tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post7882900291359174226..comments2024-03-28T16:08:29.578-04:00Comments on Sardonicky: Lambs to the SlaughterKaren Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-8367728381719320842014-02-12T11:44:03.395-05:002014-02-12T11:44:03.395-05:00Also in today's NY Times, the obituary of the ...Also in today's NY Times, the obituary of the nation's chief morale officer, after FDR, during the Great Depression, Shirley Temple (Black).<br /><br />What say you readers, is this not a topic for Ms. Garcia? I confess to never having watched one of her Depression era movies all the way through, catching segments on TCM was enough for me. And I don't think I would have been a fan; if I had lived during the 1930's I might have been for Norman Thomas, or caught the Trots...who knows...but to deliver my mind to Shirley for instruction...this was not a young Joan of Arc...and in some of my conversations with neighbors since the 2008 near collapse, I have thought that there is something childlike in the American intellectual response to our current troubles...beginning to change as readers just above have noted. <br /><br />And I see that Karen has recommended some new reading this morning, and it looks great, a must read.<br /><br />I can only offer something I came across in my research about the American Dream and its connection to our response to the Great Recession and beyond, a piece by Paul Cantor which appeared in the summer of 2013 issue of Hedgehog Review: "The Apocalyptic Strain in Popular Culture: The American Nightmare Becomes the American Dream." Here at<br /><br />http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2013_Summer_Cantor.php<br /><br />I thought it was a provocative, challenging piece, about the zombie phenomenon, especially the series The Walking Dead. I suppose you could say that they too, in the show, have come up with a form of co-operation built out of desperation and no role for government or other nodes in civil society. They are back to the state of nature, armed to the teeth, a Hobbesian world. Here's how some writers' citizens "find themselves" in the chaos of late American civilization, in its apocalyptic stage...some echoes of Chris Hedges writing from the opposite side of the spectrum, without the environmental emphasis. Quite a shift from the days of Shirley Temple dancing, charming our depression days away...and quite a bit different from Morris Dickstein's excellent "Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (2009). <br /><br />From tap dancing to the zombie's death dance...and shooting everything outside one's circle that moves..farenheit451noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-4538954706745425052014-02-12T10:00:25.660-05:002014-02-12T10:00:25.660-05:00Moral Mondays? Like Occupy and the Wisconsin demon...Moral Mondays? Like Occupy and the Wisconsin demonstrations against Walker, I think they're all symptoms of the same thing, a growing public frustration and anger against the status quo. I don't think, as Black Agenda apparently does, that it has been started and/or co-opted by the NAACP. It is simply another manifestation of a growing general unrest. Local political leaders, even national ones, may try to take advantage of it (its in the nature of the beast) but they're not really leading, just following at the front of the crowd.<br /><br />What I'm thinking about is what the oligarchs will do in reaction. We've seen their strategy and tactics against Occupy, but they must realize now that this is a much bigger thing and a very real threat to their power.James F Traynornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-40271953389180846102014-02-12T09:45:29.945-05:002014-02-12T09:45:29.945-05:00I'm agnostic on the Moral March (Moral Mondays...I'm agnostic on the Moral March (Moral Mondays) movement. The minister leading it, Rev. William Barber, has degrees in political science and public policy. I wonder if he's made any visits off the record across the street from the White House - Obama never misses a trick. <br /><br />More power to them though if they are fighting the good fight. So far my only information is from an article in Common Dreams titled 'Moral March Poses Big Questions for Progressives'. I say it's about time the religious people start walking the talk. <br /><br />When/if we hear that the police state is cracking down on them and the corporate media is ridiculing and marginalizing them, then we'll know they're for real. Since they seem to be currently ignored by the mainstream press, I take that as a good sign that they haven't yet been bought off by the OFA. <br /><br />Being a Congressional election year, the time is ideal for any movement to make some really big waves. How the MM uses this opportune time will tell us all we need to know. They're worth watching. <br /><br />http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/11-0annenigmanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-75530463815961362442014-02-12T08:49:49.692-05:002014-02-12T08:49:49.692-05:00Karen and readers:
