Aftermath - The Vulgarity of Empire

The morning after Kennedy was buried, the country awoke to find a stranger in its bed.  The indefatigable vulgarity of Lyndon Baines Johnson made unfavourable comparison inevitable.  [continue reading]

Saint Jack

Anyone over the age of seven, the world over, can tell you where he was on that day.  John Fitzgerald Kennedy had evoked the imagination of the world even among those who  considered him to be an inexperienced, preppy playboy, little different in political substance from Nixon or among those, like Kruschev, Castro or DeGaulle, who were not mired in sentimentalities about America or the forces that drove her.  [continue reading]

More From the Hologram Department

   

An illusory progressive president being embattled by an illusory grass roots reaction and now... just when you think you've had enough of holograms... an illusory arrival of the dead.

Turns out that all those solemn, tear-jerking, closure-enabling ceremonies honouring our returned fallen were ... "The Big Lie" ... as it is called by the troops detailed to carry the coffins.  The Pentagon prefers to speak of "symbolism." [NBC]  [Daily Mail]

In all events, transports on the tarmac, fluttering flags in the wind, chaplains in waiting, reverent spectators at a distance, the coffins were empty.

Gee... makes one wonder.  Do you suppose the Resurrection was a "symbolic" ceremony as well? 

"The Departure" by Piandello

Who knows...

The Political Hologram

    

A friend of ours, a fairly typical Yankee liberal, was complaining about the government shutdown which he blamed on Confederate voter suppression and Tea Party activism. It was 1860 all over again and why don't they just secede.

Actually they tried that once....

But we think the MoveOn types are wrong to blame "the South" and its mentalities for the current political stalemate.  We are congenitally wired to believe in conspiraciones and will not rest until we find one. 

I am quite certain that the dough-heads in the South are incapable of organising the trash in their trailers, much less gerrymandering anything.  No.  Cherchez le banquier is what i say; and searching i come up with Ahmanson, Coors, Mellon-Scaife and Koch.  The same folks who -- strange to say -- funded the schismatic "traditionalists" within the Anglican Communion.  Why?  They were very frank about it.  They wanted to destroy (yes, hack to pieces) "liberal" institutions like the Episcopal Church USA.

Who funds the "Tea Party"?  Are those overweight, Cheez-Oh munching, flag-waving knuckle-heads capable of anything beyond finding their way to NASCAR races?  It is absurd to talk about "the Tea Party" as if it were an object in itself as opposed to a mere political hologram. 

One last example.  Who was it who just today said on Pox News that he wanted to "punish" federal employees?  None other than Stuart Varney.  And where is this fellow from?  Macon Georgia?  Yazoo City, Mississippi? Nope. London, England. And where did he go to school?  London School of Economics.  The only worse place he could have gone to was Harvard.

These people are from nowhere. They belong to the country of Capital.  They have an agenda known as Destroy the Beast and they simply use the South because it's cheap and easy.  But that does not mean that they won't, can't and haven't used California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire -- reputedly "blue" states which are yeehaw red once one moves an an hour or so away from the the cities or any college town.  Nor is there anything particularly "southern" about the Anglican Communion. In fact most of the South is Baptist, not pseudo-Catholic.

The fact is -- as de Tocqueville discussed at great length -- that Anglo-Americans have certain credal and intellectual habits which make them exceptionally prone to certain types of polemical pogey bait.  It is a bait made from various flavours which boil down to self-serving, self-satisfied egotism  -- what de Tocqueville coined as individualism.  This is nothing particularly Southern, it permeates and stains the entire country.

The problem with "sensible" and "mainstream" people who don't believe in conspiracies is that they refuse to look beyond the "obvious" and  fall a-sucker for surface appearances... for the political hologram.

In fact, politics in the USA is so full of holograms fighting holograms that it might as well be described as Nightmare on the Holodeck.

Will someone please pull the plug?

©Barfo, 2013

Israel's Drummer Boy on 42d Street

       

It is always a sight to watch the New York Times slant the news to suit Israeli imperatives. 

Brazil's president Rousseff gave an important and diplomatically arresting address to the General Assembly, in which she denounced U.S. electronic snooping and called upon the world to erect electronic barriers to the overweening power of the US imperial security apparatus.

In what the Guardian characterised as a "scathing" and "blistering" speech, Rousseff denounced U.S. snooping as an affront to the Comity of Nations and a violation of international law.  She also spoke out, for the civil rights of ordinary people.

"As many other Latin Americans, I fought against authoritarianism and censorship and I cannot but defend, in an uncompromising fashion, the right to privacy of individuals and the sovereignty of my country"

 Nor was this simply a Brazilian concern.  As reported by RT News

US relations with all of Latin America have recently soured. In addition to Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia and Venezuela have all voiced anger with the US over the NSA’s surveillance of their countries this year. Bolivia has been especially bitter.

 Even the USophile BBC carried the report of Rousseff's speech on its front page

 And the Times?  On the Times... it was nowhere to be found. Not on the front page, not on the World page, 

 

not even on the America's page ... 

 

until the very bottom in small print, after stories on drug hauls and the like.

