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.