wind in the sales

I think this video is absolutely the best microcosm of America, and indeed late consumer capitalism, that I've seen since good ol' W landed on a aircraft carrier to announce that he had successfully conquered Iraq. Now, to most people this video is probably just embarrassing or depressing, which are completely understandable emotions. For me however, it is the punchline for a rather long historical joke.
You see back in the 70's the capitalist class in America decided that they had had just about enough of this unionized middle class labor bullshit and got working on ways to pay less money to workers. This was done through a variety of means that are by no means novel or even unusual. In the 80's it was moving manufacturing whenever possible from the staunchly unionized Mid-West and North-East to the less organized South and West. This did a lot for wage repression, as did labor saving advances in technology, but some thought it hadn't done enough. So it was that in the 90's globalization was utilized to use labor in foreign countries with no real regulations, and then import back into America under the guise of 'free trade' and thus essentially break the back of the blue collar middle-class in America.
There was one glaring problem with this strategy however, their simply wasn't a market for the goods if you didn't have people making enough money to buy them. Middle-class America was the cash cow of the century for Capitalists, but by repressing wages the milk had gone sour. Luckily the financial sector came up with a rather cunning solution- extend credit to the consumer class so they can buy and then commodify that debt so as to be able to trade it. Doing this also gave the financial sector the sort of leverage they needed to start doing some truly daring speculative trading in futures that essentially allowed them to invent profit through creative use of economics.
Where did all this lead? It lead to the video you see here. The once mighty American working class is reduced to fighting over ritualized sales on shitty products made by horribly paid workers half way around the world. All purchased with credit cards or the equally unsubstantial American dollar, that as another form of wage repression is worth less every year. So strange how the dreams we dream become reality and then that reality becomes a nightmare.
"All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as
from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -John Adams in a letter to Jefferson (1787)

Crises in Capitalism

"For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer." -John Maynard Keynes (1931)

Today I would like to talk about economics and how it is affecting the world in which we all live. The financial meltdown of 2008 can now be seen in hindsight as merely the beginning of the drama that is still being played out today. As a direct result of this crises we have seen the collapse of several regimes in North Africa and South-West Asia as the economic pressures eventually erupted and flowed like lava onto the streets. It has also led to serious disruptions in the EU which could very well cause the dismantling, in part or in whole, of this economic union. Even in the most die-hard epicenter of Capitalism, America, there was an anti-capitalist movement that although utterly ineffectual did at least raise the issue of economic injustice.
For a world order that has been specifically oriented around the concept that capital needs to flow freely, it is fascinating to see the public's response to the reality of our economic system. People get angry when they don't know what to do, and this is why so many people are so upset about this crises. They seem to have some vague understanding that someone somewhere is profiting from all this, yet they are still powerless to challenge these shadowy figures, or to even understand how it is all happening. Just to be clear, I don't think I have the answer, but I do think I understand the question- Does anyone have a better idea?
Before that question can be posed, I think there needs to be a serious attempt at reality studies. By this I mean that deciding what are the most irrefutable desires of humans (ie liking being alive and disliking suffering) and if these can be met better by another economic order. Given the insatiable nature of human desire at present it seems probable that this system is best at mass producing consumables and distributing them. It is profoundly naive to assume that we can change our current order without taking the incredibly difficult task of inventing a new system which will be more appealing to the majority of earths humans. As a historian it is amusing to me that people are willing to organize for perceived political issues but are unwilling to organize themselves in order to engage in alternate economic activity. We are creatures of habit I suppose, but as a wise man once noted, the world is a "system in perpetual search for novelty". 

Anarchy among the Arabs

One thought came to my mind today as I watched some people attack symbols of US authority across Northern Africa and South West Asia, where did they get all these US flags to burn? I think the answer is obvious; they are importing the same ones from China that they sell in the US at prices anyone can afford. Whoever the hell is running these countries is pretty damn lucky they have a US and Israel to blame, not to mention the fortuitous supply of flags to burn. In a way I feel like the Americans are being used as a patsy for the iniquities and cruelty of the wealthy. Granted American’s are probably more violent than most peoples, but I don’t think it’s fair to say we are significantly worse than any other group of hominids. In my mind the American people have been played and pawned for the purpose of making the world safe for capital; and they are just too damn arrogant to admit it. In this plot the Muslims, and particularly the Arabs, have been cast as antagonists. What I would like to discuss in this essay is why these people, roughly a billion souls, have found themselves in this role. Like most interesting questions there is a quick answer and then there is the truth, I will be attempting the latter.

