roachboy

the world health organization released a report yesterday the basic argument of which is that stratification of wealth, stratification of access to resources (health, education), stratification of access to decent employment all along class lines constitutes a massive problem of health at the global level. the most straightforward of arguments: poverty--absolute AND relative (that is poverty within an otherwise affluent society) kills. it shortens life expectancies.

here's a little article about the report from this morning's guardian:


Social injustice cutting life expectancy, UN report says | Society | guardian.co.uk

and here is a link to the full report:

http://www.who.int/social_determinan...eport_2008.pdf


what this amounts to is a simple claim: class stratification is a form of slow murder.
and it's correlate: if your worldview is, say, neoliberal--that is if your economic worldview is such that it's consequences are increases in class stratification, of uneven distribution of wealth and access to resources--you are complicit.

for as long as i have been playing at tfp, one of the main divisions between political positions has been about class. the free-marketeers tend to see economic relations as unfolding in an abstract space, separate from the rest of social reality; they tend to view the effects of market relations as producing economic hierarchies which are rationalized with appeals to morality---and because the "natural" workings of these mystical formations "markets" reflects one's ethical worth, it follows that patterns of exclusion are blamed on those who are excluded.

if you do not accept the basic distinction "markets"/social reality, and link the consequences of market action to the wider social environments within which they operate, which they effect, then it is much more difficult to wish away the excluded by blaming their exclusion on mythological "moral failing"

now this report restates in a sense what has long been obvious: class inequality--the lack of social justice in the terminology of the report (an interesting term substitution, very much a sign of the times)---kills.

it does so routinely, it does so every day, everywhere, all the time.

this makes of capitalism itself what it is: a central ethical and political Problem.

but the argument hinges on what such arguments always hinge on: control over the axioms and control over the premises---what information is factored in, what information is left out.

but it is remarkable to me---something about being american, about the ideology of being american---results in a kind of inability to come to terms with consequences that outstrip the reach of an atomized individual--if you can't go to a building, sign a piece of paper and do something to "make up for" a problem, then that problem has to be swept away, ignored. a country built on genocide apparently acquires this quirk as a gift from its history.

do you think this report makes a persuasive case?
do you think it should have an impact on the election cycle, on which issues are discussed and how?
what gets in the way?

do you think the united states is capable of addressing these problems domestically? of contributing to this process internationally?

what gets in the way?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

jorgelito

I disagree Roachie, I think that is an overly simplistic view. Accusing people who believe in free markets and earning their livelihood as complicit to murder is just way too extreme and overly melodramatic. I am actually offended by your accusations.

What gets in the way? People. Themselves.

I know for a fact that my conservative neo-liberal friends contribute positively to society far more than my poor deluded left wing socialist friends. We are already taxed to death and donate time, money, blood (literally), and marrow (literally) to society. What more would you ask of us? Take away capitalism? Free markets? Who's going to work then? One of my good buddies has adopted a number of children from Latin America. Rather than expect the government to come help, he flew to New Orleans to help out and donated money as well. Another good friend of mine donated his bone marrow to some little girl from the Philippines. He was out for two weeks of unpaid absence from work. Quite a bit of money. Or the family in Cambodia that was grateful for my blood donation that saved their children? Likewise my volunteer work with an orphanage in Egypt or the homeless in Hollywood. All made possible because I work hard and earn a good income thanks to the meritocratic nature of capitalism and free markets. Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to do those good works. Not a single one of my liberal leftist socialist friends have done anything of the sort. All they do is sit around and complain and make up excuses. So while you bash capitalism and free markets, I disagree and suggest just the opposite. Capitalism and free markets allows me and my buddies (not the government) to distribute income and resources to those who need it. My choice. This system has allowed me and my buddies to do a lot of good. How can you denigrate what we've done?

__________________
"The race is not always to the swift, nor battle to the strong, but
to the one that endures to the end."

"Demand more from yourself, more than anyone else could ever ask!"

- My recruiter

Poppinjay

What on earth is a conservative neo-liberal?

Something that would help would be to end speculation. This morning's news is a good example. Fears that Hurricane Gustav might damage the Gulf of Mexico drove oil prices up.

