.

I look down on you.

Do you know what are you doing?

You party everyday and live your life based upon the status you rake in at these parties: your outfit + the amount of booze you intake = how cool you feel about yourself.

Grow the fuck up. Move on in life. Quit posting gay ass photos of yourself on fucking Facebook, oh look at me at the bonfire, look at me at this kegger, look at me in the back of this party bus... Nobody cares that you are 21 years old, maybe older, maybe younger , that you have no job, or a job so minuscule that you can only afford to buy the clothes you wear to your parties and the beer you bring to them. You dropped out of college or are attending community college and you think you are going places or you delude yourself into believing that same story you tell everyone else about what your "plan" is. Newsflash Einstein get a fucking degree from a university, the only thing CC will get you is a manager job at a Subway, or for you freaks, Whole Foods maybe...

Is this really the life you want to live?

Do you want to be 30 years old and not remember what you did for the past 10 years, still living in the same town you grew up in, just moving to the apt. complex down the street? Sounds like a sad existence to me.

How do you feel when you see all your friends have graduated college or are almost there and have real plans for the long term? What's your long term...planing next year's fourth o' July kegger??!

Do you wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror and think... man I've done something with my life, I've really fucking accomplished something or are you so naive and short sighted that you can't see past the day you are living in? Or behind it for that matter?

I'll come home after being away for a year and not shit has changed, you are the same, exactly how I left you, maybe slightly better or worse, a whole fucking year and you are no different than when I left. Are you serious? And the really sad part is you didn't run into me doing anything of importance, most likely in a fucking bar the night before Thanksgiving, exchanging stupid greetings, asking questions that you don't really wanna know the answer to, because when you ask "how are you?" you don't really want to know what it feels like to see someone you know die, you don't really want to know the consequences of taking a life, you don't actually want to know how it feels to go to hell and back. "HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU?"

Now I'm gone again, in a foreign country, fighting a war you protest - but know nothing about. You don't educate yourself in anyway but take up these self-righteous calls that are "in" at the moment, and you haven't fucking changed, you're still posting dumb shit on Facebook that you probably don't remember because you were sooo drunk, and you're still living at your parent's house or maybe you got a party apt. with some other friends so you never have to face the music, never have to wake up to reality.

It is not that I hate you,
it is that I pity you.
I pity your sad dull empty life.

If you died tomorrow, what would people say about you?

One day we will meet up again and it will be awkward, and there will be long pauses filled with an uncomfortable silence that says more than our words will. We will have nothing in common. Whether you have been there for awhile or have just arrived you will probably be drunk, but I will know you don't drink because "it is cool" anymore, you drink to numb your sadness to forget that in the morning no matter how hungover you are, you will have to punch that ticket and work your sad minimum wage job, not because you want to work, or like what you do, but because you need to eat and pay your bills.

Don't ever complain about how hard your life is.
You don't know hard,
you don't know pain.

So please, when you read this, think this question aloud: could I be this person?

Because, more likely than not, you probably are.

Lance Corporal Cullen J. Barret
March 9th, 2011

The Horror

2011-03-19T23:57:00.000-04:00

This is one of the really great horrors of post-modernism: the refutation of objective reality or truth leads to a greater problem than preceded it, mainly that no greater ethos can exist within this framework as individual viewpoints are both incommensurable and equally correct. This leads to nihilism, the “fuck it – its all fucking bullshit” understanding of realtiy (which is yet another way in which we allow ourselves to be powerless), but more often than leading us over the cliff to a belief in nothingness it leads us to settle for a belief in self, belief that while our views are incommensurable with others, our own beliefs are true – a perfect philosophy for a consumer culture where identity can be defined through commodities. This pervasive idea of greater meaninglessness is a de facto endorsement of the status quo, because it dispossess any real movement for change against the current system of things by disavowing it of any greater meaning or purpose .

One only has to look at the microcosm of the authentic music movements of the last few decades to see this exemplified. For instance this was best captured in the zeitgeist of the early 90’s, felt through bands like Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Rage Against the Machine. There was a general aesthetic of rebellion and yet an accompanying confusion as to what exactly to rebel against. This was perhaps best embodied by the lyric “despite of my rage, I am still just a rat in cage” a perfect definition of generation X. Not surprisingly Billy Corgan and the other music folk heroes of that generation have either sold out or died. This is a ceaseless motif, especially in music - one of the last available forums to authentically comment on injustice and still have that message reach a wider audience. Consider the pre gen X radical hip hop movement: Ice T’s “Cop Killer”, NWA’s “Fuck the Police”, and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”. All are songs that were incredibly popular yet very radical in illustrating levels of injustice and inequality throughout the system they exist in… but where are they now? Ice T has been portraying a police officer on network television for years, Ice Cube has starred in two PG family comedy movies, and Flava Flav has had several Vh1 reality shows. Essentially they’ve become established parts of the system the once fought to destroy, one does not have to be a scholar to recognize the pattern – it is always heavily embedded in our culture. Any genuine movement is created out of feelings of alienation, oppression and angst, this message, because it speaks in a great way to many of us, is then incorporated and assimilated by the greater system until it becomes devoid of any real meaning. Which then seems to tell us that every thing is meaningless. That everything is corrupt and everyone is corruptible is the great self fulfilling prophecy of the last two decades which reinforces the greater pervasive feeling of powerlessness.

Unfortunately affirmations of this self fulfilling prophecy of post-modernism exist all around us. It would appear that greater truth, reality, and goodness don’t exist, or rather the appearances/simulcrum of these things exist but they are just facades – representations or tokens of truth, reality, and goodness for a greater manipulation of personal gain. This is the circular logic of what I refer to as a self fufilling prophecy, that a rejection of a greater truth or a rejection of a greater reality (that is not subjective) leads to form of moral isolationism, and one then views that others are acting morally isolated which serves as justification for the ideology that created it. It is no wonder that Fredric Jameson characterized post-modernism as “the dominant cultural logic of late capitalism”. Ironically or significantly post-modernism serves society as modernism had: as a blanket justification for inequality, decadence and nihilism.

And to be fair the problem really isn’t with post-modernism. Brandon Edward Mitchell defines the underlying tenets of post-modernism to be:

Five critical suppositions:
-politics is pervasive
-language is constitutive
-truth is provisional
-meaning is contingent
-human nature is a myth

Which is not to say that greater capital “T” truth does not exist, merely that is provisional , temporal and constantly evolving just as we are, or more imporatntly because we are. Our own subjective evolution and our own conceptions of what is the capital “T” truth changes with the ever increasing amounts of data we encounter and the experiences we undergo as our mind struggles to find the greater truth in the reality all around us.

But if post-modernism isn’t the real culprit, why has its meaning been twisted to deliver that message? Nietzsche hated that modernism had resulted in inequality, decadence and nihilism and yet post-modernism in its radical shift from the past paradigm seems to have provoked the exact same consequence. But Why? Why does post-modernism have the same results? My best guess is that the rampant relativism that the sciences have embraced, and more importantly that is rife in everyday culture and experience, stems from the masters of system we exist in. To me it seems that once the door was opened into any discussion of relativism the powers that be jumped on it because finally their actions could be absolved and explained and any opposition would be silenced. This is all too evident in Kissinger’s move to inject Realpolitik into US foreign policy.

Now the real question now is what the hell to do about it, and part of me feels like doing nothing except drowning in that malaise and ennui that all of us who went to Starbucks and listened to Nirvana are all too familiar with, part of me feels like writing poetry about how disconnected I feel in this twisted dystopia of post-modernism (In flannel).

Part of me feels like setting the world on fire.

but despite of my rage I am still just a rat in cage

DJV

Conspiracy!

2011-03-06T23:50:00.000-05:00

Recently I've come in contact with an old friend who, being like minded, subscribed me to several (radical) organizations on the Facebox. These groups include but are not limited to: Club V, World Truth, FU-NWO, Black Ops Liberty Clan, Children of Liberty, and We Are Change London. My initial excitement quickly petered out as I recognized these groups for what they are. Exempli gratia: on World Truth's wall Phillis "WeArechange" Georgia writes:

"My wonderful fellow human beings. We all know that the mouth of hell yawns before us. But has it occured to us that we are so close to running out of time that all these bits of proof we are offering each other have now become merely distractions? The internet is being kept on because it is serving someone else's purpose, NOT OURS. These bits of information, no matter how true they are, are keeping us from uniting in a meaningful way.

I don't know if you are aware of it or not, but Chaos is the name of an actual god. This god, among others, is one of the gods the Illuminati literally worship. The outbreaks of skirmishes, death, bold despotism, anger, and hatred all over the globe are ENERGY. This was INTENTIONALLY set off in order to feed the antichrist. He NEEDS this energy in order to rise. Now, whether you believe this or not, it does not matter. Even on basic levels we already know that anger and hatred serve to divide. So, let's not participate. Instead, let's pool our efforts toward learning how to unite with each other in the most meaningful way so that we can defeat this evil and send it shrinking back into the bowels of hell from which it is rising. This does not require any violence whatsoever. Just stop participating. Stop transmitting negative energy.

So far, we have united in anger. And, that's a good thing! Anger offers clarity, and we desperately needed clarity because we had none before we met each other. But it has occured to me that we are ready to begin letting go of anger more than we may realize. If the goal is to survive, what good does a ticker tape parade of evidence do for us? Ultimately, uniting in anger is not True uniting at all because it does not last! What happens when no one is angry anymore? We all go our separate ways, and the bonds we forged fade into the annals of human history. History, as we all know, is written only by the victors. This time, humanity will not be forgotten. It is time to start putting these things aside that make us angry and indignant, and learn the old ways of what it means to unite as humans. This we can do together, also by sharing bits of information!"

Well fuck-my-ass there goes the notion of there existing an objective organization (on Facebook) that understands the infinite levels of corruption and conspiracy present in all the systems that control our daily life in a non-children's book/bible kinda way. SMH. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, after all most consensus on conspiracy theories comes from low quality YouTube documentaries which espouse facts with no sourcing and always take the most simplistic route in assigning blame. The villains are: (and always are, I mean this in a profound no-bullshit-honest-Joe type of way) always the ubiquitous Illuminati, the NWO, the always vexing 10th planet nibiru, the David Icke conspiracy of lizard people, the Rothschilds/all Jews, and then any mixture of these conspiracies you can possibly imagine.

My biggest problem with all the bullshit rhetoric that gets kicked around on the internets (by Alex Jones/Glenn Beck type demagogues) is that the greater theory of conspiracy is diluted, bottled, and sold to those who don't know better. And we do know better, we know we are being lied to. We all inherently know - deep in our guts -balls to bones - that we are being hoodwinked. And the problem is now that there exist those who decry the liars, those who call for change, who illustrate the conspiracies, but these people are nothing more than liars cornering the market of people who are slightly aware of the fact that they have been lied to in the first place. This is essentially another level of deception, liars who sell new lies by revealing the old ones - "Yes your government is out to deceive you and put you in concentration camps... so buy my survival kit and some gold bullion!" What we are seeing today in Alex Jones and those of his ilk, are the new carpetbaggers of information, those that exploit our yearning for truth by giving us bits and pieces of it redistributed in a whole new set of lies.

And we know we are being lied to. My generation has grown so apathetic to the political process precisely because from a young age we have been "pitched to" by armies of ad men selling He-Man and Barbie and Colgate and Coca-Cola so when some boring suit talks about something abstract like "character" or "hope" we immediately recognize that they are lying and they are in it for themselves . We know we are being lied to, if for no other reason than this basic fact: we are "pitched to" at least 50 times a day - pop up ads online, billboards, commercials on TV, commercials on the radio, newspaper and magazine ads, ads on the subways, ect. ect. and this happens so much its nearly unconscious and we no longer actively think about it. This constant barrage is like living with a really sexy charming persuasive liar, who lies chronically but you never really can tell what exactly their lying about, you just get the feeling that if you buy that sportscar your wife's tits won't be so disproportionately huge, or you just feel that rainbows won't shoot out of your ass if you eat a particularly sugary breakfast cereal, or maybe you just know that 4 out of 5 dentists don't smoke Lucky Strikes.

But the really painful part about all of this shit is that we know we are being lied to - but it is almost impossible in this sea of conspiracies to discern what is actually the truth from what is gibberish. And if you believe in conspiracies then it becomes easier to believe that this itself is a conspiracy; that somewhere out there a low level government bureaucrat is purposely making painfully low production value YouTube videos about how Alicia Keys and Beyonce speak in witch tongue and serve satanic masters by using Masonic signs which is, of course, all part of the Illuminati pancake conspiracy of everything.

Whether this conspiracy to water down conspiracy theories is true or not is ultimately irrelevant, what is important is that real conspiracies go unnoticed in our midst. I think the problem that most people have nowadays is that the information about "real" conspiracies is right in front of them, but they don't have the attentions spans, focus, will or desire to give a shit if its real or not. In one sense we've been lied to so goddamn much that any piece of news that illustrates plutocratic evil, governmental misconduct, or corporate malfeasance just serves to confirm our already inculcated apathy. In a deeper sense, we only have that reaction when we actually see something that should piss us off and most of the time we don't, this is all sterilized and neutralized by a mass media saturated in mindless sound bites and A.D.D. inducing jump cuts. All we really have to do to discover the conspiracies that are all around us in contemporary culture is READ. Yes, read.

We don't like to read anymore. A survey done by the Jenkin's Group revealed these statistics:

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57 percent of new books are not read to completion.^[7]^[8]

There is kind of a primal gut churning fear that arises when asked to read, an amygdala based reaction of "oh shit theres gotta be a way outta this" kind of escapism that we seek when we asked to be still and quiet and take in new information and think. We are so instilled with digital and electronic stimulation that it is hard to imagine a life without those devices like TV, radio, internet, iPod, cell phone ect etc except when we have to read. We are so hooked on our toys that we can no longer entertain ourselves. But no one ever thinks of this as a conspiracy: that the supposedly most advanced people on earth are functionally illiterate and completely apathetic to those that control the wealth and systems of power around them. Hmmm.

Maybe if we were more more literate we would have read Carroll Quigley's epic tome "Tragedy and Hope" which, in over 1,300 pages, in no uncertain terms, describes how the Round Table Group founded by Cecil Rhodes (yes the Rhodes Scholar guy) has come to dominate everything that shapes foreign policy and international banking, IE spawning the Bilderburg Group, the Trilateral Commission, Council of Foreign Relations ect. which I know sounds pretty crazy but is actually just some of those facts that we ignore or remain ignorant of.

Or maybe if we read more we'd discover that after it was rumored that the ace up the sleeve Wikileaks had been threatening to dish out was possibly dirt on Bank of America. Bank of America then went to the Justice Department of United States federal government, and the Justice Dept. put BoA in contact with a sleezy law firm that put them in touch with a corporate hacker who in his attempt at espionage of Wikileaks openly flouted the law, so much so that his illegal actions were written down in emails that then got leaked when Anonymous reverse hacked him. This is one of the most important new stories of the year, and as such completely uncovered by major media outlets.

Or maybe if we read we'd learn that the British government just declassified over 8,000 UFO files. Seriously its on their official National Archives website here. I can't make it up but you can learn about UFO's from the thousands of files available for free courtesy of the the RAF and the UK.

Or maybe if we read even the mainstream paper we'd learn that JPMorgan in collusion with HSBC and the Fed have cornered the silver market.And even tried to kill the guy that exposed them!

Or maybe we would have read the leaked CitiGroup memo that demonstrated that our economy was now a Plutonomy and offered solutions to cater to the rich, and undermine our basic freedoms.

But these are just crazy theories right? UFOs can't be real and banks don't collude with government for their own benefit. That would just be crazy.

That would be as crazy as in someone believing in an Illuminati conspiracy but not believing that the CIA brought crack into inner city LA.

As crazy as believing that lizard people controlled the world but not believing the US government infected poor black Alabama sharecroppers with syphilis even after the cure had been discovered, letting them die until 1972.

As crazy as someone actually taking the time to read all this.

- DJV

Pinks and Packers

2011-02-20T21:56:00.001-05:00

Recent developments in Wisconsin serve to illustrate the longstanding grievances between labor, corporations and the state that intervenes on behalf of either. The protests in Wisconsin are a microcosm of the sorted history of organized labor in America; an example that contains all the elements of the greater whole, namely class warfare, political intrigue, worker's rights, and plutocratic control.

What is clear in the media narrative of the Wisconsin case is that the fiscal deficit needs resolution, what is not clear is why the Governor has refused the compromise offered by the union to cut pension and welfare benefits, which is what Governor Walker's bill ostensibly seeks to legislate.

I can only deduce then that real goals of Governor Walker, and the republican legislature that is eager to push through his agenda, are not merely the bullet points he reiterates in the media, but that one of his primary objectives is the dissolution of organized labor in Wisconsin. And all the evidence points in this direction. There is no clear need to end collective bargaining rights as a response to a fiscal crisis, a fiscal crisis that, as mentioned previously, unions agreed to make concessions for. Nor is it a proximate or logical step in a supposed fiscal crisis to change the organization of the union in such a way that they would need to hold a yearly vote in order to stay organized. President Obama's own statement "seems like more of an assault on unions" rings particularly true, as the union Gov. Walker is attempting to dismantle constitutes one of his largest political opponents. The situation would seem to indicate that Gov. Walker is exploiting a budget crisis for political ends.

What is even more questionable is whether this fiscal crisis actually exists or whether it was contrived as a means to an end, as sheer "budgetary gamesmanship". The Wisconsin Fiscal Bureau, in a memo written on the 30th of January stated that Wisconsin will end its fiscal year with a gross balance of 121 million dollars. Hardly a deficit. An article entitled "Walker Gins Up 'Crisis' to Reward Cronies" from Madison.Com puts it succinctly:

[Walker] has proposed a $137 million budget “repair” bill that he intends to use as a vehicle to:
1. Undermine the long-established collective bargaining rights of public employee unions, which have for 80 years been the strongest advocates for programs that serve the great mass of Wisconsinites, as opposed to wealthy elites and corporate special interests. As Racine’s Democratic state Rep. Cory Mason says, the governor’s bill is designed not with the purpose of getting the state’s finances in order but as “an assault on Wisconsin’s working families and political payback against unions who didn’t support Gov. Walker.”
2. Pay for schemes that redirect state tax dollars to wealthy individuals and corporate interests that have been sources of campaign funding for Walker’s fellow Republicans and special-interest campaigns on their behalf. As Madison’s Democratic state Rep. Brett Hulsey notes, the governor and legislators aligned with him have over the past month given away special-interest favors to every lobby group that came asking, creating zero jobs in the process “but increasing the deficit by more than $100 million.”

But Representative Hulsey's figure of over 100 million is a little generous in its vagueness, the figure is actually around 140 million as reported by One Wisconsin Now as they stated:

Walker is refusing to provide full accounting of how much in additional costs his "scoop and toss" scheme would cost taxpayers down the road. Since his inauguration in early January, Walker has approved $140 million in new special interest spending that includes:
$25 million for an economic development fund for job creation that still has $73 million due to a lack of job creation. Walker is creating a $25 million hole which will not create or retain jobs. [Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, 1/7/11]
$48 million for private health savings accounts, which primarily benefit the wealthy. A study from the federal Governmental Accountability Office showed the average adjusted gross income of HSA participants was $139,000 and nearly half of HSA participants reported withdrawing nothing from their HSA, evidence that it is serving as a tax shelter for wealthy participants. [Government Accountability Office, 4/1/08; Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, 1/11/11]
$67 million for a tax shift plan, so ill-conceived that at-best the benefit provided to job creators would be less than a dollar a day per new job, and may be as little as 30 cents a day. [Associated Press, 1/28/01]

And these claims of cronyism with industry and collusion with lobbyists are made more apparent by an article on Mother Jones which illuminates the infamous Koch Brothers role in all this:

According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Walker's gubernatorial campaign received $43,000 from the Koch Industries PAC during the 2010 election. That donation was his campaign's second-highest, behind $43,125 in contributions from housing and realtor groups in Wisconsin. The Koch's PAC also helped Walker via a familiar and much-used politicial maneuver designed to allow donors to skirt campaign finance limits. The PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn spent $65,000 on independent expenditures to support Walker. The RGA also spent a whopping $3.4 million on TV ads and mailers attacking Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Walker ended up beating Barrett by 5 points. The Koch money, no doubt, helped greatly.

However, Koch Bros. involvement doesn't stop there, their astro turf tea party front Americans For Prosperity is organizing small pro-Walker protests in concert with The Club for Growth, a conservative PAC that features key adviser R.J. Johnson - one of the chief strategists in Walker's campaign for governor. The Koch Bros. have also launched a new site www.standwithwalker.org to sign a petition in support of the Gov. The site says "These common-sense reforms have made the union bosses desperate to disrupt Wisconsin government and overturn an election. They must not be allowed to succeed. In fact, every state should adopt Governor Scott Walker's common sense reforms."

This statement is laughable, mainly because it alludes to the archetype of union bosses as fat cats (epitomized by Jimmy Hoffa), when the real fat cats are the Plutocrats like the Koch Bros. who are spending this money to enact legislation, like the proposed bill, that benefits their corporate interests and their bottom line. If you don't think that is the case then look at the facts (from Think Progress):

Koch Industries is a major player in Wisconsin: Koch owns a coal company subsidiary with facilities in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan; six timber plants throughout the state; and a large network of pipelines in Wisconsin. While Koch controls much of the infrastructure in the state, they have laid off workers to boost profits. At a time when Koch Industries owners David and Charles Koch awarded themselves an extra $11 billion of income from the company, Koch slashed jobs at their Green Bay plant:
Officials at Georgia-Pacific said the company is laying off 158 workers at its Day Street plant because out-of-date equipment at the facility is being replaced with newer, more-efficient equipment. The company said much of the new, papermaking equipment will be automated. [...] Malach tells FOX 11 that the layoffs are not because of a drop in demand. In fact, Malach said demand is high for the bath tissue and napkins manufactured at the plant.
Koch Industries was one of the biggest contributors to Walker’s gubernatorial campaign, funneling $43,000 over the course of last year. In return, Koch front groups are closely guiding the Walker agenda. The American Legislative Exchange Council, another Koch-funded group, advised Walker and the GOP legislature on its anti-labor legislation and its first corporate tax cuts.
According to the EPA, Koch businesses are huge polluters, emitting thousands of pounds of toxic pollutants. As soon as he got into office Walker started cutting environmental regulations and appointed a Republican known for her disregard for environmental regulations to lead the Department of Natural Resources. In addition, Walker has stated his opposition to clean energy jobs policies that might draw workers away from Koch-owned interests.

Now with all this information at our disposal, I think it is safe to say that what Governor Scott Walker is doing is not motivated by any true fiscal crisis, but rather one he himself engineered, and his actions following the supposed crisis are tantamount to political payback, ensuring profits for his campaign contributors and weakened political opposition for himself. The only problem with this is that 65% percent of Wisconsin residents think the Governor has gone too far. And so do the Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers. And so do the democratic senators that have fled the state to prevent quorum from being reached. And so do the countless thousands in Madison who are protesting now as I write this.

For those that stand with Walker, I would ask the question, what is the larger danger facing our individual freedoms: unions that lobby for increased rights and pay at the cost of the state and corporations or corporations that lobby the state at the cost of workers rights and freedoms?

I mean how dense are we...have we really forgotten the bloody history of the corporation in this country? Or of organized labor in the US? How many people died under oppressive conditions and were killed during strikes? Did we forget long 16 hour work shifts and child labor here in the US? Did we forget how Carnegie hired an army of Pinkerton detectives (pejoratively called "pinks") to break the homestead strike - pinks that fired on a crowd of women and children - pinks that murdered innocent strikers? Have we forgotten what it took to get those collective bargaining rights, to be treated as equals at the table rather than a disposable objects? Can we really ignore the tacit implications of supporting this bill - that we would be supporting the destruction of our way of life and environment to advance the cause of two billionaires? Do we really think that corporations are generous entities that would gladly give large percentages of profit back to their workers if they were not forced to, and legally mandated to do so? Do we remember why each state has a minimum wage law?

Are we so easily fooled by the ads (made by billionaires) attempting to portray organized as labor as outside of our best interests that we forget the last 200 years of our history? Or all the examples in contemporary history that come to mind, like the sweatshops employed by Disney and Nike and Coca-Cola? Do we really want to shop at Wal-Mart?

Perhaps it would be better to consider a contemporary example from Wisconsin that was recently making headlines, one we could all stand to learn a lesson from: the Green Bay Packers, the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team in the United States. Business doesn't need to be diametrically opposed to the rights of its constituents to be successful. You can win a Super Bowl and have ownership consist of one hundred thousand people. You can have a successful business and be non-profit.

Let's all hear it for the Super Bowl champs, for championing the cause of anarcho-syndicalism and for saying, in no small way:

"We know that it is teamwork on and off the field that makes the Packers and Wisconsin great. As a publicly owned team we wouldn't have been able to win the Super Bowl without the support of our fans.
It is the same dedication of our public workers every day that makes Wisconsin run. They are the teachers, nurses and child care workers who take care of us and our families. But now in an unprecedented political attack Governor Walker is trying to take away their right to have a voice and bargain at work.
The right to negotiate wages and benefits is a fundamental underpinning of our middle class. When workers join together it serves as a check on corporate power and helps ALL workers by raising community standards. Wisconsin's long standing tradition of allowing public sector workers to have a voice on the job has worked for the state since the 1930s. It has created greater consistency in the relationship between labor and management and a shared approach to public work.
These public workers are Wisconsin's champions every single day and we urge the Governor and the State Legislature to not take away their rights."

Maybe there's hope for Wisconsin after all.
Maybe there's hope for all of us.
Maybe.
I'll wait til Tuesday.

-DJV

The Outrage of the Outrageous: Case Study of Patriarchy Continued

2011-02-13T13:24:00.016-05:00

Some important notes on my post from the 8th:Some important notes on my post from the 8th:

1. KC Johnson has not commented on it, nor has he posted the link which I published on the commentary Durham-in-Wonderland; it is either awaiting moderation or effectively 86'ed.

2. After publishing my post (and much to my chagrin) I discovered, on an online forum called Zetaboards, a group calling itself LieStoppers which, as far as I can tell, has represented the interests of white American outrage on the internet since the outset of the Duke Lax case. LieStoppers takes the trashing of Ms. Kubon to a whole 'nother level (which, comparatively, has the effect of softening the blows from Mr. Johnson's sycophants). This thread on Ms. Kubon is extensive (69 posts long), wandering, confusing and most of all: completely insular. It seemed noteworthy that although many of the commentators on this thread harped on the lynch mob mentality following false accusation, they failed to recognize the irony of their own situation: collectively attacking one person from the luxury of a large self righteous group, a group aligned by similar interests of opinion, with no expression of dissent.

My understanding is that most message boards/forums operate this way - rather than elevating discussion on a wide variety of topics through insightful discourse or debate, people prefer to gravitate towards like-minded individuals and conglomerate with them. This generally stands true for everything from cat lovers to porn enthusiasts to followers of Raphael (the Spanish singer popular in latin america) so it should come as no surprise that there exists LieStoppers, or any other expression of watered down populist outrage in America. Yet here I am shocked and revolted by the degree of close minded opinion, agreement, and simplistic logic used to validate largely rhetorical arguments - arguments which can only work because they are preaching to the choir.

My own outrage, is directed at one woman who epitomizes my point perfectly: Joan Foster. Joan is queen of the bully pulpit, a masterful maven of manipulating a captive audience using lots of rhetoric and appeals to emotion to tie together loosely focused screeds. Allow Joan to demonstrate:

Post #9: When I read this sort of righteous dogma rhetoric from "Nicole" ...I'm reminded how similar these types are to the rural far right evangelicals they so ridicule and despise. In both cases, faith trumps fact, and a kind of self righteous superiority is assumed. No amount of information can sway those who have swooned with the headiness of their own virtue and access to Great Truth. Accuracy, evidence, anything detrimental to Dogma is forever denied. To do otherwise, would further underscore their foolishness and the their fluffy self-importance.

This religiosity on the Left ...most of whom so revile religion...is most intriguing. Their Hysterics have just altered the group speak and revamped the sacraments. They are no different in approach..or lack of open thinking.

Nicole fits the pattern of one who is certain she heard The Holy Snake speak the Ten Commandments from the pulpit...and later shown that the snake is a rubber hose and Preacher is a Con Man with a tape record circa 1965....will never yield. Years later, she will regale all with the "truthiness"of what she saw from her Sunday stall.

Nicole saw the Holy Snake talk.

She thinks it makes her morally elevated...instead she looks like she has rigor mortis of the mind.

Best she stay on the Mountain with the others of her ilk. The real deal of the Duke Lacrosse Hoax was their widespread mortification of the Metanarrative. The general public saw their rigidity, their refusal to move off their "religious posture"...their bias...their selective empathy.

Speaking of selective empathy, her hero, Professor Holloway...was proven to have much in common with the racist ole Southern sheriffs whose similar mindset preceded hers. Like Holloway, they made snap decisions on credibility based on Skin Hue. Like Holloway, they were prone to rush to judgement and advocate a Mob response. Holloway's shameful rush to publish the Listening Statement...will stand forever as a mockery of any post racial motives she might claim. It was a verbal lynching...a decision to listen to only those whose skin resembled hers. It displayed her own bigotry and the similar biases of all who signed...in a way that the general public could FINALLY understand.