      Muhammad successfully unified a large portion of the Bedouin living in the Arabian Peninsula in the late 7^th Century. Historically speaking, this was quite an accomplishment. These tribes were fiercely independent by tradition, but much as the Mongols rallied around Ghengis Khan, they would follow the banner of victory far beyond their ancestral homelands. Unlike the Mongols however, the followers of Muhammad were not only establishing an Empire, but also a religion. In my opinion this faith was designed to be acceptable to the contumacious nature of the Bedouin. A big part of this was that under Islam there would be no intermediaries between the believer and God. For this and several other reasons I would argue that Islam has never really been an ‘organized religion’, but rather a 1300 year long debate about the meaning of the poetry and life of Muhammad, as well as social norms and morality. One of these interpretations which I find particularly intriguing is that by submitting to God you are thereby renouncing all allegiance to worldly authority. There is no ‘give unto Caesar’ passage in the Quran, and this no doubt is why Islam fractured with such record breaking speed just a few decades after the Prophets death. 

Regardless of the various schisms Islam went through, the faith and the empire spread none the less until Dar-e-Islam stretched from the Hindu Kush all the way to the Atlantic by the 9^th Century. During this period there was a blossoming of learning and economic development that was arguably the most advanced civilization seen in the West since the Romans. People often forget the relatively tolerant nature of Islam throughout history prior to the modern era. It was for this reason that scholars, poets, engineers and all other manner of useful people flocked to the great cities of the Muslim world. This period constituted one of the most stable and prosperous times for the region, which was followed abruptly by the arrival of Turks, Crusaders and Mongols, all of which wrought incredible destruction. Perhaps the greatest city of its time, Baghdad, was razed to the ground by the Mongols in 1258. The Christian Crusaders slaughtered the population of Jerusalem and a fairly large portion of Palestine. It was apocalyptic times for Muslims, and one that altered substantially the course of Islamic Civilization

After this period of upheaval the Turks established their Empire and ruled the majority of the Muslim world all the way up until World War I. This is important I feel because it meant that during the period of full blown European Imperialism, when the rest of the world was being violently dominated and made the property of European States, everything from Persia to Morocco was essentially left alone. Of course the domination of the planet by Europeans had its consequences, perhaps the most important of which was the end of the ancient Silk Road as the primary trade artery in the Hemisphere. During these centuries of Turkish Despotism the non-Turkish Muslims living under their rule chaffed under the decadent Ottomans, bidding their time for when they could once again be the masters of their own fate. The ability of Lawrence of Arabia to essentially mimic Muhammad’s feet by mobilizing an army of Bedouin to tear apart the Ottoman Empire speaks to the fact that these people were just as fiercely independent as they were in the time of the Prophet, and just as willing to rally to the call of Jihad. So it was that after the War the Europeans did what for them was perfectly natural and logical, they divided the lands up as they saw fit and installed various leaders (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq) or took up direct colonial control (Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine). This was the quickest and perhaps most unexpected of all European land grabs, and one that certainly took the Muslim world by surprise. 

     It is hard to overestimate the incredible importance of this period to collective psyche of the Ummah in the Near East and North Africa. They had hated the Turks, but since they had converted to Islam and had ruled them for many generations, it was familiar. Going from this archaic model to the mechanized megalomania of late European Imperialism is a shock that I would argue the region is still reeling from. What had been fairly isolated was now once again a central and integrated part of the modern world order. With this came a flood of ideas, technology and people that opened the region to things it had little experience dealing with, all of which was imposed by the non-Muslim overlords in Paris and London. It is not hard to imagine that what followed was cultural chaos on a large scale; and that has continued right up to the modern day. The countries invented in 1918 have amazingly stayed largely intact, especially when we consider how arbitrary their borders are and how unbelievably horrible their leaders have been. Now in their defense, the West did a lot to support these regimes and gave them the military means they needed to keep their populations in line; as well as the creation of Israel which has done more than anything else to ensure some semblance of legitimacy. So it was that even with this rapid transition to modernity, the tradition of violence and institutionalized injustice was clearly continued under the various new governments, furthering the inherent distrust already deeply ingrained through centuries of lessons learned. 

