I’m the general contractor and main laborer on renovations of my new house, and the job has brought me into contact with working-class Americans. I enjoy this, and experience it as a privilege: it’s part of the economy that my natural world, the upper-middle class media, shuts itself off from.
The experience has offered lessons about the meritocracy. First off, there’s a certain type of personal freedom in the working class that simply doesn’t exist in the elite. A lot of the guys I’ve worked with are wild characters. Full of strange opinion and personal eccentricity that wouldn’t be tolerated in the professional world. Working class life has always been more colorful and alive, but these guys express political ideas that would be self-censored in good jobs, and they indulge odd habits that wouldn’t work in professional life. A few years ago my wife noticed this trend and said the culture was dividing into "fuckups" and "suckups." The fuckups are more interesting, but they get nowhere. The suckups make a lot of money, but then they have to have meetings with other super-educated people to argue over one word in an article, or an ad campaign, or a press release. No freedom at all. (I just got a phone call from a well-paid publicist berating me for one phrase I used in an article in an important publication; there’s just so much riding on elite media…)
All the working guys are living near the edge. The insulators have tattoos and an attitude. The taper lives in a trailer park and stutters. The movers were most of them missing teeth. The sheetrocker has a drug problem and has a brilliant-self-destructive gleam. None of them is making out. When I gave guys a $20 or $40 tip, they always accepted it quickly and gratefully, and sometimes brought it up before they left the job.
The large issue this speaks to is the widening divide between the rich and poor. There are more rich than ever, and they’re ever more distant from the working class. There is no sense of a continuity of experience, let alone unity. The middle class is pulverized, and of course hardly any one who pushed for the Iraq war has a child serving there. Tony Judt has a fascinating review in NYRB of Robert Reich’s new book on "Supercapitalism," headlined, the "Wrecking Ball of Innovation." Judt notes that Reich, like other meritocrats, is complacent about the effects of globalization. Hey, that’s just the way technology and capitalism work. There’s no human choice or culture in Reich’s equation, there aren’t even politics, Judt notes: for Reich, this is the natural order of things. Judt points out that "super-capitalism" tends to undermine "the noncommercial institutions and relations–of cohesion, trust, custom, restrain, obligation, morality, authority–that it inherited." Economic growth has little connection to democracy; look at China.
It’s interesting that Alan Greenspan has shown more of a moral take on these issues than Reich. He has said that the loss of a common American experience, the division into two Americas, could lead to civil unrest. Judt hints at the same when he suggests that Reich’s worldview points to "an incipient collapse of the core values and institutions of the republic….In Reich’s many examples it is the modern international corporation, its overpaid executives, and its ‘value-obsessed’ shareholders who seem to incarnate the breakdown of civic values." Pat Buchanan is more alive to this than any hundred meritocrats.
Working on my house, I’ve seen this other America first-hand. I relish the culture; but then I have the freedom to do so. When I’m exhausted, I just step back into elite culture. Right now I’m staying at a friends’ house in Garrison, New York, a fancy community, and the guys have arrived to blow the leaves, three guys in dingy uniforms. Look what the meritocracy has done: turned the other half of society into a servant class.
A great Saint once wrote:
"If there was hope, it must lie in the proles because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. It's enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet–!
The great majority of Proles did not even have telescreens in their homes. Even the civil police interfered with them very little. There was a vast amount of criminality in London, a whole world-within-a-world of thieves, bandits, prostitutes, drug-peddlers, and racketeers of every description; but since it all happened among the Proles themselves, it was of no importance. In all questions of morals they were allowed to follow their ancestral code. The sexual Puritanism of the Party was not imposed upon them. Promiscuity went unpunished, divorce was permitted. For that matter, even religious worship would have been permitted if the proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting it. They were beneath suspicion. As the Party slogan put it:
"Proles and animals are free".
"In reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous. No attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus in on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice."
I see the difference in those that work locally, and on things, and those that work globally and on images or shadows.
Here as well, supposedly "working class", inferences hinge on a word. This board of "directors".
Those that work ADD their savings, their net worth. Those that invest MULTIPLY their savings, their net worth.
Adding is ecological. Multiplying is a disaster waiting to happen.
Reich writing about what is happening in the upper atmosphere, does not indicate disrespect for what happens on the ground.
Very good writing, BTW. Kudos to your wife for her elegant taxonomy (Fuck-ups and Suck-ups). Those two words contain more wisdom than all the forest-denuding bloviations of David Brooks. Suck-ups live in the gated communities, Fuck-ups are allowed in to fix their dishwashers.
(An aside–what gated community housewife, left alone on a weekday, has not felt the frisson of fear, surrounded by a sea of sweating Mexicans, laboring grimly among the arbor vitae?)
Re-reading your post, two things come to mind. How new is this phenomenon of division? I'm reading my daughter's assigned book, 'The Jungle,' and it's a vivid reminder that society wasn't all suit-and-tie wearing Jimmy Stewarts 70 years ago. The examples multiply.
Also, your "elite" is that of the chattering class, or the gray-flannel suit-wearers of the finance class. But there is another elite, that does enjoy a greater degree of freedom: the artistic/creative elite. Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ken Tynan never had "strange opinions and personal eccentricities?" Ha! Or, for that matter, Sid Vicious, Jim Morrison, or Marilyn Manson, to name other noteworthy cultural mandarins? (I'm really dating myself, I realize)
There is an irony re: the direct connection and accountability that that engenders and the Israel discussion.
BOTH Israeli and Palestinian communities are that, communities, moreso than abstractions.
