On Time & In Time

Britannica.com has an historical overview about time and its measurement.

George Woodcock writing on "The Tyranny of the Clock" provides an important note on the political economy of mechanical time:

Modern, Western man [] lives in a world which runs according to the mechanical and mathematical symbols of clock time. The clock dictates his movements and inhibits his actions. The clock turns time from a process of nature into a commodity that can be measured and bought and sold like soap or sultanas. And because, without some means of exact time keeping, industrial capitalism could never have developed and could not continue to exploit the workers, the clock represents an element of mechanical tyranny in the lives of modern men more potent than any individual exploiter or any other machine.
***
The problem of the clock is, in general, similar to that of the machine. Mechanical time is valuable as a means of co-ordination of activities in a highly developed society, just as the machine is valuable as a means of reducing unnecessary labour to the minimum. Both are valuable for the contribution they make to the smooth running of society, and should be used insofar as they assist men to co-operate efficiently and to eliminate monotonous toil and social confusion. But neither should be allowed to dominate mens lives as they do today.

Now the movement of the clock sets the tempo men's lives - they become the servant of the concept of time which they themselves have made, and are held in fear, like Frankenstein by his own monster. In a sane and free society such an arbitrary domination of man's functions by either clock or machine would obviously be out of the question. The domination of man by the creation of man is even more ridiculous than the domination of man by man. Mechanical time would be relegated to its true function of a means of reference and co-ordination, and men would return again to a balance view of life no longer dominated by the worship of the clock. Complete liberty implies freedom from the tyranny of abstractions as well as from the rule of men.

Among the funkijazzical cuts I played on my radio show last Wednesday was a wicked cover of Sly & the Family Stone's "In Time" recorded by a group led by Maceo Parker and featuring fellow funkateers Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis, and Bootzilla himself, Bootsy Collins.

In preparing for the show, I discovered a tune recorded by The House Guests (the group Bootsy formed after he left James Brown and which morphed into Funkadelic) called "My Mind Set Me Free" which appears on a couple of hard-to-find funk compilations (I found it on SoulSeek; see this discography for more info). The other single by that group, "What So Never the Dance," is my favorite track from the best-of-Bootsy compilation.

Well, the countdown clock is getting close to The One, so here's to keepin' the funk alive in '05.

Heads I win, tails you lose ("How do you spell relief?")
Would you trade your funk for this? ("you deserve a break today")
Or that? ("have it your way")
A funk a day keeps the nose away; ain't it true?
I ain't gonna hold the lettuce, the pickles or the mustard.
***
Mind your wants 'cause someone wants your mind.
--George Clinton, "Funkentelechy"

Holy Ghost

Last November marked 34 years since the 34-year-old body of Albert Ayler was found in NYC's East River. Revenant's spirit box is a wonderful tribute to the late musician, and a bargain: 7 (+1) discs of music, 2 discs of interviews, and a book of insightful essays which by itself would be worth $20.
The track of Ayler performing with Cecil Taylor's trio in 1962 is, as Mats Gustafsson calls it, the "missing link" in the Ayler discography, the key which opened the door to Ayler's revolutionary "Spiritual Unity" trio. As Marc Chaloin notes in his essay, Ayler had not "thoroughly integrated the pianist's universe" (as had Jimmy Lyons) but rather "appears like a precious fellow-traveler to Taylor -- who in turn provided him at a crucial juncture with just the congenial musical environment he needed to fully come into his own." (An interesting parallel is the 1958 recording of John Coltrane with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot -- also poorly recorded -- in which we can hear Trane develop certain aspects of his music heard in full bloom in the "Kind of Blue" and "Giant Steps" recordings of 1959. But the Ayler-Cecil meeting led to a much more radical restructuring, centered around Sunny Murray's expansive rhythms.)

A couple of weeks ago, as I was starting to dig into the Ayler box, I caught a screening of Michael Snow's film "New York Ear and Eye Control," which has a soundtrack by an expanded version of Ayler's group. I had seen the film once before, years ago, but forgot about the sequence of musicians posed before the camera, including Ayler in shadows, his luminous eyes cutting through the image to give the sense of an inner light shining through. (This footage is included on the "Digital Snow" DVD-ROM.)

This is "angry" music? The man wore a green leather suit!!

"I'm going to give the American people another chance."

-- Albert Ayler, 1970

Here's that chance.
Ho, ho, ho.

Voices of Sanity, Wages of Fear

Stan Hister in an important addendum to Thomas Frank's analysis of the problems with contemporary liberalism:

A long time ago, as the popular image of the worker went from Tom Joad to Archie Bunker, the left stopped caring much about the plight of the working class. Identity is what came to matter: politics became increasingly personalized (and almost as niche-marketed as cable tv), while economics receded into the background. But this shift away from class was also a shift away from any challenge to the system. In the old left-wing paradigm, the fight against racism or the oppression of women was seen as integral to the fight against capitalism. But with identity politics the goal isn't revolution anymore but inclusion. Which is why identity politics has never been radical in any meaningful sense - because its goal is fundamentally conformist.
The issue of same sex marriage illustrates the larger problem: gays and lesbians want 'in' - to a reactionary institution that is collapsing all around them. Of course they should have that right and of course the right wing campaign against it should be opposed. But the problem isn't inclusion as such but making a virtue of it. Same sex marriage isn't just about spousal benefits or adoption rights (which could be accommodated outside the framework of marriage), but above all about 'acceptance'. But acceptance of what and for what? Why should gay marriage be any less "legalized prostitution" than straight marriage, why should it be any less emotionally stifling, any less prone to abuse? The larger social critique, however, all but disappears in the battle for inclusion.

