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Today's
Stories
April 3, 2008
Peter Morici
The Deepening Recession
April 2, 2008
Diane Farsetta
Indian
Point on the Potomac
Harry Browne
Bertie
Ahern Laid Low by Secretary
Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer
George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves
Col. Dan Smith
The
Militarization of America
Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism
Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland
Bernard Chazelle
Saving the American Left
Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell
April 1, 2008
Jeff Leys
Fracturing
the Peace to End the War
Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg
Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense
Budget
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia
Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels
Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader
Michael J.
Smith
Woolly Mamet
Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments
Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity
Website of
the Day
Support Briana!
March 31, 2008
Mike Whitney
Dead
on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown
Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later
Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans
Betsy Roberts
/ Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup
Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones
Website of
the Day
Five Years Too Many
March 29 / 30, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
When
They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman
and Rev. Hagee
William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
Robert Fantina
Iraq
Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton
John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's
Oil
Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context
Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making
Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train
Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers
Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump
and Consumers Sour
Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!
Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War
Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American
Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland
Tales"
David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un
Website of
the Weekend
Hidden Iraq
March 28, 2008
Saul Landau
Growing
Dread About Iraq
Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy
Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods
Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from
Guantánamo
Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service
Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception
March 27, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Basra
Erupts
Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates
Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"
Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?
William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq
John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?
Robert Weissman
How Things Work
Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen
Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table
David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers
John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction
Website of
the Day
Going Out for an English
March 26, 2008
Stan Cox
The
Germs Next Door
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays: Welfare on Wall Street
Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans
Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market
William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra
Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel
Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire
Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues
Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media
Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs
Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs
Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
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Apri1
3, 2008
Rage Fatigue, Plastic
Dirt and Happy Hour in America
The
Audacity of Depression
By JOE BAGEANT
One of the best things about the hundred
or so book festivals in America is that, with luck, a writer
can manage to get drunk with some of his or her readers. And
with more luck, the readers pick up the tab. Bear in mind that
90% of all real writers, people for whom writing is their sole
income, spend much of their time counting their change in the
rest room of the hotels where they are being put up while on
tour. Believe me, there are better rackets than writing.
So here I am at the Virginia
Festival of the Book copping a smoke on the back dining patio
of the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville with one of my readers --
a somewhat elegant sixty-plus blonde who runs a small public
library financial support group down in ancient marshy Northumberland
County, Virginia. Created in 1648, it is the area James A. Michener
wrote about in Chesapeake, and a place where, she tells
me, periwinkles planted three hundred years ago on the graves
of slaves still bloom. My wife, a historical librarian doing
colonial African-American research, tells me these periwinkle
marked slave graves can be found throughout Virginia.
Immensely energetic and a lifelong
activist for literacy and informed thought, this cigarette voiced
Northumberland librarian has built the county's new little library,
and even managed to coax enough money out of the local government
for two employees,. In a county with a population of 12,000,
that's no small political feat.
At the moment though, politically
speaking, the Obama-Hillary dirt fight is in full fury, so I
asked the obligatory question of the week, "Who will you
vote for?"
"Oh, Obama, I guess. It's
so hard to get excited over the elections. Lately I've been just
plain depressed," she said.
"About what?"
"Oh just everything. It
seems to have become so pointless in America, as if we are entering
a Dark Age. I've come to wonder why I do anything at all."
On that melancholy note, we
return to the lounge to join my wife for that last drink. The
next one always of course being the "last one," in
the early stages of these situations, before all pretense is
dropped and people start taking off their clothes or falling
off those infernal high stools that replaced good old fashioned
chairs -- the kind where your feet reach the floor at all times
and with arms you could grip if the room starts spinning.
Over the past couple of years
I've had hundreds of encounters with reading Americans -- and
by encounters I mean conversations, not falling off chairs --
which is to say book loving, thinking people like the Northumberland
librarian, people of every stripe. They have ranged from the
good ole boy Texas electrician who took me to a real smoke choked
pool-table-and-concrete-floor joint to professors of literature
and Washington policy wonks who actually use the little red cocktail
napkin that accompanies their martinis.