The storm hasn't hit.

No rigs have been damaged.

Production isn't down.

And yet, school systems will have to divert money to transportation. Families will have to use more crackers in their "meat" loaf. Dad, if he's around, will have to spend more time at the plant.

Speculation hurts this country in immeasurable ways. This is just one example. Speculation about the weather drives oil up. Speculation about oil drives manufacturing up. Speculation about manufacturing drives prices of everything we buy up.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Baraka_Guru

jorgelito, we can only assume that the tiny world of your circle of friends is the exception, not the rule. The distribution of wealth within the capitalist system is amoral; however, our acceptance of such a system without the proper redistribution to counteract some of the worst conditions of living would be immoral.

A strong society is one that establishes the most basic of care for people. Looking at the United States, I don't see this happening as much as it should. As a Canadian, I find what happens in some regions of the U.S. quite frightening. There are pockets of people living something close to Third World conditions, and they don't even have access to heath care. Now, I know there are some area of Canada that aren't doing so well—think First Nations. But note that Ottawa has announced this month that they're going to fund First Nations health care to the tune of $3 million. This isn't the first time the Canadian government has done something like this. (And I haven't even addressed how bad things can be outside of North America!)

When you look at the grand scheme of things, you see that (despite the good work you have done) there are many people suffering from a lack of access to health care and nutrition. One might say, "Well, those of us who have it worked for it," but the economic situation of a family isn't always a result of an unwillingness to work. Actually, I would assume a family's unwillingness to work for basic needs is a rare thing. No, economic hardships are a result of a complex system of markets, governments, and international factors. And when things get bad, health is one of the first casualties.

The capitalist system, on its own, doesn't fix things from which it cannot build wealth. It would rather cast it aside.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

this doesn't denigrate individual actions, things done by nice folk to make the world a bit more bearable.
i have a very close friend who politically is way to the right who runs a halfway house for men with substance abuse problems and has done more to help people than most of the academics i know put together---but because he is dealing with *social* consequences of the existing order at a level of *social* action, what's happened is that is effective everyday politics have moved well away from this kind of petit bourgeois niceness to a system-level critique of social exclusion. this because he sees the *social* consequences of exclusion every day---and experiences the limits of an individual trying to be nice and help folk all the time. it just turns out that the everyday politics and general statements about politics are out of phase with each other, in his case. we talk about this alot--he is bothered by his inability to reconcile registers of statements, which is to say his inability to reconcile his own experience and its implications with the higher-order generalities that orient him in terms of conventional politics.

i think this is a very interesting process that he is moving through.

i think what generates it is that he has passed beyond the barrier of doing stuff to make himself feel better about a fundamentally brutal and irrational social order and maybe help a few folk along the way to seeing that the problems he is up against are systemic.

this is the recognition that seems problematic for alot of americans. that there is something FUNDAMENTALLY fucked up about the social system as a whole, and that these fundamental problems are expressed in such stark and brutal ways: differences in mortality rates within the united states that are STRICT functions of class position.

this goes way beyond individual charity actions--which is not to say anything about such actions in themselves. certainly it is not to say don't do them--but i do not see how you can move from this to anything more general.

a utilitarian calculation--which is what the free-marketeers routinely indulge to render "ethical" the consequences of the class system--simply repeats the problem that this report--and thread---are about. by arguing that markets "do good for the greatest number" you are also arguing, like it or not, that those who are excluded from the game of markets are purely and simply fucked--and worse still that you see no problem with that. a second order of problem with utilitarian arguments in the hands of free marketeers is that they tend to neutralize the effects of social context/order up front. this is not ok. this is the kind of thinking that leads to the problems outlined in the who report AND to their avoidance---it enables folk to think "i am individually ok" in the context of a system that is fundamentally not ok--so utilitarian thinking is in this sense a coping mechanism, not an effective politics.

i'd try to head off the obvious move here---"so you mean that the greatest good for the greatest number is a bad thing" by simply saying that it is a stupid line of argument, given the above.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

archpaladin

I think this is an interesting observation as a whole, but fails to realize the understanding that perks or faults of a system live or die by the actions of individuals.