False accusation and Mob action of the sort that was directed at the Team...is it's own kind of Gang Rape: the victim is never the same...never can trust , relax, move about with out fear. There was most definitely a "Gang" quality to the rape of these boys reputations....the "thank You" to those carrying "Castrate them" signs by Duke professors; the classroom condemnations; the rabble-rousing media; the Black Panthers; the Fire-breathing "feminists"...what a circle they made.. encouraging the violence of those lies to continue!

The fact that Nicole has such selective empathy and ignorance of the lifechanging burdens of False Accusation shows her Bias and "religious" blinders.

She can't care.

She believes The Snake talked.

She can't make her Holy Church look any dumber than it already does.

Facts are not important to today's Holy Rollers like Nicole. It makes her feel righteous, when really, off the Holy Mountain, she looks ridiculous.

I've stopped arguing with people who know they saw Elvis at the local Walmart,,,,who think Snakes can speak with Human Tongues...who think "something happened."

What happened was the Leftist Zealots made an indelible impression on an engaged public...that will never be forgotten...and did irreparable damage to real victims and to their own credibility.

Off the Holy Mountain, of course.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MOAR:

Post # 15: False accusation of the sort we witnessed , accompanied by threats of violence, mob hatred, public defamation and constant vilification is just as damaging as any gang rape IMO.

Who do these kids and families ever trust? What fairness or justice can they believe in? Durham/Duke was possessed of a lynch mob mentality...and it was stoked by those with political self interest. Everybody had something to make for themselves by defiling these kids.

And guess what? At Duke, at least, it was a career enhancer...a vehicle that took one on the faculty fast-track...to be a Liar, and a promoter of Lies, and a destroyer of reputations...and a certified member of the Verbal Lynch Mob.

That's Duke University.

This blogger thinks she's "sensitive" and evolved...to side with the Rapists of Reputations...the Promoters pf Lies.

It's so...sophisticated. Bet she is "green"...hates Israel...loves Obama...wants no ones else religious morals standing in the way of her abortions...wants babies heads crushed if necessary to keep "religion" from her life...but wants HER morality imposed and PAID for...by everyone else. Her green energy...her abortions overseas...her Obamacare...HER religion must be imposed on Americam taxpayers..because...it's what a "moral"nation does.

The New Leftist religion.

Edited by Joan Foster, Feb 4 2011, 02:01 PM.

There is then some lauding of Joan between posts that gets her pumped up for another diatribe:

Post #18 (one hour later): The extremes of religion seem to attract certain types of hysterical personalities. I'm thinking here of the the snake handlers, the screamers, the ones who see God in the tea cup leaves. Now that religion is somewhat passe , IMO...many of these hysterics have taken on these Leftist issues. How different are the Doomsday types who espouse the Rapture from Al gore and the approaching Meltdown. "Do as I say or you are doomed!"

The know-it-all prophet.

This blogger has learned her catechism and is repeating it from her cyber-pulpit. It makes her feel that she is so much "better" than the rest of us...she is among The Elect.

There is no way facts and evidence will sway her from her religious dogma.

But this Hoax and Farce...had one redeeming quality. It exposed these Hysterics. It vomited them out onto the public stage. So many had no idea that their children's minds were being entrusted to Fanatics and Liars...like the "Listeners" of Duke University. So many had no idea that these "Evoled" Intellects wrote and spouted gibberish...and had racist views that dominated their reasoning processes.

Crystal was a truth-teller because, because..let's say it...she was BLACK. That was the only quality she needed to trump all else.

The Duke Hoax exposed the Left's selective compassion and seething race, gender, class biases...and their fanatical devotion to the former...against all reason and with extreme malice loosely disguised as "Leftist moraity."

And then her comments in response to an off topic post 40 mins later:

Post #26: Yes, Mason. You have called it what it is..the State Run Religion.

Perfect. Thank you.

We should have a thread describing the Gospel, Commandments, and Holy Scripture of the State Run religion as taught in our Universities, as funded by our taxes, as imposed upon the rest of us.

This could be a great asset in the next election...making people understand how we are all under the yoke of the State Run Religion.

Then onto the email she posted (thanks to Steve from Mass. for making me aware of this):

Post #42: She is only posting praise about herself now...but I sent her something to consider:"Does it soothe you to have the other zealots praise your efforts to bring more pain to families that have already suffered much? Does it puff you up to have the support of OTHERS OUT TO PROTECT AND SAVE KITTENS...while you kick and stomp puppies to death? That's essentially the scope of your "feminism" if you are so indoctrinated that you must "save" women by destroying young men.

What kind of "human" espouses wearing blinders when it comes to empathy, truth, fairness? Only the most highly programmed bigot..who can only feel the pain of their own race, creed, or gender.

Someday you may have a son...or someone in your shallow life that finally you finally care for more than yourself or your ignorant prattle. can you imagine the fear and frustration of having his very life in jeopardy because of a woman's lies and a prosecutor's need to win an election?

Perhaps someday, Karma might place YOU in an elevator with a Pyscho who will scream YOU assaulted her...or a jealous co-worker set you up as a thief. Try putting a little emotion into imagining how that would feel...how absolutely devastating to have your reputation, your life RAPED by lies.

Then imagine some ignorant bored little Blogger decides to use you to make her point...throw more dirt on your name...stir more hate..

This is what you have done...and then added to it...by your pompous reply to a Mother whose son was there.

You are so ignorant you believe in magic Lacrosse DNA..that disappears..yet leaves behind the dna of many other men in Mangum's every orfice and her crusted filthy underwear.

This was the second "threesome" she accused.

But she is WOMYN...and you must cling to the gospels of your crazy Holy Church...hallejulah!

You are a poor writer because you do not care about truth...and a poor human being because you primp and puff your doctrines...and pimp lies without regard to the harm you do.

Much like the professional athletes you reference...you are about self-gratification...and your "objectification" of the suffering of those kids and their families...is just as loathsome.

Look at the damage YOU do...before you pontificate about others."
Edited by Joan Foster, Feb 6 2011, 04:58 AM.

Some comments on her open letter to Nicole Kubon: "I can't touch that. Beautifully written, Joan." and "Joan...Powerfully said, but . . . you’re hunting squirrels with deer slugs." Now back to Joan:

Post #45: It's quite telling to see Kubon has such intellectual timidity that she has only cleared comments from Mom, or a few of the faithful...or perhaps just herself...heaping praise upon herself.

Such insecurity. No doubt she is unused to anyone paying much attention to her...and one can understand why.

Where is the powerful Feminist who knows this case so well and has such convictions and is...as one comment suggests...such a great "writer."

Ahh..these types huff and puff and then dissolve into the oft-repeated prattle.

Such indoctrination.

So predicable.

And, I'll confess, DP...I doubt she read past my first sentence....nor did I expect it. Like Brodhead...she does not want to know anything that contradicts the Metanarrative.

She would be, if born in different circumstances, speaking in tongues to some Holy Serpent. She has just the right mix of hysteria and lack of intellectual curiosity.

And she has no idea, as long as she stays in the Bubble..how silly and tiresome she sounds to those not likewise deluded.

...and at this point Joan steps down from podium and allows everyone to talk amongst themselves. It is appropriately ironic (again) that Joan and her colleagues (I am using this term liberally) seem focused on the "metanarrative" (a term they misuse) which is in fact what I am writing on right now - the story about the story.

Joan is the archetypal exemplar of the demagogue, and much like Glenn Beck she uses sequential logic to reach improbable conclusions. For instance "It's so...sophisticated. Bet she is "green"...hates Israel...loves Obama...wants no ones else religious morals standing in the way of her abortions...wants babies heads crushed if necessary to keep "religion" from her life...but wants HER morality imposed and PAID for...by everyone else. Her green energy...her abortions overseas...her Obamacare...HER religion must be imposed on Americam taxpayers..because...it's what a "moral"nation does...The New Leftist religion." is a perfect example. She uses hypothetical and accusatory language simultaneously to discredit Ms. Kubon by essentially supplying her own facts, facts here meaning talking points based on her limited knowledge of Ms. Kubon and her general stereotype of what a liberal is like.

This is the constant tone and theme of Joan's rants, constantly using the second person to speak for someone whom she does fundamentally not know, and painting her with same brush as all liberals/opponents. For instance "I doubt she read past my first sentence....nor did I expect it. Like Brodhead...she does not want to know anything that contradicts the Metanarrative." I know as a fact, after a correspondence from Nicole, that yes Nicole did indeed read this.

False assumptions are turned into false accusations "she does not want to know anything that contradicts the Metanarrative" so quickly that they are hard to keep up with. And most of these assumptions/assertions/accusations (which are briefly prefaced with forgettable disclaimers like "I bet" or "I doubt" or "IMO") involve this long running analogy with the church and religion.

It is weird.

Its stranger still that this anti-religious talk (or her always protean metaphor of the liberal left as a religion) dominates her writing. It comprises the lion's share of everything she writes and seems almost, as a writer, to be her panacea whenever she hits a stumbling block in her disjointed train of thought. Its one step removed from Godwin's Law (reductio ad Hitlerum), and is essentially just that: an emotionally inflated argument that overuses an over-simplistic and reductionist comparison. Well what begins as a comparison anyway. The train of thought moves as so: feminism to liberalism to dogmatism to new-leftist religion to State Run Religion and in the end stops being a comparison but an assertion.

Huh.

What is odder still is that Joan does not really use many facts at all, which is ironically (again) what she is decrying on the part of Ms. Kubon. Ms. Kubon's own posts in response to the comments on DecadentDepravity stated that the "my article is not about the Duke Lacrosse case or my opinion about their guilt or innocence. What I was exploring in my article is sexual violence in professional athletics, the Duke Lacrosse case is just one of many examples I used of athletes “accused, convicted or acquitted” of sexual violence." Joan instead prefers to hide behind the thinly veiled the rhetorical argument which is all too ironic (again) when we recall she said "You are a poor writer because you do not care about truth."

Well Joan, I am not a great writer but I do cherish the truth, so allow me to illustrate your own hypocrisy in your words, because unlike you I feel it would be presumptuous to put words in the mouths of others. I'll let you words speak for themselves. Lets look at your own paticular peculiar "metanarrative", if you'll allow me to use this word as you do:

" Only the most highly programmed bigot..who can only feel the pain of their own race, creed, or gender." VS. "Crystal was a truth-teller because, because..let's say it...she was BLACK. That was the only quality she needed to trump all else."
"No amount of information can sway those who have swooned with the headiness of their own virtue and access to Great Truth. Accuracy, evidence, anything detrimental to Dogma is forever denied. To do otherwise, would further underscore their foolishness and the their fluffy self-importance. " VS. Every assertion she makes of Ms. Kubon's character, politics and morality, knowing nothing of Ms. Kubon other than what limited and probably inaccurate information is available online
"Look at the damage YOU do...before you pontificate about others." VS. "she is "green"...hates Israel...loves Obama...wants no ones else religious morals standing in the way of her abortions...wants babies heads crushed if necessary to keep "religion" from her life...but wants HER morality imposed and PAID for...by everyone else. Her green energy...her abortions overseas...her Obamacare...HER religion must be imposed on Americam taxpayers..because...it's what a "moral"nation does...The New Leftist religion." and "She would be, if born in different circumstances, speaking in tongues to some Holy Serpent. She has just the right mix of hysteria and lack of intellectual curiosity."
"You are a poor writer because you do not care about truth." VS. Every assertion she makes of Ms. Kubon - which is just plain character assassination with no evidence prima facie.

This heap of inculpatory evidence we have on hand in front of us, is reminiscent of the KC Johnson situation, in that it all demands an explanation.

It begs the eternal question. Why?

To answer this question we need to deconstruct the larger metanarrative, we need to realize why the case of Duke Lax is so divisive. The answer can broken down as thus, it pushes all the classic hot buttons: class privilege, racism, athletic entitlement and academic opportunism, political ambition, yellow journalism, wealth and status. There are multiple levels of outrage to be drawn from this situation, at the local government for its blatant pursuit of injustice for personal benefit, at the media for not vetting the material they choose to portray for personal profit, at the professors that comprised the group of 88 that illustrated the classic hatred that exists between sports and academics at institutions of higher learning, at Crystal Magnum for her false accusation that made it harder for women that have been legitimately sexually assaulted to be believed (as well as for the implicate consequences of making real social change between races and classes much more difficult), and at the young men she falsely accused who behaved so poorly they made it beyond easy to believe that they were more than capable of perpetrating such heinous acts. And before any angry mother posts any derogatory comments lets be quite clear that when one talks about killing and skinning women and their sexual excitement at such a prospect and one exhibits cavalier attitudes in writing such statements...well they don't put themselves in a very defensible position.

All this being clarified it is understandable why we all reacted the way we did. Liberals prompted by media exploitation leapt at the opportunity to capitalize off a situation where whites of privilege and money were raping the blacks they imported into this country to be second class citizens. Academia was quick to judge, perhaps from long seated insecurities at being treated as inferior to the svelte young men that got a free ride exemptions from scholastic achievement, especially at Duke where their programs for basketball and lacrosse are perennially among the best in the nation. This was their chance to reassert their authority. But what is more clear in Joan's posts, in the writings of KC Johnson and others is that the counter reaction to all this is much, much more severe. There are numerous books published on all the ins and outs of this case, Until Proven Innocent, Its Not About the Truth, A Rush to Injustice, Race to Injustice, The Duke Lacrosse Case ect. all which serve as a sweeping reinforcement of the status quo. The existing social hierarchy was threatened by what would have been the perfect example of an injustice that social liberals have been rattling their sabres about since the birth of our nation. But that example has since been handily proven false, and now the counter movement of conservative thought has swept in to destroy and discredit any former vestiges of opposition. Clearly there exists a large market for these books, of people who want to be reassured that prosecutorial misconduct and false accusation from a notorious black prostitute are really the ills vexing society not the blatant wealth/class/race disparity that propelled this juicy story through national headlines. The last case as prominent as this in the national consciousness is undoubtedly the OJ Simpson murder trial, as case that pushed all the same hot buttons. It is understandable in this context that Joan Foster's attitudes are as they are, as a reaction to wildfire liberalism that threatens her schemas and ultimately her identity. These things, this case in particular, represent(s) an attack on her conception of how things should be, on her implicit order in the world, on her status quo and, more importantly, Ms. Kubon herself represents an attack on her very 'being' as well. Like KC Johnson, she has taken up the mantle of the vanguard in attacking a little known feminist who harmlessly expresses her views about the world and writes good movie reviews on her blog, and as such ironically (again) given Ms. Kubon a much wider following.

And all for naught.

Because what may be beyond the realm of Joan's limited vision is ultimately she is reinforcing a patriarchal system where her own role, and that of all women, is severely diminished and marginalized. While Nicole has recently been witness and victim to the consequences of biting the hand that feeds, Joan will never see the benefits of serving it, as, within the patriarchy, roles for women in society are limited or token. Why so many women despise feminists is a mystery to me, I mean why would an oppressed minority hate those trying to better their collective situation?

I think ultimately it is because Joan associates her psychological identity to that which exists as part of the patriarchy, and her limitations and space for expression is enough to the point she doesn't feel oppressed, and enough to maybe feel empowered when a bunch of men cheer her for her bigoted posts on a bigoted forum. This is of course conjecture, and I won't goes as far as Joan does in asserting that this is the truth but I think Joan herself alludes to it: "you are so indoctrinated that you must "save" women by destroying young men." and again here "Someday you may have a son... can you imagine the fear and frustration of having his very life in jeopardy because of a woman's lies [?]". What's implicit in these statements is she is taking the side of males (affluent white males in this case) which she identifies more with than the other players in this human drama. Why this is - is more than evident in all the levels of our society, the reason we probably will never have a female president and why the gross commodification of female sexuality is used to market everything in every form of visual semiotics. And this is the greatest irony, that Joan spends an incredible amount of energy haphazardly attacking the opponents of her own conservatism in her dutiful maintenance of the status quo - a status quo that ensures she will always be a second class citizen.

Maybe that is less ironic than it is sad

-DJV

PS: Now I know Godwin's Law hasn't been invoked yet, and I won't go as far as to call Joan Foster a Nazi, but I will say that her actions are representative of a crypto-facism that permeates the American psyche and is just waiting for the day when people like Joan Foster gain power to rear its ugly head.

Case Study of Patriarchy / Academic Hegemony

2011-02-08T21:05:00.011-05:00

Recently I became privy to an interesting example of an internet pissing match between a "modern day feminist, struggling between the desire for social change and bitterness towards the depraved decadence of our backward culture." and a "professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history. In 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University."

The former: Nicole Kubon.

The latter: KC Johnson.

Nicole contributes to the blog "decadent depravity of our dutiful daughters" and her most recent post "Super Bowl Madness: Athletes & Assault" seemed to irk some of the wayward intelligentsia obsessively scouring the internet for commentary over the Duke Lacrosse rape case, in paticular R. B. Parrish the author of “The Duke Lacrosse Case: A Documentary History and Analysis of the Modern Scottsboro”. This then got the attention of KC Johnson - co-author of "Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case", who took it upon himself to set up the internet/intellectual equivalent of a public caning, so that all could see how inferior and incorrect Kubon's views really were. This can be found on KC's blog, Durham Wonderland, but for my reader's sake I will reproduce it here in it's totality...

The Wonderful World of Nicole Kubon

Every so often, a post or comment comes along that even I find extraordinary. Such was the case with a recent post by Nicole Kubon, a self-described “modern day feminist, struggling between the desire for social change and bitterness towards the depraved decadence of our backward culture."
Kubon, who claims to possess a Masters’ Degree in social work from the University of Michigan, posted an item stating, “If you like the Duke Lacrosse Team because they are really good at running around, throwing balls to each other in little nets, and getting high after games, it might be hard to hear that they allgot inordinately drunk and sexually assaulted a stripper they hired for their drunkfest.” [emphasis added]
Not even the false accuser Crystal Mangum ever claimed that she was sexually assaulted by all the people at the party (though she did seem to make one assertion, which she quickly retracted, that 20 people had raped her). And, more generally, I was curious as to what evidence Kubon possessed to substantiate her assertion, and in particular whether she had read the official reports of the North Carolina State Bar and the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office.
In reply to an e-mail from me, Kubon asserted that in making her claims, she relied on this March 26, 2006 posting from Brendan Nyhan. Yet this particular Nyhan post was far from his last word on the matter--it certainly didn't reflect his overall views on the lacrosse case--and all the post did was to (correctly) suggest that the story was likely to get a lot of attention and to alert readers to the (error-riddled) Khanna N&O “interview” with Mangum.* In this respect, Kubon is sort of an extreme version of the Group of 88, someone who rushed to judgment about the case and then simply closed her mind to any and all inconvenient data points that emerged thereafter. Even most of the Group of 88, however, are not so fantastically closed-minded. (Houston Baker, Grant Farred, and perhaps Wahneema Lubiano would fall into Kubon territory.) In a follow-up e-mail, Kubon then retracted her claim that she had relied on the March 2006 blog post for her own writings, but refused to supply any additional material on which she based her assertions. She also declined to state whether or not she had read the AG’s report.
Quite oddly, Kubon further informed me that her original post hadn’t proclaimed that all (or even any) of the lacrosse players were guilty. I’m not sure how else anyone would interpret the following line: “They all got inordinately drunk and sexually assaulted a stripper they hired for their drunkfest.” [emphasis added]
Kubon also appeared to be quite angry that commenters had criticized her . . . cavalier . . . use of facts. She promised that, since she “believe[s] that something happened that night,” she will not issue a correction of her post, and that she has no obligation to actually substantiate her claims with facts or evidence.
It is, to put it mildly, rather difficult to come up with a response, other than utter contempt, to a figure who all but gloats about her closed-mindedness while making heinous accusations against people.
*--modified for clarity, and to stress that, given his position as a Duke-based blogger as of 3-26-06, there was nothing, in any way, improper about Nyhan's post.
- KC Johnson 2/3/11

Now what interests me in all this grandstanding, posturing and pettiness is the overall structure of these interactions in their entirety. It is very clear that KC and Patricia Dowd and R. B. Parrish are correct in their assessment that Nicole is wrong about the facts on the case - Johnson and Parrish are both published authors on the case and as such would be considered the "authorities" on the subject, at least academically. But what is also manifest in all of this is: this was essentially an offhand comment - nothing more than impassioned hyperbole - and more importantly not really a point that stuck out in the lengthy article that she penned. Yet here we have in front of us a credible scholar bending over backwards to publicly admonish someone seemingly completely removed from any of his academic circles or establishment connections: the internet equivalent of swerving your car twenty miles off the road to run over an ant. And it's hardly a gentle chastising either, it's filled with condescension "claims to possess a Masters’ Degree in social work" and derision "It is, to put it mildly, rather difficult to come up with a response, other than utter contempt, to a figure who all but gloats about her closed-mindedness". This all coming from an academic - and a famous one at that (although he became famous through the roundabout way of an infamous CUNY tenure battle that made national headlines).

Undoubtedly Nicole is guilty of a very liberal usage of literary tropes in referring to an inflammatory case that still lingers in our collective unconscious; and assuredly she is guilty of refusing to retract her statements or admit she was incorrect in her assumptions when confronted with a mountain of evidence; but this amounts to little more than a hill of beans in the sea of sprawling information that comprises the internet. This begs the greater question of why bother? Why would KC Johnson devote so much time and vitriol to squashing a gnat?

In the answer lies the justification of Ms. Kubon's greater argument. Let us begin:

KC Johnson, while correct, is correct ad hoc, and uses a statement built on hypothetical postulating as a wholesale and systematic deconstruction of Nicole Kubon as person and a human being. Her entire paragraph reads:

Keep things in perspective. Athleticism and team work are great things to understand, experience and even live by but when teaching children an appreciation for athleticism gets confused with an obsession for specific players or teams who then become focuses of ritualized worship (have you ever attended an actual Super Bowl party?), it is easy for people (especially young people) to lose sight that talented people are capable of doing, and have done, terrible things. If you like the Duke Lacrosse Team because they are really good at running around, throwing balls to each other in little nets, and getting high after games, it might be hard to hear that they all got inordinately drunk and sexually assaulted a stripper they hired for their drunkfest. It would probably be alot easier to agree that strippers are strippers and, well, oh yeah, she lied but take a minute and THINK ABOUT WHAT MATTERS MORE: RAPE OR SPORTS.

Now when contextualized, it is clear that her statement is figurative and not demonstrative, nor does she use the Duke Lax boys as one of the many clear and uncontested examples that her citations consist of. Unlike many of the commentators have claimed on Durham-in-Wonderland, this statement is not libelous, nor is it slander nor defamation of character. It is couched in the second person and posited as a hypothetical, and one that, frankly, just makes sense. IF I did like Duke Lax, it MIGHT be hard for me to hear they got drunk and gang raped someone. There is no error in logic here, nor is it any form of crime to draw that conclusion, or posit that question. The only thing I can fault Ms. Kubon with is her own hubris in adamantly defending her position, rather than allowing her writing to speak for itself. And while she and all of us are entitled to our own humble opinions we should also be able to defend our view points adequately in a public forum.

That aside, we should also be immune from ad hominem attacks as well. It is appropriately ironic that those seemingly so concerned with false accusation, slander and libel have no problem trashing someone they have never met on the basis of assumption, in what is both a backhanded and blatant portrayal of misogyny. Here are some posts from KC's blog (it should be noted that all comments require moderation and therefore it is reasonable to assume that KC had no problem allowing any of this to be posted):

Anonymous said... If you like the Women's Studies Program at Michgan because they are really good at making stuff up, throwing the phrase "rape culture" around, and getting high after poetry readings, it might be hard to hear that they recently reported a study showing that for every 100 female students on the Ann Arbor campus, 150 of them have been raped.
Anonymous said... Frankly, Kubon and those like her are pathetic. Without dissecting her words, I remain perplexed how such people are capable of functioning. However, her psychological framework {modern day feminist] reveals enough to understand her warped and demented view of life and society. Moreover, the Crystal Mangum affair is nothing more than an opportunity for this angry (perhaps abused) woman to vent her evil vexations upon a receptive audience of victims.
Anonymous said...
Nicole Kubon’s Experience according to her own LinkedIn listing: Marinated in government funded wackiness...read how your tax dollars are being wasted. Twenty-Something Relationships Columnist Examiner.com Sexual Assault Advocate Wayne County S.A.F.E. (Mental Health Care industry) March 2010 — Present (1 year ) Direct Services Intern Sexual Assault Prevention & Awareness Center (Mental Health Care industry) December 2008 — December 2009 (1 year 1 month) Jumpstart Corp Member Americorps (Government Agency; Non-Profit Organization Management industry) September 2008 — May 2009 (9 months) Assistant Program Coordinator Global REACH (Educational Institution; Higher Education industry) May 2007 — August 2008 (1 year 4 months) Research Assistant SURO (Mental Health Care industry) January 2007 — May 2007 (5 months) Conducted Background Research on Asexuality and Bisexuality Undergraduate Student Instructor Women's Studies Department - University of Michigan (Education Management industry) January 2007 — May 2007 (5 months) Group Facilitator for WS 100: Gendered Lives in the US Nicole Kubon’s Education University of Michigan MSW , Interpersonal Practice, Mental Health , 2008 — 2009 Activities and Societies: Sexual Assault Prevention & Awareness Center (SAPAC), Sexual Health Educators, Spectrum Center University of Michigan Bachelor's Degree , Sociology, Women's Studies , 2004 — 2007 Activities and Societies: Spectrum Center, Sexual Assault Prevention & Awareness Center (SAPAC), Students for Choice Additional Information

This last post is perhaps the most shocking and maybe it shouldn't be, maybe I should have come to expect this sort of thing in the digital age of mudslinging, but I'm glad I don't. The argument shifts clearly from Ms. Kubon is incorrect, to Ms. Kubon is legally culpable and liable, to Ms. Kubon is a dumb bitch feminist and wow clearly any view she has is stupid, she's probably a dyke and has huge hairy armpits (for the record KC, this is a literary embellishment, please don't sue me). The sum total I got from reading Durham-In-Wonderland: The Wonderful World of Nicole Kubon, was that KC Johnson is patronizing, condescending and implicitly supports/agrees with the inane ad hominem attacks on Ms. Kubon. He creates the tone and allows it to flourish, from the title (which is parody of "The Wonderful World of Disney" implying, not so subtlety or artistically, that it is a fantasy land) to the line "claims to possess a Masters’ Degree in social work" (imagine the converse claim as "claims to have a Malcolm Gladwell haircut and teach at a city college") all the way through the commentary he allows [author's note: I originally wrote a much harsher rebuke as a lengthy comment only to receive an error message and lose the entirety of the comment which is why I am writing this now] to published through moderation.

Now this sausage fest of Clockwork Orange type cyber-bullying coupled with loosely legal and academic misogyny is in stark contrast to the measured responses and empathy of Ms. Kubon herself on her own blog commentary:

Nicole Kubon says:
February 2, 2011 at 6:31 pm
I have read your comment and understand your passionate defense of the Duke Lacrosse Team. I must however, respectfully decline your request for a retraction that members of the Duke Lacrosse Team sexually assaulted a woman. I followed the Duke case closely and have indeed looked at the “facts” and studied the evidence and personally feel that an assault did take place. As this is a blog expressing my personal opinion, I do not feel that I defamed anyone. My mention of the Duke Lacrosse team was for example’s sake and was not even a focus of my article. I believe passionately that sexual assault is a serious matter, as I have dedicated my life to working with survivors of sexual assault and believe that the real tragedy here is that the defenses heard most passionately are those defending athletes, not the women assaulted by them. As much as you hope that I never have to endure the pain and anguish that the families of the lacrosse team suffered, I hope that you never have to endure the pain, anguish and devastation that sexual assault survivors, their families and friends must endure when their stories are disbelieved and they are personally attacked for coming forward against their perpetrators. Please contact me via e-mail at nicole@decadentdepravity.com if you desire any further discussion (which I’d be more than happy to make public, just not in a comment thread).
Nicole Kubon says:
February 3, 2011 at 7:11 pm
In response to your comment I will say two things:
1) And this is hopefully the last time I will have to make this point…my article is not about the Duke Lacrosse case or my opinion about their guilt or innocence. What I was exploring in my article is sexual violence in professional athletics, the Duke Lacrosse case is just one of many examples I used of athletes “accused, convicted or acquitted” of sexual violence.
2) The final paragraph of your comment,”Police knew who she was, where she lived, and that she had left two children at home alone, even before she had said a word. She was a known commodity,” is a perfectly illustrated example of what I find devastating. That someone with a bad reputation is not capable of being sexually assaulted and that any entertainment of the idea that she might be telling the truth is nonsense.
All kinds of men perpetrate sexual assault against all kinds of women on a daily basis. If a PROSTITUTE doesn’t want to have sex with someone and they force her to engage in sexual acts, even if they leave her with money afterward, she was still sexually assaulted. A person’s “reputation” should not qualify or disqualify them from being raped. Regardless of what actually occurred in the Duke Lacrosse case, the attitude offered about the “accuser” in this case is a perfect example of this contribution to a rape culture that I explored in the article.
Nicole Kubon says:
February 3, 2011 at 9:13 pm
A person’s reputation does not qualify or disqualify them from being a rapist either. Rapists come in all kinds, from the wealthy, respected father and business man, to the star athlete, to the scum of the earth.
My opinion having previously been made clear, it is exactly that, my opinion. And regardless of what actually happened the night the Duke Lacrosse scandal was born, for every man who is falsely accused of sexual assault, there are thousands of women who are disbelieved when they come forward about a sexual assault they experienced. So excuse my lack of concern for defending Duke Lacrosse.
I will no longer let this line of conversation dominate my article. As is stated in the description of my website, “our site was created as an outlet, a resource center, a ventilator for frustration for the modern day feminist.” These comments are not of this nature and thus are inappropriate.