The effort for sustainability and more direct connection is a more important issue of discussion than the issues of resentment and the artificial separations that that generates.
Another tension that is relevant is the tension of scale. Like political choices, choices of scale of governance and community include more than just two. More than just the local and the global.
In my region, many thoughtful people are pursuing "relocalization". I love the motivations, but consider the demand to be impractical.
The optimal scale for modern economy is regional, say the scale of New England. Human scale as in capable of face to face discussion, but larger than local, larger than hands on perse for organization, market scale, governance.
When I grew up in New Rochelle, NY, Garrison was the sticks, rural, just a couple miles from "wilderness" Bear Mountain. Now apparently it is suburbs.
Where did you move to Phil? Send me an e-mail please.
Sorry to have to point this out, but why are so many of the people involved in this-Reich, Greenspan, Friedman-are Jewish. What has happened to social justice? It seems that Neoliberalism, like Neoconservatism, is a heavily Jewish phenomenon, an example of Liberalism and Leftism "scurrying rightward."
Also, Israel, the Jewish State, which for all it's problems was once a model Social Democratic state, is going the same way as America too.
Bravo to you Phil Weiss for having the courage to recognise Pat Buchanan's perceptiveness to what makes a nation work.
It is a tragedy for American Jewry that you and Ron Unz are among the exceptions.
"Free trade" and the U.S. empire including the ridiculous subsidising of Israel are destroying the American nation. My hope is that our Jewish-dominated elite would see the folly of foreign, economic and many of our social policies.
As I have posted before, if the US breaks down because of no jobs, no middle class and a worthless currency, the masses will come looking for revenge…(just like the helpless, humiliated Palestinian bomber looking for revenge against the terrible injustice perpetrated upon him by the Zionists with US assistance).
Which group has done the most to create the America that we have today?
How often do we hear that service jobs will replace the lost manufacturing jobs?
The WASP elite may have run a segregated society but we have segregation too. It is just more sophisticated. Not by race but by "education", class etc Moreover the WASP elite knew the masses through militray service and cared about them . They had a genuine sense of noblesse oblige. Todays's elite (AND NOT JUST THE JEWISH PART) like Robert Reich live and think in abstractions oblivious to the harm their policies are doing.
John – Is really hoping for a White Christmas, but maybe one with a little red in it as well — as long as the red is the blood of the jews.
There already is a split into two Americas. African Americans are predominantly represented in the lower classes where there is high poverty, drug use and crime. This type of split could occur more easily in society because African Americans are a minority group. Could there be further relatively-permanent bifurcations in the non-lower classes? Sure. But whether such a bifurcation will be stable is dependent upon the relative population in each of the two groups, if the upper group outnumbers the lower group and has state power, then it is likely to be stable.
It is depends on how it is done.
I am of the opinion that the age of genetic engineering and designer babies is rushing to the present. This changes the game a bit if we can make most of these technologies available to those in all classes at an affordable cost. To me the solution is technological, we need to improve and equalize our human capital across race and ethnic lines.
I wish no ill will…to anyone…do you think that I want to see our society fall apart further with my own dollars worth nothing?
if the mob comes looking for revenge how discriminating do you think that they are gonna be?
how can you infer that I want anyone to be hurt….am I allowed to comment on our elite?
John – give it a rest. You and I both know that you'd be the asshole on the street screaming Jude! Jude! Over there! I saw one with a baby! Get her!
If you were really serious about the decline of western civilization you would be worried about a whole lot more than the jews.
To: Donald…
okay I get you now..I am not allowed to comment on:
"free trade",
open borders,
off shoring of jobs,
the disappearing middle class,
dual loyalty –(hmm may John Judas of TNR continue to do so?)
the absence of the elites performing military service,(do you have anyone in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, Donald….just curious),
the segmenting and fragmentation of society,
the lack of transparency in government,
ignoring the Constitution's requirement that war be declared by Congress before we start one;
AND of course
the disproportionate composition of our elite from one group.
I understand that I may only comment on it if I am praising it and declaring it to be superior to the old WASP elite in every way.
BTW Donald, I have posted that there is plenty of blame to go around.
John – I'm not Jewish. My wife and daughters are. I know your type. Trust me. I've got some second cousins who would gladly blame jews for all their personal failures. I grew up with this crap. I've read your comments before and didn't say anything, but a man can only hold his tongue so long. FYI – my girls are not old enough to serve, so the issue is moot. If they had to serve they would serve. One wants to be a civil rights lawyer like her Mom and the other wants to be a doctor like my father-in-law. I can't think of two more giving and loving kids, and the thought of some hateful little bigot like yourself trying to blame the litany of the world's problems on their collective group makes me frankly want to tear your head off. I actually like Ron Unz. I read Phil's blog every now and then because I think the neo-conservative positions are wrong. Most of my jewish in-laws do too. I have one brother-in-law who supports the neo-cons, but it sure isn't out of any deep love for Israel. He could give a rats ass about that country when it comes right down to it. He is under the mistaken belief that the neo cons have the right idea about how to insure our long term economic prosperity. I couldn't disagree more, but I don't label him a dual loyalist. Are there some jewish dual loyalists? Yes, but they are not at all typical of the Jews I know. I worry more about your ilk than I do about them. If you want to pretend that the jews are now THE power structure, and not just that some of them are now part of THE power structure, than expect me to be right behind you calling you out on it.
