Demeaning crimes
An American broadcaster called Bill Maher has seen fit to mark the passing of Stan Lee with negative and mean-minded comments. ( Collapse )
(no subject)
Reverse racism
The ferocity of American racism is becoming more intense by the day. But it may surprise you where I see it happening and why. I say that it really scares me with what hatred "white men" are described in ordinary discourse, among people who regard themselves as opposing racism and prejudice; and how impossible it is becoming to discuss any social subject without bringing in racism (of the "black"-bashing kind, of course).
Now, I cannot think that it is a coincidence that the increasingly heated, increasingly feverish obsession with "toxic whiteness" and such is moving pari passu with a dramatic and increasingly swift social change in America: the increasing pauperization of the lower and middle classes and the violent separation between the middle and upper classes. People like Lisa Denham and her repulsive father, with their disgusting duo about the coming "extinction" of "white man", are one per centers who would never have been noticed by anyone, let alone have had a media and arts career, otherwise; and the despicable little racist Sarah Jeong is an upwardly mobile person aiming to a place in the top one per cent, and doing none too badly in that goal. The more vicious the social split is becoming between the middle and the upper class in America, the more wildly "white privilege" and "cultural appropriation" are claimed to be issues.
Frankly, at this point I think a little Marx and Freud are not out of place. These people demonize the average white man because they feel guilty; they project their guilt on their victims. They feel guilty because they know they are sucking the life out of the society most of their fellow-citizens live in. Every drop of privilege among the seriously rich is taken away from the common pool of opportunity. And when we hear that more than 50% of Americans find that they aren't able to meet a sudden $500 expense, when any long-term illness is apt to reduce them to beggary, then it becomes clear that there is something to feel guilty about. When these things are left largely unspoken, whereas all the "socially concerned" persons obsess about an increasingly abstract notion of "racism" - and do so in an increasingly intolerant manner - I think we have a danger signal.
To be brutal, I believe that, consciously or unconsciously, the dominant classes intend to exclude from discourse anything that comes from "white men" as defined by them, by investing them with imagined racism and insulting ideas of white privilege, so as to disguise from themselves the reality of their own reverse class war. "See, these people themselves live somehow by robbing "blacks" and depriving them of their own proper deserts; see, when they whine about being robbed and abused, that is just yer everlasting commonplace racist black-bashing" - even if the unhappy "white" may never have either mentioned or intended colour at anytime in whatever protest they made. That Tea Partyism and all such phenomena are not only racist but essentially and basically racist is a fundamental tenet of this reverse racism, never even discussed. And that is why Farrakhan and his insane and dangerous followers are never treated as the intellectual and political horror, or as the terrible shackle on the "black" communities, that they are: because their racist resentment works very well within the reverse-racist narrative, behind which, if you pay attention, is nothing but the most brutal class war.
Certainly there is such a thing as black-bashing racism. More importantly, there is such a thing as the devastating exclusion of many "black" communities from any benefit in the common citizenship, their reduction to reservoirs of manpower for organized crime and for the armed forces. The point is that by casting the guilt for these horrors upon "white men" who are themselves increasingly in the same plight, who have no say in national social policies - because they would never have been so thrown to the wolves if they had - the two groups are made to hate and fear each other, while taking their eyes altogether off the conditions that really grind them down. "Blacks" and "whites" should stop accepting these categories, realize that they are in the same plight and that the same class is robbing, oppressing and abusing both. WORKERS OF THE WORLD ARISE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS!
- ahem! - But it is true that this old-fashined Marxist analysis is the best way to understand what is going on. Yet Marxism itself, under the guise of "critical theory", has been abducted by the reverse-racist class warriors. The idea that it is about examining class discrimination - and, above all, the deformities that class discrimination forces upon the thinking of both oppressors and oppressed - seems to have been forgotten; and now we have a neo-Marxist discourse in which one per centers cast themselves as oppressed victims. Old Karl turns in his grave.
