Beyond all of that, those laws are like laws invented for Sci-Fi worlds. Too many people, especially in America, take capitalism as “natural,” and its internal logic as “natural” too. No. It’s just a fiction imposed on all of us, which then has a kind of logic that works within that fiction. But if you deconstruct it, you find it’s built on air. There is nothing real or necessary or logical about any of it. Not in the way we price goods and services; not in the way we set up wages; not in the way we value individual labor. It’s completely and utterly arbitrary and can only be even slightly defended on the grounds of its fictional coherence to fictional norms.

Why humans ever allowed fictions that crush billions and reward the few . . . . I’ll never understand. It’s even more baffling that the masses defend those fictions. We have it within our power to choose much, much better fictions that work on our behalf, for us, instead of the few.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Oh, and another biggie for us back then? This was in the 1970s . . . you should never sell your paintings to a bank. Seeing it there, well, that was a sure sign you had sold out. No banks. Not ever. Never. And not just for the obvious reasons of it being a bank and all, and the apotheosis of capitalist power. Really, it was more a “taste” thing. As in, people who owned and ran banks had no taste, no aesthetic sense to speak of . . . and were barely above someone with a black velvet painting of Elvis in their basement. And they didn’t have the “class” thing going against them, etc.

I miss those days of such certainty and intellectualized scorn, that Us against the World camaraderie, in a context of heightened aesthetic awareness.

Then again, we may, um, well, have been a bit full of ourselves.

;>)

Have you ever seen Simon Schama’s The Power of Art?

https://www.amazon.com/Simon-Schamas-Power-Art-Schama/dp/B000NTPG84/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1493730886&sr=1-1&keywords=schama+power+of+art

It’s a great documentary. Several episodes, an hour each, on a different painting. That is they do the artist but the episode revolves around a particular painting and its place in that artist’s history.

The episode on Rothko centers around his decision whether or not to accept a commission from a trendy, upscale NY establishment restaurant (Seagrams).

Here’s part of it.

Thanks, ZN. Will take a look at that series and see if it’s on Netflix.

I love Rothko’s work. Did a coupla essays on that for my own website.

Zooey wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

Zooey wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

Wasn’t Apocalypto the film that showed why the brutal and corrupt Mayans needed to be saved from themselves by the Christian Conquistadors?

Is that true?

Because that’s what flashed through my mind when I watched the clip with Gibson in mind.

Some of the historians and others critical of the film said that appeared to be the underlying message.

What do you think George Bush’s place in the history of art will be? Or do you just do science stuff.

Well, if you ask me . . . and, yeah, I know you didn’t . . .

I’m an artist. A painter. Though haven’t done much in recent times due to severe arthritis. But when I was painting, or, better yet, when I was in art school, and entered juried shows, and watched others being judged, or attending openings and such . . . I think the basic consensus on Bush’s paintings would be this:

“He’s a Sunday painter. Decent skills. Nothing special. Not much in the way of originality. But decent.”

Of course, when I got my degree in Art Studio, with a minor in Art History, Abstract painting was the thing. So most of us would probably have been merciless about his sticking to “realism” of sorts. Our teachers, with few exceptions, tended to dismiss realism as mere “copying,” and they tried to inculcate that in us.

I came to Maryland convinced that the only real art was realism. Primarily from the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. But then I expanded my view, and then expanded it a ton, and I started painting and sculpting “abstractly” too and was converted. Basically, doing it made it all click for me. But before that, as an 18 year old, not so much.

So, that Bush is even trying to paint . . . I have to give him kudos for that.

Well done, Nittany.

;>)

I think I failed to gain my revolutionary bonafides because I made the mistake of saying it was good to maintain a connection to the past. All seriousness aside, I believe this. I love connecting with the past, via history, from as many points of view as possible, the living, the dead, encased in stone, or bookshelves, or sarcophagi. Music, the arts, literature, folkways, food, etc. etc.

The test probably was trying to suss out a sense of a person’s possible “reactionary” temptations, if they looked back to a “golden age,” which has long been a classic right-wing trope. But the questions really didn’t offer a sufficient choice, IMO, or allow us to differentiate between a feeling that the past was important to learn from and connect with, versus dwelling there too long, or romanticizing said past.

I had a similar struggle with the technology question. Can’t remember it exactly, but it asked about automation along with tech, and I couldn’t go there because of the automation part. But the tech overall? Yeah. I can see that being quite useful. Automation, however, is a huge threat to workers everywhere. It has the potential to wipe out literally hundreds of millions of jobs in the not too distant future, including those from the “professional” class.

Regardless, well done, Nittany.

wv wrote:

Well it sez I’m an:
“Old, Misanthropic, Poignant, Left-handed, Luddite, Hellbound, Heretic, who likes Begonias”

w
v

I’m kinda surprised by the Begonias. Everyone knows those are reactionary flowers. Real leftists love red red roses.

8values
Results
Economic Axis: Communist
94.2%
Diplomatic Axis: Pacifist
12.8%
87.2%
Civil Axis: Libertarian
84.0%
16.0%
Societal Axis: Very Progressive
16.1%
83.9%
Closest Match: Libertarian Communism

Ideological matching is a work in progress, and is much less accurate than the values and axes.

