The Written Peace:
Open Forum of June 17, 2005
From the Downing Street Memo hearing to the grim and unrelenting insurgency in Iraq, from Congressmen who decline to support an official apology for the government not making lynchings a federal crime to the number of jobless claims rising in the latest reporting period, talking points abound this evening.
The newest commenter here at The Dark Wraith Forums, T. Rogers, is herewith welcomed. So, too, is TrailerTrash, from It's Morning Somewhere.
Continuing my committed interest in promoting new, interesting, and perhaps under-noticed voices in our new world, I have a non-blog to suggest tonight: it's an online, feminist magazine called The F-Word, and it's quite a treat. I suppose I should advise you that it's not something for everybody's tastes but, then again, neither is The Dark Wraith Forums. Aside from its content richness, what I really like about this e-zine is something perhaps a bit subtle: its editor, Melody, has a grasp—quite genuine and earnest, it seems to me—of what she is doing in the context of the history of the modern feminist movement, especially as it came forward from perhaps the 1950s. It might not be evident to many at first glance, but The F-Word has structural, visual, and sensical orientations that remind me of academic and broader, social feminist literature from earlier times. And this doesn't mean The F-Word is some kind of retro affair; it's not.
I've mention previously something that I've been seeing lately along these lines. In the Analysis entitled "Fire and Seeds", I noted that I'm seeing revivals of movements from previous times, movements whose methods proved successful in the challenges of another era. Although many people today wouldn't know what the term means, at least part of what I'm seeing in socially conscious writing in general and non-mainstream journalism in particular is a 21st Century version of what was once called "Beat literature." There's more to this movement than what could merely be called a new version of the beat generation's intellectual and journalistic work, but the momentum and methods are unmistakeable, even if somewhat different in terms of technology of communication. And it's all probably the best thing that has come out of this otherwise bleak era in the shadow of Empire.
That's enough of that.
As a modest offering here this evening, over at BlondeSense, a recent post by BlondeSense Liz about Congressmen benefiting greatly and personally from the tax cuts for which they voted prompted me to offer some pledges that members of Congress might consider taking. I herewith provide for the consideration of The Dark Wraith Forum readers a somewhat extended and fuller version of the Pledges in the hope that, during next year's mid-cycle Elections, polemical candidates will sign on to one or more of these entirely reasonable and honest oaths of commitment.
Here are the Five Great Pledges of a Good and Worthy Candidate.
Tax Cut Pledge:
If I am elected, I will not benefit from any tax cut enacted during my tenure in office. Any increases in my after-tax income arising from tax cuts in favor of which I voted will be returned to the Treasury every year for the rest of my Natural Life.
Forgiveness Pledge:
Whosoever is condemned to Death by the Will of the People, I will prevent from being executed, and I will lift up that person and release that person with the admonition to go and to sin no more.
Creationist Pledge:
As a Believer in the Divine origin of all Living Things, as that Creation is described in the Holy Bible, I will not accept any medical treatment that has been developed from applied principles of evolutionary biology. This applies to antibiotics, cancer therapies, and other treatments that utilize organisms and the chemical processes arising therefrom whose selective evolution was used to create therapeutic medicines.
Abstention and Chastity Pledge:
Because marriage is by nature and the Will of God an institution of a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation, I will not have sex with my spouse or any other member of the opposite sex subsequent to that time when the Act would not have the possibility of resulting in a viable pregnancy. This means that, if I am a man, I will not have Sexual Intercourse with a woman, even my wife, when she has passed menopause. If I am a woman, I will not engage in Sex Acts with any man who cranks beef but no juice. I will furthermore accept the will of God with respect to the ability of my body to procreate; I will, therefore, use no artificial means, be they chemical or pornographic, to attain a state that would allow me to engage in a Sex Act.
The Christ Pledge:
In that the Lord Jesus Christ said something about a wealthy man entering Heaven being as likely as a camel making it through the eye of a needle, if I am elected, I shall renounce all Material Goods and live therefor as a hermit in all my years of service to this Country, that it may be more Godly for my example.
These Pledges will be a real hit in the next Election.
Don't just stick your head in the door here at The Dark Wraith Forums. Come in and sit down. There's plenty of company and a lot of things to talk about. If you brought something of your own to eat, fine; otherwise, there's half a can of Spam™ in the refrigerator, five or six bags of peanuts in the pantry, and all kinds of things to drink behind the bar. Just don't burn yourself on the espresso maker, and don't use the coffee that has the skull and crossbones on the label. That's for me.
