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If only Americans would eat better food. Like broccoli. I stopped at a Shop-N-Go in New Jersey and I picked up some crowns. And today, I'm having crowns for breakfast. Good Morning.
It would be so much healthier if we were to eat broccoli for breakfast. I am talking about raw crowns but people eat horrible processed things. This is what you find in the "service station" or the "convenience store." The colorful outlets.
You know what I mean. I'm talking about the kind of food we call processed --- full of oils and sugars. Don't forget the flavor. And now --- color! There you go! Now wrap it up in a nice colorful package; people have to notice it. They won't be able not to. And, that way you can "compete" with the other corporations. Who are your enemy of course. That's one brutal competition to be sure. To be king of this mountain of junk --- the slag heap.
Now there's a term I remember from youth. It's vernacular but in my younger days at least we knew it was necessary to think. Big loss there. We never thought that use of mind would have a time limit. But now there's no point. Yes, I know the term's vernacular, mountain, slag, whatever, but even if we used the vernacular to get the point across I think it's alright to use vernacular you know, because it is speech, and in speech, the mind had a real point to look to.
On the other hand, YOU can go get yourself killed; and that's what'll happen, buddy, if you do not eat your broccolli for breakfast. You, buddy, can eat junk food, buddy. You do not have to think; you have that right. That is your right. Why you should think? That is so last season -- and out of style seasoning is something you no longer use anyways. You can go kill yourself with yer junk food. Your stomach does not have a mind. It does not control the capacity called choice. The one that makes choices is you yourself; you have made your choice and I'm not going to intervene. Except to say,
............Good morning. And,
____________________...............Wake Up..............._________________
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Product Line
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We are witness not only to candy canes, flying saucers, blogging, and other excesses but also: to the astounding success of capitalism and diversity, religious tolerance and modernity. This is our system of liberal modernity, as it can be called, which, it must be said, can be conceptually opposed to what one highly accomplished Georgetown University scholar calls "puritanism" (I am not sure I am exactly duplicating his intent, or his context, so I wont give the name), or, more broadly, to any kind of rigid, fundamentalist or conformist, or single-themed regime. (Yeah! -- puritans, in beards. NO! -- I just dissed Solzhenitsyn, Allen Ginsburg and the Amish. Confucius anyone? Berlin had it correct: liberal modernity is "maddening")
But why does this liberal modernity work? I hold that choice works only when the individual appropriates one. It only works when the individual gets his own choice. He also wraps it up, takes it home with him/her. "Choice" does not exist on a shelf. It exists when it becomes part of an individual life. This consumer-commercial life is satisfying when we bring it home. The puppy looks cute in the store too but it's a different matter when you take her home. Then your kids can be happy; then it can shit on the rug.
If you did not bring it home? None of this could happen. No point in letting it sit in the store forever, anyway. But I am not saying that if you bring Barbie home, she comes to life. And I am not saying the pet shop should not be subject to regulation (i.e. when the puppy is still in the store!). I'm not saying any of that. I am asking why this "choice" or what is called liberal modernity exists.
I'm asking why do stars come out of Merlin's beard and he isn't a puritan after all but a saint.
I'm saying the consumer product works because we can take it home --- we can make it a part of our lives.
We are witness not only to candy canes, flying saucers, blogging, and other excesses but also: to the astounding success of capitalism and diversity, religious tolerance and modernity. This is our system of liberal modernity, as it can be called, which, it must be said, can be conceptually opposed to what one highly accomplished Georgetown University scholar calls "puritanism" (I am not sure I am exactly duplicating his intent, or his context, so I wont give the name), or, more broadly, to any kind of rigid, fundamentalist or conformist, or single-themed regime. (Yeah! -- puritans, in beards. NO! -- I just dissed Solzhenitsyn, Allen Ginsburg and the Amish. Confucius anyone? Berlin had it correct: liberal modernity is "maddening")
But why does this liberal modernity work? I hold that choice works only when the individual appropriates one. It only works when the individual gets his own choice. He also wraps it up, takes it home with him/her. "Choice" does not exist on a shelf. It exists when it becomes part of an individual life. This consumer-commercial life is satisfying when we bring it home. The puppy looks cute in the store too but it's a different matter when you take her home. Then your kids can be happy; then it can shit on the rug.
If you did not bring it home? None of this could happen. No point in letting it sit in the store forever, anyway. But I am not saying that if you bring Barbie home, she comes to life. And I am not saying the pet shop should not be subject to regulation (i.e. when the puppy is still in the store!). I'm not saying any of that. I am asking why this "choice" or what is called liberal modernity exists.
I'm asking why do stars come out of Merlin's beard and he isn't a puritan after all but a saint.
I'm saying the consumer product works because we can take it home --- we can make it a part of our lives.
Wealthy Decision Makers - That's Rich
Rich people never have to pay for their mistakes. They can pay (s.i.c.) their way out of anything they do. Although they speak of their mistakes and lessons learned, something is missing.
They are facile. The speeches that concern notions of ethics, their talk of moral choices --- it is more than facile. It is a decency of talk. Talk is cheap -- very, very cheap. When morality is limited... we do not see any expenditiure of energy, meaning real energy; meaning in a physical sense of work, sweat. That involves also imperfection. Imperfection. It is the normal mileau.
So, imperf. is the environment we are working in; I want to see something physical happening here. Something expended (-not money). Pay in sweat.
I want you to do some work.
Exploiting labor is no longer fashionable, but, for a limited period of time capitalism meant that persons exchanged something. What do we mean by that? By "exchange"?
By living, by expending labor, we built this house. Now it is imperfect, but the time has come to define what it is --- or , how it shall be used.
We need to bring into focus the world we have created. You don't do it only in words. Note again that the humans they are imperfect (Neitzche said that).
Because we are imperfect, we act. In acting we build things. One imperfect person meets another. There is friction, or interaction, or something like a toehold on sticky paper --- something like that. There are friction. But the inconsistency and frictions are what give us toeholds, like those strip things on the stairs.
Not to mention drama. Feminists, say Butler, do not (should not) create a category out of "women" . We do not buy our way out of our moral responsibilities, or make excuses.
They are facile. The speeches that concern notions of ethics, their talk of moral choices --- it is more than facile. It is a decency of talk. Talk is cheap -- very, very cheap. When morality is limited... we do not see any expenditiure of energy, meaning real energy; meaning in a physical sense of work, sweat. That involves also imperfection. Imperfection. It is the normal mileau.
So, imperf. is the environment we are working in; I want to see something physical happening here. Something expended (-not money). Pay in sweat.
I want you to do some work.
Exploiting labor is no longer fashionable, but, for a limited period of time capitalism meant that persons exchanged something. What do we mean by that? By "exchange"?
By living, by expending labor, we built this house. Now it is imperfect, but the time has come to define what it is --- or , how it shall be used.
We need to bring into focus the world we have created. You don't do it only in words. Note again that the humans they are imperfect (Neitzche said that).
Because we are imperfect, we act. In acting we build things. One imperfect person meets another. There is friction, or interaction, or something like a toehold on sticky paper --- something like that. There are friction. But the inconsistency and frictions are what give us toeholds, like those strip things on the stairs.
Not to mention drama. Feminists, say Butler, do not (should not) create a category out of "women" . We do not buy our way out of our moral responsibilities, or make excuses.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
U. S. Policy. Maybe. So Far As We Know.
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75 shot by "govt. 'armed gangs'." (1) As in Libya, the police and/or army is massacring its people. This is their tactic to retain power -- they resort to direct violence, attempting to intimidate their own people by shooting into crowds or shooting whomever they have a whim to.
We do not necessarily need to regard this as abnormal behavior, or call it "abnormal." The Syrian government has maintained public order, for years. During those years life in Ssyria was what would have been termed "normal." How could these persons doing the shooting have become suddenly abnormal? They are the same persons as they were the day before. They may be showing their true colors. But they are no more abnormal now than they were before.
In 1932 the Germans were respectable persons. In a few years a raging menace.
Sen. Lindsay Graham now suggests we bomb Tripoli to make Ghaddafi's inner circle "wonder if this is their last day." (This is more or less the meaning, I might not have an exact quote) Is that abnormal? He is suggesting to kill various persons. This does not bother him.
He is a Republican and he is from the South. And he doesn't mind killing people.
Is there any reason to believe that Sen. Lindsey Graham is any different from Ghaddafi, or Syrian President Bashar? --- except that he is "our" guy and not "their" guy? If there is any distinction between one killer and the other --- what is it? Who can specify what that is? Sen. Graham is saying this just because he feels like it. He does not know Muhammar Ghaddafi (I am presuming this in my mind). Nor has Ghaddafi attacked Americans --- on our soil. There is no indication he will do that, so what gives Graham the right to?
Candy Crowley interpreted Graham's comments to suggest that he wants the inner circle around Ghaddafi to (you know -- peel off or) defect.
I do not get that either. Defect to what, exactly? Being Graham's friend? --- now that Graham has tried to kill them they will be friends? That is how a dictator thinks. Or maybe they will turn more pro-U.S. after escaping by happenstance from the bombs our side dropped?
I think he's a Southern-fried asshole, actually! OK; That's what I think. That's my impression about Graham, from hearing his pasty face utter a few words on international T. V. or on CNN. But I am not going to try to kill him, I have no business doing that.
I think it would be better if someone showed a little sense. In our (U.S.) lack of a precise and principled policy (not to mention our lack of having a few more marbles in our heads), we should have limited ourselves to protecting civilians. That was the whole idea, as the govt. obtained an agreement with the Arab League to "protect civilians." We had the right idea, but I think that now we are going too far. If we have to move to protect civilians that is fine; but do so in a principled manner.
As a nation, we need to decide who we are. It is because we don't know or did not do it that we decide to fudge and change things all the time.
-- - - - -- -
(1) The sequence of words enquoted taken off the television screen, as a caption displayed by CNN
75 shot by "govt. 'armed gangs'." (1) As in Libya, the police and/or army is massacring its people. This is their tactic to retain power -- they resort to direct violence, attempting to intimidate their own people by shooting into crowds or shooting whomever they have a whim to.
We do not necessarily need to regard this as abnormal behavior, or call it "abnormal." The Syrian government has maintained public order, for years. During those years life in Ssyria was what would have been termed "normal." How could these persons doing the shooting have become suddenly abnormal? They are the same persons as they were the day before. They may be showing their true colors. But they are no more abnormal now than they were before.
In 1932 the Germans were respectable persons. In a few years a raging menace.
Sen. Lindsay Graham now suggests we bomb Tripoli to make Ghaddafi's inner circle "wonder if this is their last day." (This is more or less the meaning, I might not have an exact quote) Is that abnormal? He is suggesting to kill various persons. This does not bother him.
He is a Republican and he is from the South. And he doesn't mind killing people.
Is there any reason to believe that Sen. Lindsey Graham is any different from Ghaddafi, or Syrian President Bashar? --- except that he is "our" guy and not "their" guy? If there is any distinction between one killer and the other --- what is it? Who can specify what that is? Sen. Graham is saying this just because he feels like it. He does not know Muhammar Ghaddafi (I am presuming this in my mind). Nor has Ghaddafi attacked Americans --- on our soil. There is no indication he will do that, so what gives Graham the right to?
Candy Crowley interpreted Graham's comments to suggest that he wants the inner circle around Ghaddafi to (you know -- peel off or) defect.
I do not get that either. Defect to what, exactly? Being Graham's friend? --- now that Graham has tried to kill them they will be friends? That is how a dictator thinks. Or maybe they will turn more pro-U.S. after escaping by happenstance from the bombs our side dropped?
I think he's a Southern-fried asshole, actually! OK; That's what I think. That's my impression about Graham, from hearing his pasty face utter a few words on international T. V. or on CNN. But I am not going to try to kill him, I have no business doing that.
I think it would be better if someone showed a little sense. In our (U.S.) lack of a precise and principled policy (not to mention our lack of having a few more marbles in our heads), we should have limited ourselves to protecting civilians. That was the whole idea, as the govt. obtained an agreement with the Arab League to "protect civilians." We had the right idea, but I think that now we are going too far. If we have to move to protect civilians that is fine; but do so in a principled manner.
As a nation, we need to decide who we are. It is because we don't know or did not do it that we decide to fudge and change things all the time.
-- - - - -- -
(1) The sequence of words enquoted taken off the television screen, as a caption displayed by CNN
Monday, April 25, 2011
Economists Say...
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It is USA Today that informs us this morning that (nearly) eight out of ten economists say they are less optimistic than they were three months ago. Americans are usually very optimistic. This is brought home to us when we read Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book, "Bright-Sided," which underlines optimist by means of contrast, sort of the way the 9-11 attacks clarified or should have clarified what our real values are and so forth.
But, if they are less "optimistic," as the news put it, what really is the other side of that optimism? Only a few obscure writers are discussing a "Capitalism v.2" or a "re-framing of capitalism."
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the whole cause of the lack of optimism is put down to "high energy prices."
That is it? No more?
It is USA Today that informs us this morning that (nearly) eight out of ten economists say they are less optimistic than they were three months ago. Americans are usually very optimistic. This is brought home to us when we read Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book, "Bright-Sided," which underlines optimist by means of contrast, sort of the way the 9-11 attacks clarified or should have clarified what our real values are and so forth.
But, if they are less "optimistic," as the news put it, what really is the other side of that optimism? Only a few obscure writers are discussing a "Capitalism v.2" or a "re-framing of capitalism."
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the whole cause of the lack of optimism is put down to "high energy prices."
That is it? No more?
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Sunday, April 24 - U. S. Libya Policy
On o4-o6 this blog commented on the Libya situation. I will make more comments on another post in the next few days, but here is a link for the meantime:
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/5689-growing-the-war-in-libya
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/5689-growing-the-war-in-libya
Saturday, April 23, 2011
What Kind?
The Republican candidates, whom CNN says are "coy" about committing, do not seem to have any ideas. They do not seem to be strong candidates. The United States has evolved a certain kind of society. I definitely believe that. The problem is only that we do not know exactly what kind it is.
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