According to progs, using exclamation marks is now a "phallic display"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/31/elena-ferrante-exclamation-mark?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
You cant make that stuff up!
Kanye
Thanks for the Steve Cutts clip. What's sad about my generation is that we are still rats, but without much of a race. The whole corner office dream is really done. Our situation is more like a bunch of rats scavenging for scraps nobody else wants and taking Instagram pictures of our yield.
ReplyDeleteRe: Parkland shooter fanmail- Louis Bunel made a surreal film called Phantom of Liberty, comprised of several absurd sketches. One of them involves the celebrity of mass shooting...
https://youtu.be/ak-GCfMr3oQ
MB, it seems like a lot of adults never get beyond media that's geared towards young adults. I constantly hear my coworkers talking about movies and books that are fine for a 10 year old, but not someone who is 30. The really bad thing is, all this crap is shaping their views and thoughts on the world to the point where they're thinking flying cars are 5 years away and soon we'll all be living like Star Trek.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think so many people just aren't interested in adult themes or other viewpoints? Why stop at Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel, Disney, or this new movie Ready Player One?
Dr. B,
ReplyDeleteI see that Barnes and Noble have your books, been looking for an alternative to Amazon, any issues with B&N? BTW thanks for the Donna Tartt recommendation a while back, enjoyed "The Goldfinch" which led to "The Secret History." To those Wafers who use Spotify the playlist labeled "Songs to test headphones With" is a glorious blend of well recorded and produced music that will bring audio happiness. Happy Passover and Easter to all. Onward and downward.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/%22Morris%20Berman%22;jsessionid=BA51D909B055BD7D3E0260BA0883033B.prodny_store01-atgap09?Ntk=P_key_Contributor_List&Ns=P_Sales_Rank&Ntx=mode+matchall
Aaron-
ReplyDeleteEmotionally speaking, there are very few adults in America. I mean that quite seriously. They live in a juvenile bubble, and have no interest in escaping it.
mb
Quiet-
ReplyDeleteNo issues w/B&N. They probably bought a bunch from Amazon on the "Expanded Distribution" program, wh/is cheaper if you buy in bulk. Enjoy!
mb
Maybe relevant to recent themes here:
ReplyDelete"The Resistance" means waiting for someone else to do something (Ted Rall)
Americans of all ages avoiding health care due to cost
Fentanyl deaths soaring. Maybe this is the new definition of "affordable health care".
Tesla recalls 44% of the cars it ever sold
Hillary now whining that "no man" was ever told to shut up after face-planting in an election. Most failed political candidates don't need to be told to shut up because nobody will give them air time. I suggest that Hillary is the perfect representative of her nation and demographic.
The American Renaissance is right around the corner.
A dystopia of dating, intimacy:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-culture-end-of-dating
"They say they think their own anxiety about intimacy comes from having “grown up on social media,” so “we don’t know how to talk to each other face-to-face.” “You form your first impression based off Facebook rather than forming a connection with someone, so you’re, like, forming your connection with their profile,” says Stephanie, smiling grimly at the absurdity of it."
Each side blames the other, which accomplishes exactly nothing.
We are all diminished by this.
Bill, this is what your friend's daughter has to deal with, this is her present and future: "“Sex should stem from emotional intimacy, and it’s the opposite with us right now, and I think it really is kind of destroying females’ self-images,” says Fallon."
"“It’s a contest to see who cares less, and guys win a lot at caring less,” Amanda says."
I do not think this is true about all guys, but the perception helps create the reality.
Onward, and downward ...
A big thank you Dr. Berman for pointing out the indisputable fact that President Carter was the last voice for the alternative tradition, one which Americans resoundingly rejected in 1980 and 1984. Carter put solar panels on the White House first thing Reagan did was take 'em down. Kind of says it all for me. It's really great to see JC back in public view with a new book. What an antidote to Trump, I hope we see more of him - his interviews on PBS Newshour and Colbert inspire me. I mean you can't rule out the miraculous. At this moment though it would take something like the parting of the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho crumbling down, or maybe a better analogy a second American Great Awakening - ain't gonna happen but a guy can dream. I've decided, mostly b/c of this blog, to engage the Turkeys by writing a guest column in our local paper. My first one is going to print in a couple of weeks. I plan to attempt to reintroduce Carter to the locals and want to make sure MB gets credit - I never saw Carter in the light MB gave him. I feel like the spacecraft Cassini turning its antennas toward earth broadcasting as it burns up in Saturn's atmosphere and is no more.
ReplyDeleteCassini
President Carter
PBS part one"
PBS part two
Gun-
ReplyDeleteDon't get yrself lynched. When turkeys get angry, there's no telling what they will do. Definitely go outta control. If you cite me, be sure to omit my address.
As for Jimmy, ever active, a bk on faith. I wish instead he had written: "Turkeys: Is There No Stopping Them?" or perhaps: "The Reaganite Vision: How to Shove Your Head up Your Ass and Keep It There."
mb
@Grandma--no doubt you are onto something. I have another niece on my wife's side of the family who was recently caught by her mother (at about the same age) sneaking boys over to her house for parties in which she and her friends were performing casual oral sex on them. In her case, she had the added emotional distress of seeing her parents divorce after my BIL got his widowed girlfriend pregnant. I'm still not sure which has been more shocking to me, though obviously my brother's daughter is facing a potentially permanent, life-altering mental illness.
ReplyDelete@Aaron Thomas--I remember commuting on the DC Metro back during height of the Harry Potter craze and seeing at least one person in every train car glued to an HP novel--and often more than one. My wife and all of her friends became obsessed with reading every one of those stupid books. Sometimes at parties I'd feel left out of the conversation because I was the only one who had never read HP nor seen any of the movies. On more than one occasion I just wanted to scream, "those books are for KIDS!" Not that I have any problem with occasional escapism (I love hard-boiled detective fiction myself), but I know darn well that for most of the HP fanatics these were the ONLY books they were reading. Of course, then came Twilight craze, which was even more juvenile. O&D indeed!
The pressure on these kids today to “Succeed” appears to be enormous...No wonder the high suicide and OD rates from opioids.
ReplyDeletehttps://nypost.com/2018/03/31/i-learned-nothing-at-one-of-nycs-elite-high-schools/
They don't want you to know,...
ReplyDeletehttp://therealnews.com/t2/story:21316:Israel-Lobby-Doesn%27t-Want-Al-Jazeera-to-Spill-its-Secrets
https://forward.com/opinion/396203/we-made-a-documentary-exposing-the-israel-lobby-why-hasnt-it-run/
..., until the dumpster fire goes out of control.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/31/gaza-strip-israel-conflict-border-season-of-conflicts
Dr. Berman i was wondering, did you move from Canada to Mexico or US to Mexico? Also, do you miss living in Victoria, BC? I hear it's a nice place to retire-very beautiful, quiet & peaceful..
ReplyDeleteInsightful-
ReplyDeleteI was living in DC for abt 9 yrs b4 I moved down to Mexico. As for Victoria: don' miss it at all. It's so peaceful, it's like a tomb. I was too young to die. Vancouver, on the other hand, I always enjoyed.
mb
Good lord I'm wondering if anyone else on the blog has seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI&feature=youtu.be
ReplyDeleteIts a video mash-up of a bunch of local news anchors saying the exact same thing because they all have been given the exact same script. The Sinclair broadcasting group owns hundreds of local stations, and surprise! - they have an agenda to push.
Its pretty rare that something I see online shakes me up these days but this was something else....though I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Critics of the media establishment like Chomsky have been pointing to this kind of thing for decades.
And speaking of turkeys out of control: here we have one of the greatest douche baguettes in the history of the world:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-ingraham-ad-boycott-20180330-story.html
Her shoes are definitely too dry.
mb
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteIn the previous thread, Prezi posted an article about a woman who made advances on an Easter Bunny. I'd never heard of these characters before, as we don't have them here. What do kids do, sit on their laps and ask for Easter eggs? Chocolate? Redemption?
I'm old school, so I think they could improve on this idea by having kids visit a mall crucifixion, where they can address a guy tied to a cross and ask for indulgences.
A little while ago I assigned students essay topics, one of which was to write about depictions of First Nations people in works we have covered or will cover in class. I included suggestions, including Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers. One student took it upon himself to write me a long email expressing how offended he was to be forced to write about such "sacrilegious pornography." He actually cited sections of the school's policy handbook, and claimed that I was violating his rights.
My one-line (Hail St. Henny) response was that he could choose to write on whatever he wanted.
Benedicite.
al-
ReplyDeleteHave him write about Bernini's sculpture of St. Teresa in Ecstasy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_Saint_Teresa#/media/File:Santa_Maria_della_Vittoria_-_6.jpg
If this doesn't push the poor little turkey over the edge, nothing will. (Fabulous orgasm!)
mb
Namaste MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteFor an entertaining look into the annals of turkeydom, check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBLS_OM6Puk
The documentary "Wild Wild Country" is currently screaming on Netflix.
Miles
Jeff-
ReplyDeleteCheck it out:
http://www.vulture.com/2018/03/wild-wild-country-bhagwan-rajneesh-questions.html
Long b4 he died, the great Bhagwan owned a fleet of Rolls Royces.
mb
@Aaron, Bill, on the topic of adults never growing up check this out:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jan/02/us-uk-box-office-top-20-2016-fantasy-sci-fi-film
I don't have the numbers, but the amount of adults >30 playing computer games is also shocking.
I do think that in some instances though, "not growing up" and refusing the "get a job, have kids, get married, buy a house, live in debt and with resentment all your life" narrative can be very Waferish. The Big Lebowski is a good example of that.
Kanye
Wudu, Thanks for the video, which shows how badly we’re being brainwashed and that it’s no accident. This is exactly why I totally ditched reading or watching anything from the MSM at least 15 years ago.
ReplyDeleteBhagwan Shri Rajneesh/Osho: I had a friend who was a sannyasin and spent time in Oregon and Pune. Her stories about what went on were hilarious and Wild Wild Country captured the craziness pretty accurately. That said, Rajneesh was a polymath and anarchist, and if nothing else helped his followers develop a healthy disrespect for authority. From personal experience I can say that some of these gurus have abilities that I couldn’t even begin to explain. In my own case, I studied the philosophy of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism under a guru (who gave me my name), and it saved me from terminal Turkeydom. I was involved for only a few years, and even so I’m eternally grateful.
BTW, Morris, Rajneesh had about 90 psychedelic painted Rolls Royces that were given to him by some of his numerous devotees.