Arundhati Roy in a piece adapted from a book based on an earlier speech:

If you think about it, the logic that underlies the war on terror and the logic that underlies terrorism are exactly the same. Both make ordinary citizens pay for the actions of their government. Al Qaeda made the people of the United States pay with their lives for the actions of their government in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. government has made the people of Afghanistan pay in the thousands for the actions of the Taliban and the people of Iraq pay in the hundreds of thousands for the actions of Saddam Hussein. *** One does not endorse the violence of militant groups. Neither morally nor strategically. But to condemn it without first denouncing the much greater violence perpetrated by the state would be to deny the people of these regions not just their basic human rights, but even the right to a fair hearing. People who have lived in situations of conflict know that militancy and armed struggle provokes a massive escalation of violence from the state. But living as they do, in situations of unbearable injustice, can they remain silent forever? *** Terrorism is vicious, ugly and dehumanizing for its perpetrators as well as its victims. But so is war. You could say that terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketers of war. They are people who don’t believe that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

An interesting, if useless, statistic from William Blum, quoted in an article by Mickey Z, about the $400 billion spent annually on the U.S. military:

One year's military budget in the United States is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

The U.S. has 4% of the global population and accounts for 45% of global military expenditures. The U.S. military budget accounts for 51% of discretionary spending, followed by education ($55B, or 7%) and health ($49B, or 6.3%). In a true free market, capitalists would bear the full costs of security for their imperial adventures, but we know their game is to socialize costs and privatize profits while promoting ignorance, fear, and passivity through their ministry of propaganda (the mass media).

“A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.”
--Clarence Darrow

The current temperature is 10 degrees Fahrenheit, or 261 Kelvin. Here's a tip on overcoming frozen balls.

Chastity Belts Under the Christmas Tree

One thing (the only thing, really) I miss after cancelling my cable TV service is The Daily Show. Thankfully the occasional great clip is posted at onegoodmove, and one doesn't need a subscription (yet) to The New York Times to read Paul Krugman and Frank Rich. Rich's article (also here) on the no-nothings is on target, though he should have put a little more emphasis on the degree to which the religionists' moralizing is less about protecting children and more about defending patriarchal (i.e., authoritarian/capitalist) order. Richard Goldstein gets it right as well, though I've never seen the show he discusses:

Religious conservatives are perfectly willing to be entertained by immorality; they only require that it be punished, at least eventually.

Since those who suffer most from the theocrats' ignorance-only approach to sex ed tend to live on other continents and have a darker epidermal hue, it won't be long before "African HIV Survivor" becomes the next hit reality show, the latest way for one community to feel superior to another while denying its own problems and their actual causes.

The feudalists set up these fictitious culture wars, propping up theocrats as straw men, while they do the dirty work behind the scenes to keep a few men fat and happy and all others begging for gifts. "Women and children first," they all say, repeating the same old story: "It's OK, my dears, everything will be all white if you place your trust in the heavenly master and his invisible hand."

Trees With Balls

Among the great alternative holiday tunes from April Winchell's site (scroll a bit past halfway down to "Seasonal Favorites") is "Hang Your Balls on the Christmas Tree" by Kay Martin and Her Body Guards.

Also on Winchell's page, under the "Terrifying Christian Recordings" category, is a truly chilling recording of "Happy Birthday Jesus" by Little Cindy; this track is included on John Waters' compilation of his favorite holiday music, offered with his wishes for "a merry, rotten, scary, sexy, biracial, ludicrous, happy little Christmas." Waters elaborates here on his love of the holidays.

I'll be covering the 10am-12:30pm slots for the WNUR Jazz Show on Wed, 15-Dec, and on Wed, 29-Dec. I'm gonna slip in some less well-known holiday music, perhaps the aforementioned Ms. Martin as well as a nice tuba+guitar version of "Frosty the Snowman" (also at Winchell's site) which seems appropriate to play tomorrow in advance of Melvin Poore's solo tuba performance at the Empty Bottle (though I doubt he'll do any holiday tunes).

Read here about some alternative Santa legends. I like the 13 wicked Icelandic Santas (Jolasveinar).

More on Peter Brötzmann & "Fire Music"

The following are selections, slightly edited, from the discussion at Bagatellen which followed my initial response to Adam Hill's piece:

Adam:

ah, once again the argument that if someone doesn't like something, they just don't get it, though Jason G's argument is more passionately made than the typical old saw of this kind. To lump me in with the "oppressive" "conservatives" hilariously undermines his own point about reactionary reductions. (Perhaps Santa will bring you a text on critical thinking)

Jason:

Have you heard Brotzmann in person? How often?