Night and Day. While I don't agree with her assertion that "an assault did take place" the entire point is essentially moot, which she states herself "my article is not about the Duke Lacrosse case or my opinion about their guilt or innocence. What I was exploring in my article is sexual violence in professional athletics, the Duke Lacrosse case is just one of many examples I used of athletes “accused, convicted or acquitted” of sexual violence.". The entire argument by KC (and his minions) is essentially a rhetorically aside, a digression - pedantic narrow ad hoc stupidity.
So Nicole Kubon was sandbagged.

Nicole Kubon was stonewalled.

Nicole Kubon was railroaded by several published academics. When she refused to continue to publish their comments they took the fight to their turf: the male only world of blogs from men of letters. In one sense this is understandable, if only as a classic patriarchal response demonstrated through the framework of academic hegemony. Males and their collective system of authority are under attack, an attack that is logical and furthermore illustrates a grand hypocrisy and injustice that is continually allowed to be perpetuated in male dominated society. They respond in a pattern to be expected - playing by their rules, in their world. They change the argument to focus on an errant comment, and disprove it thoroughly until there is no possible recourse but accept their pronouncement. Then they relish their victory, in poor taste.
If you recognize this pattern it is because it is tattooed on our society. The best example of this is how conservatives have really established the best narrative in American politics by doing just that: repeatedly hammering home a trivial point as the keystone of a mindless logic that is allowed to flourish by merit of its repetition and simplicity.

Ultimately KC's excursion in mental masturbation, to show all his peers and contemporaries how big his anti-feminist crushing muscles are, is completely irrelevant and serves only to show how shallow and petty establishment thinking is when reacting to anything or anyone perceived as radical. KC's greatest contribution here is to show Ms. Kubon's paranoia of an aggressive male society is completely justified. Apparently irony strikes twice as KC's high profile lambasting has drawn much more traffic to her blog, and allowed her opinion to promulgate and disseminate amongst more minds.
The funniest thing is that if those with authority (and power) weren't so insecure in their position as to have the need to excoriate any modest opposition, their opposition wouldn't have so much credibility. By acknowledging Ms. Kubon, KC gives her much more recognition, and her opinion much more weight, than if he had chosen to ignore her completely.
The greater implicit truths contained within my dissection of this argument are:

Nicole's greater argument over the double standard of athlete's sexual indiscretions is non-fallacious
To reject Nicole's greater points and argument in toto because of the distortion of a statement taken out of context is fallacious
To reject Nicole's orginal thesis wholesale by discrediting her ad hominem is fallacious

And then again these truths allude to fact that:

Institutions of any gravitas (by society's terms, id est: the status quo) are extensions of the existing power structure which is patriarchal
Academia / higher education is not immune to this, it is largely an old boy's club that rarely does much to influence social norms, a fact KC should be well acquainted with after his tenure struggle
Why feminism is purely relegated to the garret of liberal arts colleges should speak for itself considering: Women have NOT had the right to vote for even a century yet, they comprise an extremely small amount of our elected officials, account for an equally infinitesimal portion of our corporate leaders et cetera.
Despite all that feminism remains a pejorative term, despite what has been demonstrated as clear oppression within our society, and the term feminist has the cultural connotation of an unattractive man hating lesbian who, as a caricature, can be completely disregarded. Thus threats to the power structure can be disregarded. This keeps a silent majority, those feisty women that occasionally need to be put in their place by cowards in bowties.

That none of this is blatantly obvious to a pompous and petty scholar who spends the bulk of his energy defending rich white boys of privilege that were so excited to "kill" and "skin" a bitch, that they were "cumming in their Duke issued spandex" is a big FUCK YOU AMERICA, (ESPECIALLY WOMEN).

So wholeheartedly FUCK YOU KC JOHNSON, ESPECIALLY IN THE ASS. [emphasis added]

God Bless Nicole Kubon, and all women like her

- DJV

PS: Don't sue me,
fucker.

Bike Co-Op: or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

2011-01-16T00:01:00.005-05:00

Recently I was invited to attend a town hall sort of gathering for the founding of a bike cooperative in a city where I no longer live. My first thought was well that will fail, and the following self loathing at my own pessimism and negativity forced me to delve deeper into the thought tree that came up with that conclusion in less than one second.

"WELL THAT WILL FAIL"

1. I am only aware of one other previous bike co-op (this is anecdotal mind you) in Sutton's Bay, Michigan. It failed after high expectations fell prey to human avarice, laziness, selfishness, and apathy. People just didn't return the bikes. They kept 'em, for the aforementioned reasons.

2. So called "Co-ops" that functionally operate within the framework of our capitalist society all share a similar structure: a non-profit corporation owned collectively by a community which purchases shares in order to participate (in the community I no longer live in the ICC and the PFC are stalwart examples of this model). The radical concept of the commune, communal living or sharing material possessions never really gained ground outside of the 60's and 70's without being coupled to the dense materialistic system they were essentially trying to liberate themselves from. Co-operative organizations are governed by a Board of Directors much like any corporation.

2b. Well why is this necessary? Which actually begs the greater question why did communism fail (as a system for redistribution of wealth, of greater equality, or social harmony)? The answer is complicated, so please bear with me {because my mother and girlfriend think my writing is pedantic and overbearing}.

b1. Altruistic systems are weak. They are vulnerable to greed. Most are founded on tenets that espouse the greater nature of humanity and regard man's lower nature as a corrosive byproduct of the overall system in place around him. Which is simultaneously naive and condescending

b2. It is nearly impossible to transition to an altruistic system of commerce or existence with people whose origins come from foreign selfish systems. This has constantly been attempted and always failed, which brings us back to the greater why?

b3. The answer recalls the transition of the Kingdom Judah from Judges to Kings (which we all remember from our Torah studies). Greed operates innately within the framework we have created for our society [footnote1], seemingly in an implicit manner maybe because there is a sheer thrill in knowing you got away with sneaking a cookie out of the cookie jar while mommy's back was turned. This metaphor is not as abstract as it seems. Greed operates as a mechanism resisting an externalized norm - that paticular norm of doing the best for all and not oneself. The fact that this norm is externalized at all is the very crux of the matter, rules are set in place by authority figures and as such are always outside of ourselves. Because we don't internalize simple concepts like the golden rule, we are simply in stasis waiting for a vacuum of leadership to revert into savagery. This is, of course, not true for all of us. We all know a goodie two shoes who internalized all the rules, and everyone hated him for it. But the point is that most people are not likely to be a goodie two shoes all the time, and if they feel no one else is watching, they are likely to let their greed run rampant. Whether that's eating your roommate's sandwich or embezzling from everyone's pension fund to support your gambling addiction is irrelevant, most of us wait til the cameras are off and the backs are turned and the watchful eye is dormant - to take full advantage for self [editorial aside: Mind you, this is not meant to simplify greed to a reductionist pleasure, it is far more subtle than that, far more inculcated and nefarious. At best one could claim that it sublimates through even the most sublime system, and the greatest fallacy that Marx employs is that this product fades, that greed relinquishes into some form of higher principle once the capitalist hierarchy is removed. Greed is so complicated essentially because the motivations for greed vary infinitely from narcisism to absent mindedness. No one would say that Jean Valjean is equatable Gordon Gecko]. Our sense of propriety, of what is wrong and right, is very much based on others and on authority figures that range from teachers, adults, beureacrats, civil servants, politicians, parents, professionals, police and priests who are all too often just as fallible, just as corrupt, just as human as anyone else. Our sense of propriety is dictated by a hierachy outside of ourselves, a both a ficticious and tangible force designed to maintain social order but not to establish internalized scrupples. This is the problem. A vast problem that may not be portaged (timshel). Consider when non-western civilizations (that co-habitated with their enviroment and within themselves in a more common-sensical and logical way) came into contact with the first Europeans focused on conquest. From Captain Cook to Cortez to the butcher Christopher Columbus the system of greater self interest ripped apart the system of basic incorporated altruism. These handfuls of foriegn interlopers were greeted as gods (Lono, Quetzalcoatal, Pacha Camac ect.) a favor they returned with slavery, rape and murder. This is precisely what I mean when I say altruism is weak (see b1)- the physical consequences, (not the meta-physical) can be catastrophic when encountering a more ruthless force. Its analagous to "The Invention of Lying", the lowest common denominator always seems to overrun nicities, as if being good implies being pliant.

b4. It is important to realize that greed is not the most universal characteristic of humanity, it is simply the lowest common denominator. I don't think that it should be philospohically extrapolated to a modernist conception of original sin, or that all humans are greedy selfish animals in desperate need of the Leviathan to save them from themselves. That is the dead opposite of what I am attempting to convey here. In truth by following the principles of Hobbes' work we create a self-fufilling prophecy by making ourselves increasingly morally bankrupt and thus increasingly reliant on a strong external authority to regulate behavior. The goal should not be some Japanese utopia of obedience and efficiency based on fear, the goal for humanity should be harmony. A harmonious co-existence with each other based off of shared benefit - not self interest.

b5. The problematic nature of the modern connundrum is two-fold: 1) we depend on authority figures for understanding the rules of social behavior yet (ironically) media has replaced authority because it is more ubiquitous, more visual and much sexier. But this media is a fast paced simulacrum of reality constantly trying to out-do itself [editorial aside: consider dwindling sexual mores within the porn industry: the increasing violence of male domination and misogyny accelerating to sociopathic levels in the last two decades as porn increasingly has to out-do itself in order to capture the attention of those with dwindling attention spans. Somebody should really make a graph to illustrate what I am saying.] and as such it always pushing boundaries in society which in turn mimic the mimicry. This would undoubtedly make Baudrillard happy, or answer the timeless Republican question/accusation of the liberal/libertine media but it is daunting when confronted with the sheer scale of the problem. 2) to implement a real change or a new society free of this problem we need to start fresh. But to start fresh with individuals raised in such an enviroment is impossible (see b2), it has been tried before, the USSR being the largest example of how it systematically fails - the politburo is eating caviar and speaking of the merits of sacrifice for collective good - and more importantly how could we start fresh at all without carrying all of our pre-existing biases with us? How presumptuous of our greatest philosphers to endeavor that this is indeed possible! Even assuming we could wipe the slate clean, start tabula rasa, we will then encouter the boy who cried wolf scenario, where some random child discovers that he can lie to manipulate the actions of others until the code he violates becomes meaningless and everyone is devoured. Again this essentially is the plot to "The Invention of Lying", and not to toot Rick Gervais' horn too much, but this psychological concept is much more vexing because even if we were able to eliminate all of our biases and begin again it wouldn't take long for greed to be spontaneously invented and undermine the fabric of the new system of social harmony which is exactly why the Bike Co-op will never work, and even if there is initial enthusiasm, and its recieved well, and everyone comes to Cafe Ambrosia to herald the genius of such a simple and practical concept, and AnnArbor.com runs a huge spread on sharing bicycles, well that will fail.

Post Script: This demonstration of a few seconds of thought that takes laborious hours to articulate on paper (proverbial of course) is a greater illustration of my pedantic and neurotic nature, which is precisely why my girlfriend and my mother roll their eyes everytime I write anything.

- DJV

Footnote1: The economic structure which permeates all greater and surrounding structures in our society is based off this greed. The father of this system, Adam Smith, designed it as an economic model using this LCD as the primary engine of motivation, creation, achievement and ingenuity. Smith also intended this to exist within a vaccum of power, where no unions, cartels, or conglomerates existed. This is not the case, as he underestimated the nefarious power of the LCD in terms of it working its tendrils into everything around itself as a means of self preservance and perpetuation. Ah father Frankenstein.

Post on the Post

2011-01-02T14:12:00.005-05:00

In the pecking order of periodicals, The New York Post is almost certainly dead last [non-editorial aside: an argument could be made for am New York and Metro New York as well, but these newspapers(objectively speaking of course) feature an equal-to-greater amount of actual news and informative content while occupying a smaller amount of physical space, this, in addition to being ubiquitous and free (which generally makes the act of reading less of a psychological exercise in masochism) marks the definitive and objective criteria with which to distinguish them from the aforementioned Post]. As such, it is not remarkable that I often encounter the Post as discarded rubbish on the floor of the R train, no doubt abandoned wholesale out of disgust or deep revulsion. Although the Post now has an ignominious connotation and is synonymous with 'rag', it has storied roots and a venerable history. Founded by Alexander Hamilton it is the oldest running daily in this great nation, and the sixth largest by circulation. William Cullen Bryant was a former editor. And that's about it. In the last few decades the Post has been owned by none other than Rupert Murdoch, whose crass blend of exploitative yellow journalism and unrepresentative reactionary bias have made the Post into a dirty little simulacrum of The Sun across the sea (also owned by Murdoch, that is The Sun and the sea). Like all of Murdoch's revolting little offspring, the Post has an extremely conservative editorial board that uses populist rhetoric to thinly disguise views designed to promulgate the business interests of Mr. Murdoch himself. Which is why the Post, the center of ignorant rage on every ill informed topic, has never once said anything disparaging about China, an odd discrepancy until one realizes that Murdoch has heavy interests at stake in China:

"The harshest criticism of Mr. Murdoch from within Dow Jones has been that he is willing to contort his coverage of the news to suit his business needs, in particular that he has blocked reporting unflattering to the government of China. He has invested heavily in satellite television there and wants to remain in Beijing’s favor.
Many of the charges have been reported before, but Mr. Spiegelman repeated them in his statement. He said that in 2001, he was ordered to kill an item on Page Six about a Chinese diplomat and a strip club because it would have 'angered the Communist regime and endangered Murdoch’s broadcast privileges.'" - NYT (a credible news source)

This shouldn't be news to anyone (obvious pun intended). Let me highlight a few examples for December 30th's Post to demonstrate clearly these claims of editorial misconduct-for-commercial-gain-under-the-guise-of-populism:

1) Victor Davis Hanson: "Don't You Believe it: Wacky 'truths' of media left": 2. When did global warming become "climate change"? With record winter low temperatures again this year in Europe and similar freezing weather in America,[editorial aside: this of course is coupled with the inflammatory cover headline "ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN; Sanit workers in blizzard sabotage", and intentionally directed at the blizzard that us New Yorkers just suffered through even though New York City received NO snowfall that stuck prior to a goddamn BLIZZARD which, yes, is in fact both proof of global warming and global climate change] climatologists and green activists argue terrible cold is proof of global warming. If it were now 80 degrees in New York or dry and 70 degrees in London, would we be told such unreasonable heat was likewise proof of climate change? You can see a case study in deductive thinking, as symptoms are fudged to conform to a preexisting[non editorial aside: notice the lack of umlaut, contrasting the effete New Yorker] diagnosis.

- Eyes roll. Global warming is synonymous with Global Climate Change. The average temperatures are rising, and because of the increasing warmth more water is vaporized and consequently airborne, leading to more precipitation. Converse to the dumbass logic of reactionary pundits, the higher the temperature - the higher the amount of precipitation, and although it is more dispersed and infrequent - drought is a consequence - when it rains, it pours. Or in New York's case, when it snows for the first time, it's a blizzard. This logic was pulled out last year when DC received an atypical blizzard. Ironically Global Climate Change predicts this behavior, and the fallacious deductive thinking of the author represents the vested interests of Rupert Murdoch's conglomerates unwilling to reconcile with change. It is also interesting to note that the author references climatologists, which might stand as the core weakness of his argument, where he stands against the declared facts from the declared authorities that he blatantly tries to passive-aggressively defame in an ad hominem manner by lumping them with green activists in the same breath. But what else is new.

2) Michael A. Walsh: "ObamaCare Knockout: America awaits GOP's punch": ...The law stands as a monument to government's contempt for its citizens, a breathtaking power grab by Democrats... It's the principle that counts: Not only do anti-constitutional government programs like ObamaCare make us less free, they make us less self reliant as well...Washington isn't broken. It's out of control, and the American people are shouting no mas! The first order of business is for the Republicans to stand upright, spinally stiffened - and to finally throw that first Rocky punch.

- Governmental contempt here being characterized by conservatives as compassion and progressive acts of humanism?... Universal health care is constitutional, as well as being the logical extension of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", it makes us more free than worrying about health insurance that dooms some to a certain early sheol, and it most definitely makes us MORE self reliant, as we don't have to rely on faceless corporations to deny us coverage because of preexisting[umlaut omitted due to html concerns] health conditions...HOW FUCKING IRONIC that he wants to frame the American populous as giving a response in Spanish! When the Hispanics are one of most disenfranchised groups in the current health care system! Yet the white majority with health care is framed as the Rocky underdog in this argument? I doubt it is a coincidence that in this case the article is couched in the framework of a movie where the black guy is the lazy un-preparing villain. Come on. Come on.

In Frank Luther Mott's epic tome; American Journalism: a history of newspapers in the United States through 250 years, 1690-1940, he espouses the following qualities of "yellow journalism":

scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news
lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudo-science, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips (which is now normal in the U.S.)
dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.

This is, of course, antiquated. Almost every newspaper delves into 4, and as for 2, imaginary drawings have fallen to the wayside in place of de-contextualized photographs. Otherwise this assessment would seem to be an acutely accurate overview of the Post today, an empty rag filled with scare tactics and fear mongering, reductionist and pandering imagery through the manipulation of photography, deliberate misrepresentation through selective panelists, and the constant play to sympathy of the rabble as if corporate interests were their own. Maybe the sad revelation here is that nothing changes, the worm doesn't turn; the same formulaic encapsulation and page six scandals of the 40's are just a modest reduction of the present; low end print will always vend the same pulpy tripe to those with two quarters, no matter what generation we hail from. It ultimately doesn't matter who's the editor, or who's in charge; from Hearst to Murdoch, the doctrine is essentially the same: govern self interest by confounding or inflaming populist sensibilities with those of their corporate masters, subvert all competition by abandoning all morality in journalism (in cases of doubt be sure to take the low road for safety), and sensationalize inevitable and commonplace crime and misfortune into attention grabbing headlines. Its the business of commodifying tragedy [editorial aside: on December 13th actor Michael Dion got pinned between the 4 train and the extend-able platform for over half an hour. He was in the most excruciating pain imaginable to any man, and this drama was pictured in the most horrendous way by the Post. It was at this point when I realized that this newspaper has absolutely no moral compass in order to justify capitalizing off one of the most offensive images I have ever born witness to]. And more importantly its a business that is always open, unless we, the readership, collectively shun the lowest common denominator.

This point hints at the greatest tragedy here, not just that this daily exploits the shared vulnerability in our own humanity, but that we give it carte blanche to do exactly that. We all thrown in our own two bits and silently watch as Michael Dion suffers - the would be passive supporters of Barabas. We are all complicit in the crucification, as if we were driving in the nails, or we were casting the lots. There is no seat in society that does not bear the weight of the spectator. And ultimately it doesn't matter if you paid to see the show or if you snuck in, if you paid the 50 cents or you picked it up off the floor, what's been done can't be undone, what's been seen can't be unseen, the damage immortalized in unceremonious wordplay:

Geez Whiz! A Dad at 94
Snow Slow-Mo
Sneaky Farve is Just 'Fine'
Zac Beefs Up
Robber had one 'Hill' of a Nerve

At least all the xenophobic chest beating pride is still appropriate for the sport section. Go Lions.

- DJV

The End of the World (Again)

2010-12-28T18:52:00.010-05:00

(to clarify my terms, by end of the world, I mean end of humanity)

As a constant harbinger of doom and preacher of (most certain) impending calamity, I often find myself surrounded by odd bedfellows, whom I thoroughly detest (when you think the world is going to end you are usually pretty crazy or religious or both). Its difficult to remedy my beliefs with this fact when my contemporaries are Pat Robertson and Jehovah's Witnesses. And that's not mention the endless carousel of loonies and charlatans that have been exploiting people's fear of the apocalypse since before the new testament was written. Literally. In 40 AD, less than a decade since Christ's death, Theudas declared he was the Messiah and grabbed 400 people and marched into desert. The roman's beheaded him. Since then any arbitrary cosmic event or superfluous date has been used to "predict" the end of the world. I'm oft reminded of Ingmar Bergman's classic The Seventh Seal, in which the black death ravages Europe, and flagellants wander through the forest whipping themselves while others recruit for the crusades to retake the holy land. This always seems to be happening, no matter what time we exist in. For instance Jehovah's Witnessess have predicted the end of the return of Jesus several times, first in 1874 then 1910, 1914, 1918, 1920, 1941 1975, 1994. They were wrong. Famous predictions are always the same con: agitate pre-existing fears that result from discomfort with society's ever changing norms into commercial exploitation, and it runs the gamut from reactionary (Jack Van Impe) to radical (Alex Jones) rhetoric. And this is where I would like distinguish myself from the rest of my ignominious peers because:

I don't care if you listen to me
I don't want any money
I'm not making specific predictions, just observations
My observations are not based on any outlying or motivating ideology (ie political or religious)
I'm usually right about everything

But first lets break down a few core archetypes to understand why people are so enthralled with this idea of the rapture that the "Left Behind" series of christian fiction has sold over 65 million copies. First of all, humanity is collectively enthralled by the idea of the "singularity" judgement. Its tattooed on our pop culture with shows like Lost, V, The Event, Flash Forward, movies like Transformers, 2012, Independence Day, The Matrix, Skyline ect. It is as if we are always perpetually looking to heavens (literally looking to the sky) for a punishment we know we deserve. The problem with this mentality is that all our sins never seem to be avenged en masse
but rather, slowly, through the natural consequences of our actions that balance things out with a much broader stroke of karmic and cosmic justice. I'm really not entirely sure why we conceive of our universe in such a temporal manner (it being fucking infinite after all), but it may very well have to do with protestant and christian notions that you only get one life and doing good things is not a prerequisite to get into heaven. But this ethos may have more to do with our monetary system and how that unconsciously gears us into a short term mentality. But who knows, its all conjecture, and quite irrelevant anyhow, the thing to remember is that deep in the collective unconscious we fear the universe wants to slam us with a comet or aliens or killer robots. We fear that at anytime the other shoe will drop, the sword of Damocles will fall, that God will get all Old Testament on our asses.

The second most important archetype to understanding apocalyptic mentality is unhappiness. Deeply affected disgruntlement. A lot of people are just fucking miserable. They live boring petty little lives and are deeply unhappy about that. Salvation creates a way out, a clear us-versus-them scenario where the rust belt can take a deep sigh of relief because now that Israel is in the hands of the Jews Jesus is coming back in a couple months to teach all those God hating liberal faggot loving Californians a lesson in pain. Forget turn the other cheek, its payback time, and this time...its personal. Mainly its the elderly and uneducated [and either are equally depressing demographics] that spend a lot of time in front of the TV watching the 700 club (or whatever other forms of televised evangelical ministry that are determined to bilk millions out of the hapless). But consider their mindset for a moment. In a short couple generations the America they knew and loved completely disappeared, now gay marriage is en vogue, a black man is president, and the proud glory of our nation has been replaced by cheap Mexican labor and Chinese imports. I'd be pretty damn dissatisfied. It would feel that such large scale changes in a short lifetime would mean we are headed in a bad direction quickly, and all I'd really need is someone or something to say what I already felt in my gut, then tell me I was special and that I'd be saved for three easy payments of 19.95$ and everyone else would burn in hell. Follow me? When norms and mores of a culture evolve faster than the people within it there is a rift that develops, and that psychological dissonance between the world as it is and how it "had ought to be" is easily exploitable.

The third, and perhaps most important archetype, is fear. Fear. No greater motivation to join a movement than fear of being left behind. It can't hurt right? No one wants to be the naysayer that doesn't picked up on the next Noah's Ark, or the next spaceship traveling in the tail of the Halebop comet. Ultimately, no one wants to die alone, and this causes humanity to do a bunch of stupid things for vain reasons. Recall the first example, 400 people followed Theudas into the desert. 400. And that was in a time when 400 was a number that meant something. In 53 AD when Paul was visiting with the Thessalonians they were in the midst of a panic because they had already heard that the time was at hand and they were afraid they missed the rapture. This is before most of the New Testament had been actually written down. The concept of exclusion is a very powerful one when considering these end o' times groups, because most groups that are proponents of the end of times use exclusion to their benefit: they are all leaving to go to heaven and if you're not on the bus, you'll burn in hell for the rest of eternity. The fear of being excluded is not to be poo-pooed as being a minimalist construction here, it is one of the strongest of all sociological phenomena regarding cohesion. Think pre-school, elementary school playgrounds ect.; most groups thrive by having a clear group from which to distance themselves, this enhances the group-think of the progenitors and again creates the us and them mentality. But most of us are so afraid to not be picked for T-ball or foursquare that we are willing to quash any qualms within ourselves to better adhere to the whole. We don't wanna be Kevin McCallister, all alone on Christmas.

Now that I've covered the major reasons I believe that others are so inanely focused on 2012 or Y2K or 11/11/11 or whatever date is conveniently cute enough to assign to the end of times, I am going to give my rationale for advocating a somewhat similar apocalyptic scenario. Seems hypocritical, I know, but I am not talking four horsemen here, I am merely concerned with scientific data:

1) Global Climate Change. The world is changing, as it always does. No one ever said it was a static system, hell 10,000 years ago we had an ice age. And I am not going to make any claims that GCC is anthropogenic, its a moot point. Whether its changing because of us or despite us, our environment is rapidly morphing before our own eyes and reluctance to bear witness to this change for political or ideological reasons is the epitome of pin headedness. I'm not some bleeding heart from the WWF that wants to save the Panda, a species too stupid to have an interest in sex, and I don't think we need to stop or cap carbon emissions (because China won't), but we do need to accept that this (GCC) is a reality and prepare for the future. If we are unwilling to do that = doom. If a species cannot adapt to its changing environment quickly enough it will die. Which is currently happening during this 6th mass extinction event of out Holocene era, bats, bees, frogs and all other various forms of temperamentally adjusted animals will die, and the nasty ones we don't like will thrive. Unfortunately all these various ecosystems are delicately balanced and the resulting changes will be more than expected, especially considering we are not expecting any change. This is not to say humans are not having an impact on our environment, they most certainly are, with horrible consequences which we are only beginning to witness. PCB's and Plastics have the most deleterious effect on the environment as they interact with endocrine systems of mammals in perverse ways including hermaphroditic offspring and sterility as the most common effects of ingestion. The pollution of both these polymer based chemicals is ubiquitous, for the sheer fact that they don't break down. And I've heard from the conservatives the converse argument that the earth has untold limits of shittiness from humans that it can tolerate, but those arguments seem to miss the point that humans ultimately do have limits of shittiness they can tolerate. The earth will still be around, even when we are not.

2) Population / Limits of resources. Getting back to the economic side of things I don't like endorsing Malthusian models of population limits and collapse, but at some point one has to consider that there are some asymptotes governing growth, if only for the reason that wealth and resources are not and have never been evenly distributed. Nor will they be. This is why we have conflict. For instance the US represents about 5% of the worlds population but consumes over a quarter of its resources. This is a problem. We are well beyond peak oil and commodity prices are rising globally. Resources are finite and as competition to use them increases prices will rise as well. If there was clever infrastructure in place to distribute energy, water, and sanitation in an even-handed manner these limits would quickly dissolve, but we all know that's an egalitarian pipe dream of some utopia that could never exist in our world where infrastructure's entire purpose is to make profit(ie why we revere Edison over Tesla, [who was was the greater genius and who was the greater capitalist?]). This is sad, but over 90% of conflict comes over resources (and I can justify that claim in under 25 pages [but not now]) and as population expands greater areas come into conflict over shared resources. Whether thats a gold mine or a river is irrelevant, ultimately the problem is the same: people don't share and as a consequence more suffer. Now here again we encounter the conservative pundit scoffing and shaking his jowls from side to side, their argument being that the earth has untold myriads of resources to be tapped and we haven't even started. This argument is fallacious for several reasons, the most important being that the extraction processes of said resources (ie Oil) become decreasingly cost effective the farther we have to go to get them. This is no longer an oil rich Pennsylvania or the a bountiful Arabian peninsula where you could stick a pin in the ground and oil would spew out of vast reservoirs. Increasing amounts of energy and resources are required to extract one resource which begins then to climb in price (due to scarcity) towards the ever infinite end of the asymptote curve, until its value is worthless-not priceless. This is a problem. A big problem seeing as the people of the earth are using an ever increasing amount of resources with no end in sight. We are not the Israelites lost in the desert, we cannot rely on manna to sustain us, energy and food need to be widely available, which cannot exist in the current system - one that has vested interests in archaic hierarchies of profit and withholding as means of manufacturing scarcity. Think corn and tobacco subsidies, think of free wireless electricity you don't receive, think the reason the Chevy volt came out 2 decades too damn late to make a difference. Which brings me to my next point

3). Greed. Sure arrogance has a close to equal hand in our ultimate demise, but nothing plays a greater role than greed. Good ol' fashioned greed, the reason superintendents feed their children poisonous dolphin meat for lunch, the reason we are all eating shrimp and fish from the oily gulf of Mexico and not thinking about it, the only reason any war ever occurs, great gluttonous greed. Maybe ultimately this point is too biblical or metaphysical, but its the reason that corporations became conglomerations that influence governments, its the sole ethos behind globalization that is tangible. And I've heard all the pro-capitalism arguments any of my detractors can muster, but ultimately Adam Smith advocated that capitalism would only serve democracy if there were no unions, syndicates or any groupings of larger enterprise that prevent competition, which is the exact opposite of what we have(this is not evident prima facie, but who has time to read Wealth of Nations?). Ultimately, what it boils down to, when you get down to it, our entire system of life (here in the US I speak of) must be philosophically justified by the antiquated and anachronistic argument that the third world nations we exploit (free trade agreements are anything but) need our help because they are such backward and undeveloped peoples. It stems from the imperialistic notion of bringing Christ to the savages that was used to divvy up Africa between colonial dynastic monarchies. Now the same principle is applied through an odd syncretic bleeding of economic and foreign policy. We exploit the third world by raping it of its commodities, which is no different than we've always done, except now the justification is economic stability and the supposed insurgence of democratic principles. Neither of which are true. As I see it, unless you accept that our way of life is intrinsically better (outside of material benefits) than other cultures by virtue of its own merits, than there is no inherit justification for the intense greed and materialism that radiates from our culture. Period. Greed is not good to rebut Gordon Gecko, but rather radix malorem est cupiditas. This should be the mantra we cling to. But we don't, we won't and humanity cannot survive if the permeating worldview is one of short term gain for temporary advantage. That is not a blueprint for the future, its a blueprint for destruction, one that is fundamentally unsustainable and untenable.

