Politics and Paul

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     A "Pan-African" is an individual that enthusiastically identifies as black. Cain isn't one. But, when he was accused of being a sex pervert, he quickly reverted to a kind of folksy, and rather more Afro-centric, speech. He may not be Pan-African but he did sound more populist.
     But he does not seem to be a populist, either. He is about business. OK, then, what in tarnation is he? And what is up wit' da folksy speech patterns, ever so conveniently placed on the tongue? Cain sounds to me like a man in the practice of putting on the hat that is convenient. (See NYRB for the story of his high school music career which may, or may not, be relevant to our narrative.)
     Obama did this. He started out talking more like an elitist. THen he changed it, and picked up a lot more votes -- simply by playing it more folksier. A few vocal inflections made all the difference. Come to think of it, Paul Lawrence Dunbar used vernacular in the 1890s! A Pan-African is someone who is really committed to something: he is black; he is definitively not white. Playing on one's race for policical expediency is a cheap gimmick. This seems the essential gimmick, a very subtle, embedded way they both play on race to get elected. Obama is the Harvard man. He may have more credentials for being a leader. He is obviously more cosmopolitan. Despite that, it would seem to be the case that there are gimmicks, in both cases. What that shows is a certain shallowness.
     
     Of all the candidates, the most genuine of the candidates seems like Ron Paul. Everyone else is phony compared to him. So, Paul has the genuineness. That's undeniable. The man is not a fake. He sits there believing in something; and on those core beliefs he doesn't falter.

(Slightly re-written post-Shari's comment)

The Comfortable Places of the World

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In most (not all) places that one goes when one is out in public there is the implicit idea, an idea there, hanging in the air (the atmospheric ideology), telling us the leisure and comfort of life is to be found in the private sphere, the "private sector." Generally, of course, persons do find leisure and comfort in their private areas. Of course, yes, they do. They find leisure and comfort in private, and normally that means, quite simply, the home. But not in this world! Oooooo.....no.....yesterday "private" meant at home.  Of course now it means the "private" -- "business" -- sector. Now which wag came up with that? The "private" business sphere. But what is business? -nobody knows, dahling, nobody knows.

     Anyways at the bar (Kitty O'Shea's to be exact) at the Hilton Hotel on south Michigan is where I am scratching this onto a white piece of paper so it is definitely some privately-owned business that is your only shot for finding out some comfort, leisure. And you know, they are so friendly in those places. I want to open a cafe' called "The Burned Bean" where everything is burned and awful. And the wairtress chews gums and says nastily, "what'll it be, bud?"
     So, the only place left to go for comfort, outside of your home, if you have one, is yet another world called "private."

     Americans as a people are known for being "friendly." In fact, it is as if the private sphere, the business sphere, were their own public property or transplanted on top of it like a fried egg. They are obsessed with kindness and niceness and comfort to the extent of sometimes forgetting to shave. But these are our folks. I'm so loyal. We no longer find comfort in our own family quarters. Where do Americans find it? They thirst for it in commercial establishments, which somehow seems kind of inside-out. This is somewhat disturbing. How can you pay money for that? How can there be "comfort food"?

     But wait: the money thing is important. In that earlier part of the timeline, of a mercantile, commercial society, they find comfort at home but that means where money is not spent. But now, the italics have turned upside down, and, they do it in public (Ooooops...private) places where a latte is four dollars, a hotel room 2 or 300. That is what is "comfortable"?

     I dunno.

Soul

I keep writing "sould." I think that was, or "Soul'd Out" was the title.. of an R&B album, once, some time back.

OK. Here goes the post. It's about the tendency to organize society, or to favor the idea of it, which is perhaps a little different.