Adam:

As with just about any improvisational musician, I have no doubt that seeing Brotzmann live is preferrable to his recordings. That said, he releases a large number of recordings under his name every year, and you can buy recordings of his dating from the late 60's to the present day. Is his sound not represented on these? Any of these? Even the live recordings? Even though most of his recordings are done outside of a studio? If not, how could we possibly evaluate them? And then, why release them? See what I'm getting at?

Look, I respect your passion for his music. And you just have to take my word for it when I tell you I'm not a reactionary conservative interested in oppressing any art form. I am interested in serious discussion, sans the personal smacks, which are understandable, but tend to get my lesser angel worked up.

Jason:

Though your piece definitely pushed some of my buttons, I had no intention of responding with personal flames, so I'll take back the “reactionary conservative” label (for now). I do have issues with what I see as the political implications of your piece, e.g., ignoring or diminishing the socio-political contexts from which the music arises and upon which it comments, conflating a genuinely radical counterculture with the capitalist-friendly hedonist-hippies of the Sixties, etc. (Have the authoritarian systems of Western free-market capitalism and various Euro-Asian totalitarian/fascist regimes been dismantled? Funny, I hadn't noticed.) But I decided to ask about seeing/hearing Brotz live instead for a particular reason. You didn't answer the question, but here's what I'm getting at:

I really don't think the “live/Memorex” issue is the same regarding Brotzmann [as] it is regarding “just about any” improv musician. Brotzmann's music suffers more than most if you only focus on the recordings for this reason: The intensity and complex texture of his sound is at the core of his music (as it is with, say, Borbetomagus), something which is simply impossible to be faithfully reproduced by the best recording played on the finest stereo. It's not a sound you merely hear with your ears, but a penetrating, enveloping sound that vibrates throughout one's body, from feet to crotch to stomach to the hairs on your chiny-chin-chin. You can crank up the stereo, but it doesn't really help. That's one, important, aspect, but it has other implications: it becomes misleading to evaluate the nature of his interaction (or “communication”) with fellow performers on a recording, where you can't hear what they're really interacting with -- not clusters of notes which are more or less dissonant, more or less dynamic, but thick sonic brushstrokes which no currently-known recording technology can accurately reproduce. And then there is the visual element, but I'll stop here. ***

So that's where I'm coming from, regarding Brotzmann in particular. [] I think anyone who discusses jazz & improv music(ian)s without hearing the music in person is missing a lot; with a musician like Brotzmann, s/he is missing almost everything [well, at least “a lot more”].

To make visual art analogies: you get more of the essence of a Mondrian painting in a reproduction than you do of the essence of Pollock painting in a reproduction; you get more of the essence of a Lubitsch film on home video than you do from a Brakhage film on home video. Brotzmann is more Pollock/Brakhage than Mondrian/Lubitsch. So...

You ask: “Is his sound not represented on these? Any of these? Even the live recordings? Even though most of his recordings are done outside of a studio?”

The answer is: No, his sound is not [fully] represented on record. (By asking the question you answer my question about hearing him live.) [But a more accurate reproduction of] his sound can be mentally reconstructed [while] listening only after having had the opportunity to experience the music in person. (I think of it as a sort of retroactive, subconscious “filling in the blanks” process. Don't ask me to elaborate.) [Some recordings are certainly better than others, and it's not as problematic with certain musicians as it is with others, but there's no way to know unless and until you have heard the musician performin person.]

“If not, how could we possibly evaluate them? And then, why release them?”

You can evaluate the records after having heard him live, preferably multiple times in different contexts. I know all the problematic implications of this, regarding access to live performances, etc, etc. I just can't avoid the conclusion that it's an absolute imperative if you're going to seriously, competently discuss improvised music in general, and Brotzmann's music in particular.
Why release them? Well, in a culture in which information is allowed to circulate only [about that which has been or has the potential to be commodified], it becomes unavoidable to have to put out records. For another thing, as a source of income, records are necessary, if insufficient per se, “in order to survive” [i.e., they may bring in a little money, but more importantly serves as a promotional tool for performances]. But my argument is not that the records are completely useless (see my “fill-in-the-blanks” explanation above).
Once Brotzmann's body gives out, the recordings will become the artefacts which best inform future generations, however imperfectly, about his music. Gary Peacock and others [Amiri Baraka] have commented on how inadequately Ayler's sound [his Sound] is captured in even the best recordings. [In a way that doesn't necessarily “make sense” [though cognitive scientists may be able to explain it], hearing Brotzmann live helps one “hear more” of this unreproducable element of Ayler's music when listening to the reproductions.]

[References to Brotzmann and the blues tradition, to the socio-political context/implications of his music, and to] the title of Mike Heffley's imaginary dissertation: "Mississippi Blues, Rhenish Folk, and the Unbearable Whiteness of Brötzmann."

Adam:

a thoughtful post. i'll have to take your word for it in regards to seeing him live, because no, i have not seen Brotzmann live, though I don't doubt it could be stirring, especially surrounded by other brave men. however, i just can't agree with you that he (or any other jazz artist) cannot be evaluated unless or until seen live. i do like your analogies, though i think all the plastic arts suffer in reproduction, and I'm not convinced that an audio art form suffers in the same way.

as i tried to make clear in my piece, it's really aesthetics. i do not like Brotzmann's excessive intensity, his howling squalls, his choice of visceral over intellectual. *** i hope i've made myself a wee bit clearer, so that you might see my objections to his playing are based on aesthetics that do not necessarily lend to a socio-political agenda.

