I cite

Better off dead

Yesterday's NYT picked up a story out of LA about a man left dead on his balcony for five days.

“He looked fake,” said Austin Raishbrook, 33, who lives nearby. “It looked like somebody had thrown a dummy over the back of a chair.”

and

“I ran over there with my camera equipment,” he said. “There was blood on the balcony, and he was visible from the street. But it really did not look like a real person up there.”

Also reported in the NYT (in a recap from a blog) was that suicide has been increasing:

Worldwide, deaths from suicide now outnumber deaths from war and homicide together: the World Health Organization estimates that each year around one million people — predominantly men — kill themselves

We cannot tell the living from the dead. Many of us choose death.

Popular culture is overrun by the dead--vampires, ghosts, zombies. They are more alive than the living, demonstrating the kinds of freedom and agency (or, more precisely, the fantasy of freedom in the undead circuits of drive) we can only dream about. After all, no worries about health insurance here--it can't get any worse.

Do we fear them, these dead, these zombies or vampires? Do we seek in them a kind of release from our own entombment? So are they fantasies of agency or passivity? Or is part of the fantasy the very posing of a choice or opposition?

I read The Lovely Bones. The freedom of the dead narrator, the one at the center of the horror who as that very center escapes it. The contemporary tethering to the dead has replaced American dreams of progress, manifest destiny, hope, change, a better world. The zombie banks that are Obama's obscene underside are the truth of embrace of the dead, are failure to distinguish between living and dead (there are other elements of this as well: enthusiasm for Antigone, a new book on the blurring between life and death, everything written by Agamben).

Can we come back to life (especially a life that is not biopolitical--as I posted here a number of months ago, biopolitics is best understood in terms of the death drive). Can we engage living and the living, without having to talk about valuing life, and thereby inserting it into arguments over economies? Can we hold onto living as a necessary element of the axiom of equality, without getting dragged into ridiculous arguments over fetishization of the human? What is the fear of life? A fear of responsibility, agency, accountability, of the day to dayness of its processes and requirements?

Don't bring out your dead. Our dead are already here and they are enough.

Feeling sick

From the WSWS:

The popular disaffection with the Obama healthcare plan goes much further, however, than the fanatical right-to-life constituency. The Obama administration has based its program for healthcare restructuring entirely on the argument that healthcare costs are bankrupting the US economy and that controlling and reducing these costs is essential.

The logical conclusion of this policy—even if officially denied by the White House—is that somebody’s healthcare is too expensive and must be cut back or eliminated. Millions of people fear that that somebody is likely to be them and their families. One opinion poll published last week showed that 53 percent believed they would be worse off or no better than before under the Obama plan.

People feel that they will be worse off, that something will be taken from them, that they won't be able to care for their families. They feel, in other words, that something will be stolen; they are worried about theft and about the theft of their life and livelihood.

Last night on Maddow, Oberman, and Stewart protesters were featured who were scared--of Obama, of the loss of their rights. They voiced anger and outrage. One of the most pronounced themes: we don't trust you, you are lying; even the smallest bit of respect or decorum (waiting one's turn, listening, raising one's hand) was gone. This strong current of mistrust, and of open statements of it, has less to do with Obama than with the larger collapse in confidence in governance--last year Congress's popularity was lower than Bush's. That collapse in symbolic efficiency is becoming more visible and pronounced.

I wonder if much of this outrage isn't displaced from the last couple of years of the recession as well as the last decade of escalating inequality. Yes, the outrage right now is taking, in some places, a racist form. The Daily Show was good on this point: yes, white people are losing. Admit it and get over it. It's kick off was a clip from the horrible Glen Beck: Obama's basic principle is reparations.

The racial politics at work might account in part for the failed outrage around the bailouts--bailouts meant that white people were still ahead, were winning, were on tops. Same with outrage fail over bonuses and the general Wall Street pillage: done by white people so still part of white hegemony (class struggle has always been ruptured by racism in the US). But, with health care, the basic affective dimension is that the white winners are having to pay for black and immigrant losers. This means that the worried whites are dealing with the barely repressed knowledge of their economic misery--their tax dollars paying out banks--and with seemingly undeserving black people, who are going to get something for nothing.