When I get to the nitty gritty of it, it is simply that too many complex systems are not sustainable while simultaneously being codependent. Our economic system, the world system of foreign diplomacy, the environment, are all equally complex and nested within each other in weird unpredictable ways. When these systems are as shoddy as they are, systematic collapse seems inevitable. The only argument i've heard that stands as logical refusal of my thesis is from Ellis (by proxy of Brandon), who states that the system will not collapse because it always finds a way to survive. It exhibits the traits of a living organism and its desire to perpetuate itself is greater than any environmental factors which threaten it. That is too depressing to even contemplate. Whats worse the world ending or the world continuing?

Maybe I sound too much like Skeeter Davis' lament at the beginning of this post, crying over somebody, wondering why everyone else is oblivious to the end of the world. Well, at least I'm not alone, I'll have Pat Robertson and the Jehova's Witnessess to keep me company.

No one wants to die alone.

- DJV

Leitmotif

2010-12-26T18:35:00.006-05:00

I have been remiss to my friends and readership to update this blog in some time, not that I've been lacking plenty of source material in the news to write about. These are most certainly tumultuous times, and events have become bleaker and bleaker as the days have become shorter and shorter:

The wealth gap is at its worst since roaring 20's and as reported in Dec 10th's AM New York; 34.6% of wealth is owned by the top 1% of Americans and the following 50.5% is owned by the next 19%. If you do the math that leaves 14.9% of the wealth to be divvied up amongst the rest of us -the ill fed undereducated 80% that constitutes our wonderful proletariat/rabble.

To add insult to injury, the Bush tax cuts, which largely benefit the upper echelon of society, were renewed for another two years. Democrats took a demoralizing defeat in midterm elections, in part due to the Koch Bros. massive funding of the burgeoning and vapid Tea Party Movement. The DREAM Act was effective shot down in Congress, and Julian Assange was arrested for rape.

"Darkness warshed over the dude" - Sam Elliot

And it was this last bit that I found the most heart wrenchingly dismaying. It is so demoralizing for several reasons, the most important being that anti-heroes are dubbed thus precisely because they are not heroes, and can never be looked up to, or deeply revered, although we all secretly long to be them. Everyone wants to be Han Solo, but no one wants to get frozen in carbonite and paraded about as a trophy for an obese slug. But I digress. The point I was fumbling over was that even those of us that we wish to laud for their brave attempts to overthrow the yoke of universal control that encompasses us all are still, at the end of the day, jerks. Mister Assange is no exception to the rule. The second real reason this story is so demoralizing is it once illustrates how narrow minded we can be. As soon as it broke it polarized everyone into two camps and reduced the discussion to a hostile polemic dichotomy (a false one at that I might add, much like the one that exists between Democrats and Republicans) that served only to illustrate collective bias and ignorance as a whole...

"rarely have I seen so many “progressives” engaged in a dialogue of rape-apology—from leveling personal attacks against Assange’s accusers to dismissing his supposed actions as mere faux pas rather than “valid” acts of assault. As someone who identifies as both a radical leftist and a feminist—and who sees those two aspects of my identity as inseparable parts of a whole—I’ve been closely following the response to this case from all sides. And what I’ve witnessed is the divisive creation of a false dichotomy: either you are a progressive who supports WikiLeaks (and therefore must defend Assange by any means necessary), or you are a feminist who wishes to defend possible rape victims against public shaming (and therefore must be in opposition to the whole WikiLeaks project)" - Angi Becker Stevens

Although my perspective is radically different than that particular author, I can't help but shaking my head in reticent agreement. The conversation is either one of conspiracy by nebulous governmental entities and agencies to stop one man, or one of how reproachable such a man's actions are, both online and real-world. Both are equally right and wrong, composing some sort of fucked up ying yang that explains the yes/no duality of our flawed logic. It begs the question..."can Julian Assange be guilty of sexual assault and still be admired for Wikileaks?"

The answer requires only modest soul searching. It should be understood, that the charges levied against Julian Assange are most certainly politically motivated, regardless of their authenticity. The case was dismissed for lack of evidence, until this was ruling was appealed by a higher court after the US put international pressure on Sweden, threatening to cut it off from data sharing between intelligence services. That being said the intricacies and nuance in the case files point to Mr. Assange being a boorish lover to perhaps a level of criminality (well at least in Sweden, definitely not in Italy). It should also be noted that neither woman filed charges until they spoke with each other and shared their stories and realized he was an ass and didn't wear a condom with either. And still then they didn't file charges until he refused to get tested for V.D. The most important detail that is glossed over in everyone's feud over this is that both of these women are still ardent advocates for Wikileaks. I'm sure Julian Assange is guilty of having sex without a condom, and in general for just being an asshole to women, but I'm still convinced that the charges against him are trumped up and moving 8 months faster than the Swedish legal process usual moves and motivated by international pressure. These can be simultaneously true.

But the bigger, underlying picture, is somehow still the elephant in the room. There is a multi-tiered approach to deconstruction that "the man" uses to eliminate and pigeon hole "hostiles" from ever becoming systematic threats to their vested interests. Wikileaks presents an unprecedented threat the hierarchy of authority and hegemony that exists today. Recall the underrated "Bulworth", or perhaps more importantly the greater examples of the last century, Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr., RFK, JFK, and Gandhi . All these men we're immensely fallible, and their lives were rife with scandal , MLK cheated on his wife, Malcom X did all sorts of shit, JFK and RFK both had Marylin Monroe, and Gandhi was a racist. None were beyond reproach, and neither is Mr. Assange. But all these figures promulgated ideas that were much greater than themselves, ideas which made these ad hominem attacks on their impeachable character fail, as will the attacks on Julian Assange. There is always the same slow methodology at play, first they try to buy you off, then they try to discredit your ideas, then they try to discredit you, and then they shut you up by force. This is the leitmotif of big brother, and you best be believing the same pattern is in play with Wikileaks. I've read an endless variety of editorials using bizarre arguments to discredit Wikileaks' brazen lack of morality (this being devoid of editorial irony; that being that the kettle is calling the pot black, and the US government is accusing Wikileaks[by proxy] of being without a moral compass when the documents released by Wikileaks paint a different picture), with a series of very narrow and pedantic ad hoc attacks.

The only message I want to seep forth from the screen into the cerebellums of all who read this is: avoid this clear quagmire of dichotomous thinking. Things aren't just black and white, and we should consider issues carefully before jumping to premature conclusions. For the love of God and all that is holy, don't let a clearly reductionist media dictate a conversation, or viewpoint, or discussion by reducing to it opposing polemics focused on ideology over substance. Use logic, research and intuition. I just implore everyone to use their brain and their heart(rather than one or the other[ethos and pathos]) just like when we followed King and Kennedy; lets allow the truth speak louder than those that speak it.

Happy Holidays

- DJV

Skinny Love

2010-09-09T01:28:00.006-04:00

Its that time of year again, the time of the season when the leaves start turning and network television turns out the same stale pablum of recycled ideas (Hawaii 5-0) and edgy excrement (Shit My Dad Says) that failed in the previous viewing cycle. Heading the empty promise that comprises CBS's feckless fall schedule, is Mike & Molly, a sitcom about the struggles of an obese couple in the nascency of a budding relationship. The commercials previewing this show portray as it non-stop fat joke with one tasteless punchline after another. It unabashedly touts itself as a "weighty comedy serving up plus sized laughs" while simultaneously trying to appeal to "real" Americans who fail to see their body type portrayed in the media. Think Roseanne, except this time completely devoid of pathos or John Goodman and newly revamped with snappy dialogue that comes at the expense of the protagonists. While the show's website panders toward the bible belt-blue collar-brainless baby boomer with a belly demographic through empathy and relatability (they are a cop and a teacher respectively), CBS's own 30 second teaser commercials revive the aesthetic of fat as grotesque humor, an aesthetic lost in the annals of American comedy since the days of Barnum and Bailey, vaudeville, and Fatty Arbuckle. This humor has been kept alive on YouTube as well as on animated shows like Southpark, Family Guy, and the Simpsons, but previously the networks had been keen enough to recognize that to have audiences actually laughing at real obesity would illustrate a tangible cruelty and crassness that would open up considerable backlash. Which is exactly why CBS's website for Mike & Molly tries to paint it as a comedy for the everyday Joe with a double chin and gut working a 9-5 as a civil servant for nominal wages. But this is in stark contrast to those 30 second spots I mentioned earlier, which go for cheap laughs, the highlight of which is Mike leaning on a table ill equipped to support his girth which then collapses as the viewers collapse into laughter. So why the contradiction? Why would CBS invite in a viewership only to then make jokes at their expense? Well here's the skinny:

The rate of childhood obesity has tripled over the last three decades

1/3 of all American children are at risk of Obesity

A little over ten years ago, the fattest state in the union, Mississippi, had rates of Obesity at just under 20%. Now the leanest state in the nation, Colorado has the same rate. Let that sink in. I can't make it any simpler than to show this map I got from the CDC:

And its only getting worse. 9 states now have obesity rates over 30%. With such a ballooning populace it seems even more curious that CBS is so busy contradicting itself, engaging in such blatant doublespeak, but I think the answer is astonishingly simple: we are still in denial over our bugeoning waistlines, holding onto our vanity poorly - like an aging starlet still convinced we look just as trim as we did in our prime. We perpetuate a body image increasingly incongruous with our reality. As we grow ever fatter our collective image of beauty becomes increasingly thinner as a proportionate reaction to our disproportionate selves.

Yes we need television shows to empathize with, but since we still can't accept ourselves in that role, since we can't identify with who that is in the mirror, it is essential to mock - to laugh at ourselves while not admitting that it is indeed ourselves we are laughing at. Classic projection. We enjoy shows like The Biggest Loser because we feel comforted by comparison, (well, at least i'm not that fat) and the thinly veiled double entendre in the title speaks volumes. We have a culturally pervasive body dimorphic disorder, a pathological adherence to an ideal that is farther and farther away from the norm, and I fear as we become more physically unhealthy we will become more mentally unhealthy as well, something already too evinced in the memes of popular culture.

Hopefully, we can turn the corner of awareness in order to begin to address the systemic problems of how we eat and how we view ourselves.

Fat chance.

- DJV

La fin du monde

2010-07-07T18:32:00.004-04:00

"I get world sick every time I take a stand"

I've been called a doom-and-gloomer, chicken little, a conspiracy theorist, and a radical anarcho-leftist, none of which I would describe as accurate. I feel I have mostly held myself to stringent standards of empirical evidence to back my wild claims, whether those be historical, political, scientific or mathematical. Yet I feel my thoughts, no matter how thoroughly researched, methodically calculated, factually based, are just "mental masturbation". They fall on deaf ears. No one cares that thousands of species are dying, that the weather is becoming irregular and unstable, that the economy is going to fail soon, or that we have run out of oil. No one cares that this lifestyle will collapse. My views, no matter how true or false, are essentially empty rhetoric. I am having an argument with myself. I guess that makes me crazy.

But insanity can only be a good thing in a culture that is so intentionally masochistic, so sick and unhealthy - in every possible sense. Is it me that is crazy or us? At the riverside I was struck by the thought "why do we live like this?" upon seeing the jetsam and flotsam of cellophane rubbish caressing the shore. From landfills to macro-farms how we feed/clothe/bathe ourselves is sick. Our food is derived from genetically modified corn of no nutritional value, made from fertilizers derived from a now almost defunct resource that our entire infrastructure is based off of. In Time magazine yesterday I read 1/3 of America's children are obese or overweight. Diabetes has changed from early adult onset to - childhood onset. We poison our bodies and kill the time away by living sedentary lifestyles that poison our minds with the emptiness of television and videogames. Our entire culture is fashioned along an infinite growth paradigm that became extrapolated from manifest destiny. We expanded to the coasts until there was nothing left to conquer, then we expanded our military might even further to complete hegemony over the world (made possible with our ever expansive economic model), but then we turned the dagger on ourselves and we started believing the lie. We shit where we ate. We bought the dangerous and hazardous products we were supposed to sell to other people. And now we are complacent cattle - docile, fat and unmoving - barely lowing in the field. Masticating on whatever product we are designed to consume. There are entire journalists that only cover news on the latest apple product. We are so enamored with ourselves that we never thought "why"? I often ask people that very question "why"? Why is what we do okay? Why is genocide okay when we do it? Why are human rights violations okay when we commit them? Why is economic enslavement of the third world okay for our products? Why us?

There never is an answer. I'm just talking to myself again. We share an understood collective ideal that "because we can" is enough justification for our horribly depraved way of life. We don't vocalize that though (well, most of us don't). When people search for an answer its usually based in the thought that our political ideology is what is best for the world. Our corrupt, inept, fiscally and morally bankrupt government is what other countries and peoples need. So we shove it down their throats until they are too dead and broken to resist. I don't subscribe to these blind notions "just because" and that makes me crazy - simply because I refuse to tow the party line. But if I told you civilization as you know it will collapse within the next decade (a generous estimate), or the next 5 years you'd call me a lunatic. But why? I have data, and everyone I've talked to either reverts to a blind belief in the self perpetuation of a status quo that is unsustainable, or they'll just laugh at me because its "too big to fail". And its easy to marginalize a view that is so shocking, but that doesn't remove it's veracity. The truth is, its too big not to fail, and if you think I'm wrong look at a graph mapping the human population on the earth for the last millennium.

But now as I sit by my window in the benign heat of a lazy July afternoon I see the sidewalks and the mowed lawns and the old women with their silly hats and froofy dogs selectively bred to be useless and it is so easy for me to think "how could this ever end"? But then the creeping malaise sets in and I remember that none of this is real, that this is a grand illusion of ignorance and arrogance. I look in my driveway. First sign that (our) civilization is going to end: the disparity in the size of my recycling bins to my trash can. My recycling containers (collectively) are about a fourth the size of my gargantuan trash can. My gargantuan trash can that is filled with non-biodegradable trash. Even if all the plastics I used were recyclable, which they aren't:

"Plastic recycling rates lag far behind those of other items, such as newspaper (about 80%) and corrugated fiberboard (about 70%).^[26] All plastic bottles were recycled at a rate of 24% in 2005"[wiki].

And that doesn't include all the little ubiquitous items that we throw away everyday that are made of plastic; whether its the cellophane covering your pack of cigarettes or the applicator for your tampon, or the trash bag itself - those items sit in a landfill forever until they are broken down into smaller polymer chains by sunlight and erosion. We have these items in our society like plastic and Styrofoam that because of their ease and convenience as packaging materials and now they have disseminated into all of our products. Unfortunately we tend to dispose of these items improperly when we are done with them, not realizing that they will never leave. In our "out of sight out of mind" culture we fail to comprehend where things come from and where they go. Plastics come from oil. They don't go anywhere, the polymer chains release other chemicals like bisphenol A and phthalates, which then enter the water supply. They little pieces are then consumed by us and other animals where the plastics act like estradiol causing sterility and hermaphroditic offspring. So I guess if they do go somewhere they go back in us. In the pacific ocean there is a flotilla of plastic refuse the size of Texas. Yet our consumption habits for this material are increasing and our pitiful recycling rates make this beyond unsustainable. Its all the same sickness sprouted from this ever expansionary infinite growth paradigm. Consumption without consequence, a culture of the disposable.

This mindset was the byproduct of the hubris following the victory of WWII and technological innovation. Oil was such a readily available commodity we based all our industries off of it, the auto industry and the ever present car made suburbs spring up, suburbs that lacked the resources of a real community because Americans could always commute to real urban centers to fulfill their needs. We built great highways instead of trains, we built inefficient bulky hulks of vehicles because we could, all built with plastics from oil and powered by gasoline from oil. Now we face the grimmest future as our entire infrastructure is predicated upon this commodity which is running out. Collapse is inevitable only because we are the ostrich, our head buried in the sand.

The sad thing is, the really sick thing is, we could change, we could save the future, if enough of us gave a damn. But we are the cattle, culled with apathy and nihilism, ripe for slaughter. But I'm talking to myself again aren't I? Just taking a piss in the wind, crazy as a loon. I'm crazy for not throwing the empty bag of corn chips loaded with trans fat out the window of my SUV onto the side of the highway. Just remember that as this untenable system crashes and burns around you, while the last pundits tell you that "no one could have ever seen this coming", as chaos and fear invade your consciousness, some once told you the writing was on the wall, you just refused to read it. But no one's listening, I'm just talking to myself.

No one will even remember that I told you so

- DJV

Things That Piss Me Off: Non-Smokers

2010-07-02T14:00:00.004-04:00

Recently public smoking bans in Michigan have turned out droves of smokers from their former nooks and crannies of cramped bar space and poured them out onto the sidewalks surrounding their favorite haunts. As an avid smoker and tobacco enthusiast, I too have been affected by this ban. And although I consider the rationale behind the ban illegitimate and a moronic falsehood of gargantuan proportions, I still have to abide by the law and not smoke indoors in public places. It upsets me to hear the words "health crisis" being thrown around so carelessly and directed with a nasty stigma towards me and all my fellow compatriots who choose to indulge in a relaxing cigarette. Frankly it pisses me off to no end and let me tell you why:

1. Second Hand Smoke - The number one complaint in this health "pandemic" of smoking, is non-smoker's exposure to that nasty second hand smoke. Well here's an idea - DON'T GO OUT TO BARS AND RESTAURANTS THAT HAVE SMOKING IN THEM. What a novel thought, I just won't give patronage to the establishments where I feel uncomfortable, for any reason, and choose to spend my time at their competitors. Or maybe I'll just sit in the NO SMOKING SECTION, if I am really that bothered by it. On top of that the militant non-smokers are always bemoaning the fact that they are being exposed to noxious, toxic clouds of poisonous smoke that are killing them. I wish they were, and haste would be appreciated. Unfortunately unless you spend a lot of your time around someone who is perpetually smoking in your face, you will never get enough accumulated tar and carcinogens to give yourself the accompanying deleterious health effects. One night at a bar for a couple hours probably takes as much time off your life as standing next to microwave, and certainly less damage to your body than THE ALCOHOL YOU ARE CONSUMING. So it is one thing to complain about how your hair and clothes smell upon returning home from the bar, but don't whine about how its taken seven minutes of your life after your prolonged exposure. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

2. Militant Non-Smokers - Recently my lovely girlfriend was accosted by an over eager anti-smoking dweeb, some sort of hybrid combination between a public service advertisement and a Michael Moore confrontationist. This new breed of Dudley Do-Right Doofus was most likely spawned from the truth movement, a hip MTV-chic group of Nazi youth hell bent on making smoking uncool with ads that all seem to carry an underlying "fuck you dad" sentiment. Now that we smokers have been forced out on the esplanade, their is no protection for us from the menacing nemesis of the over opinionated pedestrian. In the warped minds of the militant it seems okay to approach a total stranger and lambaste their sovereignty by attacking the choices they make. Maybe their time would be better spent if they terrorized a McDonald's and slapped the double cheeseburgers out of the hands of the obese. The last time I checked this was still a free country- I don't go up unknown folks and then criticize them for eating red meat, driving a car, drinking, or any other behavior that could be harmful to me in an insignificant way or harmful to themselves. Isn't that what made America? The ability to do stupid things that are terrible for ourselves on every level? Isn't that freedom? Isn't that the double-down sandwich? Shouldn't that be accompanied with warnings for heart disease and obesity? Give me a fucking break. I need other people legislating my choices like I need teeth in my asshole. I am very well aware of the effects of cigarettes, which is why I've always smoked Spirits, and yes I am aware what it will do to my lungs and maybe my skin. I don't need an enthusiastic reminder begging to be punched in the face.

3. The "Right Reasons" - In sycophantic lock step with the cretins that govern our society the University of Michigan recently decided to ban smoking on campus. This was a blow, but I didn't see the ban really stopping anyone, the ashtrays will be removed but the butts will remain. What was interesting to me though was initially this was pushed forth as the MHealth initiative or some similar sounding rubbish. Recently the ulterior motives of Mary Sue Coleman were revealed...

Coleman serves on Johnson & Johnson’s Board of Directors. According to public SEC Filings, Coleman was compensated a total of $229,978 for her role in 2009.[1]

Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries produce a host of expensive nicotine replacement products including NicoDerm, NicoDerm CQ, Nicorette, Nicotrol, and Chantix.[2] According to Coleman, the Smoke-Free Initiative would be enforced by referring students, faculty, and staff who violate the policy to “behavioral sessions” and offering them free or subsidized “selected over-the-counter smoking cessation products” manufactured by Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries.[3]

Under this policy, the University would subsidize products made by Johnson & Johnson – the very company that generously compensates Coleman for sitting on its Board of Directors. With the Smoke-Free Initiative, through which the University would purchase an increased amount of nicotine replacement products, it is likely that Johnson & Johnson would stand to benefit financially.

“J&J benefits from public policies that reduce smoking because it produces two leading products to help people quit, NicoDerm patches and Nicorette gum,” noted The Wall Street Journal in 2009.

Public Health Indeed. Its always money isn't it?

Fuck off

Let me smoke in peace

- DJV

Models of Repression in Relation of Addiction

2010-06-28T14:31:00.002-04:00

Some thoughts riddled with tangents and asides...

Presuppositions: Repression (I use the term liberally) is integrated into consciousness not only as a defense mechanism but more broadly as a tool of social cohesion. Psyche suppresses itself circumstantially as is appropriate in every environment - socially/culturally and in any interaction with other psyche, whether that is a direct contact or a perceived one with a collective consciousness( IE society, nation/state, ect.), unless the emotional stimulus transcends the bearable threshold, or unless the vehicle for which consciousness has to express itself is so damaged that it is not able to repress or subdue itself enough to adhere to "the rules' (IE Tourette's Syndrome).

We therefore are constantly repressing or subduing our emotions, thoughts, speech, expressions and feelings both consciously and unconsciously (Unconsciously these mechanisms are "zoned out" like driving a car or repeating an action that you have done a thousand times - the action of restraining ones speech ect. as appropriate has been ingrained through thorough enculturation and thousands of hours of rote learning and is not actively thought of without effort of will to focus on the thought processes taking place, they are merely automatic) as a means of maintaining the societal fabric. Again this a learned cultural behavior- politeness and etiquette just being the words we use to affix to our rules of peaceful cohabitation. Each and every type of conditioning is used to enforce these rules and consequently psyche is "limited" in the sense that it is not the fullest expression of self, but rather self within the constraints of a maintained social hierarchy. We (an over generalization - "for the most part" would be more realistic) suppress thoughts, word and deeds that would be perceived as others as hurtful or rude. This allows our consciousness to exist with others' and allows it to grow/learn increasing its own chances for survival along with the other consciousnesses it commingles with. (I see this as an evolutionary mechanism - the universal propensity for integration and collaboration - the formation of unicellular organisms having come from smaller organisms that agreed to specialize cell functioning to increase chance of survival and share a cell, then these unicellular organisms coming together to form colonial organisms, which then formed multicellular organisms capable of retaining a larger capacity for awareness [consciousness] which IS analogous to these consciousnesses banding together at first in kin affiliation, then extending this recognition of "sameness" to church, state, then nation and soon [hopefully] to the entire species. It is analogous if not the same process, our consciousness within a larger societal whole is like the specialization of T-Cells or lymphocytes in the immune system, we remain parts of the same organism while having drastically different functions or individuality.)

How this interacts with Alcoholism: The disinhibitory and more importantly the dissociative neurological effects of alcohol abuse remove the barrier actively in place separating the psyche from emotions / thoughts that may be unpleasant. This removes the veil from the conscious to the preconcious, subconcious and unconscious - in Freudian terms it is like descending down the ladder of ego, superego and id. It is a forced shift in consciousness through the psychoactive properties of the alcoholic agent which opens the proverbial Pandora's box (in relation to alcoholism Louis XV's "apres moi le deluge" seems an apt reminder). This in itself, is inevitable, "for each action there is an equal and opposite reaction", this being the counter-balance or snap back of the rubber band type reaction to the repression of the different facets of psyche. (I see this as evinced in the Alcoholism rates of western-european countires with a more austere, rigid, strict or repressive zeitgeist - Germany, England and the US all have higher alcoholism rates per capita than their easy going contemporaries Spain, France and Italy. Having a siesta, or not having a drinking age alleviates some of the pressures put on self by society). So as intoxication increases psyche now dwells (or rather, can dwell) in the deep well of emotions and repressed thoughts - which is accounted for in our biological/medical apocrypha - as the brain uses the frontal cortex less and less and relies more heavily on the drama queen of the limbic system. Under even heavier amounts of drinking complete dissociation can take place, where the once compartmentalized aspects of consciousness can now assume the driver's seat, so to speak, and in reaction suppress the weakened everyday managerial thought process that normally has the controls. This internal rearrangement of the psyche is commonly known as a blackout, where a different aspect of psyche wields control over the physical vehicle. This dissociation is very similar to a fugue state although here the causes are external, the mechanisms are nearly identical. When these repressed/suppressed parts of being are given/take control their primary objective is the satisfaction of repressed desires (surprise!) : from acting out, violent behavior, to overeating and sex (of course). This process is the equivalent of letting a toddler drive a Mack truck.

For those of us who exist in communities or larger societies where individual expression is limited by the state or by any other controlling entity, or for those of us who use repression as their primary defense mechanism, the danger of alcoholism(or addiction?) is greater, as the caged portion of self desires to be free to roam. The higher the amount of self suppressed the greater the desire for that aspect to be released. Once alcohol abuse begins to be habituated this compartmentalized or fractal aspect of self wishes to continually be in control. After having a taste of power, those aspects of self are reluctant to surrender control of the vehicle back to the dominant portion of consciousness - and this fractal self, being released, builds a "backdoor" so that it can continually gain control while its host is intoxicated. This, in my opinion, is the force behind the progressive nature of alcoholism, and the loss of will and control alcoholics so commonly describe. The description of alcoholism as a spiritual disease by those in AA is very fitting, as it appears to me to be self battling self, and usually our repression is so fundamental to our core identity and so steeped in denial that this battle feels hopeless against a foe that is cunning and ineffable.

...

The only solution, that I can see, to really heal the actual problem is too reintegrate the self and develop other cognitive mechanisms for handling life. The reintegration of self would need to be a process designed to "reboot" the system by breaking it down and building it back up again, which would most likely be very unpleasant. Cognitive practices afterward would likely be centered on focus and reflection on all stimulus as they occurr coupled with mature responses like sublimation, humor, ect.

- DJV

The Death of Capitalism (The Limits of "Free Market Enterprise")

2010-06-01T11:58:00.009-04:00

For H -

Reading the Wall Street Journal from May 20th, I was struck by the final statement in the article "Democratic Rift Stalls Financial Bill". The final two paragraphs of the article read:

Earlier in the day, Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) backed away from a proposal to dilute provisions of the bill that would crack down on banks' trading of derivatives.
Mr. Dodd had proposed to delay for two years provisions of the bill that could force banks to spin off their derivative-trading operations. He dropped the idea after it prompted an outcry from both fellow Democrats and the finance industry, which said it would increase uncertainty.

I find this last sentence laughable, and I gave out a half exasperated exhalation [chuckle/sigh] while reading it. One of the main problems with our economic system today is that there is such a severe disconnect between we the people, and our money. Common knowledge of hedge funds, derivatives, credit default swaps or any slew of these banking nouns that have become buzzwords post-AIG crash, are still nearly non-existant. This divide is intentional, [of course] and knowledge of economics remains obtuse for the purpose of segregating the wealth into a limited number of hands. It is deliberately cloaked with acronyms and jargon that are overwhelming to the layman for the explicit purpose of keeping the veil of mystery that surrounds our economic models intact. For the purpose of this article and to fully explain my prefatory statement allow me to briefly give an over simplification of how I perceive modern economics:

(Capitalist) Economics is a social science, much like psychology, that would like to take itself much more seriously. To distinguish itself it uses extensive mathematical modeling as justifications for the proposed theories of economics. Different economists will come along and posit their ideas and models which are then supported by data. These theories and ideas then change the way we practice business and plan for growth ect. Pretty simple right?

