Happy Bastille Day!

Today is Tuesday, 14 July 2009.

Happy Bastille Day!



What’s important about the French Revolution is that it was the first attempt at a genuine social revolution, one meant to fundamentally alter the nature and distribution of power within a society, as opposed to events labeled revolutions, which were in actuality mere squabbles within ruling elites.

The American (so-called) Revolution fits squarely into the latter category. The framers of the “Revolution” and Constitution meant power to be confined, as traditionally, to a narrow circle: no females, no First Americans, even no white males without sufficient net worth.

A Predator in Chicago

Today is Sunday, 12 July 2009.

In a letter to the editor in the Business Section of today’s The New York Times, Robert Kaestner, professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes:

“In “Mortgages Made Simpler” (Economic View, July 5), Richard H. Thaler uses the analogy of ski resorts with expert and novice slopes to make the point that most people should stick to novice (plain vanilla) loans like the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

But in the recent financial meltdown, many expert skiers — sophisticated investors and institutions alike — also ran into trees on the slopes. The problem was not concentrated among unsophisticated investors who were duped by bad sales practices. The best and brightest financiers, along with people on Main Street, engaged in a gamble that housing prices would keep rising.

When the party stopped, many institutions and people of all backgrounds lost money. This is not an argument for more regulation, as the column suggests. Human nature cannot be regulated.”

I’m reminded of those in the 1960s who denounced civil rights laws: laws can’t change how people think or feel, and should therefore not be enacted. Kaestner makes a similar argument, and a similar error.

The point of laws and regulations is not to change “human nature” (whatever that might be), or how people think or feel, but how people act. If people wish to be prejudiced in their heart of hearts, I’m sad that they’re afflicted, but they’ve chosen their own private hell, and must suffer in it. However, if they act with prejudice toward others, they’re making a social hell, and should be sanctioned by law.

Racial bigots and such as Kaestner are simply apologists for predators.
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On this date in 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born.

On this date in 1904, Chilean poet and Nobelist Pablo Neruda was born.

Palin Turns Tail

Today is Saturday, 11 July 2009.

Why did Palin resign?

1. Least likely is an actively threatening investigation which could lead to criminal or civil liability. Much as I’d like to see Palin cuffed, perp walked, and Supermaxed, I think she’d be shrewd enough to pull an Agnew: wait until the last moment, and then trade her office for no prison time.

2. Run for President.

In terms of exposure in preparation for a national race, there are fundamentally two types of governors: those from states such as New York, California, Texas, etc., on whom the limelight perpetually shines, and those from states such as Oklahoma, Idaho, Alaska, etc., who normally toil in obscurity unless they’re indicted or run into a burning building and emerge with a bawling baby.

In either case, 2009 and the near future are not the time to be a governor running for President, given the economic crisis and concomitant state budget difficulties, particularly in a state so closely tied to oil prices over which it has no control. The unappetizing choice would have been the death-of-a-thousand-cuts in Juneau, or neglecting her responsibilities, while continuing to draw a salary and gallivanting about the Lower Forty-Eight.

3. Cash in.

Palin probably realizes she was a fluke. Her selection was the result of three main factors. First, the desperation of the McCain campaign for a game-changer level gimmick. Second, the fact that the McCain of 2008 wasn’t as mentally acute as the McCain of 2000, let alone 1990, and would fall for it. Third, the fact that McCain is the type of male who, through his entire adult life, has shown a propensity for letting his crotch lead his brain around by the ... uhm … nose.

Palin probably realizes she may very well have a short use-by date, so best to gather the ro$e buds while one may: sell books, rant on radio, give $peeche$, before the day that the only way she’ll receive attention is to jump naked into the Tidal Basin, or sell National Enquirer lurid details of the sexual “exams” given her by the aliens on the UFO.

As ex-governor, she’s free to take a stab at running for President while making hay while the sun shines. Even if she becomes the 21st century Harold Stassen, she can still laugh all the way to the bank.

And, with any luck, she’ll commit multiple felonies along the way.

Poetry and Power

Today is Thursday, 9 July 2009.

A particularly fine poem today in The Writer's Almanac.

"The Place I Want To Get Back To"
by Mary Oliver

is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;

and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.