Kanye-
ReplyDeleteAlso the hikikomori in Japan. Problem is, when they finally emerge from their bedrooms into life, they don't have a viable alternative.
mb
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteWell, no surprise here - Trump supporters have views that a majority of Americans including Trump possess. Extreme individualism and all that goes with it.
From AlterNet, results of a survey of Trump supporters.
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/4-key-personality-traits-trump-supporters-share-their-beloved-leader?akid=16894.1923546.SSrwkz&rd=1&src=newsletter1090527&t=5
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/the-sunday-times-magazine/jordan-peterson-the-bestselling-author-and-clinical-psychologist-on-why-theres-still-power-in-the-easter-story-rx5njr0zl
ReplyDeleteJordan Peterson on Easter mythos
christos anesti alithos anesti, Wafers!
I think Douthat's take on JB is essentially correct- just a popularizer of pseudo-religious works for lost young men:
ReplyDeletehttps://nyti.ms/2Gmg8Kl
JB isn't a Jung, a Nietzsche, a Foucault- or even an Allan Bloom. Having said that, he's a lot better than Oprah. I'd rather have young person listen to JB than watch tee vee or play video games. His 'self authoring' program looks interesting;most of the youtube reviews are from young men who testify how much it has helped them. If it helps people become transparent to themselves or engage in critical self-reflection, I really don't see how it can hurt. Not a panacea by any means but a ray of light in a very dark culture.
My main issue with JB is his claim that 'cultural Marxism" (whatever that is) 'blew out the metaphysical foundations of society'. Hence, the mess western society is in vis a via gender relations, PC culture on campus, etc. The idea that two French intellectuals in the 70's (Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida) caused such havoc is ludicrous. To me it is the ultimate right wing red herring combining the USA's hysterical fear of: intellectuals, anything French, the 70's, and Marxism. It's perfect. (For good measure, Foucault was also gay). This is designed to distract us from he real cause of our decay: unfettered capitalism.
If JB really wanted to examine the root cause of all this he should look to the 80's and Raygun-onmics and Thatcherism.
BrotherMaynard
Regarding Osho, it's really hilarious to me how these eastern wisdom gurus usually teach Americans "disrespect for authority." I suspect it's like Chinese food in the US: mostly prepared for American tastes. From my personal experience, I'd say that, ironically, eastern cultures normally teach people to respect authority very successfully. That's why China will take over the US in a few decades (unfortunately for the Chinese, I don't think their hegemony will last very long, as it will come precisely at the time of the global resource crunch, but I don't want to get apocalyptic here...)
ReplyDeleteIn America, on the other hand, I think that people are taught to fear authority, since it's not really possible to respect it, as they are fed at the same time with the mythology of American freedom and the revolution to get rid of the tyranny of the English monarchy. It makes for a population with a severe case of dissociative identity disorder.
@Kanye
ReplyDeleteI don't find the idea of adults playing video games jarring. I mean people play board games and things still. What I find jarring is not that 30+-year-old people are playing but the TIME they pour into games. Games have become the ultimate form of Escape where people use games to escape reality and pour ungodly hours into it. I play Wow with some friends and in truth, my issue with games in this day of age is the games are designed to devour your life.
There is a hardcore segment, a minority of gamers, who are extremely vocal that in a given day generally sink 8-10 hours a day into gaming. These empty people can be seen online screaming on forums about how the game sucks if it doesn't cater to them, and that how dare a developers "embrace casuals". So, in any game, you can see these people screaming for tiering games so that they can have all the exclusive "loot" to lord over "Filthy casual" gamers. Unfortunately, these losers have turned games into work and onlinegame review sites cater to these empty morons.
@ MB
ReplyDeleteAmerican equivalents of the hikikomori might be found in elements of the gaming and cosplay cultures, or maybe the MGTOW movement. Among them there seems to be an unspoken agreement that there's no value in "growing up". A lot of kids saw their parents do everything they were supposed to -- get a good job, buy a house, marriage, kids, save for retirement -- only to be wiped out in the crash of 2008. For most people there's been no recovery either. Want to attend university? For that you get a mountain of debt you'll never pay off, even if you get a middle-class job. Want to live in a nice house? You can't afford that either. So what's the point?
It seems that Nashville has become a new hot destination for asshole American tourists--most of them white women. Check out the one picture of the clueless moron posing for a photograph literally at the feet of a broken down homeless man lying on the sidewalk. What a perfect metaphor for what America has become. Though this article is far more sympathetic to these douchbagettes that it should be, I'd love to send it to Hedges and ask him why he expects these spoiled, entitled, pieces of shit to EVER rise up in revolution. I had a relative recently who said confidently that she expects the women of America to "rise up" against Trump. Sure they will, just as soon as they get done taking the endless selfies they seem to love so fucking much.
ReplyDeleteOn the flip side: Nature Outings At Bates College Are Denounced As “White Privilege.” "Many of us have heard AESOP horror stories; friends and peers had AESOP experiences they wouldn’t care to relive, and in my experience, many of those friends are those who inhabit marginalized identities. Women of color on white-majority hiking trips that are entirely made of microaggressions, queer first-years surrounded by straight people making eyes at each other across canoes, or simply geeks forced into a beach camping trip despite social anxiety–these experiences, while not at all equatable, are somewhat parallel.” No idiot--what's going on in Nashville is an example of "white privilege." Getting your fat ass out and walking in the woods is HEALTHY.
That video mashup is disturbing, but there have been many like it over the years. The masses will forget all about it in a week, and I see certain MSM outlets are already trying to spin it.
ReplyDeleteThe DNC/Podesta mail trove over at Wikileaks has multiple examples of journos and talk show hosts at our most esteemed propaganda mills working hand-in-glove w/political campaigns (Maggie Habermann, Devlin Barret, Steven Colbert, etc.)
As far as mashups, these are two of my favs from the past year or two (also a bit more entertaining).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw2BVI9OhC4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trLbb0Ucyy4
Hi Wafers,
ReplyDeleteJust got back from a vacation. So could not participate for a while. Here is another review I found on the Netflix documentary on Rajneesh.
MB, just received CTOS in mail last week while I was away. Still occupied with Mishra's `Age of Anger' and one of G. N. Devy's books. Wish to get to CTOS once I finish these. Looks like will be a long occupation.
Prasen
Aaron, et. al: Interesting discussion. I just ran across this:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Hardest-Course-in-the/242896
but what the author (who wrote "The Dumbest Generation", a good book BTW) doesn't mention is that really, neither Auden's course nor the U of OK course should be that hard because any good student should have already read most of those books!
Anyway, I'll admit I play video games and love Scifi books (at age 41). It's all about escapism really. Plus the game series I like best is all about solving puzzles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Layton. To quote from Ready Player One the book: "For one quarter, Black Tiger [a 1980s video game] lets me escape from my rotten existence for three glorious hours. Pretty good deal."
@Bill
ReplyDeleteLove the Nashville article. I'm sure many of them are checking out the replica of the Parthenon?
ReplyDeleteFemale McDonald's cashier charged with incest after she and brother have baby with 'severe medical problems'
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/28/female-mcdonalds-cashier-charged-with-incest-after-and-brother-have-baby-with-severe-medical-problems.html
The gamers are going to be the first to be driven over the cliff and they aren't going to know what hit 'em - they're under the influence of a narcotic far more potent than Marx could have imagined. Looks like Spielberg is laying the rails with his new movie Ready Player One.
ReplyDeleteGood riddance you Asperger pains in the ass
No worries MB your locale and even this blog are safe from any exposure I could give it, their heads would explode and I would be lynched. I'm aiming to implant a tiny grain of sand, tread lightly - who knows maybe it'll become a pearl for someone - I guess it's my expression of NMI since I can't afford to buy and store things.
Since he is POTUS, I think the least Trumpi can do is move the US Capitol from Washington DC to Las Vegas, it seems a much more appropriate venue at this point.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, he can move the Capitol (White House, Congress, and Supreme Court) all to his name plated building there and make some quick $$$$$.
While he does this, he could also replace the Bald Eagle as our national symbol with Elvis Presley- not young, handsome Elvis, but drugged-out, obese 40 year old Elvis. i think this is a better symbol of who we are as a country right now.
He could also declare Kim's buttocks a national monument (although aren't they one already?). They could grace the redesign of our currency. Kim's buttocks to replace George Washington's portrait on the $1 bill.
One can dream...
BrotherMaynard
Julia Kristeva was communist secret agent, Bulgaria claims
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/28/julia-kristeva-communist-secret-agent-bulgaria-claims
And she worked with Barthes, Lacan and Derrida:
"Drug overdose deaths are on the rise across all genders, demographics and geographic areas, according to a new CDC report."
ReplyDeletehttp://time.com/5220372/drug-overdose-deaths-cdc/
Michael Lind has an interesting article on the concept of the deep state. Lind argues that what is called the deep state is actually the elite consensus in the United States and other Western countries. Some might call it the neoliberal consensus.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-deep-state-no-supervillain-24473
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/28/utahs-free-range-parenting-law-said-to-be-first-in-the-nation/
ReplyDeleteYes! Dual Process indeed!
RE: Geoff
ReplyDeleteBasically, that's my default view of my future: uncertain and filled to the brim with precariousness. So why should I work hard to strive for the unsustainable American Dream? Why should I bring more victims (oh I meant children) to a country with poor childcare policies? To continue breeding the same corrupt DNA of Americans into the future? Not for me sorry. As for the so-called "biological clock" (I am 27 years old woman) well I got news that the only clock worth the attention is when we die.
https://www.amazon.com/Human-Instinct-Evolved-Reason-Consciousness/dp/1476790264
ReplyDeleteThe Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will
by Kenneth R. Miller
Read this on a long flight 2day. Deep evolutionary analysis of free will, consciousness, morality, meaning, etc.
Next book on my list is the new Antonio Damasio "The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures" . Continues on with his research into our feelings & emotions, and their dating back billions of years; i.e. Bacterial level organisms cooperate with cooperators, shun cheaters, & "want" or "avoid" good & bad things in the environment. Origin of human emotions is ancient!
@Nesim,
ReplyDeleteExactly. Nothing wrong with playing Mario Kart with your mates every now and then, but for many adults, gaming becomes life itself and has scary consequences in real life. The first episode of Black Mirror's Season 4 - "USS Calister" - is a brilliant and scary depiction of that.