During this period I have noticed
a change in the nature of discussion with these previously unmet
readers. Four years ago, much of it centered on the outrageousness
of the Bush administration, the stomach turning criminality of
the Iraq War, Cheney The Fanged Man of Wax, with a little rage
at our planetary ecocide thrown into the mix. In other words,
about what you might expect from a baby roasting alien commie
readership such as mine, made up of such folks as school teachers,
union members, sociology profs and other congenital malcontents,
the sort of people who resent things like student strip searches
in public high schools (HR 5295, The Student Teacher Safety
Act of 2006, which, to its credit, at least bans cavity searches
by faculty. You gotta be a cop to do that in our public schools)
and other subversive types.
Lately though, I don't hear
so much outrage. In fact, the readers seem to be suffering from
what someone aptly called "rage fatigue." Which is
another way of saying the bastards have simply worn us out. And
it's true.
I am not kidding when I say
rage fatigue victims have fallen into an ongoing mid-level depression.
(Looks to me like the whole country has, but then I'm no mental
health expert.) The less depressed victims can be found lurking
near the edges of the Obama cult, consoling themselves that a
soothing and/or  charismatic orator is better
than nothing. Obama may yet be borne through the White House
portico by a Democratic host of seraphim, but he cannot do much
without the consent of a bought and paid for Congress. Only George
Bush can do that, and we can only hope God broke the mold after
he made George. And like whoever else wins the presidency, Obama
can never acknowledge any significant truth, such as that the
nation is waaaaay beyond being just broke, and is even a net
debtor nation to Mexico, or that the greatest touch-me-not in
the U.S. political flower garden, the "American lifestyle,"
is toast. But then, we really do not expect political truth,
but rather entertainment in a system where, as Frank Zappa said,
politics is merely "the entertainment branch of industry."
Still, millions of Americans
do grasp at The Audacity of Hope, a meaningless marketing
slogan of the publishing industry if ever there was one. At least
it has the word Audacity in it, something millions of folks are
having trouble conjuring up the least shred of these days. And
there is good old fashioned "Hope" of course -- that
murky, undefined belief that some unknown force or magical unseen
power will reverse the national condition -- will deliver us
from what every bit of evidence indicates is irreversible, if
not politically, then economically and ecologically: Collapse.
Compounding everything is the
fact that it is quite human and even pragmatic to passively accept
reality as it is. Until it's too late to do anything. As my late
friend Virgil the philosophical backhoe operator summed it up:
"If we fucked everything up so bad tryin' to do our best,
maybe we oughtta just leave'er be for a while. Quit thinking
about it so much."
More Band-Aids for the trained
chickens, please!
Virgil may be popping open
a Keystone Light lager somewhere in heaven, or in maybe a much
warmer venue. I dunno. But people are thinking about it more
than ever. Among sentient people everywhere there is a deep,
visceral unease, and among those most aware there is genuinely
acute suffering. I hear this expressed quite articulately not
only in places such as this Omni Hotel "writers' lounge,"
but in working and middle class living rooms and in emails from
Americans and around the world.
Naturally, the bunny and cupcake
set of Americans are still oblivious, or at least pretend to
be, but even at the more inchoate and private level, there is
a growing awareness that things are going very wrong, and doing
so on an incomprehensively massive and complex scale. There is
the feeling that even if what is happening could be made comprehensible
to the majority of humanity, to all those people just trying
to keep afloat on the planet, from Zimbabwe to Flint, Michigan,
overall it is unstoppable. Unfixable except in the fleeting media/politics
Band-Aid sense, and then only in locales rich enough to afford
the illusionary Band-Aid fixes politicians dream up when they
write their campaign "plans for change."
All of which is horseshit,
of course, since real change would entail undoing most of the
machinery of planetary destruction and extreme pressure to standardize
humanity that we have come to know as modern civilization and
mass society -- halting, then reversing the momentum this monolith
has achieved.
