We are “Outrage Junkies”

August 14, 2005

Lifted from a comment

by Monolycus

Oh, come on. It’s not like this is the first time Bush has demonstrated contempt for the will of the people. Ten million human beings protested his proposed invasion of Iraq in 2003 (more, if one can believe the rumours, than had ever protested against any single cause in human history)… and his response? He described them as a "focus group" and gave them a very insincere "I respectfully disagree". To describe this administration as having a ears of tin is missing the larger point; they have hearts of stone and I.O.U.’s where their souls should be. Do not act surprised by the latest demonstrations of sociopathic behaviour when that has been evident all along.

The problem is that these personality defects are not confined to certain individuals, or even political parties. This is who we are, people. This is the culture we are so damned proud of. And a significant part of this culture that creates these antisocial, anti-environmental, inhumane monsters is pretending that we despise it. We pretend to be shocked by each new glimmer of atrociousness no matter how often we are faced with the same behaviours from the same sources; and all the while, we are really just happily devouring the misery as fast as it can be produced by the cultural byproducts we continue to create and support with our values.

We’re like "outrage junkies"… we produce excrement simply to be offended by it. Makes us feel a bit better about our own meaninglessness. It would defeat the purpose for us to address and correct the problems we complain about because the real problems are we, ourselves. "Powerful people" with tin ears, disastrous policies and a demonstrable contempt for the populus are only symptoms. If we cured those symptoms, we would have to trade our beloved outrage for the hard work of trying to repair the damage the symptoms have done. I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone really wants to make that trade. Not as long as we can continue to be appalled anew over the same old shit that is taking us all to the grave.

Posted by b on August 14, 2005 at 12:39 UTC | Permalink

Comments

I think this analysis is exactly correct. For several weeks, I’ve been pondering Loren Baritz’s conclusion in Backfire: The Myths That Made Us Fight, The Legacy That Haunts Us Today (Ballantine, 1986), which I quote in relevant part:
“We are in the calamitous position of having to choose between an unrealistic faith in the possibility of reinventing the nation and a suicidal delusion that what we have is good enough… The American barbarian is at large in the world. Only its own fears can restrain it. But it is not very practiced in fear. It would rather act than think. It knows how to act much better than it knows when or why it should or should not. It does not know what to do. It is not so much cornered as bewildered. Others must decide whether this confused nation is an adequate defense against an unknown future. It may be that the future is even more dangerous because we exist, and because we have persuaded ourselves that we, as a nation, will protect both ourselves and the rest of the world. That is the wrong question. What we must ask is how we may learn to protect ourselves from ourselves.”

Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Aug 14 2005 13:41 utc | 1

A long time ago, back when Billmon had comments, I entered a brief comment that contained a reference to the conspiracies which sit behind events. I received an angry profanity from Billmon and my post was censored. Ever since then I have largely refrained from entering comments, first there, and now here, because I don’t like to waste my time writing things that others are fond of erasing. The Monolycus comments are spot on, and so are the Wolf DeVoon comments.
But while each of us who is rightly outraged settles for a few moments of literate venting, duly recording our daily outrage in comments on the blogs, such as this one, then we do nothing all day long otherwise, I think we use these opportunities to comment as our drug of choice. It would be far better if we also would actually do something – even if it is self serving. Nothing wrong with that. Is there a blog on do it yourself resistance as a way of life, for people who want to do more than just analyze all the ways that the conspirators have screwed up the world?