On another topic, here's a great article about modern working class Britain. I am sure much of the same applies to the US. And progs still wonder why people voted Brexit and Trump...
https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/03/less-zero-six-months-working-low-wage-britain
Kanye
Dr. B-
ReplyDeleteHere's a new one- "condom snorting." Unbelievable.
https://nypost.com/2018/04/02/moronic-condom-snorting-challenge-takes-over-social-media/
The Misanthropy of Wild Wild Country:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/03/the-misanthropy-of-wild-wild-country/
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteThis Salon article is in part an interview with Elizabeth Mika, counselor and therapist, who states that collective and individual narcissism is a basic characteristic of the American character dating back to its beginnings. Trump's presidency is simply giving permission for his supporters to express this very old American characteristic. Perhaps narcissism, both collective and individual, is characteristic of most civilizations, certainly of all empires.
https://www.salon.com/2018/04/02/a-triumph-of-collective-narcissism-how-trump-unleashed-forbidden-desires/?source=newsletter
Meet Benjamin Grafius:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/03/22/amish-expose-lancaster/
William Barber II on a New Poor People’s Campaign:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/a-new-poor-peoples-campaign/552503/
Dear Mr. Barber (an open letter):
Wrong. The entire American program is fraudulent, it cannot be fixed and it cannot be made to be honest. The government is now (and has always been?) a criminal operation benefitting a privileged elite with an effective public relations program operated by a subservient liberal class. At best, Mr. Barber, the results of your efforts will be more meaningless identity politics and tepid liberal reform. American culture is a death cult. Some of us don’t have amnesia. ... live a little, already!
Dear Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing we don't have TGV-like high speed rails connecting Washington DC with every part of America. Otherwise, Turkeys'd come marching every weekend! The turkeys have lost the spiritual side of freedom. Maybe, like you said, that happened from day one since the foundation of this country. America is collapsing, I think, because it didn't have a solid basis for anything - apart from an undying faith in money. People here just can't think. Mark Zuckerberg called them "dumb fuck" and I think he was absolutely right. This is a country of and for the few, never for the many - everything sucks for the many. But the many got brainwashed pretty bad they think their freedom depends on the few's success.
You are absolutely right, the turkeys just want to join the few. That's why their marches are always meaningless. What they want is to be among the few, not the many.
Matt
I enjoyed a collection of essays in Truthdig about American history.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-truthdiggers-original-sin/
A cultural anthropology from Maj.Danny Sjursen that gives further insight into
America and its state in the world today.
Confirmation of the Ways of the Wafers..... again
Now shootings at youtube headquarters. A woman this time. She didn;t like new youtube policies that reduced the money she could make on her content so she shot the place up and then killed herself. Very rare women do these shootings. Diversity initiatives gone awry? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43638221
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygEEL57AcZs&feature=youtu.be
ReplyDeleteWhy America is a Republic, not a Democracy
This is an excerpt from "Overview of America" produced by The John Birch Society. It is narrated by John McManus. At the end is the music video Yankee Doodle (Tea Party Mix) by Dhruva Aliman
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteThank you all for great posts. Meanwhile, check out recent film, "The Shape of Water." Very gd portrait of the US govt, its values, personnel, and how it operates. (Director is Mexican)
mb
Glad you're back MB, I was bereft with only leftover corned beef and diet cream soda to comfort me.
ReplyDeleteAsh, thanks for the link to free-range kids, go Utah!
Brother Maynard, Las Vegas is a hustling sin city full of gamblers and porn stars, it is far better than D.C. He should move the capitol to either Atlantic City which is a shithole or better yet to Princeton so my favorite revolutionary Chris Hedges won’t have far to walk when his glorious revolution takes place. Large parts of the country are a psychological, spiritual and intellectual slum.
ReplyDeleteMorris, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation quoted you today in his daily meditation:
ReplyDelete“In his book Coming to Our Senses, historian Morris Berman makes the point that our first experience of life is not merely a visual or audio one of knowing ourselves through other people’s facial and verbal responses; it is primarily felt in the body. He calls this feeling kinesthetic knowing. We know ourselves in the security of those who hold us, skin to skin. This early knowing is not so much heard, seen, or thought. It’s felt. [2]”
Rohr ends with “True spirituality is always bringing us back to the original bodily knowing that is unitive experience, which is why you cannot do it all in the head!
On another note, Wafers might enjoy this video, Educayshun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=353&v=iKcWu0tsiZM
Toddler pummeling! Daycare employees body slammed toddlers during nap time.
ReplyDeleteOzzie Osbourne's biggest fan: Student bites off head of chicken at University High.
Thank Christ these two assholes didn't manage to find each other: California man arrested, accused of trying to pay for sex with 4-year-old. and Wisconsin man sentenced to 60 years in prison for trying to sell his 4-year-old daughter for sex.
The NYT covers itself with glory yet again: MeToo For Executioners. "Sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace are terrible things, to be sure. But that a newspaper gives these wrongs more import than the scandal of federal prosecutors manufacturing, and often bungling, an ever-increasing number of death penalty referrals is downright grotesque. This enthusiasm for ever more capital punishment is only mentioned in the Times article as it pertains to the sexual harassment cases, and then almost as a side issue."
I’m not sure—Lord knows we want the little whippersnappers to do well—but this sounds like it qualifies as another milemarker on the road to hell. Homework therapists. Sauve qui peut.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/nyregion/homework-therapists-tutoring-counseling-new-york.html
The extent of hustling and fantasy selling in the U.S. is quite fascinating. Mass delusions and culture of narcissism all day everyday. A friend showed me the new ideal peddled to youth..
ReplyDeletehttps://www.damianprosalendis.com/intro
Its beyond words. It is artful I suppose.
Interesting how religious passion impresses people--even non-believers-- more than passion for tolerance and self-critical reasoning. A take on Erasmus vs Luther.
ReplyDeletehttps://nytimes.com/2018/03/29/books/review/fatal-discord-michael-massing.html
First they started eating those Tide PODS, now American Teenagers are “Snorting Condoms.”
ReplyDeleteWhat other bizarre practices will they think of next? Snorting babies or homeless people maybe? Licking public urinals and toilet bowls?
America is FINISHED
https://usat.ly/2GqJZBk
Hello Wafers, MB,
ReplyDeleteI have a question to single Wafers out there. How do you date as Wafers? Despite us clearly being the crème de la crème of the dating market, I am finding it very hard to meet a fellow Waferette who's OK with living an NMI lifestyle and - in my case - not having kids. I am 29 y/o and I've found much more common ground with women >35 rather than girls my age, but it still is a struggle. Women should be jumping all over us I don't understand! Wafers are the true rock stars!
Kanye
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeletePaul Street is a bit more coherent in this essay that insists that neoliberal capitalism as practiced by the West is incapable of either reducing dependence on fossil fuels or protecting the environment - those with access to the levers of power are not acting on any real problems. As I wrote here after Trump's election, I just wonder if there will be enough of the global ecosystems left in 20-50 years to support even a fraction of the present 8 billion humans or much of the present biodiversity. I agree with much of Street's essay.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/russia-madness-on-the-eve-of-destruction-hegemony-trumps-survival/
Kanye-
ReplyDeleteOnce you let American women know what your political views are, they will run for the hills. In a word, the odds aren't great. Wafers are rock stars only in an alternative universe, sad to say.
Becca-
Check out essay "Tribal Consciousness and Enlightenment Tradition" in QOV. Also the essay on Transference in AWTY.
Sar-
Nice! Thanks for letting me know. I'm currently rdg a bio of St. Francis, BTW.
mb
Sarasvita, that;s so great!
ReplyDeleteMB, by chance is the bio you're reading called "Francis: The Journey and the Dream"
by Murray Bodo O.F.M. and John Michael Talbot?
I read that one last year and loved it.
Kanye: Dating? HA! I can't even find a non-phone/TV addict to hang out with among my family let alone out there in the wide world of douchebagettes (and douchbags if you swing that way). Luckily for me, the last thing I need right now is a significant other... But if I were actively looking, I suppose one might try attending the local lecture circuit, going to bookstores, even certain kinds of religion (thinking Quakers maybe) if you can stomach it. I've tried internet dating before and it didn't work, what with 100 guys for every woman.
ReplyDeleteBut, hey what do I know. I haven't been on a formal date in years. My brother-in-law keeps trying to set me up with teacher friends, but they can smell my indifference a mile away...
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteThe gun that saved the Savior is the real Savior:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/matt-barber-jesus-was-advocating-for-the-second-amendment/
Pastor David Manning on Trump:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_somvyte2A
Miles
To: Ash & Pastrami,
ReplyDeleteI'm totally for the free-range initiative. Poor kids.
And then there is this
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/04/god-is-ted-jordan-peterson-self-help-men/
On Jordan Peterson's hypocrisy & incomplete reading of Nietzsche: "But though he decries the ideology of victimhood, Peterson is apt to literally weep when talking about the plight of young men in contemporary Western culture"
Pastrami-
ReplyDeleteHere's how to have a very short, but somewhat amusing date. Go out with one of these teachers (or any woman, really), and as soon as you sit down--*before* you order anything--tell her that if she takes out her cell phone, you won't be responsible for your actions. As she flees from the table, take a foto of her receding back. Then when you have 100 of these, you might publish a picture book called "Baby Got Back." Have Sir Mix-a-Lot write the Introduction.
Matt-
Andre Vauchez. Thanks for tip on Bodo.
mb
Francois: Touche! Agreed, it should be Atlantic City: Las Vegas is far too nice with all the stoners, gamblers, drunks, and escorts (rumored to be 10,000) to be the Capitol. I do, however, continue to think obese, drugged-out Elvis should be our new national symbol:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/dSeTA3549So
Perhaps, Congress and the Supreme Court can move into the rotted hulk of Trump's Taj Mahal?
Kayne: It's easy: date Canadians- preferably French Canadians but perhaps that is my personal preference. Our neighbors to the north are already trying to help us:
www.maplematch.com
BrotherMaynard
Brawl erupts at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.inquisitr.com/4856274/wendys-restaurant-brawl-caught-on-cell-phone-camera/
Man angry over custom pizza order attacks Cicis Pizza manager in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
http://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article207627924.html
Alleged sex party turns into brawl when one of four participants backs out.
http://www.timesnews.net/Law-Enforcement/2018/04/02/Sex-party-turns-into-brawl-when-one-of-four-participants-backs-out
Profe,
ReplyDeleteYou'd better cool it with the turkey jabs lest you get a cease and desist order or a defamation suit from the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association (real organization), and in fairness turkeys are much better at being birds and food than Americans are at being human beings. I am thrilled to see that Sir Mix-a-lot has been cited in Waferdom's annals, thank you for that. Maybe he can be guest speaker at the next Wafer summit!