In short, the news was suppressed, albeit with the usual and tiresome buried, fine-print exception designed to give a colour of good faith to hypocricy.

Of course as the US flagship propaganda organ, it stands to reason that the Times would wish to suppress how disgusted  -- desde las pelotas hasta las cejas --  the rest of the hemisphere is with United States bullying arrogance -- or prepotencia as it is called in Spanish.

But of equal note is what the Times considers to be "fit to print" --

Iran, Iran, Iran, and more Iran.

Now Iran's alleged nuclear arms programme is certainly not not news.  It does indirectly affect U.S. interests to the extent that any proliferation of nuclear arms impacts U.S. interests and the stability of world.  As indeed, Israel's "illegal" (non-signatory) acquisition of nuclear weapons has destabilised the Middle East.

But Iran's possible acquisition of nuclear weapons is really only an urgent concern to Israel  whose destabilising and imbalanced nuclear hegemony in the region is upset by a challenge.

The true interests of the United States, from a national perspective would be to make the Middle East nuclear free and to induce Israel to destroy it's nuclear weapons.

Oh but mum on that.  Instead endless dross on Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran.

Qui bono?

The Figure of Speech

    

In an interview reported by the U.K. Guardian, Hilarity Clinton admitted that she "wrestles with running" before adding, "But I'm both a pragmatist and realistic. I think I have a pretty good idea of the political and governmental challenges that are facing our leaders..."

Huh?

"Both,  a. or pron. [OE. bothe, bae, fr. Icel. bāir; akin to Dan. baade, Sw. båda, Goth. bajs, OHG. beid, bd, G. & D. beide, also AS. begen, bā, b, Goth. bai, and Gr. , L. ambo, Lith. abà, OSlav. oba, Skr. ubha. &root; 310. Cf. Amb-.] The one and the other; the two; the pair, without exception of either.  ....   Both, as adj.:  Two, considered as distinct from others or by themselves; the one and the other.   This word is often placed before the nouns with which it is connected."

Does Clinton really think this way?  When used as an adjective, "both" presupposes a difference of kind or degree in the substantives it connects.  As in,

To judge both quick and dead.  (Milton.)
A masterpiece both for argument and style. (Goldsmith.)
To whom bothe heven and erthe and see is sene.  (Chaucer.)
He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. (Coleridge.)

If Clinton had wanted to emphasize with surplus redundancy that she was a hard-nosed, tough-as-nails, realistic, pragmatist she ought to have omitted the "both". Otherwise she is "dis-confusing" two things which are basically the same.  That does not bespeak a well-ordered mind.

In the interview, Clinton followed up with:

"I will just continue to weigh what the factors are that would influence me making a decision one way or another."

and

"The election is more than three years away and I just don't think it's good for the country."

Well... both for ill or good she at least has three years to decide what factors will guide her decision.

Political speech in the U.S. resembles a disordered mosaic of rough-cut, verbal chips which increasingly disconnect from one another and fail to reflect any cohering image or concept.   The vocalisations of our ruling class (oh grief!)  are incompetent to enable "decisions about the just and the unjust or the expedient and the inexpedient." (Arist. Politics, Bk I.)

©

The Figure of Speech

    

In an interview reported by the U.K. Guardian, Hilarity Clinton admitted that she "wrestles with running" before adding, "But I'm both a pragmatist and realistic. I think I have a pretty good idea of the political and governmental challenges that are facing our leaders..."

Huh?

"Both,  a. or pron. [OE. bothe, bae, fr. Icel. bāir; akin to Dan. baade, Sw. båda, Goth. bajs, OHG. beid, bd, G. & D. beide, also AS. begen, bā, b, Goth. bai, and Gr. , L. ambo, Lith. abà, OSlav. oba, Skr. ubha. &root; 310. Cf. Amb-.] The one and the other; the two; the pair, without exception of either.  ....   Both, as adj.:  Two, considered as distinct from others or by themselves; the one and the other.   This word is often placed before the nouns with which it is connected."

Does Clinton really think this way?  When used as an adjective, "both" presupposes a difference of kind or degree in the substantives it connects.  As in,

To judge both quick and dead.  (Milton.)
A masterpiece both for argument and style. (Goldsmith.)
To whom bothe heven and erthe and see is sene.  (Chaucer.)
He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. (Coleridge.)

If Clinton had wanted to emphasize with surplus redundancy that she was a hard-nosed, tough-as-nails, realistic, pragmatist she ought to have omitted the "both". Otherwise she is "dis-confusing" two things which are basically the same.  That does not bespeak a well-ordered mind.

In the interview, Clinton followed up with:

"I will just continue to weigh what the factors are that would influence me making a decision one way or another."

and

"The election is more than three years away and I just don't think it's good for the country."

Well... both for ill or good she at least has three years to decide what factors will guide her decision.

Political speech in the U.S. resembles a disordered mosaic of rough-cut, verbal chips which increasingly disconnect from one another and fail to reflect any cohering image or concept.   The vocalisations of our ruling class (oh grief!)  are incompetent to enable "decisions about the just and the unjust or the expedient and the inexpedient." (Arist. Politics, Bk I.)

©