Tag Archives: daily blog

2016.12.01 : binary system failure

American political culture suffers from a unique failure of binary systems. Politics everywhere fall into this particular trap, but something about the American mindset makes it particularly prone to this pitfall and historically predisposed to it.

The tendency for a moralistic binary of “good” versus “bad,” completely ignores the modifying appendages which not only render nuance, but constitute real meaning.
Vox recently ran a piece about the one thing Donald Trump got right that economists got wrong. Beyond the clear attempt to bait their Left-leaning, young audience into clicking on something they expect to hate read, the contents of the article failed to actually measure up to the title. (Shockingly, we are finding that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.)

The sentence that caused me to lose faith in the direction of the piece came at the beginning of the third paragraph:

“For decades, experts have argued that freer trade is good for the US economy and downplayed the economic harms that trade can cause.”

Because the metric that the economists, and the metric the President-elect (or any isolationist, populist ideologue) is using are fundamentally different. From what I know about economists, they enjoy using numbers such as the gross domestic product (GDP), sometimes they dabble with employment (or unemployment) statistics, they’ll look at job growth by sector, or other such national measures of what can be termed “success” and “failure”.

We are still the foremost global economy, we have a ludicrous amount of wealth in natural resources, intellectual property, military technology, and many other areas.

The overall health of the US economy, ultimately, can be completely divorced from the actual economic situation of its citizens.

What the neoliberal elite have worked very hard to ensure is that when they say “free trade is good” no one asks “for whom?”

That having been said, I don’t actually feel comfortable falling in line with some of the increasingly prominent isolationist or anti-globalization factions of the Left. I believe that the free travel of people and information and ideas is actually a boon for humanity and a step in the right direction as we develop a global society.

I think the free movement of wealth, capital, and the political and economic elite is a disaster that is pushing the human race to the brink of self-annihilation. That the heads of national banks or large private wealth management companies can live in countries on the other side of the world away from their professional responsibilities (nearly always for reasons of tax evasion on their exorbitant salaries) is a disaster and an active contributing factor to the deterioration of both civil society and global economic stability.

With that in mind, I am a cautious proponent of global trade. But I’m not going to defend unregulated markets. Because unregulated (or “free”) markets are the means of stripping national and international communities of their resources and then leaving them behind without any structure of social support or security. It leads to unemployment, hunger, and limited or non-existent access to education, housing, and opportunities.

The recent campaign has taught us nothing that was not already known. It has merely shown that one set of lies is being replace by another, and that the people who make up the working flesh of this country and many others, will continue to be debased and destroyed by people who are willing to end the world to have the most stuff.

2016.11.29 : atomization

Today I face something that might even be my old demons. Certainly I get the mixed bag of necessary travel.
I love the feeling of being in motion. I hate traveling by bus, but I am most content in that in between, when you have left and have yet to arrive.
I’m told I have an avoidant personality, and that cannot help but contribute to the pleasure of uncertainty. When we are on the bus, train, airplane, boat, when we are between here and there, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is in effect; we can know where we are, or how fast we’re going, but not both.
Time and space become abstracted; all the trappings of quotidian existence get suspended while we await the resolution of our trajectory.

I travel on faith. I imagine that it comes from the experience of always visiting friends and family, even when I travel overseas. I leave my plans half-baked, and with minimal assurance of food and shelter, I head off, calling ahead as questions arise. It will fail me some day, and I’ll have to sleep in a park; I’m almost looking forward to it.

The meditative, fugue-like state of watching (even familiar) scenery slide by the panoramic bus windows is pulling me in even now, before we have even left the city.

2016.11.28 : pipe dreams

Thanksgiving is come and gone. 

It has been hard not to think of William S. Burroughs’ Thanksgiving Prayer, especially the last line:

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal
of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

(Content Warning for the poem: racial slurs, anti-gay slurs. Un-varnished representations of America.) 

I read some good bits of advice for weathering the new political climate, both are making the rounds, but a little extra time spent on them won’t be wasted:

Annalisa Merelli’s piece for Quartz, regarding what the US body politic and the US media can learn from Italy’s experiences with Silvio Berlusconi. Namely, that fighting the man does little good, because as Trump has said: All publicity is good publicity. (And the man is a reality TV star, he surely knows what he’s talking about.) We need to refocus away from a critique of his personal or moral foibles and failures, and re-engage with what matters. That means it’s time to (finally) talk policy. 

