Psychopolitik 2.0

So here’s some appropriate music for it:

See you next year.

If I still gave a fuck about the situation in Israel, I’d write something like this*.  Thanks Tim.

(* – except for the following: Strike the line starting with “As Israel’s most important friend…” and the sentence immediately after.  Replace with approximately “No surprise there, we are talking about a State after all.  When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  Explain again why this is any of the business of the US?”.)

Edit: Greenwald notes that in polls on the subject us plebes overwhelmingly favor butting out — while our alleged representatives overwhelingly favor the opposite — and adds the following (emphasis all his):

By itself, the degree of full-fledged, absolute agreement — down to the syllable — among America’s political leaders is striking, even when one acknowledges the constant convergence between the leadership of both parties.  But it becomes even more striking in light of the bizarre fact that the consensus view — that America must unquestioningly stand on Israel’s side and support it, not just in this conflict but in all of Israel’s various wars — is a view which 7 out of 10 Americans reject.  Conversely, the view which 70% of Americans embrace — that the U.S. should be neutral and even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally — is one that no mainstream politician would dare express.

In a democracy, one could expect that politicians would be afraid to express a view that 70% of the citizens oppose.  Yet here we have the exact opposite situation:  no mainstream politician would dare express the view that 70% of Americans support; instead, the universal piety is the one that only a small minority accept.  Isn’t that fairly compelling evidence of the complete disconnect between our political elites and the people they purportedly represent?

Yup.  It’s also evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, numbers mean zilch.  The percentage on those polls could go to 99% and it still wouldn’t matter, treating Israel like the 51st state benefits the Rapturists & the owners of the companies that make the weapons we send there, therefore it will happen, period.  People who argue in public for removing ourselves from the conflict there get smeared as anti-semites not from truth, or even because the people making the charges think so, but because saying “if we don’t then what are we going to do about all these extra missiles?” exposes the real interest involved.  Better for it to seem like largely sideline bickering than to have people question the worth of intervention itself.

They must be having problems lately keeping the ranks of elite water-carriers filled, because this guy still has a job:

During the presidential election, some Democrats demanded to know how I could defend Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.  Simply put, Palin is my people. She’s small-town folk who wound up in the big leagues.

Because I grew up in a small town with a population of less than 15,000 people, I was disgusted by the insults and condescension coming from those who think of themselves as the enlightened elite. Meanwhile, in small towns, I detected great affection for Palin. People talked about how she was “a real person” who “reflected their values.”

Ruben Navarrette, professional fool.  Insisting on the ridiculous cliche that there is such thing as a universal set of “small-town values”, that “small-town values” are worthy of some sort of unquestioning salute, & that people from not-small towns live to fling crap at small-town people, he can’t even be bothered to put forth this garbage himself: “the peasants tell me they loooove them some Palin!  Really!”  This is Second-hand Stupid.

During a recent appearance on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” [Colin] Powell attempted an autopsy on the Republican Party’s failed presidential bid. He went after Palin, accusing her of pushing the party so far to the right that it went over a cliff.

“I think [Palin] had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about how small-town values are good,” Powell said. “Well, most of us don’t live in small towns. And I was raised in the South Bronx, and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.”

You’d think the presidential campaign was about conservatives picking on urbanites. It wasn’t.

Yeah, sure, because all those mocking references to community organizers included the rural ones.  Ruben, have you been living under a fucking rock the past couple decades?  The campaigns are always about picking on urbanites, even when the Dem running isn’t one, they just shift the claim to them being a hollow enabler of Those Evil City Slickers.  There’s a reason why the point of damn near every ad during elections is “I’m just like you”, despite that claim being inherently bunk.

Sure, some Republicans probably made a mistake by using phrases such as “real America” or “real Americans” as a rallying cry for the base. Americans who live in cities might have thought they were being slighted.  But those phrases referred as much to people’s politics and values as it did their zip code. (emphasis mine)

…and here we have the real truth.  It’s about agreeing with the self-appointed spokespeople for Das Volk, who hold their position despite there not being agreement as to what the hell that means.  If you happen to be from a small town but hold distinct opinions you just don’t count.