So from the perspective of middle whites, everyone enjoys--gets something for nothing, sets some kind of excessive jouissance--but them. This links to one of the biggest myths in the US: that people want everyone to succeed; the truth is that people don't want universal health care because they want some people to suffer, they want to have more than others, they are actually ok with folks dying for lack of health care. Positing death panels is a way of displacing the knowledge that we are the death panels.

Truth and consequences

How often have we heard Republicans, Conservatives, and Christian fundamentalists preach about responsiblity? Everyone is supposed to take responsibility, personal responsibility. People are supposed to take responsibility for their drug and alcohol use (rehab? no! no! no!); for their obesity, lack of exercise, and failure of will power; for their credit card debt and excess expenditures; for their unprotected sex. Three strikes and you are out, out, out. Unwanted pregnancy? Responsibility means having that baby. The smaller and more personal the transgression, the greater your exposure to excessive punishment, all in the name of responsibility. We are small enough to be allowed to, even encouraged to, fail. If we don't fail and encounter the consequences, the system can't work--no incentives to be good (Reagan taught us this back in the 80s by making sure that we saw homeless people all over our cities; he called them welfare queens; the media called them bag ladies; we knew they were that the fate we had to avoid at all costs). We are all supposed to face the consequences of our actions.

But this 'all' is actually pretty narrow. Who's left out? The rich and the privileged, especially if they are white and male. And they get extra dispensation if they are or have been employed in the finance sector or the Bush administration (sorta the same thing, if you think about it). So the finance sector doesn't have to face any consequences. And it looks like the Bush administration might escape the consequences of its actions as well (I favor a war crimes tribunal and execution, myself; I expect they will escape accountability for running torture and prison camps because leading congressional Democrats were in on it all along; I admit the drawback of my position is that it rapidly escalates into mass hangings).

Which 'all' comprises the citizens? It seems clear that the 'all supposed to accept the consequences' are the people--but this people isn't the part of no part. It's the part that has to be counted, included, and literally made to pay. Those excluded from this all, excluded from the consequences, are the privileged ones, the exception. It's like a state of exception turned inside out: those who inhabit the terrain of lawlessness are the financial elite and their state arm.

Too many voices of the allegedly pragmatic Democratic left claim that Obama should move on, deal with the economy, and let the crimes of the past remain in the past. This is wrong, severely, unconscionably wrong. The crimes are the same crimes. The economic crimes are inextricable from the crimes of torture and aggressive war. All result from the attempt to escape law, to move beyond and outside it, to persist in exceptional space without consequences.

A horrible list

1.   Climate change. I read the NYT magazine today. One of its reminders--that US gas mileage is pathetically worse than that in Japan and the EU. That the structure of our communities around driving is killing the environment. It may be that little nudge that pushes me to start a vegetable garden although I hate gardening. There are good reasons for this: I will be changing my practices, decreasing my carbon footprint, all that stuff. But I'm really doing it because I think that the society is so close to the abyss that I need some skills and some kind of provisions for the calamity to come.

2.    Economic collapse. With no Soviet Union to keep it in line, capitalism has accelerated and intensified unbearably. I can't get over the fact that 50 hedge fund managers (combined) made over 20 billion dollars this year. And that the numbers of workers making 20 dollars or more an hour has declined to levels below where they were in the seventies. The greed is mind-boggling. The 'oh well, there's nothing we can do' attitude is unbearable. There has been a massive counter-revolution in the US since the 70s, brought on by finance capital, its corporate allies, and conservatives in the wake of the unrest of the 60s (this was what makes Reagan so popular, the not quite human face of counter-revolution in the guise of greed is good and sex is bad). And the thing is, people have gone for it, swallowed what was screwing them whole. Cheap credit, tons of consumer goods, constant entertainment and socially acceptable prescription drugs. Who needs economic equality when we've got You Tube? We are all creative. We entertain each other and let the rich take more and the environment collapse.