Thanks to everyone for the posts, I haven't got much to add but am currently trying to help an opioid-cocaine-amphetamine addicted family member from 6000 miles away to survive a prison like rehab stint, and the biggest obstacle has been the rest of the family's ineffectual response and emotional immaturity, speaking to MB's point about no adults being present in USA, go figure. Micro reflecting the macro...
@BillHicks, hope you are feeling well amigo,
¡para adelante y para abajo! (PAPA)
@Kanye, for dating one needs to be current with the trends. A software made for Windows95 is unlikely to work in Windows10 much less in a iThingy. Try cryptomance. It is the latest pickheruper.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/28/six-new-dating-terms-youve-never-heard-of
Girls dig OrangeHair and 50Cents likes, not Wafers. Learn from the winners.
https://pics.onsizzle.com/this-is-a-shirt-trump-can-grab-onal-memoir-noir-4915023.png
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmVK6LJUL9E
You also need to know where to find love. If Tinder is not your thing, try Craigslist.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-42611685/a-mother-on-how-she-fell-in-love-with-her-sperm-donor
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-eulogy-for-craigslists-casual-encounters-and-all-the-sex-i-found-there_us_5ab52083e4b0decad04989ab
Where every human interaction has become hustling, why would love and search for a life's partner remain sacred?
Greetings, Wafers and Dr. B
ReplyDeleteHere's a thoughtful article for declinists from novelist Rana Dasgupta. The author presents a good argument for why political reform within any current nation state is doomed to fail.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/05/demise-of-the-nation-state-rana-dasgupta
Here's a summary from about three-quarters of the way through the article:
"The three elements of the crisis described here will only worsen. First, the existential breakdown of rich countries during the assault on national political power by global forces. Second, the volatility of the poorest countries and regions, now that the departure of cold war-era strongmen has revealed their true fragility. And third, the illegitimacy of an “international order” that has never aspired to any kind of “society of nations” governed by the rule of law.
Since they are all rooted in transnational forces whose scale eludes the reach of any one nation’s politics, they are largely immune to well-meaning political reform within nations (though the coming years will also see many examples of such reform). So we are obliged to re-examine its ageing political foundations if we do not wish to see our global system pushed to ever more extreme forms of collapse."
Dasgupta places faith in a reconfiguration of politics on a global scale. Humanity may be too debased to reach the heights the author aspires to, but the article is IMHO an interesting take on our current situation.
Nora and MB
ReplyDeleteIt is a Constitutional Republic totally. Independent media is the only way to obtain an informed perspective anymore.
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteJohn W. Whitehead is definitely frustrated about how little Americans have learned about the perils of militarism, materialism and racism in this recollection and updating of what Martin Luther King railed against. This strongly suggests that militarism, materialism and racism are core values which one can only expect certain individuals to transcend, MLK is among those who have been marginalized by these 'values', as you, Dr. Berman, said about other alternative paths.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49150.htm
“Peterson, it should now be clear, is a crank of drunk uncle proportions.”
ReplyDelete'12 Rules For Life is paleo-intellectualism crossed with a Hallmark card. We’re all going to die in a ball of fire'
Dear lord this is a fine piece of writing. This is a terrific, funny and thoroughly depressing review of Jordan Peterson’s book, a melange of pseudoscience, misogyny and paper-thin ahistoric philosophizing
https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2018/04/04/richard-poplak-sets-jordan-b-petersons-house-in-order-a-scorching-review-of-12-rules-for-life/
TO be honest, I'm disappointed no one commented on the Israeli massacre last Friday in which 18 unarmed Palestinians were killed peacefully protesting. THe US media blackout was more or less in tact. I saw the report on the PBS Newshour at 6PM Friday but not a word of it on ABC, CBS, or NBC beginning from 6:30. The NYTimes spoke of "violent clashes." What violent clash? The only violence came from Israel. Turkey, at least, responded but not hardly a sound from otherwise internationally. I did post a few stories on Facebook and now I'm proud to say I do not have one Jewish friend left. Many I knew as anti-war radicals in the 60's and now they've become your usual right wing fascists especially when it pertains to Israel. I always suspected their left wing politics were paper thin even then. Of course, all said I was a self-hating Jew whatever that means. Of course when I responded "How would you like to live under a brutal military occupation for over 50 years?" I got "BUt it's the Palestinians who are occupying Israeli land." How can you even talk to these people who live in such an alternative universe?
ReplyDeleteHello, Morris and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteFirst time poster here. Thank you all for the very insightful articles you've shared.
In regards to documentation of American decline, I thought I could recommend Philadelphia-based Linh Dinh's Postcards from the End of America. I first heard of him on Hedges' program. He traveled around the country by bus and documented his experience. He's interested in working class people's experience during this time, and his writing is very funny and sad at the same time. He also cited Dr. Berman at one point in his book.
Here's his blog: https://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Postcards-End-America-Linh-Dinh/dp/1609806530/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523024510&sr=8-1&keywords=postcards+from+the+end+of+america
Enbion
Enbion-
ReplyDeleteWelcome! Don't lurk; live! Plus thanks for the ref.
Dan-
It was indeed a horror, but in Palestine, it's business as usual. And no surprise, that American media ignored it.
Michael-
I very much doubt that Americans, black or otherwise, really understand what MLK stood for. But I do believe that the US govt understood it, which suggests the possibility of who the real assassin was. Didn't Coretta make such an accusation, yrs ago?
Patrick-
Not a problem: I love turkeys, i.e. the real kind. American (human) turkeys, not so much.
mb
Brother Maynard, an obese drugged out Elvis singing “Baby Got Back.” Is what the United States needs. I feel Chris Hedges should have such a performance start his show. What dissappoints me most about Hedges is he doesn’t have the marginalized voices of those eating Tide Pods, and snorting condoms in his essays or On Contact. I can hear him now “We must resist the masters of our corportate state with acts of resistance. I will now snort a nonlubricated, ribbed, magnum sized condom with a reservoir tip to show I stand against fascism.”
ReplyDeleteGreetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteMB, Wafers-
Finding the American Dream in Mexico:
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-a-dream-displaced-life-back-home/
Cell phones and radiation/cancer risk:
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-big-wireless-made-us-think-that-cell-phones-are-safe-a-special-investigation/
MB-
Re: "The Shape of Water"
Jesus, what a marvelous film. Beverly and I watched it (twice) last night, and can't stop talking about it. There's a depth to this film that I can't completely describe, but I think it speaks critically and deeply to our own times. In may ways, the film depicts what it's like to be an outsider in the US; to find oneself at the hands of our completely arrogant and unsympathetic society. I also loved the fact that the Russian spy had more compassion than the Americans. It's truly a masterpiece, many thanks for the recommendation.
Miles
@Kanye
ReplyDeleteYou're going to have real problems dating my friend. Once you express a political view that's outside the accepted norm it's probably over.
As an example, I had been dating a woman for a little over 3 months. One night we were at her apartment discussing politics, and I was critical of Obama. I used the pretty much the same arguments we've had on this blog, but a little more restrained (I didn't swear or call him a douche bag).
First I was accused of man-splaining the issue to her. I wasn't. I was making an argument about his policies and using evidence to back what I was saying up. This made her even more infuriated and she asked me to leave her apartment. We never had a fight before and I was genuinely puzzled.
The next day I experienced a lecture on all the triggers I had set off with her, blah, pc nonsense, etc. The relationship was over then. But my point is you're going to have a real problem finding someone who can respectfully disagree with you. And that's all you're really wanting. You don't need someone to parrot your own views back to you. We're not right about everything. But if you're not reading from the acceptable viewpoints in the US you're gonna find yourself lonely fast.
My two cents.
So this is now what's going on in my field of work:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.artforum.com/news/after-controversial-hire-activists-call-for-brooklyn-museum-to-form-decolonization-commission-74909
So ... even though it is the law to have color-blind hiring, now we are supposed to pick employees based upon their color/race/creed/etc.? So which is it FFS?
The irony is there is a (huge) point to be made about stuff in museums that was stolen/pillaged in the past and what to do about it now (Elgin Marbles for example), but this is totally overshadowed by this PC BS.
I'll be sans computer all weekend so if any WAFers comment, I'll read them on Monday.
Mcgregor,
ReplyDeleteI'd put Poplak's review of Peterson in the same league as Kakutami's review of Dr. Berman's book in the NYT some years ago. Poplak is a film maker and musician with a knack for clever invective. Its not a review, like Kakutami's review its just a rant against ideas they don't like or can't or wont understand. Certainly, rigorous and thoughtful critiques can be made of anyone's work including Drs Berman and Peterson, but rants are not useful or constitute true review or critiques. Were Poplak and Kakutami trained in social science or history they most assuredly would have provided some useful critiques rather than braying and attention seeking.
The Norwegian, there has never been an objective media. The idea of an objective media was a marketing idea first launched by WH Hearst to sell more papers. Always and everywhere the media is either a commercial undertaking and or a voice for the state. They sell advertising (now clicks) and need access to people in government or business. Always partisian and in the service of one interest or another. Paul Starr at Princeton wrote a very useful (and underappreciated) book: The Creation of the Media; Political Origins of Modern Communications. Another well trod media/news tool is trading in confirmation bias, for example Kakutami is catering to the bien pessant readers of the NYT's biases--we in America are awesome and we left of center NYT affluent readers represent all that is good in mankind, pay no attention to this Berman guy. Same is true with Peterson--if you watch the BBC 4 interview of Peterson you see he (no he is not perfect already) conducted himself as an empirically minded professor (which he is) and his interviewer trying to out him as some wrong thinking monster--which is what a progressive BBC audience wants. It did not turn out well for the interviewer. Alas there is not place for sanity save for MB's blog and reading of the classics.
Investigative journalist Jeffery Sinclair pulled out this little nugget for his Friday weekly column: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are. And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” -- Teddy Roosevelt.
ReplyDeleteFunny, I don't remember that quote being included in one of two hagiographies I've read about TR written by our mainstream historians--the ones whose every book tops the NYT bestseller list, and who get lucrative fees for public speaking. It was the overly venerated Stephen Ambrose who wrote in his dual biography of Crazy Horse and Custer that the removal of the Native Americans from their lands wasn't a "genocide" because it wasn't an organized effort like the Holocaust. He also added something about how if the U.S. didn't steal all this great land, somebody else would have.