The other is from Nic Dawes, appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review and made the rounds, at least in the arenas I’m familiar with (it’s all algorithmic and doubtlessly intended to keep me deep in my comfort zone). Dawes is concerned with preparing American journalists for a level of hostility and restricted access they have never encountered before. The freedom of the Press and, more importantly, the importance of the Press is something that has been taken for granted in this country, and ostensibly enshrined in our founding document. It has weathered difficult times and difficult moments before, but never has it faced the total rejection and defamation that is being put forth by the President-elect and his political entourage. 

On the matter of the press, part of me despairs. The calcification of the federal government was at least periodically tempered by the actions of the Press (though not with anything near the level of effectiveness that was necessary). Without any voices playing even nominally playing the role of dissenting opinion or considered criticism, I fear we face a necrotic rather than a merely ailing infrastructure of governance. 

Most of all, fear is what keeps me up at night. If this shock, this pain, this anger continues as it is, and fear sets in long term, we will be lost. The forces of power need us divided and overwhelmed. We must imagine new ways of being, and living, and speaking that will allow us to push back against those instincts to circle the wagons and protect our own. 

Maybe I’ve been watching too much Supergirl lately, but it seems like this moment––when things are dark and bleak and uncertain––is when we must hold out our hands and try and help each other stand. 

2016.11.21 : getting back on the horse

i’ve had a cold for the past four days, which laid me out a little bit. (i was self indulgent on the weekend, and let myself spend all day in leggings – not the same ones I was sleeping in, but close – and hang out in my room and binge watch netflix.)

so i’ve watched a lot of Supergirl. it seemed to be the feminist showboat of the CWDCU so i figured i’d take it for a spin. it’s got a number of interesting commitments to social commentary it has dedicated itself to. obviously, the character of cat grant is an easy choice for commentary. the writers have made excellent choices presenting her as demanding, difficult, calculating, and cold, while fostering a rich inner life and complex set of motivators and emotions below the surface. this allows them to have an ice queen with a real human heart. it gets to the crux of the feminist problem with representation in media: can you have a stone cold bitch character who is still fully human and sympathetic? as many have long suspected, the answer is: yes. 

i still think that the show that provides the best explicit rather than narrative critiques of racism and sexism, in the CWDCU and possibly elsewhere is DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. If there is a dearth of complex characters, people are certainly taking steps to fill those representational gaps, but Legends is modeling active resistance to the powers of social violence and oppression. the character regularly interrupt and interject to point out the ways in which the forces of sexism and racism are consistently alive and well, and actively petition for their own rights. 

they also do a fantastic job of explicitly calling out passive acceptance of sexist and racist and heterosexist attitudes, particularly from the straight, white, male characters. if my tv shows are going to teach me anything this year, i’m hoping that Legends will continue to remind me to say something, when i encounter sexist or racist behaviors, rather than rolling my eyes and letting them slide. 

it’s been a tough couple of weeks; politics is a subiectum non gratus in my household. my father is actively distressed by discussions of the President-elect’s cabinet nominations. i cannot, strictly, disagree with his reactions, but i’m still in this semi-detached realm. some switch in my brain is flipped and i can look at the whole thing with dispassionate interest: how will things change with this or that nomination? what can we expect? what are the likely policy suggestions or outcomes of the contenders? 

but i don’t read the new york times in the morning, i trawl for information from Foreign Policy and Stratfor Intelligence and got myself a discounted subscription to Foreign Affairs. beyond the clear international relations junkie status, the steady diet of high-level analysis allows me to feel a sense of mastery over these arenas. the false confidence of information is a heady drug. but more importantly, it comes with the bizarre assurance that, just maybe, you could do better. that always seems to be the last defense of the incompetent when in power, and i look forward to the day when i can argue policy positions in the political arena. 

for the moment, i’ll continue to consume my own body weight in tea, irrigate my sinuses and work the sidelines of my responsibilities while i do my best to read every possible thing i come across. the future is grim, but it’s still there, for now. 

2016.11.18 : Dirty Little Secrets and the Duke’s Bastard Son

I can’t remember where I picked up the term consensus reality. I know only that it appeared in my lexicon sometime in the last 2 years, and that it has become one of my foremost tools when trying to explain and understand our current political moment.

