Verwirrung

Who the hell knows?

I voted for the guy.  I have hopes for what he can do for the US of A, but I still have at least one foot on the ground.  The expectations should be kept in check that he can somehow topple The System.  At the very most, we can hope that he can give it the slightest nudge that might cause it to slightly alter its course.  He’s not going to move mountains, he’s not going to part seas, and in his acceptance speech, he made that much perfectly clear.  He acknowledge that it is entirely likely that the major policy initiatives he begins, may not completely bear fruit until after his first term, if then. 

However, I think it is entirely appropriate to label his Presidency as one of a Transitional nature.  And this isn’t solely because of the man and his makeup.  To be sure that is an element of this transition.  The other, of course, is the time.  We are at a transitory moment in our history.  We are at a transition point in terms of demographics.  The baby boomers are retiring and beginning to take the geriatric perch at the top of the American lifespan.  The White Man will soon be in the minority, when compared to all of the other creeds and ethnicitys that make up the American Populous.  We are at a transition point in terms of energy.  It is quite clear that Big Oil’s days are numbered.  Unless we go into “Shock and Awe” exploration and drilling, the inventories will dry up in our lifetimes.  It is time to find that next thing that will power our homes and our automobiles.  With just these two huge landmark shifts, it is imperative to have leadership that can help us get from Point A to Point B.  This will be part of President Obama’s charge.  And of course, it will be our charge to make sure he keeps his eyes on the road while he is steering. 

What is known is that a significant majority of the electorate has recognized this time of transition that we are in, and that it is time for a newer and more modern perspective to guide the way.  The paradigms of yesterday were rejected in favor of the possibilities of tomorrow.  The palpable sense of needing to move on is pervasive.  But equally as prominent is the uncertainty of the unknown.  And so he needs to be as reassuring as he is realistic.  To be as certain as he is seeking.  To be as commanding as he is collaborating.

And so, what does an Obama win mean?  As of now, all we know is that it means a new story will begin to be written and told.  But it does not mean we just sit and watch the events unfold.  He has said he will ask and expect our support in his efforts.  He will make a call for service in the redirection of America’s path.  Some will answer, some will not.  But what is clear is what has always been so.  This is OUR future that he is attempting to shape.  This means it is OUR time to make sure we are a part of that. 

Because the reality is that when someone asks “What Does An Obama Win Mean?”, we will have a big influence on how that is answered.

Ripped this discussion, built on Cram’s earlier post and musings, from the forum.  Enjoy.

LMNO:  Because so far, nothing else seems to be working.  Because Discordia is about models, not absolutes.

Baron von Hoopla:  Bingo.

Cramulus: [to LMNO] that’s a great angle.  Could you expand on that a bit?

GA:  I don’t know about more relevant, because I wasn’t around 50 years ago.  It seems to me that the Cold War was in pretty dire need of some lightheartedness, even more than our current War on Terror.

It just seems relevant to me because I personally had (have?) a problem with taking things far to seriously.  And because many of the people around me have concepts like ‘mandatory’ and ‘forbidden’ and apply them to things that are really optional.

I makes me sad when people tell me that things like religion are to important to joke about, or old propaganda posters too offensive.  It bothers me when I get suspended from school or hauled before Loss Prevention for reasons like “I know that this is just a misunderstanding, but we must follow procedure.”  It hurts when I look around my infosphere and see nothing but advertisements, especially when those ads are meant to make people feel bad about themselves.

The world is ruled by an endless morass of strictures and convention, and no one wants to take responsibility for them.  People are perfectly content to let the train follow its own momentum down the tracks, even though they don’t like where it is or where it is going, because this is Policy, it’s what Everyone (the everyone in “everyone knows that…”) has Decided.  Rules and traditions might be annoying, but it’s Not In Our Power to do anything about them.

LMNO:  In today’s so-called “Information Age”, most of us are constantly bombarded with stuff.  Perhaps not with ideas, so much as pure input.  While for the most part this input is pretty much bias-neutral, an increasing amount of it is being supplied by people who have an angle.  What’s more, to get through to the growing population of Jaded Couch-Dwelling Fuckheads, there has been a new approach of making the stuff more-or-less self referential, as in, “we know you know we’re trying to manipulate you.  See how cool that makes us?”

So, what do you do when you are flooded by 50,000 points of view?  The old way was to have Rules and Tradition and Procedure and Black and White. To take that stuff and cram it into a narrow worldview, distorting what little information you actually notice.  Which only serves to hold you back, slow you down, and shut you up.

Our way, the Discordian way, is to make Temporary Models, make new Game Rules, to grab hold of the stuff and ride it out, making connections as you see them.  You do your best not to have your views manipulated by stuff, and you do your best not to manipulate stuff to fit your views.  Which serves to keep you on the Edge of What’s Going On.

At least, that’s the general idea.

Tempest Virago:  [to LMNO]  You think the input is “pretty much bias-neutral”? I think (almost?) all of it has an angle of some sort. Maybe we’re defining this differently. Can you explain what you mean by that?

[referring to the final two paragraphs]  Absolutely. I think this is also something that can be really hard to do, especially the part about not manipulating information to fit what you already believe. I think doing that is a pretty natural way of dealing with the world, and the best way to avoid it is to be conscious of yourself and how you’re reacting to new information. I certainly tend to subconsciously manipulate information to fit my (pinko hippie liberal) view - something I try to keep an eye on.

Verb:  I think the reason Discordia is relevant today is that these are times of change and the Discordian thrives on change. Tradition and static states of being can only hold out for so long when facing broad changes in the world around them. The pace of change has in many ways reached an all-time high and old, static models of dealing with change are becoming untenable. Discordia, which is generally dynamic, irreverent, and unafraid of change, is an increasingly good way to maintain your sanity and well-being (or whatever is left of them.)

Ratatosk:  I don’t know if it is ‘more relevant’. It seems to me that people act, pretty much, like people. People in 1959 aren’t all that different from us, they may have slightly different rituals and memes, sleight variations in clothing styles and slang, but the humans appear the same. Our society may be more open and more tolerant (at least the aspects of society that are very popular right now), but humans interact and follow the rules of that society, pretty much as they did in 1959.

The people who are cogs in society behave like they’re supposed to. The conservative cog grinds to the tune that their entire society is about to collapse, the liberal cog whirrs away at a Utopia that seems as far away now as it did in 1959 and the ‘rebel’ cogs turn to the tune of “I Did It My Way” (though now it might be the Sex Pistols version…).

If Discordianism was relevant ever, then it’s relevant now… in theory, if not in specific memes. To think that life now is DIFFERENT, is (in my opinion) to confuse the trappings of society with the functionality of humans. Even the best broadband available won’t stop an asshole from beating his wife and kids. It won’t stop the man who is not comfortable with his own feelings from bashing gays. All the information in the world, won’t necessarily make us elect a good president or change the basic selfish behavior of most monkeys on this planet.

However, IF the information is served on a platter, complete with trimmings and yummy sauce… some humans might eat it and change. Discordianism, I think, provides just such a platter. The concepts of general semantics, the limits of perception, the bias of our own reality and the ability to ‘STOP’ doing the things we don’t like, aren’t unique to Erisian Enlightenment. However, for at least some humans, Discordianism  seems to make the ideas palatable, digestible and useful.

So Discordianism was valuable then and is valuable now… because humans are human

Tempest Virago: [responding to Ratatosk] ‘m inclined to agree with this. I think every generation thinks they are fundamentally different than all of the ones before them.

Dr Payne:  Discordia will always be more relevant to me personally than in any kind of “cause” or “movement”.

Yes, things in society are fucked up, yes “everyone” thinks that “everyone” else wants things to be this way, and there is nothing that they can do about it as individuals. Yes, they are wrong.

But all of this means nothing to me.

I am not an activist, I don’t go out of my way to try and convert people anymore. I used to, but then I thought it was mandatory or at least expected. Since I decided for myself that it wasn’t, I don’t do it. I don’t expect people to wake up unless they want to do it themselves, I certainly don’t expect it to ever make sense for them unless they do it in the hardest and unfunniest ways, but that may be my jaded and bitter inner self talking.

Discordia is not a movement, it is not a purpose, it is not a cause. It’s a state of mind. A state of mind that connects a diverse group of people who wouldn’t give each other the time of day if they met socially in other circumstances and didn’t have the call signs Discordia offers, the “fluff” like 23, Eris or Principia Discordia.

I like that. I like talking to people who I normally would never talk to, who would normally never talk to me.

Discordia is at times an excellent way of tying some of us together to work on projects that normally would never be worked on, like Paths and Shrapnel, PosterGASM and some of the weird and wonderful art projects that have grown out of these forums.

I like that. I like working with people on plans and projects that may have some relevance to how I think about my life, or can help decorate it in a way that makes me question what decoration is.

Discordia will always be relevant to me in some way because of this. Its worth far outweighs the effort of getting anything back from it.

I like models, I like art, I like exploring the weirder aspects of our psyches, and the even weirder methods of exploiting what we find.

I like to laugh, hate, cry and love, as we as humans are meant to, not as we have been conditioned to. As I’ve only learned to do with some intense soul searching and some pain. Discordia has been the chair I’ve sat down in when I’m weary, the desk I’ve used to write some of the most personal and important things I’ve ever written, it has been the mirror in which I’ve seen what I am, what I was and what I want to be.

And I’ve learned to not care what others are thinking about it all, except in specialised circumstances, for example: when I feel like it.

I know what I’ve learned, I’ve learned to question what I know, and I’ve learned to learn more, always learn more.

For me, Discordia is a question, an answer and everything else in between, and it is so huge that I could spend a lifetime exploring it.

Is Discordia relevent? Certainly for me, maybe for you.

Dido:  discordia is a reason that makes a random group of people focus on something.
as stated above, it bypasses the usual reason for banding together in humans, which is affinity.
instead of feeling an affinity for others we gather around the concept, which is so fuzzy as to allow many different interpretations and therefore attracts a rather diverse group of people. affinity creates groups where the reality tunnels of the participants are safe from interruptions.
groups around a more abstract cause tend to suffer from the lack of basic emotional affinity. such groups develop hierarchical structures in order to keep from dissolving. structures determine the flow and shape of thought and ideas. in a hierarchical group any idea, no matter where in the group it originated will have to pass through the top in order to be accepted, which will restrict the possible output of that group dramatically.

a group that gathers around the idea of disagreeing with each other and still manages to find a modus operandi, however chaotic, is more creative than a group whose output is always in the shape of the head of whoever is at the top.

in my opinion the relevance of such a focus or group does not depend on it happening in one epoch or the other. if it exists it has the potential to change any epoch.

damn i am preaching.
look what you made me do.

YattoDobbs:  i think what will make discordian the most ordox religion yet is that it includes agree to disagree in most of its scriptures

plus we can talk to those science atheist about our lovely new planet: they are already in philosocial mode over what she really is… astrological boards are PRIME numberS
plus like below are also rich
{http://www.mauricefernandez.com/}
[plus we need to make sure the poee symbol becomes the standard one vs an E or whatever]

Eris Mars through a square and the Aries location and Eris Saturn through a quincunx and the 10th house location. This suggests an issue of authority (Mars also in Capricorn ruler of Eris and the 10th)

I predict that awareness of this fundamental need of any modern society will become part of the collective consciousness when Eris transits through Taurus, if we manage to get through the rest of the Aries transit.

I believe that Eris has to do with stirring stuff up,controversy,ideology, civil/equal rights matters,standing up for self/others,advocacy, bigotry,racism,minorities,race relations,diversity,…..all those things are connected to each other too.

I know that it is customary to look to ancient Greek myths for clues to the meanings of newly-discovered planets, and the mythology of Eris has a lot to do with strife and warfare, which would seem to suggest an affinity with Aries. However, in this case, the quest for mythological clues is misleading because, in ancient Greek society, the Eris principle was so horribly, monstrously perverted that the relevant myths were twisted and poisone

Eris has a natural affinity with Libra, not Aries. Ancient Greek society depended heavily on slavery, and, especially in Athens, women were basically locked up in the home, and initiation into manhood typically involved submitting to a cult of pederasty, with the victims getting their chance as perpetrators a few years later. This was a society that was horribly out of balance, so it stands to reason that those Eris myths are pretty sick.

So now Eris shows up in Aries, highlighting the imbalances in our own culture, at a time when the human race desperately needs to get it right, or else… I would like to suggest that Eris in individual horoscopes is often associated with the karmic residue of unbalanced relationships that many if not most of us carry over from past lives. Eris is in Aries, so, well, such issues can manifest in such negative Arian modes as violence or domination. Or, on a more positive Aries note, getting involved in a civil rights campaign. Fight for your rights…

LMNO: [responding to Tempest Virago] Law of Fives.  There is far more neutral sensory input than biased out there, but you’re just noticing the deliberately manipulative stuff.  Try looking for the stuff that’s value-neutral, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Lupernikes Shadowbark:  Puts me in mind of a tv program I watched last night and later discussed with the wife (conversation is as important as the show in some ways).  It was called Putting God on Trial and it was essentially centred around this premise;

It was set in Autchwitz in the barracks (i shudder at the name but it’s the best i can think of) of a group of jewish prisoners; waiting to be ’selected’, in other words to die.  They were a mix of young and old, German, Polish, educatated and tradesmen, rabbis and so forth.  First they realised that here they were all equal, horribly and wrongly so but equal.  Next they decided to agree on who was to Blame and decided it had to be God.  Afterall what had women and children and many of the inmates done to deserve this from a God who was supposed to protect them and had signed a Covenant with Moses?  They took the Torah apart (you must see it, incredibly educational and interesting) and decided to put God on trial on a rabbinacal court.

Of course there were many speeches but one stood out to me and I’ll paraphrase.  It was given by a French Physicist;

“look into the sky and what do you see?  Stars, millions and millions of stars.  There are (hazy here) 10 billion in our galaxy alone and we know, or at least presume that many of these have worlds like this one, with people and so forth.  As jews we must acknowledge that all this was created by God.  So we then believe that this God, who created all of those stars we can see, all of those worlds, and the many more which exist outside our galaxy also made other beings which must logically live there, directs all His love and attention at one world on the outer arm of one galaxy and, not only this, but on one single group of people on this one world.  This is not only unlikely but it is stupid…”

This led on to us discussing some form of Higher Intelligence, some creative force, some deus ex universalia who, at least, set matter in motion all those eaons ago.  I do believe that some such entity or group of entities exist but that, at the core of it all is chaos, no Design, no Plan, no Destiny of All save expansion and survival of the whole, like our own bodies, which are all the world some creatures will ever know.  But this entity, call it Creator if you like, call it the mind of the Universe (maybe a kind of subconcious hive mind), call it the body of the universe..whatever you like but IT is not interested in us, indivual us.  It doesn’t care what we do or how we do it, howe we dress or how we pray or what rituals we observe; all these are means of control invented by other humans no more.  It requires no worship, nor recognition, any more than we require that of the bacteria who live in our gut.  They do their job and don’t damage our body (they occasionally embarress us but hey ho..) we leave them to it.  Same with the Universe’s alleged Gods or Earth’s alleged Gods, we don’t do  anything to interfere with the smooth running and alone we are left, mess around and out come the lycocytes to show us where we can go.

ok this is getting long now but the essence is that morality is a matter of choice, anything not required to be taboo in order to stop total civil war and dissolution of any form of social order (murder, rape, direct theft and so on) is the same; free will.  We should be good people because it is Right, not (like millions of religious folk) because we are afraid not to be.  Not God to use as an excuse for wars and violence, no God to make one group seemingly better than another, no scripture, no dogma (maybe catma is allowed) just free will.  Crowley’s ‘Do what thou wilt’ is one of the most misunderstood statements in recent history!  He meant “Do what your will decides, not what you are told” or ” do good because you want to, not because you have to”….what he didn’t mean is “lets do all the bad and nasty stuff because we can”.  To me then, to be a Discordian is all free will, about choice sans punishment to make you make the right choice (not The Right Choice but your own right choice) but your own freely made decision.  In the end we have to think for ourselves because no-one else will do if for us…

but then, how many people in the world spend their lives think other people’s thoughts?

Maybe Discordia is not needed more now than ever but certainly usual Discordian attitudes won’t tend to land one on the gibbet doing the hemp fandango (you can do that at home now, or the tango, or the lie there and do nothing…up to you lol)

Ratatosk: [repsonding to LMNO]  Do you mean that the universe supplies information that we can call value-neutral (notwithstanding how humans perceive it) or that humans perceive that value neutral information as value neutral?

LMNO: Um… both?  I think I mean that there is a vast amount of information that was not created with the specific intent of manipulation.

Cain:  Why is Discordianism still relevant in 2008?

Because I am the The Decider, and I have decided that it is.

Debate over.

Oh, alright then, some more evidence.

Two thousand and eight kicked off, in my mind at least, with two major events.  The first was the US Presidential election.  The second was the Anonymous “war” on Scientology.  The first of these two quickly became a spiralling mess of such a degree that parody and satire often seemed more reasonable than what was actually being said.  Therefore, parody and satire need to step up to the plate, and have done so admirably.  In a country where Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart can give more prescient and accurate news than many of the major news stations, in such a country comedy with a message is King.

The second was interesting, because it showed how an internet subculture with no centralization, no money and little in way of common purpose (indeed they often flaunted their chaotic and contradictory ways) could pose a threat to a very powerful and rich, highly centralized religious cult.

Change is still the name of the game.  As corporate elites have stepped up to the plate, promoting and co-opting every new youth movement and subculture, in some cases from almost the very start, subversive counterculture has done a vanishing act.  It still exists, and its still there, but its a true invisible college, taking form on the internet and in the street.  Flashmobs and other microcultures have become very possible with the rise of mass membership websites such as Facebook, putting Situationist tactics into the hands of online activists, who can construct an event with a few clicks, so long as they can get enough people interested.    Appear, perform and disperse.  We’re evolving and changing, because anyone who stands still for too long is going to end up in the cross-hairs of one marketing executive or another.  Subversion and change, nanoculture and personal freedom, are becoming synonymous.

We’re continuing to have a small, if noticed effect on the mainstream as well.  V for Vendetta and Lost, a program and a film with some very Discordian influences, are favourites of viewers all over the world.  High Weirdness is back in fashion, too.  It doesn’t matter if its a giant artistic piece of dogshit which has got loose, or J. J. Abrams latest show (the X-Files esque TV program he intends to air on Fox this fall), the strange and the odd are still capturing imaginations and peoples curiosity.

Chaos, equally, is back in fashion more than ever.  No matter if its politics or the music industry, the old rules of how things are done, and the elites who control them, are under a barrage of assaults from newcomers and individuals with the power to move and shake the industries they work in.  With the second internet revolution in full swing, its becoming easier than ever to get one’s voice out there, create an audience, be heard, and bypass the traditional methods of control to say what you want.  Equally the weather and the stockmarkets are both going crazy, and becoming ever harder to predict.  Many of the old assurances seem to be crumbling in the bright lights of the 21st century.

The arts of obfuscation, disruption and, well, we can only call it trolling have become more popular than ever, diffusing down into society.  Since trolling is part Situationist theatre, part postmodern identity shifting, and we have natural advantages in areas such as that, we have an edge on tactics that the media, the blogs and activists are only just starting to grasp.

Religious fundamentalism is back on the scene, with all the stupidity and farce such an event brings.  Whether its bearded lunatics in caves or meth-taking, rent-boy hiring, homophobic minister, religion is once again proving its potential to destroy lives, ruin countries and damn people on the flimsiest of charges.  And so, it must come as a relief to many to find a religion that doesn’t want your unquestioning obedience, wont damn you to hell for your sins, doesn’t want your time or money or impose any strange dietary practices (barring those with hotdogs), but wants you to have a good time and tell anyone who tries to get in your way to STFU.

Ratatosk: [responding to LMNO]  But, can any human process information without manipulating it in some way? Can they share information without manipulating it in some way?

Non-manipulated information might exist in some sense, but perhaps in the same manner that Objective Reality exists.

Maybe it exists somewhere outside of the BiP?

LMNO:  Who said anything about shared information as being the sole type of information that exists?  Information is not limited to communication.

Ratatosk: Well, I can agree with that. Maybe you could provide me an example of the sort of information you’re thinking of?

LMNO: Walking out into the steet and seeing a bus coming at you is a form of information

Ratatosk:  But isn’t ’seeing’ both communication of information (light bouncing into eyes, processed by rods and cones and sent to brain) and manipulation? The brain processes information, ties it to symbols and interprets it into “OSHI! Bus!” or “Ah, Bus, but since you just had some Angel Dust, it won’t hurt you.” or “Ah Bus, life sucks and it will all be over soon.”

Or am I missing something here?

LMNO:   The information of the bus coming at you is value neutral; no external entity is trying to manipulate your actions or is employing propoganda or putting spin on the bessage or trying to hand you a line of bullshit.

What the fuck, Rat?  Are you missing the forest here?

GA:  Ahh, but internal entities are.  The fact of the bus is value neutral; how you perceive the bus is not.

Cramulus:  semantics aside, I think I understood what LMNO meant. That the information age is presenting new and unique problems in communication. There’s just so much more of it now than there ever was. And that since Discordia is very much about making personal choices about information and separating signal from noise, it’s an extremely valuable tool for dealing with 21st century civilization.

LMNO:  [to GA] I’d appreciate it if you actually read the post in question.

Ratatosk:  [responding to LMNO]  Possibly.  I reread your post and I think we’re in agreement that lots of Information exists in the Universe that has no agenda or spin.

Maybe we have multiple orders of Information:

Non-Biased Information (Object labeled “Bus” is travelling at Speed “X” from Point A to Point B)
Self-Biased Information (OSHI! I’m between Point A and Point B!”)
Pre-Biased Information (”Today, Alaskan Democratic Senator Ted Stevens stole a bus and ran over 30 people”)
Self Biased/Pre-Biased Information (”God damned Democrats, we have to get them out of office before they run us all over… wait… Ted Stevens isn’t a… Err, Nevermind!! DAMN the PINKOS!”)

So maybe all information IS based on Non-Biased information (except outright lies/fabrications?), but all information available to humans is processed/manipulated in at least some sense.

So I think you’re saying that the Discordian may grok this conundrum and do their best to discard as much bias as possible?

I think…

LMNO:  Dude.

Read my post again.

I said nothing about “all” information.

I said while much of the information is value-neutral, more is becoming biased, and also meta and self-referencing.

And Discordia helps with this, some.

Ratatosk:  Ok, let’s set aside “all” for a second… it was more internal monologue I think.

I think I grok what you’re saying now.

The ratio of Value-Neutral Information to Manipulated-by-Some-Other-Human Information is shrinking.

Both forms of information aren’t value-neutral once they’ve been processed by self… but that’s beside the point of your main argument. See I was off on a tangent!

The Good Reverend Roger:  Relevant?  Who cares?

I’m just here to gnaw at the foundations of society like a diseased termite.

If any of these phrases come up in the Presidential debates, take the amount of shots you are required according to the list.

POW/Prisoner of War - 1 shot
“Experience” - 1 shot
9/11 - 1 shot
Any story about eating a moose - 1 shot
Hockey mom - 1 shot
Change we can believe in, any recognizably derivative phrase - 1 shot
Liberal elite - 1 shot
Liberal media - 1 shot
Imply your opponent is a Muslim - 1 shot
Washington Elite - 1 shot
Yes We Can! - 1 shot for each full chant
Commander in Chief of Alaska - 1 shot
Bridge to Nowhere - 2 shots
Bill Ayers - 2 shots
Community organizer - 2 shots
Manchurian Candidate - 2 shots
How many houses - 2 shots

Downs Syndrome Baby - 3 shots
The Keating Five - 3 shots
Ambien - 3 shots

WE already knew it, of course. Vance, of radosh.net finally caught on too.

Now that “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” has picked Joe Biden as his running mate, the question remains: Why did he wait the 23rd to announce?

Traditionally politicians announce things late on Friday that they don’t want to get too much attention (because it’s a dead spot for MSM cycles). Assuming Obama had made his pick by Thursday, announcing it that night would have been a night-and-day difference in how much it was ballyhooed.

So why pick this dead spot for this high-profile announcement? The answer, obviously, is that in announcing on August 23rd, Obama is performing the first phase of an Illuminati ritual. If he is involved with this gnostic Illuminati sect, expect another signal on November the 5th.

I told you guys he wasn’t a secret Muslim.

This is a spin-off from my post yesterday about Quentin Fucking Letts, but its something I’ve been considering for a while, and wanted to talk about more, as a general trend within current political discourse, especially among the “opinion-formers” in the media.

Its hardly a novel or surprising insight, I’ll be the first to admit. I know that its a particular aggravation of the brilliant American blogger HTML Mencken, of Sadly, No! fame and the more I see it within our own papers and political discussions, the more it pisses me off.

Some people, it seems, are far more in favour of civility in a discussion than actual decency. As anyone who reads me fairly often knows, I am hardly the poster-child for civil discussion. I rant, I swear, I mock and I troll. “All your carefully picked arguments can be easily ignored” and all that. But I think, underneath it, I am a fairly decent person. Not in the ‘decent left‘ sense, hell no, those people are the poster children for Civility over Decency (especially as Alan ‘Not the Minister’ Johnson’s lack of concern for human rights shows), but in the basic sense that no matter how nasty or cutting or rude I am, I’m only violent in my presentation of language.

In short, I’m not the sort of person who calls for pre-emptive attacks on enemy countries. I do not condone torture. I despise ‘extraordinary rendition’, hate racial profiling, cannot stand people who barely disguise their bigotry and blood-lust under the guise of cheerleading the “war on terrorism” and the war in Iraq especially. I don’t think we should be throwing out everyone whose skin colour is a little too dark, nor cutting benefits for those most at risk in society. I don’t think we should deny gays, atheists, Muslims, transsexuals or anyone else rights that the majority enjoys.

That’s decency. Having some motherfucking respect for the people around you, not demonizing people who have never hurt you, not acting like a jerk simply because “I’ve got mine, and fuck everyone else”. Or cowering in a corner going “oh no, the scary people different to me are here, we must deal with this immediately!”

Because, lets face it, when you dig behind the supposedly ‘respectable’ and civil writing of papers like The Sun, or the Daily Mail, or especially The Express, that is all that is left. Its dressing up ugly and vile opinions in nice sounding tones. A perfect example is that insufferable cunt Peter Hitchens, who just recently denied that homophobia has any real meaning. Well I’m sure gay people all over the world who are being killed, denied rights, attacked and smeared for their sexual leanings will be SO glad to hear that.

But you see, he said it in a nice way, with clean respectable words and no swearing, so he’s perfectly alright!

Whereas on the other hand, all those nasty people over at the Guardian who were saying rude things about Thatcher are evil and nasty leftists. Never mind that none of them are contributing to a set of beliefs designed to deny Thatcher any of her basic human rights. Never mind that Thatcher put in place policies that did ruin many peoples lives, to benefit a few. Oh no, the problem is all those horrible and sweary Guardian types, who refuse to shed a tear at the idea of Our Great Leader passing away.

Well fuck that, and fuck anyone who thinks in that way. Oh boo-fucking-hoo, the nasty little leftists won’t be all nice and civil when discussing your sacred cows? Civility is “manners masquerading as morals”, to quote Sidney Blumenthal. Its about an unspoken social code that relates in absolutely no way to the actual ethical ideas. Its a way of controlling the forms of argument, of dismissing people without actually having to refute what they say.

Noting the letters that Lett’s reprinted at the Mail, the common theme among them seems to be that Thatcher’s leadership did not enrichen or improve their lives, so why the fuck should they have to kowtow to her and her legions of brainless followers and admirers among the press corps? Letts doesn’t answer that, because he can’t. The idea of treating such a woman as a great leader worthy of such honour is disgusting, and the level of invective it deserves is well beyond that expressed in the Guardian. Presumably Letts would have us all drink tea with our little finger’s sticking out while discussing the pro’s and con’s of torture and genocide as well.

The fact is that you simply can’t fight some people and the ideas they espouse by being civil. You have to let people know that they’re vile, hateful scumbags with no sense of standards or simple human decency. You have to stand up to them and (rhetorically) kick them in the balls. Repeatedly, in some cases. This whole “oh I respectfully disagree with your views on kicking out all the ‘Muslim terrorist scum infesting this country with foreign diseases‘” bollocks has to stop.

And yes, I am an angry leftist. If you call yourselves a decent fucking human being and you look around at the state of current affairs: a supposedly left-wing government tearing down civil rights and engaging in pointless foreign wars while the gap between rich and poor rises, and a bunch of cretinous reporters in the tabloid media who are willing to give them hell over the only few things they have done right, then you’d be fucking angry too.

And if you don’t like it, Letts, you can blow me.

Stimergic learning is covered here.

The structure of secular conservative “framing” of events is discussed here.

Note the most interesting thing, that actually being an amorphous mass with seperated command structures but all communicating is actually an effective strategy. Its essentially an open-source platform, applied to political and information operations.

In both cases, each rely on various groups innovating and trying varying methods of attack, the communicating their effectiveness back to other groups who share their aims. The techniques are refined, then packaged for mass release. Then the process is repeated. It is constant refinement based on the ability for fast feedback AND, a mass of people willing to try various strategies.

Its essentially a Black Swan approach to events. By allowing groups to experiment, the whole movement can take advantage of successful methods, whereas failures will only impact on those directly involved in them. Its very smart, really.

Via the Huffington Post:

NEW YORK…Hillary and Bill Clinton announced today that they are forming a new political party to continue her fight for the presidency. Seeking to draw comparisons with Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Bull Moose’, the new party will be called ‘Surly Eris’ for the Greek Goddess of discord and strife. According to the press release, the party will “cater to the perceived slights and accumulated frustrations harbored by women of a certain age and Lanny Davis.”

Speculation that Clinton would be placed on the Democratic ticket ended earlier in the day when representatives for Barack Obama refused her demand that he do all his campaigning in an open top limousine. Said a visibly indignant Harold Ickes, “Would we have liked Obama to be capable of enjoying pleasant weather? You bet your ass.”

Meanwhile, longtime Clinton friend and bagman Terry McAuliffe stressed that the new party would be open to “anyone with resentments and a credit card” including “honest, hard working Americans who just happen not to like blacks.”

When pressed by reporters on how Senator Clinton had managed to squander every institutional advantage in her descent from inevitability to runner-up, spokesman Howard Wolfson decried “this endless media fascination with the factual” adding “this isn’t about who won what how, this is about something far more important, the future of the Clintons”.

The United States’ Presidential Election 2008 is proving to be an excellent case study in the realm of “Think For Yourself, Schmuck”  I say that because, more than ever, the media has become pervasive and invasive in our daily lives.  I’m not just talking about the 24-hour Cable News cycles.  You also have to include the internet media, the blogs, the political forums, anyone with a little bandwidth and an opinion. 

 The daily drumbeat of this Presidential Election, has been polls, polls, polls.  Or I should say, that is part of it.  The other part has been this Reality-TV style coverage of every utterance, every breath, every movement each of the candidates have made.  Now, this might be okay, if it were on C-Span, where you have little commentary.  You just get to see what is happening and decide for yourself what’s going on and what it means.  But it isn’t C-Span.  It’s MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, and all of the Internet “news” outlets.  So there is a barrage of “what’s really going on” messages. 

 ”Oh my God!  Obama is a horrible bowler!!!!  If he can’t handle some 10-pin, how’s he going to handle Iran???”

Yes, I know that’s one of those trivial little things that happen on the campaign trail, and it doesn’t compare to more important “scandals” like Rev. Wright, bitter comments, phantom sniper fire, nut-job pastors endorsing candidates, and the like.  But the point is, at every turn someone is telling you how you should think about these things.  Or, if you are getting multiple scenarios, it’s typically an either/or paradigm. 

We’ve all heard how a candidate is all style and no substance, an empty suit.  That he or she is relying on soundbites and talking points.  But the thing of it is, the media who is telling us that is doing the same thing.  Their coverage is all about soundbites and talking points.  Save for the debates, how much actual coverage of actual policy proposals do we get?  And so this is why Joe Schmoe is so easily swayed by the talking heads, because he has little else to go upon.  And he certainly isn’t going to give up his nightly ritual of worshipping the boob-tube while swigging some PBR, to go do some actual research on the candidates. 

What does this mean for the future of U.S.A. Democracy(tm)? 

We will explore this next week….

It can be difficult to want to move forward, when all you see are potholes and tears in the trail ahead.  No not tears, tears, rips, chasms, breaks.  There is no crying in abject uncertainty. 

I think many have been feeling this, for the past 7 years or so.  Quite a few give voice to their fears and apprehension about the future.  But even more have swallowed it in the name of ideological loyalty or just not wanting to be labeled a heretic, or worse, a terrorist.  And no, it’s not just The War, it’s more than that.  The happy times of joy and surplus of the 90s seem so far away now.  It’s kind of like we were having this 8 year party, we drank a bit too much, and passed out.  So now, in 2008 many are finally sobering up and realizing what’s been transpiring during this 7 year hangover. 