Now, I cannot think that it is a coincidence that the increasingly heated, increasingly feverish obsession with "toxic whiteness" and such is moving pari passu with a dramatic and increasingly swift social change in America: the increasing pauperization of the lower and middle classes and the violent separation between the middle and upper classes. People like Lisa Denham and her repulsive father, with their disgusting duo about the coming "extinction" of "white man", are one per centers who would never have been noticed by anyone, let alone have had a media and arts career, otherwise; and the despicable little racist Sarah Jeong is an upwardly mobile person aiming to a place in the top one per cent, and doing none too badly in that goal. The more vicious the social split is becoming between the middle and the upper class in America, the more wildly "white privilege" and "cultural appropriation" are claimed to be issues.
Frankly, at this point I think a little Marx and Freud are not out of place. These people demonize the average white man because they feel guilty; they project their guilt on their victims. They feel guilty because they know they are sucking the life out of the society most of their fellow-citizens live in. Every drop of privilege among the seriously rich is taken away from the common pool of opportunity. And when we hear that more than 50% of Americans find that they aren't able to meet a sudden $500 expense, when any long-term illness is apt to reduce them to beggary, then it becomes clear that there is something to feel guilty about. When these things are left largely unspoken, whereas all the "socially concerned" persons obsess about an increasingly abstract notion of "racism" - and do so in an increasingly intolerant manner - I think we have a danger signal.
To be brutal, I believe that, consciously or unconsciously, the dominant classes intend to exclude from discourse anything that comes from "white men" as defined by them, by investing them with imagined racism and insulting ideas of white privilege, so as to disguise from themselves the reality of their own reverse class war. "See, these people themselves live somehow by robbing "blacks" and depriving them of their own proper deserts; see, when they whine about being robbed and abused, that is just yer everlasting commonplace racist black-bashing" - even if the unhappy "white" may never have either mentioned or intended colour at anytime in whatever protest they made. That Tea Partyism and all such phenomena are not only racist but essentially and basically racist is a fundamental tenet of this reverse racism, never even discussed. And that is why Farrakhan and his insane and dangerous followers are never treated as the intellectual and political horror, or as the terrible shackle on the "black" communities, that they are: because their racist resentment works very well within the reverse-racist narrative, behind which, if you pay attention, is nothing but the most brutal class war.
Certainly there is such a thing as black-bashing racism. More importantly, there is such a thing as the devastating exclusion of many "black" communities from any benefit in the common citizenship, their reduction to reservoirs of manpower for organized crime and for the armed forces. The point is that by casting the guilt for these horrors upon "white men" who are themselves increasingly in the same plight, who have no say in national social policies - because they would never have been so thrown to the wolves if they had - the two groups are made to hate and fear each other, while taking their eyes altogether off the conditions that really grind them down. "Blacks" and "whites" should stop accepting these categories, realize that they are in the same plight and that the same class is robbing, oppressing and abusing both. WORKERS OF THE WORLD ARISE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS!
- ahem! - But it is true that this old-fashined Marxist analysis is the best way to understand what is going on. Yet Marxism itself, under the guise of "critical theory", has been abducted by the reverse-racist class warriors. The idea that it is about examining class discrimination - and, above all, the deformities that class discrimination forces upon the thinking of both oppressors and oppressed - seems to have been forgotten; and now we have a neo-Marxist discourse in which one per centers cast themselves as oppressed victims. Old Karl turns in his grave.
The despicable Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson has hit bottom. I really think there is nothing more despicable and dishonourable that he could have done than his article on today's Telegraph. Knowing perfectly well that the Brexit he howls for is both impossible and largely not defined at all, he covers his own party leader with insults for not achieving it. He is appealing to the most stupid, deviant, grotesque part of the Brexiteer crowd, to those to whom real life is far less important than their self-pleasing fictions and diseased fantasies. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the demagogue in his full and shameless shape, such as Britain has not seen in living memory. He makes Trump sound like an honourable man, and I mean it.
A Quora answer: why were there no fascist movements in Britain, France and America?
Steve Ditko has passed away
My attitude to Steve Ditko and his work is complicated, and to publish about it now, in the hour of his death, might seem ungenerous and rude. But if there is one thing Ditko himself despised, it is sentimental half-truths; I don't think I would honour his memory by posting a wholly positive essay - which, given my view of his work, would involve considerable suppression. Instead, I will post, behind the cut, an essay I wrote in the nineties about one of his last published complete works, STRANGE AVENGING TALES. It contains pretty much everything I think about this great artist, good and bad.
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When will this sorry bunch of twerps ever resign?
The sorry caricature of a government led – but only in the sense that the front fender leads a car – by Teresa May has hit yet another scandal, one that should by rights lead to its collapse. But we have little hope of that, because even the least self-respect, let alone respect for habits and laws, is so absent among this rabble, that they would probably all dance naked in public rather than give up their posts.
Five months ago, the government was reshuffled and the department for social security was given to a very unsuitable person, Esther McVey. This glamorous blonde, a former TV newsreader, had made such a bad impression in her previous stint as a junior minister in the same department that her own voters in a Lancashire seat had voted her out by way of thanks. She was widely regarded as having all the empathy of a rock and, in spite of her pretty features, half the charm. In fact, if Teresa May weren't notoriously straight, there would be every reason to suspect that McVey had slept her way back into office. The truth, of course, had to do with that miserable death-rattle of politics, brexit; to “balance” the factions in her government, May needed a hard-line brexiteer in the vacant social security seat, and McVey had at least some experience in the place – in the sense that a Communist union agitator has an experience of private business.
Now McVey has shown her entire quality. She has twice lied in Parliament – a resigning matter; and not only lied, but put words in a top civil servant's mouth that were the very reverse of what he had said, and implicitly charged him with incompetence. The facts are these. For the last few years, the Tories, first under Cameron and now under May, have been pushing an ugly nostrum called Universal Credit for the reform of social benefits (unemployment, disability, etc.). This meant basically taking all the state benefits and bundling them together. There have long been serious doubts as to whether this monster could possibly be implemented and as to whether it would do any good if it were, and in the last few months, the head of the Government Accounting Office, Sir Amyas Morse, has been preparing a report into the matter.
Not once, but twice, Esther McVey has stated in open Parliament that Sir Amyas had stated concerns – that Universal Credit wasn't being rolled out fast enough; that he had no problems with the reform as such; and that at any rate the report was out of date. These things seemed unlikely on the face of it, and today, two days after her second such statement, Sir Amyas Morse, head of the General Accounting Office, one of the most sensitive and senior posts in the civil service, has exploded in public with an open letter that all but calls her a liar. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/04/amyas-morse-auditor-general-universal-credit-letter-esther-mcvey
This is a resigning matter. If you lie to Parliament, you resign. That is a simple and well known principle, although of late some notorious instances have got away with doing just that. But I don't think that anyone has ever been called a liar in such an enormous matter, a primary government policy, and to such a disgraceful extent – yes means no, not just once, but all across the line. This is not only a lie, but a stupid lie – I am tempted to say, in homage to the colour of Ms.McVey's hair dye, a dumb blonde kind of lie. The only way she could hope to get away with it was if Sir Amyas turned out to be such a fantastic coward that he would allow himself to be treated like that and not set the record straight. Well, apparently McVey has no idea what a backbone is, because she seems to have been very surprised to find that Sir Amyas Morse had one.
Mrs.May needs McVey to stay in her post, for the same reason why she placed her in it: it is needed to “balance” her self-splitting government. And so McVey has been dispatched to apologize to Parliament for “unwittingly misleading” them. But above and beyond the matter of political convenicence, there is something very May about this July scandal. McVey has been guilty, basically, of thinking that if you just paper over the cracks and lie over matter of fact, your policies will move ahead by some sort of inner inevitability, and people will be convinced or knuckle under. And this is, in fact, a very Teresa May sort of behaviour; it is the same way in which May continues to sail blithely on with the Irish border issue, just talking as though everyone will soon be convinced of her magnificent brilliance. It is the “What could possibly go wrong” kind of politics.
Five months ago, the government was reshuffled and the department for social security was given to a very unsuitable person, Esther McVey. This glamorous blonde, a former TV newsreader, had made such a bad impression in her previous stint as a junior minister in the same department that her own voters in a Lancashire seat had voted her out by way of thanks. She was widely regarded as having all the empathy of a rock and, in spite of her pretty features, half the charm. In fact, if Teresa May weren't notoriously straight, there would be every reason to suspect that McVey had slept her way back into office. The truth, of course, had to do with that miserable death-rattle of politics, brexit; to “balance” the factions in her government, May needed a hard-line brexiteer in the vacant social security seat, and McVey had at least some experience in the place – in the sense that a Communist union agitator has an experience of private business.
Now McVey has shown her entire quality. She has twice lied in Parliament – a resigning matter; and not only lied, but put words in a top civil servant's mouth that were the very reverse of what he had said, and implicitly charged him with incompetence. The facts are these. For the last few years, the Tories, first under Cameron and now under May, have been pushing an ugly nostrum called Universal Credit for the reform of social benefits (unemployment, disability, etc.). This meant basically taking all the state benefits and bundling them together. There have long been serious doubts as to whether this monster could possibly be implemented and as to whether it would do any good if it were, and in the last few months, the head of the Government Accounting Office, Sir Amyas Morse, has been preparing a report into the matter.
Not once, but twice, Esther McVey has stated in open Parliament that Sir Amyas had stated concerns – that Universal Credit wasn't being rolled out fast enough; that he had no problems with the reform as such; and that at any rate the report was out of date. These things seemed unlikely on the face of it, and today, two days after her second such statement, Sir Amyas Morse, head of the General Accounting Office, one of the most sensitive and senior posts in the civil service, has exploded in public with an open letter that all but calls her a liar. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/04/amyas-morse-auditor-general-universal-credit-letter-esther-mcvey
This is a resigning matter. If you lie to Parliament, you resign. That is a simple and well known principle, although of late some notorious instances have got away with doing just that. But I don't think that anyone has ever been called a liar in such an enormous matter, a primary government policy, and to such a disgraceful extent – yes means no, not just once, but all across the line. This is not only a lie, but a stupid lie – I am tempted to say, in homage to the colour of Ms.McVey's hair dye, a dumb blonde kind of lie. The only way she could hope to get away with it was if Sir Amyas turned out to be such a fantastic coward that he would allow himself to be treated like that and not set the record straight. Well, apparently McVey has no idea what a backbone is, because she seems to have been very surprised to find that Sir Amyas Morse had one.
Mrs.May needs McVey to stay in her post, for the same reason why she placed her in it: it is needed to “balance” her self-splitting government. And so McVey has been dispatched to apologize to Parliament for “unwittingly misleading” them. But above and beyond the matter of political convenicence, there is something very May about this July scandal. McVey has been guilty, basically, of thinking that if you just paper over the cracks and lie over matter of fact, your policies will move ahead by some sort of inner inevitability, and people will be convinced or knuckle under. And this is, in fact, a very Teresa May sort of behaviour; it is the same way in which May continues to sail blithely on with the Irish border issue, just talking as though everyone will soon be convinced of her magnificent brilliance. It is the “What could possibly go wrong” kind of politics.
One of the few good things about getting older...
A sketchy thought about the study of politics
A historian called Andreas Herberg-Rothe has written an interesting study of the famous Prussian military theorist, "Clausewitz's Puzzle: The political theory of war," part of whose thesis is that Clausewitz's celebrated study of war, though completed and published with great success, is in effect unfinished - Clausewitz wanted to rewrite, it, and it bears notable problems within itself, as Rothe points out. That made me think. A number of the most influential writings about politics are either unfinished, or self-contradictory, or both. Karl Marx' Das Kapital is unfinished. Machiavelli's The Prince bears problems of interpretation so formidable that it would be hard to find two scholars who read it exactly the same. And going back to the grandest and strangest of them all, Plato's dialogues are full of contradictory and speculative views. The two most important political texts among them, The Laws and The Republic, contradict each other in many ways, and The Republic, though one of Plato's most famous and popular texts, is also an outlier among its work in some ways, such as its doctrine of the tripartite soul, which also reflects on its politics.
I have a suspicion that sufficiently ambitious and brilliant studies of human society and history will always either taper off into silence, or include severe self-contradiction, or both. Of all objects of study, humanity in action is probably the most complex and confusing. It is possible that, at the highest levels, these things are not signs of failure, but of as much engagement with the subject as a single mind, however brilliant, may manage.
I have a suspicion that sufficiently ambitious and brilliant studies of human society and history will always either taper off into silence, or include severe self-contradiction, or both. Of all objects of study, humanity in action is probably the most complex and confusing. It is possible that, at the highest levels, these things are not signs of failure, but of as much engagement with the subject as a single mind, however brilliant, may manage.