@Patrick F--thanks for well wishes. So far, I still don't feel any new symptoms, but have had to wait a full month while the doctors try to figure out their plan. I've already had three scans at a cost of about $5,000. I can't imagine what someone else in my situation with no health insurance would do.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/atlanta-n-word-confederate-history-month-griffin-georgia-rodney-mccord-a8290176.html
ReplyDeleteOur lives are one big onion article
From the annals of stupidity:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fitness-fads-20180405-story.html
Reminds me of the old Carlin routine... "Eat healthy, exercise, don't smoke, don't drink, and die anyway!"
Dan,
ReplyDeleteI became openly furious last weekend when an uncle was making cruel and dehumanizing comments about the Palestinians. This happened despite decades of always keeping my responses calm and factual (and of course short as I’m immediately shouted over). I hope I’m not turning into a turkey. Maybe it was the off-label medicine prescribed by my doctor for nerve damage sustained in a car accident that I had just started taking. The medicine lists severe “Feelings of Anger Toward Something”, severe “Memory Loss”, and severe “Mood Changes” as side effects. I hope I haven’t been turkified.
Enbion,
Six years ago I went to a poetry reading by Linh Dinh at the University of Pittsburgh. His work is very moving, and both funny and sad as you say. After giving a touching, kind, and moving presentation, you wouldn’t believe how one of the students treated him. She was part of a small class that comprised about half the audience. She relentlessly asked sneering and belittling questions, though they were closer to accusations. Linh Dinh would answer them, and she’d immediately follow up with another comment ignorant of the other people in the audience. Eventually, her professor told her that her question had been addressed and we should allow others a chance to ask a question. She ignored this and continued to berate the guest, violating norms to no good end.
k-
ReplyDeleteSo many Americans need urine on their shoes! Wdn't you agree?
Geoff-
Americans have shit for brains. Wdn't you agree?
Crow-
What are the odds that one day, this woman wakes up, looks in the mirror, and says (aloud): "My god, I'm a douche bag!"
Summary: When I say there is no hope for this country, I mean: there is no hope!
Jeff-
I've screened it 3x by now. It's absolutely amazing. How a Mexican director managed to capture exactly the atmosphere in Baltimore in the 60s (where I lived during part of that time), I have no idea. The levels of possible interpretation...Violence and cruelty of the American govt; relations between men and women, and between the powerful vs. the weak; hatred of gay people, and blacks (=aliens, others); and then the fear of, and disgust at, a real alien, an ultimate other. Plus the crossing of an ultimate boundary/taboo: sex between humans and alien creatures. How far have we come (govt, most Americans) since 1962, really?
Fran-
Hedges, incredibly, still ends his essays with a call to the masses to rise up against the corporations. I'm wondering if the entire 327 million people here contain a person more stupid than he is. He's going to die, at some pt, with abs. no wake-up pt having taken place during his entire life. What a journey!: from 1st-rate reporter to preacher to complete laughing stock.
mb
Thank you for your feedback on dating MB et al.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, I do not live in the US, but in France, and women (and men) - I think it's safe to say - are less neurotic on our shores than they are on yours. That's not to say all is fine and dandy on the dating front au pays du fromage. My main issue with the women I meet is that it seems to me they only have two "solutions" to face our dire times, that aren't mutually exclusive:
a. Hustling - A.k.a. the Sheryl Sandberg ideology - "Lean in" to corporate douchebaggery and entrepreneurial hustling. Of course this concerns only a fringe of liberal, well-educated, urban and financially well-off women, not cleaners or factory workers, but that's the type of women I encounter as part of my work and social life. It seems like work is almost ALL they have in their lives and they're very far ontologically-speaking from grasping the concept of NMI.
b. Having kids - I personally don't want any and even if I did, I wouldn't understand why someone who really has the courage of raising a child lovingly in this mess wouldn't *adopt* someone in need rather than have kids of his own. Again, having this viewpoint puts me in the crazy category for 99.9% of women.
What I am saying isn't exclusive to women actually. I've only got a couple of male friends who understand my lifestyle.
Kanye
The Porden Jeterson Demographic isn’t going away...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/jordan-peterson-male-democraphic-isnt-going-anywhere/
jj-
ReplyDeleteA thoughtful essay. He's rt: progs will just double down and offer young (white) men nothing but attacks based on political correctness. This type of response just increases Peterson's popularity.
mb
@ MB
ReplyDeleteI would agree. And -292° F is roughly the average temperature of Saturn, so maybe we could send all the cryotherapists and their clients there?
@ Enbion
I've followed Linh Dinh's work for years, and I'd particularly recommend his books Blood and Soap and Love Like Hate. As he's said on his blog, he's in the process of leaving the USA to return to Vietnam. Originally he'd planned to stay in Philly to document the American collapse, but things are just getting too ugly here.
Paul works two days a week at his old company. Yesterday he had to attend a 2-/2 hour sexual harassment workshop. Bottom line: You must be extremely careful how you interact with anyone lest you offend and there’s a lawsuit. Of course, since you cannot know what someone else’s “triggers” are, it’s probably best to avoid any interaction except for discussing the project at hand. Speaking as someone who dealt with sexual harassment her entire working life in every form short of physical assault, insane doesn’t even begin to describe this approach. This reminds me of our medical system: Treat the symptoms while doing nothing about the underlying causes. Guess what? Nothing gets better.
ReplyDeleteK_pgh: Look into PEMF for a non-pharmaceutical approach to pain…it’s eliminated my nerve pain. A good educational site: http://www.drpawluk.com/
Here’s a story about Coca-Cola and Mexico:
https://www.salon.com/2018/04/04/the-coca-cola-invasion-is-causing-mexicos-slow-death-by-junk-food_partner/
This American life : Eulogy For My Friend, Alice, Ten Years Too Late.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMqA8b_iG5o
From jj's article, Carlson says:
ReplyDelete"What Carlson was actually doing in “Men in America,” which concluded last week, was offering his version of an explanation of why conditions are dreadful for so many American men. He blamed a combination of immigration, automation, second-wave feminism, the vilification of traditional masculinity, and certain ill-advised government programs."
Peterson, on the other hand, is quoted as "Life is hard, you will suffer, and in order to handle that suffering, you will have to be prepared. Preparing means taking responsibility for yourself. That’s hard, too, so you may try to avoid it ... stop lying. Accept responsibility for your fate."
Two completely different messages, and the second one is the road to a better life. At some point, everybody needs to stop playing the blame game and just get on with things. That is the point of NMI, isn't it? To accept things as they are, and do our best?
What ever will be, will be, que sera sera (sing with me!). Kanye, I say don't give up! Things have a way of sorting themselves out. Dating is a numbers game (something our elders knew, but this knowledge is suppressed in today's overt hustling world where apps are supposed to take care of all these supposed problems.) Enjoy the journey!
The most appropriate American news headline ever: Famed Walden Pond, which inspired Henry David Thoreau, is being killed by urine.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure those in Puerto Rico who are STILL without electricity after last year's hurricane will take great comfort in this story: US military spent $60 million on Afghanistan power lines to nowhere. Remember how CONgress shook their collective finger at PR and said that it need to be "responsible" for its debts? Good times.
Get this dopey headline: It’s Up to Us to End the War on Yemen. "It’s time to end our participation in this carnage...If we withdraw that support, we could potentially force our allies to abandon the war entirely. As taxpayers, we’re complicit if we stay silent. Our lawmakers have the power to end this humanitarian crisis, and they must act before it’s too late." This lunacy would be funny if it wasn't so sad. The author is listed as being the Deputy Director of Communications and Policy at Progressive Congress, but I don't think effective "communications" is her strong suit.
Another JP column. This one is interesting not for it's take on JP but for its take on Canada:
ReplyDeletehttps://nyti.ms/2GFaKlx
I defer to Canadian Wafers for its accuracy or lack thereof. That JP, a boring Ward Cleaver 'eat you vegetables' 'clean your room', type father figure has become such a cultural phenomena is just beyond me. I find him boring. It's the typical mechanical analysis followed by mechanical solutions. No brilliant insights here.
Worse, all this appears to be going to JP's head. Hence, he is 'seriously contemplating' challenging Justin Trudeau for Prime Minister (I don't think the parliamentary system works this way, but what the hell. I hope he does):
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6gusk5
He's starting to look a lot like Timothy Leary...his 'truth' is the key to the universe, everyone else is unenlightened, come with me if you want to live, blah, blah, blah...
BrotherMaynard
Re: Kanye
ReplyDeleteThe fact there is no part C in your list is deeply troubling. Is there a lifestyle for women, like me, who don't want to hustle her best years away, but don't to be a meer breeder like a bacteria. To stumble upon that causes great existential trauma that few individuals could escape from. Men and women together must realize this predicament and try to solve it together. Heh, who I'm kidding it's almost an impossible feat.
I am going off topic but this could somehow connect to the "DNA bottleneck" of homo sapiens as I heard over the internet.
Sean Brandon Cole had his girlfriend Khadeijah Moore rape his 11-year-old autistic son because he feared he was gay.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/31/alabama-man-directs-girlfriend-to-rape-his-11-year-old-autistic-son-believed-was-gay.html
ReplyDeleteRe: urine
“Consider the fact that 64 percent of Americans admitted to urinating in public pools in a 2016 survey”
http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/americans-worst-behaved-travelers
Talk about a country of children, last night I attended a concert of The Fab Faux, a Beatles tribute band. Almost the entire audience was made up of people like me- over-the-hill, late 60's early 70's, ner do wells. The band is considered perhaps the best Beatles tribute band ever-near perfect recreations. Think the audience could just sit and listen? Of course not. Those sitting around me were all singing with the band, and screaming when the song started like they were still infected with Beatlemania. After intermission I was able to find another seat. I sat next to a woman around 75 years old. Nearly throughout the entire second half she stood waving her jacket over her head and, of course, screaming and singing the songs. I think someone once wrote that a lot of laughing in the US is actually cries of desperation. If so, I was surrounded by thousands of highly desperate people.
ReplyDeleteIt' official- I have not one Jewish friend left in the entire Delaware Valley. My last friend thought that the 8 month prison sentence given to the girl who slapped a soldier was too lenient. I wrote back, "If I ever found a Jew with a heart I think I would faint."