We now live as the technoculture's
subjects, not its masters and will from here on out as viral
technology mediates, homogenizes and monetizes human experience
worldwide, in ever more remote corners. I watch it regularly
in the Third World, where the power of gadgets such as cell phones
is wiping out the core foundations of indigenous or longstanding
cultures within a decade or two. The global machine's technological
nervous system and production musculature, the techno grid now
embedded in the world, grows in quantum fashion to control every
aspect of our lives deeper and more thoroughly than is imaginable
by the folks living those lives. It's so pervasive we don't feel
it at all.
For instance, I just hit the
ATM machine in this hotel for forty bucks. And in doing so I
joined the Manhattan book editor, the black Carib village fisherman
in Dangriga, Central America and the taxi driver in Capetown,
South Africa in performing the same activity. We all stand submissively
before the global ATM machine network like trained chickens pecking
the correct colored buttons to release our grains of corn. Freedom,
and to a large extent joy, as we understand it in our common
technoculture, is mostly just the grid's monetized consumer offerings,
each with its own type of packaging, its own technologically
produced overlay of commercial skin. These choices, by the way,
do not include the non-uniform products or experience, unauthorized
products or joys such as hashish or deviant sex. Not officially
at least, but perhaps when technoculture solves the uniform packaging
and delivery problem
If anybody solves that problem,
it will be the Japanese. There seem to be no bigger suckers for
technoculture than the people who have given the world plastic
dirt ("half as dense as and a thousand times cleaner than
real dirt") the UFO-detecting keychain, the online lie-detector
and the hydroelectric toilet, which "assesses what variety
of waste you've just put into it." Technoculture is stressful
enough, but obsessing over how clean or dense dirt is, and assessing
the varieties of you bodily waste (last time I looked there were
only two) well, there may be a certain justice in the Japanese
suffering the highest levels of anxiety, stress, and depression.
It's so bad that according to Dr. Kunio Kitamura, director of
the Japan Family Planning Association, "Japanese people
simply aren't having sex, and the suicide rate has been rising
rapidly."
Personally, I am not having much sex either, but that has not
yet pushed me to toward suicidalism and probably never will.
After age sixty sex became perhaps my fifth highest priority,
just below the availability of cheap beer or maybe even a double
bourbon after six PM, which of course has a helluva lot to do
with that fifth priority and its likelihood. All of which is
more than you cared to know, I am sure.
Sucking the cuff in Totoland
"Eventually the system
will reach a point where the social cue is 'integration'--where
the universal dependence of all moments on all other moments
makes the talk of causality obsolete. It is idle to search for
what might have been a cause within a monolithic society."
-- Theodor Adorno
In other words, Teddy boy,
a totalitarian society. Not a nice word, according to
our Western Civ instructors. An ironic one too, considering that
Americans and Europeans sowed so much of its original seed. But
the reality is that totalitarian society (dubbed "Totoland"
in my household in a grim effort toward mockery: Dear Dorothy,
fuck you and your little dog too! Signed, Bill Gates) is already
here. And most of the planet accepts that as long as nobody next
door is getting beheaded and at least some grains of corn keep
dropping out of that ATM machine. Such is the belief in technology's
supposed production efficiency in dealing with the supply and
demand problems of this world's six billion.
That belief will remain because the technology will remain. Until
it collapses along with the corporate aristocracy that make and
own it. Otherwise, it cannot be dismantled without dismantling
the world as we have made it and we cannot undo our own evolutionary
species trajectory. Regardless of what the New Agers and Earth
worshipping goddess cultists believe, we cannot haul six billion
people back into pre-technology or support them in any natural
sustainable fashion. Most of the world's common people accept
this, however unconsciously, thus the lack of protests and counter
efforts on any meaningful scale. The new totalitarianism is its
own justification, and nobody in America or Europe is going to
kick up much sand so long as the Darfurs and Haitis remain on
the goddamned TV screen where they belong.
At the same time, those empowered
to do what little can be done, the world's aristocrats, do what
they have always done: surf the crest of power and wealth with
their dicks pointed into the sunset of their civilization and
their heads up their asses. A delighted nation cheers as a brunette
corporate aspirant sucks on Donald Trumps pant leg on the Donald
Trump Show. ("Ya gotta really want it baby!") As a
hobby, the guy owns The Miss Universe Organization, Miss USA
and Miss Teen USA pageants. He'll never want for pants suckers.