3.   That the Bush administration will get away with torture (waging aggressive war, undertaking illegal surveillance). How could the NYT have ignored the White House torture story for more than a week and then only produce one editorial on it? The editorial was pathetic, saying things like we need more information and we won't get the information and using the Orwellian euphemisms for torture promulgated by the White House. Isn't it their job to dig up this information? Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats are pathetic, too weak and spineless (and I include both presidential candidates here) to call for resignations, press for indictments, and all the rest (maybe if folks had been giving each other blowjobs in the Oval we'd have a case...). The sickness will fester, continuing to kill the Constitution until it rots away completely (or is just the building blocks of children's toys Agamben evokes). Do we have anything to offer in its place?

Addition: Global food riots, shortages, and massive price increases, the flipside of American obesity (think corn syrup).

"If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me!"

I'm not sure if what I am about to describe is general or specific. That is, I'm not sure whether it is a characteristic of my own background and foreground or something broader. I suspect that it is something broader. So, why is it that we are more interested in another's misfortune than another's good fortune? Gossip is rarely positive. We don't often whisper nice asides to our neighbors. And pleasant, praising remarks about a third party rarely generate giggles of complicity. Why?

To speak of one's own achievements is considering bragging and pompous. But we can always find ears excited to hear about our trials and tribulations. Even though lauding the accomplishments of one's children is a relatively common practice, we still tend, at least a little, to tolerate rather than enjoy it. Oddly, the engagement and affective attachment generated by complaints, errors, misfortune, even tragedy, is strong with those we love as well as with acquaintances or relative strangers.

Is this simply schadenfreude? Or is there something about misfortune or error or tragedy that creates opportunities for connection? Does another's unhappiness enable us to feel like we can help, make a difference, that we are needed and valued? So, even though it seems we are simply relishing the story of another's fall, are we not also working through ways of insuring that similar misfortune does not happen to us? Success doesn't give us much to talk about. But failure opens us to myriad possibilities, almost as if there is something preferable about failure--it changes our world, our course, the path we though we were taking.

I backed into a car in a parking lot evening. I left a note (but I hope they don't call me).

Nice? No, thanks!

The interesting comments on the hugs and kisses thread have stimulated my thinking about niceness. They explore the ways niceness functions as a mode of control (with gendered dimensions) in the current political conjuncture, disabling dissent, channeling conflict onto the subject as the fragile individual with precarious self-esteem, and operating as an illusory locus of agency--we might not be able to change the world, but we can still be nice!

Given the politics of nice in its oppressive and gendered dimensions, is there nonetheless a terrain where we should be nice and if so how far does it extend? Like, maybe we should be really nice to young children and the very old? But, if that's the case, wouldn't it be because we don't think they can handle the truth? That they aren't quite tough enough? And, how would toughening kids up occur anyway?

These seem to me to be vexed questions because of the ways that niceness, politeness, and consensus blend together. Some forces in contemporary US society seem to want to make every forum child and family friendly (well, nearly everywhere: there positions involve necessarily excluded spaces of violence, otherness, and difference, spaces for the uncivilized, spaces that need to be contained or controlled). Others point out (correctly in many cases) the ways that hostile and demeaning speech has exclusionary effects. I have been uncertain on this point, myself. For example, in Precarious Life, Judith Butler describes how accusations of anti-semitism silence criticisms of Israel (or at least make the costs of that criticism very, very high). In the past, I haven't been very sympathetic to this view, in part because I think that one should be able to counter those positions pretty easily and in part because I think politics requires a kind of will and toughness.