(Not having any luck copying the image.)

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Billy_T.

Who knows who did it? Or, if chemical weapons were used at all? WV and Zooey make great points about the use of chemical weapons not being in the best interest of Assad. Then again, it’s not in his best interest to bomb the shit out of his own populace, and no one disputes Assad has been doing that for years. That’s not a controversy subject to competing versions of the truth right now. And, frankly, what does it matter to the dead how they were killed? It’s not as if being blow to bits is the “nicer” way to go.

Dead is dead. War is war. A tangent to this is that it makes next to no sense for people to freak out about “terrorist” attacks, make public announcements of national, even international solidarity when a lone “terrorist” runs down half a dozen human beings, but no such hysteria exists, and zero public statements of solidarity arise, when millions of human beings die because of poverty, hunger, pollution, domestic gunfire, curable diseases, etc. etc. Millions of children die each year from hunger and poverty. Where is the national and international outcry about this? Where is the solidarity?

If someone could find a way to make hunger, homelessness, poverty, inequality, rampant gun violence, pollution or death via smoking a matter of “terrorism,” we’d solve all of that shit in months.

Zooey wrote:

Democrats have ignored every obvious lesson from the past 12 months, and doubled down on a losing strategy. They’ve decided the problem wasn’t the message, but how they got victimized by chauvinism and Comey.

I think the Dems see the problem as their inability to get “their message” out there, plus Comey, Misogyny, Wikileaks, etc. etc. In reality, their message is crap too. Their history, since the 1960s, is crap. A bit better than the GOP’s, which can’t even claim a decent stretch of time like the New Deal era — well, at least not since Lincoln. But the Dems’ post-Keynesian era record, and their message are crap. Primarily because they’ve embraced the Reagan GOP era, and think that putting a happy face on it will beat the Republicans.

They still think if they refine their communications strategies, this will do the trick, when they need to alter their legislative and judicial record more than anything else, and then learn to make the sale on that.

In general, they’re terrible salespeople, without a good product. The GOP, OTOH, has talented salesmen, with an even crappier product.

The party that can sync both will win a generation of voters, at least.

WV,

This Jacobin article doesn’t answer your question, but it’s a pretty good summary of the madness of our current politics.

The Elite Consensus on Syria As long as liberals cheerlead Trump’s military action in Syria, right-wing hawks barely have to lift a finger. by Branko Marcetic

Centrists and op-ed columnists, take heart. At a time of seemingly unprecedented gridlock and partisan rancor in Washington, there’s still something that can bring America’s divided political class together: a good old-fashioned war.

Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to reverse course and bomb an airbase to avenge the Syrian people who he is also desperately trying to keep out of the country may have come as a shock to those who believed his inconsistent promises on the campaign trail to keep the United States out of foreign wars. For most others, though, launching a bombing campaign like this one was only a matter of time.

But unlike the Trump administration’s half-baked attempt to yank health insurance from millions of people, its utter failures in instituting a racist immigration program, or its ongoing efforts to round up and break apart millions of families, Trump’s bombing of Syria likely won’t be met with a wall of “resistance,” certainly not within the halls of power. That’s because for nearly all liberal and conservative pundits and politicians, foreign wars — particularly those launched in the name of “humanitarianism” — are an issue where no leader, even one as disliked as Trump, can ever go wrong.

There were the usual suspects. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have never met a war they didn’t want to send others to fight, praised Trump for acting at a “pivotal moment in Syria,” “unlike the previous administration,” despite their often-lauded history of rhetorically standing up to Trump. (“He’s been his usual, incredibly politically brave self,” one Democratic senator said of Graham as they investigated Trump’s Russia ties).

At least those two are consistent warmongers. But much of the Republican support for Trump’s bombing has come from his former political enemies who once spent their hours grandstanding about his lack of fitness for office — and even opposed Obama’s proposed airstrikes on Syria four years ago, though not out of any concern for the suffering such airstrikes would produce.

Marco Rubio, who refused to lend his support to Obama’s plan because it was “basically a symbolic strike to send a message, but not backed up by a clear plan,” yesterday told his Twitter followers that “#Somethingshouldhappen,” that Trump was “deeply moved by the images & stories emerging from #SyriaChemicalAttack,” and ended up quoting the Bible to cheer on Trump “acting decisively.”

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan — who in 2013 declared that Obama “needs to clearly demonstrate that the use of military force would strengthen America’s security” — called Trump’s action “appropriate and just.” Ted Cruz wrote an entire op-ed in the Washington Post that same year explaining why he wasn’t backing Obama’s plans for a “limited airstrike,” citing the fact that Assad’s use of chemical weapons didn’t threaten US national security and that “the potential for escalation is immense.” On Thursday, as tomahawks rained down on Syria, he issued a milquetoast statement that simply stated he looked forward to hearing Trump make the case for how to keep chemical weapons out of terrorists’ hands.

Republican lawmakers’ partisan hypocrisy and lust for war is hardly surprising. But Trump’s strike was also enabled by significant liberal and Democratic support, before, during, and after the strike.

