“…“It is as if each arm has a mind of its own,” says Peter Godfrey-Smith, a diver, professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and an admirer of octopuses. For example, researchers who cut off an octopus’s arm (which the octopus can regrow) discovered that not only does the arm crawl away on its own, but if the arm meets a food item, it seizes it — and tries to pass it to where the mouth would be if the arm were still connected to its body…”
==============

I would like to cut some parts off researchers. Just, ya know, for the sake of science.

w
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InvaderRam wrote:

wv wrote:

Is it my imagination or have you been posting more on Politics lately, Invader?
Is there a reason for that? Or am i imagining that? Do you think of yourself as a ‘leftist’ or a ‘liberal’ or just a Seahawk fan like Zooey?

it’s not your imagination. honestly? with the pandemic and the protests i’ve been leaning toward this side of the board more often lately.

i’m not particularly political. and for some of the reasons you stated. i often am conflicted between the way i would want to see things done vs being practical and trying to focus on things that are within the realm of possibility.

but also. how do you get 8 billion people to agree on a way forward? how do you even get half of them to agree on a way forward?

but then i also think does it even matter? is this planet supposed to go on forever? are humans meant to exist forever? the universe? sometimes i think i should just enjoy the world for what it is. faults and all. but then other days i think it does matter, and we should try and make this place better while we’re here. even if you can’t reach that ideal society.

i think what i would want is that we treat each other compassionately. universal healthcare. universal basic income. free education. free housing. i do think those are steps towards that. so if that makes me a leftist then i guess i’m leftist.

it wouldn’t solve everything. but then what would? again. trying to get 300 million people (not to mention 8 billion) to agree. well good luck with that. you can’t even get 30 million to agree.

i think you always have the end goal in mind. but you also enjoy the journey if that makes any sense. so even if you don’t ever reach the goal, you at least appreciate the steps it takes to get there?

so if we could get at least universal healthcare and universal basic income before i pass. and a mars landing. i’d be pretty cool with that.

————–

I hear ya. I can relate to a lot of that. You covered a lot of ground there.

Our human brains have a lot of shit goin on inside them, dont they. I wonder if dolphins think about all this shit. Leftist-Dolphins probly do. They probly swim around thinking ‘what the hell is wrong with this whole entire pod…’

w
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InvaderRam wrote:

i don’t know. but i do know that we’re currently going in the wrong direction.

===================

Is it my imagination or have you been posting more on Politics lately, Invader?
Is there a reason for that? Or am i imagining that? Do you think of yourself as a ‘leftist’ or a ‘liberal’ or just a Seahawk fan like Zooey?

One of the continuing-thots that bounce around in my head on the topic of ‘what is a leftist’ is what i might call the ‘utopian’ notions and the ‘practical’ notions. Sometimes those things do not play together, well.

On tuesdays and thursdays i might think ending all forms of capitalism and private property is a good longterm goal. Maybe. But then that kind of utopian notion is often utterly, completely counter-fucking-productive to building a big tent in order to get practical policies done — like Medicare For All. Etc.

So deep down I might be a pure Commie. At least on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Maybe.
But then what matters in the real world is not my commie-brain. What matters is Medicare For All. Something DO-able.

There’s always this clash between utopian/aspirational broad ideas, And fucking real-world policies and building real, actual coalitions, with real actual people.
At least that clash exists IN MY Head. Its always there.

Blah blah blah.

w
v

Cal wrote:

I like what Reed said just before the video started. I thought this was an interesting comment.

This [the most recent shift in the protests] is the bread and circus stuff that appeals to the other side and you can feel the long hand of the Ford Foundation and leadership development corporations shaping the institutional structure of a political economy of race relations administration in a certain direction so that it moves in a slightly different direction, farther away from anything that smells anything like class re-distribution.

Interesting stuff–I looked up the Ford Foundation and was intrigued to see BLM protest photos on the website of a multi-billion non-profit that has been operating since the 60’s.

Off topic–If you still need info WV about sharpening a (Japanese) knife a friend of mine sent me an insightful email as I need to put a sharper blade on my knife.

=================

Yeah, we used to talk about a Thomas Frank collection of essays back in the 90s, called ‘Commodify Your Dissent.’ Its kindof about that whole subject of the system taking authentic-dissent and turning it into something tame so it doesnt actually threaten capitalism. Think of CHE earrings and such.

This ‘process’ of domesticating and shaping dissent-movements
would not work if the citizens actually had higher political-IQs. But they’ve been dummed-down so far, that its not that hard for the system to nudge them, shape them, bewilder them, tame them, divert them…

Ah well.