I live in a city with a population of more than a million people and I never thought the GOP singled me out as not being a “real American.”

You live in California & you’re not white.  It’s not like they’re going to call you out by name, you’re just “other” to them.  That’s the whole point of these cultural divide & conquer games, just being yourself is unacceptable.

After Powell attacked Palin, one of the governor’s most vocal defenders, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, returned the favor by attacking Powell.

“What is this hatred for conservatives and small-town people and Sarah Palin?” Limbaugh asked on his radio show. “I know a lot of people that are from the Bronx, Gen. Powell, and if you think the values there in the Bronx today reflect the ones you grew up with, take a trip back and see if the street corners and the activities there are the same as when you were growing up.”

Limbaugh got it. When people use phrases such as “small-town values,” it’s as much about time as it is place. The idea isn’t that people who live in small towns have better values than people who live in cities. It’s simply an attempt to recall, with nostalgia, what life was like when more Americans lived in small towns.

This is to legitimize pipe dreams.  Whether or not “the past” was so great depended highly on where you were, who you were, & who you knew at the time.  This tends to be conveniently forgotten because age biases people favorably to a period where they could ignore their mortality.  Besides, considering Colin Powell’s age it says nothing to say that he wouldn’t recognize the 21st Century Bronx compared to circa 1954 (the year he graduated high school).

Regardless of where we came from, we’re not them & they aren’t us.  Anyone seeing themself in a politican, whether they grew up in Brooklyn or Brooklyn, is delusional.  What’s to say there aren’t people in both towns that think most of their neighbors are idiots?

Not surprised: various companies are making cuts lately because of the current economic train wreck.

Really, REALLY not surprised: this includes newspaper companies, which’ve been facing lower circulation & ad revenue anyway.

Surprised: The NY Times holds an ownership stake in a baseball team, which they’re considering selling.

WTF: …that team is the Red Sox.

I vaguely recalled as a feature of my childhood seeing the generic (not store-brand, I really mean GENERIC) food section at the grocery store.  Yellow or white packaging, with black letters, merely saying what the item was: a bag of chips that just said “chips”, for example.  One item I remember laughing at even now was generic BEER.

Finally, proof that I wasn’t just hallucinating:

Props…

Oh yeah, one more thing while we’re on the subject of consumables: I used to have a cast-iron skillet I used for deep-dish pizza, but it got lost between moves.  Went searching for a genuine deep-dish pan to get rather than the skillet & can’t seem to find any cast-iron ones at reasonable prices (the ones in my range seem to be all aluminum).  Any pizza dorks out there that’ve used both, help a brotha out: how much difference is there?  Could I live with the aluminum ones, or should I just get another skillet since the actual pans are M.I.A.?  It seems odd that the real pans are nowhere to be found, I mean where the fuck do the restaurants get them then?

Edit:…just found the aforementioned skillet this morning.  Was just buried behind a bunch of stuff.  Long as I can still find that one I don’t have to worry about it.

Going by the MSM coverage of economic matters, you’d think the only classes that existed were middle-class, entertainers, & corporate CEOs.  Whatever happened to the poor?  Where’s the people that aren’t coming down from having a huge house & two cars, but from merely not having to choose between food & lights?

Had a dream last night so odd it had to be shared with somebody:

Me & my brother were coming back from a pet store with a mouse (something we’d never ever ever do).  For some reason, while it was loose one of us spit on the ground.  The mouse touched it and magically (I think) morphed into a horse-like creature — looked kinda like a cross between a unicorn & a zebra, but with a fur on its neck that looked like lion mane.  It called for me to hop on for a ride, and I did, and we exited through the window instead of the door (why?).