Posted by: Gerald | Aug 14 2005 15:37 utc | 2

O come on, B….
Monolycus is being disingenuous. Political commentary has existed since prehistory. Ovid, Shakespeare, Swift, Hunter S. Thompson. It’s what we “do”.
When Reagan began his junk politics pogrom, and disco and coke swept the nation, what was our game plan? Run naked through the streets of downtown LA, grabbing at passersby, “Forsake thou disco frippery! Thou dost *not* have to keep on dancing, dancing! Absent thee from demon cocaine! Forsooth, the world comes to an end!”
They’d lock you up with the stoners, although, as I recall, Reagan was dumping asylum inmates out on the street back then, wasn’t he?
The website 15yearstolife.com talks about incarceration of drug offenders, one of the greatest issues before US, since Reagan first opened the gate to the Columbian drug cartels. They found working top-down got them nowhere.
The Pol’s have zero interest. So they’re working bottom-up, grassroots, trying to change things.
That’s all we can do, go invisible, drop out and work the margins of society, the habitat for humanity, half-way houses, child welfare groups. None of that will change the rule of law, not when there be monsters in the Oval Office.
“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life.” Unless, of course, that man doesn’t have the go for a license, or fleets of offshore commercial fishing vessels are scraping the seafloor.
Then fisherman returns to subsistence farming. Shrug your shoulders, write an angry blog or two, give a shout out to the Sierra Club.
Nothing changes in the halls of power. Only the great clock on the wall, tick, tock, tick, tock, measuring out the end of our national liberties.
Look around, Monolycus! It’s War of the Worlds!

Posted by: tante aime | Aug 14 2005 16:40 utc | 3

@ gerald — and all of us living in the “free” world,
Not to sound condescending, but I think the best, easiest, first thing we all should be doing, is to try to leave a smaller and smaller individual footprint on this our planet; by this I mean view each and every daily activity through the lens of “total energy cost” (and thus make more intelligent, more informed choices).
What this can achieve is to a) provide a better quality of life for yourself (both material and spiritual), b) allow those with substantially less to slowly have access to at least a little more, c) stealthily undermine the power and the obscene profits of the “white western military-industrial corporate conspiracy”, d) slow the “modernization” of China, India and the rest of the 3rd world, and e) with luck, prevent the total disintegration of civilization as we know it by the end of the 21st century (and the possible extinction of homo sapiens).
As a certain Mr. Lennon once intoned, “you may think I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”. Only individuals taking responsibility for their individual actions can effect the kind of political, economic, social and spiritual changes that will make this world a better place, eventually (for our children’s children’s children).
OK, now I’ll get down off my soapbox.

Posted by: andrew in caledon | Aug 14 2005 17:13 utc | 4

The Prince and the Magician
Once upon a time there was a young prince, who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, and he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father’s domains, and no sign of God, the young man believed his father.
But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore.
“Are those real islands?” asked the young prince.
“Of course they are real islands,” said the man in evening dress.
“And those strange and troubling creatures?”
“They are all genuine and authentic princesses.”
“Then God also must exist!” cried the prince.
“I am God,” replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow.
The young prince returned home as quickly as he could.
“So you are back,” said his father, the king.
“I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God,” said the prince reproachfully.
The king was unmoved.
“Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God, exist.”
“I saw them!”
“Tell me how God was dressed.”
“God was in full evening dress.”
“Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?”
The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled. “That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived.”
At this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress.
“My father the king has told me who you are,” said the young prince indignantly. “You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician.”
The man on the shore smiled. “It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father’s kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father’s spell, so you cannot see them.”
The prince returned pensively home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes.
“Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?”
The king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves.
“Yes, my son, I am only a magician.”
“Then the man on the shore was God.”
“The man on the shore was another magician.”
“I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic.”
“There is no truth beyond magic,” said the king.
The prince was full of sadness.
He said, “I will kill myself.”
The king by magic caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses.
“Very well,” he said. “I can bear it.”
“You see, my son,” said the king, “you too now begin to be a magician.”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 14 2005 17:20 utc | 5

@tante – it’s worth discussing isn´t it – at least that’s what you are doing
Hope you have all read this Berman piece in The Nation The Strategic Class

In July 2002, at the first Senate hearing on Iraq, then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Joe Biden pledged his allegiance to Bush’s war. Ever since, the blunt-spoken Biden has seized every opportunity to dismiss antiwar critics within his own party, vocally denouncing Bush’s handling of the war while doggedly supporting the war effort itself. Biden carried this message into the Kerry campaign as the candidate’s closest foreign policy confidant, and a few days after announcing his own intention to run for the presidency in 2008, he gave a major speech at the Brookings Institution in which he criticized rising calls for withdrawal as a “gigantic mistake.”
The Democrats’ speculative front-runner for ’08, Hillary Clinton, has offered similarly hawkish rhetoric. “If we were to artificially set a deadline of some sort, that would be like a green light to the terrorists, and we can’t afford to do that,” Clinton told CBS in February. Instead, she recently proposed enlarging the Army by 80,000 troops “to respond to threats wherever danger lies.”
…
Nearly 60 percent of Americans now oppose the war, according to recent polling. Sixty-three percent want US troops brought home within the next year. Yet a recent National Journal “insiders poll” found that a similar margin of Democratic members of Congress reject setting any timetable. The possibility that America’s military presence in Iraq may be doing more harm than good is considered beyond the pale of “sophisticated” debate.
…
“There’s an approach which says, ‘Let’s raise the stakes and call,'” says former Senator Gary Hart, a rare voice of principled opposition in the party today. “That if Republicans want a ten-division Army, let’s be for a twelve-division Army. I think that’s just nonsense, frankly. It’s stupid policy. Trying to get on the other side of the Republicans is folly, both politically and substantively.”
…
Unless and until the strategic class transforms or declines in stature, the Democrats beholden to them will be doomed to repeat their Iraq mistakes.

My reason for “don´t vote for Kerry” and they will be the same with Clinton as the candidate.
Though my outrage has declined (much the reason why I post less) what is still outraging is the passivity of the american people, well of most of them.

Posted by: b | Aug 14 2005 17:25 utc | 6

The problem I find reading your comment Monolycus is your totally inclusive use of “we”. I couldn’t agree more with you in the premise that there is a huge sociopathic element in US culture and that we all should be looking within before condemning the others out there. But I also recognize a growing subculture within the greater US culture that is and has been looking within and have made remarkable strides in healing their own sociopathic tendencies.
I speak here in the first person but I believe I am also speaking for those subcultures that are consciously making inroads into living more civilized, compassionate and spiritually sensitive lives. I do not devour misery and mayhem and am not so much shocked as sad when I encounter such. I purposely avoid the infotainment based excrement, not to be oblivious to it but to try to spend more time and energy on the activities that will hopefully help heal the psychosis it portrays.
I don’t think you meant the “we’s” in your comment to be so universal in nature but that’s the way it reads to me and while not particularly personally offended by the insinuation I think your comment could be more effective if you had left a little more wiggle room for those of us who don’t fall so cleanly into your all inclusive inference.
When looking within I try not to be blind to the objective without. The power institutions overrunning our society have imbued obscene ideals (for instance, corporate personhood and the “virtues of selfishness”) and that it is from those influential peaks that the excrement overflows and drowns many of us below in the flood plains. But many of us are still swimming and doing our best to shut down the flow, many I might add, gallantly (although I fall far short of such strength and effectiveness, I do recognize it in others.) Lets at the least in our comments allow room for credit and appreciation for them.

Posted by: Juannie | Aug 14 2005 17:48 utc | 7

@tante aime
My comment was written (poorly) during an insomniac moment of despair, but I promise that I was not being disingenuous. The thrust of my complaint was not not to decry political discussion or commentary; I do, after all, continue to engage in it. However, I did not imagine that I engaged in it for its own sake, nor did I expect that anyone else did either. I expected that political discourse was a vehicle for change and not an end in itself. Comrade slothrop has defended the the debates that we have here as being part of the process of action, and consciously I agree with that. But I am beginning to wonder if perhaps there are other unconscious motives.
When I read Bernhard’s submission of Rich’s piece, I was so strongly reminded of previous discussions and revelations about the nature of the collective psyches of our leadership that I couldn’t contain myself. We’ve heard these things; they aren’t “news” per se. When Bush was the governor of Texas we saw all of these destructive patterns on a smaller scale. Since 2001, we’ve seen these same destructive patterns. Where is this “surprise” coming from? Why are we still reacting to all of this as though it is the first time we are hearing it? Above all, why are we still having the same discussions about them unless the discussions are the ends themselves and the “news” only exists to fuel them?
You wrote in your response that “(n)othing changes in the halls of power”. I don’t think that’s true. Since the Manhattan Project, we are faced with the unlikely possibility that those who dwell in the halls of power could deliberately end the life on this planet. More likely now, we are faced with the possibility that those who dwell in the halls of power could inadvertently end the life on this planet through neglectful (or even malicious) environmental policies and procedures. The halls of power have been very dynamic… it is we having these endlessly cyclical debates about them who have not seemed to have changed a bit.
@andrew in caledon
You do not come across as condescending with your suggestions. I admire your approach and wish that were the mainstream attitude. Unfortunately, your suggestion that living less gluttonously increases the availability of resources to “those with substantially less” is hampered by the fact that any small surplus of commodity is ravenously consumed by corporations the instant it becomes available. Until those beasts are beheaded, we are not feeding the poor with our charity and conscientious living. We are feeding the very monsters who are holding us captive.
@Uncle $cam
I’m not entirely confident that I can bear living in a world of nothing but illusion. It seems to me that your parable comes close to Brecht’s dictum that our choices are restricted to death or capitulation. I see very little difference in the two options; and if capitulation will only stave off death temporarily, maybe I would be better off not becoming a magician after all.
@Bernhard
First of all, thank you for listening. You know that my original comment wasn’t aimed at you specifically. Yes, the passivity is outraging and it is that very passivity that I am railing against here. I think that American apathy is in a large part cultivated, both consciously and unconsciously. I included the link to the Enron story to try to demonstrate this. The world is not as it is because of a few “bad apples”. The Enrons and Abu Ghraibs happen because of who we are and until we can honestly face our own ugliness and stop blaming those largely imaginary “bad apples”, we will continue to blithely perpetrate outrages.
@Juannie
You raise a very valid criticism. My “we” was all-inclusive because I am having very serious doubts. Have you ever seen tabloids at the supermarket and laughed about the “others” who take them at face value? I suspect we all do that and there are no “others”. I know that there are people who do not actively support the dehumanizations of so-called reality television or play the game of recognising corporate personhood. I know that the “we” who cause problems is not as inclusive as I made it sound.
But.
I am starting to suspect that our exemption of ourselves as “part of the problem” is more universal than not. We blame others for perpetuating injustice many times as a matter of course. There’s always an evil organization or higher power to blame and be outraged by. Our very outrage is a way of rationalising that it is not “us” that is responsible. Someone once told me that we are all the heroes in our own movies… so we have to put the black hat on others. Almost everyone agrees that the world is full of contemptible “assholes”, but I have never met anyone who admits to being one. If we’re all in agreement that someone is causing the problems, then how can we also all be agreed that it’s someone else…?
Yes, there are people who have genuinely been introspective and are not “part of the problem” (at least I hope there are). I made my “we” as inclusive as possible because I suspect the majority haven’t done that self-examination and if I provided more wriggle room than I did, than our tendency as human beings is to ascribe my complaints to that nebulous someone else.
Being outraged and blaming others does not seem to me evidence enough that a person has been more than cursorily introspective about these things. Recognising our own contributions to the problems we face is not an easy thing to do, nor is it culturally condoned. But we can’t all be innocent if there is wrongdoing. I don’t want to dilute responsibility by assigning blame to everyone, but I also don’t want to give each of us more fuel to rationalise away our own share. It’s a very fine line.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 14 2005 20:59 utc | 8

Everyone is responsible is some way. Many of us try to do good deeds but still evade the confrontation and face the many crimes we commit in our own lives against others, our environment, and our own selves. As soon as we think we have some sort of moral superiority we are in trouble. Most of us are a combination of creative and destructive impulses at work. Clarity is the start, honest assessment, and then growing wisdom as confidence in our morality and ability to affect positive change builds. It is always the individual growth pattern that is fundamental to the well being of the society. And that is where we should look first.
The seeds of health are there and all of our good actions contribute. We should acknowledge these. We live in a dualistic dimension at the moment and there is equal and opposite always at work. The resistance to war will always mount as war is on the rise. The attempt to heal will also build as the disease is perpetuated. It’s choice as to how we align ourselves, but it is very difficult to see ourselves clearly in the midst of so much sensory input. Consciousness is a bitch.
I think the blogosphere is vitally important right now in our history as it is so fresh and innovative. We are compelled to spend much of our time and energy here for good reason. We are getting to know one another in an entirely new way, brain to brain without a lot of noise and interference. The silence I believe is one of the most important things we are learning. How to pay attention to others’ thoughts. A fantastic start. Without the screaming that ruins everything. We are developing new neural pathways as we use our brains in a different way. We can’t stop this initial explosion just yet. We will know what actions are appropriate in due time. And we are watching the rulers intently, monitoring their actions, more ruthlessly than ever. And It looks like the Internet is going to be a highle effective political tool.
We are learning. If some have doubts as to the amount of time they are on the Internet, they can go elsewhere. But that’s probably not where the power is right now. There is a calling in cyberspace and we are responding. It is too soon to judge it. We are mobilizing, collecting our thoughts, not running into the streets in panic, soothing one another when we can, teaching, learning, and preparing. The brotherhood of man has to start somewhere and will grow in infinitessimal increments. We are learning to govern ourselves.
Patience.

Posted by: jm | Aug 14 2005 22:21 utc | 9

Blogs are good raise to raise money for candidates who will represent the democratic wing of the democratic party…or some other party, maybe…
Dean showed what a candidate can do. He was smeared and Kerry got the nomination, and now I don’t think it even matters that I voted…not only b/c of the candidate that was available, but because of the voting machine crimes and voter suppression crimes, and the lack of democractic leadership (beyond Conyers) to make this an issue. That’s what totally amazes me.
I saw a documentary last night on Ollie North, when he ran for the Senate in ’94. He had music before he took the floor in a speech and the song had lyrics like — It’s not my fault you’re poor. Get off your ass. Stop trying to blame me for the poor. Don’t take my money to help the poor because they made themselves that way.
So it would appear that 50% of the American people are assholes, as far as issues of poverty go. They blame the wrong people when wages have fallen against costs of living for everyone but the richest of the rich (and those people in the auditorium were not the richest).
If they have that attitude toward their fellow country members, they surely have a problem humanizing anyone else.
But hearing that song made me also realize that I really detest at least half this country, and I so hope that I will be able to move in a couple of years.

Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 14 2005 23:02 utc | 10

I disagree with the assertion that fear restrains the American barbarian. Rather, barbarian behavior is always completely fear-based. And I also disagree with the assertion that faith in the possibility of reinventing the nation is unrealistic.
The Human mind is powerful. How do we want to use it? We must first envision the future that we wish to create, therefore faith in the possibility of reinventing the nation is the prerequisite for actually reinventing the nation. Faith, demonstrated through action, is not misplaced.
There are generations of Americans who preceeded us, Americans who envisioned laudable, controversial, and seemingly impossible goals, for example, universal suffrage, the abolition of slavery. Many of them did not live to see women vote or african americans create their own wealth but that did not deter them from working toward the goal.
What is your goal, your vision? Whether you believe you can or whether you believe you cannot achieve it, you are right!

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 14 2005 23:38 utc | 11

Individual and/or family serenity, living life with honor, is not the question. How to redeem the United States?
Raising money for candidates can’t cure the disease, which is particularly American. I think this discussion has run off the rails. Monolycus has made a brilliant contribution and I thank him/her.

Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Aug 14 2005 23:59 utc | 12

fauxreal
i don’t know who sd it but i think it was a member of the bourgeoisie – who once sd in democratic delirium that a society can be judged by the way it treats its most impoverished citizens
the one world of the cheney bush junta, the the world of tony blair & of john howard are worlds where the poor are regarded simply as enemies
john pilger in two books ‘heroes’ & ‘hidden agenda’ – in nearly all of his work he chronicles in painful terms how it has gone from negligence to contempt to hatred. he has shown practically what it means to be poor in these countries & that the poor pay & pay until there is no more to those who treat them as worse than goats, worse than slaves
it is the false triumphalism of our catastrophic times that hurts the most – the rich pillage the world, roll back any reforms that have been constructed in the last half century that are either humanist, feminist, syndicalist, lie constantly about their underclass do not include them in any statistics as if they do not exist. & that truth that there are cities all over the world & especially in these countries where whole populations are on welfare or worse, that there exists no possibility of work, that the future is nothing but a cruel joke
the ‘powerful’ pillage & lie their way into wars where again it is the poor who do the suffering
my disgust for that order of things has only intensified these last years & the fact that there exists sites like this i am suddenly aware how many of us are fed up – fed up to the back teeth – with the evil deeds & pagan idolatory of the ‘powerful’ who in their dementia have even exposed the emptiness of their power

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 15 2005 0:08 utc | 13

We are “Outrage Junkies”
Yes.
And I imagine that a creative entrepreneur or magician or whatever could start a 12 step program for us, and “save us”.
Really, isn’t it time to work on solutions?
@Gerald:
s there a blog on do it yourself resistance as a way of life, for people who want to do more than just analyze all the ways that the conspirators have screwed up the world?
If not, we could perhaps start one.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 15 2005 0:29 utc | 14

@ groucho,
Re do-it-yourself resistance as a way of life: I am not a Quaker but living simply [the small footprint] and peacefully as the Society of Friends / Quakers have demonstrated [for hundreds of years!] seems one way. Many non-religious environmentally-minded activists have also adopted the less wasteful lifestyle. Besides spending less, there are ways of spending/investing money that also support more positive ‘solutions’.
Waiting for elected officials to do the job for us is a waste of time. I think this false hope/betrayal is what most spreads despair. But speaking truth to power isn’t a waste of time and it gives hope to likeminded people. Sometimes I wonder if, rather than giving money to favored party candidates who eventually listen only to the wealthy, we campaigned to oust/recall all incumbents regardless of party, we might finally instill some fear of God in our “leaders”.

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 15 2005 1:02 utc | 15

@ Groucho: diy resistance,
One place to start is Rob Brezsny’s Truth and Beauty lab, a workshop for generating pronoia instead of paranoia.
Then there’s websites like Grassroots Economic Organization and a wealth of others (I did a couple quick clicks on the sidebar list of periodicals at Commondreams.org.

Posted by: catlady | Aug 15 2005 1:09 utc | 16

Thanks cat and Ggirl.
@ All
I get very frustrated reading the same thing over and over for months and years.
And no action taken–just whining.
I see a project we could get involved in in many ways:
The US DOD is going to “commemorate” September 11, on September 11.
Enough said. Just a thought.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 15 2005 1:26 utc | 17

@groucho,
define “get involved” re the September 11 “project”…example?

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 15 2005 2:35 utc | 18

@Ggirl:
Just the ordinary stuff;
Letters to editor,Washington people, local protest & get it in the paper. If you can, get to Washington if there is a counter event.
Web:
Don’t know what sites have got planned, but find out who’s involved, get involved, and help others to get hooked up.
Maybe donate to a counterevent if one is planned.
Too early to tell exactly what this dog is gonna look like.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 15 2005 3:17 utc | 19

Og and Urg Ponder the Coming Bronze Age
Og the Young is sitting on a knoll with his older brother Urg,
breaking bones up for their marrow, and watching a young
maiden carry water jugs back and forth from a pond below.
Being Neanderthals, they only speak when truly inspired.
Urg, obsessed now with rapid knapping of flint spearpoints,
ever since Og first alerted him to slave-produced prices over
at RockMart, is banging away with his antler horn, pressure-
flaking a last razor edge on a finely formed, though slightly
ragged chert point that Urg hopes he can sell on StoneBay.
“Og, d’you ever stop to think what will happen if the hominids
come up with, say, a bronze spearpoint?” Urg sighs forlornly.
He’s already run the numbers in his head, and knows his
children will starve, toe-to-toe price-pointing with RockMart.
So thinking about bronze for him was like picking at a scab.
Og remains thoughtful, staring after the water maiden.
“But council say Urg can trade flint points to hominids.”
Urg wipes his sweating face with a leathery palm.
“Og, look, if hominids have stronger better bronze points,
why would they want our flint ones, even at a lower price?
And if they grow maize and beans instead of hunting, we
couldn’t trade them flint points even if we gave them away!
They’ll outproduce us, dump at below production costs,
and we’ll end up as their slaves, just to be able to eat.”
Og picks a tendril of meat from between his rotten teeth.
CAFTA was still ten thousand years in the future for him,
and there was that cute water maiden to think of instead.
Urg tries another tack. “Let’s play a game…. Knock, knock.”
“What’s there?” Og replies.
“10,000,000 starving Africans.”
“What Africans?”
“Exactly Og, what Africans!” says Urg, jabbering fast in case
Og decides to bash his nose in. “Soon it’ll only be hominids
and their bronze spearpoints.Maybe thousands of years from
now, even those hominids will die out, when some deus ex
machina starts producing iron spearpoints by the millions,
dumping them on the global economy under IMF and WTO.”
Og is spellbound, his fingers trying to count up to a million.
“What WTO?” Then he smacks his ham-hand on Urg’s back,
startling him. “All Og know, a tiger purrs when you feed it.”
“Yup,” smiles Urg, laughing in relief. “You’re right, Og.
And the bees sting when you try to steal their honey.”
Then having solved the riddle of existence, right there,
at the beginning of unrecorded history, both Og and Urg
wrapped their arms about each other, brothers to the end,
an end marching towards them in an inevitable extinction.

Posted by: tante aime | Aug 15 2005 3:45 utc | 20

I’ve always known/felt Bush was a sociopath from Day 1. In fact the only argument I’ve ever had with Armando on Kos were to the tune of “how can you still be so naive to be surprised/outraged by what that fucking nazi is doing.”
What is scarier is that it seems to me a significant portion of the American public (say, 25%?) has embraced the Cult, and democratic process or not, I can’t see how you can reclaim a functioning country with that many dangerous lunatics in it.
Time will tell.

Posted by: Lupin | Aug 15 2005 5:51 utc | 21

From Wolf-
How to redeem the United States?
Raising money for candidates can’t cure the disease, which is particularly American. I think this discussion has run off the rails.
Well, Wolf, how would you suggest that Americans change the way candidates are elected, and how would you go about implementing it?
This particularly American disease…what is this?
Are you in America? If not, you may not have an idea how deeply divided people in this nation are at this time. If you are in America, then you surely know, as I’ve said repeatedly, that the local and state levels are where people can change things at this time because the federal govt is totally corrupt.
do you really think that, when millions of people in the US and around the world repeatedly marching against the invasion of Iraq and these marches could hardly even get air time on national tv…so that if others were in agreement, but not part of some group, they would know they’re not alone, for instance…
how do you propose to change things? what are your concrete suggestions for things that are actually do-able?
The electoral college? –that would require a major legislative change. Mass protests? –those have happened, more than once, and they were ignored (over an issue some of us regarded as a war crime.) –do you think that Americans will storm the white house? not gonna happen. and it wouldn’t matter if it did, with the control of three branches of govt.
voter reform? Americans can’t get their representatives to address the issue. gerrymandering is part of every election now as well, so that candidates have districts carved to make them electable.
Please tell me what is to be done. I would really like to know what will work. I mean this sincerely. What do you think should be done?

Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 15 2005 6:15 utc | 22

fauxreal: personally I don’t thing anything can be done, no more than you could reform the French Ancien Regime short of a Revolution.
I think the US is like the USSR: it will break first then reform.

Posted by: Lupin | Aug 15 2005 6:35 utc | 23

Lupin- I happen to agree, which, again, reinforces the idea that the local levels of govt will be the ones that will have the most importance for rebuilding something better…if that’s possible.
I’m probably far more fatalistic than you are. My thoughts at this point are that it is a matter of time before the U.S. is subject to bomb karma…maybe Iraq and Iran need to first solidify their working relationship as Islamic nations, and China needs to develop its internal customer base for goods.
I hope I’m wrong.

Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 15 2005 7:37 utc | 24

…the US is like the USSR: it will break first then reform.
Unfortunately, I ‘am afraid Lupin is correct, but it will get much much worse before “the break” and even when it does break and reform will it be better? I think not. Different but better?
Also, I am my Condolences, Lupin, for Prime Minister David Lange’s untimely death.
For those who haven’t heard (and why would you w/our fucked media), Former
New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange died over the weekend.
His loss will impact our country considerably – he championed our anti-nuclear policy which led to the end of Anzus and a falling out with the US that continues to this day, he spoke at the Oxford Union defending our stance on nuclear weapons and power and he was Prime Minister presiding over the far reaching economic reform that has arguably led to the economic prosperity Kiwi’s are enjoying right now. He was a man larger than life, funny, friendly and caring and his passing is being felt all over Godzone.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 15 2005 7:46 utc | 25

faux: I think the US is like the French generals in 1914, fighting the last war.
What we in the West now face are not hostile countries (ruled by their own entrenched elites) but a global jacquerie.
In short: the peasants are fed up and they are revolting and, in today’s global village, as 9/11 or Madrid or London demonstrated, they can strike anywhere.
This is not “terrorism” – *we* are the terrorists – this is simply revolution. The war of the poor against the rich, jihad (and vendetta) having replaced Anarchism and Marxism as the motivating ideology.
We’re going to have to find a way to cope with the situation. Yet the US like Pre-Revolutionary France seems incapable of dealing with the new realities.

Posted by: Lupin | Aug 15 2005 7:49 utc | 26

@fauxreal
Wendell Berry
GLOBAL PROBLEMS, LOCAL SOLUTIONS If governments fail to protect their citizens, then those citizens must protect themselves by developing local economies.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 15 2005 8:03 utc | 27

Please tell me what is to be done. I would really like to know what will work. I mean this sincerely. What do you think should be done?
I wrote an article for The Free Liberal recently, where I argued that 60’s style antiwar protests were needed. I think it will come to that pretty quickly, depending on events in Iraq, Iran, Syria.
However, there’s another dimension, much more intractable, which Baritz identified in the book I cited at the top of this thread. Still thinking about it. I’ll let you know if I find a solution. Meanwhile, all the crap about magicians and metaphors is wasted bandwidth. Sorry to be blunt.

Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Aug 15 2005 8:06 utc | 28

Is there a blog on do it yourself resistance as a way of life, for people who want to do more than just analyze all the ways that the conspirators have screwed up the world?
Posted by: Gerald | August 14, 2005 11:37 AM | #
Yes there is and it’s what Kos is a version of for libruls
http://www.indymedia.org and it’s far flung network of sites

Posted by: drunk as a rule | Aug 15 2005 17:52 utc | 29

Wolf: The only anti-anything protests you’re ever going to see
are anti-SCOTUS bashing by the Christian Right, and anti-alien
vigilante comitatus along our southern borders. Otherwise, it’s
business as usual, Dirty Jobs and Survivor RNC Little Red Book,
a triumverate corporate socialist political economic status quo.
Live on with your parents and learn to sex chickens … or die.
Therefore, I’d argue, magicians and neanderthals and other grim
fables are really the *only* legitimate use for ORG bandwidth.
Hence the incredible popularity of anime, manga, MTV and hip-hop.

Posted by: Paranoid Agent | Aug 15 2005 19:55 utc | 30

Paranoid, I beg to disagree. Let’s look at what’s happening right now. Arguably, Cindy Sheehan and company are attacking Bush’s weakest flank. My husband organized a sympathy protest here in Atlanta at which several mothers (of soldiers who died in Iraq) spoke and it made the front page of the Journal-Constitution, with pix. Whoever can do the same, and/or is able to go to Crawford, should consider it.

Posted by: liz | Aug 16 2005 4:41 utc | 31

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