I dont wanna sound too dark though. 🙂 This latest uprising did indeed lead to some nice reforms in some places. Colorado.

w
v
—-
link:https://www.amazon.com/Commodify-Your-Dissent-Salvos-Baffler/dp/0393316734
Amazon.com Review
In this thought-provoking collection of essays, editor Thomas Frank and other contributors to the contrarian journal the Baffler examine the unprecedented ascendancy of business as the dominating force in American life. If the closest historical parallel is with the Gilded Age and its all-powerful robber barons, Frank and his ilk clearly see themselves as the muckrakers out to expose the absurdities and abuses of big business. Today, however, advertising has come to permeate every aspect of our society, and corporations are in the business of manufacturing culture–what Frank calls the “Culture Trust.” These essays analyze the ways in which this Culture Trust has co-opted the power of dissent by appropriating the language and symbolism of nonconformist youth culture, from hippie slang to grunge fashion; in other words, when the media markets rebellion, it becomes just another consumer choice. As evidence, the essayists explore the image of consumer as rebel pioneered by publications such as Details and Wired, as well as the preeminence of “revolutionary” business gurus such as Tom Peters. The result is a highly original book, a satirical and savage indictment of ’90s consumerist culture.
Review
You’d have to look back at the fights between New York intellectuals in the fifties to find the sort of verbal firepower unleashed here. — Nation

[Frank is] … perhaps the most provocative young cultural critic of the moment, and certainly the most malcontent… Although he has been to graduate school … both his thinking and his prose hark back to a time when the radical left was something more in America than conferences and seminars attended by Foucault-steeped professors. Frank has thrown off the mandarin jargon; for him it’s about wealth and power, haves and have-nots, loud and simple–it’s as if he were channeling Herbert Marcuse and C. Wright Mills and Thorstein Veblen through a boom box. — The New York Times Book Review, Gerald Marzorati
From the Back Cover
The 1980s and 1990s have seen an enormous increase in the power of business over the American mind. Not since the Gilded Age have the robber barons of business accumulated more wealth or won more popular attention. But where the tycoons of yore built railroads or banks, today culture stands at the heart of American enterprise and mass entertainment has become its economic dynamo. For a decade The Baffler magazine has been an invigorating voice of dissent against these developments, in the tradition of the muckrakers and H. L. Mencken’s The American Mercury. Commodity Your Dissent gathers together the best of its excoriating criticism of the new American cultural order, exploring such peculiar developments as the birth of the rebel consumer as hero in the pages of Wired and Details; the dramatic rise of “alternative” culture in the post-Nirvana era; the appearance of new business gurus like Tom Peters and corporate fads like “reengineering”; the ever-accelerating race to market youth culture; and the encroachment of advertising and commercial enterprise into every last nook and cranny of American life.
About the Author
Thomas Frank is the author of One Market Under God and The Conquest of Cool.

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

“you can define leftism as rejecting capitalism”

Is that true of social democracy? I don’t even think social democracy is anti small business. I think that social democracy–which is left/progressive, of course–supports a mixed economy where large wealthy interests don’t and can’t dominate public and economic life.

I have recently found myself in arguments many times with righties who assume social democracy is socialism and I then have to explain the difference.

It’s funny if some leftists don’t even make the same distinction.

================

Well Beau’s notion is not how i would put it. I’d probly say something like
Leftists reject the worst aspects of capitalism, among other things. I think thats a better ‘strategic’ position at any rate. Leftists oughta think about making the tent bigger, not smaller.

w
v

Adolph referred to Preston H. Smith’s book:

link:https://nonsite.org/
Saw this site mentioned by Halper and Taibbi. Adolph Reed Jr, had something to do with starting it, i think.

Here’s an example of one of the articles:

The Triumph of Black Lives Matter and Neoliberal Redemption
By Cedric Johnson (University of Illinois at Chicago)

Draped in Ghanaian kente cloth, a fabric popularized by Afrocentric nationalists during the late eighties, a dozen or so Congressional Democrats knelt in a moment of silence before unveiling their Justice in Policing legislation. Their actions came exactly two weeks to the date that George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, and after an unprecedented wave of protests that swept all fifty states, over 500 U.S. towns and cities, and scores of demonstrations of solidarity globally. Led by Karen Bass, Congressional Black Caucus chair, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the congress members embraced the language and tone of Black Lives Matter protests, with some lecturing on the “original sin” of slavery, and South Carolina congressman James Clyburn adding that Floyd’s death was “just a continuation” of a long and unbroken history of American racism. Even former presidential hopefuls, senators Kamala Harris and Corey Booker traded in their previous roles as tough-on-crime enforcers and adopted the histrionic rhetoric of popular anti-racism. This was perhaps the perfect valence to mount the center-right Democratic renewal, especially after a botched campaign to impeach Donald Trump, and the social-democratic left challenge of Bernie Sanders’ second bid for the party’s nomination. This moment has been a triumph for Black Lives Matter activists, but once the plumes of tear gas dissipate and compassion fatigue sets in, the real beneficiaries will likely be the neoliberal Democrats and the capitalist blocs they serve. Nearly all of the Democrat leadership who “took a knee” against racist policing, have openly opposed Medicare for All, free higher education, and the expansion of other public goods, but their technical reforms to reduce excessive force incidents and prosecute police for misconduct are the perfect way of displaying commitment to racial justice, while perpetuating the very pro-market logics and class relations that stress policing and mass incarceration were invented to protect.

Adolph Reed, Jr.’s “How Racial Disparity Does Not Help Make Sense of Patterns of Police Violence,” should be read again and often during this moment of resurgent Black Lives Matter sentiment, precisely because he so clearly names the limitations of anti-racism as a way of thinking about the problems of carceral power, and cautions against any left-progressive politics that separates racism from historical processes and political economy. As Reed notes, “antiracism is not a different sort of egalitarian alternative to a class politics but is a class politics itself.” Furthermore, antiracist politics is essentially “the left wing of neoliberalism in that its sole metric of social justice is opposition to disparity in the distribution of goods and bads in the society, an ideal that naturalizes the outcomes of capitalist market forces so long as they are equitable along racial (and other identitarian) lines.” Of course, I can already hear some friends of mine, academic colleagues and activists alike, who will grumble and cry foul, quickly asserting the presence of this or that tendency that embodies the true radical spirit of Black Lives Matter. Others will likely point to the scale of recent protests as evidence of a new moment, a turning point that will yield massive substantive reforms. Like Occupy Wall Street protests before, however, Black Lives Matter is more of a sentiment than a fully formed political force. Let’s not forget that it was born as a hashtag, and while it has provided a powerful banner for longer-standing organizations and legislative campaigns working to reverse the social toll of carceral expansion, the liberal character of the hashtag should be more apparent now than ever….see link

I never knew Vidal had a long correspondence with Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber.
Vidal noted that the Corporate-Media painted McV over and over as an ‘evil’ character and that was the ‘reason’ he bombed the gov building.

But according to Vidal, McV simply saw himself as a very very serious ‘soldier.’ He was at war with the US Government because he thought the US Government was at war with citizens. Waco, etc.

“…
……I sat on an uncomfortable chair, facing a camera. Generators hummed amid the delphiniums. Good Morning America was first. I had been told that Diane Sawyer would be questioning me from New York, but ABC has a McVeigh “expert,” one Charles Gibson, and he would do the honors. Our interview would be something like four minutes. Yes, I was to be interviewed In Depth. This means that only every other question starts with “Now, tell us, briefly . . . ” Dutifully, I told, briefly, how it was that McVeigh, whom I had never met, happened to invite me to be one of the five chosen witnesses to his execution.

Briefly, it all began in the November….
…..

….McVeigh quotes again from Justice Brandeis: “Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example.” He stops there. But Brandeis goes on to write in his dissent, “Crime is contagious. If the government becomes the law breaker, it breeds contempt for laws; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.” Thus the straight-arrow model soldier unleashed his terrible swift sword and the innocent died. But then a lawless government, Brandeis writes, “invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means—to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal—would bring terrible retribution.”

One wonders if the Opus Dei plurality of the present Supreme Court’s five-to-four majority has ever pondered these words so different from, let us say, one of its essential thinkers, Machiavelli, who insisted that, above all, the Prince must be feared.

Finally, McVeigh sent me three pages of longhand notes dated April 4, 2001, a few weeks before he was first scheduled to die. It is addressed to “C.J.”(?), whose initials he has struck out.

I explain herein why I bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. I explain this not for publicity, nor seeking to win an argument of right or wrong, I explain so that the record is clear as to my thinking and motivations in bombing a government installation.

I chose to bomb a Federal Building because such an action served more purposes than other options. Foremost, the bombing was a retaliatory strike: a counter-attack, for the cumulative raids (and subsequent violence and damage) that federal agents had participated in over the preceding years (including, but not limited to, Waco). From the formation of such units as the FBI’s “Hostage Rescue” and other assault teams amongst federal agencies during the 80s, culminating in the Waco incident, federal actions grew increasingly militaristic and violent, to the point where at Waco, our government—like the Chinese—was deploying tanks against its own citizens.

. . . For all intents and purposes, federal agents had become “soldiers” (using military training, tactics, techniques, equipment, language, dress, organization and mindset) and they were escalating their behavior. Therefore, this bombing was also meant as a pre-emptive (or pro-active) strike against those forces and their command and control centers within the federal building. When an aggressor force continually launches attacks from a particular base of operations, it is sound military strategy to take the fight to the enemy. Additionally, borrowing a page from U.S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U.S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option. From this perspective what occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time, and, subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. (The bombing of the Murrah Building was not personal no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against (foreign) government installations and their personnel.)

I hope this clarification amply addresses your question.

Sincerely, T.M., USP Terre Haute (In.)….see link

link:https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2001/09/mcveigh200109