Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The Progressive Realist

Hey everybody!

I added a new link to the sidebar for a "meta-blog" called The Progressive Realist. The site is an up-to-date aggregation of news and insight on American foreign policy, the brain child of Robert Wright. I selected the blog after sharing one of his articles, The Myth of Modern Jihad, which expressed a refreshing degree of insight and perspective regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Check it out, let me know what you think, and leave some comments while you're here!

UPDATE

Recently added the poignant contemporary literary critique "Anthropomorpheyes" to "Just for Funsies". The title of this list should in no way detract from the inventive commentary and creative stylings of the author's hard work and dedication to plastic eyeballs.

I Think They Doth Protest

...too much.

As Elena Kagan sits before a Congressional hearing for the next few days, defending her choices against constant Republican insinuations that she will "politicize" the high court, no one seems to be doing anything about one of the most prolific court-politicizers, Samuel Alito.

Salon.com: Sam Alito: The Tea Party justice


Salon brings to light what is just a one instance in a long chain of instances of Alito's conservative bend. My question is (already knowing the answer): how can Jeff Sessions and Lindsey Graham constantly harass Obama-n judicial nominees while overlooking the Bush administration's rampant judicial "reform"?
 

The truth is, one cannot simply overlook the practice of purposely tilting courts in one political direction or another. The saving grace of Democracy is the notion that the people may respond to injustice within the bounds of the law. If the law decides to rewrite the definition of "injustice", then the political power of the people wanes.

Monday, June 28, 2010

The Marxian Progression

This morning I woke up, went for a walk, came home, grabbed a shower and some water and sat down to check out the days news. Hoping to find some solace after the US national team lost in the World Cup, I went to one of my favorite user-driven news sites, Current, and found this story.

It didn't help.



This graph, constructed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) using Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data tells a startling tale. I know that all of us here can intelligently consider the implications of this data, but I'd like to lay it out in plain terms just to drive home the point.

  1. While the wealthiest fifth have (successfully) thrown their money behind anti-taxation messages they've also successfully secured enormous gains in income (aided in the Bush presidency, no doubt, by deregulation and financial speculation).
  2. At the same time, they've managed to consistently squash the idea of "class warfare" (when brought up in the context of poor vs. rich) without the general public questioning where the topic even came from.
  3. Finally, they've managed to provide 80% of Americans enough token economic benefit to keep them satiate, leaving them ignorant to their continually diminishing piece of a much larger pie.
Well and truly, the Marxian system is bearing itself out.  The emergence of a Bourgeoisie and a Proletariat through means of state and economic control is being realized. 

As a young American trying to break into the world, I've noted on several occasions just how difficult it is to obtain property, prosperity, and means of production. While Kristen and I struggle to keep food on the table, millionaires (and beyond) have seen a 51% increase in their income! It is as if they need not make any attempt to hide the iniquity because the collective distraction of the American public is enough to hide the truth.

Call it a conspiracy. Criticize me for evoking Communist rhetoric. If you do, ask yourself: is it really so far-fetched to consider that, in a country that conveniently covers up all flaws under makeup, lights, and grandeur, that what appears to be casually may not be so under the surface?

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Fake Wife, Fake Life, Real Consequences

It's June, Gay Pride month, and in honor of gay pride month, infoMania's Bryan Safi gives politicians a crisis plan in case they find themselves in a "sticky" situation (think about it...).



While hilarious, Safi evokes an important facet of America's roadblock on the way to progress: hubris.

I'm currently reading "Living in the End Times" by Slavoj Žižek (had to break out the character map for that one); the book is his treatise against Capitalism, detailing the downfall of the liberal government (read: totalitarian, detached, self-serving, not as in Democrats), and arguing that such a downfall allows us to find a new beginning through the failure.  To open the discussion, he argues that admitting to one's own identity in all it's glory and tragedy is the first step to finding this new beginning.

Legislators facing such a "gay crisis" as Safi describes need take note of this.  It would appear that they've gone so far down the path of hatred and discrimination that they deny what they are.  It can largely be argued that they hate because they are unable to come to terms with who they are.

This hubris, this denial of what is right for the advancement of what you've constructed, affects more than just gay/bisexual/transgender legislators and legislation: this same kind of hubris has stalled health care legislation, climate change legislation, gay rights legislation, immigration reform, foreign policy, and the dreams of ordinary citizens in the process.  The truth is, if legislators are to represent our wishes, they cannot do so if they are so cornered by fear as to prevent them from taking action at all.

Let this be a lesson to all of us.  Be who you are and admit it to yourself, or start shipping Dawn to the Gulf.

UPDATE:


This story gives an example of the same activity in the church.  It's nothing new, but it is still very important to acknowledge the toll this backwards discrimination takes, not only on the subjects of such prejudice, but on those who tout it.

Monday, June 21, 2010

infoMania: An Oasis in a Media Desert

If being employed has taught me one thing above all others, it's that being broke sucks ass.  If being unemployed has taught me another thing above all others (but below the ass sucking) it's that television sucks.  I mean really sucks.  The news, the sports analysis (how many times can you talk about one birdie putt?), the dramas, all of it sucks.  It's indicative of a growing trend in the information age: that's that we generally do not need all this information.  We deal with an onslaught of communication and entertainment in video, text, and sound and are we really any better for it?


That's where infoMania comes in.  infoMania is a show parodying or highlighting the ridiculous onslaught of media and its effects on our society. It's young and hip, frequently using The Internet and you can even contribute content.  If you have Current TV it's on Thursdays at 9 PM central.


And for those of you too lazy to check the thing for yourself, here's an episode.  Enjoy!

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

"Gather Your Armies"

Daily I wake up and watch the news and daily I am by the depths to which "politicians" will stoop.  On my facebook page I posted this video.



It was simply incredible to me that anyone could express this level of hubris, confusion, and anger simultaneously.  The ideas that 1. Rick Barber would lead the founding fathers, 2. the American Revolution was simply over a tax on tea, and 3. that the IRS should be violently overthrown are simply incredible.  With recent results showing the Tea Party in a sticky spot, however, I don't expect we'll have to worry about Barber's "armies" staging a military coup any time soon.

But the implications of the Tea Party's message and impending failure are far deeper.  Let's examine the Tea Party message.

The idea behind the Tea Party is that the Constitution, and Bill of Rights especially, should be held as sacred.  No law should violate the boundaries that these documents set on government and special care should be taken to keep government out of the economy, allowing free market principles to have their say.  In this way, they attempt to protect the little guy, the grass-roots citizen, from tyranny.

Rick Barber's message exposes Tea Party confusion on two levels.  The first is that he speaks with the founding fathers, painting them as the protectors of individual liberty.  This completely ignores the classic American hypocrisy: the Founders installed Democracy while completely ignoring blacks, Native Americans, women, renters, farmers, and craftspeople.  The qualification of property for voting and the economic gains the Founders stood to make from the installation of the new government should immediately call into question the intentions of their actions.

The second is the interpretation sanctification  of the Constitution.  The Bill of Rights was added to quell citizens fears of tyranny in order to achieve ratification.  This is clear since, after passage, the government continued to violate these "laws" over and over again; the Espionage Act of WWI and the detention of Japanese Americans during WWII are just a couple of examples.  Furthermore, the people holding the strings during the drafting and amending of the Constitution were all wealthy land-owners, not Joe the Plumbers.  It is clear through history that the Constitution was not entirely created to protect people, but instead (at least partially) to set formal boundaries that would satiate the public while the powerful largely did as they pleased.

So it's clear now that the grass-roots organization most prominent in politics is favoring the powerful.  Not by design, but by rhetorical steering from the likes of Glenn Beck, Fox News, and all business interests that fill their coffers.  This lies in stark contrast to the labor revolutions of the late 19th century, where true grass-roots organizations rose up against labor tyranny in order to shackle industry from harming the real "little guy.  Frankly, the implication here is that grass-roots, or at least grass-roots prominent and well funded enough to make it in the news are completely betraying the historical definition.

Despite this, however, the largest consequence arise from the Tea Party's failure. Not only are grass-roots now, effectively, "corporate grass-roots", but their failure is observed as if the Tea Party really is a people's movement.  The danger is that when they fail, the community of politicians, corporate firms, and active-but-uninformed voters could write off the power of a people's movement altogether.  I don't imagine this set back would be permanent, but it would certainly be damning in the short-term.

I have faith that, as is historically true, the true power of people will fight back even if they don't win.  Simply consider, however, that when the bell tolls on the Tea Party, it tolls for us as well.

New Design!

Hello everybody!

As you can see, I've made a few cosmetic changes to the design of the website.  I thought that the original design was a little too copy-paste Washington stereotypical.  I feel like the new design reflects the casual nature of our conversation and the grass-roots (an overused word, I'm aware) nature of our thoughts.

Please, enjoy the new design and comment on upcoming stories.  We'll have a lot to talk about here real soon.