I’m riding along happily on my mythical creature, when I pass through a rough section of town.  There’s some girls out in the middle of the street arguing, like they’re going to fight, except they’re all dressed like strippers and in perfect shape.  I ride just past the crowd, stop, hop off, walk up behind a couple of them, fondle both their asses, then resume my riding.  They apparently thought nothing strange about any of that, as they resumed arguing and escalated to slapping each other and pulling hair instead of, y’know, wondering WTF that animal was or reacting to being groped so deliberately.

Next thing you know, I’m in the mall, galloping along.  Some people start shouting stuff at me as I go by, so I circle around, whip out a sword & start chopping their heads off — and absorbing their energy like Highlander.

The entire time I’m doing this, a constant piano loop is playing in my head that lies somewhere between the Peanuts TV theme & the kind of thing Madlib would sample off a Galt McDermot album.  When it stops, I wake up.

Somebody please explain this…

A Shoegate update:

An Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush has publicly apologised and asked the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to forgive him, Iraqi officials said today.

Muntazer al-Zaidi said in a letter that his “big ugly act cannot be excused,” said Yasin Majeed, Maliki’s media adviser.

In a plea for clemency, Zaidi added: “I remember in the summer of 2005, I interviewed your excellency and you told me, ‘Come in, this is your house.’ And so I appeal to your fatherly feelings to forgive me.”

Gee, I wonder why the change of heart?

Zaidi’s family says he suffered a broken arm and other severe injuries after he was dragged away struggling and screaming by Iraqi security officers and US secret service agents. They say he is in hospital in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. (emphasis mine)

Note the “other severe injuries” mention.  The broken arm I can understand.  Literally being dragged away struggling can result in that kind of thing: if someone is holding your arm and you’re wriggling around, it’s entirely possible to injure it mid-writhe.  However, “other severe injuries” suggests, in my mind at least, only one thing: the agents that grabbed him repeatedly showed the regional mark of disrespect, at accelerated speeds, to Zaidi’s ass.

Shorter Krugman: “Constant states of damn-near-war are good.  Y’know, for ‘progressive’ reasons…”

Yes, let’s ignore the corporatism (the residual effects of which are still with us today), the justification of pretty much everything in the name of Big Security (ditto), & all those dead people from the proxy wars.  People bought more shit, so it was all good.

This isn’t to say he’s wrong on the pure economics.  WW2 & its aftermath did end up boosting the US economy, largely because during the war we adopted fascism with a different flag & the infrastructure of much of the rest of the world went kablooey.  The question is why the fuck anyone remotely considered “Left-wing” would co-sign that, & openly see it as a model to follow for current economic matters.

Relatively ho-hum story out of Iraq:

More than 20 employees of Iraq’s Ministry of the Interior have been arrested on allegations that they were plotting to revive Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath party, government officials said Thursday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf told reporters that 23 people had been arrested over the past five days in a Baath Party plot but he dismissed suggestions they were planning a coup.

Another security official put the figure at 25 and said a brigadier general in the traffic police was the highest-ranking figure. Most are low-level ministry employees, he said.

Weak attempt at shock — basically “OHMIGODZOMBIESADDAM!” — immediately revealed to be as significant as lint.  Here’s the real interesting bit:

Iraq’s 2005 constitution bans the Baath party and any group that uses its symbols and ideology “regardless of the name that it adopts.” (emphasis mine)

How exactly do you ban an entire ideology?  Suppose there’s overlap between the banned ideology and that of another group, then what?  Is there a certain ratio of Baath sympathizing ideas to other ideas that serves as a boundary line, where going one direction or the other is the difference between a group being legal or illegal?  Or is it absolute enforcement, a blanket “do not agree with Baath on anything, or else”?  What if someone wants to establish a party using the exact same name but with completely different goals?  Or government officials have a grudge against some unrelated party so they start claiming they’re secretly Baathists?

More to the point, what realistically are the prospects of liberty in a society that doesn’t see an inherent problem with attempting to abolish thoughts?