Good for Nothing

In my lifetime, government which used to be considered public service, has gotten very bad.  I am not just talking about the sort of viral incompetence that becomes the fodder for late night monologues.  What I'm talking about is actually worse because it's not the product of incompetence but of intentional poorness, poorness designed to be poor.  I have complained in the past about the design of subway cars.  Once cars were designed with the comfort of passengers in mind.  Newer cars are designed to be uncomfortable for all but the shortest rides to discourage anyone with no place in particular to go to who might need to ride a train simply as a means of temporary shelter from the elements.  Subway service itself is a perfect example of the problem.  Service is reduced while fares rise.  Fewer employees means less maintenance, the rareness of which means that when it is done at all it is done at times of day and for longer periods that necessarily  inconvenience the ridership.  Public funding shrinks, fares rise, ridership falls.  All of this in an age when public transportation should be encouraged. 

For former subway riders, driving is not a panacea.  Infrastructure is falling apart, roadways are clogged, and when the construction stops, I don't think I'm imagining that traffic control design is a lost art-- at newer interchanges, I've noticed traffic congests to accommodate poorly conceived traffic flows-- stoplights create bottlenecks in all directions.  On freeways, when the smoke of perpetual construction clears, empty HOV lanes and EZPass* only lanes surely cause longer drive times for more drivers. which must have the opposite effect of what they were originally intended for (for all but the few who can and are willing to pay to travel them.)

Transportation is just an example that hits close to home, but it's not an anomaly.  Our legislators seem to exist merely to greenlight aggressions and inequality and privatization of carceral institutions, and to obstruct forgiveness and assistance to all but the least deserving and in need of it.  It's no mystery why.  Ronald Reagan is why. Reagan was a gifted propagandist -- a spokesperson for particularly nefarious ideas.  Among his greatest hits was an anomalous gratuitous quip at good government: "The most frightening words in the English language are 'We're the government and we're here to help.'"  

Government has never been perfect, but it was once a profession that lived up to the phrase public service.  There was once an infrastructure designed to assist those who needed it -- imperfectly and with prejudice no doubt-- but if a farmer were in need of assistance weathering catastrophe, there was an agency whose business was to help.  Even Republicans understood that a government agency existed to house the expertise -- free of politics-- that good government required.  The Supreme Court enshrined the trust that the political branches of government were bound to uphold in the professionals hired and appointed to run government's agencies in a 1984 case called Chevron vs Natural Resources Council that gave the latter authorization to determine that Chevron's smokestacks were a source of pollution that the agency could require Chevron to mitigate.  After years and billions of dollars of dark money donations, the Trump Supreme Court is expected to overturn this bulwark against corporate and political intrusion in the affairs of government in a case to be decided this year.

This is not merely an idle complaint.  I am not merely lamenting the sad state of public service.  I am arguing that Ronald Reagan's clever yet bogus (wholly invented) dig was actually a terrorist bomb spelling the death of good government.  It was a deadeye first and ultimately final volley in a short successful ideological war against government that delivered value to the masses-- government for the people in the original sense.  (Not for the white people.  Not for the male people. Not for the rich, the Christian the land and people-owning people.  Government for all people.)  

The result is that any innovation in government policy is now reflexively rejected unless it inflicts  the requisite amount of misery-- misery to a degree that is unmissable by any run-of-the-mill bureaucrat or politician.  The message of Republicans and (the "serious" Democrats who'd like you to know they are not happy unless they are reaching across the aisle to stroke the laps of their fellow Republicans) is not merely that government is bad, but that Americans are not entitled to good government.  As a result, government is bad, and Americans (dutifully, like sedated sheep) expect it to be.

Screw that! 

As an exercise, we need to force ourselves as a society to do at least a certain number of things a year that are not for profit, not to satisfy a donor, not to punish those too powerless to resist being punished, but merely for the public good.   We can rechannel some of the billions spent to keep government bad into small programs that have the opposite effect.  We need the exercise, because we have lost the art.  We may need to start small, maybe one gratuitously good thing to get our feet wet.  It could be for the good of a minority to ensure that it is not pandering.  As an example, we could take a cue from Copenhagen and plant fruit trees in city parks— particularly in depressed urban areas— the fruit of which would be available to the public for free.  Once we have demonstration that our intent to do good has succeeded we can branch out.  I think the trajectory of doing things merely for the public good will be infectious.  At the very least, it will be a change from the downward spiral we have become accustomed to since the days of Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher.

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*And don't get me started on EZPass which in my state started charging fees for non-use more than once depleting my account without my knowledge and causing me to incur fines outside my state ... EZPass my ass.  Hard Pass is more like it.

Vote Like It Matters

In a case of twisted déja vu, Joe Biden and his people are operating on a kind of doom flavor of Hillary’s 2016 inevitability syndrome – he’s all we have so he better win seems to be the feeling around him—and he better make it to the election because if he doesn’t then it’s Kamala or Boot-Edge-Edge and that’s no good.  Joe Biden is almost assured to be re-nominated for re-election, but Dean Phillips a latecomer challenger is by many accounts surging.  He won't win, but why is a rather conventional centrist billionaire democratic congressman from Minnesota  who you never heard of before I told you his name surging?  Because people are sick of Joe Biden. Moreover Dean Phillips is surging because he represents the same order as Joe Biden but in a younger package.   What is with this country?  We are facing environmental catastrophe, massive inequality, a resurgence of fascism, conflict in the hottest hotspots on the planet that threaten to involve us in a new perhaps apocalyptic World War, but we seem only capable of baby steps.  Friends, we don't have the luxury of baby steps.  We need to stop pretending we're going to learn.  We need to learn.  Yesterday.  

Speaking to a crowd in Portsmouth New Hampshire this weekend, Marianne Williamson said: "What this country needs is a visionary.  I may not be the best visionary, but I can tell you I am the only one running for President of the United States."

"Visionary" is le mot juste for Marianne Williamson's campaign.  I have been struggling with commitment myself this weird political season, but I confess, her outsider art approach to politics resonates with me.  Moreover, I am going to argue that if you are voting in the Democratic primary you need to vote for that visionary while there's still a chance.  If you are not planning to vote in the democratic primary, you need to change your plans.*  Here-- a bit late, but hopefully not too late-- are some reasons:

1.  Vote your wishes.  It's too early  to hold your nose.  That comes in November.  I prefer Biden to Trump by a margin, but not enough to fritter my free primary vote on him for any reason.  Primaries are for dreaming of getting what you want.  

2. The Vision Thing - She is the only candidate promoting FDR's unfinished business: an Economic bill of rights.  She is for Medicare For All; Free college and trade school for all; cancellation of student debt; paid family leave; and a guaranteed living wage.  She says, rightly that with Trump we're heading straight for the iceberg.  With Biden, we are heading for a glancing piercing blow to the hull.  Only Marianne Williamson is saying what we need to hear-- we need to turn this fucking thing around!

3. Environment - The environment is being murdered by a repeat offender called Capitalism.  There really is only one candidate who you can vote for now! who recognizes the environmental harm that capitalism is and who has a plan to address it.   She is the only candidate giving the environment the urgency that it demands.

4.  Troublemaking - Why should Joe Biden (whose campaign is cancelling primaries left and right to try to make you forget how unpopular he is) have it easy?  None of the other democrats running-- being essentially new and improved versions of Joe Biden's complicity in the mess that we are all living with-- give him trouble quite like Marianne Williamson.  She promises to be nothing like Joe Biden. Thank goodness!

5. Peace - Marianne Williamson unlike the incumbent (whichever incumbent you think is President) is for a complete ceasefire in Gaza.  She also advocates for a Department of Peace whose business will be the promotion and sustaining of global Peace.  In essence, Marianne Williamson is for giving Peace some teeth.

6. Pro-Labor - Before declaring her candidacy, Marianne Williamson was an early critic of Joe Biden's antagonistic response to the striking railroad workers, calling him, because of his strike breaking moves, an "economic royalist."   Over the summer, in an effort to jumpstart the national conversation on topics of importance, Marianne Williamson featured conversations with a number of activists to discuss causes from LGBTQ+ to the plight of Palestinians in Israel.  But no topic was covered more frequently than the various causes of labor, particularly among  teachers, screen writers and actors, auto workers, and the burgeoning movements such as Starbuck employees and Amazon workers.   You will not hear a Marianne Williamson speech that is not centered around giving working people the better life they deserve; the life that she recognizes has been stolen from them by corporate greed.

7. Pro-People - Whatever your identity, Marianne Williamson is for you.  Are you for Marianne?

8.  Anger - Marianne was the first candidate to challenge Joe Biden; she announced before the vernal equinox last year.  So why do you never see her on any of the major cable news networks (with the exception of Fox which you don't watch.)?  Seriously, why?  Why is the mainstream media pretending creaky, leaky Joe Biden has no challengers?  If you aren't pissed about that, what's wrong with you?  If you are pissed, take it out of their hides with a spite vote for Marianne Williamson and you just might accidentally get the kind of society where the media isn't a propaganda arm for the man.

9. Anti Cop City - I don't think even Bernie Sanders would have featured Anti Cop City activists on his campaign agenda.  Last summer, on her campaign podcast, Marianne Williamson highlighted the cause of defeating the dystopian Cop City-- a  project that threatens to build a state-of-the-art high tech militaristic training ground on the site of an Atlanta forest in order to give cops from the US, Israel and other police states a place to rehearse the clampdown in spite of overwhelming unpopularity among the Atlantans whose forest is being destroyed for the project.

10. Love - Marianne Williamson is a proponent of what she calls a politics of love.  I'm cynical and hard-hearted enough that I still haven't gotten around to investigating what she means by a politics of love; but I'm pretty sure I prefer it to the prevailing politics of hate.  I don't think the abundance of reasons to be cynical and hard-hearted in this cold, dead age give them any special claim over love as a force to be desired and cultivated in our politics.  I'm not motivated by love.   But I hope you are.  And if you are, Marianne Williamson is your candidate.  This is your chance.

11. Self-Indulgence - You're in the voting booth.  There are a handful of names.  A bunch of men and one woman.  No one's watching.  Do it because it feels good.

12. Excitement - Marianne Williamson has said repeatedly (and accurately) that the greatest threat to democrats is not Donald Trump-- the greatest threat is people staying home on election day.  With his standard neoliberal democrat fixation on centrist suburban republicans, non-voters are once again not going to be in Joe Biden's calculation.  Marianne Williamson is for promoting an agenda that even chronic non-voters can get excited about.  This is how the American voters win.

13. Self-Imposed Term Limit - Marianne Williamson has said that she's not interested in more than one term. She is self-imposing a limit of a single term on herself because she wants to be motivated not by re-election but by the urgency that inspired her to run in the first place.

14. Chaos - Enough of this orderly march to our doom.  Let's get a little action going here.

15. Reparations - She has been making the case for reparations since the 2020 election.  If you have not heard her on the subject, you may not have heard the best case for paying the debt we encumbered by enslaving fellow human beings and fighting to keep enslaving them (and then ordering things in ways to keep their descendants from claiming their rightful place in the American society built by the blood and sweat of their forebears) for over 350 years.  As Marianne says, "A debt is owed."

16. Perversion - Come on!  You know you want to.  Let's just all do it and see what happens!

17. Last (in this list because it is so late), vote for Marianne Williamson because you still can. 

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* Vote for whomever you want in the General election.  This is about disrupting the most disruptible of the two parties of the duopoly.  If you haven't considered your ability to disrupt the most disruptible of the 2 parties of the duopoly, I suggest you give it some thought before you lose your opportunity when the democratic primary is over.  If the deadline makes you nervous, good.

Our Story So Far...

With speech coming out of their mouths, the erect apelike creatures from the grasslands spread out over the watery planet, on foot where there was a path, on the back of beasts when they could be tamed,  and sometimes over sea, bringing their tools and weapons with them, interbreeding with those they came upon and picking up new skills and tricks as they went.  Though there was often peace between factions, circumstance might cause one or another from among them to assert control.  In this way, parts of the planet became centers of cooperation and science, and parts (including some of the same) became centers of war and domination.  

