In Spite of Ourselves

Viagra Boys present a cover of John Prine's In Spite of Ourselves featuring Amy Taylor:

The song was written for the 2001 Billy Bob Thornton Southern Gothic comedy-drama Daddy & Me, screenplay and mise en scène by Thornton and starring Thornton, Laura Dern, Brenda Blethyn and Andy Griffith with Prine in a supporting role.  Originally recorded for the closing credits by Prine and Iris DeMent, both were seen performing the song Live from Sessions At West 54th in the same year:

Bonus fun: Amy Taylor performing Hertz with her usual gig Amyl and the Sniffers.

Proxy Wars

Getty Images

At the start of Putin's war on Ukraine in February, President Joe Biden made telling statements that revealed the attitude of the US toward the impending invasion of Russia's neighbors to the West -- a conflict undertaken on the part of Russia to assert its dominance over a country and people that outside of a few pockets had exhibited a troubling tendency-- openly and clandestinely encouraged by US and other Western alliance officials and operatives-- to list westward in its orientation for most of its independence from the Soviet Union in 1992 while Russia, in contrast, was increasingly marginalized.  The day that Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden explained gratuitously that sanctions imposed on Russia prior to its invasion were not intended to prevent the war but to send a message to those most hurt by them, not the oligarchs or those planning for the invasion but the Russian people, that Putin by being the cause of the sanctions was the cause of their misery.  The war was not a thing the US was determined to avoid -- it was the point.  

"For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden said of Putin in remarks in Poland a month into the Russian president's war against neighboring Ukraine over the latter's suppression of pro-Russian factions in the Donbas region and its stated intentions to join NATO.  As an opinion, Biden's remarks are unremarkable, but as executive of the American project, his thoughts are the seeds of history.  As it turned out they were more intemperate than the national security establishment was prepared for and had to be walked back in an op-ed column signed by the president in the New York Times Many Americans I'm sure share the sentiment as Biden originally expressed it-- I've had it myself once or twice.  But why Putin and not Netanyahu or Muhammad bin Salman?  The answer is obvious considering the sameness of US national security apparatus objectives at least since the end of World War II-- because Israel and Saudi Arabia do not threaten or reject the dominance of America and its closest  and most similar European allies over global affairs like Putin and Russia do.

Is Ukraine fighting a proxy war against Russia for the US and its NATO allies?  Since at least 2015 the CIA has trained Ukrainian special forces in undisclosed locations of the south -- not southern Ukraine, but Southern USA--  on countering a Russian invasion.  Is this evidence of incredible foresight or has something else been going on?  

To Ukrainians and Russians immiserated by it, the war is immediate and real.  To the US military and diplomatic apparatus which did little to prevent it and has done virtually nothing to try to bring it to an end, it is a boon to munitions suppliers and military advisers, whose bread and butter for once comes without a cost of American lives, and therefore with even less friction than usual from the yard sign contingent.  If Russia won quickly as many in the American establishment claimed to believe would happen or if Ukraine could muster a protracted resistance to drain Putin's treasury as long as possible, what did it matter to the US?  Considering the entrenched apparently unconditional involvement of American interests in Ukraine leading up to and since the February invasion, why does no one in the American national security establishment seem able to articulate what we envision as a satisfactory end of the conflict-- and why do so few Americans seem to care?

I wonder if others who have tried their hand at writing about the Ukraine war as critics (and not as journalists) have like me struggled to get beneath the surface of what can be gleaned by the most carefully worded google searches, or discussed at high volume at a depth of mere inches on 24 hours news channels, or pre-digested and regurgitated to us from the pages of newspapers and magazines and joked about on late night talk shows.  Do they know that Boris Johnson talked Volodymir Zelensky into abandoning productive peace talks with Russia mediated by Turkey in April in spite of a substantial list of agreed upon points reportedly because "Putin cannot be negotiated with, and the West isn’t ready for the war to end"?  Do they recall  US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the time those talks ended stated American objectives in Ukraine as being to prolong the war to the point of exhausting Russian conventional military capabilities? Are they aware that Amnesty International has reported that Ukraine is violating International humanitarian law by placing military installations in heavily populated civilian areas and launching attacks that endanger those populations from Russian artillery responses?    Are they aware that since April, 66 UN member nations representing most of the world's population have called on those involved to end the war; that events on the ground reflect Biden's off the cuff remarks and  contradict the words of his May editorial?  Are they aware that the narrative of the war is being cleansed in real time by those reporting on it (if it even breaks through the wall of what is officially allowed to be said)?  As Patrick Lawrence says in the Scheerpost essay linked to above:

