Moving To Montana Soon

Took a great walk today, saw a moose crossing the river, a bunch of wild turkeys, pheasant, another coyote, deer, even some quail! The sign in front of the Baptist church said "For all you do ,His bloods for you!" I guess it's all about marketing.

Montana is back in the Nation magazine ( piece on Max Baucus, K Streets favorite Senator last month), this time about local, grassroots "progressive " politics, our new Senator John Tester, and possibilities for the New West. I wasn't mentioned and neither was the fact
that all these progressives live in two counties, while most of the state is populated with reactionary neanderthals ( sorry anonomous, I meant perception challenged) whose elected representatives argue endlessly about UN flags (hate them), gays (hate them) and wolves (hate them). What Im saying is, don't start packing your bags just yet if your dreaming of a worker-run state unless you want to help build one. Of course ,if you want to be a dental floss tycoon...

Andrew Bacevich does a great review in this same issue of some books about presidential power and Empire. Forget everything I said about you ,Andrew.

My wife returned yesterday from six weeks in Vietnam on a delegation with Thich Nhat Hahn. She said coming back to the states was like returning to the land of the gigantic people. She claims no one in Vietnam is fat. No one. She can't imagine how we could have ravaged such gentle , sweet people and such a beautiful country. I guess much of it was from way up high, where you didn't have to see faces.

Thinking of my recent lack of patience, in 1972 Salvadore Allende warned his companeros to work hard, but patiently. "The creation of a socio-economic regime entails the development of social and economic forces which are essentially opposed to that regime.Those factors , engines of revolutionary change , are not the laws or the institutional apparatus of the state; they are inherant in the economic structure, in the new relations of production which we are promoting, in the conscience of the workers, in the new labor organizations which are changing the infra-structure. It is a rudiment of materialist scientific analysis that the accumulation of quantitative changes produces qualitative changes. No one can have illusions of changing day to night a socio-economic regime. The institutional form of a state can be transformed rapidly but not it's economic structure."

De-constructing Imus Nation

(warning to anonymous: I will be criticizing stupid white males again. If you find this painful, Im sorry.Repeat after me “Im a guy, but I can change.”)

First, I have never listened to a Don Imus show, so I’m basing this whole piece on hearsay, innuendo, personal speculation and what I hear on the news! In this sense, I have myself joined Imus Nation. How many listeners DID Mr. Imus have? 5 million ,30 million, whatever, it was enough to create a 150 million dollar revenue stream for giant media corporations.And what were these advertisers so sure Don would do to bring in listeners? That’s right, be “edgy”, maybe “shock” or titillate or be outrageous. We all remember that sense of weightlessness when the class clown would say something sure to get him sent to the principles office, that’s what Don did for big money every day. He certainly is not alone in this genre, America loves it’s class clowns, America is the little pack of wanna-be’s who follow the schoolyard bully around, who in fact give him their lunch money for the privilege of doing so.Whether it’s Howard Stern or Savage or Rush or O Reily, when they invite Jesse Jackson on their show, Imus Nation shows up to hear the Big Mouth say in public what they think in private.Or might dare to say amongst a closed circle of bigoted confederates. They listen in hopes the high paid clown will directly challenge the “politically correct” conventions which have restricted their GOD GIVEN RIGHT to express their homophobic, racist, and sexist views, and they will smirk and guffaw whenever the “nappy headed hoes” get a thumpin. Is this strictly a right-wing psycho-socio phenomenon? . Probably not, but can i have the illusion?Please? "When I am paricularly depressed," Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in a NY Times op-ed ,"I ascribe our behavor to stupidity- the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture.."

Columnist David Brooks was compelled to issue a flimsy mea culpa for being a guest on the Don Imus show so many times (probably knowing he would run into Gwen Ifil on the Newshour) by saying it was a kick for pundit intellectuals to go slumming every once in a while, buy a sixer of Budlight and head on down to the NASCAR track. Of course every nerd wants protection from the bully, but deep down he wants association, he wants the left-overs (did I mention the little flock of girls that are also in sexual awe of the “badboy”?).

So the shareholders got nervous,(maybe they’re invested in sub-prime lenders as well) and pulled the plug but Don has his defenders. Blogger sonia-belle points out Don’s free-speech rights are being infringed upon and that he is being subjected to a “McCarthy Trial” witch-hunt. I think those are terrible arguments and analogies (Don can go scream racist insults from any soapbox in the public sphere he wants) and I’m a little surprised to hear her defend commie bastard Arthur Miller. In terms of culture critique ,I don’t know if this is just more of “what’s wrong with Kansas” or in line with Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” thesis but something is obviously out of whack and perhaps all shock radio listeners should be picked up and taken to re-education camps. Just kidding, anonymous! I have compassion for the mentally oppressed as well as the physically, and will work to nurture their own compassion. "Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child." Cicero Shoot, we all have compassion for children! "Once the running of the state involves a permanent and massive shortage of historical knowledge, that state can no longer be run strategically." Guy Debord