Hero Crime

I spent a few minutes (or more) with this little bit from Gertrude Stein and I think it's apropos to our robber baron culture. We lionize the Greed of Wall Street cuz goddam if I had the opportunity I'd keep those billions too...and you'd shittin' hate me for it but holy jesus want to be in my place.

Anyway, not too far from my writing desk, geographically speaking, is a museum dedicated to John Dillinger. We all seem to want to stick it to the man, but, guess what...the "man" ain't in charge no more and you and me, we're the ones getting stuck.

Do you see what I mean when I say anybody in America can be a public one, and anybody in America being able to be a public one it has something to do with the hero crime and so many people are always doing this thing doing the hero crime it gets into anybody who can have his picture where it is to be seen by everybody. Of course there are so many who feel themselves to be a crime hero that practically nobody wonders that there are any, their names are like the names of Pullman cars, they make them up as easily and it is no good. (From "American Crimes and How They Matter")

Yes, that was in Crase's AMERIFIL.TXT. You really should go steal a copy from someone, because likely you can apply any one of its entries to any news/blog item you come across dealing with politics and money.

The Dark Heart of Humanity

I am continually disturbed by the human world as it has evolved a kind of systematic concatenation of ever and ever more abusive and rapacious ideologies in which the Powerful can now easily and readily marshal and inject sophisticated (and not so sophisticated) strategies of persuasion into every part of our daily living: from industrial food and religious brotherhood to military invasion and Hollywood entertainments, not to mention testing in education (both for teachers and students) and mandatory payments to the industrial "wellness" industry. The list of course goes on and on.

One often balks at "conspiracy" as an idea--rationally, too many parts must coalesce to be the work of conspirators. But I've come to simply think of it as a systematic conspiracy created by very the framework of our ideas of what it means to be a human and how we come to BE and ACT within this. In short, everything seems tied together when you start thinking about changing even one way of "being" in the world.

That said, I was struck yesterday by a Rolling Stone piece about the "proposed" use of Psy-Op techniques by the military on delegations of congressional members visiting Afghanistan for "on the ground" briefings. So, basically, military generals attempting to use propaganda against our elected representatives to encourage continuing and expanding the pillaging and domination of occupied territory.

Now, it's claimed that this tactic WAS NOT deployed as those ordered to do so refused the order. This is illegal after all--but illegal never stopped anyone before! However, my "read" on this is, "of course they do these kinds of things all the time, and anyway, how would anyone know if/when psy-ops is used."

Remember when it was reported that Donald Rumsfeld would pepper all his reports to Bush with bible verses? That is psy-ops 101.

Also, you might recall that the torture regime has been aided and abetted by psychologists. Look it up yourself.

Okay, so, to the tapestry of "like" ideology.

Psy-Ops really is no different than any application of "organizational" psychology. Daily we are subjected to this kind of manipulation. It's a corporate and academic industry after all.

[You might recall that I suggested you do a little investigating the fact that there are so many Religious colleges that offer HR degrees--well, HR is of course nothing more than manipulating the "human resource" in the corporate machine.]

Now, here is little essay about Industrial and Organization Psychologists written by one of their own. Skim it, it's not worth spending too much time on. But, I would like to call your attention to the first few lines of the author's bio:

Dr. Charles Handler is the president and founder of Rocket-Hire.com. Throughout his career he has specialized in developing effective, legally defensible employee selection systems.

Comforting, yes? This is the dark heart of humanity. I hope you think long and hard about taking this route in life.

I'm tired of this. How do people justify this type of activity as it is applied to their fellow humans? But of course, what part of your life isn't infested by psy-op applications? What the hell is advertising anyway?

Well, remember an earlier post about the "organizational" strength of a certain religion?

See, this is all coming together...onward Christian soldiers marching as to war...on everyone else. But my favorite phrase is next: "with the Cross of Jesus marching on before." It's the IDEA that marches on before (the symbol of torture by the state) because Jesus, as a man and philosopher is too complicated (and well, against violent and worldly domination) to be a symbol of war.

And, finally, for this post, what do you think the "morality of greed" (not softened by the use of "profit" to replace "greed") is but a psy-op attack on your very idea of human society (your social relations). Your responsibility is now to an abstraction called MONEY, or PROSPERITY rather than your fellow beings.

All this manipulation is fostered by the distancing hand of our technologies. More machines, more tools, less human empathy, what we once might have called "fellow feeling"...it's that simple.

Please stop it.

It's All Coming Together

From Paul Zweig's The Heresy of Self-Love:

The Pax Romana had made the Empire into what Gibbon described as a vast prison, with no escape for those who resisted its authority. It was a prison as vast as the world; and this is recognized in the religious terminology of the Neoplatonists, the Christians, and especially the Gnostics, for whom "this world" was literally a prison, enclosing each citizen in his own isolated predicament. But if the world was a prison, then the only appeal could be "out of this world," away from its authority and toward some new authority whose main evidence lay not in laws, no matter how brilliantly codified, but in a certain quality of experience. Such was the atmosphere in which Christianity first gained its strength, rejecting the legalistic aspect of Judaism, along with the authority of the Empire, while it appealed, in the writings of St. Paul, to spiritual conviction as individual as that of "grace."

Yet from the very first the Christians moderated this Pauline "individualism," limiting its mystical bias with a shrewd sense of organization and earthly responsibility. Already during the first and second centuries the new Church showed signs of an absolutist tendency. In each city of the Empire, the Christians assembled under the authority of a bishop, whose word was spiritual law. Their religion made them citizens in the City of God, but it also made them members of a strict, increasingly organized community. The Christians owed their success as much to this organizational shrewdness as to the richness of their doctrine. [bold text mine]

Here we have the basis of our current politics of religion and our current conservative ideology, but more importantly we have an explanation for the strength of the combination.

Kochs, Religion, Institutional Corruption--an inverted trinity of material greed.

[As an aside, take a gander at preponderance of programs in HR and Organizational Behavior at those institutions proclaiming an adherence to and promulgation of Christian principles as part of their educational mission.]

Do Unto Others

Krugman today on Wisconsin:

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

This is true to a degree but very weakly put. Even Krugman doesn't seem to have a voice these days and he's a Nobel Laureate. Money is the only VOTE unless the underclasses vote by demonstration. Finally, Wisconsin's people are voting with their physical presence. It's unclear whether it will make a difference. The only way an oligarchy is "checked" is, as Krugman points out, by Institutions that serve as counterweights to the "corporation". Liberal Institutions used to balance out Conservative Corporations. Now our institutions (like Universities--hell, even churches) are only commodities and our society is out of balance with Power being served by all parties. The real trouble comes when our national government enacts laws that hinder us further but are deemed constitutional by that third corrupt branch, the judiciary. Money has power in all places.

But why do these things happen? Why is the Republican/Conservative mentality so intractable.

Here's a clue from George Lakoff at Huffpost:

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.


The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, "Let the market decide" assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that. Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks, and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don't deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life, a civilized society, and as necessary for business to prosper.

This ultimately blends everything into Might Makes Right. Who's the most powerful? The Father (God?); The Market. Notice how we can be absolved of all responsibility? Let go, Let God; Let go, Let Greed. (In the market greed is supposed to be balanced by something...I forget what--more greed?)

All else is human (liberal) meddling. This is finally where I stand. To be human is to be liberal, open, caring, giving, sharing, hoping. To be anything else is less than human.