FREEDOM NOT SPOKEN HERE

FREEDOM NOT SPOKEN HERE;

ORDINARY EVERYDAY REPRESSION AND CONTROL AT THE LOCAL K MART

Today I walked to the local KMart--a good 20 minute walk, and not particularly

a pleasant walk. Got there after crossing the busy street. A street filled with enormous trucks, many of them noisy--either because their motors made noise or because the driver insisted on playing his or her favorite music loudly. (And speaking of unpleasant sounds, as I type this at 12:15, somebody is playing loud music which sounds like pounding right now....)

The pedestrian cross light is timed so that you cannot hesitate or wait a second if you are to cross the street in time. That's not pleasant either--but that's par for the course in El Paso, Texas.

Then, once on the other side of the street, I walk on a sidewalk flanked by houses sporting fences, trucks parked in front, and here and there dogs. But, as a rule,

I am the only one outside walking--which to me is decidedly unnerving. I see nothing but empty spaces and cars.....This is not civilization.

When I arrived at the store, the man at the door told me that it was "store policy" that I was not allowed to enter the store with my "large" backpack.

We discussed this. He began by telling me that he did not make the policy. I would have to be an idiot to think he did......I should have told him that Germans who worked in the concentration camps were also following orders. But let's just say the conversation was not pleasant. It was false. He was asserting his authority and engaging in the typical American friendly but false smile and gesture. And I was foolish enough that I tried to communicate with him as a person, "Look. You are not just an employee and I am not just a customer. You have a brain and can understand what I'm saying..." Not my exact words but that's the nub of it... At any rate, I have forgotten the details, but it was NOT PLEASANT. I feel sick to my stomach thinking of it now. If that's all my mastery of my mother tongue is good for, then I would rather be partial master of another language than be full master of a language spoken in a land so repressive as is the USA.

AND THAT WAS ONLY One of many UNPLEASANT experiences I have had in the land of my birth, when I've failed to satisfy unwritten rules, such as that you must have a driver's license.....One of many unpleasant experiences when I've done nothing but attempted to carry out the most mundane and necessary tasks.

And now that I think about it, I have entered department stores and grocery stores with that back pack, and even larger ones--in Prague, in Vienna, and in Bratislava, and never was I required to leave my backpack at the door.

This is NOT a free country. It is, in fact, MUCH LESS FREE than other places I have know....

Please get me out of here as soon as possible.

I can't perform the most routine activity without being suspected of being a thief, accused without trial ..... Here I am in the land of my birth and I am POWERLESS, less respected than I ever was in an Eastern or Central European land.....

Peace Prize Nominee

Now here's someone (an organization) that REALLY DESERVES THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/

Joke

I'll never forget the conversation I had with a student once...
once upon a time when I was teaching Philosophy at a university in the midwest...

'Oh you are just a WASP...."

he said dismissively.....

But he was wrong, I am "white", but that's it.....
Anglo-Saxon? No, Protestant? No....

Sorry, two out of three wrong does not get you a passing grade......

What I didn't Say

It was, I suppose, about two months ago that I visited Vienna...

and at night or in the morning in my room in the hostel I marveled at the silence.

No cars.

No booming stereos.

No barking dogs.

I reveled in the quiet, in the calm. I was in heaven.

But now I am in hell.

Since my return to El Paso I have suffered every day with the noise.

what kind of country is this?

What sort of people are these who don't give a damn if their barking dog disturbs their neighbor or their pounding stereo robs someone of their sanity?

They are "Americans".

GET ME OUT OF HERE

What I didn't say: when I called the police to complain about a noisy neighbor...

NOTE

Why are people this way? Markets do it. Capitalism does it.

See Robin Hahnel, "The ABC's of Political Economy", Pluto Press, 2002, Chapter Four, "Markets: Guided by an Invisible Hand or Foot?"

COMMENT ON A NEW PHOTO

I have added a photo I took of the rules at a... well I don't know what it is

exactly.... I guess it's a dance hall. (You need to scroll down to see it.)

It is located in the abandoned shopping mall near the bus stop.

Why did I put this picture here? It seems to indicate a deeply anti-social people, afraid of coming together in groups, a nation so individualistic as to be deeply anti-social. They cannot even come together to celebrate without fear.

Yes, I know it is the owner of property who is afraid, afraid of ordinary people coming together to celebrate... So perhaps, the "they" is inaccurate.

And that too is revelatory of the true nature of class divisions in this miserable land.

Ugliness

El Paso is an ugly place.

There is not a day when I am not subjected to barking dogs.--Dogs that bark as I try to read. Dogs whose barking destroys my attempt to concentrate.

And then there are the dogs who throw themselves at the fence which prevents them from biting me as I walk past....

According to the American fantasy world, the secular religion of consumerism and phony freedom, buying dogs is an expression of one's personality, a free choice to enter the world of consumer products, an essential part of the domestic image: house, family, pets.

Yet this world is equally a world which enslaves the home owner. A person with a mortgage doesn't want to go on strike. And when you need pets, fences, etc., etc.,...You work to pay your bills and go around in a vicious circle.... apparently without noticing it.

Oh yes, dogs are sweet, loving, care for you, give you the love no one else gives you.

All that is true. But that's not enough to make a life. It's more like a momentary distraction from the lack of respect you have to live with in the vast majority of your life.

Get me out of here! This is as close to hell as I wish to come.

The Camera Lies

NEW PICTURES AND A NEW LINK ADDED

Pretty pictures! --You may say, looking at the photos of the abandoned shopping center not so far from my parents' home. ahhh, the color of the sky, the blue and the orange.....pretty....

But to say only that would be missing the point.

This was once a place to buy clothing and fruit and vegetables. It had a certain kind of life. But over the years, the owners found they could make larger profits by moving elsewhere. Today the nearest grocery store is not within reasonable walking distance and the nearest thing like a shopping center is a large mall fifteen or more miles away.

And then there is the abandoned asphalt, adding to the local weather.... making it less pleasant... Oddly it provides a place for people to park their cars, singly or in groups--and that too is part of a sad story of a society without adequate provision for public spaces... an anti-social society...

There is a story to be told here, of a society with deeply anti-social and egoistic concerns, the story of neo-liberalism.

And part of that story will also be the NEW LINK I have just posted, by a sociologist discussing the phenomenon of enormous beasts of glass and steel.... a.k.a. SUV'S---I hope to discuss that article some time in the near future. But anyone who reads this blog occasionally will know that I frequently comment upon the ugliness of those vehicles.

The Overwhelming Ugliness

The Overwhelming Ugliness of El Paso, Texas

Just to relieve the monotony, and to breathe a bit of fresh air, and for just a little physical activity, yesterday I ventured outside the walled confines of my parents' house, to take a little walk.

I don't like it when I'm the only one on the street. I don't like the feeling of nakedness and isolation when the only other human beings you see (from the neck up--if that) are in enormous vehicles. But then, those are mostly hypothetical human beings since most vehicles have tinted glass.

But to be fair, there were a few other life forms on the streets, even a family with bicycles. Not enough to make this a friendly experience. Isolated life forms among the dead cement.

The environment is cement, concrete, asphalt, and metal, with those insane walled in squares of green or "rock gardens" in between... a sterile environment...

The cars zoom by--and that noise they make is not pretty!

The dogs bark.

I walk and I don't enjoy it.

If I am unlucky enough to walk facing the traffic and the sun has set, the bright lights of the cars blind me. The emptiness of the darkness is like a cloak ripped by the penetrating knife of the vehicle's lights--the vehicle itself an act of violence.

True, I have escaped from the artificial air of the air conditioner. El Pasoans, indifferent to any concerns of conservation, mindlessly turn on the AC at the least provocation.... and it stays on....

But I escape the dirty air of the AC, for a time....

And I walk, sadly, falsely, with no particular pleasure in viewing my surroundings, with the constant thought that others are inside, invisible to me, and that I am the naked one, not surrounded by a vehicle or a home...

The mountains' tops are surrounded by a curious ring of clouds, but it does not move me. Those mountains represent an indifferent nature, a hostile environment, a place where green grass and imported shrubs do not belong, where humans have arrogantly created an artificial environment which encourages false and superficial desires more than it satisfies any deep ones.....

an empty environment in which there is no hope or consolation or beauty.... but only manipulation, the permanent threat of rain, wind storms, and also the threat of body-breaking collisions with the omnipresent trucks.... and, in the distance, the golden arches, or some other icon of fast food....a sign of the degraded condition of hope in this desert.

The Grouch Reads

The Grouch Reads: David Harvey and Kafka

DH

I have a friend who moved from New York City to the Midwest in the seventies because rents had gone up. She thinks it was a wise decision on her part, but I wonder to what extent that decision was brought about by individuals who were not considering her interests (only their own self-interest).

That is one thought I had after reading David Harvey’s “Brief History of Neoliberalism”.

Important changes in New York city were the result of decisions by powerful individuals, not elected officials, but bankers. Those decisions made life harder for the poor and working class, and benefited only a small number of people.

K

Kafka’s world is immediately rejected by the sane as too fantastic. Yet, if one thinks seriously about the goings on in New York City—a city gone bankrupt because of the decisions of a small group of self-interested and short-sighted individuals, it seems no longer far fetched that Kafka has described our world.

But even Kafka’s world is more personal than ours; Josef K is not seduced by advertising and the culture industry.

Kafka, Der Proceß

David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford UP, 2005

neprijemne el paso

It is hard to say just how unpleasant--nicht angenehm, neprijemne--

I find El Paso Texas.

People are not friendly.

There is a broad antipathy and hostility, a tendency toward distrust and

suspicion, typified by the signs in the buses warning us to look out for

suspicious behavior. Yes, let's all imagine a terrorist under every bed. That

will justify outrageous spending on weapons....

I suspect that people in this country have been oppressed so habitually, they do

not even recognize their downtrodden condition.

But it is not merely unfriendliness... There is simultaneously the false

friendliness one expects in the United States... bred I imagine by the

demands of employers who wish to increase their profits... and there

is something else, as well, something which I attribute to a deep

anti-democracy and authoritarianism in American society (a stream

or current) and a by-product of the military influence. (the local paper features

frequent stories about the great economic benefits of the increased

number of professional killers....)

This further piece of nastiness comes from a conviction that there must

be rules and everyone must follow the rules... a willingness to publicly

display one's willingness to follow the rules . . . combined with a puritanical

willingness to punish any deviants.

All of which is ludicrous in a country

where there is one set of rules for the rich and powerful and another set of rules for

everyone else....

Unfriendliness? Hostility? If I sit in my room trying to read and am assaulted

by booming--whether from a neighbor's house or a passing car doesn't matter--that

is very unfriendly. And that is a common occurrence.

Or, if, as a pedestrian I have learned to exercise extreme caution because cars

resent (or ignore) the presence of naked human beings (human beings not

enclosed in climate destroying glass and steel vehicles), then I have become

nervous and tense.

Of course, the very profile and dark windows of El Paso's numerous climate

criminal vehicles is designed to be unfriendly.....

All, in all, these features of my life did not exist in Europe. In a very real sense,

the United States of America is worse, a worse place to live, less civilized.

Riding the bus is an incredibly depressing experience. Either I wait in line

with thirty other people to board the bus, or I enter an already crowded space,

after proving my worthiness to the driver. The obligatory greeting ritual

mostly painful and false.... or worse, a driver's silence knocks against me

like a slap.... It feels like we are things being

prepared for transport. Cattle entering a cattle car. The bus is noisy.

The suspension is minimal. In some parts of the city the driver is unable

to negotiate turns without bouncing the bus up against the curb.

We have to prove that we have paid--an insult. Apparently the city is

very afraid that someone might ride without paying--a grotesque

case of hostility toward the poor. Heaven Forbid that one of the

Mexican day laborers who are exploited by the local population should

one day ride a bus without paying! That would be stealing!

Grotesque hypocrisy in light of the free ride enjoyed by

Wall Street and the Pentagon and the corrupt likes of Black Water or

Haliburton or Goldman Sachs-- The criminals at Goldman

Sachs are not only greedy, but they don't care if they cause people to starve:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/16/the_food_bubble_how_wall_street

People waiting in line are impatient and bump into me.

I am impatient too. I don't like being bumped. The heat is unpleasant.

It burns your skin.

Once we are inside the bus the cold will pierce my skin like needles. I may be able to read a bit, if the bus is not too crowded. Often people stand in the aisles. Many carry packages. It is not unusual for young children to scream.

I didn't mind the noisy babies in the Vienna U-bahn, so there must be some difference in the overall atmosphere. The feeling of deprivation, of belonging to an underclass, of being left out,

being unimportant, being someone who has to prove, at every step of the way, that I've

paid..... all the while knowing that whatever I pay or whatever I earn,

whatever I do, is grabbed up by someone else...

Degrading, depressing, discouraging. Ugly. At the receiving end of American class warfare.

Sing Along¡

Canci o´n de los Pasajeros de Sun Metro

O SUN METRO, SUN METRO, SUN METRO,

¡NO ES BUENO!

SUN METRO, SUN METRO, SUN METRO,

¡O QUE FEO!

SUN METRO SUN METRO, SUN METRO

NO ES BUENO

SUN METRO, SUN METRO, SUN METRO

¡OOOOO QUE MIERDA!

New York

It would appear that the mayor of New York is getting richer, and that

the people of the city are not...

http://socialistworker.org/2010/07/14/kleptocratic-mayor-of-new-york

Dear Neighbor

Dear Neighbor, I don't hate nobody. And god bless you if you love music.
Music is a peaceful activity, and
Everybody loves music, right? But maybe you and me don't like
the same music. Right? It isn't so peaceful when your music becomes
my music, without giving me a choice, if you know what I mean....
I mean when I'm sitting in my room and I'm trying to read a book,
and it is not Jack and Jill went up the hill, and the door's closed
and the window's closed and then boom, boom, boom, and I can feel it.
You get the picture.
So maybe you are not maleducato like i said.
SO, let's just say "Peace". I don't hate nobody. and I am not your enemy.
Just be fair to me and I'll be fair to you. Respect.

Just one other thing: are you afraid of something? I mean you have two
pretty scary dogs in your back yard. Maybe you should get to know
your neighbors.....Your neighbors are not bad people
and they do not want to hurt you.

Just a thought.

Respect!
Your neighbor.

in passing....

so many dishonesties.... every day.... (1)

I continue to dislike boarding the El Paso buses, being inspected by the bus-driver

as one enters the bus...

So unnecessary.

As if they are afraid that someone will ride the bus without paying...

As if the ruling class weren't robbing us of much greater sums every day.

And then there is the insult implied by the dishonest labeling: "fare adjustment"

"adjustment" Excuse me, do you think I am stupid? Do you think if you call it

by that word, somehow it will be less ugly?

You are raising the price of public transit because a small number of powerful and wealthy individuals have been gambling with other people's money--with our money.

They are robbing us and you are pretending that we have democracy.

Please stop insulting us.

And, of course, the people who you are taking money from are precisely

those who can least afford to pay more. They don't ride the bus in El Paso

Texas because they are rich. El Paso Texas is not a city like New York or

Vienna or Bratislava where public transport is fast and convenient. In El Paso,

people use the bus when they cannot afford a car... (and most people have

enormous trucks....)

All very dishonest.

The Bus Company is defective in other ways: Wasting money to print up pieces of paper (2) that make a show of democracy...

that pretend that we, the passengers, have a say, that we, the passengers, can influence the decision that has

already been made...

All dishonest and insulting.

(1) or if you prefer: So many pieces of dishonesty... or so much dishonesty....

or so many of the events of ordinary life are so fundamentally insulting and dishonest...

(2) Here I refer to the pieces of paper in every bus inviting us to a meeting to discuss the fare increase, which is misleadingly labeled as an "adjustment"....

You should "adjust" the mayor's salary or that of the city manager or that of all the managers at the El Paso bus company...

AND HERE'S SOMETHING THAT'S EVEN MORE IMPORTANT...

I hereby propose the following reform to improve life in the city of

El Paso Texas:

The mayor, and the city manager, and all employees of "Sun Metro" and all employees of UTEP (including faculty and administrators) should be required to use the bus to commute to work.

The mayor and all city employees, AND all employees of UTEP (including

Professors and administrators) should be required by law to give up their cars.

That would be civic pride.

That would require bravery.

That would be setting an example.

And, if that happened, boy would the buses get better overnight--and there might even be a real metro (fast trains) and trams and safe bike lanes..

If the buses are good enough for ordinary citizens, then they are good enough for

the mayor or any elected official, or any employee of the government or any professor

or any president of any university....

But, in the dusty dirty desperately ugly real world...

Instead they are idiotically building new freeways. --IDIOTIC and short-sighted.

They should be putting in a real metro.

NO, I do not have anything good to say about El Paso, Texas...

Your Homework

NO, no, no...

Sorry,

I just don't get it!

This American home ownership thing.

This American car ownership thing.

No thank you!

I want no part of it!

A home means time wasted doing repairs, and buying shit.

No thank you.

That's not for me. I have better things to do with my time.

And I would rather not use my leisure time to contribute to

the wealth of the already wealthy by buying shit.

Your homework, Mr. and Ms. America, is to read Eric Fromm's

"Escape from Freedom."

Fromm will tell you how unhappy you are, and how you cannot get

happiness through your possessions.

You are making a big mistake Mr. and Ms. America.

And when you finished that reading assignment, you can start to read something

legitimate about global warming....

Homework questions to be posted in the future.

get me out of here

This is really hell.

Apparently the local citizenry have decided to designate a local smoke stack

as some sort of historical object...

A smoke stack that used to pollute and, probably, damaged the health of

citizens and workers....

Perhaps because the scenery is otherwise flat?

This is such an ugly place, but I had no idea that the ugliness had literally seeped into the brains of the people who live here.

This is so horrendous I can't even bring myself to read the story about it in the local newspaper.

Stolen Land

Stolen Land

We live here with a heavy conscience.

How else to explain the military aircraft

buzzing or zooming or merely annoying overhead?

Waiting for the bus in the miserable bus station near the border,

I see a helicopter hanging in the sky, suspended in agony.

Then there is the inner colonization:

High school students at lunch time

--large even without baggy jeans--

Eat the greasy salty food produced by various multinational companies,

decorate the ground with greasy wrappers.

--What is their future in this occupied land?

Will they buy a truck and a square of dirt,

and put a fence around their lawn where two dogs stand

guard, and then play their music loud?

Or will they fight amongst themselves for access to scarce resources?

money, power, and women?

I've never had much enthusiasm for that sort of a scramble.

So, I sit alone in a room with a low ceiling,

listening to the killers’ planes flying overhead.

--I don’t think they are protecting us.