Back to the issue of fuckups and suckups. I'm the reader of this blog who is a fuckup. I hope that the suckup readers of this comment know that there's a lot of contempt headed your way. We figured out a long time ago that the suckups weren't on our side, and that we are the ones who pay for your mistakes. We fight the wars, since, really, I mean, look at you guys. It's good that the warbloogers and chickenhawks stay at their desks. We're priced out of the colleges. We get fired for saying the word 'union' so we pretty much have to go to it alone. We go to jail more, not because we commit more crimes, but because you can hire better lawyers. Becuase you look like the guys who run the system and we don't.
We are, however, a lot less scared than you are. Hell, if we weren't we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Give couragae a try. It's why I read this Weiss. He's giving it a try.
Joe Bageant sometimes comes across as a beer-bellied village crank, but this is pretty good, from 'Let's Dump Prepackaged Class Identities':
"…But country music has got to be the supreme example. People work like dogs, have few or no educational opportunities, live surly lives of struggle just trying to get by, get their cods shot off for the amusement of Cheney and Condi, yet, the country music industry sells even that identity back to the very people who are being screwed and should be pissed as hell about it but aren't because of the cultural ghetto we poor whites are raised in. As the old Johnny Russell song says, "There's no place I'd rather be than right here, with my red neck and white socks and blue ribbon beer." And so the nine-buck-an-hour skidder operator with the double hernia and no health insurance listens to the song and says to himself: "Hey! That's my life! And he's a star and he's singing a hit about it, so other people must be satisfied with it. I reckon there's no place I rather be than right here! That was true in 1973 when Johnny Russell won a Grammy for the song and it's still true. It's a damned good song. I'm still playing it.
The country music industry helped sell the heartland working mook on the virtues of dying in Iraq. The skidder operator's wife sits inputting billing data at the local hospital for $6.00 an hour, listening to a song about dead soldier's cherried out car sitting in the garage, waiting for his son to become old enough to drive it with reverence under a heroic sky. In country music everybody is made hero. Truck drivers are bigger than life figures, hemorrhoids, stress and all. It's much the same as some rap music mythologizing pointless street violence. Take a truly fucked situation and sell it back as bigger than life. And so the production people at dreary workplaces listen to country music all day, and the truck driver is hearing the same songs 3,000 miles away, and the house painter has it playing on his paint spattered portable radio, and identity is further hardened among millions of Americans: "I might be dumb, uneducated, and worked to death — but I am a hero. I AM America. More American than anyone who is not the same as me." So anyone who listens to classical music is less American by inference. " . . . and besides, I am willing to die in Iraq, just like the hometown boys in the songs. There is no better proof than that!"
Still, one increasingly hears more hopeful strains in country music. Singer Chely Wright, who has performed for US troops in Al Asad, Iraq, and whose background is poor enough and white enough to be one of my own family, and whose ancestors and kinfolk, like mine, have also fought in every American war, sings in "Bumper of my SUV":
So I hope that lady in her mini-van
Turns on her radio and hears this from me
As she picks up her kids from their private school
And drives home safely on our city streets
Or to the building where her church group meets
Only the deadest political ear could fail to hear class resentment in those lyrics. Growing up in the poor white working class leaves you angry for life, even after you've become successful. But the time is growing very ripe for liberals to wise up and come explain to my people just who it was that made them a growing permanent underclass. If we speak honestly, they will listen. But first we must unsell ourselves that our moral high ground and political awareness makes us superior."
Hey, Joe, I'm white trash, too, but just who is it makes all those folk line up to buy their cigs, lotto cards, and beer every night? Hmm?
To: Donald
Donald, I don’t think that you read my posts in context of a blog that is specifically dedicated to examining Jewish use and abuse of power to forward Israel’s interests. Waht do you think is the purpose of Weiss' blog?
Re: you claim that “I pretend that Jews are the power structure whereas they are merely part of it….”
Err Donald, I know that you only read Weiss’ blog occasionally. And it shows. Weiss comments that the “Jerusalem Post boasted that 51% of the 100 most influential Americans are Jewish….” Does that mean that about half our elite is Jewish? To corroborate that claim, Weiss has posted that “half of Republican donor money is Jewish and that 60% of Democrat donor money id Jewish….” My own data says that half the partners in major law firms are Jewish and that Jews are disproportionately represented in most professions. I believe this to be true. Certainly Jews often boast about their exploits and their influence. Have you ever noticed that? (your wife is a civil rights attorney…doubtless she believes in “diversity”…should we have some more diverse influence in who gets to own Congressmen and the President?)
Is it okay if a goyim like me to join Weiss and comment on this extraordinary concentration of power? If Weiss can comment, why can’t I? I have said nothing beyond what Weiss has commented.
Seriously Donald, how do I go beyond Weiss? Is it my speculation about how America ends?
Question:
So Donald, in your mind what part, what % of our power structure is Jewish? What number would be acceptable to you for me to say without you declaring me to be anti-Semitic? (and threatening me with violence)
Let me say that I don’t resent the Jewish rise to power. It reflects hard work and intelligence. For the most part. Yet the purpose of Weiss’ blog is to analyze Jewish power in America and how it affects our foreign policy. IS THAT OKAY?
I agree with you that some people seek out scapegoats for their own failures. My warning is that Jewish dual loyalty makes the possibility of scapegoating more likely because there is SOME merit to the charge.
Look Donald, Weiss gets to comment on John Judas’s article in TNR that “dual loyalty is a central feature to Jewish life…” I agree. If you disagree please provide data…honestly I would love to see it.
Donald, you are fortunate to be the father of two healthy children. I am slightly envious. I hope that they grow up to be like Weiss and put their country first and not lobby for undeclared wars that others less fortunate will have to fight.
Donald, cool it. Read what I have written and see it in the context of a blog dedicated to examining the effects of concentrated power with little or no accountability or examination save a few isolataed blogs.