     Some persons may in different ways like organizational things and some persons may see an increase in this aspect of life. The conservative view points to this. They talk about "liberals," or "big government."
     And  that's just who we are talking about-----those guys. The aim of such persons is to increase the organizedness of stuff.
     Socialists (whatever they are) do generally advocate more organization.
     But it is hard to see how we can intentionally make society more, or less, organized. Whether we have a position on this --- whether we want the society to be more, or less, organized we should accede to the fact that it is organized.
      Some may want more of that organization.
      Well, I do not say that. I am more saying that like societies have organization --- this exists --- let's admit it! And ours should be called "capitalist," or capitalism. Therefore it is a capitalist society. It is a capitalist-ic society if you like. I am cool with either of those two formulations: capitalist, capitalistic --- either of those two are fine. And so are you, if you are from Alaska and your name starts with "P."
     So, capitalism is the form of "social organization." Got it? It is not only a formal, or business system though. Oh no. It is organized on the cultural level, the social, informal level. And of course it is also organized on a more formal level, the business level. So, you have a society and it is both formal and informal, cultural and "economic" or "market." It has business and politics and society. Society works as a whole. It cannot work any other way. Any attempt to make it work any other way is doomed; these are not choices that the Bank of International Settlements can make (those people are fools; I do not even pay any attention to that).
     There may, I will accede, be a variety of subjective viewpoints and approaches to this matter of society and whether it should be the main topic for conversation. But here we are speaking (openly) about that, and I admit it. We are discussing the matter of human social organization, or society.
     We are more and more integrated, globalized, or "interdependent." The social basis has been capitalism, or has been expressed through capitalism. And the interdependence has been increasing ---- with globalization.
     Capitalism, i.e. business, needs to be guided (when I say "guided" I am thinking "regulated," so this is the pro-regulation or "mixed economy" position) in ways both formal and informal
     But (to change the subject a little) how does the system exist? How does it "actually" exist? It exists in cultural terms, and, in cultural terms, it exists as a system where action, or freedom, is expressed in terms of the commercial activities of work and entrepreneurship. At the same time, in the system as it is now, the actual qwuantity of money/goods is increasing all the time. That spells trouble! It means that capitalism no longer supports social values; conversely, social values no longer support capitalism. The essential "socialist" core of capitalism is torn out. The system loses its heart. The system becomes "mere money-making" ---- a hollow, empty ritual.
     When capitalism loses its soul we all die.

(Greider's simple phrase, "Soul of Capitalism," tends to come to mind lately)

Hunch (pt. 2)

Why are persons willing to ignore their inner hunch? Why do sales and discounts cause them to erase their doubts?

It is because the persons for whom it works are feeling spiritually incomplete, and persons who are feeling spiritually incomplete (i.e. neurotic) are willing to settle for some compromise.

That's the reason. All those persons are spiritually incomplete. I've got to go now. There's a sale at K-Mart

Icelandic Fisherman portrayed by Lewis

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     He wasn't a loser. He was practically the top fisherman/boat captain on the hunk of land called "Iceland." Ahoy Mate! Iceland, relatively speaking, is closer to the U. S. of America so that must be why American banks intelligently chose him to act as middleman for their loans to Argentina.

     Back in Iceland (brrrr....) there is a professional fisherman who became a currency speculator.

      Michael Lewis ("Boomerang") is a good writer. I'm not kidding. There are a lot of nutty things going on in the sphere of money and the social lives of those who live financially.

     Lewis does ask a few good questions.

     It seems to me that we expend an awful lot of wasted energy pretending that the world makes sense. Of course, in the end it does ---- it must. In the meantime, it's crazy.

     There are a lot of irrational persons in the world. Some may be psychotic, particularly some in business and finance. I do believe this. I think we have to quote Paul McCartney or John Lennon, now, that "the banker never wears a mac." (That's 'raincoat' but in Cockney or Liverpoolesque or something.)

     Literary critic Edmund Wilson criticized "mere" money-making, and did so a long time ago ---- summer of 1929, in a letter. (the phrase "mere money-making" occurs towards the end of "letters, vol. 1", and he was one of the top critics of his day so what more do you want out of me?)

     We need to be more helpful. We do. All we do is criticize persons. Or, if they are not so bad ---- if we are not criticizing the hell out of them ---- we are patting them on the back. Ever notice  this? We actually become friends with them! We are telling them, "you are great entrepreneurs," "You are 'clever' financiers," said the president.

     All that great finance stuff was done already, by the Rothschilds, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. So, let's get over it.

     He wasn't a loser, he was one of the youngest fishing boat captains in Iceland ---- a master fisherman. What kind of guy was he? He would be a very competitive one. In the country (is it really named that?) named "Iceland" (ha ha ha) what kind of person goes into commercial fishing? He would be entering a field of thousands of other healthy males competing for whatever posts there may be, on the piers, or boats, or whatever it was. In the book there is a description of fishing. Whatever fish are extracted from the ocean, going all out, in all weather, as aggressive protestant-ethic persons with maximal competitive work ethic, these animals even after all these processes are only as good as the market fish price. That fish flesh is at the mercy of the world market.

     Is it really such a jump, after all? ---- fisherman to hedge fund? Is that as weird of a transition as it sounded like it was at first? It is practically the same thing. It does have a weird side ---- but, that's capitalism. Capitalism is weird, at least in the form it now exists in.

                                      part two

     Still, I always say that capitalism is what we have ---- this is our system. Regulation is something that should be considered. It should be a normal part of the system. (We always end up regulating in any case, of course. It should always be considered.) It is wrong to say it is the exception to the rule ---- "the" rule? Right. To a rule that someone cooked up, that a so-called "conservative" created out of thin air. Yes, that is what they did. They cooked up a really weird theory, they did it on purpose. And, we accepted it.
     Capitalism is weird yet it is our system. Capitalism is always hybrid. It will always have two parts. This is something we must learn.