Consensus reality is a term to describe the communal reality: things are understood to be a particular way by the majority of human beings and those points of agreement between that majority create a thing we call “reality” which may coincide or may differ from an objective reality but is nevertheless verifiable outside of individual experience. It exists between a solipsistic reality, in which individual experience and understanding is the only basis with which one parses and manages “reality,” and objective reality. 

Consensus reality is the reason that you can hear things that aren’t there. It is impossible to say whether someone who hears voices that no one else hears is living in a solipsistic reality experience, or whether they have the means to interface with objective reality in a way that the rest of us cannot. Consensus reality merely describes this unique experience as a divergence from the reality that is experienced by the majority. 

I don’t want to take the time to defend, philosophically, any of these positions, because it is one of the elements of philosophy I do not have the patience for. Ultimately, consensus reality seems like the only functional method of engaging with reality, in a social, political, and communal way. Maybe this is a solipsistic universe, and everything is a construct of my imagination; some incredibly detailed dream that I will wake from into a different reality, or I am some slumbering god, imagining each instance from within it. It seems more like an excuse to escape responsibility than a real engagement with universal uncertainties, since I will still have to navigate consensus reality.

Likewise, it is entirely possible that ghosts are real, and some people can see them, but it is impossible for me, at this time, to verify that knowledge, with the tools at hand.

This is where consensus reality and scientific opinion begin to complement each other. 

Scientific opinion is just another name for consensus reality. Scientific opinion is formed when enough people have reproduced or otherwise verified a particular outcome of a particular set of actions or interactions through a variety of methods and have produced a particular result. Scientific opinion is a definition of some aspect of reality, derived from (ideally) rigorous, meticulous study and experimentation, reproduced and verified at a large scale resulting in the agreement of a majority of the scientific community (or subset of the scientific community) that certain conclusions are consistent. That consistency is otherwise known as “being true”. 

But there are other aspects of consensus reality. Because consensus reality is a tool that can be applied far and wide, and not merely to things that are verified quantitatively. Consensus reality is at its strongest (and, sometimes, most ambiguous) in the social sphere. 

There are two kinds of being out of sync with consensus reality, where the strain of bridging the lived and understood realities is at its highest.

The first one I call, 

The Duke’s bastard son:

The Duke’s bastard son is a linguistic aberration of consensus reality. A bastard is defined as

adj. [archaic or derogatory] born of parents not married to each other; illegitimate: a bastard child.

As an illegitimate child, a bastard son is not considered an heir to whatever inheritance might be claimed upon the death of the Duke. In all public record, the bastard son will be renounced and placed firmly outside the sphere of the family of the Duke. The bastard son is without political power.

Nevertheless, the Duke may well extend a measure of charity towards the bastard son. There is no reason to treat him badly, and, in fact, there is a measure of social value to be gained in avoiding ill-will with one’s illegitimate children. If the bastard son is allowed to exist within the Duke’s estate, it is almost guaranteed that everyone will know that the bastard son is the Duke’s. 

Simultaneously, no one will openly acknowledge that he is the Duke’s bastard son. 

Here, consensus reality contains the contradiction: everyone knows one thing to be true, but no one will say it. 

This type of consensus reality is familiar to anyone who has lived under a repressive regime; be it within a household, in a community, or a country. Something that is common knowledge, is systematically disavowed. 

The other aberration is 

The Dirty Little Secret:

This one is familiar to anyone who has ever been someone’s “side piece” or has suffered abuse or listened to a multitude of popular songs, including The All-American Rejects’ Dirty Little Secret. 

This is the place where solipsistic reality, objective reality, and consensus reality coalesce at can create total breakdowns of communication and affect. 

Some might be familiar with the question: “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to see it, does it make a sound?” Consensus reality says, yes. Solipsistic reality says, no. Objective reality is impossible to ascertain. 

The Dirty Little Secret asks: “If you are in the forest and break your arm, and no one is around to see it, did you fall or were you pushed?” 

Or my personal favorite: “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” 

The Dirty Little Secret is when some action, cause or effect, is prohibited from consensus reality. 

Secrets are the biggest barrier to consensus reality. I don’t necessarily consider the Duke’s Bastard Son to be a problem, although the recent election is changing my mind about that. (R.I.P. Facts) But I have never liked secrets. Sometimes, I think that is the number one reason I tend towards journalism: because only establishing and maintaining consensus reality, and thus dismantling the Dirty Little Secret allows people to make informed decisions. If you don’t tell people the things they need to know, there is no way to make sure that we can move in the same direction; or even disagree about which direction we should be moving.