But, I wonder now if I have been wrong. Perhaps the risk or the costs are more internal, happening in advance of the speech that one wants to make. That is, charges of anti-semitism, or fear of those charges, occurs in advance of one's speaking. They inflect our thoughts and our willingness to think and speak so that our thinking and speaking is shaped in advance. Fear, then, has a configuring force and once fear has been installed it runs on its own, under the surface, like an excess program Microsoft stuck into our operating system while we weren't paying attention.

But, if this is the case, then all thinking and speaking is already shaped by forces outside and beyond us. And, if that's true, then how can we tell the difference between a meanness, hostility, or diminution that is somehow wrong, beyond the acceptable, and that which is already part of the conditions within which we speak? Additionally, it could be that politics is in part about changing those conditions. This would apply to both right and left proponents of nice--they want a different terrain. They want a specific set of rules, rules that limit opposition.

So, back to my initial question: are there some terrains where niceness is a good idea and is education one of those? Or, does failure to challenge the politics of education concede a crucial terrain in advance?

Transgression

Last night, a primary topic of conversation was 'the horror that is Peru.'  People spoke about the depth of racism in this country, the lack of authority, the failure of law (the state is the first to transgress the law). Apparently, a well known historian recently called the country a bordello--and everyone agreed. Shining Path is seen as a symptom of the violence and racism. The earthquake is providing a momentary opportunity for something like solidarity.

One of the faculty members described for me a recent scene in a small town. The local government wanted to be in the Guinness book of world records for making the longest chocolate dessert (I forget the specific name). It raised 2000 dollars to pay for it; people cooked all day. The television cameras were there. Villagers were around the table, waiting to have a piece of the dessert after it was measured. The plan was to cut it into pieces and distribute these pieces. But, quickly the people stormed the table, grapping, and eating the dessert. It was gone in 15 seconds. One guy told a reporter that he was sure he wouldn't have gotten any had he not stormed the table and grabbed some.

And, they didn't make the world record after all.

Molly Ivins: The Politics of American Greed

Molly Ivins: AlterNet: The Politics of American Greed.

I don't get it. What's the percentage in keeping the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour? After nine years? This is such an unnecessary and nasty Republican move. Congress has voted seven times to raise its own wages since last the minimum wage budged. Of course, Congress always raises its own salary in the dark of night, hoping no one will notice. But now it does the same with the minimum wage, quietly killing it.

Anyone who doesn't think this is a country where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers -- this is Bush country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts.

According to the current issue of Mother Jones:

* One in four U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level income.

* Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any one time has risen steadily. Now, 13 percent -- 37 million Americans -- are officially poor.

* Bush's tax cuts (extended until 2010) save those earning between $20,000 and $30,000 an average of $10 a year, while those making $1 million are saved $42,700.

"A Godless America is a dead America"

I finally picked up my campus mail. In it was a glossy publication (referred to inside as a 'book') from the Great Commission Center International edited by Thomas Wang and titled, America, Return to God. Psalms 33:12 is printed on the front cover: "Blessed is the Nation whose God is The Lord." On the back cover, in addition to a number of endorsements from evangelical ministers, written in red is the following:

America is courting self-destruction
A Godless America is a dead America
Time is not on our side
Repent now

The book is a call to arms in order to make American into a Christian nation. According to the introduction, 500,000 copies of the book are being printed and 'sent as gifts to American leaders at all levels (federal, state, and local) and in all professions (political, judicial, educational, scientific, commercial, societal, church, media, etc). The book (a collection of short pieces by different authors) includes explicit denunciations of the enlightenment, feminism, homosexuality, the media, and Herbert Marcuse.