The regret is starting to sink in.  The  “Oh My God, what the fuck did I do last night?” questions are emerging.  And it isn’t just the mortgage brokers and the over-extended home owners.  It’s pretty much, to a man, everyone.  Those who aren’t questioning are certainly delusional and should be checked into an institution.  They will be the lucky ones, along with, perhaps, the dead.

But will the future really be that bad?  It’s hard to tell for sure.  But at this current juncture, viewing the different paths before us, as a collective of humanity, there certainly doesn’t appear to be any easy road to travel.  There seemingly are choices between physical safety and financial ruin, between global strife and a flourishing currency, between cheap energy and Ocean Front property in Vermont. 

And so we are in this time of confounding confusion and uncertainty.  What steps do we take next?  Who do we appoint to lead the way?  How much do we surrender to our leaders to lead?  And perhaps the most important, what can and will we do to master our own individual destinies?  Because, in my estimation, how that last question is answered in the years to come, will be the actual determination of where we end up. 

I decided to do some digging into another candidate’s odd religious links. I’m sorry, but hysteria bores me unless it is very funny, and all the Rev. Wright drama is showing is how out of touch white America is with black America, and how some conspiracy theories are pefectly acceptable for the media to believe in and accept, but others are not.

I think McCain’s religious links are fairly well known, if contested in what they signify, so instead I decided to look into Hillary Clinton who, aside from her Bosnia sniper lies has kept a relatively low fuck-up profile of late.

And that’s why I find so much of this interesting, because while it is being reported on the fringe news sites, it doesn’t seem to have translated over into a general media concern. Not yet, at least.

I am talking, if you hadn’t already guessed, of The Family, the strange religious group to which Hillary Clinton belongs. Very strange, given almost all of their members are part of the religious right, especially on Capitol Hill, where the sort of people who tend to belong to the Family (or Fellowship, they like to play fast and loose with names) include people like Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, most famously known in the UK for denying evolution during one of the Republican Presidential nominee debates.

So yeah, we’re not exactly talking Methodists here.

But there is much more to the Family than a prayer group for Christians in DC. Much, much more. As Mother Jones goes on to explain, The Family is built along:

sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to “spiritual war” on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship’s only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has “made a fetish of being invisible,” former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan.

Starting to feel a little worried?

You should be, because The Family not only says it wants to do these things, like so many groups of religious nutters, but it apparently has the means as well. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and in 2001 it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides’ eventual peace accord last July. But its power is not simply limited to waging peace. It also helped the US government forge relationships with Africa’s brutal postcolonial dictators in the 60s, not to mention Brazil and Indonesia’s anti-Communist military dictatorships.

As you’ve probably realized, at least during the Cold War, the aim would seem to be in building an anti-Communist coalition among the Third World, no matter the cost in money or lives. Suharto killed hundreds of thousands of supposed Communists, and I couldn’t even begin to try and fathom how many were lost in Africa.

So…Christian and dedicated to anti-Communism, but with a decidedly Realist streak of cynicism when it comes to power politics. A question for the political science students: who does this sound like? If you said Reinhold Niebuhr, then give yourself a cookie. Niebuhr is considered among the pre-eminent early Realists. And just so happens that he is a favourite of one-time Goldwater gal Hillary Clinton, who learnt of his teachings under the leadership of Reverend Don Jones, shortly before she joined the Republican party.

I do this to illustrate that despite Clinton’s apparent apathy towards religion except as a tool of power, there are links between her early life and the thinking of the Family, and that this should not just be dismissed by appeals to “triangulation” or cynical politicking.

You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking the Family is entirely part of the Religious Right either. They probably hate secular Democrats as much as any on the Religious Right do, but if someone is a Democrat and a Christian, they are more than willing to embrace them. Because their mission is a higher calling, they are here to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

One of the more well known members on Capitol Hill is David Coe. Here is a quote of a talk he was giving to, what he thought, was just a cell of Family members, but also included an undercover Harpers reporter:

You guys know about Genghis Khan?” he asked. “Genghis was a man with a vision. He conquered”—David stood on the couch under the map, tracing, with his hand, half the northern hemisphere—“nearly everything. He devastated nearly everything. His enemies? He beheaded them.” David swiped a finger across his throat. “Dop, dop, dop, dop.”

David explained that when Genghis entered a defeated city he would call in the local headman and have him stuffed into a crate. Over the crate would be spread a tablecloth, and on the tablecloth would be spread a wonderful meal. “And then, while the man suffocated, Genghis ate, and he didn’t even hear the man’s screams.” David still stood on the couch, a finger in the air. “Do you know what that means?” He was thinking of Christ’s parable of the wineskins. “You can’t pour new into old,” David said, returning to his chair. “We elect our leaders. Jesus elects his.”

Exactly. Chew on the implications of that for a while.