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Posts filed under Election 2008

Plains-spoken philosophy

(Via Roderick and my dad.)

Back when I was an undergraduate, I had the unexpected privilege of spending about two and a half years in one of the best Philosophy programs I could possibly have found–the Philosophy department at Auburn University. Those of you who know me probably know, and those of you who just know the blog may have guessed, that part of the reason for that was meeting and spending a lot of time studying with Roderick Long. Another important reason was the time that I spent studying and talking with Kelly Jolley, the current Chair of the department. It would be impossible to list all the philosophical, intellectual, and personal debts that I owe to Kelly, Roderick, and the rest of the faculty at Auburn (James Shelley, Mike Watkins, Eric Marcus, Jody Graham, …). So I’m really pleased to see the New York Times Magazine’s article about Auburn’s philosophy program, and Kelly in particular, which gives you a glimpse into a really quite remarkable story — the role that Kelly’s personality, teaching style, and indefatigable efforts played in transforming the Auburn philosophy department into the best department in the University, and a paradigm of liberal education at its very best — demanding, challenging, collegial, invigorating, and life-changing. And all this in the midst of a big state school that used to be dismissed as that cow college on the other side of the state.

It’s certainly a story that’s much deeper, more compelling, and ultimately much more useful than anything you’ll find in the firehose spray of little squibs and blurbs on lipstick or politicians’ summer homes or the sanctimoniously-executed power-plays and poll results for the Hopesters and Changelings of the world. Philosophers are constantly heckled — mainly by those who confuse busy-ness with importance and operational success with a life well lived — that philosophy, and the broader projects of the humanities and liberal education, are silly projects — useless really — because they don’t matter to what’s called real life. But if the sort of kitsch and trash that our practical journalists spread all over the front pages of our practical newspapers is what matters to your life, and philosophy is not, then the question you need to ask yourself is why is that the sort of life that I lead? And it’s as good a reason as you could ask for to change your life and to change the things that matter to it. And what I love about the Auburn Philosophy department, and one of the (many) things that I’m personally indebted to Kelly Jolley for, is the fact that that department really provides a place — one of the best examples of such a place that’s left in this modern world — where students are challenged to do that, expected to do that, encouraged to do that, and given access to the tools and the space and the teachers that they need for it.

Tolle, lege.

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This is what a police state looks like. (Part 3 of ???)

Show me what a police state looks like…

This is what a police state looks like!

In the interest of equal time, this footage comes from the streets of Occupied Denver, during the protests outside of the Democratic National Coronation. While police repression was much less severe in Denver than in St. Paul, the city government’s use of fascist free speech zone cages was much more extensive, and the paramilitary cadres in Denver engaged in plenty of their own pre-emptive raids on activists, round-ups and mass arrests, pepper-spraying, beatings with batons, and all the rest.

Remember that so-called electoral democracy — in fact, nothing more than an imperial elective oligarchy — never means that we (meaning you and I and our neighbors) are respected as sovereign individuals or left alone to manage our own affairs. What it means is that a highly organized, heavily armed elite insists on the privilege of representing us, ruling over us, and ordering us around, on the excuse that, once every several years, we are given some minimal opportunity to select which of two tightly regimented political parties will take control of the ruling apparatus. It is, in other words, not freedom, but rather a Party State, in which we are given only the choice of which of two bureaucratic political parties might control our lives and livelihoods, with their authority supposedly justified by the ritual of elections and the mandate of popular sovereignty. And if the people (again, meaning you and I and our neighbors) should dare to think that we might challenge the authority of the regime supposedly representing us, you'll find that it's the people that go out the window, not the rigged electoral system or the parties' grasp on the authority supposedly derived from those people.

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The Stupid Campaign Season Distraction

Here’s one of the funnier, and more on-point, comics that Tom Tomorrow has done lately:

Biff and Wanda are anchors on Action McNews Network.

Tonight we’ll be discussing the latest stupid campaign season distraction that we in the media keep talking about!

Why is the stupid distraction getting so much attention, rather than all the substantive issues we aren’t talking about?

Some have suggested that we in the mdia may actually bear some responsibility for the excessive attention being paid to the stupid distraction–but this is, of course, absurd!

Indeed it is, Wanda!

After all, the media did not create the stupid distraction. We’ve simply reported the facts–and provided endless hours of analysis and commentary!

That’s true, Biff! We’re not responsible for the perceived importance of the stupid distraction–

–But iff the stupid distraction is perceived as important, we have no choice but to discuss it further!

The entire process is completely out of our control! We have nothing to do with any of it!

Why–I can’t even remember how I got to the studio this morning! It’s as if my body simply brought me here of its own volition!

Why do my lips keep flapping and making these noises?

Please stop us–before we waste any more time on the stupid distraction–

—which our roundtable of experts will examine in depth in just one moment!

And: is the stupid distraction nothing more than a stupid distraction? We’ll see what random people on the street think!

All that and more about the you-know-what… after these messages.

The only thing to add is to complete the thought — to remember that the campaign season itself is the stupid campaign season distraction — that the empty and idiotic rituals of party politics, the Presidential election, and electoral politics as a whole are nothing more and nothing less than a colossal and largely successful effort to eradicate serious political discourse from the culture, for months at a stretch, and to replace it with such a shoddy substitute as the discussion of shamelessly dishonest attack ads, shamelessly vacuous positive ads, the reduction of all political debate to a pair of politicos’ names joined with a forward slash, the rowdy team loyalties of the Reds against the Blues, the endless series of professional blowhards gassing about the electorate and picking over popularity polls, a series of stump speeches and a tiny handful of carefully stage-managed two-person debates between anointed would-be oligarchs. And that this idiotic distraction is the sole means by which it is determined who will wield supreme Executive power over 300,000,000 people — which in these days, according to the popular theory of the mandate, is unaccountable, unchecked, and nearly absolute over all matters regulatory, military, and indeed also legislative — for the next several years of our lives. A power which the last 8 years of continuous, unchecked, unpunished, lies, manipulation, overtly tyrannical power-grabs, and catastrophic failures, have empirically demonstrated can apparently only be checked or ended by the purely astronomical phenomenon of four revolutions about the sun. That system itself, and all the works that flow from it, richly deserves discussion, debate, and challenge. But it will never be brought under scrutiny as long as it holds sway, because the function of the system itself is to destroy serious politics, to replace it with the distraction of politicians, their personality, their power, and their parties.

Yet this colossal distraction, and all the power that attaches to and derives from the absurd spectacle, would disappear in a moment if enough of us just ignored the damn thing, if enough of us refuse to take their orders, treat the absurd spectacle of their idiotic rituals with the contemptuous silence that it so richly deserves, and create our own combinations in spite of whatever they may say.

Boycott the Matrix. It’s time to wake up.

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The words of St. Paul

Here’s a recent dispatch from United Liberty (2008-08-30): Operation St. Paul. Boldface added.

The Western Standard is reporting that Dr. Paul's followers have been hard at work, preparing the twin cities for the influx of RNC delegates. Determined to get the Texas Congressman's message out there, Operation St. Paul was set in motion. Part of the push is in the form of billboards, such as this, showcased in the Minneapolis area.

Dr. Paul's message of freedom is a powerful one, and The Revolution: A Manifesto has become to the Freedom Fighter what a gospel tract is to an evangelical Christian.

Oh, come on. Y’all are making this too easy. It’s so obvious that it’s hardly even fun anymore.

Here's a Cultural Revolution-era propaganda poster of workers thrusting copies of the Little Red Book into the air, with Ron Paul's head photoshopped onto the cover.

Hold high the great red banner of Ron Paul Thought—thoroughly smash the rotting counterrevolutionary revisionist line in Constitutional law!

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Cops are here to protect you. (#7)

Trigger warning. The video footage and news report include both video and a verbal description of a male cop shouting misogynistic curses and using sudden physical violence against a woman trying to find out why another protester had been arrested.

This special edition of Cops are here to protect you is brought to you from the streets of Occupied Denver, during the recent police riots against people protesting the Democratic National Convention.

Government cops protect you by yanking random dark-skinned men out of the park for no clear reason. Then, if you should walk up and try to take some photographs of what’s happening, or ask them why they’re arresting a dark-skinned man who, as far as anyone could tell, was standing around not doing anything wrong, they’ll protect you by jabbing you with a stick. Then, if you should dare to verbally demand that your public servants stop jabbing you with a stick for asking questions, they’ll make sure you’re good and protected by screaming Back up, bitch! in your face and slamming you to the ground with a body check from the same stick.

Oh, and then grabbing you and hauling you away to jail when you try to talk to reporters about what just happened.

The woman shown on video being shoved to the ground by a Denver police officer says the officer hit her four times with his baton in an incident she describes as unprovoked.

CodePink protester Alicia Forrest, 24, was released on $500 bail Tuesday night and has a court date for late September, she said Wednesday at an anti-war protest march through the middle of Denver.

I’m a little sore, she said, but I’ll make it.

Forrest is a former fashion designer from Los Angeles.

She and others were asking officers why they were arresting another protester Tuesday afternoon outside Civic Center Park when the officer poked her twice with his baton. He then pushed her with the long side of the stick once, Forrest said, before yelling, Back up, b—- and shoving her hard to the ground.

The final shove was captured by a Rocky videographer.

. . . I was taking photos (and) he kept hitting me with his baton, she said. I was so shocked that he did that.

Forrest and CodePink said the officer was reassigned and can no longer interact with demonstrators, but that could not be immediately confirmed Wednesday.

Forrest was in jail about five hours, then spent another two hours talking with the Denver Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, she said.

— Paul A. Anthony, Rocky Mountain News (2008-08-28):

I suppose it’s for the best that he can’t get all interactive on demonstrators’ asses anymore. But if it is true that he acted improperly enough to yank him from protest control duty, then isn’t also the case that he violated the rights of an innocent woman with his use of force? And, if so, why is this dangerous thug — who feels perfectly free to beat an unarmed woman with a stick, while screaming misogynistic curses at her, apparently for nothing more than daring to give him lip — why, I say, is he not in jail on charges of assault and battery?

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