I cite

Glen Ford writing in Dissident Voice: “Progressives for Obama” Fool Themselves

Link: Dissident Voice : “Progressives for Obama” Fool Themselves.

But the most important reason that “Progressives for Obama” should have never existed is its utter lack of content. Leftists attempted to impose themselves on an electoral campaign where they were not wanted, and yet persisted in identifying with an organization over which they had no control, no ability to provide content. It was a game of make-believe that has run its illogical course. Frankly, the project can also be seen as an act of opportunism, an attempt to graft the Left onto a corporate campaign that at some point must eject it like a foreign body.

If it were just that lonely Lefties, tired of fighting in a thoroughly corporate-saturated political culture, simply wanted to hitch a ride with the younger Obamite crowd, they might be forgiven. But these veteran progressives deployed their reputations to spread falsehoods that they knew to be untrue. They provided a veneer of progressive credibility to a candidate who was nothing of the kind.

We were subjected to ideological nonsense such as: the Obama campaign is inherently progressive because it has excited millions of new potential voters. Therefore, progressives must publicly identify with Obama, take care to be seen as allies, and never do or say anything that might harm his candidacy. We were even told that the excitement surrounding Obama constituted a “movement.” But of course, there was never a social movement that was devoid of content, and excitement is a politically neutral quality that can be generated by the Left or the Right — or in wholly apolitical circumstances.

How much will you forgive?

I've been wondering about the true Obama fans out there, all of you who've invested your hopes and dreams in this 'uniter not a divider' with his scant record and faith-based initiatives. With the telecom immunity vote coming up, do you feel used? Just disappointed? Like he's still better than the alternatives?

In Sunday's column Frank Rich certainly seemed to have smelled the coffee--and not because he'd gotten breakfast in bed but because he'd endured the morning's walk of shame to a corner dinner in clothes he'd put on the day before. He'd fallen hard and fast and now the romance was gone.

Even though I didn't vote for him, I felt so used by Kerry, and by the Democrats trying to convince themselves and everyone else that there was something real here, something different yet electable. And with Obama, will they continue to play the new and historic card? the new opportunity, morning in America, not the same old same old--even when we know that the same old same old can appear in new and historic guises?

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).

Fury

Coincidence or convergence? Likely the former, but he writes my mood, even as his reflections lead him to different places. See blah-feme:

Today it is I who is irritated. Indeed I would go so far as to say that I am furious. Incandescent, even (I imagine myself glowing like a sore finger).  It is one of those furies that starts in the pit of the stomach and rides upwards like a stampede of wolves howling at the moon in chase of something small, obscure and cute, but already lost, already mauled by what the Spanish would call the vicio of the hunt. There will never be enough to satiate the pack that rides like this; it is what it is because it lives only in that vicious chase for the furry cause of its desire.

For blah-feme, anger is a kind of blindspot. I don't experience mine that way, at least not today. I can list its components (bureaucrats, software, ex's). Failures to answer are not instances of hidden authority but failures to cooperate (or bend).

I am suspicious of touchy-feely approaches to anger, either of the sort that urges its expression ("just let it all out") or the sort that says "relax," "let it go," "breathe." Each is stupid in its own way, failing to attend to its consequences.

That said, feeding anger can be a waste of time and energy. Like a bunch of emotional calories that congeal, hardening the arteries and surrounding the heart. Filled to brim , stuffed, bloated with anger, one can barely get out of bed or off the couch.

Maybe it's just pms.

Shoot me now.

(The title of this post is a figure of speech and should not be read as a provocation or incitement to violence of any sort).

I just discovered that the prospectus I sent to four or five publishers was a messy draft that I had somehow saved over the actual final version of the prospectus. This is particularly horrifying because I sent the prospectus out very soon after finishing it. I can't find the actual final version anywhere on my computer. Fortunately, there is a hardcopy (which again means I don't understand why there is not a file). But I've had to send out several emails of shame and horror.

How to cope with marauding monkeys?

Link: BBC NEWS | South Asia | Monkeys attack Delhi politician.