All correspondents bring their politics with them... This is a natural thing, a good thing, an affirmation of their engaged, civic selves not at all to be regretted. The task is to manage your politics in accord with your professional responsibilities, the unique place correspondents occupy in public space. There can be no confusing journalism and activism. You do your best to keep your biases, political proclivities, prejudices... out of the files you send your foreign desk.... We are not getting this from the Western correspondents reporting in Ukraine for mainstream media. You may associate the error of mistaking journalism for activism with independent publications, and ... [i]t happens. The truth here is that almost all mainstream journalists reporting from Ukraine are guilty of this... They are effectively activists in the cause of the American national security state, its campaign against Russia, and Washington’s latter-day effort to defend its primacy.

Putin's war is unjust and brutal; ordinary Ukrainians have no choice but to raise resistance to it, and yet, the war could have been avoided, and failing that the US -- whose response has been to provide virtually unlimited and unconditional material and strategic support to Ukraine in the conduct of their resistance-- could have been and should now be engaged in efforts to bring the war to a conclusion. We should be skeptical of the motives of a national security apparatus that enables genocide in Yemen, cultivates repression in Haiti, ignores apartheid in Israel, sides with anti-democratic forces in country after country in Latin America, that is known to have trained and supported anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan only to have to war against them 20 years later and in keeping with the pursuit of a hostile course intended to surround and economically isolate its former cold war adversary Russia, has had its fingers in Ukrainian affairs ever since that country's independence.  The fact that we are not yet actively engaged in hand to hand combat with Russians is not reason to unqualifiedly support our efforts materially or advisory in the present conflict.  While Russia's actions in Ukraine are a travesty and must be stopped, 1)  What exactly is the problem with proposing peace talks as a way to do that?; and 2) While waiting for the moment when negotiating for peace is actually ok to hope for, why should we not engage skepticism about the aims of US involvement and about the further extension East of  unlimited American hegemony?

Weaponizing Ukraine because we are not there is seen as the right thing to do when technically what we are doing is having Ukraine do our battle for us. Which is fine with Russia since they would rather kill Ukrainians as substitutes for us since there are few consequences risked than there would be killing Americans.  Similar wars take place daily online. Occasionally they spill over into the real world as when right cultish hecklers show up at town halls of congress people to voice histrionic opposition to votes taken or not taken.  But these are done for the cameras of social media and the effect they have is proxy flame wars online.

People fight each other on social media in place of making actual change.  This is an excellent way the system has devised to keep us on our asses in front of our computers at odds with each other instead of in the streets making noise together.  But while we are engaged online, we believe ourselves to be doing something.  Occasionally, in the cause of something bigger like Medicare for All, someone might urge others on line to tweet at a famous politician, preferably of the left, ideally of a squad in order to threaten them into action toward a long dreamed for policy change-- say a force of a vote on Medicate for All.  The tweet starts out as being about Medicare for All but rapidly degenerates into a battle between ostensible allies over tactics. Actions taken in the flesh and blood world are done for twitter ratios. 