The problem with this paradigm is that the economists that are the most famous in this century, IE John Maynard Keynes & Milton Friedman, are not famous because their ideas were necessarily correct but because their ideas increased the wealth of those who already had it. These economists were pushed forward simply because their ideas supported the existing oligopoly. Keynes' macro-economic vision allowed the establishment of central banks throughout the rest of the world, the creation of the dollar standard, and the establishment of the World Bank and IMF. Friedman's ridiculous extrapolation of lassez-faire was the back bone of Reaganomics (along with Laffer) and the deregulatory approach to Wall Street which has now come full circle today. These ideas made the rich then super rich and because of this, accusations about Friedman's complicity in brutal military coups in Chile and Indonesia remain silenced. The problem really is that there is always evidence, mathematical and otherwise, to back up these ideas, (AS WITH ANY THEORY OR IDEA PRESENTED IN ECONOMICS) but because this social science is so unscientific, the evidence of justification or collaboration is the only evidence that is examined. There is no objectivity. Trends and statistics that support the current school of thought on managing monetary policy are the only ones that have representation in conventional outlets of the establishment, and facts (and their corresponding theories) that would indicate otherwise are ignored as outliers. Even worse than this, we now have a way of looking back and collectively picking and choosing selective statistics and data to create a historical analysis of past policy, that more often than not results in the deification of what have been gargantuan blunders. For instance the libertarian think tank I respect so highly, The Cato Institute (via Stephen Moore) published gobs of praise for Reaganomics citing several key points :

"no act in the last quarter century had a more profound impact on the US economy of the eighties and nineties than the Reagan tax cut of 1981."

(via Wiki) "He claims that Reagan's tax cuts, combined with an emphasis on federal monetary policy, deregulation, and expansion of free trade created a sustained economic expansion creating America's greatest sustained wave of prosperity ever. The American economy grew by more than a third in size, producing a $15 trillion increase in American wealth. Every income group, from the richest, middle class and poorest in this country, grew its income (1981-1989). Consumer and investor confidence soared."

That seems pretty solid right? A lot of facts and numbers to back the claim. The problem is that the most important figures are missing or misconstrued to justify the claims. Even if I were to go as far as to say these claims are correct, I would need to preface that by saying "but the omissions are glaring". Every income group grew their income, yes, but inflation kept slowly pushing forward and the purchasing power of the dollar decreased - substantially [Check out this website: as you can see from it what 100$ would have got you in 1981 had a 136$ equivalent in '89 and a 236$ equivalent in 2010]. And yes while the American economy did grow by more than a third in size, the Cato institute does not acknowledge the fact that this growth only represented the richest strata of society and corporations. Whilst the economy bloated itself we saw the social stratification increase and social mobility decrease. The rich got richer, the middle class got just enough to stay middle class with the rising cost of things, and the poor got fucked. On top of that savings rates dwindled (see figure on the left). Not only did they dwindle but they drained. The older generations used to save, and these policies pulled the plug from the bathtub and let the water drain with mee-maw and pee-paw still pruned up in it. The deregulatory effects of the economic policy changes made during that administration, and every administration following it, have allowed us to become a nation dependent on credit. Simply put as the purchasing power of the dollar has become increasingly diminished, people compensated for their lack of wage growth by borrowing money from credit institutions. Adjusted for inflation median wages have not increased. Median. Not minimum. But all this jibber-jabber means is that the argument, although over two decades behind us, with a mountain of historical evidence to be scrutinized, still results in disparate theories. And in the resulting clash, whatever viewpoint represents the status quo wins, because it automatically has more force vested in it by the powers that be.

So the supply side economists won, based on the mathematical models they put forth, not because they were right, but because their theories and corresponding practices stood to make some very wealthy people and corporations even wealthier. Because if we peer at the models, I mean really stare hard, what do we see? I see anachronistic models being used to measure prosperity. (IE GDP... which even if I exclude hedge fund investment banks like our old pals at Goldman Sachs, the assets of the top 5 banks in the USA still constitute 56% of our GDP. That's without Goldman Sachs. If we included all of that, it would be over 3/4 of GDP that could be measured in the assets controlled by the 5 largest banking institutions.) Scrutinize harder, what do I see? I see the models themselves being based on quantifiable data to measure what is unquantifiable: human behavior. (We, being a fickle lot, economists have long simplified decision making into over-simplistic baby talk, and now attempt to make up for it with "behavioral economics", which still falls well short of the mark, still attempting reduce humanity into some binary code to be processed in some computer.) Look even harder, furrow the eyebrows til the sweat pours from crested ridges of dermis, what do you see? I see the general instability of the mathematical models themselves, as even completely deterministic systems can have unpredictable results. That is the essence of chaos theory, and what makes our economic systems so ludicrous - because we don't even have anything close to a deterministic system. If you asked an economist, he or she'd say "we're working on it". But if even the simplest closed mathematical systems can have unpredictability what does that say for ours, that is incredibly complex, and in no way, shape, or form even close to having any semblance of balance or regulation? Hmm... I'm reminded in no good way of the character from Michael Chrichton's Jurassic Park, Ian Malcom, who thematically in iterations demonstrates the nature of the fractal and of chaos logic:

FIRST ITERATION
"At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen."
--
SECOND ITERATION
"With subsequent drawings of the fractal curve, sudden changes may appear."
--
THIRD ITERATION
"Details emerge more clearly as the fractal curve is redrawn."
--
FOURTH ITERATION
"Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear."
--
FIFTH ITERATION
"Flaws in the system will now become severe."
--
SIXTH ITERATION
"System recovery may prove impossible."
--
SEVENTH ITERATION
"Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications."

And invoking pulp fiction I read in middle school I think may be the most damning thing our economic models have going against them. So when Chris Dodd, by no means the voice of reason in the senate, is forced to recant from asking banks to take a couple years to separate themselves from derivative markets trading, because that would be "too uncertain", can you now see why I laugh? It's all uncertain, very very uncertain, and if I follow the real math right, at this high level of instability in the initial states of modeling the end calculation is not only going to be unpredictable, but quite inevitably catastrophic. Quoth Ian Malcom again

"But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is."

We are all fucked. I'm going to bed. "System recovery may prove impossible."

- DJV

How Come Nothing Tastes Good?

2010-04-19T19:11:00.004-04:00

I was watching this interview with Bill Gates and he brought up one of the fundamental problems with our free market system, one that Adam Smith missed, which is: that the laws of supply and demand only govern those that have a substantial sway within the market. Despite the fact that the impoverished have more pressing needs and overwhelmingly outnumber those with wealth, there is no pure profit based motive to alleviate the needs of those suffering as long as they are poor. They have little or no representation within the marketplace and although there is high 'demand' for solutions to their problems, they lack the material wealth to serve as compensation. So they continue to suffer. AIDs is a pandemic ravaging Africa. Pharmaceutical Corporations could supply large amounts of antiviral drugs to prevent this humanitarian crisis but where is the intrinsic reward in altruism? One man can afford the luxury of philanthropy, along with the accompanying laudations and accolades, but a corporation has little room for charity. Those pharmaceutical corps. would rather develop new drugs to fight hair loss, or maintain erections, because that's where the money is. And therein lies the crux of the problem: our problems only require solutions if those solutions are profitable.

On a societal scale this fucks a lot of things up. Engineered obsolescence is the preferred mode of production. Heart disease is the leading killer in US, a problem which won't be solved because profit comes out both ends; doctors and hospitals make billions treating the problem and large corporations like Pepsi Co and Yum! Brands make billions creating the problem. We have the technological prowess to integrate into every car sophisticated machines that would eliminate drunk driving forever, but of course then the State and Local branches of law enforcement would have crippled budgets. We could have made cars more efficient decades ago, to consume less gas, run forever ect. but where is the profit in that? We have the technology to make a more equitable world, but we lack the adequate desire or motivation to follow through on that promise.

The real problem, as I see it, is that markets lack any form of ethical boundaries that would possibly guide or inform their decision making process to in anyway better humanity. Why make something that's good for people when you can create the Double Down Sandwich? At some point there needs to be humanistic intervention, for our sake, for the sake of our survival as a species. Lord knows how much profit motive lies hidden in war, hell that's how IBM got started, making proto computers for the death camps at Auschwitz. Clearly allowing markets to blindly pursue profit is not the best option for the aggregate 'human coniditon'. Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobile, Nike, Enron, I can think of a myriad of contemporary conglomerates or corporations responsible for cutting corners at the cost of the consumer.

But unfortunately it is more complex than simply just blaming capitalism or even the individual agents of capitalism for the woes that assail us, the real problem is us. You and me. We choose to subscribe to a system that operates, in every advertisement, like my best friend is talking to me about his amazing new product that I need to have. That we allow ourselves to think that this product will enhance our lives, or that consumption will do anything other than cause more problems requiring monetary solutions. When did it get so bad? When did childhood obesity become a pandemic? When did we completely lose focus on the substance of reality, to the point where we allowed ourselves to become just consumers? We are just as guilty as the soulless bankers, politicians, and executives that we demonize for destroying our world. We are worse even, because we have a choice, but out of our indolence and our groupthinking mentality we allowed ourselves to be pandered to, we bought the lie -hook line and sinker. We put our trust in figures that were obviously trying to deceive us and then we were surprised and hurt when they actually did.

There was a folkloric tradition that a vampire could only enter a house where he (or she) had been invited in as a guest then, and only then, could it come and go as it pleased. I don't think we should blame the vampire for draining our blood, after all it was us that told him "make yourself at home"

- DJV

Zeitgeist: Critique

2010-04-05T16:28:00.011-04:00

My esteemed colleague, Kadence, recently penned an article which illustrates some of the philosophic fallacies woven into the Zietgiest series of "documentaries". While I agree with Mr. Mitchell, I have my own beef with Zietgiest: Addendum that I would like to expound on briefly. I will not address the original Zietgiest movie in this forum, as there are too many problems with its historical narrative, it would simple take too long to highlight all of them.

Let me preface my critique by saying I agree with about 80% of everything asserted in this film, maybe only because it so openly caters to my biases and exiting worldview. That being said, I simply cannot go along with some of the fallacious logic and rhetoric regurgitated in this narration and I would like to highlight the information I felt was misguided or incorrect.

I generally agree with everything the video says about the federal reserve, with the exception of the large blanket statement that the Fed doesn't create enough money to cover the cost of interest on debt and because of that, the world is forever in debt. This contradicts the fact that in the fractional reserve system the initial money lent out is increased at least ten times over, and by the time that interest needs to be paid the inflation of the money supply has depreciated the value of the original loan which is a maximum one-tenth of the actual money supply, a point which the movie hammers home but then misinterprets. Thats kind of a big slip up, and its based an old and common myth. In a fractional reserve system one has to remember that the debt can always be covered because the amount that is "loaned" at interest, which the government "borrows" from the central bank is then disseminated through smaller banks that always multiply the value of the money they receive as they only need to hold 10% collateral for the loans they make, so the actual money supply increases significantly more than the loan and the original debt is anywhere from a tenth to a hundredth to a thousandth of the wealth generated from simply borrowing money that's created out of thin air at the central bank. Its a bit confusing, but the movie got that wrong.

Another error, or incorrect characterization that the movie makes is that the money issued by the US Government during the civil war, the so called "greenback", is somehow better than the other fiat currency created by European banks:

During the American civil war president Lincoln bypassed the high-interest loans offered by the European banks and decided to do what the founding fathers advocated, which was to create an independent and inherently debt-free currency. It was called the Greenback. Shortly after this measure was taken, an internal document circulated between private British and American banking interests stated:
"…slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of laborers, while the European plan…is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages. This can be done by controlling the money. It will not do to allow the greenback, as we cannot control that."-The Hazard Circular, July, 1862
The fractional reserve policy perpetrated by the Federal Reserve, which has spread in practice to the great majority of banks in the world is, in fact, a system of modern slavery. Think about it… Money is created out of debt. And what do people do when in debt? They submit to employment to pay it off. But, if money can only be created out of loans, how can society ever be debt free? It can't. And that's the point.

Not that I disagree with these sentiments, but it is hardly better to switch from a fiat monetary system controlled by banks, to a fiat monetary system controlled by government, both are equally corrupt and that's the point.

My next beef is the general characterization of the Segment with John Perkins, the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, Perkins described Omar Torrijos as an incorruptible saint assassinated by the CIA as a martyr for his populist cause of regaining sovereign control of the Panama Canal and his resources. In reality Torrijos was a killer, trained by us (the US) at the School of the Americas, he brutally suppressed opposition to his regime through murder, prison, or exile. It was not as beautiful as Perkins portrays it, Torrijos wielded almost absolute power, completely assimilating the media in Panama. His efforts to reestablish Panama's public works programs, while remaining immune to corruption from America, fell prey to the predatory interest rates of foreign banks and corruption from within his own bureaucracy. Another statement made by Perkins contains a dangerous half-truth:

(Guatemala 1954)

When Arbenz became president of Guatemala, the country was very much under the thumbs of United Fruit Company, the big international corporation, and Arbenz ran on this ticket that says you know, we want to get the land back to the people, and once he took power he was implementing policies that would do exactly that, give land rights back to the people. United Fruit didn`t like that very much, and so they hired a public relations firm, launched a huge campaign in the United States to convince the United States people, the citizens of the United States, and the press of the United States, and the congress of the United States that Arbenz was a Soviet puppet, and that if we allowed him to stay in power the Soviets would have a foothold in this hemisphere, and that at that point in time was a huge fear on everybody's mind, the red terror, the communist terror…and so to make a long story short, out of this public relations campaign came a commitment on the part of the CIA and the military to take this man out…and in fact we did. we sent in planes, we sent in soldiers, we sent in jackals, we sent everything in to take him out, and did take him out. And as soon as he was removed from office, the new guy that took over after him basically reinstated everything to the big international corporations, including United Fruit.

While again I don't necessarily disagree with that statement it characterizes in the sentence "long story short" that Communism's spread was a PR/Propaganda creation, which is a dangerous half truth - because of course the Soviets were trying to make as many inroads in South America as possible. They were funding many a populist uprising in the third world, Asia, Africa, and South America, and although this is a legitimate reaction to the economic commodity based exploitation by the US, those behind the red curtain were no doubt attempting to do just that for themselves. Communism or socialism is often just a reaction to capitalist oppression, but the earnest populists in these uprisings were exploited by two great and equally malevolent conglomerations of power in the US and the Soviet Union, that both sought to use weapons, training and funding, to establish a foothold for their respective ideologies and resources. They were both vying for the role of supreme hegemon on a global scale, and neither can be without blame in the impacts this had on the less developed nations of the world. The scale of the threat was intentionally distorted within the US media to deliberately motivate the public to participate, or be complicit in silence as our nation sought to expand our influence across the globe, but the USSR was an empire as well, and although the semblance of fear was not proportional to reality doesn't mean that it was never there.

But that's just me nitpicking... the greatest problem with this "documentary" is that it essentially tries to boil down every major problem on our world to the competition born from a monetary system where scarcity is manufactured to increase profit for a marginal percentage of society. "Monetary-ism" is presented as the sole problem, as both capitalism and communism fall under this label. I could not help and be reminded of the protagonist from Jorge Luis Borges' The Shape of the Sword, and how much he reminded me of the narrator to Zeitgeist, Peter Joseph.

"He had studied, ardently, and with some vanity , virtually every page of one of those communist manuals; he would haul out his dialectical materialism to cut off any argument. There are infinite reasons a man may have for hating or loving another man; Moon reduced the the history of the world to one sordid economic conflict. He declared that the revolution was foreordained to triumph"

This view, the predominating one of the film, that money is the source of all our problems, and has subsequently corrupted all our infrastructures, is beyond fallacious. To say the monetary system is the root cause of our problems is an over-simplistic lullaby, that prevents us from looking at the serious philosophical and psychological ramifications of what the movie talks about. Monetary-ism is merely a symptom, of a problem as old as humanity, the problem of greed. Essentially Peter Joseph's argument is no different than that presented by Karl Marx 150 years ago, with the exception that Joseph argues for a technocratic solution, and a resource based economy as a solution. This merely eliminates the existing oligarchy, in favor of a new one. Who will be responsible for the distribution of said resources? (ie Politburo, State) But more importantly how could this transformation to the "Venus Project" ever hope to alleviate societies ill's simply by placating our material needs? Contrary to what they claim strife and crime will still exist, the only thing eliminated are crimes of necessity and ignorance, but crimes of passions, jealously, anger, and pathology are just as equally present, if not more so in this new utopia of idleness. But even more looming and vexing than trying to cure innate illness with artificial constructs, is the problem of "reeducating" people from the brainwashing of our culture (This too is based on Joseph's belief that people are 95% nurture and 5% nature, as stated in his interview with Alex Jones, which is not supported by contemporary research). Because so many people will ultimately be reluctant to change their entire ways of life, how exactly does one convert society en masse to collectively to hop on board (which is making the sweeping assumption that everything that Peter Joseph claims is good as Gospel)? This model has been displayed throughout history, and was first proposed by Marx. The Oligarchs who monopolized resources, power, and wealth would be purged, but before the resources could be disseminated equally amongst the people, the people themselves would need to be reeducated in order to rid them of that pesky profit motive they'd been enculturated to latch onto. Marx delved farther than Joseph into the psyche because he saw greed as the underlying cause (radix malorum est cupiditas to quote the bible). As Marx saw it (and I see it) it is not money that is the problem, but the love of money. Marx saw it necessary to free people from themselves, through reeducation which could require the use of force. Once everyone would be reeducated, the state would atrophy like drying fruit in the sun, and eventually would disappear completely, as it was an unnecessary medium of conveyance and bureaucracy. In practicality though, converting people's underlying belief systems of religion, culture, societal rank, wealth, and governance is always an extremely violent process, as these structures have become embedded in the ego's self conception of identity. When radical change like this has been instituted, in the French revolution, Russian revolution, and cultural revolution in China the consequences are always the same; power is redistributed in the hands of new elite, that is led by despotic individuals that purge the nation of its former intelligentsia and literati. From Pol Pot on down, the examples are numerous, and it always begins as a populist revolt that touts higher principles and fights the forces of economic and political oppression only to become them once it assumes the mantle and dons the vestments. I don't see how the Venus project differs from this vein, other than its deference to machines, but yet machines lack the current complexity to govern human affairs or reach a degree of artificial intelligence in order to manage such an intricate set of unbalanced variables, like us. And as long as humans are still in control of machines the problem of greed still manifests, and removal of that from our species is much more problematic than simply removing money. One would have to remove all objects, in order to resolve greed externally, which is a backward way of dealing with a problem that is fundamentally internal and not caused by external forces. Monetary-ism most certainly exacerbates this, but this is merely a correlation and not a causation.

After that, the only other part of the film that bothered me was the ending, where the narrator gives some suggestions to "free" yourself from this system of slavery. The first suggestion was to stop using the three main banks that consist of the majority of the Fed cartel and switch to other banks. Reasons why this is retarded: unless this is some fucking Bailey Bros. Savings & Loan, most banks are FDIC insured, are members of their regional Federal Reserve Bank, owned by larger banks, and ultimately exploiting you. Why use a bank at all? Why use money? Why stop there Zeitgeist? The second suggestion is to turn of the TV news and use the internet for all new information. Criticisms on this: if they are feeding me disinformation I should know what that is, what constitutes a credible source except whatever outlet caters to my biases and tells me what I want to hear, internet bloggers are not journalists and their information is suspect, how does one sort through the black propaganda ect... Third suggestion is boycott the military, which in principle I support but in actuality don't, as I've thought of enlisting on several occasions, and have multiple friends in several branches of the armed forces. When shit goes down, they will be the only ones who will be more than provided for, trust me. The 4th suggestion is to boycott the energy companies and get off the grid, which is easy to say but hard as hell to do. The fifth suggestion pisses me off more than anything, perhaps because of my attachment to it. Its asks for a rejection of the American political system. Don't vote. Well here's a newsflash Zeitgeist, nobody does! That's the point! the system has been designed for us to feel unrepresented and marginalized so we don't participate. If I got the 50 % that never votes to come out en force I could crush the existing two party system and change the country. Instead of advocating apathy how about we try earnest change? How about a viable third party? Who remembers the ghost of Perot? The 6th suggestion (erroneously listed as 5 in the video) is to join the movement. "The Movement". I went to the website, and under the "understandings" part on the menu I read the article on Psychology and Spirituality, which pissed me off. The thing that really gnaws at me is the scientific hubris, that Joseph throws all previous modes of thought under the bus, as inferior. Long absent is the humility that caused Sir Isaac Newton to say "I came on the shoulders of giants". Joseph would have us believe that since all systems are emergent, then all systems of thought and belief of antiquity are outmoded and misguided conglomerations of witchcraft and superstition. Godfrey Higgins and Manly P Hall are turning over in their graves. This is the epitome of arrogance, the arrogance that is largely responsible for the construction and maintenance of the corrupt systems that exist in today's society. Until Mr. Joseph offers a more grounded and modest approach to the ills of the world without approaching every topic with scientific reductionist reasoning, count me out of "the movement"

- DJV

Zeitgeist III comes out this October

Global Warming: A Moot Point

2010-04-05T12:52:00.003-04:00

As a so-called "conspiracy theorist", I tend to look for my news media from a variety of sources. In several I have seen the same hypothesis posited: that anthropogenic global climate change is a fraud. While generally I do not subscribe to that notion, some scholars that I personally respect, like historian Webster Tarpley, have militantly professed it. These types, purport a view that can be found on any AM dial, a view heralded by Alex Jones on InfoWars.com, which is essentially that CO2 emissions can never damage our atmosphere (because the earth is too large to have an effect on it and warming is either a hoax or due to other causes) and that the EPA regulating carbon emissions is the stepping stone to complete governmental control of industry through unfair taxation and penalization of "pollution". Glenn Beck is among those who harp on this view, using Cap and Trade and Carbon Emissions legislation as the whipping boy in his argument that climate change is simply not occurring and is largely fabricated so that scientists can make a name for themselves and secure Federal Grants. Alex Jones argues that radical global change is occurring, but that the sun is responsible, an argument which Tarpley also uses, although they disagree as to whether the earth is entering an ice age or leaving one. There are no shortage of explanations for why this crisis has been manufactured, from global banking oligarchs seeking the end of industrialization and over population in the western hemisphere, to scientists greedily vying for position in the cutthroat world of academia, but all of which fall well short of the mark in explaining why global warming has been fabricated. But typically liberal media outlets are just as zealous dogmatic and misguided in their attempts to paint all warming deniers as bumbling simpletons. An article posted in next week's New Yorker, states that

"No one has ever offered a plausible account of why thousands of scientists at hundreds of universities in dozens of countries would bother to engineer a climate hoax. Nor has anyone been able to explain why Mother Nature would keep playing along; despite what it might have felt like in the Northeast these past few months, globally it was one of the warmest winters on record."

Obviously I just cited several arguments, that although improbable, were still plausible, at least the ones that focus on the earth's orbit and astronomical position as the source of climate change. And the last statement shows the largest fallacy in using all sorts of science to argue either way on this issue: sample size. Warmest Winters on Record.... only serves to illustrate how small our record really is when compared to the age of the earth. When scrutinized our record is infinitesimally minute. We have reliable data measuring weather patterns and temperature for less than two centuries, to draw any sort of conclusion from such limited information is reaching, as this data is essentially malleable; overall a scientist's predisposition or initial bias will shape the conclusions he makes from his observations more than the observations themselves. And the bias can be inherited from whatever foundation or non-profit he or she may work for. Whatever you think going in, is probably what you are going to get going out. The mudslinging in the mainstream media between global warming deniers, conspiracists, alternavists, and scientist/pundits has reached epic proportions, with the public now cleanly divided down the middle in whether they believe the reality of global climate change. Which is sooooo stupid bc...

The earth is an ultimate dynamic system, with thousands variables to account for, along with the delicate interplay between complex systems. Ultimately the question of global climate change cannot possibly have one simple answer like anthropogenic global climate change, ultimately its causation has more reasons than we could ever account for, from salinity levels in the oceans, volcanic activity, deforestation, the earths orbit and position to the sun, cosmic ray cloud dispersal, ect ad infinitum. We can at least have the decency to admit this. We are beyond the point of wholesale corporate denial of ozone depletion or global warming, or at least we should be. The earth is a powerfully dynamic system and as such is always changing, yet we as humans seem to come into the world thinking that everything exists in a static Ptolemaic model. Of course our climate is changing how could it not? Did we forget that dinosaurs used to roam the earth before their climate changed millions of years ago? Did we forget that 10,000 years ago climate change killed the giant Ice Age mammals? Gone are the days of Paraceratherium and the Woolly Mammoth, but at the same time we are no longer that Australopithecus either. We have all evolved, as change is the one constant in our universe. (There are certainly other constants, but the scope of our understanding is temporal and too provincial to practically apply it to anything but the reality that exists directly in front of us.) Attributing global climate change to be entirely anthropogenic is just as stupid as making the converse statement. Of course humans impact their enviroment, of course that effects us in a myriad of ways. We can't take a shit in the crik and deny its impact downstream just because its not visible to us or fails to have a substantive impact on our lives. Denying that our actions have environmental effects might as well be an attack on deductive reasoning, science, causation, logic, or our entire system of understanding.

Which brings us to the most important point, one which is lost in the mindless chatter of the demagogues Glenn Beck and Alex Jones, that even if global warming isn't real, even if it isn't caused by humans, it is a moot point, because despite all of that, calamity and catastrophe still await us on a Malthusian level if we don't change our toxic modes of production and survival. Ultimately we need to change the paradigm of using fossil fuels to power our entire way of life because it is non-sustainable and destructive. Period. Even if you disregard C02 pollution, its a moot fucking point, because of the amount of mercury and heavy metals that coal fired power plants emit - which then gets into our water supply and consequently fish, and consequently us, where those metals have deleterious cognitive effects along with neuro-cytotoxicity - there is a strong correlation with these and pervasive developmental disorders and autism spectrum disorders. Even if you disregard CO2 pollution it is fucking retarded to base your entire infrastructure of transportation on oil and petroleum based derivatives that are finite and not located in our country. No its fucking brilliant to base your entire infrastructure off a commodity you lack direct political control over. Brilliant. How about we think critically and change our cars to be electric, our trains to be maglev, our electricity to be renewable and henceforth infinite....? How about we do that for ourselves because it will enable us to exist cohesively as a species for a longer period of time? We are so stupid, and ultimately the global climate change debate is trivial and short sighted. We need to adapt to better coexist with our non-static environment, and change our mentality. We are still collectively stuck on that Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief:

Denial: "The earth's just fine. Global warming is just some fancy science bullshit"

Anger: "Who the fuck did this? Lets destroy these polluters like Captain Planet!"

Bargaining: "Well maybe of I reduce my eco-carbon-footprint and buy things that say GREEN on their cellophane/plastic packaging I'll save the earth for my kids"

Depression: "No matter how many cigarette butts I pickup, I'm never going to even match the waste I produce in a single year. That sucks. Why bother? It doesn't matter. Nothing matters"

Acceptance: "Its going to be okay. I may not be able to change the future, but at least I can prepare for it"

However, we are still stuck on denial, and with all these reports focusing on "climategate", the lack of a Senate version of the Markey-Waxman bill, and the failure of Copenhagen climate summit, we may be stuck on denial a while longer. We need to transcend this shallow and trite argument contrived in our media today if we are going to make it through the next 50 years without going extinct. Our real focus should be the adaptation of our lifestyle and transitioning of our society into one that has a higher focus on using technology to promote sustainable modes of living harmoniously with ourselves and our environment. It shouldn't matter whether global warming is real or not, we need to change the way we live regardless, because its horrible. If it is real, the world is just that much more fucked than it already is.

- DJV

The Prestige (But Wait It Gets Worse)

2010-03-01T00:13:00.015-05:00

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Ben Franklin

We exist, at perhaps the most significant juncture in this nation's history. Our rights, as framed in the constitution, those unalienable rights fundamental to every man, woman, and child, are changing, evolving and disappearing completely. We live in a state of ambiguous values and false pride that masks the corruption of the paragon tenets that this great country was founded on. This is not a matter of opinion, this is, and is quickly becoming, black letter law.

The US, has, several times, suspended or annulled or ignored the US constitution. One could argue that the Bill of Rights is conveniently forgotten every time a crisis or war surfaces. The Alien and Sedition of Acts of 1800 are in clear conflict with the 1st amendment, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the civil war, Woodrow Wilson made law the Sedition act of 1918 which explicitly contradicted the 1st amendment(again), Japanese and German Americans were interred illegally during world war two, which brings us about up to the present day(ignoring actions taken by the US government, military, or paramilitary organizations that were more covert indiscretions). During the Bush administration our civil liberties began to deteriorate once again, as we were more than willing to exchange our rights for the comfort and safety of a zealous federal government doing "what was necessary" to protect us from the perceived threat of strange men with beards and turbans hijacking our entire way of life. The majority of the citizenry jumped aboard the bandwagon of xenophobic ignorance, and advocated for bills like the Patriot Act, contradictorily arguing that such sacrifices to our freedoms were necessary to protect those same freedoms.