In search of providence, some discovered that the world was not large enough for them and their kind.  Gods spoke to them in book form, assuring them of their rightful mastery spurring them to discovery and the establishment of new lands to claim as their own.  Empire was born and with it new tools, sciences and culture to sustain and spread it.  Empires consumed empires, enlarging themselves.  Empire was good for emperors and burdensome for the provinces.  In the outposts of empire, even where empire once flourished, it was frequently dropped when no one was looking.  The creatures having discovered many ways varied the methodologies of coexistence to suit the circumstances.

In parts of the planet where  grass stretched from horizon to horizon or abounded in jungles of fruit bearing greenery, the feats of past generations were preserved in stories and songs.  Where cities and states rose up often in places in which plants and animals were cultivated, farmed and stored,  the complicated circumstances of administration favored methods of record keeping on durable media.  Technologies of representing speech and thought and customs around them arose in service of the practice, resulting in a proliferation of writings that came to be thought of as the history and inheritance of societies.  

Where there were crossroads, there were civilizations war and conquest, but there was also trade of goods, skills, knowledge and gods.  In more remote corners of the world, war lords rose up and some became kings who lorded over all. Kings could beget kings and they favored those who executed their orders with titles and domains.  Priesthoods administered the texts that underwrote the order that favored the few and upheld the rationale for the servitude of the many.

Across the world even where there were kings, need was that which had to be met.  When need could not be met-- through drought, calamity, the spreading of sickness, war or greed-- crisis inspired invention, from means of flight to methods of distribution.  One invention inspired by the waves of recognition that the planet could be known and conquered was the persistence of ownership, which resulted in the sealing off of land and fields that had been used in common to such an extent that propriety became the dominant strain of the law-- that which would be enforced.  Exclusion from the land forced starving masses to sell their time and labor to owners in return for subsistence and shelter for as long as their labor was useful.  The work that the many did for subsistence created products-- food, clothing and other materials that were sold back to them to see them through another day of work.  In this way, need became secondary to the production of articles for sale.   The skies became black with the smoke of machines making things.

The people of the enclosure sensing the finitude of land to enclose in their home turf spread over the world, turning the common and established foreign lands into further enclosure, and forcing the peoples that they found there to work until they resisted or died; and when they ran out of locals they raided southern lands for workers that they kidnapped and brought across the sea to the new lands where they were forced to work-  to plant, to grow and to harvest the crops that they found in the new lands in order for them to be used for industries in the old lands.  In return for the labor of the absconded workers, the enclosers gave nothing but enough subsistence for another day's work. Soon the extent of the world that could be enclosed was known by the enclosers, who became concerned with enclosing the rest of it.  Where once the planet was a boundless world of plenty for the vast collective parallel existences of the many, it soon became merely a small stage for the exploits of the enclosers, with the rest of the people relegated to bit players, extras in a cataclysmic melodrama of small rich men who thought themselves great.  

Owners had the property, the machines for producing the goods of society and a monopoly on the power structures that enabled them, and the debt that everyone owed them in order to survive, but those who worked for their survival had the labor and the numbers that they began to use to collectively turn the tables.  Worker power inspired a fair part of the world to ride worker empowerment over the enclosing order to a new order of ostensible restoration of the commons.  All was not solved.  In the self-important enclosed part of the world. the enclosers devised new ways to fend off the collective.   Moreover,  in the enclosed part of the world, the greed of the owners tended to cause deep crises to recur-- crises suffered most acutely among the many at the bottom of the enclosed order.   And in the places where commonality returned, it was apparent in short order that it was a lost art, especially in the hands of its administrators who having education had become a kind of priesthood.  But it kept the enclosers at bay and the example of the return of commonality as a possibility served as a threat that mitigated the greed of the enclosers, inspiring in the enclosed part of the world the emergence of measures to reduce the lopsidedness of the distribution of pain and pleasure that ownership by the few inflicted on the many. 