Thanks for your toleration of ...Karen and readers:<br /><br />Thanks for your toleration of my miss-spelling of "pragmatism" - maybe it was a deeper sourced error than I realized - William James and John Dewey notwithstanding - linked in my psyche to today's bipartisanship. <br /><br />This morning's NY Times, print edition page A-20, has an interesting article on Co-ops, "Co-ops Find They Aren't to Every Taste," by Vivian Yee. I'm thinking of Karen's question about the North Carolina movement - which I don't have a feel for - and I think you've got to be close to the local setting, which is the take here in Ms. Yee's article on co-ops - with an upscale gentrification persona struggling to win over the poor. <br /><br />The connection to my comments from last night is the fact that this is what author Gar Alperovitz is calling for and writing about in "What Then Must We Do," but he doesn't even get a mention here in the Times: once again the disconnect between the formal left - and mainstream journalism. <br /> One of the criticisms I've made of Gar's work is that in American history - and you could say this about modern Spain and the Mondragon efforts - is that co-ops can exist and flourish even, without transforming the broader society. And in this article they are caught in their own swirl of gentrification, the cash-short poor (the membership fee mentioned is triple Cosco's), class and local ethnic tensions. <br /><br />Don't get me wrong: American society cries out for more solidarity, more co-operation, more Sermon on the Mount and less cut-throat competition, but part of the story in our culture is that American Dream, based even in Lincoln's time on "the race of life." That's why sterling writer Mike Davis gave a title to his very first book, a history of American labor and its relation to the Democratic Party, "Prisoners of the American Dream." <br /><br />fahrenheit451noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-39251230176594275072014-02-12T04:50:35.214-05:002014-02-12T04:50:35.214-05:00That last anonymous was me, Valerie. I must have a...That last anonymous was me, Valerie. I must have accidentally hit the wrong button.Valerie Long Tweedienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-78424982728415887982014-02-12T04:49:31.703-05:002014-02-12T04:49:31.703-05:00I'm with Cirze - where are all these new jobs?...I'm with Cirze - where are all these new jobs? And how many of them are decently paid. Or are all the them minimum wage with no benefits. <br /><br />As always, great job, Karen. I simply can't stand to watch or even listen to Obummer, he is such a hypocrite.So it is very appreciated that you summarise his speeches for me.<br /><br />I just had a visitor who is a uni prof in Washington state. She said the latest trend in the public schools is to have a "scripted curriculum." This means that the teachers are basically told what to say when teaching. Gone are the days when teachers were asked to research and come up with creative and exciting ways to teach their subject matter. Now it is not only teach to the test by using the assigned text book (often published by the same company designing the test)but now the teacher is not allowed to use her own approach to teaching the material. Mark my words, when they are done with this, they will say any monkey paid minimum wage can do what the teachers do. Gone are the days when teachers are in a position to inspire a love of reading or a passion for their subject in their students. Talk about effectively squashing intellectual curiosity - but that seems to be the plan - a dull-witted populace is easy to manipulate and control.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-85808693187659138762014-02-11T23:42:55.657-05:002014-02-11T23:42:55.657-05:00Thanks, everyone. Do any of you have an opinion on...Thanks, everyone. Do any of you have an opinion on the Moral Mondays movement? At first glance it looks like a resurgence of Occupy, but over at Black Agenda Report they're calling it a co-opted Democratic Party operation run by Democrats who've been complicit in turning over state govt to the lords of finance. I'll have to look into it further before forming an opinion. One thing in its favor, though, is that the corporate media aren't covering it... so maybe the PTB fear it and maybe it really is at least partially grass roots.Karen Garciahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-85533107506660250322014-02-11T23:06:10.445-05:002014-02-11T23:06:10.445-05:00Written with depth and passion, Karen.