At the time only a handful of hardliner democrats seemed to oppose the changes that were transpiring before our very eyes. It wasn't just 9/11, it was everything. As a disenfranchised entity existing within our system, I viewed it objectively as thus: the federal government, having clear forehand knowledge of impending disasters (ie Katrina, 9/11) deliberately and willfully allows the events to occur in order to set in motion a series of events designed to further consolidate power in the hands of the federal government and disrupt laws that have stood for centuries. That view, is no doubt panned by my critics as overly dramatic, or reaching, but I encourage the reader to scrutinize the chain of causality. In a whodunit one must always look to who benefits from the crime, to find those responsible. This much I feel is obvious, and this tangent is not worthy of mulling over as the real, non ideological consequences of the Bush administration have yet to surface (unless you are black, poor, or from New Orleans). 9/11 led to the Patriot Act, which broadly enhanced the federal governments ability to spy on whomever they wanted without needing to provide due cause, or a warrant in order to do so. Suspected terrorists were detained illegally in offshore military prisons and denied any rights conventionally afforded to our own citizens, breaking, at least in spirit the precedent established by Ex parte Miligan.

Then came Katrina, and once more we saw the government sit on its hands until the people cried for salvation. Then came martial law. In a clear break with the century long precedent of Posse Comitatus, and in clear violation of US law 15,000 Federal Troops along with contractors from Blackwater occupied a US city and ignored both civil rights and Miranda rights after the mayor declared Martial Law. Along with Federal troops the Police Department began confiscating weapons from law abiding citizens, and as some tragic anecdotes portray, even brutalizing little old ladies and seizing their firearms - in clear violation of the second amendment. It gets worse, the next year congress amended the Insurrection act which now stated

(1) The President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to--

(A) restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that--

(i) domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; and

(ii) such violence results in a condition described in paragraph (2); or

(B) suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2).

(2) A condition described in this paragraph is a condition that--

(A) so hinders the execution of the laws of a State or possession, as applicable, and of the United States within that State or possession, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State or possession are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or

(B) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.

Only Senator Patrick Leahy (D) was heard to object, saying "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law. Invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military for law enforcement activities goes against some of the central tenets of our democracy. It creates needless tension among the various levels of government – one can easily envision governors and mayors in charge of an emergency having to constantly look over their shoulders while someone who has never visited their communities gives the orders." Amen. A year later this legislation was repealed due to his efforts. But the war still raged. In 2007 legislation was again introduced in the House of Representatives, that threatened civil rights, the so called "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" bill passed the house with 404 votes in favor to 6 against. Think about the proportion for a minute. The proposed bill would have:

Amended the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to add provisions concerning the prevention of homegrown terrorism (terrorism by individuals born, raised, or based and operating primarily in the United States).^[4]
Directed the Secretary of Homeland Security to:
1. Establish a grant program to prevent radicalization (use of an extremist belief system for facilitating ideologically-based violence) and homegrown terrorism in the United States;^[4]
2. Establish or designate a university-based Center of Excellence for the Study of Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States;^[4]
3. Conduct a survey of methodologies implemented by foreign nations to prevent radicalization and homegrown terrorism.^[4]

This became known as the thought crime bill, and the public outcry was so vocal that it died in the senate. Those were two small victories for liberty, but the war is still far from over. In 2008, the good old US Army's 3rd Infantry Division's First Brigade Combat Team got a new assignment to NORTHCOM. In lay man's terms this means that for the first time since the civil war that an active US Army unit has been given a dedicated military assignment here, on US soil. Ostensibly this for our protection, in the wake of major catastrophe. These units, ready for deployment on US soil, are trained in modes of populous control, riot gear, batons, tasers, bean bag bullets, road strips, the whole nine yards. By 2011 there will be 20,000 troops dedicated solely to deployment here in the good ol' US of A. Both the ACLU and the CATO institute have issued statements of alarm at the creeping militarization of our sovereign nation. For the most part, outside of the US Army Times and the Washington Post, this issue remains neglected by popular media.

This brings us to the current administration, of Barack Obama, an administration that promised that on the campaign trail that there would be no more "false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide". Obama made a lot of promises that reassured the public that the checks and balances necessary for true democracy to exist would be restored, and who better to do it than himself, a professor of constitutional law, even if he voted for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendments which expanded again the power of the government surveillance while simultaneously shielding all the telecommunications from the Bush White House retroactively. But that's okay because we all know that Obama was a Washington outsider, so we all drank the kool aid. But what has changed? What results do we really have? The answer is simple and terrifying. Nothing. Nothing has changed. In January 2009 Obama issued an executive order to close down the detention center at Guantamo Bay, Cuba. he stated that it would be closed within the year. Its been over a year, its still open, and the issue is all but forgotten.

On the campaign trail Obama also promised fervently that he would eliminate "National Security Letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime" which he reasonable justified with "that is not who we are, and it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists." I agree wholeheartedly with those sentiments, but actions speak louder than words. Last month Intelligence Czar Dennis Blair, in a meeting before the House Intelligence Committee, openly admitted that the intelligence community has continued the Bush policy of assassinating potential terrorist suspects, including US citizens. Wait... what just happened? The White House has upheld that previous policy that reinstated the long dormant right of the CIA to assassinate perceived threats to our nation, including US citizens. Ruminate on that, let it soak in. Obama has adopted the same stance as his predecessor, which is that anyone suspected of being in cahoots with terrorists may be executed in secrecy, without trial, without due process of law, strictly on unverified and unsubstantiated evidence. US Citizens, from Anwar Aulaqi to you, to me. Even the king of illegal presidential actions, Ronald Reagan, signed an executive order that strictly prohibited the policy of CIA assassination, after the oft incompetent agency fucked up one too many times. Our secretary of state Hilary Rodham Clinton condemned China, Burma, Sudan, Brazil, Cambodia, Pakistan, India, Swaziland ect, for their extrajudicial killings, in an unbelievable act of hypocrisy in the 2009 spysprog documents, all the while condoning extra judicial killings as a matter of foreign and now domestic policy. Well that's a fine how do you do. I guess because we are a "better" than those dirty countries and their subsequent ethnicities we can criticize their behavior that we openly engage in. It seems like we are speaking out of both sides of our mouth. Terminal doublespeak.

The same democratic senators that were up in arms over warrantless wiretapping are conspicuously silent when it comes to government sponsored murder. Speaking of wiretapping, last week the democratic controlled senate reauthorized three provisions to the Patriot Act seemingly in secret, as the media preferred to spend time covering Jim Bunning's nay-saying antics, and a meaningless Toyota recall. The Patriot Act was once again reauthorized with a complete failure to implement any of the much discussed safeguards, such as the safe guards on National Security Letters (NSLs) that Obama spoke of on the campaign trail. But wait it gets worse, this all comes following the report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) that the president's Office of Legal Counsel (OFC) had issued a secret opinion, once again granting retroactive "carte blanche" immunity for all the abuses of power when it came to the NSLs. Bear with me through the acronyms, but what the OIG discovered is that the legal branch of the administration had frankly exonerated systematic lawbreaking, even beyond the weakened limitations in place. To backtrack quickly NSLs are essentially letters that serve as warrants that allow access to all forms of electronic data, from phone numbers, bank records IP addresses of whomever the suspect or target was in contact with. The OIG uncovered that in thousands of cases the FBI failed to even provide NSLs to telecommunications providers, by giving them a "exigent letter" that served as a glorified IOU for the missing NSL. But thats not quite bad enough for the government yet, because several of the people they were monitoring turned out to work for leading critics of the legislation that enabled this in the first place: reporters for the Washington Post and the New York Times! In an article from American Prospect Julian Sanchez had this to say on the subject :

Still more incredibly, investigators sought records pertaining to more than 3,500 telephone numbers without any process at all, simply requesting records verbally or via scrawled Post-It notes. Many of those data requests were either unrelated to any authorized investigation or had to do with domestic criminal investigations -- meaning they could not legally have been made via NSLs. Despite this, the letters would routinely, and falsely, claim that an NSL or subpoena was already being sought.

When the OIG interviewed the agents responsible, it found that "no one could satisfactorily explain their actions," instead offering only "unpersuasive excuses." When supervisors attempted to implement a database to track these requests, agents revolted, refusing to use the new system "because they did not want the responsibility for inputting the data," which suggests either an extreme aversion to clerical work or an awareness that something not quite Hoyle was afoot. When information obtained by these extralegal means was later cited in warrant applications to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the applicants falsely claimed that legitimate NSLs or subpoenas had been used.

All of this, the OIG report noted, constituted a gross violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which clearly stipulates that subscriber records may only be turned over to the government pursuant to legal process. There's an exception for genuine emergencies, as when an attack is believed to be imminent, but that exception was not invoked and would not have applied to only a tiny fraction of the putatively "exigent" cases.

Now here's the beauty of the ventriloquist act: the administration publicly condemns these policies and proposes protections against them, then has the Justice Department rewrite them strip all the amendments of any real power, then serve them up on a silver platter to republicans on the Judiciary Committee who took them as apocrypha and presented them as their own. The Times wrote about this in October, but no one gives a flying fuck. In this ventriloquist act, you are the dummy. Are you watching closely?

Listen to this podcast for a quick recap from a fellow at the Cato Institute. He brings up a good point, where the veneer of Obama's rhetoric masks the fact that he is perpetuating pseudo-fascist policies, the government illegally spying on and murdering its own citizens, on a broad scale. But all the talk about civil liberties is quietly swept under the carpet while we spin our wheels, mucking about on issues of health care. We are a reactive and stupid people. Put a shiny new demagogue in front of the masses, give him a peace prize for meeting the basic diplomatic requirements of chief executive of a nation, and bombard the media outlets with senseless coverage over moderately important issues. Whats on Oprah? OMG Corey Haim just died. Does anyone know what we are doing in Yemen, that we are war with Pushtun in Pakistan? Anyone? Sleight of hand requires misdirection, where a larger movement always conceals the smaller movement. Are you watching closely? Your rights have vanished. Again.

Abracadabra

- DJV

Partisan

2010-02-21T19:24:00.004-05:00

Hows this for a cliched opening:

Merriam Webster holds two definitions for "partisan":

1 : a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance

Lets take a moment to reflect on this, as this term is being liberally thrown around by the corporate news media lately (no pun intended). "Partisan politics" and the corresponding earmarks on legislation, and pork belly projects are occupying the majority of the public's outrage, making many of the oncoming incumbent races far more interesting. But this is nothing new. Every 4 years, like clockwork, we find a new issue to be outraged by, some scandal or corruption that offends 1/3 to 1/2 of us enough to cause us to expend a minimal effort to get off our asses and shade in a bubble to depose of the criminals that hoodwinked us the first time around. It is a cyclical process for each party, as either inevitably becomes overrepresented in congress the public dissatisfaction for the current faction's mismanagement of national affairs becomes manifest come election time. Our populous was fed up with the corrupt and inept bungling of the GOP after the various scandals surrounding Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and others. We voted 'em out under a platform of change and hope and (surprise) nothing has changed. Democrats have failed to reduce the deficit , balance the budget, or pass any real meaningful domestic legislation since Bush was ousted. The legislation that has been passed is shameful: governmental bailouts for the most corrupt titans of private enterprise. Some would see this as a failure of the majority party to do its job, but I see it as a failure of democracy.

The republic is mired in the constant bickering between two selfish parties concerned more with their own benefit than that of their constituents. In fact voters have little to do with elections, as most of the voting public is apathetic in general, and the minority of us choose to participate in what should be the most noble and unalienable rite in this democracy. Elections come down to money, which is generously donated by corporate industry with the understanding that their best interests will be represented by the politicians they have effectively bought. Congress remains in perpetual deadlock as parties take arbitrary negative stances on bills that their own members proposed. Real reform fails as long as we remain glued to these silly generational concepts of party affiliation. Real reform ultimately must be non-partisan, and come from fresh minds and faces free from the tainted money associated with their platforms and parent parties. Think Ross Perot circa 92 (something which very well might come about if Ron Paul gets the nod, he just won the CPAC straw poll). In the absence of any such innovation, we are witnessing the demise of the republic, lost in partisanship, a word which has come to reflect greed and self interest on a national level. America may very well perish in our lifetime, and most certainly will if we choose think of party affiliation in non-malleable xenophobic terms.

Which brings me brings to Miriam-Websters second definition of Partisan:

2 a : a member of a body of detached light troops making forays and harassing an enemy b : a member of a guerrilla band operating within enemy lines

If Ron Paul doesn't get the nod, time for plan B

-DJV

Fuck Horses?

2010-01-15T14:36:00.007-05:00

When traveling through this loose conglomeration of federated states we call a union, it is interesting to note the regional peculiarities reflected in the local set of codified laws. What is dictated (or not dictated) by provincial decree will tell you more about the ethos or the specialized zeitgeist of the native gentry than any guidebook or tour could hope to provide. For instance in Fairbanks Alaska, it is illegal to give a moose alcohol, but in that same great state (the one that brought us Sarah Palin) you can legally have sex with that same moose that you just denied libations. In fact only 30 states explicitly prohibit bestiality (now referred to with the politically correct moniker of Zoophilia, at the risk of offending all the goat fuckers). Now, the list of states where porking Porky is not frowned upon by the forces of jurisprudence is sadly predictable:

Ohio, New Jersey, Texas, Arkansas, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Montana, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Hawaii, Alaska(hey they are new to the Union give them a break), Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont

Well, I will admit I was actually surprised by the ass end of that litany, the antepenultimate, penultimate, and final states left me scratching my head. I guess those errant blue states are small enough and bucolic enough in temperament to let that sorta thing slide. Outside of those outliers its funny to think that out of that list of states, 15/20 voted for Bush. Coincidence? When ranked by avg IQ per state 13 out of those 15 were among the 25 dumbest states. There appears to be a correlation emerging: ignorant people vote for G W Bush, ignorant people have sex with livestock, therefore people who have sex with livestock vote for Bush. Fuzzy math I know, but it still rings of truth don't it? Maybe that is the logic of our sex laws, I don't know.

Its fucked up

- DJV

Hats Off to Pat Robertson

2010-01-14T14:50:00.003-05:00

In whatever hierarchy you choose to assign to "hispanics", whatever pecking order is conscribed to my patrimonial totem, Haitians almost always occupy the lowest strata. They are the untouchables, the lowest caste, falling somewhere beneath the stinking Ricans and indolent Mexican'ts. As if they didn't have it bad enough, being the most impoverished nation in the western hemisphere, now the Lord has blighted them again, this time with cataclysm. That seems like overkill to me. If we are to believe Pat Robertson, the same man who repeatedly makes racist and bigoted comments towards Muslims, Asians, Homosexuals, Liberal professors ect., God is punishing Haiti for making a pact with Satan in order to win their freedom from the French over 200 years ago. Pat's infallible logic is thus: Haitians won their sovereignty through supernatural means and have paid the cosmic tithe henceforth...

It's not like 100,000 black slaves died fighting the French army, and then had to struggle through economic embargo, a 150 million Franc indemnity for recognition as an independent nation, and repeated US military intervention and occupation used to destabilize the economy for our own benefit and exploitation, ostensibly setting up puppet dictators and despots for the "political stability" of lesser Hispaniola. No, no Pat is correct, God is punishing the descendants of former slaves for rising up against the unjust yoke of blatant oppression (that, might I add, was justified by Christianity). Really? The Lord Cheesus (sp?) didn't do enough through crippling poverty and an AIDS epidemic? Its hardly Babylon (Las Vegas).

It is troublesome though. What if good ol' Pat is right? If God is punishing Haiti for their past sins, what will he do the US for deposing a populist priest by having the CIA set up a brutal militant faction to stage a coup? What is our karma as a nation?, if not one built on genocide, injustice and oppression.

It might be a little worse than an earthquake

- DJV

LOL Smiley Face

2010-01-13T20:11:00.008-05:00

Perhaps one of the most horrifying indicators that societal collapse is inevitable; is the decay and degeneration of common parlance into a bastardized hodgepodge of derivative forms of communication. The once novel technological innovations of texting and internet chat have directly contributed to the death of in depth expression. In a sense, this was inevitable, there is no Royal Spanish Academy for our humble lengua, and although I may bemoan the passing of once clever forms of English idiomatic vernacular, I am in no way entreating my audience to return to writing letters and other outmoded forms of communication (this reactionary solution being posited on this Diane Rehm show as the preferred modus with which to stop the hemorrhaging). It would indeed be ironic for me to express my laments in the medium at least partially responsible for them. As evinced in the song above, the deterioration of language and media is almost complete. As the rate of knowledge we can reproduce accelerates on a exponential curve, asymptotically, our ability to convey said information has fallen off the map. Their is some algorithm of negative correlation at heart in this matter, but I am no mathematician. All I know is that Walter Cronkite has become TMZ, The Wall Street Journal has become blurbs with big colorful pictures, and Rolling Stone has become the dumping grounds of the Jonas Brothers. Culture evolves, or devolves in our case.

For the most part I try to abstain from stabbing daggers in my mother tongue's back by wholesale avoidance of trite forms of "speech" found in text, but ultimately sustaining this farcical effort is, well... laughable. To try to express one's words without inflection or intonation in 180 characters or less and still fully convey the original emotional content is a daunting task to say the least, and I am forced to rely on the shorthand conveyances of pathos: LOL Smiley face. But my surrender to the whims of the evolving means and modes of the cultural lexicon was inevitable, and ultimately this has been one large digression from my original point. What was my point anyway?

What I wanted to focus on is the song, featuring Souldja Boi, Gushi Mehn, and Tr3y Songz. It is true that "art" (applying this term liberally and loosely here) imitates life, but the implication for life imitating art is what appalls me in this case. Scrutinize the lyrics and you'll understand:

I love fisher price.

8043350051,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face
(Soulja Boy Tell 'Em)
8043350051,(Gucci)
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

(Chorus)
Shorty just text me, says she want to sex me
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face
Shorty sent a twitpic saying come and get this,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

(Trey Songz)
Shorty called my phone, i was busy (i was busy)
cruisin in that Benz round the city (round the city)
then i felt my phone buzz, i know that she like thugs,
im a bad boy like diddy (take that!),
then she sent the text, that read, baby im at home,
then she sent another one that says she’s all alone
so i text her a smiley face and said lets do the grown,
she said lol, boy you crazy, come on
then she said actually, you aint gotta ask me
sent that lil face with the tongue cuz im nasty
im on my way, girl i can't wait, twitter me a picture
let me see that okayy,

[Chorus]
Shorty just text me, says she want to sex me
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face
Shorty sent a twitpic saying come and get this,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

Go to my page and follow and if you got a body like a coke bottle,
Shorty sent a twitpic saying come and get this,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

(Gucci Mane)
Email Me Shawty Text Bay send your boy a smily face, Gucci Mane x-rated we could make a sex tape. Pics on my iphone, gucci on her ipod, when she turn around, ass make you say "Oh God!" Mommy real beautiful, manicured cuticles, office job, student girl, holding down her cubicle, and she got my number tell her man that's like a miracle, said she like my swag, but love 6’s on my vehicle, GA to VA, Cali girls love me, Brooklyn girls hug me, Miami girls sexy, pull up in the stretchy, Jump out flexing, first date sexing, next night texting (well damn!).

[Chorus]
Shorty just text me, says she want to sex me
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face
Shorty sent a twitpic saying come and get this,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

Go to my page and follow and if you got a body like a coke bottle,
Shorty sent a twitpic saying come and get this,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

(Soulja Boy)
(Trey I got you baby) Lol smiley face, lol smiley face, soulja boy tell 'em, bay lol smiley face, babygirl sent da picture to my blackberry, she fine and she thick just like Halle Berry (well damn!), kiss me through the phone, LOL smiley face we can go and kick it bay later on at my place, she message me on myspace told me she loved me, she texting my phone 4:30 in da morning, baby i’m horny, i wanna kiss you, i can put it on you, that's not an issue, she scratching my back, screaming out im hers, she text my phone said I need your love, i met her monday last week in da club, one week later now she telling me that she in love.

[Chorus]
Shorty just text me, says she want to sex me
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face
Shorty sent a twitpic saying come and get this,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

Go to my page and follow and if you got a body like a coke bottle,
Shorty sent a twitpic saying come and get this,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

Wow. This is essentially pimping products (the means and modes of this communication) to further replicate this jargon of leetspeak, lolspeak, and ebonics (jive), while still making the time to maintain the normalcy of unequivalence in sexual relations. Blackberry, Iphone, Twitter and Myspace are all "dropped" in this song. This furthers and engenders the dissemination of such laconic media, setting up the cycle of repeated simulacrum, all surely worse than the first. I admit this is the nature of all things, that as our forms of communication increase in the speed of their delivery, their level of eloquence diminishes, akin to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. I know this was bound to happen, but still can't help but wish that we could go out with style, guns blazing like Carthage. What will future generations think when digging through our annals and arcana? To what will they attribute LOL Smiley Face? Will integrated hieroglyphic symbolism be the title attributed to emoticons? God only knows. I hope it all ends soon, this shit is getting too redic (or redonk) to borrow from abbreviations we call dialogue.

I think the real canary in the coalmine for me (aside from this song acting as a bellwether) will be that singular moment that can define a lifetime, that moment when I actually hear someone enunciate LOL with proper intent, instead of actually just laughing, instead of actually expending the effort to be human. When I observe that, I'll know the end is cresting the horizon, just around the bend.

- DJV

Twilight (of Dion)

2009-12-21T21:43:00.007-05:00

It has recently come to my attention that one of my dear friends has fallen under the spell of that horrible movie I'd previously thought was exclusively reserved for the hordes of prepubescent girls that obsess over myspace and clutter our malls. It seems Twilight does not categorically discriminate, and although my friend is a male in his late twenties, to all appearances safely out of range of the targeted demographic, he too has fallen prey to "the international phenomenon". (As a disclaimer I must mention that he was previously enamored with "The Notebook", the overly maudlin adaptation of the already sappy and saccharine book by Nicholas Sparks). Despite that fact, I was still left dumbfounded upon discovering that he had fallen into the trap designed to ensnare the hearts (and pocketbooks) of teenage girls across the globe. I am no fan of harlequin romance, in any form, and the mere idea of dark moody cinematography mixed with melodramatic acting and excessively pale male makeup makes my guts churn with apprehension.

But I was intrigued nevertheless, and ardently determined to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding my friend's addiction (he has been watching it on a nightly basis before crying himself to sleep on a pillow stained with tears). So as any good journalist would do, I went to the source to further my research. I watched it, ostensibly to find a cure for a fallen friend and was sucked through an emotional portal of heartache that young women seem to identify so heavily with. I laughed , I cried, I buried what shreds of credibility I still possessed in the yard with the animal carcasses.

My ethnographic foray into hearts of the hormone driven left me more bewildered than when I'd begun. The acting was contrived, directing ham handed, and it is hard to say how bad the writing was because of the impoverished acting. I think my favorite moment was when the protagonist, Edward Cullen, reveals his true self to Bella in the sunlight and begins sparking - over a minute and a half of serious and dramatic build up culminates in unexpected hilarity (the scene is shown above, with voice over from Tobias). Well that's a new one. In all the vampire movies I have seen, never before has a vampire sparkled or glimmered in daylight. It is all very contrived... a love that cannot be, forbidden love, teenage love, and so on and so forth, and to find this dribble earnestly appealing, even after having suffered through all those emotions and circumstances myself, I think I would need to be senile or lobotomized. Take these lines for instance:

Edward Cullen: [to Bella] You are my life now.

Edward Cullen: I don't have the strength to stay away from you anymore.
Isabella Swan: Then don't.

Edward Cullen: I hate you for making me want you so much.

Isabella Swan: I'd never given much though to how I would die. But dying in place of someone I love, seems like a good way to go. I can't bring myself to regret the decisions that brought me face to face with death. They also brought me to Edward.

Edward Cullen: You don't know how long I've waited for you.

Isabella Swan: About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him, and I didn't know how dominate that part might be, that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Edward Cullen: My family, we're different from others of our kind. We only drink animal blood, but it's your scent. It's like a drug to me. It's like you're my own personal brand of heroin.
Isabella Swan: Why did you hate me so much when we met?
Edward Cullen: I did, only because of wanting you so badly. I still don't know if I can control myself.
Isabella Swan: I know you can.

Isabella Swan: It's like diamonds... you're beautiful.
Edward Cullen: Beautiful? This is the skin of a killer, Bella... I'm a killer.
Isabella Swan: I don't believe that.

The dialogue goes on like this throughout the entire movie as they meander through the push pull of adolescent romance, with him repeatedly saving her but remaining mysteriously aloof which only serves to attract her more. He saves her blah blah blah until the saga resumes with the sequel.

If you haven't seen Twilight yet, don't. Its a piece of shit. And the only advice I can summon for my piscean friend after watching this is: STOP BEING SO EMO. VAMPIRES AREN'T REAL AND IF THEY WERE THEY WOULDN'T TWINKLE IN THE SUNLIGHT. BE A MAN AND GO KILL SOMETHING OR PUT ON SOME CLOWN MAKEUP AND SOME GLITTER SO EVERYONE WILL RECOGNIZE IN THE DAYLIGHT THAT YOU WILL SUCK THE LIFE OUT OF THEM WITH YOUR STUPID OBSESSION. Thanks for wasting two hours of my time, asshole. Over and out

- DJV

Fire Safe Cigarettes

2009-12-14T20:00:00.011-05:00

So I might not be the best authority to lecture about smoking; the last two weeks have resulted in a percipitous decline in my cigarette intake due to illness and lack of any form of heat in my humble place of residence. But I am going to do it any way.

By now most fellow smokers have either noticed that their cigarettes taste different, go out spontaneously, and have a funny FSC label by the bar code on the box. Cigarettes are now are "Fire Safe" - an oxymoron for the ages. Obama done did it again, and throughout the entire US (minus Wyoming) all cigarettes are or will soon be marked FSC, my American Spirits being no exception. Contrary to urban legends and uninformed suspicions of the rabble, nothing in the cigarettes you smoke has actually changed. The tabacco remains as imbued with carcinogens as it ever was, instead what was altered is the paper surrounding the tabacco. The new wraps contain bands of the same normal porous paper which are intermittently gapped with a less porous paper that will extinguish if not actively smoked. Because none of our lawmakers want to be smeared as opposing legislation to decrease fires and fire related fatalities, FSC bills have passed through every state legislature in the last two years.

That's all well and good but how does that affect me? Well what was been added to those bands of less porous paper to make them extinguish is a chemical known as ethylene vinyl acetate, better known as the everyday adhesive in hot glue sticks and the foam in boxing gloves. Fucking Carpet Glue. EVA is a lovely little polymer that when combusted breaks down into: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, vinyl acetate and acetic acid. Here are the effects of vinyl acetate as reported on the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry:

"How can vinyl acetate affect my health?

The major effects experienced from breathing high levels of vinyl acetate for a short time are irritated eyes, nose, and throat. We don't know what the effects are from breathing lower levels of vinyl acetate for a long time. We also don't know what happens if you ingest vinyl acetate. Long-term animal studies show a reduced ability of animals to fight infection when rats and mice ingested high levels of the chemical. Birth defects were not seen in the offspring of animals that were exposed to vinyl acetate in drinking water during their pregnancies. Vinyl acetate has caused skin irritation and blisters in workers who accidentally spilled it on their skin. Eye irritation has also been seen when people were exposed to vinyl acetate in the air or through accidents when the chemical went into their eyes.

How likely is vinyl acetate to cause cancer?

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has determined that vinyl acetate is not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans. There are no human studies on
the carcinogenicity of vinyl acetate. Animal studies have shown mixed results; one study showed an increase in tumors of the noses of rats who breathed vinyl acetate, while another study did not show an increase in tumors in rats who drank water containing the chemical."

In addition a recent study from the Havard School of Health has shown that FSC cigarettes produce 14 percent more Naphthalene and 11 percent more Carbon Monoxide than a normal cigarette. Yippee.

This has resulted in a host of fucking sob story Youtube videos of disenfranchised smokers bitching about the new galaxy of health problems they've discovered from smoking FSCs.Well boo fucking hoo, get off the pity potty. As a smoker, you would think I'd be a tad sympathetic, but I find my patience limited for those that want to get on the pulpit and complain. We all knew smoking was deleterious to our health when we began. We never cared. We knew the risks, what has changed? (aside from the nasty new taste) Here is my advice to all those in a quandry about what to do now that cigarettes are even more toxic than ever:

A. Shut the fuck up and quit smoking

B. Sign a worthless online petition and pray for referendum (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/repeal-fire-safe-cigarette-laws)

C. Shut the fuck up and continue smoking

D. Switch to a gentleman's pipe or cigar

E. Smoke smuggled cigarettes from the third world

F. Stop being lazy and roll your own

G. Blame big government and Obama for putting State Laws, mandating public safety, on a product directly responsible for countless deaths each year. How dare they

Me? I roll my own, but only because I can't afford black market prices.