   Its understandable how Westerners have a hard time understanding that history is factor for the Arabs, and that this is the primary reason they hate the West, not religion. In a rather ironic way the modern Muslim extremist has become something of a mythological character of  evil and cruelty, all the while Blackwater Inc. can have a Christian orientation and send troops to Arabs lands with the right to shoot anything in sight. I think the simplest and most likely answer is that in order for the West, Capitalism, the Elite, whatever, to have any sort of moral legitimacy they need an other against which to compare themselves. Given the sort of absolutely amoral and destructive nature of late consumer capitalism, this isn't really possible within the realm of reality without being ridiculously hypocritical. Luckily by demonizing the worlds largest religion requires no reality whatsoever, it can be done by simply manipulating the facts around a false narrative that claims Muslims are violent and dangerous. At this point it is virtually impossible to differentiate between the lie and reality, which is basically a win for all who want people fearful and obedient. One thing to consider though, all revolutions are based on food shortages, and prices keep climbing throughout the region. Add to this the tradition of the Arabs to not expect or need anything from their governments, and all this makes for a volatile situation that is much bigger than Israel, Iran, Oil or any other singular thing. The scariest possibility for me is that the uprisings will continue, the corrupt and impotent regimes will fall, and then the West will 'cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war'. All because at this point in history, as a group, Arabs are Anarchists by nature and Westerners are Imperialist. 

Strange stuff on a strange planet

Often as I peruse the news and soak in that sweet nectar of insanity that is current affairs, I come across something that is so interesting that I need to write about it. Today's came from an article by Naomi Klein in which she in passing mentions that over the past 10 years something like 140,00 Americans have been killed  and another 2 million injured by gun violence. Add this to the 2.3 million that are incarcerated for various crimes and its hard not to get the impression that the United States isn't in some sort of war with ourselves. And as if these numbers weren't impressive enough, we have about 1.5 million military personal, a large portion of which is scattered all over the world to impose our will upon those who oppose it. 
These statistics really don't shock me all that much, mainly because I see America in its historical context and thus am not afraid to admit that we are a violent, expansionist, imperialist Republic (this is nothing new). Realism has a tendency to sound dramatic, but in this case I think I'm well within realities boundaries. The US has flying robots hunting tribesmen in Central Asia so it can shoot laser guiding rockets at them. Those same flying robots have now been used to send American's to jail (read here if you're curious).We have floating armadas on all seas, many more nuclear submarines than could possibly be needed, and an Air Force that could literally bomb the entire planet into dust if it was ordered to do so. The truly hysterical part of this whole situation, is the moral high ground that is used to justify this militaristic monster and that we use freedom as the reason for our killings at home. 
How any country with slavery and genocide as its foundation can ever play the morality card is hard to fathom. Guess it comes down to the 'big lie' theory that if you tell a lie enough times, and it is big enough, then people will have to believe it. The argument between guns and militarism in America are more linked than you might think, and not in the obvious way. The reason why American's are legally entitled to own about half of the worlds civilian firearms is the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution, which reads as follows-"A well regulated milita being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.". Pretty straight forward writing, people can have guns so they can form a Militia. Now the Militian they are speaking about wasmeant to be a means by which the country could avoid a standing army under the control of the central government. They rather rightly rightly concluded that almost all political oppression stemmed from the ability oft he government to dominate its people, and that this was traditionally done through the use of an army loyal to the authorities. It was perhaps the most revolutionary of all things included in the founding document, and unfortunately, one of the least adhered to presently. How we got from an armed and disciplined militia to defend the rights of the people against tyranny, domestic and foreign, to 30,000 gun deaths a year and a military dominating the planet in 229 years is fairly pathetic.
As I grow older I am beginning to understand how stubborn people can be, and that there is no intransigence like that that come from ignorance.The fact that the world at large is forced to fear our military and that those who live here have to fear the guns and prisons that are omnipresent in this land is an interesting irony, and a telling one I would say. Fear is a strong motivator for humans, and one that seems to be at the core of the modern world's inability to face our problems. My people, Americans, are very fearful, and also easily manipulated through that fear. One things seems certain at this point- no amount of guns, prisons or military will ever make us less afraid. 