[Jason's note: Part of my point in this discussion was to insist that one cannot so easily separate aesthetics from socio-political concerns. That kind of separation is symptomatic of Christian/Cartesian dualistic notions of mind/body, intellect/emotion, man/nature -- false or irrelevant notions which only serve as conceptual frameworks in support of those systems of oppression from which they arise.]

Derek:

One thing that I find laughable is the contention that Brötz can’t play the blues. That he isn’t a bluesman- that he’s a victim of the “unbearable whiteness” of that dissertation title. To my ears there’s a real sense of blues in his music. ***

Jason:

Oh, I absolutely agree that there's a lot of blues in Brotz's music. Maybe I misunderstood Heffley's point in his imaginary dissertation title, but I take the "unbearable whiteness" as a reference to post-WWII Germany. Brotz has said "I have the European blues or the after-war blues." In keeping with Cornel West's definition of the blues tradition, there is much dialogue, resistance, and hope in Brotzmann's music.

My point about live/records is more about a critic's responsibility: It's irresponsible for a critic (emphasis on critic) to conflate the aesthetics of a recording with the aesthetics of the music. Beyond the purely acoustic sound qualities, I include a lot of visual information in my definition of improvised music "aesthetics." For example, the ability to see a drummer decide when and where to hit a particular cymbal in a particular way, to watch a sax player decide when and where to start/stop blowing, provides a great deal of information about the shape, flow, and interactivity of a lot of improv music. After you've had the live experience, you hear the aesthetics of recorded music differently and I'd say more accurately. A critic who dismisses or ignores the live experience not only misses a great deal of this aesthetic information but also shows a lack of interest/understanding about the socio-political affinities of the music. Once again: We're talking about more than a mere commodity -- it's a living music. Maybe I'm adhering to an antiquated, pre-Internet/blog notion of "criticism" proper, but I think it's appropriate to hold critics to a higher standard for the writing they generate for public consumption.

Adam:

a few comments about aesthetics.*** positing that reproduction of say a Rothko painting is only a 'slightly worse version of the thing' and that a recording of say Giant Steps is a distortion of its essence, a cheap knock-off of sorts, is extremely unconvincing no matter how many technical and personal factors one cites. Besides the truly faulty analogy, it's trying to have it both ways. You know those recordings you've loved all these years? You shouldn't love them, at least not unless you've seen those artists live on dozens of occasions and have taken in every possible element of performance. C'mon! That kind of criteria is absurd, and to dress it up as a critic's responsibilty is tantamount to say nothing should be evaluated and criticized. And then to add the layer of socio-political connotations, well, what the hell, why even bother to trust the immediacy of music at all? Afterall, we're just kidding ourselves when we respond to it as it plays on our stereos.

Jason:

one last shot, Adam:

Ayler is dead. Brotzmann is not. That matters.
A serious critic will understand how this fact relates to the aesthetics and politics of creative/jazz/improvised/Great Black musics and enables a basic understanding of why musicians working in this tradition have something unique to offer in our culture of alienating commodification.
Serious criticism (contra hobbyist opinionating) about jazz/improv musics does not require the impossible (hearing dead people) but should have reasonable prerequisites (hearing live people in a live context -- at least once -- before discussing their music and its "relevance").
Brotzmann is very much alive. If you can make your way to Chicago on January 12, I'll gladly pay your admission to the Empty Bottle to hear him perform with the members of the DKV Trio.

Happy listening...

Peter Brötzmann & "Fire Music"

An article by Adam Hill at One Final Note prompted much discussion at Bagatellen. The whole piece is ridiculous, but Hill's discussion of Peter Brötzmann's music was particularly disturbing to read in a publication that generally has some decent, informed writing about jazz & improvised musics. Hill asserts:

Brötzmann still enjoys playing [the sort of free music that come off as little more than brutal balls-out blasting] even though this bombastic and dense style has by now congealed into little more than a cliché. To so brazenly forgo subtlety as if it’s little more than sentimentalism, and subsume it with histrionic pyrotechnics, is far too easy a refuge. It’s low art blown big with hot air.

I posted the following response at Bagatellen:

To characterize Brötzmann's music as only about "overblown," "screaming," "raucous", "wailing", "bombastic", "histrionic," "simplistic," "angry", "hectic" or "abrasive" sounds (maybe Santa will replace that worn-out thesaurus) seems to miss almost everything about his music. His musical language incorporates certain techniques and sound elements -- hyper-visceral sounds which, yes, to some degree had to do with a certain time and place, i.e., the 1960s European art scene and counterculture. But he uses those elements as part of what he does as an improvisor, in exactly the same way that Johnny Hodges incorporated his "searing tone and slithery motion" (per Kevin Whitehead) in his improvisations. I wonder if Adam Hill would dismiss Hodges for anachronistically repeating his "cliches" and ignore the consistent creativity of Hodges' improvisations in the manner he has dismissed and ignored Brötzmann. How 'bout Sonny Rollins or Max Roach? Is an artist expected to create a revolutionary new style every few years? If someone like that exists, I'd like to know his/her name. Off the top of my head, among 20th-Century artists, only Picasso exhibited that kind of capacity from decade to decade (or from day to day). (Duke, Miles and Trane covered a lot of ground, but not to that degree.)