-DJV

TRUE STORIES: The Placid Waters of Lake Minnetonka

2009-11-19T21:26:00.007-05:00

For Carrie, On her birthday

It was the summer of '92 and I was just a young strapping lad of thirteen. From my twelfth birthday onward life had been hell. My parents were killed in a horrible car accident when they swerved off of I96 north during a rain storm. They hit two cars in the opposite lane and were thrown through a guardrail. They emerged without a scratch and were promptly mauled by a pair of rabid bears. They were on their way to see me, bearing expensive gifts from Grand Rapids for my birthday, and I carried that guilt with me, somewhere near my coccyx, for nearly a year. I'd been staying with my nana for that year until my wild uncles Jasper and Chereth decided to take me on a cross country tour of America. They came like angels on gilded wings, lifting me from my misery. Our itinerary had us drive through Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota as we headed west. They decided to skip Indiana for legal reasons and we detoured through the ass end Kentucky to avoid trouble with the law. It was at a pitstop in Tuskaloosa, KY, that I learned the value of wine, women, and song. But I digress. It was a journey i'll never forget, Paul Bunyan's birthplace, Cedar Point, the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, it was a bevy of new experience, freeing me from a haunted past. It was in Greenbay that I had my first cheese curd and saw a woman expose her breasts at a Packers game. That woman, I would later learn was Deanna Tynes, who would go on to marry the quarterback.

The main stop on our trek west was Lake Minnetonka. My uncles were huge Prince fans and said that "I needed to purify myself in the healing waters of Lake Minnetonka. " I wasn't sure what they meant, but all the other experiences up to this point on the trip had been positive so I didn't second guess their judgment. When we finally arrived I was spellbound. It was breath taking, miles and miles of pure shoreline. We set up camp at dusk, when the sky was a battle between orange and pink, the reigning colors of that past decade. That night when I slept, a tranquility so profound, so utterly serene, seemed to transform my consciousness. When I rose my mind was lifted from all the nagging feelings of guilt and remorse that had tortured me previous. The sun was low in the sky and I had a whole day in front of me. A new day. A beautiful day.

Jasper and Chereth had decided to go canoeing at dawn. So I was left alone to contemplate existence and nature with what was now a clear head. I was wearing my boy scout uniform, which is what I wore at all times (as evidenced by my year book photo from 1990 on the right), including the accompanying khaki short shorts that revealed thighs - creamy white from spending a year tucked away from the natural spectrum of light. I took off my shoes and dipped my toes into the placid waters of Lake Minnetonka. It was magical, it was life changing. No sooner had I done so than, seemingly out of no where, out of the blue, out of the ether a giant 60 foot Winnebago appeared in a whorl of dust. It was an off white luminescent pearly hue that God would drive if he decided he needed a proper chariot for transportation. I was dumbfounded, starring backwards at the camper that dwarfed our humble tent, still ankle deep in water. The door snarled open with a hiss reminiscent of Star Wars. I remember too, that it was peculiar that the door opened inwards, something that I'd never seen before. For some reason this image was particularly salient in my recollection of events. These events that transpired afterward would forever change who I am today.

Out of the door stepped an extremely tall man that looked vaguely familiar. He had a pencil thin mustache and his head was completely bald. His eyes were sunken in and his head seemed to lumber forth away from his body. It was probably just a by product of stooping on such a portentous frame. My jaw was agape in such a commanding present. He was wearing a teal bathrobe made of crushed velvet with matching slippers that were monogrammed with an overlapping VP . In a stern tone, and once again familiar voice he called out to me "Come here boy" with such a lack of hesitation that I didn't question whether to disobey his command. His long thin bony finger beckoned me to him with a magnetic pull I was too weak to withstand. I stood in front of him, confused and intimidated. "Do you like eggs?" he queried, almost malevolently. I responded affirmatively and he fished into the front pockets of his bathrobe and produced a lone, peeled, hard boiled egg. He said nothing, merely outstretching his freakishly long hand toward me, pinching the egg between forefinger and thumb. He starred at me intensely with his deep blue eyes, that seemed clouded with age or the opacity of illness. I took the egg, not daring to break eye contact. He smirked the whole time, as if about to laugh. I put the entire egg in my mouth and he simultaneously gasped and groaned - his eyes rolling to the back of his head. At center of the egg there was something crunchy but I didn't dare spit it out, he had this strange power to him, my feet felt glued to the ground. He told me to enter his palatial Winnebago and I meekly followed him in.

My memories from this moment forward are spotty. I may have been drugged or I may have just repressed the trauma. What I do remember is the smell of salty breath on my neck, screaming into a chiffon pillow, and the feel of fabric around my ankles.

I woke up later in my tent alone with only the tracks of his camper to verify that I hadn't been dreaming. I soon discovered blood in my stool. It wasn't til I was nearly seventeen that I recognized the man who'd given me the egg as none other than Vincent Price, when watching the thriller video. I looked into it, tracking down local authorities and apparently Vincent Price had been in the area at that time. He'd been a patient at the Mayo clinic with an undisclosed terminal illness and the experimental treatment had caused him to lose his mind and hair. He'd escaped stealing a handful of flurazepam and virility drugs. It was at that moment I realized that Vincent Price raped me.

Vincent Price raped me.

Its not all bad though. He gave me something special that day. When he was inside me, I realized that I would become a writer and I would tell everyone about what happened to me, I would share my survivor story so that he could never do this again. Not to anyone.

He gave me something else too. I'm HIV positive.

- Daniel Jones Vincent

Obamination?

2009-10-27T06:23:00.004-04:00

As of late, I've been subjected to the idle chatter of the ill informed. It seems in the selective circle of my esteemed peers and colleagues (most being non-voting citizens and completely ignorant to political issues on a wholesale basis) an interesting phenomena is afoot. Most people (again I refer only to my particular demographic) seem to regard the highest elected position in the land as equatable in magnitude of importance to something like their own personal sentiments regarding Kobe Bryant or LeBron James. Oh I like him he's cute/oh I heard he raped that girl / I heard he's a terrorsist / hes too flashy ect. ect. ad infinitum. People have a completely dichotomous view of the president where he is either an evil communist/terrorist making war on the American way of life or some sort of Ubermensch fallen from Olympus to save us by changing everything with a wave of his magical caduceus. The best part (my favorite part) about this reductionist mindset is that the subjective evaluation of presidential performance is predetermined based on the pre-election expectations, which, again were predicated on faulty and inflammatory propaganda. Peoples opinions about the President, his policies, his programs, are, for the most part entirely cut and dried, foreordained by whatever ridiculous and arbitrary party affiliation their parents associate with. As a consequence of looking at the presidents actions as wholly perfect and incapable of wrong or conversely as all shortsighted experiments in the perversity of socialism, we fail to ever look at a presidency objectively. It would be easy to blame the media and the collapse of CNN into the liberal version of FOX News but truth be told the media only caters to what we want to hear. We want it to be a simple yes - no good - evil black - white dialectic and politicians do to. The last president to run on issues and non-image related relevance preceded Kennedy. It bothers me how people interpret or believe in this styrofoam hat Rah! Rah! Rah! nonsense. Allow me to break it down:

The Bleeding Heart Liberals

These are the folks like my mom and dad who are sooooo happy that our President is not Bush and that now miraculously everything is a million times better even though the economy is ticking by on a wing and a prayer. Any gaff or error Obama makes is just "growing pains" and he is always better by comparison, which is important to bring up constantly, lest we forget the previous 8 years of hell we endured. They are the primary consumers of Obama as the icon for change, in the same sense that they probably believed the Ford commercials when Steve Marriucci said "We are building something good here!" They like a lot of Americans wanted so badly to believe that they could be empowered by a political process that fundamentally panders only to core groups of constituents that levy vote power come primary season. They wanted change, progress, hope. They were fed this hip iconography in place of real content and now their demagogue fails to meet up to his sweeping promises but no matter, because there is no shortage of rationalizations that these liberals will feed you for the presidents failures and shortcomings. Why is gitmo still open? Why a troop surge in Afghanistan? Why an extension on the Patriot Act? Why the lack of transparency you promised? You get the point. Ask a democrat and you will probably get some weak excuses like: its hard to be president. or hes working really hard with a super democratic congressional branch to pass legislation to undo the hurt the George W Bush did to our country. For people ready to accept the icon, people so desperately ready to consume hope because they are hopeless, Barack can do no wrong. And they can not critically look at his blossoming presidency. They are still waiting for the promise to be delivered, and no doubt they will re-elect him and keep waiting in vain for progress and change.

The Cynical Republicans

Are those that I count among my closest friends, and they have such gross misperceptions of the entire geo-political spectrum that it makes my parents and other bleeding heart liberals look like they have the acuity of hawks regarding matters of political importance. My main problem with conservatives are that they all seem such sore losers. You lost, get over it. They cling to deliberate misinformation in order to lend an immediate illegitimacy to Obama's tenure; it doesnt matter what distortion it is whether its details about a radical preacher taken out of context, his birthplace, his heritage, his middle name or his connection to Bill Ayers. But no fact was needed when the entire point of this internet propaganda was merely to give those affiliated with conservative movement and the Grand Ole Party a fabricated facade to perpetuate their racial bigotry and intolerance. No one could come out and say I'll vote for a nigger the day pigs fly, so instead they call him all sorts of things that are blatant contradictions. Hes a socialist, a communist, a terrorist, anti-american, you name it. But that's not even the beginning. This faulty information, oftentimes known to be discredited well before its disseminated is then the basis of all further interpretations and criticism of the President's actions. Really republicans have the loftiest position of all right now - stripped of all meaningful positions in power (because of their incompetence, greed, and generally bungling ) they can just sit back on the sidelines and do what they do best: Hate. Hate on health care, hate on foreign policy with Iran and Cuba, hate on the economy, hate on backing off a missile defense program in Poland, Hate, hate, hate. Do they offer any meaningful solutions? Of course not, they never have. But they will happily sit back and watch America hang itself rather than try to help. They would rather be proven right than do anything to prevent the impending collapse of our accustomed way of life. And they will continue to sandbag and stymie any meaningful change or social progress and probably still not field a viable candidate for the presidency.

The Problem

Clearly both mindsets can be seen as equally fallacious. They both fall into a terrible trap, where we are either armchair generals criticizing the battle from the leisure of our detachment or just bosomy cheerleaders haplessly cheering for our boys to succeed. Neither accomplishes anything. Obama is a demagogue by no merit of his own - we have failed to support this country and make any meaningful sacrifice to help make a difference. We elected him to solve all our problems as if he could do it when we have been actively fighting real change with apathy and disinterest. I remember watching the hundreds marching in the streets and believing for a moment that we could do something, we could save the future. But yes we can has become a cultural punch-line, a well fitting ironic epitaph for America. All that energy ultimately was directed or channeled in any way, and consequently, petered out. Perhaps that's his fault, but in this country we sure do a lot of complaining with little action to engender a position of moral superiority. Whatever happened to ask not what your country can do for you? How in the fuck did we get so lazy where we thought that shading in a box with a number two pencil would amount to more than a drop of piss in the ocean? When did you volunteer in your community last? When did you intern in DC? When did you join Americore? When did any of us try, even for a moment to make a fucking difference? There is too much blanket nihilism on both sides of the fence, and any real change is prevented by our own encultured indolence. We have forgotten that real change is achievable, forgotten the lessons of the 60's. What will it take America? Does it take to self promoting thugs like Alex Jones or media harlots like Glenn Beck to bring real issues into the collective consciousness? Why aren't we doing anything?

I don't know.
I do know the next person who talks about the Nobel Peace Prize is going to socked in the jaw. I'm sick of talk.
Do something

- DJV

Post-Modern Romance (Dating Fail Part Deux)

2009-09-15T12:43:00.009-04:00

For Brandon

Consistent failure to navigate through the sea of masks that govern archetypal characterizations of displays of sexuality has been a constant reoccurring leitmotif in all of my relationships. In my personal experience, it has been an exercise in futility to attempt to erase the typified norms of gender roles within the context of amorous relationships. Underlying sexual dimorphism prevents any meaningful equality from arising - as long as phenotypical differentiation between genders is continually exacerbated( See Images). That's not to say I'm lobbying for some pan-sexual utopia, but it would be refreshing to have something other than the oppressive gender roles we all perpetuate in this society.

It has been foolish of me to think, at least in my age group, that I can transcend the normal rules of engagement when we all, unwittingly or not, subscribe to a default system of regulations regarding inter-sex relations. Its unconscious. The zeitgeist goes as far as to permeate homosexual realtionships with roles that are reflections of their hetero counterparts such as the butch or the bottom which either defer to the feminine role of being dominated or the masculine assertion. Is it possible to surmount something so pervasively embedded in our cultural psyche? Can enlightened individuals ever defeat the indoctrinated eroding force of an unhealthy society?

I used to believe it was possible. I used to believe that love could overcome the brutality of inculcated and self detrimental gender roles. I used to believe in love. I have slowly come to realize that it is pointless to expend the effort in combating the caricatures of gender when the other party can't reciprocate - and still participates unconsciously in a system designed for their oppression. Oh woe! The pitfalls of the terminally romantic!

The plight of the serial monogamist is thus: to be in a relationship I have to not want to be in one. To be with a girl, I can't treat her well, I can't outwardly display any forms of affection that aren't physical; I can't be gallant or chivalrous, lest I appear as a pussy. I can't be a gentleman - I can't treat a woman like a queen or even remotely like an equal because automatically she will withdraw - innately feeling that males who sensitive or too attentive to her needs (other than physical ones) are to be viewed as weak and beneath their efforts: not alpha material. This highlights the paradoxical nature of pursuit: to get what I want - I have to not want it. This is the true law of attraction. By being disinterested, distant, and uncaring my female counterpart will undoubtedly become more desirous of me subconsciously reacting to the stimulus trigger that any potential mate that shows the signs of being unreceptive is so far ahead of them, in terms of genetic material, that she must attach herself to him so that her progeny can jump up a couple steps on the ladder. We want what we can't have, and biologically we leech onto those that appear out of our normal social strata as a function of our need to better our offspring's genetic probability of survival. Once we can get what we want we become disinterested realizing that the mate we have been pursing is no longer as desirable by the sheer fact that are attainable emotionally. The game is over - the mouse is dead and the cat no longer has anything to play with. Boredom ensues.

This is understandably problematic. The contemporary structure of male-female relationships is based around the male using the relationship for sex and the female attempting to use it for emotionally intimacy. If the male were ever to cede and open up emotionally the female would lose interest. She would then "feel" that she deserved better - something more masculine - and would act out in order to test her partner and provoke a reaction. In this paradigm she cries out to be dominated, demanding to be treated worse in order to fulfill the cultural disparity we perpetuate. Why is it that battered wives stand by their husbands more than any other married woman? I've come to call this phenomena The Corin Conundrum or Corin's Constant, where the aggressive male treats his partner like shit and is abusive physically and emotionally - which only goes to further the attachment from the female. She never wants to tame Tarzan - she merely wants to try and in turn be ravaged by the beast. Underlying all the excuses and denial there is a primal almost animalistic need for this subservience. But why? Why would a woman tolerate being called a cunt by her significant other?

The answer is somewhat convoluted but boils down to Cultural Antagonistic Pleiotropy. In biology antagonistic pleiotropy is when a gene expression has multiple effects not all of them being beneficial. For instance in Peacocks females selected for the healthiest males with the brightest and biggest feathers to procreate with. Over time this trait became over selected for leaving the peacock offspring incredibly vulnerable to predators with these unwieldy and gaudy feathers. Memes operate just like genes and both are subject to the same process of evolution (or in this case devolution) through time. Most of the western memes that concern sex and relationships can all be seen arising from Europe around the time of the thaw from the last ice age. Extreme resource scarcity bred ruthless and brutally greedy types that would be able to survive at all costs. The extremely patriarchal and vicious peoples (think Vikings) that emerged into an abundance of resources still acted as if they were scarce; females still selected for the most dominant male that would give her children the best chance to survive or simply was left without choice in the matter. Because of the extremity of the meme we see culture (in this case sexual relations and inter-sex relationships) evolving violently. The extreme starting position of the meme of male female relations causes the pendulum to oscillate to extremes as culture continues in its sinusoidal path forward. These extreme and disparate vacillations in gender roles (ie. Victorian era vs. Woodstock) are all caused by the "Iceman Inheritance". Fundamentally our unhealthy and extremely unbalanced sex roles are a product of thousands of years of "Skinnerarian maladaptation" in our patriarchal predecessors. We are still selecting for traits that no longer benefit society or enhance the survival of the species - which then hits a critical threshold and now endangers the species as a whole. Women are still selecting for this assholish alpha male even though its not only maladaptive for them - but everyone else around them. We are perpetuating deleterious archetypes of behavior because of how they may have benefited us in times of scarcity. While other memes have progressed along with technology, gender roles seem to be the last to move along. Women couldn't vote until 1920.

Unfortunately equality between the sexes in almost every capacity will remain mythical in a patriarchal system where women are unwittingly their own oppressors. I guess I shouldn't complain, I should learn to sit back and reap the benefits of a fucked up system that is set up in my favor. After all every time I have tried to liberate my partners from the trap of a one dimensional femininity they have bitten the hand that feeds. I suppose I have been all too willing to project the qualities of virtue on the "fairer sex" that are conspicuously missing on this generation raised on Cosmo and The Hills. I am guilty of putting the pussy on the pedestal, in some empyrean echelon. I guess its time to stop fighting my culture, no matter how whack it is. I guess to survive I should regress to simian levels of emotional understanding where everything is fucking and punching. Time to get feral.

Samuel Johnson said:

"He who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man."

How right he was. I think I'll lobotomize myself to facilitate that or castrate myself in order exist in such mindless idiocy.

Beast or Eunuch?

Life has so many difficult choices.

The Joys of the Internet (Dating Fail)

2009-09-08T23:49:00.010-04:00

Recently I discovered that a group of shameless contemporaries had finally taken the final step in whoring themselves out completely. Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, boy and girls, welcome to the wonderful world of internet dating (where you can front to even larger degrees of douchiness by reinventing yourself as a twisted caricature of your own qualities that you believe are marketable to the opposite sex) !!! Apparently this level of unabashed individualistic self promotion applies naturally to those adept at lying to others, and most importantly, to themselves. Unfortunately the only real world tangible results reaped from the desperation of the interwebs seems to be the large horny bovine-like women that flock to posers like moths to flame. I think personally, I don't need that much attention from others where I could justify such a repeated maintenance on a completely shallow facade of frontery that would only result in me being labeled a "chubby chaser" if friends and busy associates were ever to learn about these hidden proclivities. It hardly seems worth the effort. But there are those among us, those that are so lonely inside that they revoke the typical societal standards of meeting others through conventional means. Usually these individuals are so heavily flawed in certain aspects that the normalcy of dating is sheer impossibility. We are talking about club feet, port-wine stains, speech impediments, ect. - all the romantically disabled really. And the beauty is they can all be found in one place... the internet. Its like a giant room filled with every kid that was picked last in sports, and much like the gumpy kid in gym class - this is completely hilarious. The humor lies in the fact that someone out there takes this seriously enough that he deliberatley expends so much effort to present himself in such an obviously fabricated manner in order to fill the giant void of emptiness for a few fleeting moments with the awkward physical intimacy of a complete stranger (that is most likely hideous in appearance). Couldn't this be achievable in the real world? Whatever happened to going to the bar? Egad man!

Take for instance this character study from Good Will Fronting, whose last log on was yesterday afternoon: (Who can be contacted from his professional website here: On the right)

My Self-Summary

First and foremost, you all need to know that I am a dork. I don't watch anime, I don't know everything there is to know about computer programming, and I certainly would rather be on a beach than in a library, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want a language/science book with me.

My biggest drive in life is to be able to be a professor someday. I've always been really good at teaching people, and I realized that teaching Linguistics is my dream in life. I want to live in a little townhouse with a big study like the movie "My Fair Lady" with a turret bedroom and a big open indoor courtyard. I love puppies, I love kids, and I can't wait to be the biggest goof of a dad.

Academically, I've been up and down, but I'm always thinking about something, be it Physics, Language, Art History or Medicine. I know a lot about a lot, and I've always been called a "Jack of all trades, master of none". I think it's really important for people to be well versed in everything, including geography and history. I have been (and will always be) a really observant person. A lot of my humor comes from observing the situation around me and pointing out little odd things that people do.

One of my favorite things to do with another person is hang out on the couch, watch a movie, talk, and just sort of explore eachother's personalities. I really love getting peoples philosophies on life because I feel we all bring something different to the table, and it's always great to gain a new perspective.

Music has been a really big part of my life. I don't know why, but I've been able to play pretty much any instrument throughout the course of my life. I taught myself how to play the bass guitar, electric guitar, piano and trombone, and I absolutely love playing them. In fact, piano is really the way I work out my problems. I've written a lot of my own music, but I've never been in a band. I love playing improv blues on the guitar or making up songs on the piano and singing along. I listen to a lot of acapella music because I'm a nerd, and I love to sing with people.

I've kept a dream journal on and off throughout my life because I've been trying to teach myself to be able to lucid dream. I think it would be totally sweet to just do whatever you want in your dreams.

What I’m doing with my life

I'm going to school to be a professor in linguistics, which means soon I'll be leaving Ann Arbor for greener pastures elsewhere in the U.S.

I’m really good at

"House" trivia, languages, blues guitar, soccer, piano, buying goofy hats, building forts, golf, and cooking.

The first things people usually notice about me

My really dark hair, then my really dark eyes

My favorite books, movies, music, and food

Books: My Side of the Mountain, anything by Vonnegut, Chuck Klosterman, various language books, and all sorts of linguistics books.

Movies: The Weatherman, Batman Begins, City of God, The Believer, Harry Potter, Amelie, Love Actually, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Blow, Boonedock Saints, Snatch

Music: Classical? Hell yes! Specifically ? Chopin.
Techno? Yes, but only certain kinds.
Rock? Bring it! I like the classic stuff like The Who, but the Steve Miller Band is still one of my all time favorites.
Rap? Yes and no. I know pretty much all the words to the entire 2001 album by Dr. Dre, but I don't generally prefer rap as a genre.
Country? No way!
Blugrass? Hell yeah! (I know, right?)

Food: Pretty much everything. I learned how to cook from my mom's side of the family which is very Italian and very Irish, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy everything from Sushi to Thai food. I don't really care for Indian food though, but that's less my tongue and more my stomach.

The six things I could never do without

Sour patch kids, House MD, really old and cool libraries, Kool Aid, my stuffed rabbit Chester I got when I was born, and my family.

I spend a lot of time thinking about

Everything. Language, music, movies, art, physics, people, medicine and traveling to name a few.

On a typical Friday night I am

Out and about with my friends throwing a frisbee, swim ming in the bay, working on my website with a beer, or at the gymnastics gym with my Parkour friends.

The most private thing I’m willing to admit here

I have a horrible habit of buying really goofy hats from gas stations.

You should message me if

You're spontaneous but also focused on finishing school and doing something amazing with your life. I can't wait to go travel the world and use my language skills, and I want someone who's going to be right there with me, through every adventure.

A Retrun to Evil: Ashton, Archer, and the Hermes 3000

2009-08-18T09:50:00.006-04:00

I preface the following tale with an apology, for my pronounced absence from the Blogosphere. I hope you all will forgive me.

It began this Saturday night at 311 South Division. I was suffocating in that hell of an attic, swimming slowly through the languid air as I attempted to load all my worldly possessions into Cullen's over sized SUV, this gas guzzling American monstrosity designed as an essential commodity for men with the need to overcompensate for their lack of a phallus. I had slowed to a snail's pace after several exhausting trips up and down the stairs through the thick supersaturated ninety degree atmosphere. My shirt was drenched in sweat and sticking to me in the humidity. Cullen was not helping in any way. He was just sitting on the loveseat, smoking cigarettes lazily while perusing some dated foreign pornography and occasionally glancing up to oversee my task - like some mob hire teamster. This bred resentment from me, it was pouring out my eyes and through my pores. I could see how much he was relishing it. He'd tilt his head back and laugh at regular intervals just to publicly demonstrate how much he was enjoying himself. It was torture.

It was at the exact moment, when the anguish of schlepping boxes brimming with books felt like it would force me to kill Cullen, that Ashton arrived. Ziggy arrived first rather, darting up the stairs with all the enthusiasm expected of his age and breed. Ziggy's exuberance felt out of place in the chaos of our dismantled skeleton of an apartment. I greeted Ash tersely with all the energy I could still muster as I passed him on the stairs with my movie posters in tow. I threw them in the back of the car and focused my attention to a passing pedestrian. He was an average looking haggard man in his 40's wearing a plain white Tommy Bahama-esqe surf shirt. I gave him a cursory nod which he reciprocated before darting up the stairs into the dark encompassing maw of the crackhouse next door. I shook my head and lit a cigarette wondering if he would make it out alive. To my surprise he returned promptly within 45 seconds of disappearing out of view.

"What are you doing at a crackhouse man?" I asked bluntly. He fumbled around with some weak token excuse about trying to help a small woman with a medical emergency. "Is she about yay high?" I gestured with my hand, palm facing downwards, to indicate she would stand a little below my sternum. He nodded again. "Yeah, that's Donna. She's a crackwhore. You might wanna stay away from her." He once again tried to reiterate his original cockamamie story of "helping" Donna but I wasn't listening. I went back inside, at which point, Ashton and Cullen, both spying from the window decided to interject and share their wisdom with the poor hapless bastard who was just roaming the empty streets looking for a fix. Ashton took it upon himself to derogate the lifestyle of smoking rock, and was proselytizing from his third floor pulpit down to the Division street. Words were had. At one point the lonely addict after referring to Ash in a diminutive manner and threatened to come up to our apartment to set him straight. He soon became frustrated and left with me bellowing out after him something about crack.

It was at this point that Archer decided to interject in the situation. Archer was and is a full bearded balding bum that resembles a fur trapper or lumberjack of old. He emerged from Liberty Plaza across the street, a park notorious for its congregations of disenfranchised street dwellers and drug addicts/peddlers. He came and stood on the sidewalk, under the guise of taking umbrage at something Cullen or Ashton had said. In reality he just lonely and wanted to insert himself in the conversation to meet his daily quota of human attention. Ash and Cullen kept repeating incessantly that they weren't even addressing him previously to get him to go away but their appeals fell on deaf ears. I took a couple other loads down to the car interested in how this situation would play out. Archer had this really tongue heavy manner of speech that bordered on a light lisp, which made it comical as he tried to banter and trade insults back in forth with Ashton. While closed up the car, he lit a cigarette and then threw his lighter on the ground nonchalantly which exploded as was his intended effect. He wanted to create an aura of intimidation, which would have been more successful had he possessed the high ground. I complimented him on his little trick and asked him how he did it, putting myself in a immediately subservient and asking position. I intuited that a position of superiority is what would appeal to his vanity, and allow me to watch this scenario play out in a hilarious manner. I was right. He went on in his comments with Ashton, inserting boasts about getting a 29 on his ACT and having a 3.5 GPA average in high school. He complained that he couldn't see or hear Ashton, so Ashton hopped on the roof next door to placate his demands. At this point Archer claimed that he could climb any roof in the city and scale any building as well. He turned to me and mentioned something about a balcony at city hall that was supposed to be impressive and then went about trying to make good on his claim. He threw his only possession of an antique type writer fitted with an impromtu strap rigged from two belts and asked me to watch it as he went around to case the building. It was at this point the Satanas appeared on my shoulder, and I listened. He doesn't need that typewriter, I am writer, surely I should manipulate this situtation to get what I desire. And I did. As he was running around trying to climb the building I called Cullen and told him to get in the car and get ready to leave when I called him. Ashton was perched on the roof mocking the bum continually while I fed him worthless ideas of how to get on the roof of an almost unscalable building. After several minutes he returned, saying that he would be able to reach the summiit if only he had his grappling hook with him. I tried not to laugh. I offered him a new alternative of me giving him a boost to get up on the overhang on the nieghboring building wear Ashton stood three stories up beating his chest like king kong. We tried this but failed as he wieghed around 240 pounds and had no upper body strength whatsoever so he was justing trying to jump up. This act fully sealed my position as his confederate. We looked for a new solution and settled on using a a trash can topped with a table for stability and a recylcling bin for extra hieght. I held the wobbly improvised ladder and he was barely able to get on, but managed on his second attempt after almost breaking his neck on the first. He was just where I wanted him, stranded on a roof removed from his beloved Hermes 3000. I called Cullen and told him to back the car into the street and keep it running. Archer was going on about how all his strength in his legs and in high school he could leg press over a ton, but then he wieghed 335 and now only wieghed 225. I loathed him like I loathed Josh in jail. Compulsize liars that attempt to create airs of majesty around themselves and always pontificate from what is clearly a false sense of superiority. He was an uppity bum, with an undeserved sense of entitlement that in no way reflected his position in life. I couldn't wait to shatter his illusions, despite how wicked and malicious I knew my actions were. He was in dire need of reality check. He smoked a cigarette and pissed off the overhang, yelling up to Ashton not to look at his dick. I was ready to grab his shit and jump in the car, when he demanded that I take his change and go to the corner store and grab him a grape Faygo. I took his change, grabbed the typewritter and jumped in the waiting car. He didn't even notice, far too busy with Ashton.

After I opened up the Hermes 3000, I found his musings. Some poetry, some prose. Apparently he was starting a book.