States of Mind

Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think we think
-Ambrose Bierce
    I have thought more about what this crazy contraption between our ears is than anything else. Its a real mindfuck to try and think about the contraption doing the thinking, but I lack options. Recently I've come into some interesting facts about the human brain, and this gives me a cerebral itch that demands scratching. I read this article that talked about studies that seem to indicate that human brain size has been decreasing substantially over the past 20,000 years. One theory says that this is potentially the result of mankind being essentially domesticated. All the 30 some odd animals that we have mutated into our servants have had a very clear decrease in cranium capacity as they are selectively bred for various things besides intelligence; primarily being servile to humans. This really begs the fascinating question- what have we been selectively breeding for since the the Stone Age?
    I would argue that we have been essentially working towards a human that is more predisposed to be subservient, or at least more willing to fall in line with the perceived majority. The violent rebels and psychopathic power mongerers tend to die before they can out breed the endless masses of passive people. This would correlate with the meteoric rise of authority that we see throughout the world. Taken in this context, European Imperialism and the subsequent spread of Capitalist ideals have merely been a social evolutionary leap on the path that the world was already on. Now I'm not saying that indigenous cultures the world over had to be conquered and brought to heel, but it was certainly not a new trend, just more ruthlessly executed and omnipotent. Now here we sit with a truly impressive number of people on the planet with smaller brains (probably why we can all fit) and highly questionable social behavior that might not be so clever in the long run. What I am really pondering is if the complex and environmentally insane societies that we've established are the top down scams I've always thought them to be, or possibly just the best suited to our needs as highly cerebral primates domesticating ourselves to better produce more of us.
   It has always seemed vital to me to consider possibilities that contravene my own ideas. This one I've been discussing here however gives me a deep sense of dread. If we really are evolving more and more to be the play things of power and authority, what kind of people will this be? Is liberty, freedom and individuality all evolutionary traits that are being selected against in the crap shoot of human development? These questions are difficult to answer, and yet I think in my dread I realize that I know the answer. Human history is a long, relatively consistent, indicator that we are becoming more efficient in dealing with each other and less able to deal with other lifeforms. The part that gives me the feeling of uneasiness is that I feel like I'm on the loosing end of this trend, and that all my desires to make people more conscious of our past and our present are ill suited for the general populace, and if so, I am just an echo of what once was dreamed and not the reality that is appearing. But then this old 1300 odd cubic centimeters of neurons surely has a few surprises left for us. As a smart brain once noted- "If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't."

BRAVO

The world turns on its axis floating majestically through space as we humans continue our dramatic performance art piece known as 'reality'. Some debate remains over the exact dimensions and definitions of this exhibition, but it is more or less agreed that it exists. As a historian I'm really glad I was born in such a buck wild time when in the poker game of special survival, we are going all in without even looking at our cards. After many lifetimes of slow and steady accumulation of skills and resources the hairless quadrupedal mammals have really stepped up their artistic output lately. After beating a living out of a rather reluctant nature and watering the land with an immeasurable flood of our blood, this latest act is completely captivating. We have now developed complex tactics and tools to both grow our food and kill each other all while remaining basically the same as our ancestors. Sure, we talk a big game about civilization and education, but if you look at what we are using all this progress for, its not really that sophisticated or different from chucking spears at Woolly Mammoths until they are extinct. Being an American I have to admit I'm rather scarred of Monsanto and the flying drone armadas, but hey, on this wild ride you can't get off or go backwards. I think it was George Carlin who said 'When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." For this reason alone am I happy I was born where I was, for I feel well equipped to deal with whatever lunacy comes my way. It's one hell of a theatrical production watching 7 billion humans exist in a limited space with finite resources. Made up countries, races, religions all engaging in competition, cooperation, conflict almost always without any agreed upon point or purpose beyond consumption... what a show! Some days I can see beyond the psychotic sea of suffering and glimpse our species from a different point of view, let us call it a more cosmic perspective. When seeing it thus, in the glorious context of an unlimited and largely unknown Universe, our little production we got going here is very small, cozy and lovingly familiar despite its melodramatic madness. If you can just take a day off from the confines of your moral conditioning and cultural programming, suddenly this whole thing isn't so bad, but rather funny and fun. So if you are letting the world get you down, or feeling bored with the whole your existence, try and remember that it is all just a show, and it seems that each scene is crazier than the last so just stay tuned in and try to not be tedious.

"When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the world happens to agree upon."  -George Bernard Shaw

Economics

"Economics is a very dangerous science" -John Maynard Keynes

Lately I have been delving deep into the arcane art of economics. It is a fascinating world that is more like the religions of old than the sciences of the modern era. Economics has its own language and its own logic to go with it, and woe to thee who seeks to comprehend it without the prerequisite indoctrination. What so captivates my imagination is that in a very real way economics is more important than all other aspects of human activity and consciousness; yet their is a universal ignorance surrounding it. Allow me to do my best to succinctly explain my conclusions that I've derived from the study of this mighty man made monster that is so important to all.