Our society is fundamentally flawed in dealing with class issues - I agree with you saying this. That same society also behaves based on the actions of people who hold its reins (this too you said). Yet to admit these two statements and then to state that people using their own assets to compensate for a broken society is both flawed and irresponsible seems counterintuitive. If people are trying to change the flaws of the system, they have to start with whatever resources are available to them.

I believe this is the basis of the utilitarian argument. The form of the argument you put forth is "I'm doing my part, that's all that matters", where I think the more correct form is "I'm doing what I can until I am able to do more". The fundamental difference between the two is the amount of self-absorption of the indivridual. Utilitarian arguments make a lot more sense when considered from the perspective of true altruism rather than consciousness-easing behavior.

I argue that it is basic self-indulgence that is the linchpin of class disparity, being both the cause of its existence and the reason for its sustenance. Perhaps greater social awareness needs to be brought to the problem so that individual (and thus social) consciousness could change faster.

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This space not for rent.

jorgelito

Poppin, conservative neo-liberal can refer to one who holds conservative values as well as neo-liberal ones. Generally speaking neo-liberal refers to more economic principles such as free markets. For more info in a nutshell: Neoliberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The point I was trying to make in my first post is that these things are not perfect binaries, not black and white. Not all traditional labels such as left, right, liberal, conservative, socialist, capitalist fit perfect molds. Far too often, discussions get bogged down and jammed up due to preconceived notions regarding these labels. We effectively handcuff ourselves intellectually and stagnate in thought.

For me, I believe in a capitalist economic system comprising of free markets and minimal government interference. The problem with the way the op is framed it is reduced to extreme poles without nuance or meaningful analysis. I do no believe in the extreme view of capitalism nor free markets. That is just unwise and impractical. Basically, I believe in a system of minimal rules and regulations that still allow free enterprise to flourish but not at the expense of humanity. I think that's a significant point. For example, I am against reckless drilling of oil and wanton establishment of factories and plants without regard to the environment. I also believe people should be paid a fair wage but the market should decide.

Some legislated social benefits I would be willing to support such as health care, basic education depend on administration. I think this is also a significant point. I simply do not think the government has been competent enough to carry out these benefits like the private sector can. Somewhere in the middle lies a great solution and compromise. This I believe.

__________________
"The race is not always to the swift, nor battle to the strong, but
to the one that endures to the end."

"Demand more from yourself, more than anyone else could ever ask!"

- My recruiter

roachboy

there is nothing more reductive than a "belief in free enterprise with minimum government interference" in this context because it separates the economic and the social--which is a hallmark of neoliberal thinking. if these zones of activity are separated, then what happens in the economic can be understood in terms of capitalist hydraulic fictions, and the social consequences of that hydraulics understood as a necessary evil. within that, as a palliative, you can move to utilitarian "ethics" which, as i said above, simply repeats the consequences and justifies them in the process--because utilitarianism is a direct function of what you include in the set that constitutes "the greatest number" and if you've already adopted the correlate of the market hydraulic model--that there is some natural selection at play in it that the state distorts by acting---then you're already moving down the path of arguing that the excluded are excluded by virtue of some inward deficiency on their part, nothing to be done.

since this lunacy is the dominant ideology, there seemed to me to be no need to repeat it in the framing of the who report. problem for neoliberals with the report is that it is a direct rejection of the basis for the framework--the separation of economic activity from other types of social being.

this was not framed as a left/right issue--this is an ideological matter, a question of premises, of how you understand the social, and of the consequences that follow from one or another choice in this regard.

if you want, i could frame it as a more directly political (left-right) question, but i think that'd limit things.

my assumption is that folk wedded to a neoliberal outlook have no way of addressing the problems raised in this report. so far, that assumption has been confirmed. btu prove me wrong: read the report, reconcile the two....

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Poppinjay

I was not aware of neo-liberalism. Thanks, jorgelito. I guess it follows that with neo-conservatives, there would be neo-liberals.