"The Place I Want To Get Back To" by Mary Oliver, from Thirst. © Beacon Press, 2006.

One of the resonances of which this poem makes me think is The Great Gatsby, and the foolishness of how, when we've had a particularly wonderful, even life-changing, experience (as Gatsby did with Daisy), we often waste part of life trying to duplicate it, when, of course, the fact is "one can't step twice into the same river": even if the external stimulus is the same, we're no longer the person once we were, and we cannot, without deforming ourselves, duplicate the internal response. We can only seek to encounter joys resembling, broadly equivalent, but never precisely the same.
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On 8 July 1999, students in Tehran demonstrated peacefully against the dictatorship’s closing of a reformist newspaper. That evening, paramilitaries attacked a student dormitory at the university, beating indiscriminately, and killing at least one student.

On this date in 1999, began six days of demonstrations all over Iran against this type of gangsterism. At least 70 demonstrators were kidnapped by security forces and disappeared; most must be presumed dead, and at least a handful are still imprisoned.

Today, tens of thousands of Iranians attempted to march in Tehran, commemorating the anniversary and protesting the stolen presidential election. They were again viciously attacked by the security forces. Casualties are unknown.

Smash religious fascism! Long live democracy!

Good Guy in Honduras?

Today is Thursday, 2 July 2009.

In Honduras, the military ousts democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, so the latter must be the Good Guy, yes?

Hmmm.

Zelaya is a member of the Liberal Party of Honduras, which is not “liberal” in the sense that Ronald Reagan used the word. The LPH is a center-right party preaching free enterprise, personal responsibility, and less government. In other words, more-or-less Republican.

Zelaya was born into the Honduran oligarchy; the family’s businesses center on agriculture and forestry. He campaigned on a traditional platform of free trade, toughness on crime, and cutting government spending.

Then, midway through his term, Zelaya saw some light or other, and allied himself with the Bolivarianismo of Hugo Chavez, caudillo of Venezuela. (Which leads some to regard Zelaya as a socialist, or a leftist, or at least a “populist”.) Then, he attempted to stage a national referendum meant to lead to amendment of the Honduran Constitution, so he could run for a second term. This move was branded illegal by the democratically-elected Honduran Congress and the Honduran Supreme Court. Persisting in his scheme, Zelaya was kidnapped by the Honduran military and sent on involuntary vacation in Costa Rica.

So, is Zelaya a Good Guy?

To use classic Marxist terminology, the ideology and practice of the Bolivarianismo of Chavez and Zelaya are “subjectively left, objectively right”. For example, in the case of Chavez, a military dictator talks left and acts right. Chavez may prate of fundamentally re-structuring society, but, in practice, the structure of society remains the same, it’s just that a single Jefe takes position at the top, forces the oligarchy to disgorge more of its profits, and then distributes same to the lower classes, thus making the latter dependent on El Jefe, and emphatically not freed to become independent historical/political actors. In other words, no difference from the corrupt shell games of Peronism or Fidelismo.

Zelaya isn’t a Good Guy, but just an oligarch who wants to subjugate other oligarchs to himself, buying political support from the poor with trinkets and crumbs, and reigning in splendid solitude as El Supremo.

What we are witnessing in Honduras is not a struggle between Left and Right, but a spat within the ruling class.
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Note: today is the actual anniversary of USA/USE independence, when the Continental Congress voted: “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

What happened on 4 July was merely approval of the wording of the announcement of action which had already been taken.

Iran! Freedom!

Today is Saturday, 20 June 1009.

My many Iranian friends. I wish I were at your side. In my heart.



In Memory: my friend Y.

Garcia Lorca

Today is Friday, 5 June 2009.

On this day in 1898 was born Federico Garcia Lorca, the great Spanish poet and playwright. He was assassinated on 19 August 1936 by Spanish fascists, partly for his progressive politics, partly because he was gay.

The following is from his poem, “Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias”:

4. Absent Soul

The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have died forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk, where you are shuttered.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever

The autumn will come with small white snails,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.
I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.
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The complete English version (translator not given) is at:
http://www.boppin.com/lorca/lament.html. Finding the original Spanish is an exercise left to the student.