The only w...Written with depth and passion, Karen.<br /><br />The only way the current political dynamic staggers on is to continue the trajectory of the past 30 years: the Center poses as a left because it keeps what's left of a real left on a tight participation leash, and the Center continues to cave to the Right and make concessions as the price of "bipartisanship." You rightly shred the awful verbiage Obama gushes out on this. On issue after issue. Things would fall apart if a real left came to power either as an independent force or by capturing the Democratic Party. Or raise powerful currents outside the political process. And my assumption in stating this is that the basic numbers on the broad spectrum distribution between left and right don't change much. (And this is a classic pattern in many revolutionary situations, including our own Revolution: society sliced into thirds, the largest and most wavering in the middle.<br /><br />There is no real room for compromise between a social democratic left and even a FDR type of new New Deal, and the Right, given the nature of the ideas they hold. This is not exaggeration, this is a stark reality. <br /><br /> Optimistic folks on the left can point, like the Center pollsters do - that issue by issue, the left seems to be doing ok; but as we've seen with the ACA "reform," once the poll question assumes the policy table of real life, you can throw those optimistic numbers out.<br /><br />This is what I call the political "Wall," and if you listen carefully to the segments on the RealNews network of Nader, Alperovitz and Hedges, they each have a way of evading this reality. Nader says give me a billion dollars and I will mobilize a thousand volunteers in each congressional district, and then the Center-Right will hear the "rumble of the people." Well, perhaps, I think it is growing and the response to Karen's comments at the Times is one measure of that. But that is one audience, we don't know how much further it extends. In other comments Nader wonders out loud whether "the people" today would respond the way they did in the 1960's and 1970's, when his organizations were a force and got things done inside Congress.<br /><br /><br /> Hedges says the tinder for revolution is to be found in downwardly mobile folks, former professionals, and the lost generation of college graduates without meaningful work and with high debts. <br /><br />Alperovtize says this is the most important time in America - the most frought - since our Revolution. He has an "all of the above" strategy, but his real hope is to build new participatory and ownership patterns in new cooperative and community based economic institutions and really shake up the scale at which economics and ecology works. It might take 30 years and he, just like Nader, says when you put successful concrete achievements in front of people at the local level, the left/right barriers I make such a large obstacle out of - I say they are irreconcilable - melt away in good old American pragmaticism...in many ways he sounds like Wendell Berry in his recent Jefferson Lecture...but Karen you have laid out the bitter and biting reality of the lives the middle on down lead...I don't know whether the time they ask for exists...or is fair to the pressures of economic reality.<br /><br />I don't think Hedges shares this view, and he has the existentially grimmer view of things. <br /><br />Enough for now, an overview of things on the left...from where I sit. fahrenheit451noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-79669135545658067922014-02-11T17:02:22.702-05:002014-02-11T17:02:22.702-05:00Great job, Karen. I only hope more people will be ...Great job, Karen. I only hope more people will be reading your blog as a result of your comments in the NYT. You're really doing wonderful work.James F Traynornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-87886334748523364002014-02-11T16:07:27.919-05:002014-02-11T16:07:27.919-05:00Karen,
You are a wonder!
You've succinctly c...Karen,<br /><br />You are a wonder!<br /><br />You've succinctly captured the happy-talk evil doing happening today under the mask of icing on the yummy bipartisan hope(less) cake.<br /><br />I've lost my heretofore all-too-limited ability to write equably and without wincing about this fraudulent bunch of neocon (at best) Dims, but you've made me "hopeful" that some will continue to document this and to fight on for the 99% who are more and more being smilingly dismissed as they are left out of all the "great for everyone" business deals (until the bills come due).<br /><br />The last cut in food stamps leaves many of us trying to subsist on less than $1 a meal while still putting out our resumes in hopes of procuring one of those mythical newly-created jobs.<br /><br />Thanks for all you've done to inspire us and carry on the mission of real hope for change.Cirzehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07070125217972397204noreply@blogger.com