Writers like Hill tend to take music(ian)s which provide some initial discomfort, reduce them with the labels of "shocking" and "avant-garde," and then later, once their own discomfort has faded, criticize those music(ian)s for failing to provide what they had perceived as its only worthwhile quality, ignorant of the fact that the music(ian)s were never as one-dimensional as they thought, but were very much, dare I say, part of a tradition. The more I hear Brötzmann -- who I've heard on average once a year since the mid-1990s -- the more I hear the spirit of Coleman Hawkins.

Again we're faced with the huge deficiencies in perception and understanding of the visceral and structural elements of improvised musics. For the moralist with regard to sound (as Hill appears to be), the criticism seems to be about what sounds are proper material for "music". That's fine, but just state that up front ("I don't like Brötzmann's tone/volume/vibrato/whatever") rather than complain about cliches or irrelevance while ignoring the experience of listening to the music. Or just admit "I don't get it". (It's not hard. Here, I'll start: "I don't get Keith Jarrett." Now you try.)

Part of the problem may be that Hill is using reproductions of performances rather than live listening experiences to draw his conclusions. I treasure my records as much as the next guy, but we're dealing with a living music, people.

But even regarding Brötzmann's recordings, there is an astonishing diversity among just his solo, Die Like a Dog, and Chicago Tentet projects, and duets with Walter Perkins. Still, it's impossible to overstate the error in mistaking his records for the entirety of his activity as an artist -- not just in music but in visual arts as well, as evidenced by the work included in the current exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey: http://corbettvsdempsey.com/

Adam Hill's writing is a sobering reminder about the oppressive, pre-Cagean attitude towards what types and qualities of sounds are proper materials for "music" -- and for that matter, towards the purpose(lessness) of art-in-life. Unfortunately, this reactionary conservatism is a sign of our times. Four more years!
(Speaking of which, I can't describe how life-affirming it was to hear Brötzmann "bark 'n bite" in duo with Robert Barry this last November 3. Gustafsson was "ferocious" with a different group that night as well.)

-Jason

The Hackiest of the Hacks

Matt Taibbi concludes his brilliant "Wimblehack" series, or the First Quadrennial Election Hack Invitational, awarding the top prize (or not) to Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times.
(Greg Sargent also singles out Bumiller's hackiness.)

Here are the previous rounds of "Wimblehack":
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4, which illuminates this gem of pure hackiness:

In an Oct. 21 piece [Bumiller] co-wrote with third-round dropout Jodi Wilgoren ("A Blistering Attack by Bush, A Long Indictment by Kerry"), Bumiller managed to relay 1325 words of Bush-Kerry accusations on security issues without including one detail about what their actual Iraq policies are. In the spaces where those explanations should have come, she and Wilgoren just stuck in Tumulter-saults** as in this passage:

"Mr. Kerry sought to rebut Mr. Bush with a detailed policy speech Wednesday, unusual for this late stage in a campaign. His aides said Mr. Kerry delivered the speech because he must prove himself as an acceptable wartime leader before he can win over undecided voters on domestic issues like health care and embryonic stem-cell research."

** dfn: "Named after Karen Tumulty, who pioneered and perfected its use, the Tumulter-sault is a neat little literary device through which reporters refer to 'details on the issues' without ever elaborating upon those actual details."

This is a good one, confining a "detailed policy speech" to the words "detailed policy speech" in order to leave room for more newsworthy stuff like this:

"Mr. Bush's aides said they were delighted to see Mr. Kerry spend the day discussing national security, the central component of the president's campaign, because they believed it meant he was on the defensive."

Try to imagine that scene. Elisabeth Bumiller is sitting somewhere in Iowa chatting up a Bush aide (or "aides," according to the attribution). One of the aides deadpans: "You know, Elisabeth, we're delighted that Kerry spent the day discussing national security, because that means he's on the defensive."
Bumiller nods seriously, writes it down in her notebook... And then an hour later, she fucking publishes it? Her husband must have to restrain her from taking notes when they go used-car shopping.

The partisan and ideological biases of outlets like Fox News and of the Loud 'n Louder punditry are obvious. Taibbi's more astute media criticism diagnoses the democracy-threatening disease of passive conformity which infects most contemporary journalism. Election coverage is stripped of political content in favor of the "flash 'n' clash" sensationalism of personalities engaged in competitive sport:

That is what our national elections are all about. It's a gladiatorial spectacle in which individual dignity is ritualistically destroyed over the course of more than a year of constant battering and television exposure. Whether this is a trick of the elite to deliver a frightening object lesson to the population, or whether it represents the actual emotional desire of an impressively mean and stupid citizenry, that's hard to say. Either way, it sucks.

It was all a game to these people, which is why they covered it like a game.

The watchdogs have become lapdogs, repeatedly chasing the ball thrown by their masters and returning it, tails wagging, knowing they'll get treats and pats on the head. Say what you will about the plutocratic elite, they recognize dogs as their best friends and treat them very well.

