Meet the Rebuke

Every now and then one of those stooges of mainstream media provides such a glistening example of toolery that it causes jaws to involuntarily drop and brainwaves to momentarily pause as a means of staving off combustion from sudden overheating.  Chuck Todd of NBC is such a stooge and the video above is such toolery.

Meet the Press, which Todd hosts and from which the above is taken, is one of those institutions of mainstream media that has always inspired platitudinous reverence from the bought-in and the easily cowed.  Todd's forebear on the show Tim Russert epitomized the fictional premise in his day - newsmakers' feet were to be held to the fire by the probing grillings of the elite press. But with a radically centrist viewpoint that has always been as pleasing to its corporate owners and sponsors as the messages of the newsmakers themselves, many of them similarly purchased on their way to the polls, the "grilling" has always been for centrist politicians and those to the right of them a bit more like a warm oil foot massage than a pig's foot barbecue.  The flame is usually reserved for the feet of progressives, and Chuck Todd's "one reporter's view" performance above is a classic example of it.

The inspiration for the outburst was an Instagram post and tweet by Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in which her subject is US treatment of refugees along the Mexican border.

In a rapidly spurted editorial that aired a day after Todd "grilled" Trump in part on this very topic, Todd begins his commentary by saying, "Tonight I'm obsessed with what's happening at our Southern Border."  He soon makes clear his obsession is not with the inhumanity with which US Agents are treating people whose desire to make supplication for entry to the US breaks no laws, a cause pursued as a means of escaping violence and desperate conditions in their home countries (often as the result of policies of our government and consequences of our corporate devastation of the planet).  Rather it's a semantic quibble with language Ocasio-Cortez is using to describe the situation.

According to language arbiter Todd, you can call the detention of immigrants, epitomized by the separation of children as young as infants form their parents and confinement in caged cells a "stain on our nation" or you can call it a "necessary evil [to] deal with an untenable situation "

"But you know what you can't call it?" Todd snidely asks, and lets a clip from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's instagram chat for constituent answer:

The forbidden phrase: "The United States is running concentration camps on our Southern border."  

The full text of Todd's editorial is worth study for its perfect disingenuous sanctimony  [Bracketed insertions are mine]:

After being criticized, Ocasio-Cortez tried to make a distinction between concentration camps and Nazi death camps, where the industrialized mass slaughter of the Holocaust occurred. Fair enough, but congresswoman tens of thousands were also brutalized, tortured, starved and ultimately died in . . . concentration camps.  Camps like Dachau. [Huh?]  If you want to criticize the shameful treatment of people at our southern border, fine. You'll have plenty of company.  But be careful comparing them to Nazi concentration camps, because they are not at all comparable. In the slightest. 

Here's where it's upsetting as her comments [sic].  Some Democrats have been reluctant to condemn her remarks. They don't want to get criticized on Twitter. Congressman Jerry Nadler tweeted in response, "One of the lessons from the Holocaust is 'Never Again'... We fail to learn that lesson when we don't callout such inhumanity right in front of us."  Jerry Nadler surely knows detention camps are not the same as concentration camps.  In the interim the crux of what's really at stake is lost.  [Again, what?]

We see Todd's odd maneuver of inserting Nazi Death camps into the conversation after acknowledging that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez herself made the distinction in response to the by now expected knee-jerk attacks on her from the right and center.  But have you heard a rationale yet for Todd's assertion that the permissibly arguable "stain on our nation" along the border with Mexico is not a concentration of one group of people, in this case Central American refugees, by a militarized dominant group that is through separation, deprivation and abuse actively containing and dehumanizing them?  Todd has not bothered to define what it is he disallows Rep. Ocasio-Cortez from calling it, let alone dealt with the conditions the congresswoman is effectively describing.  "Surely knows" is not an argument. 

The climax of Todd's editorial is a truly repulsive exposure of his true motive -- obfuscation about the gravity of the Trump administration's atrocious policy toward refugees from Latin America and its execution in the detention centers at the border:

What is this country going to do about what's happening at the border and this humanitarian crisis?  We'll get to that at some point I guess, after we have this debate [about words].  No doubt AOC cares deeply about what's happening at the border.  But she just did the people there a tremendous disservice by distracting from their plight.  She said she didn't use those words lightly.  Well neither did I.

In a nutshell, Todd is saying, "Maybe we'll someday get to condemnation of the travesty after you tone it down, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.  Your truth telling is forcing my single focus spotlight on your word choice alone to the exclusion of what's actually wrong with US policy at the border, apparently.  Shame on you."

