At a demonstration in support of Bradley Manning this month, I was handed a postcard of a dead child with the caption "Tell this child the Democrats are the lesser of two evils." It behooves us not to use the dead for our own devices, but that child did die thanks to an Obama Administration policy. Others live because of the way that same administration has provided health insurance for millions of poor children or, for example, reinstated environmental regulations that save thousands of lives.
You could argue that to vote for Obama is to vote for the killing of children, or that to vote for him is to vote for the protection for other children or even killing fewer children. Virtually all U.S. presidents have called down death upon their fellow human beings. It is an immoral system.
You don’t have to participate in this system, but you do have to describe it and its complexities and contradictions accurately, and you do have to understand that when you choose not to participate, it better be for reasons more interesting than the cultivation of your own moral superiority, which is so often also the cultivation of recreational bitterness.
Bitterness poisons you and it poisons the people you feed it to, and with it you drive away a lot of people who don’t like poison. You don’t have to punish those who do choose to participate. Actually, you don’t have to punish anyone, period.
it was funny to not watch the debate but then to look at Twitter this morning. WTF was the context of binders full of women? Also did Obama come out swinging this time or was he a wiener again? I get my news updates from uhx Dr. J and Kevin is my Arianna Huffington
I enjoyed the first 20 minutes or so! Our President was swinging! So much "that is just not factual." The answers that our President gave were much more specific, concrete, and grounded in reality than the vague answers given by Mitt Romney. Also the moderator was ready to not be steamrolled and she just kept talking while Romney kept talking.
That's great, Matthew! In summary, that article is written by a (campaigner?) who happened to know that Romney was lying when he asked to correct inequity by researching female candidates for his cabinet.... what happened was a group approached him with the completed research and were like "here's some great women you can hire." The one thing I love about both the fictive and factual sides of this story that is very telling about execs..... they LOVE BINDERS! It is like their original computer.
seriously, also powerpoint, you should read that NYer profile of Romney. So much powerpoint talk! "He delivered a powerpoint I just couldn't believe" "He showed up with this great powerpoint"
I actually did not watch the debate last night. I was a nervous wreck. I had a glass of red wine and listened to Nick Krgovich in headphones, while Hugh bounded up the stairs repeatedly to tell me that Obama was kicking ass.
it must be terrifying, to be one of these maniacs running for president...knowing that something weird could come out of your mouth (which happens to me roughly 100 times per day, I just described to my class that gothic novels were like "all this ooky stuff blubbing up in people like bluh! bluh! (making barfing gestures)"
but that something like that could come out of your mouth and immediately be a meme chortled over by millions of people!
!!!!! my worst nightmare
well one of them, not having health insurance or being able to get an abortion are pretty close on the list
Yeah, I agree with YT, I kind of feel bad for Mitt. He said something stupid and now people are mocking him like we're in middle school. "BINDERS! HAHAHA, HE SAID BINDERS, YOU GUYS! HEY, HEY MITT, WHERE'S YOUR BINDER!"
I'm glad that he keeps exposing how unfeminist he is, but I'm turned off by the tone of the criticism.
I certainly don't feel bad for him because it's not just that "binders" was stupid/funny, it's that the content of that comment was also stupid and, it turns out, a total lie.
I didn't mean my comment--about it being terrifying to be one of those guys--to imply any sympathy for them whatsoever. Because in order to not be bothered by the possibility of humiliating yourself in front of millions of people you'd have to basically be the world's most amazing egomaniac, which both these guys obviously are.
I was more meaning to be like "can you imagine being such an amazing egomaniac"
"Third, note that in Romney's story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn't know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?"
Well.... profits and having to be home to make dinner, for some people.
I think the binder-meme demonstrates a certain kind of lyric power. (Real power.)
There was something in the music of it, plus Mitt's "Golly-gee-willickers, Women!" affect, that answered a kind of joyful, surrealistic desire in legions of people. It was kind of a Lynch-y vibe. "There's fish in the percolator!"
I was joyful (and envious) when I clicked on the link and saw 85,000 people (including 9 of my faster-clicking friends) had already liked the Facebook page by the time I got there (damn them!)
It was like believing you share a feeling about music.
Or the kind of sprouting social perception that follows the root event of Occupy or Arab Spring.
It's about discovering a community of allies, them all discovering themselves collectively 'out-of-thin-air.' It is profoundly political and feels telepathic.
I don't trust the critics who would put this kind of phenomena at the margins of politics or try to take it out of the classification all together as though keeping populations quiet and distracted while old men parse phrases, like 'clean coal', 'deficits', and inevitable war, is the most significant political activity of our time.
The most significant activity is wresting the conversations that matter away from these vampire zombie patriarchs so the people of earth can fashion forums for working out 50, 100 and 500 year-long survival plans (like we used to).
The Avengers =========
I think The Avengers is a bourgeois dystopian satire. I was fascinated by the jumpy crowds of collateral damage that would come out of the demolished buildings every so often and run from the tumbling cars. (Is that who we are while the Titans fight? Are we that finished with democracy?)
I was further enchanted by the pluralistic way that mortals and demi-gods could interact with banal and naturalistic aplomb. It was like Victor Hugo, or Dickens, or another novelistic somebody, with a narrative grasp of the way the world is put together nowadays: a convincing enough tableaux.
Into this: Titans with big scale ambitions. Social-historical tropes embodied in characters. Robert Downey Jr IS the guy financial 'masters of the universe' want to be, "Billionaire, Genius, Playboy, Philanthropist." Captain America IS the mid-20th Century 'average guy' who put down Hitler and would now rather be hanging out in the backyard with his buddies. Etc.
We need these story-tools to work out planet-scale dreams.
Binders full of Avengers.
Planet-scale infrastructures of pluralistic lyric power.
Billy M.? I agree, he's a treasure. A moral-based critic, but rarely sanctimonious.
The key to the Barofsky piece (former Federal Prosecutor tapped to be the white-collar-crime watchdog over the 2009 TARP transactions) is that we have shifted to a place where, for the sake of expediency, the government is using public wealth to help private 'too big to fail' institutions grow bigger.
Besides being corrupt in many ways, mathematically this situation can't last forever. Eventually the money-hole caused by leveraged bets will grow too big for governments or other financiers to fill and the financial system will lock up. When money becomes scarce and illiquid, pressure increases for trades and power transactions to find expression in different and less humane forms than through contracts supported by civilian laws and police.
I loved Bill Moyers "Walk through the 20th Century". Every episode was a different decade. The 00's (or maybe '10's) was mostly newsreel footage found preserved in a city dump in Alaska. Amazing stuff. One of my favorite TV shows evah!
Comments
This fine piece by Rebecca Solnit hits all the right notes for me, and clarifies why I can't get into Hedges anymore.
bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com
I just checked the tumblr and the jokes aren't as funny. It was a fun thing for a few minutes.
That 'not as funny' feeling and The Avengers, are politics for right now.
WTF was the context of binders full of women?
Also did Obama come out swinging this time or was he a wiener again?
I get my news updates from uhx
Dr. J and Kevin is my Arianna Huffington
Can I also get one of those bad ass PowerPoint remote controls. Thanks
but that something like that could come out of your mouth and immediately be a meme chortled over by millions of people!
!!!!! my worst nightmare
well one of them, not having health insurance or being able to get an abortion are pretty close on the list
I'm glad that he keeps exposing how unfeminist he is, but I'm turned off by the tone of the criticism.
because it's not just that "binders" was stupid/funny, it's that the content of that comment was also stupid and, it turns out, a total lie.
what a piece of shit
I was more meaning to be like "can you imagine being such an amazing egomaniac"
From that article above. I love this point.
Kind of like Bushies in the dumminess department, but with front of affability removed.
I think the binder-meme demonstrates a certain kind of lyric power. (Real power.)
There was something in the music of it, plus Mitt's "Golly-gee-willickers, Women!" affect, that answered a kind of joyful, surrealistic desire in legions of people. It was kind of a Lynch-y vibe. "There's fish in the percolator!"
I was joyful (and envious) when I clicked on the link and saw 85,000 people (including 9 of my faster-clicking friends) had already liked the Facebook page by the time I got there (damn them!)
It was like believing you share a feeling about music.
Or the kind of sprouting social perception that follows the root event of Occupy or Arab Spring.
It's about discovering a community of allies, them all discovering themselves collectively 'out-of-thin-air.' It is profoundly political and feels telepathic.
I don't trust the critics who would put this kind of phenomena at the margins of politics or try to take it out of the classification all together as though keeping populations quiet and distracted while old men parse phrases, like 'clean coal', 'deficits', and inevitable war, is the most significant political activity of our time.
The most significant activity is wresting the conversations that matter away from these vampire zombie patriarchs so the people of earth can fashion forums for working out 50, 100 and 500 year-long survival plans (like we used to).
The Avengers
=========
I think The Avengers is a bourgeois dystopian satire. I was fascinated by the jumpy crowds of collateral damage that would come out of the demolished buildings every so often and run from the tumbling cars. (Is that who we are while the Titans fight? Are we that finished with democracy?)
I was further enchanted by the pluralistic way that mortals and demi-gods could interact with banal and naturalistic aplomb. It was like Victor Hugo, or Dickens, or another novelistic somebody, with a narrative grasp of the way the world is put together nowadays: a convincing enough tableaux.
Into this: Titans with big scale ambitions. Social-historical tropes embodied in characters. Robert Downey Jr IS the guy financial 'masters of the universe' want to be, "Billionaire, Genius, Playboy, Philanthropist." Captain America IS the mid-20th Century 'average guy' who put down Hitler and would now rather be hanging out in the backyard with his buddies. Etc.
We need these story-tools to work out planet-scale dreams.
Binders full of Avengers.
Planet-scale infrastructures of pluralistic lyric power.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/sunday-review/candidates-and-the-truth-about-america.html
Start at 11 minutes. This is just so real.
The key to the Barofsky piece (former Federal Prosecutor tapped to be the white-collar-crime watchdog over the 2009 TARP transactions) is that we have shifted to a place where, for the sake of expediency, the government is using public wealth to help private 'too big to fail' institutions grow bigger.
Besides being corrupt in many ways, mathematically this situation can't last forever. Eventually the money-hole caused by leveraged bets will grow too big for governments or other financiers to fill and the financial system will lock up. When money becomes scarce and illiquid, pressure increases for trades and power transactions to find expression in different and less humane forms than through contracts supported by civilian laws and police.
Don't forget to vote.
THE AVENGERS!
voting is hard! (GWB voice)
but still there were a couple things the Mercury covered that aren't on my ballot. I forget what they were now.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/417228?playlist_id=1123&asset_scope=movies
Americans defeat climate change by chanting "U.S.A." at it.
We're doomed.
http://www.people-press.org/2012/10/15/more-say-there-is-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/ Pew Research is respected as unbiased. Survey was early October, wonder if the numbers have changed?
Today, among other things, Anonymous released thousands of addresses of US donors to hardline Israeli support organizations.
#Politics2012
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/8191317327/