Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Soothsaying

There is no such thing as "people-powered politics" in a nation that spends a trillion dollars every year on a state military, police, and surveillance apparatus. There are no "movements." There is no "preventing wars of aggression."

It should be needless to say that I'm not unsympathetic to the plight of the victims of America's policies abroad, but I don't believe that I, you, or anyone can arrest the prosecution of those policies. It's important to name the crimes because the act of naming has its own power. Otherwise, what will end our aggression is this: getting our asses handed to us on a platter; getting our chips called in.

We are in all likelihood doomed to go to war in Iran. The forces impelling us to further war are most probably irrevocable. They are self-sustaining and self-fulfilling. The edifice of America--the daily functioning of our society and economy as we know it--is predicated on war. It is what we do.

And here is the good news: we are also probably doomed to lose.

Posted by IOZ at 10:52 AM | email »

34 comments:

Larry M said...

Ah, well, here is the IOZ that I very much respect, even while perhaps disagreeing on some particulars, e.g., being perhaps a bit less fatalistic.

But let's not forget (and I'm NOT saying that IOZ is forgetting this; I'm trying to supplement his post, not disagree with it) that, in the course of "losing" the war with Iran, some pretty horrific things may well happen. Horrific well beyond what has gone before. A rogue state with nuclear weapons is indeed a frightening thing. Of course, in this case, that rogue state is us.

1:24 PM
Larry M said...

Which, of course, ISN'T to say that I'll be cheering for us to win, when and if the day comes. Just saying why I continue to pursue the probably hopeless quest of trying to stop the madness, as does our friend Arthur.

1:27 PM
la Rana said...

Of course we are doomed to lose - I saw Gladiator too. As the saying goes, however, we don't know the sun will rise tomorrow. You talk a big predetermined game, but the subtle hedging does not go unnoticed.

1:50 PM
IOZ said...

The hedging is on the matter of particulars only, bubba. I freely cop to the charge with that . . . hedge. My uncertainty extends only to the specific time and the specific field of folly.

2:03 PM
bobbo said...

"Otherwise, what will end our aggression is this: getting our asses handed to us on a platter."

Yep.

2:31 PM
AlanSmithee said...

'People powered politics' is Koswackian Krap fed to pathetic pwoggie pissants so they'll keep providing pennies to DP potentates. You know that well enough, IOZ. The way our wars of aggression generally end is when the lower ranks get so sick of the endless, pointless fighting that they start pressuring the generals to pack it in and call it an empire.


Larry,

THANKSRALPH!

3:05 PM
Ashley said...

And here is the good news: we are also probably doomed to lose.

Probably? Super War Preview: The Iranian Suicide Bombers vs. The American Crusaders.

And contrary to some of the shirt rending doom criers. I start to believe that Iran having nukes would be the best thing for the world. We sure as fuck wouldn't go in there if they did and as scary as it is, M.A.D. worked just fine for the first 50 years of nuclear powers with batshit crazy leaders.

3:09 PM
Brian said...

According to msn.com, the Chinese dumped a lot of stocks today, and the market crashed pretty deeply. Are our chips being called?

3:22 PM
Larry M said...

According to msn.com, the Chinese dumped a lot of stocks today, and the market crashed pretty deeply. Are our chips being called?

That would indeed be good news. Sadly, I'm inclinced to think that China has too much to lose itself to do so.

One hopes, for the world's sake, that China (with help from the rest of the world) does make that move (and by that move I mean stopping to buy our debt, and selling what they have), the sooner the better. That may be the only way to avoid the United States taking a few hundred million people with us when we go down.

3:45 PM
maximo said...

damned commies.

3:50 PM
IOZ said...

Oh yeah, baby. Nothin' says commie like a 9 point "market correction." Blamo!

4:02 PM
Moloch-Agonistes said...

I say this lovingly, but you have your head up your ass. Yes, "we" are fucked. "We" will probably attack Iran. Shortly thereafter, "we" are almost certainly headed for a market correction. (Excuse me, "correction.") It is even conceivable that in our own lifetimes, "our" country will be reduced to penury, senility, and perhaps even foreign aid.

So the fuck what? Since when does that excuse younz from having political and social objectives? The latest theory in neuroscience is that consciousness developed in simple multicellular organisms as part of the capacity for motility. IOW, IOZ, imagining yourself in a different place is more or less identical, in evolutionary terms, to thinking.

This fatalism stuff isn't "being realistic." Critique without program is just degenerate. It exists symbiotically with (or parasitically on) the evils it claims to abominate. Weimar Thuringia, friends, Weimar Thuringia.

I'm not telling anybody what to do, mind you.

6:18 PM
IOZ said...

Critique without program?! Oh, buddy. All art is quite useless.

Everyone is entitled to wish for a savior, but that doesn't make a savior so. What shall we do, comrade? Rise up and build barricades in the streets? Bomb a federal building? Elect a Democrat? I read Arthur Silber every day and consider him something near a genius. He proposed a program, but he knows, and you know, and I know, that it will not happen, anymore than I will fly unaided or you will transubstantiate lead into gold with the power of incantation.

There is no positive program to rectify what is happening in the world. What's happening has always happened. We are a top dog living out the early downhill side of our top dog days. Britain didn't voluntarily dismantle its empire. Nazi Germany didn't voluntarily retreat. Rome didn't fall because of anti-imperial activism.

Imperial America is not Jim Crow. It isn't a social policy to be changed. It isn't an election to be won. It isn't something to be "changed" by a "program," any more than any other empire before it.

If you believe the problem to be essentially political in the common sense of the word, then you don't understand the problem.

6:52 PM
Ashley said...

Critique without program is just degenerate.

The art critic has no responsibility to fix the sculpture he damns. The teacher has no responsibility to take home the students who fail. Thomas Paine was under no obligation to take on George Washington’s job in Valley Forge. Lucky for us.

Dissemination of well critiqued information and history is a service. It is participation.

The problem, perhaps just the "rub," with IOZ's editorial view is that it points to the very thing he is obviously against: violence. The US government (courts count too) might be too ingrown with corruption to save or roll back; have to go back two hundred years to undo some of the damage. There is no solution from within government. This leaves only mass peaceful movements (they can't arrest 50 million people) or revolution; which against the US military would only be possible as a mirror of what's happening in the mid-east: guerilla insurgency.

So, if IOZ wants to do what he's doing, peacefully informing, naming things by their right names, more power to him. If he's also living by his principals then he's a fucking hero; or maybe just a peer. What a world that could be.

7:00 PM
Moloch-Agonistes said...

At the risk (certainty!) of repeating myself: "imagining yourself in a different place is more or less identical, in evolutionary terms, to thinking."

Whether change is "possible" or not is completely irrelevant. Who wants a savior? I just want people to think about how to live well. I'm convinced that social criticism without an alternative vision is undisciplined and empty.

You think art doesn't demand a social vision? Man, we must be going to different museums.

7:21 PM
Brian said...

But I think ioz is very clear on where his sympathies lie. ioz and, shall we say, the circle of us his friends. The Mutualist blog is full of articles and links on how to live. Not that I (or Ioz), a "public" employees agrees with everything at this site or in this school of thought, but it most certainly does answer your question.

Not to speak for Ioz, but the role of the cirtic is a legimate one. There are other sources to better answer your question.

8:28 PM
frijoles junior said...

OK, Moloch, I'll bite. How do you think one should live well? IOZ has his wine and theater and I've got my bong and games, and not to be flippant about it, but my life is pretty good. Am I part of the problem? Sure, and I bet so are you and IOZ and everyone else in the radical end of the blogosphere. Being conscious of the problems inherent in our prosperous lifestyle, I do try to make an effort to be less of a problem than the next guy. But the forces of our history are strong like a tiger, and though it may be a brave and noble thing to wrestle that tiger, the outcome is certain victory for the tiger. Yet I value social criticism because I find it helpful when negotiating the jungle to have an IOZ out there telling me "be careful, there's a tiger over there". If IOZ does not offer me tiger-wrestling lessons while he is at it, so what?

Having spent the last 11 years married to an art historian, I can tell you that some art advances a social vision, but a lot of it is about what makes us happy. There's only so much you can read into naked ballerinas, after all. So maybe my Weimar counterpart was drinking absinthe in a cabaret while Krupp decided that Hitler was the right man to advance the interests of German Industry. Again, so what? It's not like active opposition worked out so well for the socialists.

It takes all kinds to make a world, so hella mad props to you if you're out there fighting the good fight. But don't make out like there's something wrong with carving out a comfortable place to live from the rotten heartwood of the American tree. Rotten politics are an inevitable part of the human condition. Just ask Lord Acton (power corrupts, etc.)

10:24 PM
Moloch-Agonistes said...

Sigh. The question, mis habas dulces, is not how one can live well. The question is how people can live together. Could I be any clearer? And I couldn't give two shits whether you sign onto my particular program, like that'd be some fucking coup. My objection is to this self-indulgent and sterile cynicism.

And then said the Lorax -- his dander was up -- let me say a few words about gluppity glup. If you think America's rotten wood will accomodate you and your bong for much longer you're in for a rude awakening. This tree shows every evidence of being about to go under the bulldozer, and when that time comes I suspect you're going to wish you had something a little more substantive than a fondness for cannibis to keep you getting out of bed in the morning.

Naked fucking ballerinas? Jesus. "Without poets, without artists, men would tire of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everythong would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere." Now that, my friend, is program.

So you and your bong, curled up in your (quintessentially American) metaphysical-individualist womb, have tired of nature's monotony. Boo fucking hoo. I hear you talk and I think to myself, 'reductio ad absurdum.' You and Dinesh, man. Symptoms to the end.

10:56 AM
IOZ said...

I must tell you, Moloch, that that was remarkably silly.

If a "program," as we're calling it, is just a half-ironical ars poetica with the irony conveniently ignored, then by god, man, I will produce for you such a program . . .

You use the word with uncharacteristic uncertainty, in any event. If a "program" is an expression of one's ideals for a society, then such has been, on this blog, voluminously expressed. If, on the other hand, you want a point-by-point plan of action for acquiring that society within a generation or two, boy howdy, I've got nothing to give but giggles.

11:16 AM
Moloch-Agonistes said...

Christ and all the angels in heaven. I was being ironical. What do you peepul want, emoticons?

Beyond my apparently misfiring sense of humor, the argument is not that Appollinaire had program, the argument is that program gives structure to the universe. I don't know what in creation gave you the idea that this implies a "point by point plan for acquiring that society within a generation or two"? All I demand is that the critic discipline him or herself by taking practical political steps toward a social ideal, at whatever scale seems most effective. Despite your protestations, I don't hear any echo of that from you. Right now I hear only disappointment, verging on emptiness.

Criticism, program, and maintenence. Otherwise it's just vanity.

11:40 AM
Moloch-Agonistes said...

Apollinaire. Typing is too cruel.

11:41 AM
maximo said...

fj, you've got my attention. naked ballerinas? yes. the world could do with more of those. well, i could. i mean, i do need someone to wash my car.

12:06 PM
IOZ said...

The idea that a "social ideal" is necessary to great art strikes me as entirely wrong--an impoverished idea about art, to say the least.

As for the "practical steps"--like I said, I've written to some extent about my ideal society here; those opinions aren't lacking. I've noted that I believe there to be room on the local level for meaningful actions, and when I say things like "support your local farmer," I am being lighthearted, but I am not joking. To carve out a good life in a community, and to work to improve a community through personal investment, by supporting its businesses, and so forth--these are noble, practicable goals.

But you're being disingenuous and changing the criteria of your critique. You see me critiquing the excesses--the existence--of imperial America, and you say, "What's your program?" That is asking for a plan to counteract the extension of America as an empire, and to that requirement I call bullshit.

12:10 PM
Moloch-Agonistes said...

Ahem. I am not changing the criteria of my critique. If perhaps Democrats are annoying you, this is no fault of mine. I've been repeatedly clear, in this very thread and elsewhere, that my demand is not for a "plan to counteract America as an empire" -- let alone one that is likely to work. The point is that (to repeat myself for the third time) "imagining yourself in a different place is more or less identical, in evolutionary terms, to thinking." I see lots of outrage, justifiable of course, but little political creativity; and among other things, it undermines the critique. It is cynical, not fertile.

Someone who decides that the gig is up needs to start working on a new direction. Otherwise they're sucking at the same teat. If that's farmers for you, fine, but contrary to your claims here, it's not being developed very well at all.

(As for art and social vision, definitional problems and a shortage of cannibis here at the office prevent me from engaging in the 964,857,549th iteration of this argument since the dawn of human history. I could go both ways, but it wasn't very central to my point.)

3:14 PM
Moloch-Agonistes said...

On the other hand, it's more central to my point if you're going to claim this blog as performance art. Noted.

3:17 PM
IOZ said...

"Working in a new direction," as much as "program," is a hollow political phrase, an orators setpiece, signifying nothing. You're not asking for a plan, you're asking for a "direction"? I find that even more unconvincing.

There is no such thing as "political creativity" as you mean it here. Politics is power; power is coercion. I am interested in nailing it to a wall, so that men can stop nailing each other.

4:25 PM
IOZ said...

Oh, what a fantastically inappropriate double-entendre. And a missed apostrophe. I must be slipping.

4:27 PM
Moloch-Agonistes said...

Um, thanks Michel. The practical implications of what I'm suggesting are fairly obvious, and your reference to "supporting local farmers" makes clear that you know exactly what I'm talking about, but don't take it seriously. You want performance art, not movement building. Power is coercion, after all. I suppose the existence of a Federal hegemon makes it all such wasted effort anyway.

Well, Karen Finley, smear away. I'm bored.

4:53 PM
Brian said...

What is YOUR solution, M. A.? Your program? I'm not being snarky, I'm just curious.....

6:48 PM
IOZ said...

You're right about one thing, moloch. I do not want movement building. I want no part of it. What begins as a movement ends not as a program, but a pogrom. You can quote me.

7:19 PM
frijoles junior said...

Maximo,

Yep. Degas, naked ballerinas. Gaugin, Topless Tahitian teens. They get attention, all right.

Moloch,
Chin up. I thought it was funny. And sure, I expect the bulldozer any month now. In my individualist way, I am taking concrete steps. If by society you mean all those people outside of my monkeysphere, then no, those steps aren't especially political or social, unless green consumerism is political or socially enlightened. Not so much vanity as selfishness. That's the rap that's usually laid on those of us suspicious of movement-building and enamored or cynical yet trenchant analysis and criticism.

IOZ,
now that's the funniest thing I've read all day. I'm with you that I'd rather nail power to the wall than seize the mantle for my own ends. He who would fight with monsters might take care ...

7:40 PM
frijoles junior said...

enamored of the analysis and criticism that is. Cruel indeed.

7:42 PM
Anonymous said...

Fuck me for a moron. Your earlier veneration of Rawls threw me off: this really is the last cult of Foucault. "Power is coercion shall be the whole of the law--the rest is just performance art."

What can I say? The "power is evil" ideology is as strange to me as Catharism. We will, so far as I know, remain primates for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, I don't like it. IOZ's (new?) Golden Rule flattens all moral judgment. Criticism of any specific public phenomenon--Obama, Bush, Kos, Marty, American imperium, some obscure Latvian politician who may one day appear on the scene--in the end it's all just ambience, accident, afterthought, an "orator's setpiece."

On that note, I was rather displeased by the disingenuous carping at "program." It's not that you couldn't understand the referent.* While perhaps more complicated than making fun of Marty Peretz, the effort to conceive and develop alternative political institutions in umbra imperii is hardly impossible or hard to get your head around. Apparently, however, you find it annoying. Political creativity is not just "coercive," it doesn't exist! I mean, come on. Diplomacy is one thing -- Hamas and Israel come to mind -- and political debate is another. You ought not mistake oughts for ises. This kind of sophistry is pretty tiresome.

Beans: Hang ten, dude.

Brian: Solution to what? I help underserved communities develop health care interventions. Since you have to confront all sorts of related distributive issues -- transportation, nutrition, etc. -- it's been a pretty good way of thinking about social and moral stuff and a (relatively) effective transnational coalition building exercise. But I'm not particular. People should do what seems best to them. Except this libertarian shit.

-M.A.

* Okay, "new direction" was a hack turn of phrase. Who edits?

10:52 PM
Brian said...

That's fine and admirible, M.A. I admire your profession. I think it's easy to get too cynical-it's just the political system seems to calcified, the national economy too endebted, the national concentrated corporate culture too overwhelming. A program to solve thes eproblems on a large scale seems impossible. You yourself appear to be acting at the local level that seems the only possible locus of oerpation left???? The War Pigs won't listen to million men marches anymore-there is too much money to be made and they are developing "nonlethal" methods of crowd control that can keep the lid on without getting too messy.

As for libertariansim, M.A.-I'm only "sympathetic" to libertarianism. It appeals to me emotionally. I remain skeptical-perhaps because my profession (City Planning) is involved in the evil "r" word and no I don't think my neighbor on a 4,000 square foot dense urban lot has the "right" to oeprate an industrial auto painting operation in the middle of my neighborhood-and "regulations" are a quicker way of preventing it than the courts (plus, don't the courts require coercion to enforce their edicts? I've never understood that? What if the losing party is a sociopath who just ignores the courts. I'd rather have a police force to deal with that than a mob of neighbors???)).

It's late-I'm babbling.

12:27 AM

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