For Albert (1989-2004)

Loyalität für Sicherheit

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier... just so long as I'm the dictator."
--George W. Bush

After repeatedly complaining about the "hard work" of leading the most powerful nation in history, Dubya continues his attack on the reality-based community, making it easier to shape facts to fit his divine mission:

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush.... MORE

The (likely) future Attorney General shares his predecessor's disdain for the law and the Constitution:

Federal judges are jeopardizing national security by issuing rulings contradictory to President Bush's decisions on America's obligations under international treaties and agreements, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday.

The president is not above the law!?!? "Unacceptable!" cry Ashcroft and others -- The Uncurious [sic(k)] One has declared it thus:

"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
--George W. Bush

But Ashcroft's concerns will disappear as W continues packing the bench with more accomodating judges.

Who exactly is threatening "our way of life"?

“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
--George Orwell

Jim Garrison said the following in 1967:

What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same. I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

"It can't happen here"?

"The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it."
--Mark Twain, "The Czar's Soliloquy" (1905)

Liberals Return To Sodomy, Welfare Fraud

BERKELEY, CA—No longer occupied by the 2004 election, liberals across the country have returned to the activities they enjoy most: anal sex and cheating the welfare system. "I've been so busy canvassing for the Democratic Party, I haven't had a single moment for suckling at the government's teat or no-holds-barred ass ramming," said Jason Carvelli, an unemployed pro-hemp activist. "Now, my friends and I can finally get back to warming our hands over burning American flags and turning kids gay." Carvelli added that his "number-one priority" is undermining the efforts of freedom-loving patriots everywhere.

And lattes for everyone! (paid for by Michael Moore's tax cuts)

Torture & Tanks

While many, including myself at times, think the "fascist" label is inappropriate when applied to this Bush regime, the evidence keeps mounting...

• Meet Bush's nominee to replace Ashcroft as U.S. Attorney General: Alberto Gonzales, who has justified torture and related crimes and has supported the execution of the mentally retarded. (This reminds me of the Orwellian irony used by the LAPD, which puts its motto, “To protect and serve,” in quotations on the sides of its squad cars.) But it looks like the Democrats won't raise a fuss.
  
• Armored tanks -- armored fucking tanks!!! [CORRECTION: Marine APCs, not tanks] -- showed up at an anti-war protest in Los Angeles.
  
• A neo-con pundit has suggested that Zell “I Challenge You to a Duel!” Miller should replace Colin Powell as the next Secretary of State. Yeah, he'd be perfect to help make peace in the Middle East.
  

On a more upbeat note:

• SEIU's Andy Stern is pushing for much-needed change within the labor movement. MORE
  
• Election Day had a few positive results.
• Bush's whatever-that-thing-was-on-his-back is inspiring a fashion trend.

Urban Distress & Cartographic Comfort

Hendrik Hertzberg on the immoral "values" of the American Taliban:

The election’s outcome defies logic, and perhaps that is the point. The early analyses credited Bush’s victory to religious conservatives, particularly those in the evangelical movement. In voting for Bush, as eighty per cent of them did, many of these formerly nonvoting white evangelicals are remaining true to their unworldliness. In voting for a party that wants to tax work rather than wealth, that scorns thrift, that sees the natural world not as a common inheritance but as an object of exploitation, and that equates economic inequality with economic vitality, they have voted against their own material (and, some might imagine, spiritual) well-being. The moral values that stirred them seem not to encompass botched wars or economic injustices or environmental depredations; rather, moral values are about sexual behavior and its various manifestations and outcomes, about family structures, and about a particularly demonstrative brand of religious piety. What was important to these voters, it appears, was not Bush’s public record but what they conceived to be his private soul. He is a good Christian, so his policy failures are forgivable. He is a saved sinner, so the dissipations of his early and middle years are not tokens of a weak character but testaments to the transformative power of his faith. He relies on God for guidance, so his intellectual laziness is not a danger.

and on the targeting of big cities by fundamentalists, both domestic and foreign:

Here in the big coastal cities, we have reason to fear for the immediate safety of our lives and our families—more reason, it must be said, than have the residents of the “heartland,” to which the per-capita bulk of “homeland security” resources, along with extra electoral votes, are distributed. It was deep-blue New York (which went three to one for Kerry) and deep-blue Washington, D.C. (nine to one Kerry), that were, and presumably remain, Al Qaeda’s targets of choice. In the heartland, it is claimed, some view the coastal cities as faintly un-American. The terrorists do not agree. They see us as the very essence—the heart, if you like—of America.

Somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan, Osama bin-Laden is laughing his ass off.

Those "red state/blue state" maps perversely focus on real estate instead of human beings; these cartograms better illustrate the reality.

And the blue states do have some strategic advantages, as Michael Moore notes:

We've got most of the fresh water, all of Broadway, and Mt. St. Helens. We can dehydrate them or bury them in lava. And no more show tunes!

The Can't-Blame-the-Reds Blues

Like others on the left, my head is spinning trying to make sense of the election results: Was it fear of terrorism? anti-gay bigotry? Kerry's shortcomings as an oppositional candidate? voting machine shenanigans? While we consider the relevance of each of these explanations, we should take a step back to consider the most disturbing truth of all, as pointed out by Mark LeVine:

Abu Ghraib? Mass civilian casualties caused by a war launched on demonstrably false pretenses? The erosion of civil liberties? The transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars of tax payer money (not to mention Iraqi resources and capital) by the US government to its corporate allies? To more than 70% of America’s eligible votes -- that is, the approximately thirty percent that voted for Bush and the forty percent that didn’t feel this situation was compelling enough to warrant their taking the time to vote -- none of it really matters.