There was plenty for all.  But not enough for the enclosers who devised a plan.  Using the excuse of a particularly deep crisis that their greed had caused,  the enclosers used the pretext of hard times to pin the blame on the least among them.  It did not matter if it made no sense that the smallest most oppressed number with the least power was behind the troubles, if a group could be seen to be other than the majority of a society, the elite enclosers learned that blame could be re-directed from themselves.  Where this othering was most successful, the elites, now backed by the masses, frequently became more dangerous.  During the darkest crises, war broke out across the planet, and the enclosers enlisted the knowledge class to devise powerful weapons with which to assure victory for themselves against the aggressors.  Only after wreaking their promised death upon their others, the most othering aggressors were defeated by an alliance of the rest of the planet.  But having commanded the forces of nature into the composition of weapons of such power that they only needed to be used once to demonstrate the doom that their use spelled for the planet, there soon came to be a standoff between those remaining super powers that each had their own version of the destructive technology-- which happened to be the societies of resurgent commonality on one side and the concentrated theocracies of enclosure on the other.

There were other differences between the two worlds and even more between those two super powers and the remainder of the world, which was forced into alignment with one or the other of the two former allies against the dark forces of the last world war.  The super powers were engaged in a war without fighting.  Meanwhile, the enclosers undertook a hot war against commonality in the third underdeveloped part of the world.  A duplicitous campaign was followed:  publicly, the enclosers expended great effort in turning their half of the world into a parade of wanton consumption of the products of their industries. Life centered around consumption of goods manufactured on the cheap.  The price of plenty was destruction of the planet.  But the religion of the enclosures made the science that would have foreseen the fate of the planet nullified and forbidden. Evidence of the holy bliss of the religion of constant consumption was beamed around the world, both to make a case to the third worlders ostensibly emerging from subjugation from the enclosers (but very much still beholden and indebted to the enclosers to such an extent that they could never become contenders for global domination themselves). and also to keep their own laborers under the sway of the religion of consumption.  Meanwhile, surreptitiously, the enclosers sent death squads to keep the third worlders from experimenting with commonality or making too much progress with complete independence.

For decades, the conflict between the people of commonality and the people of enclosure seemed deadlocked in the threat of global annihilation.  Then money won.  The side of the planet that had struggled to retain commonality for the people gave up.  Soon enclosure and the owners' way and consumption ruled from pole to pole.  Now a new age of triumphant money bolstered by new technologies of instant interconnectedness promised a global utopia of democratic plenitude at long last.  But history was not quite finished.  in order to justify continued exertion of dominance on every part of the globe the enclosers, with the help of pissed off formerly subjugated malcontents, began to pretend that it was no longer a struggle between ownership and commonality but rather between modern globalism and ancient provinciality.  

yadda yadda yadda.  Surveillance capitalism.  Forever wars.  Rampant inequality.  Space commercialism.  Global warming.

Tune in for the conclusion.

YMO in America

Yellow Magic Orchestra, from Tokyo Japan, was Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards, vocals), Haruomi Hosono (bass, keyboards, vocals) and Yukihiro Takahashi (drums, lead vocals and occasionally keyboards).  On tour in 1978 they were joined by Akiko Yano on keyboards, (she and Sakamoto later married) and Masayoshi Takanaka on guitar.  Below they play Behind the Mask at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles:

On tour in 1980, the band appeared on Soul Train to cover Archie Bell & the Drells' Tighten Up, chat with a feisty Don Cornelius and perform Firecracker, their biggest hit from their first self titled album.   Firecracker is itself a tongue in cheek repatriation of a Martin Denny exotica novelty that turns a somewhat cringy Orientalist pastiche into a Disco masterpiece.  Visuals from the appearance are combined with the recording in the below:

YMO's version was sampled by Afrika Bambaata in1983 for Death Mix Part 2.

Yukihiro Takahashi and the YMO's guitarist on tour Takanaka were previously in Sadistic Mika Band which had at least one memorable appearance on BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test with Mika Kato fronting in 1976.  Suki Suki Suki from that performance is below: