Writing is re-writing

When I re-write I can brutally remove what I don't like.
I can cut.  I can paste.  I can re-arrange a hundred times---if I feel like it.
And I can refuse to publish, or I can annoy my friends with my drafts.

In life I enjoy no such freedom:
Who I am and what I am,
where I am,
and what I have become,
all sit there staring at me,
like an ill-formed chunk of granite,
and I haven't got the tools the stone requires.

The Importance of Graham Greene's "Quiet American"

Today when economic issues dominate discussion of the  situation in the USA, it is frequent to hear about the relatively more prosperous period after the war.  That period is precisely the setting in Graham Greene's novel "The Quiet American."  But, what that novel shows is how imperfect USA culture was even during this period of relative prosperity.


The eponymous American, Pyle, is a devotee of the idea that the USA does good in the world, and he is willing to sacrifice innocents to re-make a country as he sees fit.  The book also has something to say about the puritanism of Americans......


To be sure, today many citizens of the USA are suffering needlessly, and the future is dim.  However, it would be wrong to be content with a partial description of the way things used to be.  Thinking of Pyle's fanaticism, one might be more inclined to notice that whilst the economy goes to hell, the USA continues to murder abroad---always with the latest technology.  

Gossip and a fallacy

I have heard it said that my older sister is under no obligation to help our elderly parents---- because her husband did not help his own parents......Well, perhaps it was never said. Perhaps I have misunderstood, .....but it is worth pointing out what a stupid and barbarous thing that is to say! He should have helped his parents! And if he did not: Shame on him! He has nothing to be proud of. To repeat an error on grounds of consistency is not clever or just; it is idiocy. It is no virtue to be consistent if the first thing you did was wrong.

I hate driving, yet again...

How many times have I heard someone say, "Oh, I like driving"?----Like driving?! --- like DRIVING? Are you an idiot? Or, I suppose you have never been someplace with decent public transport--- say Copenhagen or Vienna? Have you really got nothing better to do than sit behind the wheel of a car? I mean: in the metro, you can sleep, read, let your mind wander, think about what you are going to do next---- all with no worries about some idiot crasing into you or some policeman stopping you because you failed to notice a change in the speed limit.....like driving? Maybe it is the rocking motion of the car? That primitive sensation of movement that soothes babies? If so, you would be better off in a train. Anyway the roads in El Paso, Texas ( where I am currently trapped--- but not for long if I have any luck...) are so bad that a car does not gently rock. It bounces and thuds and rattles due to the poor condition of the roads! Oh yeah, Mexican politicians squander tax money! What a laugh! As if the USA were not corrupt! Don't know whether to laugh or cry.......let's spend a few more millions on remote control killer spyplanes. After we perfect them on foreigners, we can use them to control the population of the USA. ( I can just imagine the wise men talking about this public spirited idea....) Don't you realize, my friend, that driving is work?! And you have been brain- washed into wasting years of your life performing this unpaid work!? In fact, you pay to perform this work. The stupidity of the whole operation is staggering.......gmooh!

After-thought:  (27 June Wed. 2012)
I must confess that I was bothered by my examples:  Copenhagen and Vienna.  What if you've not got the money for a plane ticket?  Well, I did once meet a relatively ordinary American who complained about the crowded Paris metro; so, it can't be so uncommon for USA people to travel abroad.  And there are places in the USA with relatively and better more public transport.  However, it is a curious fact about the North American mind-set that cities are associated with crime.  And, that is, as well, partially a matter of racism.  As in the young woman who explained that she didn't like the idea of public transit because she experienced it in Washington DC.  But, upon further discussion it emerged that she did not feel "safe" in that city, and so it was hard for her to separate her use of public transport from fear of crime.......

Incomplete thoughts about the involuntarily acquired rootlessness characteristic of the USA and the blindness of capitalism

(edited, revised, and partially expanded Monday, 25 June 2012)

Someone who signs himself as "bob mcmanus" had an interesting remark at "Crooked Timber" on 24 June:

"'My contention is that to become an American is to become deracinated in principle, capable of living anywhere, including your home person over there, so extremely rootless as to devalue and be contemptuous of other’s “rootedness” or sense of place or past. This is not and can never be a true cosmopolitanism, in accepting others traditions, we despise all traditions and aggressively attack them in the name of “freedom”, economic, political, individual.

We are the country of rationalistic nihilism, and imperialistic, culturally destructive, and genocidal not simply by history or accident but in our deepest natures. And evangelical about it."


(Note:  I confess that I do not understand:  "including your home person over there".--Perhaps it would make more sense in context, but I can't check it just now.)

The original post by Henry Brighouse on 22 June 2012 ("Imperialist Doublethink") dealt with a Washington Post editorial about Julian Assange's request for asylum in Ecuador. It is worth reading:   http://crookedtimber.org/

With respect to the quote above:  I do not find myself "capable of living anywhere.".  (Hence the existence of this blog.)

I also believe that I am not contemptuous of other's 'rootedness'....Largely because I have known and envied people who did feel a definite connection to a place.---And it can be quite beautiful to see.

I was amazed when a Spanish friend showed me around her "hometown".  She had both personal memories and shared long-term memories--stories about locally famous possibly mythical lovers--- which she shared with me---as if she were writing on various buildings the history of the people living there and her own personal history, as if the blank stones became, with her telling, covered with calligraphy or elaborate designs......

So, I wonder whether my current discomfort in the USA---a daily sensation, like  pebble in your shoe which can't be removed---is not due to my failure to share these elements of the USA psyche identified above.....(those elements and others.....)........

On the other hand, prior to living abroad, I had been forced to move within the USA many times.  And my parents were forced to leave behind their families in order for my father to secure employment.  

I used to wonder--quite often, in fact---whether Americans had not lost something very valuable, via a process in which there was no debate......no discussion.......Another feature of their uprootedness is the casual way in which (at least sometimes) one talks to complete strangers.  This was once parodied with the claim that if you meet a North American on the plane, he will tell you about his divorce, offer to lend you money, and then forget your name......But the alleged informality of USA culture might be a result of this need to move, to move for a job or a "career". If you move frequently, you need to make friends fast.

But, wait a minute!  Maybe you cannot make real friends quickly.  Maybe it just takes time!  It simply has to involve getting to know someone gradually, over time.   If so, the mobility expected in the USA is a bad thing.  (And that is my current opinion.)

On the other hand, there is a kind of myth of the American small town, which some people find appealing..... But for most Americans (I suspect), it is axiomatic that you might have to move to get a job, or to get a better job.  (To be honest, that used to be an axiom for me and my family.  Were we unique?) I believe that it is a goal of the European  Union to encourage young people to move around within Europe, in search of work.  That could change things in the direction of USA-style rootlessness......

There are genuine psychological limitations---how many names one person can remember, or how large a group can become before what's said won't be heard clearly by everyone.  (I seem to recall that the anthropologist Dunbar gave the figure as seven or eight.  In a group larger than that, when one person speaks, at least one person wont' hear what's being said.)

And, at the risk of saying what's obvious, capitalist forces are peculiarly blind.  It is most characteristic of capitalism as a system not that it is dynamic, but that its dynamism is blind. --Blind from the standpoint of genuine human flourishing, genuine happiness.  In other words, capitalism encourages actors to ignore the consequences of their actions.  They aim at profit, but profit is neither happiness nor justice, but competes with those two genuine goods.  So, to that extent, I shouldn't wonder if the human race continues to  move towards greater unhappiness (unhappiness for the vast majority of human beings) so long as we continue to allow ourselves to be organized in this fashion.

tentative thoughts

If you spent most of your life in the USA, were educated there, and then find yourself living in a country which was once dominated by the Soviet Union, it is natural enough to ask yourself about the differences between the US system and the Soviet one.  That difference is often described using the labels "capitalism" and "communism".

"Communism", however, does not correctly apply to the Soviet Union.  A communist society is a classless society--It has neither rich, nor poor, nor middle class.  One might say that a truly communist society was the goal of "communists" in Eastern Europe, and it might be thought that this intention suffices to justify use of the term.  In that case, there needs to be a further defense.  It's not enough to proclaim classlessness (or social justice) as your goal; there need to be steps taken if that proclamation is to be something more than hot air.

In the case of the United States, the trick is to align capitalism with democracy and freedom, and then drop the word capitalism.  Here, one must ask whether those under the sway of the USA (both citizens and non-citizens) are, on account of their location in the space of politics and power, more free and more able to exercise democratic rights.

The trick of USA propagandists is to define "freedom" as narrowly as possible, so that finally it comes down to the ability to sell one's self (for most people) or the ability to participate in markets.  ("Sell one's self" may be too strong; more accurately, you rent  yourself for 40 or 50 hours a week.......You sell your "labor power", if I've correctly recalled Marx....)

That is a drastically curtailed notion of freedom and human happiness.  It is, in fact, a notion which removes justice from the goods of human life---unless one can mount an economic argument to the effect that a capitalist economy has a certain structure, an argument whose conclusion is the Leibnizian claim that no better arrangement is possible.

Here, the ideologists of capitalism have over-reached themselves, and continue to do so.  The assert that capitalist economies tend toward so-called "equilibrium".

Unfortunately, that is not true.  As Richard D. Wolff has been stressing, the current disaster is only the latest in a long line of train wrecks....... Every time there is a so-called economic downturn, people lose their jobs, suffer anxiety, families fall apart.  People die sooner than otherwise they would have, and the lives that they have are not pleasant.  But this is invisible within the ideological framework instilled in the breast of every red-blooded American.

And a thought I've come across in various forms lately needs to be registered:  The very fact that the Soviet Union existed (with all of its imperfections), and existed as an alternative to the USA system, made life better within the USA.  that might not be quite right.  It could also be said that compromises were made with labor after World War Two because capitalists feared losing everything to a revolt.  (Richard D. Wolff seems to be saying that.)  However, workers in, say, communist Czechoslovakia had a kind of grey security not enjoyed today by workers in the USA.  And workers in the USA during the Cold War had (until the 1970's) advantages and comforts that have disappeared or are disappearing today.

Further Details/Recommended Reading:

See, e.g., Quiggins "Zombie Economics", or Steve Keen's "Debunking Economics", or (even more sharply) Yanis Varoufakis recent apology on behalf of the economics profession  "And the Good Ship Greece Sails On" (24 June) at http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/,  or Richard D. Wolff's "Occupy the Economy"

Medicare, MediDoor

The door, it seems, used to be a gate,
As much to keep you out,
as to let you in.

And many times today,
it's only half open.

Not a perfect metaphor,
but a pregnant one:

Not fully open,
Not fully shut,
Not adequate,
Actually inadequate,
But open just enough,
to let in a bit of air,
and light.

Not adequate,
painfully inadequate:
the assistance allotted to my elderly parents by "Medicare".