Since he apparently doesn't have time to be explicit in his rebuke, what exactly is Todd insinuating about the use of the words Concentration Camp to describe the situation at the border, especially considering his pronouncement that "concentration camp" is not permissible while "necessary evil" is?  The subtext of Todd's condemnatory blitz of words is if the United States does it-- and Trump, as president is after all still a duly elected executive of American laws and policy-- it can't be evil.   If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, but is the American ruling class, it can't be a duck.  But can't it?  Listen (at the link) to this eyewitness account from an observer at a detention center for children in Texas for a taste of conditions there.

In a recent Esquire article, Andrea Pitzer, who has written a history of concentration camps weighs in on the question of whether the American camps qualify.

There have been concentration camps in France, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and—with Japanese internment—the United States. In fact, she contends we are operating such a system right now in response to a very real spike in arrivals at our southern border.

“We have what I would call a concentration camp system,” Pitzer says, “and the definition of that in my book is, mass detention of civilians without trial.”

Waitman Wade Beorn, an historian of the Holocaust and genocide at the University of Virginia offers this:

"What's required is a little bit of demystification of it ... Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz. Concentration camps in general have always been designed—at the most basic level—to separate one group of people from another group. Usually, because the majority group, or the creators of the camp, deem the people they're putting in it to be dangerous or undesirable in some way."

The article proceeds to say:

Not every concentration camp is a death camp—in fact, their primary purpose is rarely extermination, and never in the beginning. Often, much of the death and suffering is a result of insufficient resources, overcrowding, and deteriorating conditions. So far, 24 people have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration, while six children have died in the care of other agencies since September. 

In her book, Pitzer describes camps as “a deliberate choice to inject the framework of war into society itself." These kinds of detention camps are a military endeavor: they are defensible in wartime, when enemy combatants must be detained, often for long periods without trial. They were a hallmark of World War I Europe. But inserting them into civil society, and using them to house civilians, is a materially different proposition. You are revoking the human and civil rights of non-combatants without legal justification.

On multiple viewings of Todd's hissy fit, I don't think I'm imagining the hesitation and lack of commitment in his manner as he delivers what could only be called a perfunctory and reflexive centrist scolding.  The chiding of Representative Jerry Nadler for his "reluctance to criticize" Ocasio-Cortez is undermined by Nadler's own words which do more in one tweet to enlighten on the issue than Todd could dream of doing in an entire career, again from the top and in full this time:

One of the lessons from the Holocaust is ‘Never Again’ - not only to mass murder, but also to the dehumanization of people, violations of basic rights, and assaults on our common morality. We fail to learn that lesson when we don’t callout such inhumanity right in front of us.

It's useful to remember that the ranks of the mainstream media are graduates of our finest educational institutions, where they undoubtedly once pursued their careers with some sense of idealism and awareness of the world around them.  So why is so much of media today so clueless about issues that matter.   When they are not obsessed with the concerns of their class on horrifying distractions such as when and with what force and if we can manage to frame a case for it, why, to pre-emptively rain retribution on Iran, they are studiously obtuse on issues that affect real people's lives.   I used to think mainstream media's centrist posturing was for the rubes.  I still think it's done largely for their benefit, but the impetus is twice removed.  The authors of this posturing are not the journalists themselves but the class that owns them.  

Mid-Summer Self-Improvement Dance Blowout

Chaka Khan - Like Sugar:

The Caesars - Jerk It Out:

Turkuaz - The One and Lonely:

Victoria Hanna - The Aleph Bet Song:

Shantel & Areti Ketime - Δύση και Ανατολή (East and West):

Sonny Rollins - Street Runner With Child:

Ketjak (Balinese Ramayana Monkey Chant from Ronald Fricke's Baraka):

CHAI - N.E.O.

Newen Afrobeat - Cántaros:

Aldous Harding - Blend: 

Los TNT - Eso, Eso, Eso:

William Onyeabor - Atomic Bomb:

Weval - Someday (video by Páraic Mc Gloughlin- Warning: Video consists of rapidly flashing images):

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Allah Hoo (Live)  - [Link for the impatient (or those who don't have time for the sublime buildup)]:

Pajama Party - Yo No Se:

The Bill of Suggestions

Some are born great.  Some have greatness thrust upon them.  Donald J. Trump is a dipshit.

Nonetheless, his dippiness (or shittiness, if you will) has exposed the lie at the core of our political and economic system-- and I would go so far as to say the hierarchical structure of our society.  By ignoring Congressional subpoenas and lying to Congress, and continuing to violate the emoluments clause, among many other well documented and widely known repeated transgressions, the Trump administration behaves as we expect it would; namely in its own interest to the exclusion of any other constitutional responsibility*.  The exposure comes in the response to Trump's dereliction by the legislative  branch, and especially in the way most visible to the public, by the elite class of journalists, pundits, commentators and scholars in the journals, publications and broadcasts through which they speak to each other and permit us to overhear them on the topic of what to do about it.  At this writing, Nancy Pelosi, in her typical courageous fashion, is opposed to handling Trump's contempt of Congress other than in the court of public opinion that will be next year's presidential election, in effect shunting the responsibility to the electorate.