     Regulation is hard work but that does not mean there is anything inherently wrong with it. It is one side of hybrid capitalism, and its natural complement is the other side, which is called non-regulation, the "free market" or the dynamic of markets. These two sides have been inherent in capitalistic phenomena for a long time. They have both existed, together, for about two hundred years. The decoupling process has been ideological, and it is a mistake. You should never just look at one side of capitalism and not the other. Ths is because capitalism is a hybrid. It (the system itself) won't work otherwise. "Regulation" -- unlike Joe Wilson's wife -- is "fair game." It should always be under consideration. When we have to regulate, we do. 
     This doesn't mean it is easy. It's a lot harder than uttering free-market claptrap. You have to pay attention to what you are doing. You should not be distracted by that conservative theoretical claptrap. You would need to ignore this stuff that is always coming in your ear; you really must concentrate totally on how to regulate. To do this, you do not concentrate on how not to regulate, get it? You accept the responsibility of regulating; you use a lot of skill doing so. 
     And, in light of this, I think we can see just about what it is that happened. A gimmick is always an easier thing, always the easier thing, right? The simplistic and dead wrong "conservative" version/vision of the lazy boneheads won and took sway. (Assuming we have employ the best persons at the job, that job of governing capitalism should not be so hard that it could not be done.)

     Conservatives always seem to want to see only one side, you know. And you know I am getting sick of this crap. They seem to make less sense every year. At one time communism met its fate. It was blown up. It was blown out of the water but at that time it made more sense than the sense capitalism makes now. In the last period of Americana, let's say since the fifties ----- forces called "conservative" (I would have preferred "malevolent nitwit") have done the worst thing they could have done, and made the worst choice of all. They made the worst choice they could have made, they made the perfect storm. That is what I am saying the so-called "anti-regulation" view (or "view," and I add the quote marks because, you see, it does not even make sense, I mean semantically, or grammatically, logically, or any other way). Theirs is the worst argument, the perfect storm. Their "view"? Their point? We should never regulate. Never, ever? Do you really mean  that, Milton?

     The stance we always see from them is one that says only one side is right. But conservatives do this all the time. Nevertheless, when it comes to capitalism, they are wrong about it: dead wrong.

Comic T.V. Movie Hulk Strip Literature Review

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     If they do not like something, they kill it. That's how scared they are of themselves, of their own worthless, undedicated lives. They surround the mystery of rebellion or disobedience with whatever they have that seems to defend their own ---- Walls to keep out truths. Some truths.
     And what do they love? I'll give you the answer: They love themselves ---- And only themselves. This movie illustrates that all the power in San Francisco cannot keep man from himself.

                                     ("Incredible Hulk" movie)

     Mankind is ignorant. Yet mankind has "civilization." In whose hands is civilization?
     The military man is impressed with civilization not for the right reasons, not for its civilizing influence, but rather for the power that lies within civilization. He himself is in doubt; he is confused. He says he has morals and ideas but he reaches for a bigger gun. The general in the movie just wants to blow up everything. Everytime Hulk gets bigger he too gets bigger.
     His power does him no good, because although he sits in (original wording: sits astride) civilization, he will never know what (any of it) is worth.
     Nothing except civilization has power and yet civilization itself does not have power if it cannot comprehend the greater purpose for which it was created. Civilization is a "shell." We find ourselves within a shell.
     When we find ourselves living within a shell we have to create some meaning within there. Civilization (or, for example, "the friendly confines" of Wrigley Field) is useless to those who cannot find value within the confines or parameters of the container they are living inside of. Those particular members of the human species are merely stunned, they are confused. And they gravitate towards fortifying the wall of their enclosure. This goes on, even as for them, there isn't really much there that is worth all this effort of protecting. And this is how the police and soldiers, and at the higher level, judges for example (who cannot reason their way through a case or put a crime into its context and seem to think it proves some kind of principle to give a weird and foolish Illinois governor fourteen years in prison for being, basically, weird and foolish), and generals, at the pinnacle of power, act based on confusion and fear.
     The future of civilization may well hang on a thread --- and that thread is the ability to project some kind of decency, some kind of mercy --- into the uppermost reaches where the elites dwell.

     Now, if Obama would only stop those drones...

Intuitive hunch (I am being cheated)

The customer has a continual sense of "I am being cheated." He has this little voice somewhere. He has this subtle feeling: "I am getting swindled." It is just there as a part of the person's psychology. He has a hunch.
     Now comes the counteractive force. it is counteracted by 10% off, 50% off, special discounts for YOU, etc.

     That sounds pretty simplistic and crass, so why does it work?

(see tomorrow's post)