I'd like to think Roachboy has it 100% correct. There is more than enough income and material in this world, and certainly in the US to supply everybody with sustenance and education. Part of me thinks there is a certain segment that holds on to their stack just for thrills.

But part of me still thinks that a segment will always seek the bottom, the supposed easy way out, which tends to be the hardest way. You can send the world to Harvard, but some will still have an Ipswich IQ.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

roachboy

HEY! WHADDYA MEAN AN IPSWICH IQ?

neo-liberalism is a term that's used everyplace except the united states (go figure) to name the dominant economic ideology of the past 30 years or so. in the states, it remains dominant--so much so that it operates without a name---like a climate. it's hard to oppose what you cannot name, you see. the reasons for calling it neo-liberalis that is repeats both the market ideologies particular to "classical political economy"--those strange littel exercises in capitalist metaphysics from the 18th century that marx had so much fun dismantling--and elements of 19th century lilberalism (utilitarianism for example)...calling the whole thing "neo-classical" would have presented problems, but "neo-liberal" as a kind of ring to it.

except in the states, where market fundamentalist versions of neo-liberalism are like the weather.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Cynthetiq

I think that all you people like to say neo because it sounds cool, and now ipswich because tha word sounds cool too.

wealth has always dictated health to a degree, even back in the witch doctor days...

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

roachboy

aside:

well, i'm writing this from ipswich.
that's why i wondered about it.

who are "you people" anyway?
what did we have to do with the matrix?

to the point:

you know, one of the things folk say about "civlization" and "progress" is that it's supposed to make the lives of regular folk better, not find new and improved and more bureaucratically "rational" ways to kill them/manage them/neutralize them.

but maybe you're right, cyn, and we are just in a context of capitalist barbarism, no different from any other form of barbarism except maybe better toys and indoor plumbing (i like indoor plumbing.)

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Poppinjay

I used Ipswich because it was an old joke from Mad Magazine.

Al Jaffe drew a cartoon of man telling another guy about the wonderful education he was getting at Harvard while a thought balloon hovered over his head saying, "He's a dropout from Ipswich Tech".

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

FoolThemAll

Advice: pretty words and even eloquent arguments can lose all effectiveness when your hook is an obvious absurdity such as "class stratification is a form of slow murder".

It's really, really hard to take a post seriously after that. It's like a rider attached to Godwin's Law or something.

__________________
I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

scout

I would think it's more about personal choices. People living in the poorer neighborhoods are more likely to be prostitutes or gun toting gang bangers hooked on drugs or alcohol and be exposed to violence and disease than someone living in a ritzier neighborhood. People make choices to either stay in that environment or get the hell out. Thousands of people every year make the choice to get an education and a real job and move from these poorer neighborhoods leaving behind those that choose to stay so it's no small wonder their life expectancy is shorter. Unfortunately with all the current government programs to help people out of these neighborhoods it's fairly likely no matter how much more you tax and steal from the "rich" and give to these people they will most likely choose to continue to stay in these environments.

roachboy

fool them all: you're right. i should have followed the information about the drastically shorter life expectancies for the poor in a capitalist content with something different: "fuck em" maybe or "capitalism is the best of all possible worlds"...that way maybe you'd have taken the information, which i am sure you did not read, seriously.

i'll definitely take your post under advisement.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

scout

I don't think it has anything at all to do with capitalism or being rich or poor but more about the choices people make that affect their life expectancy. Most people are poor or live in a poor neighborhood because of life choices and thats just the way it is. Blaming it on capitalism or class stratification is a cop out. History is full of people that had very little, was poor or even lived in poorer neighborhoods but lived a healthy life well into their 70s and 80s.

roachboy

the point is that these choices do not happen in a vacuum, that they are shaped by system-level features: for example in the states the education system is sharply stratified on class lines. this follows from the fact that the bulk of the funding for any given school comes from local property taxes--so a school in a given area is a direct expression of the class composition of that area. so a poor district will have less money, fewer resources, lowered expectations---and will in all likelihood also find itself confronted as a theater in which other social consequences of exclusion are played out. while it is possible for folk to escape individually the statistical fate this simple arrangement confronts them with, in the main people don't. folk who are more conservative ideologically in the states tend, for whatever reason, to prefer to ignore the systematic character of this kind of situation--they prefer to assume that the minimal number of people who manage through whatever means to escape this kind of machinery are the norm and that the vast majority of children whose futures are determined for them by the class composition of the area in which they, without having a choice in the matter, grow up find themselves in that position because they lack something. not only is this view unhinged from social reality, it functions to obscure that reality. this cannot be explained as a move in the context of description, so it has to have some therapeutic function. that therapeutic function is built into conservative ideology, is central to it, and may explain something of the appeal of that ideology.

but it also follows that this same ideology leads to a blindness relative to these system-conditions.

you see it here. the who report, when it comes down to it, presents the claim and data to back it up that poverty and reduced life expectancy are linked---but also that poverty is a relational term, so it cannot be coherently thought about in terms of income levels, but rather has to be understood as a measure of particular types and implications of exclusion--so poverty in the united states is more lethal than poverty in, say, benin. why is that? because the context which enframes poverty in the united states is simply more brutal than that of benin (which i pick more or less at random as a counter-example).

from this follows an argument that if capitalism can in any way be equated with a socio-economic machine that produces a better life for the people who live within it than other systems, it can be so equated not on the basis of any "natural" unfolding of some fictive, discrete "market" order--but because within that context a POLITICAL decision is made to redirect resources with the idea that making a more equitable society is desirable--and that left to itself, however that is understood, the economic dimension of the capitalist mode of production produces outcomes that are at cross-purposes with the idea of an equitable society.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

scout

I understood the point and I see what you are saying. However, speaking from experience, most people that live in bad areas tend to live there by choice and not because "the man" is holding them back from their full potential or killing them off at a young age. "Birds of a feather flock together" so to speak. I don't know how the welfare, HUD,section 8 or whatever you call it works in your area but here the welfare system rents apartments, homes and houses in all school districts, all paid for by people with means that actually pay taxes, i.e. the middle class, and if you don't like the place your living or don't want your kids to grow up and go the school down the street you can apply and move to a different area. I used to work for HUD and that's the way it was. Lots of people moved all the time to take advantage of what different school districts offered. I still believe life expectancy has more to do with life choices rather than the amount of money in your pocket.

roachboy

see the thing is that class is not simple a question of money---it's alot of dispositions and options and the sense of options that are linked, usually, to economic class position by way of things like the way class segregation plays out spatially---in the states, spatial separation is a primary mode of class segregation across the board---mostly because there's room for it geographically---if you compare--o i dunno---chicago or philadelphia to paris, the differences in terms of social and economic segregation are pretty striking. in paris, there are homogenously weathly areas (most of the 16th for example) but they're not typical--generally you have a wide variety of income levels, a range of housing options, distributed across quartiers---the areas i've lived in were all like this, with different proportions (the 14th relative to the northern section of the 20th for example)---that's a function of different policies on the part of the state and city government concerning housing, of a decision to promote a particular kind of urban life--with the benefit to the state of perhaps buying a different type of poltical legitimacy--at the cost (if you want to see it this way) of a different politics of class. speaking very generally, class is a going political concern in many areas of paris simply because you see its effects as part of the ambient conditions---this is one explanation (again, very simple) for the anomalous situations in many of the poorer suburbs around paris which are subject to periodic bouts of violence...in the states, the spatial separation of class fractions is also a choice. one of the effects of that is (in general) that the relative nature of class positions can be disappeared because your experience does not necessarily lead you to cross hard class boundaries--you can organize your movements such that you move through relatively homogenous spaces.

the instances of higher mortality for the poor in the states than elsewhere follows from this general model, because the consequences of class stratification can be rendered invisible.

as for why folk gravitate toward particular neighborhoods--this is complicated, yes?
choices at the level of section 8 housing are not made from an infinite range of possibilities, yes? section 8 is accepted in some areas and not in others: why is that?
if that's true that section 8 is differentially accepted, and you were working with a population on section 8 who were looking for housing, it follows that they would at some level "choose" to live where the section 8 possibilties were available, yes?