Grandma-
ReplyDeleteI never saw the NMI as being passive, as just accepting the status quo. True, in a declining situation where the fix is in, so to speak, not a lot can be done in terms of substantive social change. But the job of the NMI is to preserve what is great in Western culture, for example; and also, if so inclined, to act on the positive side of Dual Process. The Monastic Option is not a que sera philosophy, in short, and if you check out the examples I give, in the Twilight bk, of NMI's, you'll see that they are quite active in the world.
mb
More people should trespass and urinate in private pools, especially the above ground ones. Bill Hicks, I find progressives like Bernie Sanders and chicks that use fancy progressive titles a real turn on. The genie is out of the bottle in the Middle East. Even if the American weapons dried up in Yemen, they would be replaced by someone else’s. The Saudis and Iranians are going to fight, and the fighting is still in the early innings. A hundred years from now Arabs and Persians, Sunni and Shi’a will still be slugging it out in the Middle East and Bernie Sanders and his progressive friends won’t be remembered.
ReplyDelete@Kanye
ReplyDeleteGrandma's right. Enjoy the journey. I chose to relate a story of a particular douchebagette. This is in now way indicative of women in general, just one particular person. And you will likely not get everything you're looking for. Relationships always have some compromise to them. Think about what makes you happy and what you can live with in a mate. You're unlikely to find the "complete" package.
Dan:
ReplyDeleteI sympathize with your situation at the Fab Faux concert. I used to attend a club that features some of the best acts in acoustic music: from Joni Mitchell to Tom Paxton to the Limelighters and more. The club owner had cards prominently place on each table that warned people not to talk or create distracting noise “while the performances (sic) are on stage.” And before the bands and performers came on, the admonition was repeated over the PA system. For the first few years this policy was honored by customers. But in recent years, the cards are gone, and the admonition is offered in only a half-hearted way.
The same goes for performances by comics at larger venues. I can well remember Carlin telling some douchebag that he had to “listen to this shit to get it” after the reprobate had interrupted the flow with some moronic shout or other. No more Lewis Black for me; his crowds are guaranteed to have enough assholes to constitute a disruptive element.
Same for movies. I’m retired now, so I go to the earliest movies available on weekdays, more or less guaranteed to be virtually alone. No nighttime showings or afternoon matinees.
The state we’re in.
I have to admit I knew nothing about Jordan Peterson, so I did some preliminary research. I am afraid to say he seems OK to me. He's spot on about Trudeau, a second-rate Obama with tar sands for brains. Peterson is a bit too Bible-banging for my taste, and I also think it's better to read Jung directly, but let's be honest, the majority of people don't have the intellectual capacity to read Jung, so there.
ReplyDeleteThe point is still valid that the death of God has left a vacuum that's sucking Western culture, so to speak, into desperation. You don't need to be trailer trash addicted to opioids to experience that; watch Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, for example, and you'll see that Ingmar was in similar situation: he felt in his guts that atheism was a dead end that could bring nothing but emptiness, and nevertheless his mind couldn't make himself believe in God any more.
Regarding the problems facing men in America, most of it comes down to the collapse of the post-war economic model that provided decent, unionized jobs for millions of working-class men. While it is true that progs often dismiss the problems facing men conservatives aren't much help either.
ReplyDeleteMost Republican politicians support union busting and free trade agreements like NAFTA that encourage outsourcing. I find it laughable that conservatives all of a sudden found their hearts and care deeply about the plight of poor men.
Identity politics is not just a problem on the Left. You can clearly see how conservatives are cultivating disaffected white men as their own favored identity group and are promoting a grievance industry while doing nothing to address the real problems that are mostly tied to issues of class and power.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/yes-israel-palestinians-actually-genocide/
ReplyDeleteOne of the most disturbing aspects of Zionism is using one genocide to justify/whitewash another
Re: Urine, The Sacred and the Profane edition:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/famed-walden-pond-which-inspired-henry-david-thoreau-being-killed-n863381
Civil Discontinence & Other Essays
Civil Disopeedience ?
"all good things are wild and pee" ?
@Dan--my wife and I compromised regarding Seder this year. I had wanted to go to a concert on Friday night while she wanted to go to Seder with these former neighbors of ours whose house we used to go to every year. I finally convinced her when I reminded her that even though the couple politically considers themselves to be "good liberals," the wife in recent years has become such a staunch supporter of Israel that she is utterly intolerant of any criticism of Israeli atrocities. So instead we went to the concert and on Saturday joined some other friends of hers for Seder who are not only a lot more easy going, but the wife makes Seder food that's actually edible even for an old Goyim like me. Definitely a win-win!
ReplyDeleteMore stupid urine tricks in the Boston area: Police: Urine found in library soap dispenser, air freshener.
Here's a video of all those salt-of-the-earth type average Americans who are going to lead Hedges's progressive revolution: Indians Fans Taunt, Mock, And Scream Obscenities At Native American Protesters At Home Opener. Look at all those ugly, mean, angry faces--then realize they are upset because it's being pointed out to them that their sports team logo is blatantly racist. No doubt ending the war in Yemen will be a very high priority for these douchebags.
@MB - Thank you! Not lurking anymore!
ReplyDelete@k_pgh - Thanks for sharing your experience. It's awful that someone was so disrespectful to Linh Dinh.
@Pastrami and Coleslaw - Regarding Brooklyn Museum, besides hiring practices, when it comes to race and art, it's a conversation you simply can't have at all with the social justice crowd. It kind of reminds me of the Dana Schutz painting of Emmet Till. Or when a boston museum paired kimono wearing with monet's la japonaise painting. the kimono was provided by a japanese organization. as people protested, japanese people were confused by the protesters. I have come to learn that you simply can't have conversations with social justice people at all when it comes to art/culture. They don't seem to care about how different artistic styles come about, how different cultures interact - instead of understanding how different cultures influence and inform each other, they look to be offended by "cultural appropriation". It causes me great stress whenever I have to speak on such issues because you will likely be labeled a racist just because you don't agree with them 100%... I'm not white... it's really hard to have any kind of fruitful conversation when the logic is limited to standard social justice jargons. i actually know a couple of people from decolonize.. i would love to speak to them about it, but it's unlikely the conversation will be fruitful or even interesting...
@Geoff Thank you for the recommendation! Will check them out!
Enbion
1st Japan trip; Realise Nippon's problems--salarymen, hikikomori, "Chou-cide," etc...however, some (superficial) impressions from a gaijin.
ReplyDeleteKindness, respect for elders, foreigners, children on their highly efficient, clean trains, walking down the street, at the 7/11s, Lawsons etc..
Authentic sense of community--e.g., wearing facial masks NOT b/c they're worried about getting 'germs' from others--but, them having a slight cold and passing it on to others is disrespectful. Imagine that--caring about others!
Traditions and talking story e.g., bonsai village in Omiya, for example. Excitement about preserving traditions, history, culture, community spirit from a young docent. In Kobe--3 generations discussing in extreme detail the processes to raise, prepare, and present beef and preserve their excellence. NOT once was money mentioned, ways to expand, or monetize, this, that, the other,
One can be very certain--this is NOT america.
Kether-
ReplyDeleteWell, to be fair, the Israelis are not yet herding the Palestinians into gas chambers and killing them by the millions. That said, the situation is obviously pretty vile. As Edward Said remarked, the Palestinians are "the victims of the victims."
mb
Enbion: You've hit the nail on the head. When difficult discussions about real appropriation (a.k.a. some archaeologist/anthropologist stole/looted your stuff 100 years ago) come up outside the museum/academic world, they inevitably descend into simplistic name calling, labeling, etc. We have a large collection of Native American artifacts and it has been a huge undertaking to reconcile the often terrible ways items were collected 150 years ago with current thoughts on how to display/interpret those items.
ReplyDeleteHello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteVile indeed.
'Outdoor Cinema': Photo Shows Israelis Cheering as Palestinians Killed at Gaza Border
An Israeli Channel 2 television news journalist, Nir Dvori, posted the photo Friday, showing the barbaric scene of seven Israelis smiling and waving at the cameras as they sat on an observation tower in Nahal Oz, outside the fenced-off Gaza strip overlooking Palestinians suffering gruesome attacks.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Outdoor-Cinema-Photo-Shows-Israelis-Cheering-as-Palestinians-Killed-at-Gaza-Border-20180408-0009.html
Israeli Sniper Targets, Kills Journalist in "PRESS" Vest
Yaser Murtaja, a cameraman for Palestinian Ain Media, was wearing a "PRESS" flak jacket as he was shot by an Israeli sniper Friday. He died of his injuries in a hospital on Saturday.
The 30-year-old journalist was one of nine people killed and more than 1,000 injured by Israeli troops Friday on the Gaza border.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/07/israeli-sniper-targets-kills-journalist-press-vest
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/two-children-journalist-among-israels-latest-gaza-victims
My experience as well in regard to 'romantic' relationships in US - in hs I was mildly interested in a girl when her mom intervened and so completely disemboweled me I vowed never again - and so it has been ever since, sometimes I think I'm too sensitive and then again I'll never have the fruits of hustling that so many women seem to desire above all. I've lived a more or less monastic life.
ReplyDeleteIran, Russia, Turkey, expanding their influence in middle east bearing down on Israel. Is it a coincidence they're attacking Palestinians and now a chemical attack in Syria just when Trump said he wants to leave? Could this be the Suez moment?
Denver Post is biting the dust - Why not sell shares of ownership and b publically owned?
ReplyDeleteMan who was raised by wolves in a cave admits he's disappointed with human life...
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-who-raised-wolves-cave-12313287
Some Wafers have probably already seen video of the road collapse. A friend of mine from Australia saw it, and she had assumed it was in a third world country. I told her she was correct. The Lincoln Highway, “The Main Street Across America”, the first transcontinental road across the USA (connecting NYC's Times Square to San Francisco) has collapsed in East Pittsburgh.
ReplyDeleteThree Videos of Collapse: One, Two, and Three
Local Newspaper Link: Collapse from Sunday, April 8
Random trivia: Dwight D. Eisenhower described his 1919 experience of The Lincoln Highway as a trip “through darkest America in truck and tank.”
Technical detail: the original Lincoln Highway followed Electric Avenue. Thus, the newer post-Westinghouse Bridge (early 1930s) Lincoln Highway collapsed towards the original Lincoln Highway.
Bill Hicks,
Your article on Walden Pond says it all. Your Walden post had yet to appear when I sent my own response regarding urination. I guess you could say urination is “in the water”.
Sarasvati,
Thank you very much for the PEMF recommendation and the link. I am looking into it. Please know that if your suggestions had been visible at the time, I would have thanked you in my last comment. The help is appreciated.
@James - I almost never see a movie in the theater these days, unless it's some obscure art film. Usually a better audience. As far as everything else goes the turkeys are truly on the march. Non-stop cellphone action, loud patrons, and children running around at 10 pm showings of rated R movies.
ReplyDelete@Bill - Glad you posted that clip of the Indian fans. Can you believe those people? Also, notice the size of the protest group was very small, maybe 8-10 people. Really, the only proper response to such an intimidating crowd is to yell fuck you and call them all Marxists. I know you and I are both baseball fans, but going to a game these days is to be surrounded by turkeys like this.
Check it out:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/09/social-media-has-poisoned-us-young-brits-on-why-they-are-unhappy
https://www.wired.com/story/tricky-business-of-measuring-consciousness/
ReplyDeleteA rare bright spot of fundamental inquiry in an American university. The professor, not surprisingly, is Italian.
https://www.amazon.com/Phi-Voyage-Brain-Giulio-Tononi/dp/030790721X
The author has a really good literary conceit. Galileo returns to life and discovers the fruits of his scientific revolution. Yet while he made modern science possible by eliminating subjectivity from objective measurement, he his method is clearly insufficient to investigate subjectivity itself.
So Galileo comes back and has Platonic dialogues with Darwin, Turing, and Crick about the mind. Really intelligent and interesting read.
I'm a bit put off by the idea that measurement is the right way to approach consciousness, but at least it's taking consciousness seriously as a fact of the world, in contrast to the years of chemical reductionist behaviorism we've had, which has people on all sorts of loosely prescribed happy pills.
Though the longer the researcher lives in America, the quicker he may come to feel that higher consciousness is a philosophical fiction after all...
Interesting (though I'm not fully convinced) article here:
ReplyDeletehttps://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult
"Here is the real source of irrationality in lifelong echo-chamber members – and it turns out to be incredibly subtle. Those caught in an echo chamber are giving far too much weight to the evidence they encounter first, just because it’s first."
God is TED
ReplyDeleteThus Spoke Jordan Peterson: The best-selling psychologist isn't leading young men to salvation — he's delivering them to authoritarianism. - http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/04/god-is-ted-jordan-peterson-self-help-men/
Heart goes out to all the Palestinian victims.
ReplyDeleteWith so much injustice and suffering how can people tolerate anything fake?
Ted Talks for example really need to go away along with probably any anti-intellectualism.
Dual Process!
ReplyDeleteYale’s Most Popular Class Ever: Happiness
https://nytimes.com/2018/01/26/nyregion/at-yale-class-on-happiness-draws-huge-crowd-laurie-santos.html
Robert Wright's review of Steven Pinker's bestselling book (or of one aspect of it) Enlightenment Now. https://www.wired.com/story/why-pure-reason-wont-end-american-tribalism/
ReplyDelete"Here's a video of all those salt-of-the-earth type average Americans who are going to lead Hedges's progressive revolution: Indians Fans Taunt, Mock, And Scream Obscenities At Native American Protesters At Home Opener. Look at all those ugly, mean, angry faces--then realize they are upset because it's being pointed out to them that their sports team logo is blatantly racist."
ReplyDelete---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not condoning the rude behavior, but when do the Irish start protesting the Boston Celtics? When do Scandinavian Americans rise up and protest a certain football team out of Minnesota?
Native Americans have very real issues for which they could use support (alcoholism, unemployment, addiction, education, isolation), and I just don't see how a cartoon indian rises to the same level, or any level really.
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteRelevant to some of yr posts is my essay, "Tribal Consciousness and Enlightenment Tradition,"
which can be found in QOV.
mb
Hedges’s progressive revolution needs a logo. Truthdig’s Robert Scheer snorting a condom would be perfect. Mr. Fish can draw it. Native Americans are still hustlers and their casinos remind me of Atlantic City, which really should be the seat of the federal government.
ReplyDelete@Transatlantic--so, you're saying that because American Indians have far more important issues to worry about that the reaction of the fat, white douchebag Americans to the protest against their sports team's cartoon logo was appropriate? Because THAT was the point of my post. No doubt that had the protesters instead been demanding better treatment on the whole those assholes would have been all like, "oh, you're absolutely right. As soon as I get home, I'm going to call my CONgressman and DEMAND economic justice for native peoples."
ReplyDeleteSo here we are with the worst confrontation between the world's two largest nuclear-armed powers since the Cuban missile crisis and very few people seem to be paying any attention at all, while the Israelis attack Syria in supposed retaliation to an atrocity against civilians that is no worse that the atrocities they are committing against civilians in Gaza on a daily basis (even if the Syrians actually did it, which is doubtful). With madman Bolton settling into his new seat just outside the Oval Office while all this going on, people should be scared shitless. Instead it's all, "hey, did you see what happened in the NBA playoffs last night?"
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteGee, Transatlantic, maybe the Irish and Scandinavians will protest after they've been massacred and have everything they have stolen from them. These aren't equivalent examples to "cartoon indians," never mind "Redskins."
Furthermore, what would you say if there were teams named the "Kansas City Kikes," or "The Nashville Niggers?" No prob, right?
Fran-
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that if real careers were open to Native Americans, they wd dump the casinos forthwith. Once their identity was destroyed and replaced by alcohol, it didn't leave them with a lot of motivation, in any case.
In the meantime, I'm worried that Bolti will fail to do the damage that we are all hoping for, and instead will just sit on his thumb, spinning around the axis of his anus.
mb
Gustavo, it might very well be that Peterson is a hustler, but that article in Foreign Policy is such a cheap hit job that I can't take it seriously. And if I may make a suggestion, stop wasting your time reading Foreign Policy, especially articles like this one: Macron Needs to Attack Syria. It stinks, really.
ReplyDelete@ Matthew (Re: Urine, Sacred–Profane):
ReplyDeleteChrysopeea and The Philosopher's Kidney Stone ?
Zizek meets Poe in " Never Bet the Devil Your Head " ?
Hey, MB, a new book has come out blaming post-modernism for the post-truth world. I heard an NPR talk show segment about it today:
ReplyDeleteThe Brian Lehrer Show: The Roots of the 'Post-Truth' Era
Philosopher Lee McIntyre, research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School and author of Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, 2018), argues that to push back on the "post-truth" phenomenon, seen in climate change denials, birtherism and inauguration crowd size claims, it's necessary to acknowledge its origins in post-modernism and Derrida's contention that there's no such thing as "objective truth" and gender and cultural experience, plus politics influence claims of fact. He also sees connections to industry's 1950-s "science-denying" of the links between smoking and lung disease, for example.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/seven/gunpowder.htm
ReplyDelete"This is a show about the conquest of the West, but everything that the audience sees is Indians attacking whites. It's a strange story of an inverted conquest... a celebration of conquest in which the conquerors are the victims. We didn't plan it; they attacked us, and when we ended up, we had the whole continent." -Richard White
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robert-scheer-and-benjamin-madley-discuss-the-genocide_us_57a50be8e4b0c94bd3c9630f
"In 1851, California governor Peter Burnett declared -his actual words- a war of extermination will continue to be waged until the Indian race becomes extinct. Newspapers reported babies skewered on bayonets by regular U.S. army soldiers. They reported on people throwing children into bonfires. They reported on the extermination of entire Indian communities, wholesale."
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/three/goldandhope.htm
"The Yankees are a wonderful people -- wonderful! Wherever they go, they make improvements, If they were to emigrate in large numbers to hell itself, they would irrigate it, plant trees and flower gardens, build reservoirs and fountains, and make everything beautiful and pleasant." -Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo
Why are the authorities depriving this poor woman of her beloved heads?
ReplyDeleteA West Virginia woman accused of beheading her boyfriend allegedly shouted during her arrest that police officers "have to take me back and let me get my heads."
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/09/west-virginia-woman-accused-beheading-boyfriend-shouting-let-me-get-my-heads.html
Another somewhat overlooked aspect of our decline is just how awful most of our cities are by international standards. Little or no public transportation, uncontrolled sprawl, etc. Of course, that our infrastructure is quite literally falling apart is well known yet nothing is done. It is amazing that some parts of the NYC subway system are from the 1930s and in daily use for critical operations:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-york-city-subway-technology-1930s-180956111/
In the 3 main surveys of world cities (Mercer, Economist, Monocle), no American city ranks in the top 25:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_most_liveable_cities
BrotherMaynard
Just in from CNN:
ReplyDeletePresident Trump has named Morris Berman to be his new Chief of Staff, effective immediately. Berman promises to radically shake things up in DC. "Look it," says Berman, "my first order of business will be to direct Lorenzo Riggins to remove John Bolton's thumb from his anus and replace it w/an 18-inch dildo. I will then rename the FBI to FBE (Full-Brown-Eye). And believe you me, this is only the beginning... Subsequently, all schools, day-care centers, airports, museums, casinos, and sport stadiums will be permanently shuttered. For good measure, I will also conduct brain surgery on Ben Carson, give President Trump a decent haircut, make love to Sarah Palin on an ice floe among the meese w/Ed Meese in attendance, and begin to systematically carpet bomb Cleveland, Newark, Peoria, and Spokane as soon as it is humanly possible. These measures are our only hope, really." And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Re: the old discussion on handwriting
ReplyDeleteI recently went to go send a greeting card via a website, and the preview of my card didn't have it typewritten, as I expected, but generated a fake form of digitally created handwriting.
Thankfully, there was still an option to go with a typewritten font, so I didn't have to use an implausible fake calligraphy.
I told my girlfriend about this, and she told me she gets this kind of stuff in the mail all the time from large corporations that are trying to send 'personal' advertising.
I'm just trying to imagine what it would be like to be the human being that actually is touched and convinced by these fake personal touches. Either the companies adopt these technologies and don't care that they are laughable, or a good section of the population is emotionally lobotomized. It's either a performer that's indifferent to his audience, or an audience that will gush over any nonsense the performer tries.