Delhi has long struggled to cope with marauding monkeys The deputy mayor of the Indian capital Delhi has died a day after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys.

SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys.

The city has long struggled to counter its plague of monkeys, which invade government complexes and temples, snatch food and scare passers-by.

The High Court ordered the city to find an answer to the problem last year.

One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques.

The city has also employed monkey catchers to round them up so they can be moved to forests.

But the problem has persisted.

Culling is seen as unacceptable to devout Hindus, who revere the monkeys as a manifestation of the monkey god Hanuman, and often feed them bananas and peanuts.

Urban development around the city has also been blamed for destroying the monkeys' natural habitat.

Via Adam (a founding member of the gulag blogopelago) who found the post here ,

Andre Gorz

(Cross-posted from: Long Sunday.)

French philosopher Andre Gorz commits suicide with wife 4 days ago.

    TROYES, France (AFP) — French philosopher Andre Gorz, 84, co-founder of the Nouvel Observateur weekly, has committed suicide together with his wife Dorine, relatives told AFP on Monday.
    
    Dorine, who was 83 and of British origin, had been ill for several years. The couple were found by a friend side by side in their home southeast of Paris surrounded by letters written to close friends and relatives.
    
    Born Gerard Horst in Vienna in 1923, Gorz became a naturalised French citizen in 1954 and made his name writing about ecology and anti-capitalism. He co-founded the Nouvel Observateur in 1954.
    
    Last year Gorz wrote of his wife: "You have just turned 82. You are still beautiful, gracious and desirable. We have been living together for 58 years and I love you more than ever."
    

What is it to be terrorized?

I don't recall thinking much about what it is to be terrorized before 9/11. I think we talked about it some in some of my classes with respect to domestic violence and the fear that women trapped in that situation become accustomed to. I know that the topic was much larger and more present in other countries, that those who did research in those areas were thinking more about it, and that there was a certain luxury in ignoring it. But overall, this was not a term that was part of my everyday vocabulary.

Since 9/11, the idea of being terrorized is more present. Some discuss it in terms of a climate of fear. Brian Massumi has a terrific article where he describes the terrorist alert system in terms of a deliberate modulation of fear. And he may discuss this, but I'm not looking at the article so I don't know directly, but I'm uncertain as to the affective dimension of what it is to be terrorized. What is feared? Does the likelihood of the realization of the fear impact the depth or severity of the feeling? Is the intangible aspect, the not knowing, the uncertainty the worse part? Maybe the question can be asked like this: is part of the affective dimension of being terrorized the confrontation with a lack of control, with a fundamental uncertainty? And, are there ways that this confrontation may in fact lead through and beyond the debilitating sense of being terrorized?

One of the closest things to a feeling of being terrorized that I've encountered was in the conversation with Gina in Peru about her childhood. She repeated the phrase "and they made us go to the center square" (or something like this, her words were being translated to me as she spoke). This phrase captured an incredible trauma and uncertainty, an incapacity to act, an entrapment and a fear. And in this instance, it was a site of entrapment between Shining Path and the Army--there was no safe space (there was also a high likelihood of violent death and torture, as well as the loss of friends and family members). As I think about this, I am torn between the sense of very real violence and the feeling of desperate incapacity. Are there degrees of the experience of being terrorized? How broad a category and/or affect is terror?

Remembering, Reluctantly

As we put together our syllabus for Introduction to Women's Studies, my colleague, Susan, noted that we would be teaching today and wondered if we perhaps should set aside some time to talk about the events of September 11, 2001. Of course not, I replied. September 11 is a forced memory, a manipulated event to inspire fear and racism and to attach people to an illegal war.

It may be all those things.

But that's not all it is.

And I say this not simply to recover the momentary sense that the market isn't everything, that it can be stopped--as it was for the rest of that week. Rather, I say this because I had not considered the differential effects of the event on people who were young at that time and what those effects might mean for politics.