The first section of the book ("from faith to unbelief: American in decline") documents the decadence and decline that have been wrought by secularism and liberalism. The second half ("from unbelief to repentence: American in restoration") begins with an emphasis on repentence and revival but moves quickly to a language of warfare. Thus, a chapter by James Dobson is called "How can we win this war?" The answer is by passing a Federal Marriage Amendment. What's interesting here is thus the ambiguity in the referent 'this'--it could be that the original article was clearly part of an attack on gay marriage. In the context of this book, however, the war in question seems more a war for the soul of America. Gay marriage thus works in this context as a particular standing in for a universal, as a consolidation of multiple evils and crimes (it should come as know surprise that Dobson rails against tyranny, oligarchy, and a runaway court). Dobson writes:

We are involved in nothing less that a civil war of values--a collision between two ways of seeing life. This is not an issue of two alternatives from which to choose, but a life-and-death struggle. And one value system is going to predominate. One is going to rule the country.

Political Correctness

The business section of yesterday's NYT ran an article on American Idol and Simon Cowell. Here is a paragraph from it:

The whole Fox network operation impressed Mr. Cowell because there was never a hint of an attempt to censor him or to turn him into a sweetheart of a guy. Fox seemed to him to be bravely acknowledging that the American audience, like the British audience, was ready to rebel against what Mr. Cowell called "the terrible political correctness that invaded America and England."

Here is another paragraph from the article:

"Pop Idol" made Mr. Cowell one of the most talked-about cultural figures in Britain in the winter of 2002. He was a tabloid newspaper's dream: seen by millions every week on television, saying something outrageously quotable ("You're a disaster"), doing something unconscionably cruel (several young women left the auditions convulsed in tears after hearing his corrosive assessments of their talents) and tirelessly promoting his program (by doing every sort of interview in print and on television and radio).

What's interesting to me is the meaning of political correctness in this context. In the first paragraph, political correctness is linked to censorship and politeness (good manners). The Fox Network is not politically correct. And, this means that it neither censors nor attempts to make people be nice to others. It tells the truth, no matter how harsh or ugly. In fact, it is brave in doing so. It's lack of manners, in other words, is justified, grounded in, truth. In the second paragraph (which comes about a page before the one I cite first here), Cowell's behavior is described in excessive terms: outrageous, unconscionable, and cruel. So, does this mean that to be politically incorrect is to be outrageous, unconscionable, and cruel? Does it mean that one promotes (another word used to describe Cowell's actions) or tolerates cruelty? Does it mean that the truth is itself cruel, a harsh outrage which we must acknowledge?

If left or liberal critics attack Fox for its cruelty, are we not simply stating the obvious? In fact, is it not the case that, if articles such as this one are not off base, Fox does not claim to be otherwise, precisely insofar as it prides itself on not giving in to political correctness? Indeed, when we criticize Fox for being incorrect, we support their claims to bravery, their sense of themselves as righteous defenders of truth (and the best commenter on this is clearly Stephen Colbert).

What is missing from this line of thinking is of course politics: the equation of political correctness with lies and with manners. The element of manners is the easiest to deal with: anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia are not about being nice; they are about equality. This can perhaps get blurred (by idiots) when terms such as equal consideration are used (which suggests as well the limits of liberal concepts). But struggles for equality, particularly in equality of distribution, cannot be reduced to being nice.

But what about truth? I think this is more complicated because we can speak of truth in various ways: we could say that the politically incorrect speak the truth of and from their partisan position. So of course it will be diametrically opposed to ours. We can say that we speak from a truth that we are bringing into being. And we can say that we speak from a truth of the past and of history that cannot and will not be erased. These cases indicate the struggle over truth at the heart of political correctness.

So, it's interesting here that the second paragraph includes these outrageous elements, the excesses part of any struggle. On on hand, the paragraph (like the show) performs and naturalizes (in an innocuous space) the excisions and eliminations constitutive of neoliberal markets--there are losers. Deal with it. Only the weak, the nice, the self-deceived think otherwise and require such a gloss of manners. Only those who actively seek their own degradation, who readily participate in rituals of humilation, need the superficial shield of politeness. On the other, it can do so because it effaces the possibility of politics, that is, of actual resistance, contestation, refusal. It does so because it has turned the weapon of political correctness into mere manners, mere politeness.

What, then, would it be like if a real and terrible political correctness invaded England and America? All should tremble in its wake.