The Dark Wraith turns up the lights and makes sure the phone number for the Poison Control Center is taped to the wall by the pay phone.
Published 6/17/2005 01:46:00 AM
<< 69 Comments Total
Hi Dark Wraith - I clicked on your link to The F-Word and read several of the articles. Gloria Steinem is terrific, her quote about Bush, "Well, yeah. He wasn't born that way. As a baby, he probably had a whole person inside him! But that family is enough to turn anybody into a raving power maniac, and they certainly did it with him." really made me chuckle.
The interview with Wendy Shanker, author of "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life", was quite delicious, too. I looked at a couple others, and I will be going back. You are right! There's certainly a lot of good reading.
**I'll try not to make up any more commenters. The three, I use now, should be enough:)
Oh, yeah, those pledges are nice, however; once made, seldom kept.
The Abstention and Chastity Pledge should also include renouncing porn, little boys, and viagra.
Here's something fun for a Friday:
KITTEN WAR!
I swear I saw Old White Lady on one of the pages.
Good morning, Mr. Goat.
That "Kitten Wars" site was positively ridiculous. I couldn't stop doing the votes. Every time I thought I'd had enough, I decided to look at one more pair of pictures.
As it turned out, most of the time, I was voting for the cat who was losing.
There's a metaphor in there somewhere, but I'll be darned if I'm going to go too far with it.
Now, about the Pledges. I do think it would be appropriate to include a Viagra Pledge, but to include language in any of the pledges about abstaining from porn would exclude every last Republican who supports Mary Carey; and putting in an oath against underaged boys would automatically drive away a whole lot of...
Nope, I'm not even going to finish that sarcastic remark.
The Dark Wraith knows when to knock it off before he offends way too many people.
Good morning, Old White Lady.
Yes, that magazine has a whole lot of meaty stuff. As I said, it would not be everybody's cup of tea; but for me, I was having this weird wave of nostalgia as I was prowling around there.
I get a similar feeling when I go to sites involved in the Carnivals of the Un-Capitalist. Imagine that: someone who still sees himself to this very day as an old-time-gospel conservative talking like that. God! how times move the Earth under a person's feet.
There was such energy in the intellectual community back in another time. The literature, the art, the music: it all had such muscle. I remember this odd sense, though, in the 1980s that the energy was draining away as the Reagan Administration droned on. It seemed like every last time some new nastiness came to light, the outcry was made with a voice that sounded more and more elderly.
By the time the United Nations did its survey in the early 1990s of massacres in Central America of the 1980s, it just seemed like almost nobody in the United States—in particular, nobody in the mainstream media—cared enough to even take note, much less be utterly revulsed by the horror that American money, training, logistical, and even direct military support had wrought upon people who didn't deserve to die the way they did.
That, by the way, is why, even though I find him an otherwise attractive and viable potential candidate for the Presidency in 2008, Wesley Clark's continuing support for the School of the Americas puts me off in a way I cannot get past.
I need to stop rambling. There's work to be done.
The Dark Wraith heads over to campus to terrorize students.
And by the way, Mr. Goat and everybody else, if you haven't seen the BlondeSense post, "They Like Me! They Really Like Me!", you might want to have a look at this window into the future of the Republican Party.
The Dark Wraith longs for the grave, where the weirdness is more normal.
Good morning, once again, Mr. Goat.
I have incorporated your suggestions concerning Viagra and pornography into an amended version of the Abstinence and Chastity Pledge.
The Dark Wraith believes the Pledges are now ready to be signed.
my pet goat - that was the CUTEST site, and FUN, too. What cute little kittens/cats and what ugly little kittens/cats.
That picture you thought was me? No way, ... it's my sister.;)
"...any man who cranks beef but no juice."
Is that a euphemism for a guy who shoots blanks?
there is some sort of thesis that "gnosis," in the classic greek sense of knowledge and the platonic sense of rapture (as in fun), or in the beat lexicon perhaps "hipness," rises from the bohemian intersection of all cultures where it has a permanent home to the consciousness of the larger population in irregular cycles. think of the 20's and the 60's in this country. the "owners of everything" of course can't have the peasants laughing knowingly at them while dancing, and so use all means possible--wars, major economic dislocation, bread and circuses, cooption and commercialization--to subvert and drive back underground this threat to their control. we MAY be seeing this dyonisian awareness making its appearance again.
as a repository and guardian of this sensibility i say right on brothers and sisters, and i will endeavor to update my hip lexicon to do my part. i have my shoulder to the wheel.
You, Dread Pirate Roberts, have it right on the money.
The Dark Wraith keeps his nose to the grindstone.