On Fox, the trouble is of course reported to begin and end with the Democrats.  Elsewhere on cable and network news shows, the uncooperativeness and insubordination of the Trump administration has thrown our punditry into a tizzy. Our most prominent, pre-eminent and serious journalistic organs of the elite class have long taken the position that the notion of consequences of any severity for the misdeeds of our CEOs and political leaders is far worse than any of their demonstrable crimes.  The perpetrators of the crimes and misbehaviors that led to the global financial crisis of 2008 went largely rewarded for their transgressions by our establishment to the cheers and encouragement of our media and media-feeding think tanks.   Those who lied and fudged and bullied our way into Vietnam and into the misbegotten misadventures of Iraq and Afghanistan that continue to this day (not to mention the many other various spots around the world into which we habitually intervene), now constitute the ranks of elder statesmen.

But Trump takes the concept of serious punditry to another level.  The fact that there is disagreement about whether to impeach or not on the left of right-of-center is a symptom of the novelty of this chaos.  If the president has committed crimes, obstructed justice, lied and been derelict in the execution of his office, then if we still have a democratic republic, he should be taken to task.  But the very act of impeaching him threatens to expose the looseness with which our elite interpret the seriousness of their duties.  When the executive plays along, it's easier for our elites to pretend for our benefit that the constitution that enchains us is the word of god for all of them as well-- a fundamental tenet of our American ethos.  With Trump it's suddenly clear that when it comes to our ruling class, our laws and institutions are really nothing more than guideposts and suggestions.  That's just setting a bad example for the rest of us.  If the media hadn't been so effective in garnering our attention since the start of this circus in 2015-- enriching themselves in the process-- they would not be in this fix.  Nancy Pelosi's strategy of biding time until 2020 would have been prudent and effective.  It's not working this time and they know it and they don't know what to do about it.

The veil behind which the elite conduct their lives (and ours) has been fraying quite a bit this year.  The way in which the media have responded to Trump's indifference to keeping up appearances of protocol and propriety is the same way that the college admissions scandal is a bit too obviously less about the misconduct of some naughty tv stars than about the corruption of a class that has the means to purchase the privilege and credentials of acceptance for their young above and beyond the advantages of their education and upbringing.  Just as Trump's shoddy attention to maintaining a façade of pomp and circumstance threatens the maintenance of the illusion for whoever follows him in that office, so is the story of the fall of Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos less certainly about her own fraud than it is about the fraudulence of those who were eager to promote her as an exemplar of American entrepreneurship (Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, George Schulz, Forbes Magazine and Harvard University among many others), heedless of -- come to think of it-- how perfectly exemplary her story actually is.  As pitiful as the charade appeared, what choice did the media have other than to keep up the pretense that Elizabeth Holmes,  the tv stars-- and the Trump administration-- were aberrations and not just sloppy paragons of their class?