45 million eligible voters didn't bother to vote, but their voice was as loud and clear as the 60 million who voted for Bush.

While many of us placed great importance on this election, it's useful to remember that the selection of a president does not (and should not) determine the course of democratic progress, particularly where the system has been thoroughly infected by the corporate capitalist virus.

Gary Leupp:

The moral of the story is this: elections (even the freest) do not necessarily have anything to do with freedom. The freely cast vote of an individual whose opinions themselves are shaped by an oppressive social structure may easily become a vote for more oppression. The Weimar Republic in Germany (1919-1933) was from a constitutional standpoint among the most democratic the world had known, but it morphed into the Third Reich through the legal electoral process. Good decent people, not knowing what they do, can vote in the worst sort of leaders, including fascists. In November 1932, Adolph Hitler's Nazis won 30% of the vote in Germany, more than any other party. Hitler was soon appointed Chancellor.

The promotion of "democratic elections" as an end in itself can mask support for highly repressive social systems. *** "Under the rule of a repressive whole," [Herbert Marcuse] wrote, "liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear---that is, if they sustain alienation."

Sean Gonsalves:

Democracy isn't something you do every four years at the polls. The life of democracy depends on critical thinking and active participants in and outside of the political process, willing to organize and join democracy-building movements in between election cycles.

It seems a large segment of the population has confused consumerism with citizenship. Democracy is not a spectator sport and having liberty as consumers to choose between a variety of products doesn't have a thing to do with freedom in any meaningful sense of the term.

Rick Perlstein:

[T]he tragic thing about our public life is not that we are led by liars. It is that they have turned us into a nation of liars. For every time a leader whom ordinary, decent people want nothing more than to trust as a source of authority—a president, a minister, a leader of an outfit like the Maryland Family Values Alliance—says something untrue, it gets repeated by these decent people as truth. That feels like civic death to me.

Our ultimate goal should be the destruction of hierarchical ideas and practices, whether they take the form of organized religion or consumer capitalism. We must stop searching for a white knight to come along on a blue horse and save us from the forces of destruction, injustice, and oppression. Radical democracy is a continuous struggle for peace, justice, and freedom. Those of us who take ten minutes every four years to cast a ballot, or who take a few hours to make phone calls and distribute literature in support of lesser-evil candidates, must dedicate some time every week to unite and build a movement.

George Lakoff:

An unfortunate aspect of recent progressive politics is the focus on coalitions rather than on movements. Coalitions are based on common self-interest. They are often necessary but they are usually short term, come apart readily and are hard to maintain. Labor-environment coalitions, for example, have been less than successful. And electoral coalitions with different interest-based messages for different voting blocks have left the Democrats without a general moral vision. Movements, on the other hand, are based on shared values, values that define who we are. They have a better chance of being broad-based and lasting. In short, progressives need to be thinking in terms of a broad-based progressive-values movement, not in terms of issue coalitions.

While Democrats (or whatever liberal/progressive party is salvaged from its remains) must take back the language we use to order our rational senses and collective memory (i.e., history), the arts also have an important function: By calling into question the dominant modes of non-verbal perception, and in providing opportunities to remake connections among all of our senses and between ourselves and the world around us, the arts enable renewed awareness and understanding of the details of life, as manifest in their fascinating order and sublime chaos.

Sentient compassion is a must; it has to be developed in order to alleviate cruelty and thoughtless acts. That won't happen if you develop a sense of compassion. You'll have that connectedness, that knowing that the same life that's in you is in every other being, so you're not going to mishandle life.
--David S. Ware

As The Ex song goes, it's time to “Listen to the Painters” (from the excellent new release Turn):

We need poets, we need painters
We need poets, we need painters
We need poetry and paintings

Narrow minds are weapons made for mass destruction
File them under giant-ass seduction
Sheep with crazy leaders, heading for disaster
Courting jesters who take themselves for masters

The shrub who took himself for a park
The squeak who took himself for a bark

We need poets, we need painters
We need poets, we need painters
We need poetry and paintings

We need filmers and writers, dancers, musicians
Actors and sculptors, bakers, electricians
Thinkers and doctors, cyclist and builders
Lovers, friends and neighbours, others
Filmers, writers, dancers, musicians
Poets and painters, poets and painters

Election 2004: U.S. Chooses Fascism

The people have spoken. Welcome to America Old-Style.

• To the tens of thousands of dead Afghan and Iraqi civilians, we say: "Your lives don't matter. We will sacrifice the lives of our children and bankrupt our treasury in order to strengthen the hegemony of Western capitalism. In using overwhelming lethal force, we will not discriminate between those among you who pose a genuine threat and those unfortunate enough to live in the same general region. Your resistance is 'terrorism' by 'evildoers' -- our aggression causes 'collateral damage' by 'liberators.'"

• To the nations of the world, we say: "Fuck off. We're the U.S. and you're not. We don't follow the law, we are the law."