Keep you "eye on the ball".
Keep your "ear to the ground".
Keep your "nose to the grindstone".
(Wraiths excepted.)
Keep your "shoulder to the wheel".
Keep your "hands to yourself"?
"Stand Up Straight". "Hunker down". "Tighten Up". "Hang Loose". "Get a grip on yourself"!
Now. Try and work in that position.
I'm still giggling over this line: If I am a woman, I will not engage in Sex Acts with any man who cranks beef but no juice. in the Abstention and Chastity Pledge...
That was, of course, meant to be taken seriously.
Gravely, even.
These are oaths, y'know!
The Dark Wraith is still waiting for the first signatories to knock on the door.
[I've even got a trash can by the door where the male politicians can dispose of their Viagra supplies.]
...with any man who cranks beef but no juice.
What about Neal Horsley?
dark wraith.....you big oath!
i just popped up to say how much i enjoy your site and regular commenters. i love economics and humour.
as a canuckistani socialist, monetary conservative, hockey player, i'm glad to see my yank friends embracing social values and understanding north america's economic challenges.
in our current economic situation a sense of humour is a necessity.
thx for the info and entertainment.:)
kitten wars is wonderful!
Hi DW,
For some reason when I read the pledges it brought to mind:
On my honor I will try to do my duty to God and my country to help other people at all times..
It's been so long, sure I don't remember the whole thing anymore..but once upon a time it meant something to me.
And as hilarious as those pledges are; just remembering my old pledge, then thinking of the realities "enforced" by this duplicitous administration makes me rather sad.
On the other hand, I would like to take my shoe (something I always say to my kids who laugh and laugh ) to Dana Milbank of the forlorn Washington Post for the lies published in his column today.
Now that makes me mad!
Ah. Friday night fun. I've been cruising kitty wars with the 5 year old. I went and told hubby what I was doing saying "Hah, see OTHER people can look at on line pussy sometimes".
I shall now slink into one of the dark corners and hide....
So, as far as the oaths go, do blowjobs count if you don't come in the person's mouth?
Good evening, good people. This hotel has turned genuinely weird tonight.
When a wraith walks in and quickly grasps that he's the pillar of quiet rectitude, that usually means the handbasket's already made it to its destination, and it's on the return journey still smoldering from the layover at the port of call.
Lenin's tomb has opened.
The zencomix page is open, and there's that comic strip alluding obliquely to how she played Hail to the Chief/On His Flute Made of Beef.
An elf swept in to note the annoyance of the Washington Pest and its strange idea of "balance" and journalistic integrity, trying ever so adroitly as it is to stand on some middle ground that got swallowed up years ago.
And if all that weren't enough, the wind through the field of Wild Clover whispers something about the subtle-yet-troubling life metaphor of a Website about dueling cats.
The Dark Wraith will return in a while to do inventory to find out just how many people got into that bag of coffee with the skull and crossbones on it.
[Darned, but that was the good stuff imported from Jamaica, too.]
I know this is a good clean site, but I have to tell my mother's favorite joke.
Q: How do you stop a dog from humping your leg?
A: Give him a blowjob.
Don't frown at me, zencomix did mention blowjobs, first!
Mr. Goat - Thank you for Kitten Wars. I had a lot of fun there. What a wonderful variety of cats!
Coffee? That wasn't coffee. Sorry, while you were out we stoked the hookah, put a flame to it, and passed it around. Mightly fine Jamaican these days. Nice guests that we are, we left a full charge in it for you.
------------
Too much head makes you mad at the
person giving you a beer.
You're welcome AuntieRoo. Little gems like that are fun find and share.
Anybody got a black cat named Dark Wraith that we can send in?
The Dark Wraith is still waiting for the first signatories to knock on the door.
Hmm.. doesn't look like any stopped by. I wonder why that is?
Oh, I checked on my 401k...it has finally earned $6. I guess maybe the economy is picking up, right? And "personal accounts" would save social security......
(about 20% of the 402 is in a guaranteed 4.5% return catagory...I think the whole mix is now performing at about that level. Not a great fund return if you're already over 40. Gee,after 6 months my earnings can buy me a burger and fries. As I've said before, the ONLY thing that makes this worthwhile as a retirement plan is the employer match, which means the earning on my investment from a personal standpoint is 100%. This is NOT what the Bushistas propose. I put in 3% of my income. It becomes 6% with the match. I have a whopping $350 or so after 6 months. In 30 years when I can retire, it will probably(this 6 months) be worth maybe $3000. This is $500 a month for an equivalent 6 month period. About half my salary. This is fine, but the money that stays in for only 20 years will only earn about 2/3 what this does, so my income drops. Putting $$$ away 20 years ago, it wouldn't matter as much, the early earnings making more over time to balace the later. Unfortunately, what few solid proposals I've heard have the present old fogeys untouched, and the vast middle aged screwed by cuts in SS benefits while not having the time for proper retirement planning/investment to occur. Of course, they may keep futzing around until I actually retire before they do anything at all...)
Good afternoon, Dark Wraith.
This is not exactly in keeping with the general tone of this thread but I'm beginning to think that the US economy is not in the best hands. I know this sounds ludicrous but I believe that anything that Wall St. thinks is good is likely to be quite bad for the majority of people in this country. I am even entertaining doubts about the essential benefits of capitalism on a scale larger than a village marketplace. Am I just being intellectually seduced by creeping socialism? Or, heavens forfend, communism?
I know this sounds like an agony column question, but do you see any good in large scale capitalism? Is Alan Greenspan a devil incarnate? Was the mid-nineteenth century Irish potato famine really caused by economists in London who advised allowing the market to correct itself rather than extend charity and/or aid to the Irish? Finally, a true essay question, what three things would you do to make the US economy healthier?
I'll take my answer off the air.
Lack Wordy has pendantic tendencies.
For myself, I would be interested to know DW's answer, and so would prefer an "on the air" reply.
Capitalism has generally reminded me of Churchill's comment about democracy, ie., that it's the worst form of government, except for all the others. DW had a post a while back about the information he passes along to his students in intro. econ. classes, requiring them to read both the serious righties who bow the knee to the Austrian School of Economics and Adam Smith and all that, and then also requiring them to read Das Kapital by Marx, as well as the background philosophy that buttresses that thinking.
It was most insightful, reminding me that there is no such thing as a perfect economy, never was, and never will be. Attempts to force one are dangerous.
- oddjob
"Unleashing the Resistance" by Karen Kwiatkowski at
http://tinyurl.com/acyrz
OH NO! What's the number for poison control, again?
PeterofLoneTree - thanks for that link to "Unleashing the Resistance" (Karen Kwiatkowski).
What a good article!
Good evening, good bloggers.
I must first apologize for disappearing for almost a day. I realized this morning that I had made a commitment to be at a Medieval and Renaissance Festival in the middle of nowhere. It turned out to be quite a large affair compared to what I was expecting. I was even happily surprised to find quite a bit more effort at authenticity than I have seen at other such festivals around the country. I even came across a few folks who were conversant in Old English.
This evening, I repaired the code on a blog that had become somewhat errant. It took quite a bit longer than I thought it would.
Now, let me get down to some business here.
The Dark Wraith pours himself a pot of coffee.
Good evening, Wordlackey.
It's funny you should mention that.
I am sorely familiar with the deficiencies in socialism: they've been hammered into my head through training, through propaganda, and through honest analysis.
That having been said, I am just as familiar with the deficiencies of capitalism. Even within the training to be an economist, some of the close to fatal flaws are noted; but more advanced training either dismisses these as aberrations that do not overwhelm the benefits or dismisses them entirely.
I can argue from the point that what we see now is not capitalism. More specifically, what we are seeing now is post-capitalism: the logical end game of the beauty of perfect competition when concentration starts to occur on a massive scale across industries and across nations. In such a scenario, all of the amazing benefits to society of free markets vanish in a pool of oligopolies and cartel-like structures that sap away what in economics is called "social welfare" by those economists who don't sneer at the very idea of costs and benefits to society that arise from market structure and the flow of transactions therein.
Practically speaking, this degeneration of capitalism to something brutal and subsequent to it cannot be stopped without violence on a scale of profound proportions. As frightening as a future in the post-capitalist world may seem, it should be equally frightening that there is real possibility of a snapping point where peoples around the world rebel en masse and effectively try to tear it down. History—even very recent history—has terrifying examples of this happening, albeit on smaller than global scale.
When I wrote the four-part series, "The 21st Century," I wasn't writing a speculative, science-and-social fiction novel; I was writing about the future that will happen unless something equally powerful stops it in its tracks.
But what would replace the world of tomorrow if some gigantic force of human revulsion ends our headlong path into the future of which I wrote?
Imagine tomorrow, Wordlackey, awakening to a landscape where you cannot have the things most people want:
the extraordinary medicines that make you get better or at least make you believe you'll get better;
the stores that have so many things from which people can choose or even reject if they are so inclined to prove their unwillingness to be tamed by consumerism;
the food that you know very well, despite what you might have read in some Mother Earth journal, isn't going to make you horribly sick and kill you... at least not right away;
the world of entertainment that keeps you company so that you never, ever have to be alone, either by yourself or with your uninterrupted thoughts;
the streets that are safe in a way that places were never safe in most of the history of people's walking from here to there;
the belief, unyielding to personal experience or what you read every day in liberal publications, that there really are great jobs with decent pay out there, or at least there will be once the economy gets back on its feet for workers.
How many people are really, really willing to give up the fervent hope that all we need to do is tweak this system here and there, and everything will be pretty darned good? How many people, liberals especially, believe that, if only we can get the neo-cons out of power, we can do just about anything, and social justice will reign supreme, once again?
Here's what I think, Wordlackey: the neo-conservatives, the giant, multinational corporations, the degradation of personal privacy to a mockery, the era of average workers slowly and inexorably losing economic ground—these things are no longer aberrations in our economic system; instead, they are our economic system. The George Bushes, the fundamentalists, the spreading, globalizing corporate entities of interlocking directorates and cashflows, the mainstream news media that talks in a surreal world where the shocking facts and stories don't even exist—these are not some cancer waiting for the proper scalpel to remove from the patient; instead, they are the patient.
But who, then, is ready to calm the soul of humankind now once again coming to an age of chains just as it was emerging from so many millennia in the darkness of misery and repressions?
Are there alternatives to what we are facing? Yes, of course.
Will we live to see any of them? Only if we are willing to die to have them.
Short of that, we shall slowly walk a road back to the hated fields of our ancestors, and we shall convince ourselves at every step of the way that there surely will come a time when we shall choose to make the road go a different way, even though we know very well that it won't happen.
After all, Wordlackey, we aren't the ones building the road.
The Dark Wraith still does not know, however, whether we can learn how to build our own road to the future.
Good evening, Wild Clover.
Six dollars, huh? What concerns me about your situation is that, from your descriptions of what you're doing for a living, how secure your employment situation is.
I do get the impression from your previous posts that you live in sort of a group setting. The good news is that this allows at least some economies of scale to be realized, and it also offers some degree of employment risk reduction. I don't know enough about your situation to be at all certain if this is the case, however.
This does, though, go to a point within Wordlackey's question: there are ways, at the small level, at least, to partially compensate for what is clearly turning out to be a government that has willfully abandoned its commitment to a sense of social good that protects people from major economic collapses in the personal lives. The problem is that, no matter how well-knit a mutually supportive group is (and there are very few that are all that well knit, anymore), it just cannot compensate for all that is lost when the government, itself, walks away.
Whereas there's only so much people can do for each other, even when they would be willing to do anything and everything for those in their communal group, they simply cannot do as much as a benevolent and beneficent government can. The United States was by no stretch of the imagination a "socialist" country (despite what polemicists on the Right say to the contrary); but even lacking the basic pillars of socialism, that government was on a track of doing incredible, amazing things for its citizens.
Now, it has chosen to let go of that decades-long commitment to providing and enforcing progressively greater benefits for people. And at the same time, its willingness to commit beneficence to corporations, the wealthy, and the religiously obsessed has grown.
What are we to make of this world, Wild Clover?
I suppose the answer to that is, "Six whole dollars towards retirement, that's what."
The Dark Wraith doesn't much care for that answer.
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
Or should that be good morning? Very interesting comment about our ongoing segue into a post capitalist society. The world is indeed becoming a strange place, and even over the course of my relatively short lifespan I have noticed how the virtues that our civilization once held dear are gradually evaporating. A process that appears to be accelerating as we move further into this new, and increasingly foreboding century.
I remember a time not so long ago when I had faith in the ideals that have formed the foundation of the great anglo-saxon nations for centuries. Even in my youthful naivite I knew that the structure that rests upon these foundations has varied in its spledor over time; that our actions have oft had occassion to marr the facade, or even burn the entire edifice to the ground. However, I believed in our people, and those who have decided to cast their lot in with us; in our ability to learn from our mistakes, and rebuild anew.
These ideals that I speak of: the rule of law, representative governemnt, thrift, hard work, education and egalitarianism have never managed to find their full expression, but I believed in the march of progress that they had set in motion, and thought our future was to be a bright one. Instead, we find ourselves on the cusp of a new Dark Age, one not so dissimilar to that envisioned by Winston Churchill, as he contemplated the consequences of Nazi victory:
...a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by he lights of perverted science.
How did this happen? How did we reach the point where our leaders lie to us, and we shrug, and where reason is trodden into the mud by superstition and ignorance? Our people have lost their way, so thoroughly, that I don't believe they can ever find it again. The time has come for the torch to be passed.
We were so close. Soemone tell me it isn't so.
Mr. Shakes, as we've discussed before, this paradigm is also fundamentally based upon relatively cheap and readily available oil (& the energy it contains).
From the sounds of it, that will not be so by the end of our lives if we live for another four to five decades.
As you have pointed out before, no matter the other circumstances, if the society at large does not manage to accomodate this fundamental change, it will collapse no matter how it appears now.
In retrospect the 1950's were a fearful, conservative time. The generation that followed rejected that. While they had universal conscription to force the matter and the equivalent generation today does not, I still take heart in what DW has seen and written about earlier. If a new "beat generation" makes its appearance then we will know we are on a path we have seen before and it doesn't end in permanent loss of the values you treasure.
- oddjob
(ps: Has anyone else noticed that the "arty", creative types among the guys are letting their hair grow long again?)
After reading the most recent comments and realizing how ineffectual we are, at this point, I'm going to stop thinking about our current administration, our economic and global situation, and stick my head in the sand. I'm going to deny there's any problem. In fact, I'm going over to that kitty site and vote on kitties.
oddjob----i have never thought of myself as arty or creative, but i am letting my hair grow out again. there were many years a while back that my hair was long enough for a two foot braid. stephen stills has a song about this.
ooooh. i am a geezer.
dw. nice term--post-capitalism. getchyer pitchfork ready fellow peasants.
(I erred in forgetting to add on the word "young", for I suspect I'm noticing a generational shift away from short hair. The last time hair was this short was the early 1960's, and after that the trend for long appeared rather suddenly. It seems to me that this is perhaps occurring again.)
- oddjob
Newsweek column:
If Watergate Happened Now
- oddjob
Good evening, Darkish Wraith.
Thank you for your very thorough answer. Unfortunately, I have looked down the road and distinctly seen the possibilities you outlined. Between the hyper-raveneous beast currently called capitalism (and I certainly note your differentiation of this form and a more ideal version) and the not very distant energy difficulties (a mild word) we will face, I have seen a very dark future much closer than it appears in the rear mirror.
I'm particularly interested in your post-capitalism label as applying to our current financial system. I have to say it makes very good sense to me. Is this an original label or is this a stream of economic thought/theory?
Steven Greenhut's "A View From Inside the Housing Bubble" might be worth a read: http://tinyurl.com/dw4wj
in the 50's, most people got by with a single family income.
by the 80's and the horrors of ronnie raygun's attack on humanity through economics, people started needing two family incomes to get by.
now we need two incomes and a load of debt to get by.
this is not progress!
here in the great white north of commie canuckistan, the tax burden lays approximately at 11% on the corporate world. in the 50's the corporate load was over 30%.
easy to see why we having problems and what happens when the ordinary joe has nothing left to give?
are things similar south of the 49th?
should i liquidate all my assets and move to tahiti before the crash or should i just start selling illegal drugs(lucrative and constant demand)?
lenin's ghost:
"are things similar south of the 49th?"
What happened to "54-40 or Fight"?
Good evening, Wordlackey.
Although I had not seen the term "post-capitalism" used by anyone else, it would appear that the term is being used by others, although it seems to be a more-or-less generic description to most. It also appears that some neo-conservatives are using the term as some kind of double-speak for what they consider a "post-Welfare State" society that they envision as the successor to the one passing from the scene in the Industrialized World.
This is a bit scary because it comports in notable ways with the descriptions I set forth in the series, "The 21st Century": they're imagining some kind of an economic system that fully recognizes agglomerated corporations that are capable of providing incentives to work far more effective than could be offered in a more democratic, pluralistic society. Perhaps more accurately, this neo-con dream world has a state apparatus that doesn't give people the option of not working, since people want to stay alive, and the only way they can do that in a strongly corporate type of society is to work for whatever wage and need is available. There will be no government hand-outs that the neo-cons and Classical economists have always bemoaned were the source of everything from unemployment to STDs to crime to flatulence.
Strangely, now that I see their vision of post-capitalism, I understand that it just about exactly comports with what I see happening.
The only difference I notice is the possibility, albeit unlikely, of a global and violent reaction, one that would be met with a global crackdown by a statist apparatus.
The Dark Wraith reaches for the channel changer; there's gotta be something else on FUTURE TV.
According to Wikipedia, the Mexican-American War happened.
- oddjob
Good evening, Lenin's Tomb.
It's about as bad here as it is elsewhere. The erosion of real purchasing power has been rolling along for years, now, and there's no end in sight.
The loss of power by unions in the 1980s is probably a critical factor, but it seems to me from a qualitative view that the forces propelling the working class downward are more fundamental. Several major shifts were pretty clear in the late 1960s and early 1970s, although the mainstream journalists of the time weren't able to see that economic and social crises of that day were all part of a more basic, underlying change that was occurring in the world.
To this day, I see only minor references to and understanding of the massive undertow that was, after World War II and especially after Kennedy, pulling the world away from ancient times and into a form of modernity that was not going to be particularly enjoyable. The good part was that, once the U.S. role in Vietnam was over, people could take something of a breather from the accumulating problems of the last half of the 20th Century. The bad news was that, despite what appeared to be the relative calm of the 1970s and the fairly mild game of conservative rectitude in the political environment of the 1980s, the future was still on the march. Had people not been so interested in not being interested, they might have noticed that black clouds of the 21st Century were forming on the horizon.
As it was, folks didn't notice those far-off thunderheads towering barely visibly against low on the horizon of the next century that seemed so far out there somewhere. The Clinton Era gave people a rather perverse idea that the society and maybe even the economy were so robust that they could be jerked in any desirable direction and things would keep on keeping on.
It didn't work out that way; and it appears that folks are only now beginning to realize that they weren't pushing the future around to make it obey them, at all: instead, they were just stage hands putting up the theatre where forces much larger than they could ever imagine would play out the new century in fire and shadow, leaving the common people of the land to wonder when in the world it was that the whole thing turned so ugly.
Sadly, the answer to that question requires citations back to many decades ago; and I doubt if anyone remembers things that far back.
Not that it matters now, anyway.
The Dark Wraith just grimaces at what could have been that just couldn't have been.
There is an erosion of purchasing power here, but an increase of it in several developing nations, and this has been going on for decades, correct? While our power has ebbed, it has increased in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, China, and India.
Given that, would it not be possible for it to come back here if the underlying paradigms were sufficiently altered? I know the odds of that are remote, but is it not likely that the erosion of purchasing power is at least in part connected to our country's transition from net creditor to net debtor? If that is so, shouldn't it be possible (if extraordinarily difficult and painful) to reverse the trend?
- oddjob
It's a week old, but it's still another gem by Toles.
- oddjob
so oddjob----took me awhile to get back here. been over at creek running north making an ass of myself in comments, tho the cause was good.
to be petty and personal, are you telling me that it doesn't mean anything that i'm growing my hair long (again) because i'm not young? ahh well.
great discussion here on this thread! lotta good stuff. lotta good humor
Good evening, Dread Pirate Roberts.
I'm almost afraid to click on that link to Creek Running North. I'm not familiar with the site, and I have learned not to wander too often into sites about which I know nothing. Lately, I've stumbled into some genuinely weird stuff clicking on links. A couple of days ago (maybe it was yesterday), I clicked on a link and ended up at a Website where some strange lady is making and selling what she describes as "Christian American" flags. I clicked on a link today that took me to some has-been's site where he thought a bunch of Fred Phelps nutcases protesting a funeral were crazed liberals.
And then, just a few minutes ago, I clicked on a link that took me to a blog run by a neo-con economist whose name I've heard a few times, a fellow who's so obsessed with this warpage the neo-cons have done of economics that he's afraid to have anyone comment at his blog unless they "register" with him, personally. Now, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who would give that cat personal information is crazy; but that's just me.
About your hair. You need to grow it out. Trust me on this. You'll look 20 years—no, 30 years!—younger. Heck, you'll feel like a teenager again, and you'll be ready to go right out and join the war protests that will be starting at universities around the country.
I would, however, perhaps think twice about going to any get-togethers at that one school in Ohio. Things got rather ugly, there; and the political atmosphere of that state wasn't anywhere near as bizarrely Right-wing as it is now.
Remember, Dread Pirate Roberts: as we age, we may feel young, but those M-16 rounds travel mighty fast.
And retribution for killing Americans protesting vile wars doesn't even try to catch up, even after three decades.
The Dark Wraith just wants to make sure he doesn't lose any of the good commenters here at The Dark Wraith Forums.
Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming,
we're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming,
four dead in Ohio
- Neil Young, CSNY
- oddjob
Dark Wraith, did I thank you for mentioning and linking to my website in this post? If not, thank you.... I was thinking about a fun little site I visited some time ago, you could google the popularity of your posting name. Anyway, after running trailertrash through it, I was amazed to find some porn sites using MY NAME. Anyway, I am not affiliated with them in any way. I will not change my name. I am waiting for them to change theirs. Being an optimist, I feel certain that they will be changing their names to "Stud-muffin" and "Bunny Girlies", etc., any day now.
Damn! Damn! Damn!
That was supposed to be TRAILERTRASH! above, not calldkitties!
Imagine that. Someone posting under dual names here on The Black Wraith Forums!
This is The Dark Wraith Forums, Black Wraith.
I have a purchasing power macroeconomic question for you posted further back up the thread, DW.
- oddjob
Good morning, OddJob. I did see that question, and my intention to answer it somehow slipped away.
The erosion of purchasing power is the result of some fairly complex forces, but underlying these is a pretty simple notion: as you note, we are a net debtor nation. This is not, however, rectified by simply deciding that we'll stop borrowing so much money. The motive force that induces us to borrow to finance operations has to do with structural issues involving desired economic growth rate and how that relates to the age and scale of our economic operations as a nation. It also has to do with our continuing, albeit eroding, status as the world's banker, a highly desirable situation that affords us lots of room to grow when, considering the size of our economy, our growth rate should slow down just by the nature of how numbers work.
We want to keep growing rapidly, and we want to remain the dominant force on the world's financial stage. These twin desires put us in the terrible position of leveraging ever more to keep the growth rate going and the value of the dollar strong against other currencies.
Ultimately, we suffer in the labor markets with a continuously slipping ability to maintain purchasing power. There are only two things that keep the situation from being profoundly noticeable to many people: rapidly changing and improving technologies in products and distribution, along with low prices for imports—particularly from China, but also from much of Asia—that allow people to live fairly comfortably despite eroding purchasing power. In this second vein we can see why the United States did not, years back, crack the whip on China to stop its artificial pegging of the yuan at 8.28 to the U.S. dollar: no politician in his right mind is going to do more than whine about "unfair trade practices" like that unless he really wants to see prices at the consumer level go through the roof, with the consequent realization by his voters of just how much purchasing power they've really lost.
The game is getting harder to play, now, though. China knows it has to unleash the yuan, at least to some extent; and once it does so, it will become really obvious to a whole lot of people that they're not really all that well off. The trick for folks like me is to explain to them that they haven't been well off for a very long time, but they felt okay all these years because of the cocktail they were drinking made of excessive government and private debt and the related low prices of imports.
I doubt, though, if most folks will understand that part. But that's okay because, if the pain becomes obvious during Mr. Bush's last three years in office, my suspicion is that the voters will lay all of the blame right at his doorstep; and he'll go down in history reviled, right along with the Republicans who clung to his ideological coattails to the very end of his bloody Administration.
The Dark Wraith can only hope.
And by one of life's odd coincidences as I'm reading this the work playing on the radio is the Kyrie from the Mozart Requiem....
- oddjob
Once again, OddJob, the universe gives us evidence of the fragile, nearly non-existent line between coincidence and weirdness.
The Dark Wraith wishes Mozart's ghost would find some other blog to vex.
DW--creek running north is the blog of chris clarke, a very nice, very hip guy. i was responding to a commentor who made, what seemed to me and several other people and chris himself, some absurdly stupid remarks about rape. i responded, uh, vigorously and intemperately.
Don't know if anyone is still looking at this open thread but I thought I would point out that NYMEX Crude Oil was at 59.20 a barrel earlier today and it seems to have gone back to 58 something. I was looking at Energy prices on Bloomberg.com for this info. It should pop the $60 mark soon if it hasn't already.
Is this just the start of Oil going through the roof.
-Gary A
In the medium term I'd say this wasn't the best of times to have purchased that Hummer, ya know?
- oddjob
thats what clinton said about ten years ago.;)
thx for addressing my questions and for all the laughs....a joy in these dark times.
thats what clinton said about ten years ago.;)
thx for addressing my questions and for all the laughs....a joy in these dark times.
shoes!!!!
that was me!
Ye gods! but this place gets weird sometimes.
Don't you have a graveyard to haunt, Black Wraith?
Sheesh.
As if the Dark Wraith doesn't have enough to figure out without the alter ego wafting through.
Dark Wraith - is the Black Wraith a twin, perhaps? He's pretty amusing:)
Good morning, Old White Lady.
Just ignore the Black Wraith; he's just trying to stir things up.
The Dark Wraith definitely needs to hang some garlic and crosses from the rafters in this place.
Dark Wraith - The Black Wraith may be trying to stir things up, b........
Nope, I won't say anything more. I have to go to work now.