MSNBC spent the days leading up to the airstrike goading Trump into taking some kind of action.

“Men, women, children, and babies got gassed in Syria this week because last week the Trump administration gave the signal that, that was OK with President Trump,” Lawrence O’Donnell said on Wednesday, referring to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s equivocation over whether Assad should stay or go. “Everything Donald Trump has ever said about President Assad has been a signal for Assad to go on killing as many people as he felt like,” he later added.

O’Donnell then brought on neoconservative Max Boot, one of the few men whose full name doubles as his foreign policy, to further beat the drums. “This is not the first time the kids have been killed,” Boot said. “Donald Trump has always been OK with this in the past, but now they’ve crossed some kind of line. Well, OK, so what are you going to do about it?”

Boot, who has urged the United States “unambiguously to embrace its imperial role” and is completely unrepentant about his longtime support for the Iraq War, has been calling for US involvement in Syria since Bush was in power.

The night before, former Fox anchor Greta van Susteren interviewed Democratic senator Ben Cardin, who had voted in 2013 to authorize Obama to strike Syria. Van Susteren tried to coax support for unilateral action out of Cardin (“Are you saying that we should do something alone in Syria? What are you saying we’re going to do? We’re not going to get help out of the UN”), but when it wasn’t forthcoming, she turned to Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger, who affirmed that “there needs to be punishing strikes against the Syrian regime as a result of this.” Kinzinger returned the next morning on the network, repeating his call for “punishing airstrikes.”

MSNBC also had on Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline (who had earlier charged that it was “shameful that the White House is no longer seeking to remove Bashir al-Assad from power”), who pushed for some kind of unnamed action to get Assad out of power. That same day, Democratic operative and Clinton ally Peter Daou tweeted: “I oppose @realDonaldTrump’s policies, but I wilfully support appropriate retaliation against #Assad’s war crimes in #Syria.” Daou believes Trump is a “dangerous bigot” and “a danger to the free world,” but he sees no problem with supporting such a man’s use of US military might.

Things continued to heat up the day of Trump’s decision. Van Susteren interviewed retired general Barry McCaffrey, who suggested the Trump administration “give the US Air Force and Navy fifteen days and tell them to take out the Syrian Air Force.” When she suggested such action could also take out Russian military, possibly escalating the conflict, McCaffrey assured her that “Russia is a second- or third-tier military power.”

Meanwhile, just hours before the man she had dubbed “Dangerous Donald” ordered planes to start bombing Syria, former Democratic standard-bearer Hillary Clinton told a friendly audience that his actions were exactly the approach the United States should take.

“I really believe we should have and still should take out his airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them,” she said to a steadily building crescendo of applause. (Yet somehow, liberal journalists used the occasion to declare that Clinton never would have done such a thing.)

Thus far, Trump appears to have been richly rewarded by the press for his “decisive” actions, with even his sworn enemies praising his decision to go into Syria with no apparent plan or goal other than “sending a message.”

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who otherwise spends his days brainstorming possible ways to kick Trump out of office, stated last night that “Trump is right to make Syria pay a price for war crimes” and that “taking out airfields is the best approach.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Kristof had been earlier interviewing Clinton when she made the same suggestion.

MSNBC had on a number of guests who gushed about the attack. Marco Rubio expounded on the strategic importance of the airstrikes. Nicholas Kristof reiterated that Trump had done the right thing, citing the fact that Clinton had “prescribed pretty much exactly the same response.” Democratic representative Jim Hines then affirmed that Kristof was correct and that “there is definitely virtue in making sure that Assad understands that if he steps over that line . . . there is a price to be paid.”

Entirely missing from the broadcast was any semblance of a war-skeptical voice, pointing out, as Micah Zenko has, that US limited airstrikes have a poor track record of actually achieving anything, or explaining that most long-term military adventures usually start off as a form of “limited” involvement — from Vietnam, to Libya, to Syria itself.

A number of top Democrats took a break from resisting Trump to also pat him on the back for his decision. Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin called it a “measured response” (only in Washington could firing fifty-nine missiles into a country be considered “measured”). The previously restrained Ben Cardin called it a “clear signal that the United States will stand up for internationally accepted norms and rules against the use of chemical weapons.” Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi both backed the move, with Schumer calling it “the right thing to do,” and Pelosi terming it a “proportional response.”

Trump must have known his decision would get such a friendly reception. After all, it was only a little over a month ago that he received torrents of praise from pundits, liberal and conservative, for paying tribute to a fallen Navy SEAL whom he had sent to die in a chaotic and poorly planned raid that killed thirty civilians. Now, even his sworn enemies were falling over themselves to praise what could be the start of regime change in Syria.

The pattern seems clear: when people die, Trump gets plaudits.

The spectacle of liberals cheerleading and, subsequently, congratulating Trump for taking a short-sighted military action in Syria shouldn’t be surprising. But it is an essential element in legitimizing and enabling such military misadventures, applying a bipartisan coating to questionable military operations that allows presidents to launch them without fear of deeper scrutiny.

As long as liberals continue doing their work for them, right-wing hawks barely have to lift a finger.