Meanwhile, I've got forty ATM
bucks that have to last me two days at this book bash.
A new Dark Age? Hell, why
not?
"A new barbarism, illiteracy
and impoverishment of language, new kinds of poverty, merciless
remodeling of opinion by media, immiseration of the mind, obsolescence
of the soul. Massified, standardizing modes, in every area of
life, relentlessly re-enact the actual control program of modernity.
Capitalism did not create our world; the machine did."
-- Jean-François Lyotard
I've painted a grim picture
for sure, made worse by claiming that hope is a sucker's game,
even a religion for millions of "people of faith" who
believe hope and faith are the same thing. Ah hope! That fuzzy
hearted Hallmark world of mass produced sentiment and emotions,
even about "bereavement," a world where thinking is
regarded as a rat in the larder of bourgeois smugness. Thinking
gnaws away at everything so relentlessly, until it finally breaks
a tooth on one truth or another. And one of those truths is that
the technology enabling those digital greeting cards that play
"Happy Birthday" is systematically destroying nature
and toxifying and maiming the millions of drudgery filled souls
whose sole purpose for existence is industrial.
I'm convinced we are watching
Lyotard's illiteracy and impoverishment of language and merciless
remodeling of opinion by media and "massified" standardizing
in action. I could be wrong -- my wife and kids assure me I am
wrong about most things. But I have at least one scholarly author
type on my side, Dr. Morris Berman, who argues that we are indeed
seeing the approach of a new Dark Age. I'm willing to bet that
the tens of millions living on less than a dollar a day or any
of the women and children sold into the world's multibillion-dollar
sex-slave trafficking (including those under American auspices
of Dyncorp and Halliburton subsidiaries like KBR) feel that it's
here already. Not that anyone is asking them or anyone else in
the Third World.
Living as I do much of the
year in a Third World village, watching daily the cost of the
American lifestyle on the village's people, the technocultural
cheapening of their lives, physical hunger, I feel guilty even
being in such a posh hotel as the Omni. I should be back in
Central America finishing up the water and sanitation project
I recently started there (and probably would be if I were not
out of money). Yet, through the patio's glass door I can see
then people round my table, the Northumberland librarian, the
writer Tom Miller whose moving testimonies of Latino immigrants
open up worlds unseen by white Americans, my own good wife who
brings to life the truth of slavery by excavating memories in
an amnesiac America These are people who understand that human
life is short and history is long, and that their humanly elegant
efforts will not only go unheralded by that history, but mostly
go unacknowledged in their own darkening time, and be all but
eradicated by the sheer impoverishment of language and literacy
in their native country during a New American Dark Age that comes
cloaked in glittering technology instead of a coarse woolen cowl.
Such unassuming and dedicated people are among our best.
This sordid American drama,
the one I am calling a Dark Age, will in all likelihood not
be completed until well into this century or the next, with a
slew of increasingly nasty episodes along the way. Everyone here
in the hotel lounge will say goodbye to this world long before
America says the Big Goodbye.
Until then, we are left to play out the game day by day. That
being the case, we should elect to play it out with the best
among us, the ones on humanity's side, that hidden and unheralded
aristocracy those quiet lamp lighters making their way
through the deepening dusk of American civilization.
E. M. Forster described them
as, "Not an aristocracy of power, but an aristocracy of
the sensitive, considerate and the plucky. Its members are to
be found in all nations and classes and through the ages, and
they know each other when they meet. Authority, seeing their
value, tries to net them and to utilize them But they slip through
the net and are gone; when the door is shut they are no longer
in the room; Their temple is the Holiness of the Heart's Imagination,
and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide
open world."
In this they are deathless.
Like periwinkles.
Joe Bageant is the author of Deer
Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War,
from Random House/Crown about working class America. Bageant
is also a contributer to Red State Rebels: Resistance in the
Heartland edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, forthcoming
this spring from AK Press. A complete archive of his online work,
along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject
of class may be found at: http://www.joebageant.com.
Feel free to contact him at:
joebageant@joebageant.com.
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