I have been trying so hard to be good, and I faltered. Weak and unaware I commited a heinous act, and once again returned to evil. There is nothing I can do about my past actions, all the matters is how I continue forth in the future. Lord knows I'm not perfect, but I have to do better than that. I know what I did was clearly wrong, and I pray that my karma is offset by some of the good that I put forth into the universe. For my own personal karmic compensation I'll finish the book he started, on the typewritter I stole, until I bleed out all the sin on the pages of his novel. Who knows, maybe good can come from evil

- DJV

Sanity

2009-07-24T21:44:00.002-04:00

Life has been an endless process of searching for mental health. For the longest time after failing to discover equanimity within myself I searched for it within external stimuli, finally resorting on substances to self medicate. This was a a temporal aid that caused more harm than good and now, in the vacuum of sobriety, I again have to answer the question of how to be happy. I have turned to cigarettes, starvation, and sleep deprivation to manage a ceaseless sea of anxiety. I am not sure if the sauce was healthier for me.

It's the same shit, and the pursuit of the external to be satisfied with the internal is a completely fucked notion. Emotion, love, attachment, ect. is all the pursuit of happiness in others, rather than in the self. To find true tranquility I increasingly feel it might be necessary to spurn the traits that make me so human. Is this an exercise in futility? Can I ever exorcise the entanglement of emotion from the thought forms I emanate? I think it possible, but probably exceedingly difficult. I need to meditate more on this. I need to meditate more in general because cigarettes are killing me.

My Job Search

2009-07-22T14:13:00.003-04:00

Searching for jobs on Craig's List is like navigating a minefield. Half the postings are scams for Albanian get rich quick schemes. The rest are odd jobs that don't pay well, but sometimes, sometimes there are posts like this.

http://annarbor.craigslist.org/spa/1283243471.html

Don't go to Exotic Shades.

New Career

2009-07-17T18:04:00.002-04:00

Just because I've stopped drinking don't think I've gone soft on ya.

My hobby is illegal and fun. See where I pop up round the Ace Deuce

Kid Brother

2009-07-17T17:04:00.002-04:00

So I'm pretty sure he doesn't realize it, because he has been on Facebook for the last three months, but he is not classified on Facebook as male. Which is also hilarious because no one has bothered to tell him. Maybe it's just the name.

Sorry Ash. Epic Fail

A Man's Gotta Eat

2009-07-16T03:06:00.003-04:00

I've been hesitant to write anything online lately, preferring to deposit my clever thoughts and words into material that may someday make me money. But then again I've never heard of a poet that was doing well for himself (masculine pronoun intended). This blog has been a lot of things over the short period of time that I've chosen to share my thoughts with anonymous strangers online. It used to be mindless entertainment at the expense of others, which fits the title appropriately. Then it grew into self deprecation and then again into quasi-intellectual rants. Most recently it seems that my blog has become what I initially dreaded: just some douchebag's unoriginal musings on life - marked by limited self reflection and poor grammar.

There are so many questions that burn within me, and I fear that this may be a poor forum to address questions of philosophical, spiritual and meta-physical importance. I don't think anyone would actually care anyway if I wrote about anything of merit, everyone certainly hated when I attempted to talk about how the powers that be were making overt efforts to control their lives. I feel the only thing I can write about is myself, which is about the only thing I have control of these days, but unfortunately my life is not something that is always amusing.

Well its funny in a sense that seeing someone getting crushed in the testicles repeatedly is humorous. Its schadenfreudean. Ha. I feel the circumstances in my life have been painted with the sardonic brush of God's irony as I began to reap the karma of a lifetime spent in wickedness and ignorance. I am destitute, unemployed, and looking doom right in the eyes. I can feel the creditors and hell hounds lurking around my door, just waiting for me to let my guard down so they break down the door and barge in with affidavits and repo-men. When looking at my life objectively, it seems failure is almost an inevitability given my current situation. In a few weeks I could resort to prostituting myself, leading the life of a gigolo in order to survive (A Man's Gotta Eat Mr. Leahey). Despite how pressing these concerns seem to be they don't really phase me in the slightest. Maybe I'm so detached from the stimulus of stress and anxiety that I can't react properly to the engulfing wave of shit that is soon to crash. That probably has something to do with it, I never really have valued money and cash really doesn't play into my conceptions of happiness. Not even as a means to an end. No it seems the bulk of my efforts and concerns revolve around spending my time with a woman I'm hopelessly enamored with. Of course there is a catch. It's me. She happens to be in a relationship and lives with her partner. Of course.

So aside from the ordinary quagmires in my life, I now must navigate through the intricacies of the human heart. There was a time when I viewed the world in such a simple way, where there were moral absolutes, and right and wrong were clearly defined. Now I see everything in shades of gray and I don't know if there is any one right answer or solution to a problem. I find myself desiring one outcome, but I am loathe to lobby for it. Allowing others the sanctity of choice may be the most painful thing I have ever attempted to do. I try to convince myself that I will be happy with whatever outcome life chooses to bless me with, but that even sounds phony just writing it. It seems I am fighting all the aspects of my nature to refrain from any galvanizing action. While this may be fair to the other party, I don't know if its fair to myself, as I find myself increasingly tormented and haunted by thoughts and dreams. Patience is a virtue that I have never possessed and now my own reckless homunculus of impulse is eating itself alive trying to escape my body. No one ever told me restraint would be as painful as carelessness. I have doubts regarding my own approach, but I have to stick with it. The paradigms I've applied in the past have always resulted in failure so now might be the right time to take the highroad. There are no guarantees in life, and even though I am trying to do things the right way there is no inherent reward in self righteousness. People might argue that point but I don't think there is any real argument. All my effort aside, she still goes home to another man and my heartache is the only thing really tangible that I net from this equation. I can hang my hat on sanctimony but that does not even begin to negate the hurt crawling through my veins.

I see friends in similar situations, and by similar I mean equally shitty. Its funny how love, at times so beautiful, can radiate the opposite intensely. Fucking entanglement. Castration seems a more logical option day by day, and I can finally understand all those crazy fucks that wore Nikes and drank Koolaid to hop on the Halebop comet. Makes as much sense as love. Its hard to see the good in it when all I can see is the paralyzing pain of unrequited love plastered in the faces of my friends. And even if it is reciprocal, there are always obstacles embedded in the path, there are no fairy tales, no prince charmings, and no magical talking animals. Its a difficult thing to fight for uncertainty when the path of least resistance is sooo much more alluring and simple.

Its terrifying being powerless and completely vulnerable. Its not a situation I ever found myself in and maybe this ole alpha male has finally become a bitch. All my cards are on the table and I await someone elses choice. I'm hanging in the breeze right now and its both terrifying and liberating. Here's praying I don't crash again. I can only hope and pray. I think its about time something went right in my life. Its time for my windfall. I'm due. - DJV

What I'm Listening to:
Lucky - Radiohead
Rock Bottom Riser - Smog
Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
In the Flowers - Animal Collective
Russian Berries But You're Quiet Tonight - Frog Eyes
The Glow - The Microphones
Marquee Moon -Television
Skinny Love - Bon Iver

The Death of "Chug Life"

2009-07-12T03:19:00.002-04:00

My new found foray into sobriety is an interesting chapter in my life. At first I deprived myself of all human contact like an ascetic, preferring to limit my misery to the confines of my domicile. Then, much like a young strapping David Cassidy, I decided to take my solo act on the road - sharing my sappy pseudo-moralistic message to the youths ( or as Whoopi so eloquently stated to Lil' Wayne on The View "da yoots"). Its not an easy journey reentering decent society as a statesman for temperance when my exit was punctuated with a fifth of bourbon that left a gaping hole next to the oven in my kitchen, and I find when I step up on my pulpit of a soapbox that I am met with understandable scorn and skepticism. This is to be expected and a man like me never backs away from a challenge. I enter the ring with the confidence of a student straight of the seminary, just an eager beaver ready to tame the snarling inebriated masses like a snake oil salesman. I don't have my pitch down yet but it usually has a relatively consistent formula:

So you don't drink at all now? I answer the affirmative to try to dissuade the sneer or scowl that is plastered on their doubting faces.

How is that? This answers depends on how much I care/like the person or how much patience I have at the given moment. Sometimes I'll say Its like sticking your dick in meat grinder and having Abe Vigoda turn the crank a little more every time a beautiful woman walks by. OR I'll say It's great I'm really happy now. Jesus loves me.

How long have you been sober? The correct answer is "since march" but I like to throw in the bonus Since bathing in the purifying waters of lake Minnetonka OR the alternative After I killed my Pep pep when driving drunk from the horse races

Wow. Good for you do you still smoke? To be honest I stopped smoking weed way before I stopped drinking but people don't know this because burning herb is not something I advertise. So I say no but I let them know that I still take the occasional psychedelics just so they are sure that I haven't lost my edge or have turned militantly straightedge. If I told people I was completely clean, heads would explode, and corpses would rise from their graves with reanimated delight. So I don't, and I'm not, that's too big of a commitment to make. Doing so would be a violation of the social contract I signed - to never say a commonplace thing and never be someone the square community would give a shit about.

This is really the issue. I've made such a name of infamy for myself as a drunken savage that trying to redefine and refine my image into a sophisticated socialite is like trying to turn lead into gold. This alchemy is not yielding results. When a friend of mine shared with another the news of my becoming some modern tee-totaler, the recipient balked and said "What!? Dave not drink? Dave taught me how to drink." Its hard to cut through the initial scrutiny of peers when you resign from the big leagues at the top of your career. I feel like Michael Jordan when he gave up basketball to pursue baseball and golf. People merely watch me now just as a bizarre spectacle, the once artful mistro of intoxication now suffering like a chump on the golf course of the straight and narrow. On the hardwood I'd been something and now out on the greens, I'm just an average lump, that any lucky sap shooting 3 under par can beat on a good day. I'm in a struggle of identity trying to find separation from the world of mortgages and marriages. That seems like the next logical leap - clean up - find the white Mormon Jesus - get married - go to work - go to church - let my dreams char like fat marshmallows over a campfire. That's what I fear others will discover with their incessant probing, they'll discover that I'm a grown up now and I have to leave never never land at once. They'll see I'm no longer like them, and they won't wanna play reindeer games with old Rudolf anymore. I'm in constant fear of being discovered and that the angry drunks will tear me to pieces once they'll realize I've rejected their religion and shit on their idols after once being their high priest. I fear that they'll fear me by viewing me as a threat to their life of degeneracy and plot my assassination on the ides of march. Is their even any room for a clear headed individual in a world of insanity?

Does it like bother you if I like drink around you? What people fail to realize is that my life has never been influenced by their opinions and actions. Why would I start caring about what people think of me, now, years after I burned down the Riechstag. I'm not going to start an annoying habit of pleasing others when everyone already has been soured by my legacy of assholery. I may not be drunk, but don't confuse the liquor with the man, I have always been an acrid, bitter, and crochety ball buster, and I'll be damned if i'm going to start turning over a new leaf amidst the process of turning over a new leaf.

I don't believe it. Wow. Good for you man. The sneer on their collective lips has curdled into something not quite friendly - still laden with doubt and apprehension - as if at anypoint I might jump out of my hiding place and ambush them. They believe - if only temporarily.

And who knows.

Maybe I'm an Alchemist

- DJV

Idiot Heart

2009-07-06T14:27:00.003-04:00

Lately I've reached an unhealthy impasse - choosing to fester on various topics of philosophical importance. The issues of life, love and the human condition are constantly vying for attention in the limited amphitheater of my fractured mind. Answers are few and far between. Every time I attempt to vainly erect some thought structure to draw an outline of one of these complex concepts one of the others comes and tears it down. Every fucking time. I'm at war with myself - body, mind, and soul all deep in the thick of battle with each other, exchanging treaties to gang up on the weaker of the three and quickly breaking them with the war like whimsy of ancient colonial monarchies. While various friends have commended me for a relatively enlightened sense of self awareness, I can't help but feel lost in this world, just a rudderless ship adrift - skimming along the infinite loneliness of empty horizons. My "awareness" is only born out of knowing what I don't want to do. The future is still tabula rasa, and I don't know what things are set in my path as tests and temptations and which are blessings and miracles. From my perspective they all look the same - just this terrifying beauty embodied at the core of the physical plane. In a sense I know what goals I want to achieve in helping others and what levels of consciousness I want to obtain in this incarnation but the question of companionship is a vexing one. All around me I see the joy and pain of seeds sown through carnal intimacy. I see souls parting paths and embarking on new beginnings. It strikes me that is no such thing as "free love" and everywhere I witness the karmic consequences that the entanglement of love and sex create. An acquaintance recently confided to me of his "marital indiscretions" so to speak, and despite past experience in the role of the Lothario, I was hard pressed to find any real advice for a situation that seemed hopeless. Another friend seems hopelessly enamored with his best friend, and ultimately following a relationship that will never and can never reach fruition. At first the observer I now find myself in a sympathetic situation. Once again I feel pulled into the whirlwind of drama and tragedy that is the human condition. This is where the conflict begins. My head is reluctant to move from its lofty position in the clouds. My heart opens like a lotus blossom to the first rays of sunshine that initiate the morning. My body, well my body usually follows my heart, but it also likes to do whatever the hell it wants to in order to balance hormone levels and satiate it's foolish "needs".

This is the crux of my dilemma. While the pursuit of self mastery remains a lofty goal embedded in my brain, my heart bleeds all over my clothing - seeping dark purple stains washing over my toes into the carpet. Is this the test? To surmount my emotions and all the pain they inevitably cause - in order to achieve something greater? There is a blindness to my emotionality that prevents rationality but by the same token there is dryness to my rationality that feels less than human. All aspects and facets of myself just want to be good - but it seems like such a struggle when my romantic goals appear to be in contradiction with reality. If this is a test I'm not sure if I want to pass it. Perhaps I am blessed that I am not so reckless in my endeavors anymore. Now I tip toe timorously with temerity through the tulips - trying as hard as possible to not disturb so much as a petal. But I'm still large and oafish - with all the dexterity of an elephant seal during mating season - and I find myself falling assbackwards into the constant spiral of hopeless love that all my friends subscribe to. Do I fight or surrender? I have no real answers and I'm trying as hard as possible to tread water. It would be nice to be able to see the future, or taste the intentions of the universe, but instead I feel cursed to be this dreaded jetsam bobbing up and down with the waves, following the guidelines of invisible currents that steer my path to some unknown destination. Despite any awareness, the universe is still a complete mystery. Just when I thought I knew which way to turn the rug was torn from under my feet. Its time for course correction... but then another gorgeous stimulus re-presents itself almost at the very instant that I thought that I was liberated from the bondage of attraction towards it. I ache and burn and my joints quiver like an old man. Maybe I am just a glutton for punishment. Maybe the universe sees fit to play practical jokes on my heart. I don't know. But I am not laughing.

What is the purpose of it all? When glanced at from a perspective of distance it seems so petty and fleeting. Yet the cycle is as old as time and all the mavenly wisdom of the sages can never slow the boundless and reckless force of love. All my intellectual capabilities are completely ineffectual and incapable of navigating through this morass of attractions. Why do I find myself hopelessly enamored with the impossible? My affections spill forth without permission or control and I have to respond to my own unwanted advances. My heart is an idiot. I used to be like Sailor - truly Wild at Heart, and now as I attempt to tame the beasts that rage within my chest and loins I find myself yearning to cast off the yoke restraint - to kiss and be kissed - to hold and be held - to seek solace in a stranger.

I just sighed. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. My dreams torture and haunt me, offering me melancholy versions of parallel realities - tangential universes popping into being for fragments of non existent time. Visions of happiness are dangled in front of me like the lures of malicious fisherman, just waiting to hook me on their line, with intentions of butchery. Life was a hell of a lot easier when I was savage ( he who makes a beast of himself get rid of the pain of being a man - Samuel Johnson). All this self awareness gives me is greater sense of pain. I just want to scream, I just want one thing to go right, I just want to sleep without waking up with tears in my eyes. I want to cut out the aspects of humanity that make this life so fucking difficult. I just want to feel light again.

When I convinced my father I was on the straight and narrow path towards intitiation and enlightenment, he shared a curious anecdote: There once was a foolish student that thought he knew more than his master, and after his vain attempt to surpass him he found a note left behind from his master (translated from Spanish)

Dust of mankind...
dust of the worlds that
move in the infinite space...
poor dust that the invisible wind sweeps...
for centuries and thousands of centuries...,
dust of the time!
Love, hatred, joy, wrath...
dust of the feelings!...

Maybe this should serve as an appropriate epitaph for the hopeless emotions that spring into being, perpetually entangling those that like me, lose sight of the final destination, the distant shore on the other side.

I can't imagine a sweeter death sentence than being human. - DJV

What I'm Listening To:
Sunset Rubdown - Idiot Heart
My body is a cage - Arcade Fire
Iggy Pop - I want to go to the beach
Yeah Yeah Yeah's - Skeletons
Sunset Rubdown - Taming of the hands that came back to life
Bjork - Dull flame of Desire
Wilco - How to fight lonliness
Bon Iver - Blood bank
Vampire Weekend - I stand corrected
My Heart is an Apple - Arcade Fire

Locked Up

2009-07-01T23:04:00.004-04:00

As soon as the abrasive clang of the gavel heralded my incarceration a profound sense of frustration overcame me. Remand? Had I not turned myself in on a probation violation that was over 3 years old? For missing a court date that I was not notified about for failing to complete community service? And then I remembered, Oh wait I have a last name just dripping with ethnicity. I'm fucked.

It was a miserable situation locked up in the bosom of West Michigan. It's God's country over there, the last bastion of a militant reactionary form of Christianity which is incensed with destroying any threat to it's homogeneity. Its a small town that's grown too big, but the townsfolk are still fully preoccupied and wholly consumed with the task of eradicating all sinners and heathens that hide away in their midst. The hatred is distilled into its simplest form at the 58th District Court of Ottawa County, where the three easiest targets are persecuted to maximum extent of the law - minorities, the poor, and the youths suffer the wrath of the ruling class. Their only real crime as far as I could see was being unfortunate enough to be born into circumstances beyond their control. I was forced to watch one by one as these lambs became fodder before the menacing cowl of the esteemed Judge Jonas. She is a cold hearted woman, with little or no sympathy for the poorly educated offenders presented to her. Its only understandable to expect some degree of jadedness after several years on the bench. The nature of the job is one where the daily erosion of human emotions comes in the job description. But Judge Jonas goes above the pale. I heard rumors of her child being killed by a drunk driver and even others that went as far as to say that she had incarcerated her own husband for some drunken indiscretion. My collar felt tight as I gulped watching some poor hapless bastard being sent to his doom right before my name was summarily called up on docket. In a county where half the population consists of immigrants of Mexican descent you would think that the bailiff would learn to pronounce Spanish. So there I was, a member of all three groups of the major sinners, dressed to nines in attempt to hide my poverty, standing naked in front of the might of a tired old husk of a bitch. Her lips pursed and her eyebrows shot up as she glanced over my considerable record. "Mr. Villaverde, you are going to jail today" she announced casually, not even bothering to lift her eyes from the page. It was no use hiding in suit. My efforts had been vain. I could not escape my legacy.

I was immediately thrown in an intermediate holding tank, where I was deprived of my constitutional right to send a text message to my loved ones to inform them about my position. No more watch, no more belt, no more tie, shoes ect. I was stripped of the trapping of success in this material world as an overly friendly police officer frisked my genitals in search of a weapon. All he found was my gun. The other bulky behemoth of man just chewed his gum with his arms crossed letting out a little grunt of amusement as I was being patted down. It looked his head was going to burst from high blood pressure. It was not my first time through the meat grinder and by now I was familiar with the rigmarole of the criminal justice system. I use that term loosely, as justice is only available for those that have money to procure it, or the country club connections to surmount it. I was thrown into a 6x9 cement box with a stainless toilet where I would sit for the next three hours.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. It is no hyperbole when I say that minutes turned to days. Finally I was ushered downstairs in handcuffs and moved into a holding tank with 5 other smelly confederates that looked like they had been rotting in their for weeks. I reclined on a concrete bench and tried to pass the time through sleep. I awoke to lunch - the brown bag special of peanut butter crackers and Cheetos. Everything was stale. The time dragged on with what would become a monotonous motif of story swapping, each party vying for the prize of a consensus agreement concerning the severity of fuckedness concerning their specific situation. At five o'clock We were all fully shackled and loaded up for our final destination - Filmore - the Ottawa County Jail. Aside from the leg shackles cutting open the exposed skin on my ankles the car ride was not memorable. At Filmore we were fully dehumanized as we were pushed through the process of becoming an inmate. I spent another 5 hours in a holding cell that smelled worse than the prior two. I watched patiently as the corrections officers cracked jokes and surfed the internet aimless in lieu of actually doing their jobs. When they finally got around to the task of work, it was only begrudgingly, with an attitude of someone taking care of unpleasant but necessary chores. We were photoed, fingerprinted, searched, stripped and showered. They put all my possessions in a tote, making sure to take my cash out and put it in my jail account where they could then withdraw booking fees and other miscellaneous charges such as for an indigent kit at their personal discretion. Nothing in my belongings was allowed in save for what items I had the foresight to smuggle in ass. I was issued the county Oranges, a bleak, loose fitting garb that was made too wide and too short. It was not flattering, although I find that tangerine does highlight a certain spark in my eyes, a little twinkle that would be of no use in a sexually segregated jail complex. I was tossed a wool blanket and escorted through a labyrinthine maze of steel doors and bullet proof glass. There are no bars in jail.

I was ushered in to G- Block, a loose conglomerate of 24 cells adorned in teal and whitewashed concrete. G-12 was my new home, fitted yet another ubiquitous stainless steel commode, a bunk bed, utilitarian steel desk bolted to the floor, and round plastic seat that resembled a large turquoise top hat sticking out of the ground. Home sweet home. The powers that be were generous enough to give us a mirror made of dull metal and an erratic sink with strange buttons that would shoot water at you intermittently depending on its mood. Luckily my bunkie was not one of the many CSC baby rapists ever present in the system, or even one of the loud ignorant colored folks that liked to pound on the walls at night in a futile attempt to display power in a powerless situation. No my bunkie was an anglicized Asian who'd been catching cases for the better part of a decade and was now struggling to find his way back to Jesus through the quagmire of substance abuse and the burden of carrying the scarlet letter of felon. He was/is a talkative lad, which keeps the mind off the brutal reality of banality trapped in four walls for twenty hours a day. He kept me entertained as I slowly dissected the truth from the myriad of lies he sold me when I was initiated into his presence. He was a bit squirrely, and at night he would pop out of his bunk and glance at me with a queer smile and then run back under his covers. He had been self medicating his diagnosed instablilites with marijuana for some time, and now with its pronounced deficiency his psyche was beginning to wear thin when I arrived. He showed me the ropes like some kung fu master, teaching me the ins and outs to life on the inside, and regaling me in tales of Jackson, Muskegon, and Allegan, all jails supposedly better than the one were in. He grew on me, and we had developed a routine and chemistry together that was abruptly severed when they stole him away from me at 5 in the morning on an insignificant day. My other bunkies paled in comparison.

Time flows thick like molasses on the inside, each hour marked by the passing of the COs commonly referred to as the C hos. Every goddamn hour one of those paunchy brutish apes with hairy knuckles will waddle their girth up and down the block to reassert their authority over their prisoners. Balding and fat they utilize the universal language of sharp glances and kicks on the door or rapping at the window to remind you of just who is in charge. The rules of behavior and the code of conduct are objective and rigid, but the COs interpretation of them is completely subjective. You got to know which ones were the real pricks, which ones were lenient and which ones were the real savage bastards just itching for a chance to beat the living tar out of you because their wife would no longer service them sexually. They were all, by governmental standards and otherwise, obese. Stuck in perhaps the most sedentary job ever created, sitting watching other men sit. Most of them were lifers, passed over for promotion again and again, buried at a dead end job and scorned by their peers at the Sheriff's Office as pudgy wannabes that couldn't carry firearms. They were aching with frustration, it was dripping out of their pores and through their eyes and beleaguered bodies. They wanted to take it out on you, and you just had to shut up and not give them an opportunity to explode. Who knew I had such an ability to be quiet? Certainly not myself.

The other good indicator of time was meals. Breakfast was at 6:30, Lunch at Noon and Dinner around 5:30. Days revolved around "free time" where were allowed to mingle out of our cells and watch TV for four hours a day. MWF was ABC Family, TTh was HGTV and Sat and Sun were ESPN. Needless to say I watched a lot of Full House and gained a new respect for John Stamos and Bob Saget. I played a lot of cards, Rummy, Spades and Euchre and bullshitted with the best bullshitters this side if the Mississippi. There was DP, a crazy ass mountain man from Manistee who was old school. He was in for the better part of year for drunkenly fingering a baby while changing its diaper. He was my favorite. There was Tony G, a 16 year old kid locked up for sleeping with his girlfriend when she was 13.5 and he was 15. He was getting two years and moving to Jackson where he will probably be raped continually until he allies with a gang. He was a lovable kid, whose life is victim to the draconian sex laws of a puritan state. There was Darren and Paco and BA and too many names to remember and too many faces to count. They were all innocent, except the "stickler", who was most definitely guilty by sheer merit of protesting his guilt and proclaiming his innocence. I called him the stickler because he was a grotesque lump of a man that would let no rule be bent in broken in cards and had to know the answer to everything even though he was not a high school graduate. I hated him and his stupid mumbling voice, and his stupid Helen Keller jokes. I hated him because I always cheat at cards and he was so far up ass he could have given me a tonsillectomy. He had long greasy hair and never showered. He smelled like a pair of shoes I left out in the rain once. It took every bit self control I possesed to not beat him the face with my lunch tray. Other than that I was on good terms with everyone in the block, the spics liked me because I spoke Spanish, the Nazi's let me get a pass because I befriended Flip, and Indiana hell raiser with a penchant for cold medicine. I laughed at the blacks jokes and baby rapists kept to themselves. It was a lot like highschool, with the same social currency of gossip and "OMG did you hear about the fight in the showers this morning". Nothing changes. Humans are always petty vain cruel and isolated regardless of circumstance. We are social beasts.

Jail is easy. Jail is hell. Jail is a racket. I recently received my bill from Filmore, for a whopping 525 dollars of which I have no intention of paying back, ever. That is the funny thing with a system of public jurisprudence that privatizes its system of incarceration. The county still pays for most of the jail, but the private owners charge rent to us in top of that. It's more of that new paradigm of privatized gains and socialized losses. With that money I could have eaten like a king, slept on a bed not made of metal, maybe have had pillow even in the shittiest rat infested motel known to man. We were fed "slop" an odd mixture of gluten, gravy and gruel with chunks of ham flavored soy product. To wash it down we had green koolaid laced with salt peter to prevent any erections from popping up. On the good days we got corn bread, on the bad days we got choke bread that was dryer than the Gobi desert. Every other day we would get eggs for breakfast - harboiled and usually brown and green instead of white and yellow. On Wednesdays and Sundays we get razors and nail clippers if it wasn't a holiday. The razors were singleblade disposables that I didn't know existed. For shaving cream you would need to lather up some of the pink GOJO soap that you may know from public restrooms and which resembles the ectoplasm from Ghostbusters. The razors tore hair of my face and were usually dull after a couple swipes at three day old stubble. Shaving was promptly followed by my face breaking out which would heal just in time to get shaved again. I wonder if it would really break the bank if I decided to use some of my 525 to spring for maybe a two blade disposable razor? Maybe a better blanket too. It is cold as hell in jail, I'm sure in effort to keep boners down and aggression low the AC is at a comfortable 63 degrees, or as I like to call it, just the right temperature to make a person shiver constantly without killing them with pneumonia or frostbite or some other cold related illness. I think most of my money is being paid to keep the AC on needlessly 24/7, along the sickly hum of the ever present florescent lights. "Lights out" is just a phrase the lights are always on, always fucking humming, and always watching. They are more consistent than the sunrise, and they never worry about the weather. They just are. Permanently.

Jail is not as exciting as television would lend one to believe, and that's where I was caught off guard. It's no Oz, its just boring all the time, and you have to find amusement or be swallowed up into the depths of madness lurking behind the velveteen curtains in your own mind. It's like anything else in life, its what you make it. And in that hell I read, I prayed, and I meditated. I wrote and did all I could. Now I am free and I'm never going back
-DJV

Return of the King

2009-06-24T23:52:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the long hiatus, but I was put up temporarily with the mandatory hospitality of the Ottawa County Jail. Upon my return to world of the living I find the world an even more fucked and fragile thing than I left it. Take this anecdote that just happened to me for example:

THE WEIRDEST CONVERSATION I HAVE EVER HAD ON FACEBOOK

Let me preface this by saying my status message was "DV is upside down" and her was "Jessica is super upset". Now I haven't talked to this girl since high school and I thought I would make some small talk and buffer the awkwardness that inevitably follows when you haven't talked to someone in 7 years. The last time I hung out with her we ditched class to get high. She was cool but a lil' too DTF if you know what mean. She was a loose woman. At least a third of my lifetime ago she was. So here I am being cute when left holding my dick in my hand looking like a super-twat. Welcome back to land of the living. Merry fucking christmas

Jessica

well get right side up then

11:45pmDavid

ha ha i guess i should

all the blood is rushing to my head

well you are super upset so i guess you should just get not super upset then

11:48pmJessica

this isnt jessica, its her husband, are you another one of the guys she's fucking or?

11:49pmDavid

whoa nelly. I am sorry thats happening to you in whatever state your relationship is in but I haven't seen her since high school

apologies

11:50pmJessica

COOL