AOC was publicly challenged on her votes to fund US military and advisory support of Ukraine and she needed to be, and her recent confronters at a town hall meeting in the Bronx had me with them until they mentioned the very problematic and non-voting ex-congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (the opposite of a model of purity) as a counterpoint.  They turned out to be adherents of the very bizarre, necrophiliac cryptofascistic LaRouche movement. Why must everything nowadays be filtered through some sectarian lens?  Why must we establish our corners before we can even hope to come to common cause on issues that should be accumulating solidarity rather serving as prisms of our differences?  Why is so much effort on the left from every corner expended on how correctly the most progressive members of Congress behave, and not at all on those who will never behave?  I suspect it's because we are too close to a tipping point for the neoliberal order.  We thwart our own progress because we are terrified of success.

Not all proxy wars are bad.  Two climate activists in London startled the world by tomato souping Van Gogh's very pricy piece Sunflowers and then supergluing themselves to the National Gallery walls to protest Big oil production. What did Sunflowers have to do with anything?  As a solitary act it was shocking and seemed unnecessary. On the other hand, was it?  Compared to the crisis we are facing that no one seems to be doing anything about?  As a solitary act, a single world famous very expensive painting assaulted with tomato soup seems anomalous and paltry and unfair.  But imagine if this became a daily thing.  Imagine if painting after paintng, Guernica, the Mona Lisa, American Gothic, Whistler's Mother, Stuart's portrait of George Washington, preferably those in private collections-- every day a new familiar bauble were to be splashed.  Would capital start listening?

My intentions are good

Ten people asked me today, "How are you?"  Did you ever notice how many states are uncomfortable?  And I’m not talking Abalama.  But seriously, how often is the answer to the "How are you?" question, “Comfortable”.   How about itchy, sore, nervous, anxious, annoyed, hungry, full, hot, cold, tepid, bored, horny.  Because if you were comfortable you wouldn't have need of so many other words to describe your state.  In conversation, I find it best not to go down the road of truth if you don't enjoy the podium.*   So "Fine" is the only strategically prudent answer.

In truth, I haven't been myself lately.  Unless myself is a depressed malcontent.  In which case, I've been the same as usual. No one really wants to know the truth anyway. 

Why  is it that human interactions so rarely go well for me. Embarrassment, miscommunication, being taken advantage of, missed opportunity, infinite boring tangents, unsolicited lecturing. These are many of the most likely outcomes of almost any interaction-- even the most trivial interactions with people I've never met and will never see again.  It seems to me.  Am I right?  I'm always tempted to think I don't belong in public.  I have been told I'm reserved.  Could that be the problem?

Not like the public space is lacking anything on my account.  Although mask requirements (and even mask suggestions) are being lifted across the country and our president has declared the COVID crisis over, I'm still wearing a mask in public.  If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would never have pegged me for the type.   'He's too self-conscious,' I would have thought.  'He'd rather not stick out.' Outside of major metropolitan areas (also known as germ incubators) I'm in fact more inclined to go with the flow which seems to be an embrace of masklessness, but on my own turf (a major metropolitan area) I surprise myself by not giving a fuck what other people think.  I fantasize about what I would say if I were bullied by some strange asshole who decided to be offended enough by my precaution to openly challenge me on mask-wearing.  I like the idea of pulling down the mask,  violently hacking in his face, and then politely explaining, "I have ebola."

You see, Jayden (for that's the name of the out-of-towner who confronts me about mask wearing in my fantasy), I don't wear a mask for political reasons.  I'm not a fan of performative gestures and that includes performative mask wearing to demonstrate your contempt for Trump as well as performative non-mask wearing to demonstrate your contempt for public health officials  (and I'm no great fan of either).  

True, I barely wear it for health reasons anymore anyway.  As it happens I discovered a comfort level, a commitment to the bubble in wearing a mask.  And part of the comfort is an absence of a need to explain it to anyone. Least of all Jayden.  People do suck.  How can they not see that.  If only they could see what I see they would realize that, the motherfuckers. If people only knew what dumasses they were being, Twitter would be a very quiet place.  The world would be beautiful.  And if people knew who to thank for suddenly being able to see their own dumassery you and I would get the thanks and appreciation we deserve.