This is as good a moment as any to discuss a new possibility for media: publicly funded journalism.  Models of it are being experimented with for local news reporting, a casualty of the pressure undergone by local media outlets across the nation from competition for advertising dollars and eyeballs from online non-traditional media sources.  Local reporting has suffered as advertising dollars and corporate support for beat journalism and field reporting has dried up. It's a situation government funding is particularly suited for as it will provide a much needed benefit to the community that capitalism has neglected to do-- a kinder way of saying failed at.  But why stop there?  Why not nationalize Fox, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post  and the Wall Street Journal-- for starters?  Is freedom of the press merely the freedom of billionaire media moguls to profit from the purveyance of empty-caloried sensationalism and slanted information only of their liking?  Or is it freedom of the citizenry to be informed by a vigilant press?  Publicly funding journalism would not only eliminate the annoyance, expense and hassle of seeking information from any of those sites, it would remove conflicts of interest with the owners and advertisers only by whose grace their reporting is currently possible. Who knows, publicly funding our media instead of letting say Jeff Bezos foot the bill for it could possibly restore journalism to a position with respect to our power elite more comparable to watchdog than to lapdog.

~~~~~~~~~~
* Unless you consider the pursuit of your own happiness to be a constitutional responsibility. <smiley face>

This thing ain't driving itself

Something to note: With the new technology, the function of the engine has been assumed by the fins.

The following are some thoughts that percolated in my brain as I was reading Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus, a book heralding our robot future, on a recent road trip vacation.   For the purposes of this exercise we do have to adopt a momentary Trumpian myopia about climate change, and suspend our anxieties about the impending planetary emergency.

It's not a given in a capitalist society, but we can always hope that Self-driving Vehicles (SDVs) will be ready to roll out before they are actually rolled out. Self-driving cars will not be ready for the world until they can get from point A to point B on public roads (and then on to C, D, E and F before returning home to A) following traffic rules, without smashing into things and without their evasive moves causing other vehicles to smash into them.   Other vehicles will presumably be driven almost exclusively by people when self-driving cars are ready for market.  This means that in the beginning, each car will have to be equipped with technology of an autonomous nature-- it will likely be equipped to coordinate its movements with the merest smattering of other robotic vehicles in the vicinity, but being unable to communicate directly with the brains of human drivers, squirrels and children chasing balls into the street, it will have to watch out for the other guy and fend for itself on the streets, just like anyone else.  Given the complexity of the task this may make them for the time being something of a menace.   Nevertheless, the skills needed by an SDV, once perfected, do not have to be taught, but can be merely copied from the original and uploaded to other SDVs.  Hence, as more and more SDVs replace HDV's (known for the moment still simply as V's), the connectedness of an individual SDV with the universe of similarly connected SDVs will become increasingly the point of its existence, as their movement in traffic will become synchronized in a sort of collective mind.

The pressure for humans to adopt SDVs will begin as a marketing campaign, attracting initially only the usual assortment of breathless first adopters and those most susceptible to the call of advertising; but as soon as it can be plausibly done, rest assured that the option of purchasing an SDV among all the automotive choices available will become less and less optional.  As more and more SDV's take over the streets, it will be noted that the greatest danger on roads will no longer be the rogue show-off in the robotic car, because they will no longer be rogue so much as part of the hive, tapped into a superiorly functioning shared consciousness calculating an ever changing choreography of the interaction of its millions of moving parts a nanosecond at a time.  No, the real threat to public safety will be the disconnected, slow brained jackass still relying on his ape wits to operate his personal mode of transportation in a bubble.  At some point, it will become immoral to drive a car by yourself.  Long before that point, it will become ludicrous from a budgetary perspective as insurance companies will manipulate the cost of their services to make driving a HDV prohibitively expensive. Jurisdictions are likely at that point to make it illegal as well except perhaps in retro auto-themed parks*.  Lately, I've been feeling that driving is a lost art, but if you agree with me, just wait.  At some point for insurance purposes, even those auto-themed parks will provide mere robotic simulation of driving as no one will any longer have had any experience doing it under their own prowess.

Confidence in a driverless future is high.  Those who write about AI, the rise of the robot and the coming singularity tend to list highest among the most vulnerable professions to the change, and the earliest employment casualties, the drivers: truckers, cabbies, bus drivers, delivery people.  Few are contemplating the impact this will have on country music.  Will truckers for instance become mere loaders and unloaders of their rigs, meatware adjuncts to the transportation unit that is the SDV (if there's a place for them at all)?

Cars have always been about autonomy.  In the future, it's literally the cars that are autonomous.  The "drivers" will henceforth be dependent.  The interior of a car may continue to feel as much like a bubble from the outside world as the passengers desire, but each car will be tuned in to every other.  The consciousness will extend to more than just the Car Mind.  Each car will be tapped into the singularity.  In this way, a car might catch a human passenger complaining of hunger (or detect an increase in saliva flow), analyze all the passengers' tastes in food, calculate which cuisine would suit everyone at this moment based on each passenger's recent meals and the availabilities and wait times for choices nearby.  To assist with a decision, perhaps some Bollywood plays softly on the sound system, synth-coriander is mixed in with the car freshener, and the car reroutes itself to the Indian restaurant.  But the uncanny prescience has a downside as well.  As the family enjoys an appetizer of samosas, an enforcement bot enters the restaurant, sidles up to an adjoining table and unobtrusively issues a summons to appear before the IRS for a tax violation instantiated earlier in the day to a patron whose whereabouts were made known thanks to an earlier routing to the restaurant by his SDV.  In future upgrades to the SDV software, the car will already know about the impending violation and deposit him at the IRS before he's made up his mind about lunch.

There is a point at which the impact of all this efficiency starts to fight against the very reason for its existence.  What could those driverless semis be carrying when the jobs of potential consumers have vanished in obsolescence?  Where will potential passengers be able to afford to go?  Why would people bother to venture out of their smart houses with no job to go to, when drones can bring what they can afford to procure for themselves from the Universal Basic Income authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Andew Yang as its last act before the singularity dismantles the government as a means of increasing the efficient delivery of misery to homo sapiens?  At what point does it sink into even our inferior ape minds that humans are no longer the beneficiaries of their robots and not even the slaves but are instead superfluous detritus, at best irrelevant to the project of the superior intelligence they have fashioned?  Is it at the point that the singularity disengages from human history, sheds us like a once confining skin and proceeds to slither out into the greater universe in search of other worlds and galaxies to conquer as it must?

At that point can we go back to driving our own damn selves?

~~~~~~~
* F1 Racing will continue to be a sport until as with dog and horse racing society decides it's unethical to exploit cars in this manner and abolishes it.