Our first-year college students were in seventh grade on September 11th. Some described confusion, not really knowing what the World Trade Center was. "It's the Twin Towers," was offered as explanation, but one that didn't explain very much. Some described schools that didn't tell them anything and the fear that arose as hysterical parents came to pick up their children, leaving those who remained wondering what had happened. And some described sitting in classrooms in front of televisions as their teachers cried and panicked--"they are bombing all the cities on the East Coast--we're all going to die!"

A number of the women in our class broadened their recollections of the event. They mentioned the humiliation of racial profiling in airports on class trips. With quite pride they told us of their fathers, firemen who "went to September 11th to volunteer, to help." They spoke of conversations whispered in hallways, "that boy's father died." They voiced fear of the armed soldiers in airports, they everywhere those first months, and the reassuring calm of mothers promising that these were the safest of times to fly.

And some told us how they grew up. Encountering the confusion and helplessness of the adults around the, they acquired a knowledge that grown ups might not be able to protect them, that there are things that we do not know and may not understand. And rather than responding by embracing something like fate or authority or cynicism or despair, as have too many American adults, who should have known better, these college students are okay with the knowledge they gained about the world as seventh graders. For most of the women in our class, their confrontation with vulnerability and limitation seems a new opportunity, an opportunity to act and move. They don't expect invulnerability, predictability, and certainty. They know the world isn't like this. Knowing this, they expect the possible of themselves.

And anything is possible.

Fantasies of cleaner work

A month or so ago, the wife of an assistant professor in Chinese was killed. She was hit by a truck as she crossed the street on the way to work. She worked as a cleaner at the college where I teach, where her husband is a tenure-track faculty member. I was surprised to learn that she worked as a cleaner, and somehow uncomfortable with this. It seemed to cross a divide between different kinds of work, a divide necessary for the fantasy structure of academia.

The wife of one of the professors I met in a Peru worked as a cleaner while they lived in England and he worked on his graduate degree. This also surprised and troubled me. It's easier not to think about why I find it troubling. It could have something to do with anxieties around North and South, First and Third. But I suspect that it has more to do with exposing the underlying class assumptions of academia for what we know they are, a privilege. And, perhaps more, they expose distance from dirt, shit, mess, the detritus of everyday life as central to this academic privilege. We don't touch other people's shit, not to mention our own; we just interpret it.

The daughter-in-law of one of my close faculty friends worked as a cleaner while she was in between jobs and finishing a degree. She worked for me a couple of times. This wasn't awkward, maybe because I knew that she also worked for my friend and that this was very temporary. And I wonder: most graduate students would be pretty happy with part time work that paid twenty dollars an hour. Yet, some work, work as a cleaner, seems unbecoming, unacceptable, stained, and dirty. Is it somehow more acceptable, more in keeping with academic fantasy, to employ students as cleaners, or baby-sitters, because we know that for them this is transitional work? Because really, we aren't getting bogged down in the shit and the dirt, really we are on our way up out of the cave.

Another woman who cleaned to me had quit her office job. She wanted more independence and flexibility in making her own schedule, less boring work, something that would give her a feeling of accomplishment, something that would let her have more take home pay for fewer hours.

Once, at a small dinner gathering, one faculty member mentioned that she was against the sort of hierarchical relation necessarily part of having someone work for pay in her home. Another faculty member said that her mother had worked as a cleaner her whole life and that it was decent pay off the books--what's wrong with that?

Someone recently called me to task for paying someone to clean my house. Why? If I had a wife to do it for me, would that be a problem? Or if my mother lived here? If the labor were free and ostensibly given out of care and love? It seems to me that there is a highly gendered supposition at work in the criticism of paid domestic labor, namely, that this work is done by women out of love. Women are supposed to handle the shit because they love us; it's what mothers do. When this work is treated as paid labor, we have to confront the fact that it is a burden, that no one really loves to do it. And we are then exposed to our own relationship to shit and to dirt and to our dependence for comfort on the work of others, when really we want to retain the fantasy that they love us.

When my kids are older and can share more in household labor, should I fire my housekeeper? Should she be denied of an extra 200 dollars a month so that I can acquire some kind of politically pure position?