Recipe for revolution? No, how about adequate checks and balances in the labor market — nothing more radical — nothing better paid European workers haven't been practicing for decades (albeit with an un-American taste for the welfare state). To wit; my latest wake up- working America diatribe (still a work in progress):
********************
Had Adam Smith lived to see the 1800s…
…we would surely, today, have the opportunity to read his interesting dissertation on the newly occurring "race to the bottom".
The race to the bottom hit American labor (not for the first time) in the early 1970s; but it hit European labor steadily (and usually harder) beginning 200 years ago. Over the past 50 years Europeans have come up with a basic market correcting solution which takes the pressure off both sides of the bargaining table — sector-wide labor agreements and its equivalents — while American labor has yet to wake up and find what it has been hit by.
The race to the bottom works like this: The maximum ownership can possibly pay labor in any market is just short of what would put it bottom line into the red. The lowest wage labor can possibly accept is just enough to barely keep body and soul together. In between is room for fair play. Since the advent of industrialization, the maximum ownership could pay has sometimes become the least labor could accept — both met at the wage bottom.
Individual weavers who once made a fair living were replaced by 100 (?) times more productive steam loom operators who were reduced not merely to subsistence but to the lowest level of same, living on oat cakes three times a day, unable to afford wheat bread. In like manner in California, today, Safeway supermarket workers cannot hold on to their previous pay scales because Wal-Mart is entering the retail food market paying bottom wages.
Under more perfect preindustrial competition in, wages and prices were set by INNUMERABLE participants in each market and between different wares markets — the free interaction of free wills naturally arriving at a more fair distribution of prices and wages. Under industrialization prices need to stay as low as the EASILY IDENTIFIABLE competition's prices — and the wages of more interchangeable labor are the easiest cost to keep down (at least until they hit the oat cake barrier) — the unfree interaction of unfree wills leading to the race to the wage bottom.
It is finally time for America to wake up and see unfettered market theory as about as unrealistic as communism — and for the same reason — both theories mostly miss how self-interest warps their outcomes in practice — both being equally out of touch with that all essential fair play requirement: adequate checks and balances.
Adequate checks and balances should be all or almost all what is weighed in every judgment of whether or not government should intervene in the free market — nothing less and nothing more. [give examples]
Checks and balances are not everything in most public policy questions — given the realities of human nature they are the only thing.
I'm wondering about Donald. For someone who is not Jewish, and who finds the discussion of Jewish power to be in bad taste, what brings you to this site? Did you just drop in by accident?
Well…I just have to address the fuck-up-suck-up thing (love that description!) and Phil's notions about the super educated as he put it.
First I have to admit that I am a WASP and my family has what is called old money. Money and degrees aren't anything new to my family. Both my brothers are Harvard MBA's…half a dozen of my 15 cousins are Yale Law graduates and so on. And we are Southerners…sorry if that destroys anyone's redneck theories.
Now, as for the "educated" Phil is enamored of, why I don't know, maybe it is a new experience for him or he perceives it as the ultimate status thing.
But the educated are not necessarily the intelligent. One of my Harvard brothers is an idiot,sincerely, he really is an idiot. He can read and make sense of what he reads and memorize, he runs a huge business sucessfully…..but curiousity and imagination and intitutive thinking and ability to sniff the air for forces and changes at work around him and in the world….he has none. His brain is not tuned to process the whispers and roars and bits of seemingly unrelated info into any possibilities or conclusions that did not come from his past educational disciplines. He knows what he knows the way he was taught to know it and that is that. The ability to listen or even think to listen to the fuck-ups who are usually the first to reflect in non educated words what is going to happen next, what actually is afoot in the working mass engines that keep the suck-ups afloat…he doesn't have that either. For all his education that would simply never occur to him. Education and a degree just gives you a way to use your intelligence,it doesn't make you smart if the raw material isn't there.
The biggest mistakes people ever make, and Phil looks a little guilty of this,…is assuming they are smarter than other people.. and ….assuming other people are smarter than them.
Both suck-ups and fuck-ups make these two mistakes equally.
I don't need to give any current day examples do I?
As Ralph Nader has been pushing Effortocracy, which is pay based on how hard you work, which would produce a more egalitarian society. If that has been the case, I would move from a fuckup in a suckup world to purely a fuckup world since the only thing that put me there is my ability despite my lack of effort. But hey, for social equality, that is probably the only way to go.
Better that the fuck-ups didn't, and better that the suck-ups didn't.
Instead both contributing, both valued.
Phil is proposing inquiry towards transformation (hopefully), not blame.
For those here, that presume that he is merely a "good Jew", meaning supportive of the neo-fascist party line (even the version that calls itself "left", or the one that calls itself "libertarian"), you're wrong.
I was groomed for suckupdom, but alas, all my heroes have always been fuckups. Thank God.
"One of my Harvard brothers is an idiot…"
Probably not. Nature is a bit smarter than us and it creates it's very own version of suckups and fuckups. If your brother is one of the elder ones he possibly had the leave to grow in a dominant role. For those who have this opportunity the "other" is an irrelevant element. If he is one of the younger ones, then you should thank the gods for saving your family from extinction, because in western man if the dominant trait is too intense in an elder brother it may very well destroy the whole family.
Maybe when you are less involved with the subject you will perceive that excessive consciousness about "the other" is not necessarily an advantage. Why even jews are a good lesson, don't they restrict their moral boundaries to include only other jews, only other chosen ones?
In a world where you're bound to meet people like Donald who "wants to tear heads off" or Wittys who want to lie americans into being israeli slaves, being able to dismiss their lamments ("my poor girls!" or "I'm hurt when people call Vader evil!") and focus on their intent is what really matters.
I'm sure your brother cannot be easily swindled by sentimentalism and is not propense to feel guilty. Therefore he cannot be thrown into the "liberal" cage so many of the suckups of this world live in. Maybe americans will need people like your brother in the near future. Time will tell.
And if I'm not mistaken there is a third element besides the fuckups and suckups. How would Phil's wife name the top dogs who own us all?
I am Jewish and I can understand how Donald feels when reading some of the comments here. There is a tremendous amount of diversity within the Jewish community and range of opinions on the war, Israel, capitalism, and pretty much any other topic you can think of. We have a saying – 'get two jews in a room and you'll have three opinions."
It boils my blood as well to think that my children and grandchildren are to be held responsible for the actions of some Jews, despite having nothing to do with those people and actually having opposing positions on many issues. You don't see me or others calling for the heads of WASPs because Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have done a horrible job and wasted our young people's lives and our funds. Nor do we call for the heads of African-Americans because Condi and Powell both facilitated this debacle in Iraq. I haven't read John's others posts so I can't speak to what Donald has claimed, but I've read enough of the comments here to understand how a parent would feel.
"How would Phil's wife name the top dogs who own us all?"
You mean the ones who killed Kennedy, lo these 44 years ago?
(Had to toss that in)
The F's and S's will soon have competition from the R's. The robots. Ask yourself (it's a fun exercise) how many of those clerks at Wal!Mart are going to be replaced by robots. Or at Burger-Boy, or at Petrol Petes? How about–100%
Okay, those are the service f/ups. It might take a bit longer to get to robotic assembly line workers…uh, wait, already done. Well, a bit longer to get to robotic sheetrockers and appliance fixers and lawn mowers. The less automated, the harder to robotize, but only a matter of time, my pretties.
Robot soldiers? Many billions being spent already on that–do a Google search. Watch some of those videos of what is already out there (and unclassified). Didn't these people see The Terminator? (Or, GULP, I guess they did).
Robot suck-ups? What better suck-up than a robot? Not the least shred of remorse when they fire 10,000 fuck-ups on Christmas Eve. Not a trace of self-incrimination. A capitalist's wet dream, done in silicon and carbon-fiber. Out-sourcing is a first, modest step. How long before most of these soulless number-crunchers are replaced with soulless machines? Including the Harvard idiots?
I'm not a believer in so-called "strong" AI: I don't think machines will ever think. But ask yourself: how many suck-ups actually think, as opposed to processing memorized algorithms?
Go down the list of jobs. It's frightening, and it's going to bring the most massive social upheaval in history, the automated loom of the 1700s writ large, a kind of mechanized Black Death.
——————
"Here the hangman stops his cart:
Now the best of friends must part.
Fare you well, for ill fare I:
Live, lads, and I will die.
"Oh, at home had I but stayed
'Prenticed to my father's trade,
Had I stuck to plane and adze,
I had not been lost, my lads.
"Then I might have built perhaps
Gallows-trees for other chaps,
Never dangled on my own,
Had I left but ill alone.
"Now, you see, they hang me high,
And the people passing by
Stop to shake their fists and curse;
So 'tis come from ill to worse.
"Here hang I, and right and left
Two poor fellows hang for theft:
All the same's the luck we prove,
Though the midmost hangs for love.
"Comrades all, that stand and gaze,
Walk henceforth in other ways;
See my neck and save your own:
Comrades all, leave ill alone.
"Make some day a decent end,
Shrewder fellows than your friend.
Fare you well, for ill fare I:
Live lads, and I will die."
'The Carpenter's Son
A. E. Housman
"Here hang I, and right and left
Two poor fellows hang for theft:
All the same's the luck we prove,
Though the midmost hangs for love.
Splendid!
Here's my take:
Here hang I, and in same luck
Hangs the fuck and hangs the suck
Though up and up did we belong
Eagle's love was eagle's wrong
I find it curious that the fate of the US dollar is now appears to be in the hands of China, which is ruled by the direct heirs of Mao Tse Tung.
John Lennon sang mockingly,"But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow". However, Mao's picture is on all the Chinese money right this very moment, so I guess that makes about a billion people "carrying pictures of Chairman Mao".
The idea always was that the opposing internal forces in capitalism, called the "contradictions" would bring it down eventually. The problem is that millenarians always expect (demand) the millennium in their lifetime. You could say that all revolutions to date have been impatient "cesareans". Perhaps it will come finally with a whimper instead of a bang.
What we have now with globalization is unfettered capitalism in its most advanced state and if the contradictions are really there they should become very evident and have real consequences. Keep the faith.
The big question for Americans in this scenario is will we be "raptured" or will we be "left behind"??
We'll move to a single global currency in a single world market, with single product quality and worker protection laws.
To Stuart Wolisnsky
Hi Stuart:
there really seems to be some confusion as to what this blog is all about….read Weiss' own posts!! It is to analyze Jewish power in America and how it affects the culture, the economy and our foreign policy. Inevitably we are gonnna have to look at the composition of the elite….funny when things are going half right Jews are quick to trumpet their contribution…apparently Weiss and others should make no comment on the failures and what might have caused them.
Diversity in the Jewish community:
hmm can you name me one prominent Jewish leader who has discussed the TRILLIONS that Isreal has cost the US between higher oil prices, direct aid and needless enmity with the Arab/Islamic world…..Stuart are you familiar with the 9-11 Commission and their analysis that the 911 attack was blowback for our ME policies….can you post some cites here for my benefit of what mainstream Jewish publications have discussed THAT aspect of the report?
Weiss wanted to make this blog part of the NY Observer but the pro Isreal types said no to him….where oh where is this diversity?
Is Richard's last name a joke or something?
After thinking about this more it also occurs to me that suck-ups are more robotic than fuck-ups. Fuck-ups would be hard to robotize.
In early days we revered the gunslinger or the sherrif, more then the preacher or school teacher. We still rever the prize fighter, the football star more than the intellectual unless he produces some kind of great wealth or startling invention.
The evolving conditions of societies seem to determine who is the suck-up or fuck-up at any given time.
"It boils my blood as well to think that my children and grandchildren are to be held responsible for the actions of some Jews, despite having nothing to do with those people and actually having opposing positions on many issues."
And yet in your anger all the names you could conjure up were gentile names.
"We have a saying – 'get two jews in a room and you'll have three opinions.'"
Let me see…
- jew 1: "it was Bush!"
- jew 2: "it was Cheney!"
- gentile passerby: "what about Wolf…."
- j1 and j2 in unison: "shut your mouth up, you antisemite!" (that being the default third opinion)
- comes Witty: "there are many names and many opinions, it only matters if you are an actor!"
- gentile passerby: "I guess three makes a lobby…"
- j1, j2 and Witty in unison: "Protocols everywhere!" (that being the default fourth opinion)
Bush was responsible for the actions of his administration.
What do you think about the performance of the Bush administration?
I live in Reno, Nevada. Conservative Republican. Registered. Because of new schedule we are now caucus country. Suddenly people call us.
Ring: Yes?
Republican campaign: Who will you want as a Republican nomenee?
Me: Ron Paul.
Republican campaign: Your second choice?
Me: Non-Hillary democrat.
Republican campaign: But you are Republican!
Me: Yes, and I wish your candidate Mitt Romney was one too!
Republican campaign: Who do you think he is?
Me: A big money puppet in Republican uniform.
Romney guy (puzzled) And Giuliani?
Me: Giuliani same as Romney plus a dash of Mussolini!
Romney guy: SLAM!!!
Me: Another 50 bucks to Ron Paul campaign.
What is the purpose of this blog?
It is to anlayze and frankly discuss a matter that few wiull dare discuss….disproportionate Jewsih power and influence upon American culture–the arts, science, politics etc.
There are no shortage of media praising Jews for their contributions to this country. Nor should there be. Any sane peson has gotta be grateful for the polio vaccine for example. But the other side of the story needs to be discussed also.
We goyim are people and parents too. And we love this country. And we dont yearn to anywhere else. We want ouyr govt to be transparent in its dealings and accountable…that means no dual loyalty.
Yup, Witty, Bush is responsible for his failures. But so are the neo conservatives for their failures. So also is AIPAC which has been gunning for an undeclared war with Iran. So is the Jewish community for failing to rein in AIPAC as AIPAC beat the drums for war with Iran and blocked Ron Paul's resolution reminding our neo-con President what the Constitution says…..Tell me Witty where is the message board that I can go to to discover all this Jewish diversity where Jews are livid about AIPAC and the neo Cons and the near total absence of Jews from combat units in the USA ??
BTW Donald, Witty and Saul….nothing that I have just posted is one iota different in substance from what Weiss posts and says…..why can't I say what he says?
What is the purpose of this blog?
It is to anlayze and frankly discuss a matter that few wiull dare discuss….disproportionate Jewsih power and influence upon American culture–the arts, science, politics etc.
There are no shortage of media praising Jews for their contributions to this country. Nor should there be. Any sane peson has gotta be grateful for the polio vaccine for example. But the other side of the story needs to be discussed also.
We goyim are people and parents too. And we love this country. And we dont yearn to anywhere else. We want ouyr govt to be transparent in its dealings and accountable…that means no dual loyalty.
Yup, Witty, Bush is responsible for his failures. But so are the neo conservatives for their failures. So also is AIPAC which has been gunning for an undeclared war with Iran. So is the Jewish community for failing to rein in AIPAC as AIPAC beat the drums for war with Iran and blocked Ron Paul's resolution reminding our neo-con President what the Constitution says…..Tell me Witty where is the message board that I can go to to discover all this Jewish diversity where Jews are livid about AIPAC and the neo Cons and the near total absence of Jews from combat units in the USA ??
BTW Donald, Witty and Saul….nothing that I have just posted is one iota different in substance from what Weiss posts and says…..why can't I say what he says?
"What do you think about the performance of the Bush administration?"
Me? I'm a 3rdwrd monkey. We avoid bush round here because it gives no shadow and summer is comming hot. All in all the shrub administration is chaotic, with dry leafless branches everywhere, like a muckrake thorny generaly speaking. Though our homeland we secure throwing chert off the edge of boughs, still there are no fucoids or suckoids to eat.
Phil Weiss post from Nov 17 2007 (what I say is no different from what he posts….)
Weiss extract:
One of my themes on this site is that Jewishness played a role in the prowar movement (just as Islam plays a role in jihadist radicalism). Jewish neocons were aggressive about using American power to preserve Israel's security, while liberal Jewish hawks asserted over and over that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and completely neglected the apartheid road system that is talked about across the Arab world. Until liberal Jews come to terms with this element of the war support, Jewish intellectual life will remain in denial/crisis, the left will be riven by unspoken suspicions on this score and will remain ineffective, the neocons will remain unchallenged intellectually, and our foreign policy will remain broken.
Ask Phil what his purpose is.
My sense it is different than yours, and to a different audience.
John,
My sense is also that you don't have a clue as to what my positions and actions are.
Let us not forget, on this great day of injun slaughter OOOPS I mean thanksgiving, Eugene Debs' TREASONOUS utterance, that "The Master Class has always declared wars, and the Subject Class has always fought the battles." Which utterance caused the "liberal democrat" Wilson to send Debs to Federal prison (whence he ran for president himself, winning a million votes from his prison cell). The Debs utterance is just as true today.
john,
Who is Saul?
I think Mr. Witty is right. Why don't you email Philip Weiss personally and discuss with him whether you both have the same agenda. I recall you posting some ominous and threatening prophecies earlier.
Philip: I think you owe it to John here to clarify your positions, if necessary. Poor John spent an inordinate amount of his holiday posting on your blog, when he could have spent it with his loved ones.
-Dave
Tomorrow there will be a federal election in Australia and with a bit of luck we will be rid of John Howard and his mates.
The particular topic of Phil's post makes the following (part of an) article by the Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, who tomorrow night might be Australian Prime Minister-elect (as the polls suggest), quite apposite:
"Contemporary British conservatives such as Michael Oakeshott have starkly warned against a "brutopia" of unchecked market forces. Equally, American conservatives such as the columnist George F Will have cautioned that capitalism unrestrained is a "solvent" that can dissolve the social fabric. Nevertheless, this tradition of conservatism finally capitulated to the Thatcher-Reagan onslaught of the 1980s, which saw the political ascendancy of neo-liberalism on both sides of the Atlantic.
In all of this, the influence of Friedrich Hayek (1889-1992), the leading neo-liberal economist, cannot be overstated. In Australia, it is writ large in the Australian Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute of Public Affairs, Quadrant and the rest of the Australian neo-liberal establishment. He is to a generation of neo-liberals as Keynes was to an earlier generation of social democrats.
Hayek railed against classical conservatives for standing for nothing, arguing that liberals and conservatives had merely formed a tactical alliance against communism. But his new definition of morality was itself disturbingly minimalist. In Beyond Right and Left, David McKnight outlines Hayek's position:
Hayek defines morality as those attitudes that are necessary for, and developed within the market … These concern rules about private property, honesty, contract, exchange, trade, competition, gain and privacy. These are what Hayek understands by moral rules. The unexpected … concomitant of this notion of cultural evolution is that feelings of altruism and obligation are here seen as its antithesis, as primitive instincts from earlier hunter societies, which have to be overcome.
Because of social evolution, Hayek argued, there are virtually no shared values between societies, other than liberty and the desire for limitless material acquisition. These minimalist values were the product of social and cultural evolution which, in Darwinian fashion, "selected" those values best suited to survival in the modern environment. He explicitly repudiated solidarity and altruism in favour of private property and contract: "An order in which everyone treated his neighbour as himself would be one where comparatively few could be fruitful and multiply."
McKnight notes that the only domains in which Hayek allows for the "primitive" feelings of solidarity and altruism are the family and voluntary associations. In Hayek's words, "If we were always to apply rules of the extended order [of capitalism and the market] to our more intimate groupings we would crush them." (The emphasis is Hayek's own.) In his analysis, McKnight rightly concentrates on the central vulnerability in this philosophy: the problem that arises from the commodification of all things, that is, "the transformation of obligations based on love and altruism into those of commodity-based economic values (i.e. money)". He describes the central dilemma:
Hayek recognised this paradoxical inconstancy, and proposed that we must simply learn to "live simultaneously within different kinds of orders within different rules – those of the markets and those of the family. We must be ruthlessly self-interested in the market and sweetly caring in the family; greedy at work and selfless at home …"
Herein lies the core challenge for conservatives, as the impact of neo-liberalism cannot be effectively quarantined from its effect on the family – and beyond the family to other sub-economic, reciprocal relationships within communities, and other social and spiritual associations. Once again, McKnight distils it best:
Rather than the two worlds existing simultaneously, one world is slowly crushing the other. Hayek's intellectual paradigm has turbo-charged the privatised, marketised economy, which is relentlessly encroaching on the life-world of family, friends and community. The invisible hand is clutching at the invisible heart and slowly choking it. Thus the story of New Capitalism's effect on the family is just part of a wider story of what is happening to all non-market relations between people. Bonds of respect, civility and trust between people are being weakened, and relations based on competition, self-interest and suspicion are growing.
. Friedrich Hayek visited Australia in 1976 and gave an address at Sydney University in which he attacked "the atavism of social justice" and argued that notions of moral obligation were hangovers from earlier evolutionary periods. He was, at least, consistent. And, through the agency of Margaret Thatcher's prime ministership, his ideas were propagated across the world.
…
Social democrats take part of their philosophical inheritance from Adam Smith, as interpreted by Keynes, Samuelson, Galbraith and, in Australia's case, Nugget Coombs. Modern Labor, following Smith, argues that human beings are both "self-regarding" and "other-regarding". By contrast, modern Liberals, influenced by Hayek, argue that human beings are almost exclusively self-regarding. They distort Adam Smith, adopting his Wealth of Nations while ignoring the philosophical framework outlined in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. As Smith stated in Moral Sentiments, "However selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."
Smith conceived of a market supported by a complex set of social relationships based on reciprocity, trust and civic commitment. Modern economists might describe this as the "social capital" necessary to underpin and enhance economic performance. As Peter Dougherty has noted in his recent study:
Smith emphasised the essential connections between strong, trust-building social institutions and the productive economic machinery of markets, a relation designed not only to expand wealth, but to instil virtue – to multiply fiscal as well as social capital … Smith laboured a lifetime to show how institutions and incentives could be structured to make us better producers and consumers as well as better neighbours.
This is a far broader enterprise than the destruction of social capital and institutions that Hayek saw as almost "de rigueur". Instead it aims to assist in shaping distinctive social-democratic values that are sensitive to market realities but which, unlike Hayek's neo-liberalism, are not subordinate to them. Neo-liberals speak of the self-regarding values of security, liberty and property. To these, social democrats would add the other-regarding values of equity, solidarity and sustainability. For social democrats, these additional values are seen as mutually reinforcing, because the allocation of resources in pursuit of equity (particularly through education), solidarity and sustainability assist in creating the human, social and environmental capital necessary to make a market economy function effectively.
By contrast, neo-liberals reject the legitimacy of altruistic values that go beyond direct self-interest. When costs – for example, environmental, social insurance and training costs – threaten to affect economic self-interest, however, they often seek to externalise them and transfer them to the state.
Working within a comprehensive framework of self-regarding and other-regarding values gives social democrats a rich policy terrain in which to define a role for the state. This includes the security of the people; macro-economic stability; the identification of market failure in critical areas such as infrastructure; the identification of key public goods, including education, health, the environment and the social safety net; the fostering of new forms of social capital; and the protection of the family as the core incubator of human and social capital. These state functions do not interfere with the market; they support the market. But they have their origins in the view that the market is designed for human beings, not vice versa, and this remains the fundamental premise that separates social democrats from neo-liberals."
Arie, through complex paths your post took me to Michael Polanyi. He wrote an article entitled "Jewish Problems" which I cannot find on the net, except here:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/action/showPdf?submitPDF=Full+Text+PDF+%28710+KB%29&doi=10.1111%2Fj.1467-923X.1943.tb00992.x
By all accounts it seems to be interesting reading, but I cannot purchase it. Do you know if such article can be found elsewhere? Thanks.
Philip, it's touching that you've finally managed to spend time with the help. I wonder what the help would think if they read your blog post. You probably don't have to worry about that, though — something tells me they don't have the reading comprehension skills to absorb such a thoughtful post from an elite.
On a more serious note, I'm annoyed to see you fall for the "only the poor kids fight wars" cliche that's been thrown around by ignorant folks.
My brother's a college graduate with a film degree. He enlisted in the Marines out of patriotism and the desire for a challenge — to live uncomfortably, sometimes miserably, to do something good for his country. Since we come from the same state as you, I should mention there are lots of other guys like him — New Yorkers who were lawyers, stockbrokers and writers and enlisted in the Marines because they didn't see it as beneath them to get dirty and put their life on the line.
Apparently, you do see it as beneath you and your fellow "elites." Your post his hilarious not only because it shows how ignorant you are, but because you think spending a few weeks with contractors is a meaningful foray into lower-class life, after which you return pensively to your life as an "elite," where by your own admission you argue over meaningless words in rooms full of people who don't actually work for their money.
But here's the thing: You lament the fact that these struggling contractors, with their lack of tact and economic struggles, have more "freedom" than you. Those are the words of a fool who's never known what it's like to work a real job or worry about financial security. Arguing over little words or answering to publicists isn't restrictive or stressful, because at the end of the day, you don't have to worry about a damn thing. That's freedom, Philip. It's a pity you can't recognize it.
Sona, that article is pretty old (1943)and the trouble is that a database might not go back that far.
Here is a link to an article by Paul Knepper that has an extensive comment on it:
Off topic:
The World Service just ran a half-hour interview with M&W. Owen Bennett-Jones spoke with them both on the show "The Interview." Their message is starting to sound very mainstream–
In previous threads I've been commenting as "Donald"–unfortunately it now appears there are two of us. I just jumped in to point that out and to dissassociate previous "Donald" posts from the ones in this thread–I'm now going to have to think of a different handle.
I don't have time to carefully read this thread and decide whether I'd agree with my namesake-possibly so, since I'm allergic to talk of too much "Jewish" influence. Now if you want to criticize particular Jews or non-Jews for blind support of Israel or Zionism or the Iraq War, I'll probably cheer you on, but talk of "too much Jewish" influence—well, I think we gentiles have a 2000 year history of talk like that which led nowhere good.
Arie, thanks for the PDF link. I read it and now I feel even more intrigued about the Polanyi original.
There is a "Polanyi Society". Maybe I will find something there:
http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/
From Knepper's paper:
"Polanyi chose not to think of Zionism in its immediate context but within a more personal context… To write his critique of Zionism, Polanyi turned the clock back fifty years."
"Polanyi believed that the threat to Jews as individuals was bigger than the collective solution of nationhood. Modernity represented a deeper and tougher dilemma that could only be negotiated on individual terms. In making the case for a Jewish state as the solution to anti-Semitism, Zionists had thrown up an array of mistaken identities, defining Jewishness in political, religious, and cultural terms. Polanyi rejected this as inward-looking, even reactionary; he pursued an outward-looking understanding based on the relationship of Jews to non-Jews. Polanyi saw assimilated Jews not as running away or denying Jewish identity, but instead, as pursuing a truer and more significant expression of Jewishness."
Maybe Philip and Polanyi share something…
Thanks again, Arie.
"He pursued an outward-looking understanding based on the relationship of Jews to non-Jews."
BTW, for Richard Witty: remember that what Polanyi means here by "relationship" is not the antagonism that you feel.
Projection your honor! The prosecutor is projecting all over the witness. Mr. Witty has not described an antagonism towards non-Jews. "David" on the other hand has repeatedly described an antagonism towards Jews. Lets just be real here.