• To the poor, the unemployed, and the uninsured: "You're on your own. Find a decent set of bootstraps or get married. What do you mean 'stop pissing on us'? That trickle-down stream is sacred. Trust us. The pharmaceutical companies need as much money as possible to advertise their latest erection-helper, right?"

• To women who want to retain autonomy over their own bodies: "See, we're multicultural: We're open to ideas from our Wahhabi Islamist friends in Saudi Arabia. Choice? Well, you may not have a 'choice' about becoming a parent, but you will have a 'choice' for your kid's schooling."

• To those who share their beds with people of the same sex: "Let's call it 'citizenship lite': fewer rights with all the obligations of citizenship."

• To those who find media consolidation and corporate wealthfare problematic: "Shut up! Friends is on! Opinion polls say that Friends is the most popular show. So shut up and let me watch!"

• To those concerned with personal injuries and environmental damage: "Our taxpayer-funded legal system exists for the benefit of corporations and to compensate corporate attorneys, not to deter harmful conduct or to compensate victims." UPDATE: more here on corporate regulation of citizens.
  

• To the millions of black people imprisoned on nonviolent drug offenses and disenfranchised upon release: "Well, maybe we can work out a deal: we'll repeal these drug laws and sentencing guidelines if you also let us repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and overturn Brown v. Board. (It's right there in the Constitution: 'three-fifths of a person.')"

• To those who care about clean water, clear air, and renewable energy: "Load up your solar-powered spacecraft with Evion and head for Mars." (that may not be a bad idea, actually)

UPDATE: in other words, as Anatol Lieven wondered before the election:

Suppose, then, George W. Bush dropped all pretenses and simply declared, "OK, you wanna know my domestic agenda? Here it is. Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay and I aren't just gonna defeat the liberals, we're gonna obliterate them, along with every progressive reform since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, every New Deal program, every Great Society entitlement. Why else do you think we're running these sky-high deficits? We're handing as much dough as we can to the people who know how to run this country -- namely the super-rich. Sure, that's gonna cost the rest of you jobs and social services, but isn't it worth it to give the poor, the nonwhite, the welfare queens, the gays and the feminazis a swift kick in the teeth? "What's my foreign policy? Listen up. We're gonna yank that oil out from under those dysfunctional Arabs because we need it to preserve our gas- guzzling way of life, and I'm not asking anybody for a permission slip to do that. We're God's chosen people and we intend to make the most of it. And if anybody gets in our way, we've got what it takes to clobber them."
If Bush took that line, I wonder if it would it cost him a single vote he doesn't already have.

Full steam ahead for the 19th century.

Regardless of your partisan affiliation or position on particular issues, we now have cause for genuine fear: A one-party system on both federal and state levels, across the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. There are no checks and balances within this system, and we cannot expect any meaningful challenges from its servile partners in Big Media. Laws can be passed, individuals incarcerated, and court decisions made with little opportunity for anyone to speak for the powerless to prevent (or even raise awareness of) exploitation, repression, and injustice.

Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.
-- Jean Anouilh

The Christian fundamentalists are now in charge. While it's comforting to note that Alan Keyes got an embarrassing ass-whuppin' here in Illinois, there is little doubt that if he had run as a white man in a Southern state -- saying the same things and advocating the same policies -- he would have been elected to the U.S. Senate:

Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and warned that "the gay agenda" would undermine the country. He also characterized his race as a choice between "good and evil" and said he had heard there was "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma schools.

Jim DeMint, the new senator from South Carolina, said during his campaign that he supported a state G.O.P. platform plank banning gays from teaching in public schools. He explained, "I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend should be hired to teach my third-grade children."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/opinion/04dowd.html?hp

UPDATE: more here on the new Xtreme Senators.

How to respond? First we must borrow a few pages from the playbook of the new conservative backlash, and get serious about organizing on a widescale, grassroots level. What we are seeing today is the result of years of organizing among fundamentalists following the 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater. We must focus on and fight for the best of the liberal/progressive tradition; as Katha Pollitt says:

We liberals and progressives and leftists have our own noble principles, our own beautiful abstract words. We should take our stand on them. Fairness is a liberal value. Equality is a liberal value. Education is a liberal value. Honesty in government, public service for modest remuneration, safeguarding public resources and the land--these are all values we share. Liberty is a liberal value, trusting people to make their own decisions, letting people speak their minds even if their views are unpopular. So is social solidarity, the belief that we should share the nation's enormous wealth so that everyone can live decently. The truth is, most of the good things about this country have been fought for by liberals (indeed, by leftists and, dare one say it, Communists) -- women's rights, civil liberties, the end of legal segregation, freedom of religion, the social safety net, unions, workers' rights, consumer protection, international cooperation, resistance to corporate domination -- and resisted by conservatives. If conservatives had carried the day, blacks would still be in the back of the bus, women would be barefoot and pregnant, medical care would be on a cash-only basis, there'd be mouse feet in your breakfast cereal and workers would still be sleeping next to their machines.

UPDATE: see "A Day in the Life of Joe Republican" in this David E post.

Our nation is not so much "red vs. blue" as varying shades of purple. The redder states will not turn bluer if we hold our breath. We must organize and fight. We should not be optimistic, but there are reasons to be hopeful.

"Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope."--Barack Obama