The primary thing about economics is that it is amoral and apolitical. As perhaps the first truly (or at least openly) Capitalist statesman of the modern era put it, "Free trade is not a principle; it is an expedient.". Perhaps the best thing to consider analogous to economics is warfare. Like economics war has many theories about tactics and strategies, but when it comes to generals giving orders pragmatism and cunning are all that matters. Every single successful Capitalist was able to adapt to their situation better than others and did so because they weren't wasting time on childish notions of morality and ideology. This hits at the basis for the preeminence of the Capitalist system; it can adapt to any location because it is not based on anything but material gain. The Chinese Government can be authoritarian and corrupt, but as long as it uses this to facilitate economic growth their so called 'Capitalism with Asian values' will happily fit into the global economic order. 

One reason economic matters are so completely dominant in the world is that those who seek to oppose it generally do so on some sort of philosophical or ideological basis. This is something like challenging a charging bull by complaining that the bull is wrong to charge; you will inevitably get the horns with this approach. Those who have sought alternatives to strictly economic thought have sadly been easily annihilated because the majority have never really seemed to understand the nature of the conflict. Even at the height of the labor movement the demand was primarily for better wages and social spending/protection by the government. The so called Communist experiments were inevitably just a country ruled by Communists, who never managed to make the system efficient enough to compete with the tenacious and relentless efficiency of Capitalism in the economic arena in which all modern battles are decided. The anarchist tradition, although stating clearer than any other the importance of economics over all else, was simply too radical for the wage-slaves to risk their families lives on. How do you get people who are so psychologically ensconced in their economic roles to through power of will change an entire system upon which they depend for absolutely everything? As Groucho Marx summed it up, "I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal". 

The older I get and the more I learn about economics the easier it is for me to see how it can change from being a esoteric academic pseudo-science to something more practical and useful. Currently people seem very caught up in 19th Century thinking that centers around the notion that political change is meaningful and that democracy as such can solve problems. This is erroneous and simply out of date. The only democracy in this world is dollar-democracy and all political power flows out the barrel of a gun not a ballot box. If war wasn't profitable, we wouldn't be seeing it in our era. When people lament the activities of the great corporations and their allies in government, they are forgetting the primary purpose of both, to produce and posses wealth. The most effective way to make them change is to make it profitable for them to do so and unprofitable not to;  in the post-industrial consumer society this is very feasible. The big challenge seems to be that people are so dependent, despondent and so limited in imagination that they can't alter their perceptions and discipline their actions. I would argue that this is the result of the inherent alienation that comes from the modern era in which cause and effect, substance and meaning, are all lost to our collectively convoluted consciousness. We loose connection to both the earth and each other, and thus start to behave more like cogs in a machine than sentient beings. 

This economic evolution that is human history is also the development of the human species. We are clever and adaptable creatures, this is beyond doubt. However, if we want to be smart enough to survive our own cleverness we need to start making economic activity the main concern in our lives. How much and what we consume is so much more important than who we vote for or what ideology we agree with. In our goal for a better economic system we would do well to listen that titan of economics, Adam Smith, when he said- "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind" Our world is and has been run by these people, and it will remain so until people can realize that their economic activity is the cause of all things human and that we, and no one else, is completely responsible for it.

   

The Haps

Lately there has been a lot of things happening on this world of ours that deserve to be considered. Naturally there is no easy way for people to find out about these things because they are complicated and often depressing; making it difficult to compete with mindless media that wraps us in complacent ignorance.
Violence continues to be a primary way in which people seek to achieve their goals. Assad has been keeping up the long legacy of brutal repression, and in so doing helps provide the moral high ground that the West so desperately craves. In this particular case however the Russians aren't letting NATO  come in and play morality God, and so 14 months of ruthless conflict continues.

Meanwhile in a desert not so far away, the Tuareg have managed to carve out a country in Northern Mali and called it Azawad. As a principle, I'm opposed to countries for a variety of reasons. However, if any group of people as tough as the Kurds, Pashtuns or Tuareg are denied a state they are going to fight for one. In this particular instance it was the war in Libya that gave them the weapons and experience necessary to drive out the hopelessly inefficient forces of the Malian government.

The situation in China continues to be the histories biggest experiment in state repression. This drama surrounding a blind lawyer advocating the rule of law and the response to Tibetans setting themselves on fire shows the depth of the Communist Parties determination to show no quarter to its foes. They have even started imprisoning people who simply see a Tibetan self-immolate. This is an exciting knew form of censorship that should demonstrate well the way in which government is responding to the challenges of the digital age. Meanwhile the West and the rest engage in colossal hypocrisy by trading with China while trying to criticize the means by which they can deliver such cheap goods.

Three things we should keep in mind about this current economic order-

1. "Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent." -Benjamin Disraeli

2. "In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality." -Marx

3. LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist. -Devil's Dictionary