I miss quarantine.  So maybe mask wearing for me is just one of my many out of date fashions.

~~~~

Post Script: I wrote this a while ago.  In the interim, a sore throat that had been bothering me for a few days prompted me to test myself for COVID.  Mask wearer though I am, I tested positive.  Trust me, if a masked vaxed hermit can get COVID when the COVID crisis is over, anyone can.

~~~~

* On the other hand, complaint is the stuff of inspiration for a compulsive blogger who has forced a monthly quota on himself.  Apologies.

Good grief

Hugging Faces' Stable Diffusion image of "Skyscraper rising over jungle 1950's paperback style"

Phil Johnson is a video producer at Vox who made a recent You Tube video on his personal channel called "I found the perfect metaphor for AI Art" that is getting some views.  The preponderance of videos on AI art are evangelistic demonstrations of its mushrooming proficiency, made by mostly enthusiastic embracers of it, and are presented-- with very little skepticism or curiosity (or certainly information) about the workings of it-- for the benefit of would-be users.  Phil Johnson's video is for the rest of us. The borrowed analogy referred to in the title, which Johnson sweetens with Dad humor, is to the history of lace making, a highly skilled and specialized human art form developed in 16th century Northern Europe, the practice of which was assumed in the Industrial Age almost entirely by machinery. In the process lace was transformed from a rare luxury commodity prized and enjoyed almost exclusively by the wealthiest to a material widely available and affordable to all with a loss of quality according to Johnson discernible only to the most careful observers.  

Let's set aside the possible objection that Johnson's characterization of the differences between machine-made and human-made lace as trivial is perhaps a bit too eagerly dismissive (and his acceptance of the coming analogous comparison of AI generated art to human art a bit hasty).  AI is expected by experts to be commandeering computer graphic design in very short order in a very similar fashion.  For the time being still the domain of highly skilled and talented humans, AI generated design, Johnson says will sooner than we think dominate the field of art, obviating the need for multitudes of highly trained professionals for what has until now been assumed by those not paying close attention to be an exclusively human function.

He then proposes that as with lace making, we prepare ourselves for the coming transition from almost exclusively human produced computer graphics to nearly complete domination of the field by computers by thinking of it as a process of Elizabeth Kubler Ross's Stages of Grief: First Denial (This can't be happening!),  then Anger (I'll be damned if this is happening!), Bargaining (I'll give you a dollar if this doesn't happen!), Depression (I guess no one but me cares that this is happening.) and finally, Acceptance (Oh well!).  If you think about it Johnson is urging Acceptance of the victim's death before the murder has happened.

I confess to some major skepticism about the capabilities that AI programs are exhibiting in the generation of original images.  Are we comfortable it's not just diffuse mechanized collage, if not plagiarism?  From my vantage given that they begin from phrases typed into a text box to the results of image searches presented in a graphically coherent meta-image I can’t get over the hump of thinking that even if I didn’t find it basically hideous to look at for the most part, it’s offensive to me that I'm basically being urged in the video to just accept that it is close to being “good enough” that there can be any sort of recovery of what is lost when it comes to dominate the visual aspect of what we produce and consume from now on.  Make no mistake, owing to simple economics combined with the dearth of imagination, will and character of those who commission art,  AI generated art (much of it as cheaply and thoughtfully made as Dollar Store lace) will become the dominant visual force whether we accept it or not.  And for that reason we will accept it due to inoculation by visual overload which will result in an erosion and atrophy of our will to fight it long before the opportunity to reject it has expired.  And then we’ll just wonder how our souls are being sucked, being no longer able to recognize the oppressive dissatisfaction of our visual yearnings in spite of the assault of artificiality of everything we look at.

Phil Johnson seems to be a journalist and it's tempting to take at face value that his voice is authoritative on the subject of the video.  And perhaps it is. Nevertheless it's easy to overlook the fact (a fact which is utterly absent from every corner of  the video) that acceptance is a choice.  It just happens to be the choice that the perpetrators of AI on the public would prefer we all make.

Proper skepticism here and here.