Dr B-
ReplyDeleteHere's some neon signs making fun of social media-
https://www.behance.net/gallery/61878925/ANTISOCIAL
Bill, you said:” So here we are with the worst confrontation between the world's two largest nuclear-armed powers since the Cuban missile crisis and very few people seem to be paying any attention at all….” Unfortunately, this is par for the course, and if you try to talk to anybody about it they don’t want to have anything to do with you because you’re “too negative. “
ReplyDeletePaul Craig Roberts agrees with you: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/04/09/threshold-war-paul-craig-roberts/
I guess his love affair with Trump is over: he refers to him as a crazed president and our government as criminally insane.
Apparently, Bolti often attended Plato's Retreat, the NYC sex club popular in the 1970's. I mean talk about opportunities for blackmail.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm doubling down on my Gazan posts just to piss off my former Jewish friends. Their comments to me assure me I did the right thing. One tells me that the Gazans should go back to Egypt where they originally came from. None seem to know that Hamas was democratically elected or that Israel created Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO. I mean why be friends with such complete morons, right? One response, however, said:"I'm glad to be alive but Israel makes me ashamed to be human." I would like to add that Israel makes me ashamed to be Jewish.
By the way, anyone following instances where ultra-orthodox Jews move into a neighborhood, take over the local government and divert all funds to their religious schools among other changes? The locals are furious but if they protest they are immediately branded anti-semitic. These are just fluff pieces in the NY Times but I'm afraid they will get lethal. There are many Youtube videos on this for anyone interested.
Below is an interesting article on the Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce and his critique of modern politics, particularly the modern Left. It is from a Roman Catholic publication so many Wafers might disagree with the religious focus but I think there are some good insights in the piece.
ReplyDeleteHere is an excerpt:
"The paradox is that these two trends (the leftist critique of authority and conservative technocracy) converged into what Del Noce called prophetically 'the alliance between the technocratic right and the cultural left.' Its result has been that 'separation between the ruling class and the masses becomes extreme.' Indeed, one plausible interpretation of the election of Donald Trump is that today many people who do not benefit from the expansion of technology feel that the only political choice is between an alien liberal technocracy and tribalism."
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/dead-end-left
Bro-
ReplyDeleteOn collapse of cities, infrastructure, etc., check out works by Jim Kunstler. These have been around for a long time.
Sav-
I haven't read it, but I agree with the thesis. These things start in esoteric journals read by 15 people, spread to dinner parties, become the subject of academic conferences, get picked up by Time Mag and the like, and b4 u know it everyone, Trumpi included, is postmodern.
mb
Gee, Transatlantic, maybe the Irish and Scandinavians will protest after they've been massacred and have everything they have stolen from them. These aren't equivalent examples to "cartoon indians," never mind "Redskins."
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, what would you say if there were teams named the "Kansas City Kikes," or "The Nashville Niggers?" No prob, right?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last I checked, the word "indian" is not a perjorative or slur. And,try though I may, I see no connection between a harmless, cartoon mascot for a sports team and genocide.
RE: Kunstler -- The Geography of Nowhere is excellent. One of his best observations in the book is the loss of public space in American life.
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeletePaul Craig Roberts calls the American people 'clueless' and that wonders why the French and British leaders support Washington's bellicose confrontation with Russia. Sarasvati's observation of PCR's brief love affair with Trump really reflected the hope that Trump's word, that he wanted good relations with Russia, was truthful and that he would do something for people who are in desperate straits economically - like me it took a short while to realize Trump's statements are for effect - he isn't capable thinking anything through and he has contempt for 'losers' which is almost everybody. Apparently Tony Blair has been financially rewarded by the elites in much the same way as the Clintons and Obama. I hope the Russians respond to US aggression in Syria with force and get the US to back down. Of course if the US doesn't back down, this could result eventually in a nuclear war.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/04/11/idiocy-bringing-end-world/
@Sarasvati--indeed Justin Raimondo, editor of Antiwar.com and one of the leading voices of the staunch libertarian anti-interventionists, just wrote an essay admitting he was wrong about Trump. Raimondo writes: "I was very wrong to discount the role of character, personality, and intelligence: Trump is simply not fit to be President." Well, no shit. Much as I agreed with Raimondo, Roberts and their ilk back in 2016 that Trump's campaign rhetoric (such as saying the Iraq War was a mistake) was certainly preferable to warmongering ol' Botox Face, there was no way I was going to trust that it was genuine to the point of actually voting for the supreme douchebag. Raimondo and Roberts not being able to see Trump for what he really is is yet another example of what MB says about how in America even the smart people are stupid.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Porn Stache Bomber, even as a declinist I simply cannot take any pleasure in the pretty obvious fact that he was brought into the White House to drive for war on Syria, which is no doubt intended to be quickly spread to Iran. This isn't a potential American "Suez Moment," it's a potential "extinction of all sentient life on Earth moment." Someone should be monitoring the airports to see if the scumbag Wall Street types who have doomsday bunkers in places like Patagonia and New Zealand are heading for the airports. Much as I'd love to see the Russians punch the arrogant American military machine right in the mouth, I'll be spending the next few days hoping that this is just more BS brinksmanship like what happened with North Korea.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-facebook-can-we-be-saved-social-media-giant-w518655
ReplyDeleteCan We Be Saved From Facebook?
The social media giant has swallowed up the free press, become an unstoppable private spying operation and undermined democracy. Is it too late to stop it?
By Matt Taibbi
April 3, 2018
another great Taibbi essay.
Greetings MB and Waf-peeps,
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if you guys can help me out here... When did all this foolishness begin?
Meanwhile, Khloe's pregnant w/her third baby by an unfaithful hubby:
https://pagesix.com/2018/04/11/pregnant-khloe-went-ballistic-when-she-found-out-about-tristans-cheating/
I'm thinking Khloe should name her new baby Karma Khameleon Kardashian.
Toodles,
Miles
Bill-
ReplyDeleteI cd be wrong abt this, but I have a feeling that it's all theater, and that theater has replaced actual events.
Jeff-
Inclined to agree with you abt Cleveland.
mb
@Bill
ReplyDeleteHow noble of Justin to admit his mistake! /sarc
I don't mean to be hurtful or blithe to those with serious medical conditions, but the only word I can find to describe this kind of attitude is *autistic*. Some guy said something I like, he must be the real deal! Or, conversely, some prof said something I dislike, so I need to throw a fit! Two sides of the same coin.
Zero subtlety. Zero comprehension of the whole beyond soundbites, repeated over and over like repetitive tics.
They say autism is a spectrum disorder, I think Americans as a whole shift in that direction of the spectrum. Crude literalism, little ability to hand complexity, the desire for controlled, reptitive ersatz stimuli on TV/ devices.
Bill: As the saying goes, How do you know that a politician is lying? His lips are moving. In spite of what some people would like to believe, The Orange Orangutan (and my apologies to orangutans everywhere) is a politician. How anyone could have taken what he said at face value (except for his bigotry) is beyond me. Every candidate tells their base want they want to hear to get elected (excluding the deeply stupid, tone-deaf Hillary), and then do what they, or the Deep State, want. Unfortunately, when the candidate they love gets elected and screws them they refuse to see it.
ReplyDeleteMorris, Max Igan agrees with you that it’s all theater…but even very bad theater keeps people in fear and easy to manipulate. I vacillate between thinking that its nothing more than theater or that a nuclear holocaust is around the corner. Theater makes more sense, but with psychopaths one can never know.
Bill-
ReplyDeleteActually while everyone thinks nuclear war is the ultimate calamity, it isn't. The human species would survive. Nassim Taleb (of Fooled by Randomness fame) assess nuclear risk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V7W46sOt38
Right now, in the next 40-50 years we are faced with planet-wide ecological catastrophe caused by human overpopulation and American style capitalist consumerism. I do not see how this doesn't happen (not even wearing a pussy hat would stop it).
The article below makes Morris Berman look like Dr. Pangloss. Unfortunately, I believe it is essentially correct:
http://expressiveegg.org/2016/08/27/end-of-the-world/
As it states: 'nature bats last', it won't be pretty. I suppose the only rational response to this is some type of NMO in which the individual can treasure and cherish good things (community, friendship, music, art, theatre, nature, beauty) while they can. This is more likely to be doable outside the United States (for reasons well documented on this blog).
BrotherMaynard
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteMB-
Re: Theater replacing actual events
I agree w/yr analysis. After all, Trumpo did say he wanted to run government like a reality show. And it looks like we're in the middle of one.
MB, Wafers-
Incidentally, I think it's interesting that Saudi prince, Mohammad bin Salman, was just in DC and a gas attack against civilians suddenly takes place in Syria. The attack occurs when Mueller seems to be closing in on Trumpo. Trumpo also had previously called for a Syrian exit b4 the attack, and now he's prepared for a confrontation w/Syria and the Russians. Assad, of course, is capable of doing this, but why would he, given the fact that he, the Russians, and the Iranians have just about won the Syrian Civil War? I know it sounds conspiratorial, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if Saudi intelligence is reponsible for the attack, since it's in their interest to draw the US into the conflict to block their Iranian enemies. I dunno, it's a real head-scrather... In any case, a Trumpo-directed missile strike will have little effect on the outcome of the Syrian Civil War, because it isn't connected to a clear, coherent strategy. Gee, what a shock!
MIles
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteI suppose we need to get into theater in a more serious way. Wafers are encouraged to submit scripts for a movie called "The Day We Nuked Cleveland"; which is long overdue, BTW. Hopefully, we can get Bolti to play a major role. (WTF is that turkey *doing*, meanwhile?)
mb
Wimp City Dept.:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/04/12/nyu-students-end-environmental-protest-after-warnings-of-disciplinary-action/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ad0906be0353
Can you imagine French students collapsing like limp spaghetti, in the same situation? Are these the kids that are going to rise up against our corporate masters, a la Hedges?
mb
I don’t think Putin ever wanted to play nice with the U.S. goingback to his first meeting with Bill Clinton, Putin’s body language at that meeting indicated he was the alpha male and Bill was the wimp. Clinton didn’t even have the resolve to get the Somali warlord Aidid in 1993. Hedges can and he most certainly will go on and on about movements like Occupy, resisting, fighting oppression, but Hedges and his movements and revolutions are limp spaghetti.
ReplyDeleteMy heart goes out to Syria and all the victims Wesley C. fore-warned about.
ReplyDeleteYeah MB I think everything is a controlled theater by a global mafia that only
subverts and worse whatever subverts their plans, the rest is noise and distraction and aids them.
Maybe the Swedish Pam Anderson intellectual can help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7k0OHYpW5A
Even Boltons' stache (an homage to a past warmonger?), seems unhinged.