see what i'm getting at?
it's not that i disagree with the information you posted, scout, so much as i wonder about the way you frame it.
and that's mostly what the thread's about: how you frame information about economic class and its consequences. we might agree that there are economic classes and that there are consequences, but diverge on why that holds and, on that basis, about what could be done to address them.

the who report bumps this to a level of medical well-being, which i think is interesting.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

There are certainly some interesting sentiments rising out of this. I think making the logical step from class stratification to a kind of murder is a difficult one if you don't spend the time to examine the idea. I will always stand by the belief that rampant capitalism without regulation is an amoral system enabled by immoral powers. If we look at class purely from its outcome rather than its causes, then we can see this as a more direct problem. The poor don't live as long as the rich, if the statistics are valid. Why is this? I heard there was a documentary on PBS that looked at some of the poorest regions in the U.S. There was some organization that wanted to provide some basic health care to these people and so they loaded up buses and turned them into a kind of mobile hospital and pharmacy. They trucked out to these regions and the response was appalling. People would group up with a variety of conditions, several of which these mobile hospitals couldn't treat with any sort of drug or other treatment the health professionals were prepared to conduct. These people had to be turned away, taking their serious (and essentially untreatable) health problems with them. It was a sad thing to watch, apparently. I wish I remembered the name of the thing, as I'd like to watch it myself.

I find it quite disturbing that a nation with the wealth of America can have this sort of thing going on--the abject sick distributed in pockets throughout the country and having nothing done about it.

I don't know if I'd call this sort of thing a slow form of murder, but I would call it ignorant, immoral, and completely unacceptable.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

host

Welcome to Amerika, roachboy...a country so committed to and slanted towards "right wing values", the right leaning nearest center (those just to the left of Property Party candidate Obiden....) think of themselves as "leftist" and the screaming batshit crazy right who view themselves as "moderates", view the democrats as "extreme liberal democrat", of the "democrat" party, just coming from their "democrat" convention..... when the truth is that, almost to a man....they are of one political party, with two right wings....the "property party"....for....vee must have Ohhhhrderrrrr!!!!

roachboy

what is overlooked, host, in the above is simply that fascism in its older forms was a mass movement. so it was not only a top-down affair, a dictatorship grafted onto and otherwise functional status quo--it was the mobilization of people in defense of that status quo, and in that respect was a change in its nature. in particular, american commentators have tended since before world war 2 to make strange analytic separations which enable them to frame fascism as something Other than an expression of capitalist social relations in a nation-state context which has a media apparatus capable of more-or-less real time opinion co-ordinatinon. radio was fundamental to fascism...i don't think the reliance on a mass media can be overstated. if that's the case, the you can have a range of variants on a basically fascist situation, not all of which require a dictator...--i think you are working with an overly rigid notion of fascism and that notion leads you to characterize cowboy george in ways that simply are not at this point accurate. as much as i oppose it, the addington type arguments about expansive presidential power are well inside the status quo ante, are not a break with it, and do not in themselves represent the emergence of a dictatorship--rather they show that within the normal run of the american system, the space exists for a quite extreme concentration of power in the hands of el jeffe without constituting a break with the system itself--so no state of emergency, so i think the bush people are exploiting a structural weakness *within* the american system, and are not a break with it--and the way in which teh have been trying to exploit these weaknesses seem to me to point to the need to rethink the organization of that system itself. in other words, as much as i oppose the administration, they are still **inside** the constitutional order--they have not and at this point (barring something catastrophic, which is possible) cannot suspend the order itself.

one of the standard interpretations of fascism is that its core constituency is petit bourgeois and that it exploits that class-fractions sense of socio-economic precariousness by offering its inverse, a festishization of the "normal" class order.--which would functionally undercut the problems of precariousness--because the class order would be written into a notion of natural hierarchy. typically the interests of the fractions within the holders of capital who collude with fascist regimes are quite different from that--in those cases it's more often order for its own sake--but where the interests intersect at the level of form is across an idea of natural class order.

all this to say that i don't think kirkpatrick germaine here.

more later....time for a beverage.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite