Strung Out On Anodyne

The United States is a selectively forgetful nation, thanks to the mainstream media in this country. We are trained to remember everything that reinforces apple-pie patriotism, while any news that challenges the notion that America is the greatest nation on earth is quickly buried.

So it is that many American media outlets have begun to forget Michael Brown, the unarmed Black teenager who was shot to death by a white cop in the town of Ferguson, Missouri. (Just as we've been made to forget our ongoing problems with mass shootings in this country, and the implications for American society.) I have to confess that I am a bit amazed by the speed with which Mr. Brown's story was replaced with stories about germs on keyboards, a rehash of the last moments of the RMS Titanic, the saga of Michael Sam, and a list of freaky things that happen to ordinary people, such as “8 year old girl saved by adoring pit bull.”

Fortunately, Mr. Brown's story isn't entirely buried. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has issued a condemnation of the shooting of Michael Brown and a call to the United States to eliminate ongoing racism and discrimination in this country. The committee also called attention to the pernicious effect of “stand-your-ground” laws in this country, and the continued inequitable enforcement of the law by police departments which remain largely white. But that's not front-page news today at Aol.com, or the New York Times, or USA Today, and certainly not at the Wall Street Journal, which was eaten a few years ago by Rupert Murdoch, a bigoted rich Australian who applied for US citizenship in the 1980's so that he could consolidate his ownership of American media. And Michael Brown certainly didn't make it onto the cover of People Magazine and other magazines like it, which have indeed at times chosen to publish stories about ordinary Americans caught in extraordinary circumstances. I guess he didn't have the potential star power of Elizabeth Smart.

Forgetfulness can be dangerous. As can be the refusal to think through the implications of a thing. When the town of Ferguson erupted in unrest after the shooting of Michael Brown, the doofus mayor of Ferguson declared that “We don't have a race problem here.” That statement is an example of willful blindness. And as Margaret Heffernan stated in her book titled Willful Blindness, problems that are ignored only become worse. The problem in the United States is that for a very long time, the members of one dominant culture have subjugated, oppressed, exploited and in many cases murdered other peoples both in the United States and abroad, simply on the basis that the skin of those other peoples was not white. The privileged people of the U.S. did so in order to secure all the benefits, both material and psychological, of being at the top of a heap. Such behavior has unintended consequences, even though the consequences may seem to be a long time in coming. Eventually the heap comes down, due in part to the consequences of the actions of the people who built the heap in the first place.

Consider the “Stand Your Ground” laws, the latest outgrowth of the rabid devotion to “2nd Amendment Rights” on the part of many Republicans and white supremacists. A Wikipedia article states that, according to many researchers, the effect of those laws was “...a significant increase in homicide and injury of whites, especially white males.” (Emphasis mine.) Consider also something I wrote in an earlier post, namely, what happens when a large, dominant group scapegoats another smaller and weaker group. Eventually, if the scapegoating is cruel enough, the smaller group is eradicated or removes itself from the scene – but the dysfunction which led to its scapegoating continues to exist within the larger group. There must always be a scapegoat in such groups. Therefore, a fight ensues to see who gets to create a new heap, and who will be at the top of it. The losers get to occupy the place of “poor trash.” Some of the newly-minted trash will be quite surprised at the change of identity bestowed on them by their newly-minted masters. With that change of identity will come the deprivation of civil rights and the denial of due process, along with pervasive, yet subtle discrimination based on the place of one's birth, one's income level or the last names of one's parents. All these things have happened before – even in seemingly homogeneous societies.

But all this assumes that the builders of the heap are allowed to continue sitting at its top. Those who comprise the lower levels of the heap might just decide one day to tear the heap down. That sort of thing has also happened before. A nation can't unrestrainedly exploit its natural resource base without reaching a point of diminishing, then negative returns. Neither can it exploit other peoples without the same thing happening.  So if you're not in a forgetful mood, here's something to think about: first, how, in the midst of diminishing resources, to create a society (or a social circle) in which resources are shared equitably and people are valued equally.

Clueless Conversations (A Look At The Country)

Once again, I am down in So. Cal. for Christmas. This time, I traveled by different means than I normally use. Heretofore, I had always driven straight from Portland to here and back, having developed something of an allergy to flying several years ago. (Who wouldn't be allergic, what with TSA checkpoints, pat-downs of grandmas and grandpas, full body scans, deferred maintenance on aircraft, and pilots who make less per hour than Pizza Hut drivers?) Unfortunately, driving from Portland to So. Cal. takes about seventeen hours, assuming that a driver knows when to judiciously drive faster than the speed limit, and that he doesn't spend more than the minimum time necessary at gas stations, coffee shops, and fast food joints. It takes a few hours longer if you decide to drive at or below the speed limit all the way, although you can shorten the time by driving a car with an extremely large fuel tank and doing without bathroom breaks. Good luck with that!

Last time, I was not judicious enough in knowing when to speed. I also made the mistake of believing that since I had never been stopped by the California Highway Patrol, they were therefore harmless. They got me about 25 miles south of Weed, California. My trip wound up costing an extra $200. At least the cop who wrote the ticket was a nice guy, or the trip would have been even more costly.

So this time I took the train, a choice which provided a good opportunity to study some of the features of mainstream American culture, as most of my fellow travelers were Anglo-Americans. I like to use traveling time to improve myself, so I brought my computer, my guitar, a copy of the Good Book, a graduate level text on HVAC system design, and a copy of the New Penguin Russian Course (Я ещё изучаю руский язык).

Most other people also brought computers and other hand-held data display devices, on which the majority were watching movies or playing video games. Occasionally I saw someone reading a book. In almost all cases, the books being read were popular novels. The man sitting next to me had his smartphone plugged into the AC power socket next to the window, and he was following a football game involving the Seattle Seahawks. A relative of his was sitting in the seat directly in front of him, and was doing the same thing on his own smartphone. Occasionally the two men exchanged comments on the progress of the game. About half an hour out of Eugene, an elderly man sitting in the aisle across from me looked over at my fellow passenger and said, “How 'bout them Seahawks! Too bad they don't have a TV on this train. Otherwise, we could watch 'em! I wonder if anybody has a TV or a laptop we could use to watch 'em!” Suddenly feeling uncomfortable in the presence of my company, I decided to move to the observation car, where I busted out one of my books and started to read.

I chose a seat across a table from a tall, thin, quiet blonde woman. She was also reading (her book was a novel), although from time to time she looked at her smartphone. She never spoke. However, most of the people in the observation car were quite talkative, and as I read, occasionally I focused my attention on the scraps of conversation reaching my ears. Two conversations stood out on account of their extreme banality. One conversation was between two men sitting at a table right behind me, and concerned brew pubs in Portland and the opening of a McMenamins pub out on the West Side (west of the Willamette River for those of you who are unfamiliar with Portland). This led one of the men to talk at great length (rather incoherently) about which brand of beer was his favorite.

The other conversation was between two young women at another nearby table, and concerned work and career. It seems that one of the women works at a Starbucks and the other works in a telemarketing call center, having worked in Starbucks for a while as well. Both women constantly used two particular four-letter words in describing the downsides and the high points of their jobs, which included getting lots of free coffee. One of them remarked to the other that she had wanted to work at a Starbucks ever since she was a little girl. Then they discussed their interest in creative writing and some of the writing classes they had taken, using one of their two favorite four-letter words as a noun to describe the things they wrote about.

The conductors announced that they were taking dinner reservations, so I signed up for a time slot. When my time came, I made my way to the dining car, where I was seated across from a quiet, middle-aged married couple. I also was quiet. For several minutes, I sat and continued listening to the conversations of others. A couple of tables down the aisle, there sat a big, burly young man wearing a baseball cap. Next to him was a cute young blond woman. They were obviously attached to each other. Across from them sat an elderly woman. The couple was in the midst of delivering a long lesson in things Americans like to the elderly woman, using lots of pronouns such as “I” and “we” as they went down the list of favorite foods, sports and other things. I wondered at them, because it had seemed to me that all three of them were Americans (whenever the elderly woman managed to get a word in edgewise, she did not speak with any obvious accent).

Directly across the aisle from our table was another table, at which two couples were seated. One couple consisted of an African-American man married to a Caucasian woman. Both were middle-aged. Across the table from them was a young Asian pair who were, I believe, at the boyfriend-girlfriend stage. The conversation shared between these four, and the conversation I had with my dinner companions, were the most thought-provoking ones I heard during the entire trip.

My conversation began slowly. The couple at my table started by sharing some ice-breaking information about themselves. I found out that they had recently sailed up the Amazon River in South America, and were now traveling from Portland to Klamath Falls. This piqued my curiosity and got me talking. “Klamath Falls? Isn't that where the Oregon Institute of Technology is? I know a bit about their renewable energy engineering program.” I informed them that I am an engineer. They then informed me that they had both worked in the engineering field, the husband as a civil engineer and the wife as a drafter. They asked me how I liked engineering, to which I replied that there were parts I hated – namely the attempt by employers to work us like dogs for 55 to over 70 hours per week, world without end. My comment led to a general discussion of present-day life in America.

The discussion covered some familiar ground, such as the fact that people in most other countries – including many Third World countries – seem to be much healthier mentally than Americans, the fact that most immigrants to this country come here in much better mental health than most native-born U.S. citizens, and the fact that immigrant mental health deteriorates with increasing length of time in America and increasing Americanization. The wife then asked rhetorically, “Why is it so that we are so selfish here, so isolated from each other?” “I think it's because of the myths on which this country was founded,” I opined. “Other nations have realized for a long time that their citizens lived in a land of limits, in which everyone had to sacrifice certain prerogatives so that all might benefit. The dominant culture in the United States has always believed that there are no limits to what we can do or have if we want something badly enough. Therefore we haven't learned effective strategies for sharing limited resources with each other.”

That led us to talk about where we believed this country is heading as undeniable limits are beginning to bite us. It was also at this point that I began to tune in to the conversation between the mixed-race couple and the Asian boyfriend-girlfriend pair sitting at the table across the aisle from my table. The African-American male half of the married couple was relating what sounded like a belief that Asian (specifically Chinese) culture, intellectual power and economic might would bring about the end of American hegemony. It was with some effort that I managed to remain focused on my own conversation. At my table, we reviewed the spectrum of the most widely-held opinions concerning the future of industrial society, and of the United States in particular. Then a moment came when our food was all eaten, our energy spent, our words all said. We all excused ourselves and said our goodbyes for the night.

As I returned to the observation car, I saw several new arrivals, including some college-age guys enjoying a night of underage drinking. It occurred to me that they, as well as most of the passengers, were so typical of Anglo-American culture at present: unreflecting, sensual, incapable of articulating anything other than the cravings induced in them by our commercialized culture, and totally clueless about the future. Later, as I tried to sleep, my thoughts expanded to consider how the wealthiest and most powerful members of our society had become utterly incapable of giving ground or sacrificing assumed “rights” in order to benefit the common good. I was particularly mindful of the statement of the president of the NRA to the effect that guns were not the reason for the recent shooting rampages in this country, and that instead of restricting gun access, we should install armed guards in every elementary school in the United States. I was thinking also of the most recent shooting rampage, in which an older white male with a criminal history set some houses on fire and then shot volunteer firefighters as they arrived to try to put the fires out, before shooting himself. I thought of the lack of adult, intelligent, realistic conversations on the part of media figures or politicians to address the violent reality of mainstream American culture, or the multifaceted predicament we now face. We are forced by events to acknowledge that our society is killing us, yet nothing is done to effectively remedy the causes of the killing, because to do so would cause certain wealthy people to lose a lot of money, and would force most of us to live far more simply. And that's something that most people don't want to talk about.

Dreaming That We're Poor

This past week, the New York Times ran a front page piece titled, “Bleak Portrait of Poverty is Off the Mark, Experts Say.” It was basically a packaging of “expert” criticisms of a U.S. Census Bureau study titled, “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010.” The study stated that, among other things, the number of Americans living officially below the poverty line grew by 9.7 million between 2006 and 2010. (That figure is found in Table B-1, on page 62 of the report.) The report states that the number of Americans living in poverty has grown to 46.2 million, over four consecutive years of increasing poverty, and that the official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent. There are also now 49.9 million Americans without health insurance coverage.

The experts quoted by the Times (as well as the writers and editors at the Times) object to such a stark depiction of American poverty, saying that it does not take into account the availability of safety net programs for the poor as well as earned income tax credits. According to these talking heads, such things would cause “as much as half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006” to “disappear.” These talking heads grudgingly acknowledge a rise in the numbers of “near poor” people (what does that mean?!), who make too little to live comfortably and make too much to qualify for aid or tax breaks or reduced-cost medical care.

I find such talk to be very far from reality. It seems to me that the nation has become poorer. Social safety nets have been and are being gutted in every state in the Union while the rich continue to concentrate wealth. Access to social safety net programs is dwindling for most Americans. It's easy for so-called experts and their media mouthpieces to redefine “poverty” by fudging numbers. They have no idea what it is to experience life on $18,000 a year. But maybe I'm asleep, dreaming that most of us are poorer. If I just pinched myself hard enough, I'd wake up to find that most of us are rich.

Then again, maybe pinching myself wouldn't work. Maybe those of us who are tired of pinching ourselves should tell our stories to each other, lest the experts convince us that we're all crazy or dreaming. What if we bloggers mounted a campaign to contradict the Times and its talking heads by citing the Census Bureau study and posting our own stories of the poverty we're seeing?

By the way, if you want a copy of that Census Bureau study, you'd better download it fast. According to the Times, on Monday the 7^th of this month, the Census Bureau will publish a “long-promised alternate measure meant to do a better job of fudging the numbers counting the resources the needy have and the bills they have to pay.”

No One For President, Or, Election-Proofing Your Life

(Before I start, I'd like to welcome Meg O'Halloran to my blog. Thanks for your readership! Also, a belated welcome to those who joined last year, including Neil and Naomi Montacre. If you live in the Portland metro area, feel free to check out their store some time.)

I've been thinking about my visit to the #Occupy Portland protests, especially in light of the mainstream media's continued lame coverage of the #Occupy movement in general. While the MSM have not been exactly enthusiastic or even diligent in their coverage of the protests, they have been very enthusiastic in providing coverage of the Republican presidential campaign. This is interesting in that it shows the rapidly widening rift between the MSM and the ordinary people of the United States.

One message that came through loud and clear in my interviews with the #Occupy Portland protesters is that increasingly, most Americans do not believe that either main political party serves the interests of the common people. Increasingly, people are coming to believe that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are actually interested in providing solutions or adaptive responses to the problems and predicaments facing ordinary Americans in this time of economic decline and contraction. An increasing number of Americans is waking up to the realization that the entire electoral and political process has been bought by the rich in order to serve the rich at the expense of all the rest of us. And more and more Americans are realizing that the story they are being fed by the mainstream media bears no resemblance to reality – especially the reality lived daily by ordinary people of small means.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is pushing stories about Texas Governor Rick Perry's proposed policies for America while Herman Cain chews up the airwaves with controversial and schizophrenic statements. (If ever there was a man suffering from a massive case of Stockholm syndrome, Herman Cain fits the bill. He's at least as bad as Clarence Thomas.) And AOL News recently ran a piece advising its readers which Republican presidential candidate would be best for their wallets. At least Sarah Palin has experienced a rare moment of decency and has decided not to run for president.

Increasingly, the Republicans remind me of a line from a Warren Zevon song, Werewolves of London: “You better stay away from him. He'll rip your lungs out, Jim...” And the Democrats? They are being paid by the werewolves to do nothing while the rest of us get eaten. In fact, I can see a few well-developed canine teeth in the mouths of many Democrat politicians. As for third parties in the United States, most of them also seem to be insane and more than a little bit feral.

Maybe we ordinary people should send an election year message of our own to whoever might be listening. I propose a campaign consisting of homemade bumper stickers (for those who drive) or bicycle helmet stickers (for those who pedal). Let the stickers read, NO ONE FOR PRESIDENT. I also propose that ordinary working-class people devise means for election-proofing their lives. This means finding strategies that will enable you to live in some measure of dignity without danger to your lungs or any other body parts, no matter which werewolf gets elected in 2012.

P.S. I will have a couple of more technical posts in the next few weeks, including (hopefully) an interview.

The Sheep Dogs Of Dissent

I was driving home from work this evening (only a week left to go before I won't have to do that again!), and found myself stuck in a long, slow freeway traffic jam. I wanted to find out why the freeway was so slow, so I turned on the radio, hoping to hear some traffic news from KPOJ.

It wasn't quite the time for news, traffic and weather; like most news/talk stations nowadays, they only give you a smidgeon of news, and that only happens once every half hour. What I got instead was a bit of impassioned commentary from Randi Rhodes regarding the privatization of prisons in the United States. She also played an audio clip of the mother of a young teen sentenced to a juvenile camp by a Pennsylvania judge who was convicted this past February of accepting kickbacks from a private prison corporation operating in the state. Evidently the young teen killed himself as a result of his imprisonment, and so at the sentencing of the former judge, the young man's mother delivered a furious rant when she found out that the judge would remain free until his sentencing.

I found that I couldn't stand to listen to more than three minutes of this, and I shut the radio off and delivered a little soliloquy of my own. I was mad, all right – but for reasons which might not have occurred to Randi Rhodes.

It's not that I'm pleased by the commercialization and corruption of the American criminal justice system. Indeed, I've known about it for a few years now, as I wrote in posts such as “Money and Filthy Hands,” and “The Replacement of Petroleum Slaves,” to name a few. The American criminal justice system is a disgraceful evil whose purpose is increasingly to serve as yet another way of funneling the wealth and labor of poor people into the hands of the rich. Part of what made Randi Rhodes' show so hard to listen to is that it is painful to hear of the miscarriages of justice that are still going on in this country.

Now the fact that rich people profit from locking up youth without cause is nothing new. It was only recently elevated to national attention because of the increasing lockups of non-minority youth. But the minority community (in particular, the Black and Latino communities) have always had to deal with this. (See Color Of Justice and Justice for Some, for instance.) It seems, however, that problems of injustice don't really start to exist until they begin to be experienced by mainstream, apple-pie America. And that I find irritating.

But here's a yet more irritating thing. I admit that I didn't finish listening to Randi Rhodes, but I think I can guess how her commentary was structured: first, to inflame passion and anger among certain listeners with so-called “progressive” political views, then to make impassioned appeals to “work to try to change the system!” Why “work to change the system”? “Because we're all in this together, and we're under the system, so we gotta change it to make the system work better and more fairly!”

The truth is that the “system” under which all but the richest Americans live and operate can no longer be changed by ordinary people of small means. It is evil, predatory, sociopathic and unfair precisely because its masters are evil, predatory, sociopathic and unfair. Its masters are also very powerful. To me, it really seems that there's nothing we can do about this short of disengaging ourselves from the system.

This disengagement may seem like a small act, but it is the one thing we can do to weaken the system. Don't like American public education? Disengage from it. Don't like American for-profit health care? Learn to take care of yourself. Don't like the way most of us get our food? Create alternative means of feeding yourself. But don't tell the world what you're up to. Disengagement may well be the most effective act of sabotage any individual can commit.

You won't find that sort of solution discussed on KPOJ, “Portland's only progressive talk station!” If the KPOJ talking heads seriously discussed how people can disengage themselves from the predatory and corrupt systems under which they now live, Clear Channel would instantly pull the plug. Instead, we get impassioned talk designed to inflame us to go out and vote, or to support one political candidate over another, or "be ethical consumers," or in any of a number of other ways to continue to lend our support to a corrupt and failing system. And every fifteen minutes, there is a station break into which five or six commercials are jammed, telling us to go out and consume even more. Those talking heads who are good at what they do are able to keep their audiences hooked so that they soak up everything, including the commercials.

Meanwhile, the masters of commercialized, faux-progressive mass media in this country do their best to shift their audience base ever so slightly to the right, day by day. How many KPOJ talking heads supported NATO intervention in Libya? Why did Rachel Maddow ask a couple of years ago what the United States should be doing to make the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan “behave”? It seems sometimes that the main job of the faux-progressives is to turn genuine outrage into ineffectual channels that pose no threat to their real masters.

An American Chimera

Over the last year or so, I've almost stopped following the mainstream news. Occasionally I scan newspaper headlines, but that's about all I do unless I happen to be listening to the now ubiquitous “news/talk” radio (with the emphasis on the talk) to find out what tomorrow's weather will be.

An outside observer might have expected my disinterest to change last Sunday when I heard that the United States had assassinated Osama Bin Laden. Such an observer would have been disappointed.

To be sure, I picked up small scraps, bits and pieces of the story. I guess U.S. operatives were supposed to have located and shot Mr. Bin Laden this past Sunday, and to have buried his body in the sea. Bin Laden has provided the U.S. with a convenient excuse for some interesting policies and actions on the international stage over the last decade. These policies and actions have led to the destruction of two national governments, the death of over a million civilians and the attempt to steal the oil of at least two countries.

Now it seems that his death offers more political and propaganda capital than his life did for the leaders of America. What better way to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the September 11 attacks than to announce the death of the so-called perpetrator of those attacks? This will be a big year for the wealthy and powerful leaders of American society, as well as their media mouthpieces. I am sure they will make all sorts of appeals to patriotism via carefully choreographed propaganda stunts and commemorations. Their message will be, “God bless America! And let no one question the sustainability or morality of the American way of life: the unrestrained freedom to pursue material wealth! Support our troops, for they fight to maintain the American way! And let no one question the morality of their fight or the rights of those against whom they are fighting!”

Pardon my skepticism, but the story of Bin Laden's death seems to hold a lot less water than a corpse buried at sea should. “The operation to remove him was so hush-hush, see, that we can't release any photos of his corpse...” For the last few years, Bin Laden has seemed to me to be merely a manufactured distraction from one of the main real issues facing this country, namely the insistence of most of the nation and of all of its wealthiest and most powerful members that America is entitled to control and consume all of the world's resources, regardless of the cost to other peoples or the fact that those resources are now running out.

This issue seems to be too painful for us to bear looking at it for very long. So we look for distractions as we have been trained to by our media, and the media happily dishes up distractions. A week ago it was a certain wedding of two extremely spoiled people in England. (I don't give two cents and a stick of chewing gum about the “Royal Wedding.” He's not the prince of Oregon, is he?!) This week it's Bin Laden. But I'm not distracted.

I care far more about things that our mainstream media continues to ignore – questions like, what's a sievert? How many sieverts does it take to kill you? How many millisieverts does it take to ruin your health for good? How many millisieverts have we in the Pacific Northwest received since the 11^th of March? Will the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster ever be satisfactorily mitigated? How many people know about the gasoline shortages sweeping many parts of the globe right now (including shortages in parts of Georgia and Pittsburgh in the U.S.)? What geopolitical games of robbery will the United States play as global resource shortages intensify? Who will be the next chimera?

Laser Bigotry

I'll start this post with an illustration.

Lasers are interesting devices. The word “laser” is actually an acronym formed from the first letters of the words “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” Lasers work as follows: a “lasing” material (either a special crystal or gas or semiconducting material) is “pumped” with electromagnetic energy. This energy raises the electrons in the atoms of the material to higher “orbits” as the electrons store the energy pumped into the material. Then as electrons start to give up this energy and fall back to lower energy states, the energy is released as photons (light), which strike other atoms in the material, causing them to give up their pumped energy as well, ultimately resulting in a cascading flood of photons which comprise the light of the resulting laser beam. The laser beam has some unusual characteristics, which make it both interesting and useful. First, the light of the beam is monochromatic; that is, it is composed of light of one color only. Second, the beam is coherent; that is, it does not spread out except over very great distances. The light of the laser beam is the result of a series of deliberate choices by the designers and makers of lasers, as laser light is almost never found in nature.

Which brings me to the Arizona shootings this weekend, and to further reflections on American social life in these troubled times. There are many who write and comment on the societal consequences of resource depletion and economic collapse, and who state their belief that such times promote the rise of fascism, bigotry and intolerance. The way these writers talk, however, makes it sound as if adverse conditions cause fascism, bigotry and intolerance to just bubble up from the body politic in some inexplicable way that can only be described as a mysterious social force untraceable to any one individual.

I think such an explanation is nonsense. There are, to be sure, many idiots, bigots, and all-around doofuses in the United States these days. Our American society is now faced with post-Peak Oil, the depletion of a host of other resources, an economy which is long since past its peak, an environment which is increasingly degraded to such an extent that it can no longer support life, and the decline of our influence and hegemony in the world. Even within the U.S., the dominant Anglo sons and daughters of privilege are finding that they must now function within a multipolar, multicultural society. They have been used to being the sole center of attention for too long. For too long, they have been overloaded with all the toys a kid could want, and they have not had to share with anyone else. Our post-Peak nation in a post-Peak world will be forced to learn to share. This is a cause of angst and resentment among some of the sons and daughters of privilege.

Given the right environment, this angst and resentment could be constructively worked out. After all, having to share is not the end of the world. On a purely physical, technical level, it is quite possible that we could all live securely in a managed contraction of our economy, with high quality of life, if we were simply willing to share what we have with each other. But ours is not the right environment.

The present social environment of mainstream America is the deliberate product of its makers and designers, who are the wealthiest of the sons and daughters of privilege. They would rather tear this country apart than share the mountains of things they have piled up to themselves via the impoverishment of the rest of the nation and the world. They own the majority of the media and the majority of its politicians and most prominent mouthpieces.

So we have Fox TV and Fox News telling us that the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 arose because banks were forced to lend to minorities. We have Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh making all kinds of bigoted, racist statements to the world. We have Fox News agitating for war in Iraq even though the war was unjustified. We have all the Fox talking heads calling Obama a closet Muslim, a terrorist and a Nazi, even though their accusations had no basis in fact. We have Steve Forbes and Dick Armey creating the “Tea Party” and we have nearly all mainstream American media focusing an inordinate amount of attention on the Tea Baggers while ignoring genuine grassroots expressions of public opinion that run counter to the “me first” message of the Tea Baggers. We have Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes now able to vomit their hatred through thousands of mouthpieces. We have the Arizona immigration law and Republicans poised to try to push similar laws in several other states. We have the primary school textbook industry now taken over by right wing zealots who want to use public schools to push their jingoist propaganda. We have places like Walmart and Fred Meyer hawking books by Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and George Bush – right next to the newsstands carrying Star, the National Enquirer and Cosmopolitan. And we have Sarah Palin targeting her opponents in the crosshairs.

Under such a media onslaught, it's not surprising that a few narrow-minded working-class redneck types would find themselves getting “lased.” Like atoms being pumped by light of a certain frequency, these people are gladly allowing themselves to get pumped by propaganda that validates their evil beliefs and desires. Is it any wonder that when they release their “pumping energy”, the result is violently destructive deeds?

To be sure, there is now a “debate” in the mainstream media over whether the right-wing garbage now emanating from most American media mouthpieces is actually responsible for the appearance of white supremacist militias and acts of violence such as the Arizona shootings. According to the McClatchy Tribune, a professor from USC “cautioned against coming to any conclusions about the motivations of the shooter in Tucson.” Similar backpedaling can be seen from Fox TV and Sarah Palin. And one person wrote, “Leave it to the liberals to expect one person to be held accountable for the individual actions of every person who hears them. It's representative of the liberal nanny state dream come true!”

Funny thing, though, is that a couple of decades ago, when these very same right-wingers were religiously campaigning against indecency on television, their opponents tried to deny any causal link between indecency in the media and sexual activity among young watchers of TV and movies. Now the right wingers are trying to use the same defense. Ah, well, to borrow a line from the Crucible, “God damns (punishes) all liars.” (By the way, the Good Book says something similar in Revelation 22:15.)

The Asymptote of Truth

I won't have very much time on the weekends for deep, analytical posts for a while. The summer school session has just started and I am teaching a sophomore level engineering class two days a week as an adjunct. This is on top of my day job. (I'm glad I arranged to work part-time!)

But a couple of things have been on my mind lately. First, the continued oil spill (or leak, or gusher, or whatever you want to call it) at the Macondo field in the Gulf of Mexico. People who are paying attention should know that originally BP claimed that the spill was “very minor,” and that it was only grudgingly that they revised their daily leakage numbers upward to 5000 barrels per day. This figure they (and the U.S. Coast Guard) steadfastly maintained to be the truth, even though available evidence suggested that the spill was far worse. Recently, the evidence has become so overwhelming that the “official” leakage figures have steadily crept toward agreement with estimates made by independent observers. This source states a figure of 60,000 barrels per day. Even that figure pales in comparison with BP's own worst-case estimate of 100,000 barrels per day. The truth is coming out, but grudgingly.

The story of this oil spill and of the “official” story of this oil spill is but a subset of the story of our present societal predicament and of the “official” story of that predicament. This is especially true regarding Peak Oil. The official story started with denial. But as the evidence of our true situation has grown worse and more overwhelming, the official stories have begun to line up with the accounts of independent observers. After years of denial, even the U.S. Energy Information Administration now admitting that Peak Oil is real, and that it is here.

What makes people in power lie through their teeth? The answer to that question, while rather simple, would take a lot of time to write, and I have to be out of the house early tomorrow. But I am thinking of one possible outcome to our societal predicament, an outcome I first heard suggested in a podcast I heard of someone interviewing Dmitri Orlov. I think what may happen in a lot of cases is that people in power will lie to us just as long as the lie holds some hope of being profitable to them. As the available evidence mounts to disprove their lies, they will change their story to bring it closer to the truth – yet they will never quite reach truthfulness. Once the available evidence becomes overwhelming, Orlov suggests that some of these people will simply walk off their jobs and disappear, because there's no further reward to be had by staying. I wonder.

Davy Jones Disturbed - One Month Later

This will be a short post – my schedule has suddenly become much busier. I will say, though, that I have some good interviews lined up, and hopefully you will be seeing them over the next two months. I also owe you all a transcript of my “post-Peak health care” interview with Holly Scholles of Birthingway College of Midwifery.

Today let's talk about the ongoing oil leak caused by the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. I want to list the lies that have been told so far by British Petroleum (BP) and its allies in the mainstream media:

• Residents of Texas who discovered dead sea turtles washing up on their beaches soon after the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon and the resulting oil spill were told that there was no connection between the oil spill and the dead sea turtles on Texas shores. This assertion was heavily implied in coverage of the event by Fox News. However, the truth is that the numbers of dead sea turtles are triple the normal amount for this time of year. A more accurate picture of the environmental damage can be found at the Sea Turtle Restoration Project and similar sites.

• Tar balls are now washing up on the beaches of Florida. The U.S. Coast Guard recently asserted that “lab tests show conclusively that the the Florida Keys tar balls are not linked to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.” The funny thing is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration requires that all water, tar or oil samples collected in the area affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill must be sent to TDI-Brooks International's B&B Laboratories, located in Texas. TDI-Brooks' biggest clients are multinational oil companies such as British Petroleum, owner of the Deepwater Horizon. Clearly, there is a conflict of interest here.

• The “official” size of the leak has never lined up with reality. The official figure being bandied about is 5000 barrels per day. In the early aftermath of the disaster, that figure was far lower, as the official estimates of the severity of the leak were being published by...BP, of course! Estimates were revised upward from a mere 1000 barrels per day to the current 5000 as it became quickly obvious that BP's figures were unrealistic. Now some very respectable sources are saying that the 5000-barrel-per-day figure is also wildly optimistic. According to these sources, the figure should be closer to 70,000 barrels per day. (See “Daily Kos: Deepwater Horizon: The first 30 days” and “Gulf Oil Spill May Far Exceed Government, BP Estimates : NPR” for instance.) According to one estimate, the resulting oil slick now covers more area than the state of West Virginia.

• Descriptions of BP's effectiveness in stopping, stemming or containing the leak have proven time and time again to be very exaggerated. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp outlets, including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, have regularly and uncritically published BP's pronouncements that progress is being made in stemming the leak (see “FOXNews.com - British Petroleum Caps One of Three Gulf Oil Leaks”, and “Spill Fight Shows Progress - WSJ.com” for instance). Yet these statements are being regularly disproved. BP's recent statement that they were siphoning off 5000 barrels per day from the leak via a specially-equipped ship had to be revised downward, as reported here.

The situation is improving for people who want to get at the truth of the seriousness of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. There is now a live camera feed showing the leak in real time, via both satellite imagery and underwater cameras at the leak site. This live feed has been overloaded, showing just how many people are interested in learning the truth. There are also independent experts who are not friends of the oil industry, who can also provide insight into the magnitude of the disaster.

The truth that emerges is not a pretty picture. What is being seen is that BP who were incompetent in managing offshore oil drilling, are just as incompetent in managing the cleanup from an offshore well blowout. Either that, or they are unwilling to mount the sort of effort needed to stop the Gulf oil leak in a timely manner due to fear of reducing their profit margin. It is high time to bring in more competent agencies, even if this means we have to ask for help from foreign governments. This will of course tarnish the myth of American exceptionalism, as well as exposing BP to increased civil and criminal liability (for many more people will see the evidence of the magnitude of the mess BP have created). That's just too bad. Time is of the essence here. Otherwise, we face the prospect of 70,000 barrels of oil per day polluting our oceans for months on end, while BP dithers about and expends most of their energy protecting their stock value instead of taking responsibility for their mess.

Pravda Moments

This is not the land that was promised me,

Even as far as my eyes can see...

– Not The Land, Derek Webb

There is a series of articles about Soviet history at the PBS website. One article deals with the function of propaganda in the Soviet regime, specifically mentioning Pravda, the former official news organ of the Soviet Communist Party, which is now an independent news/editorial organization in its own right. The PBS article states that, “When the Bolshevik party came to power in the October 1917 revolution, it immediately began creating the world's first modern propaganda state. This is not at all surprising...The means of communication...were ordered seized as a priority. To hold the means of communication denied them to enemies. Public opinion mattered; making sure rivals could not get their message out mattered more.” The purpose of seizing all means of mass communication was simple: to reform and re-structure a society comprised of many heterogeneous traditions and traditional sources of authority into a cohesive unit under a strong central authority.

Thus the Bolsheviks attacked any rival authorities, including traditions of elders, ancient yet heterogeneous cultures, parental authority and religious faith. In place of these authorities they inserted themselves and their party structure, and they created a new collective of “saints” and heroes to legitimize their reign in the minds of their subjects. The constant hammering of their message through state-owned means of mass communication was another means by which they sought to legitimize themselves.

From the start, the Bolsheviks wanted to turn Russia into a new, modern, scientifically advanced techno-utopia. This was the Soviet ideal. Lenin's administration achieved the widespread electrification of the Soviet Union in a very short time. The rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union continued under Stalin, along with the breakup of family farming and the rise of collective farms. These things took place alongside the massive indoctrination of Russian children and youth in order to displace the influence of local, traditional culture and the authority of elders.

For a long while, this strategy worked. Soviet life began to improve and modern technology became widely available to a large percentage of the population. World War Two validated the propaganda depiction of the Soviet Union as a utopian experiment threatened by enemies, and validated Stalin as a defender of that utopia-in-progress. After the war, the Soviets rebuilt and expanded their industrial economy, achieving some significant public relations victories with the detonation of their own nuclear weapons, the launch of the world's first artificial satellite, the first man in space and the first space walk. While times were good and things were going the Soviets' way, it was easy for the average Soviet man on the street to believe the propaganda being pushed on him.

That began to change in the late 1970's and 1980's, as the Soviet regime experienced a series of reversals and setbacks, and ordinary people in the Soviet Union were able to travel more freely to other countries. It became apparent to a large number of people that the reality of their daily lives contradicted official media pronouncements. As one source wrote in the 1880's, the old joke about the Soviet press was that “there's no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia.” Soviet media began to lose its power. Samizdat and alternative sources of news became much more important.

At least, that's how I understand how all this worked out. I must provide a caveat: I'm not Russian and haven't lived anywhere near Russia during my entire life. But my opinion is formed by the sources I've read and by sketchy memories of a Cold War childhood.

There are parallels between the “world's first propaganda state,” as Western propagandists describe the Soviet Union, and the supposedly “free,” “democratic” nations of the West, particularly the United States. I won't belabor them, as they have already been covered amply by other writers (particularly by a former citizen of the Soviet Union, a copy of whose book I own). One of those parallels does deserve some mention, however.

In the West (particularly the United States) over the years, some extremely rich people have succeeded in loosening state restrictions on the concentration and aggregation of wealth and resources. These restrictions were originally created to prevent large numbers of people from being hurt by the side effects of predatory capitalism. These restrictions are now almost completely erased. One of these restrictions was a restriction on the amount of media ownership any one person or corporation could have.

Because that restriction has been largely erased, a handful of men own huge numbers of very rich and powerful media outlets. I am thinking of Rupert Murdoch in particular (as some of you probably guessed), who is as rabid and enthusiastic an apologist for predatory capitalism as Pravda once was for Soviet socialism.

The problem for Mr. Murdoch (and for people like him) is that recent events are presenting a reality of daily experience for many Americans which is very different from the official party line they get from Fox News or the Wall Street Journal. This reality is not being experienced in isolation, but rather out in the open, by people who can look at each other and compare notes. This makes it harder for the propaganda machine to say, “So your experience is different from what we promised? That's because you're a failure.” In other words, it's getting harder for perpetrators of societal abuse to blame their victims for their own suffering.

A media outlet like Fox might still be able to succeed in making someone feel guilty for losing his job and being on food stamps (even though this person is out of work because of massive layoffs or the bankruptcy of his employer). But how can one blame residents of coastal cities and towns for a massive oil spill that pollutes their beaches and contaminates their groundwater? Or how is this the fault of “them 'terrrists,' socialists and liberals!”? By the way, which “news” outlets and political candidates were pushing the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” message over the last two years?

The right-wing media in this country (which comprises the majority of mainstream media nowadays) would tell us that greed is good, that laissez-fare capitalism is wonderful, and that all our social problems can be solved if only we remove all governmental restrictions and “let the market decide” what our lives shall be. But if free markets and small government are so wonderful, who poisoned the water supply of Charleston, West Virginia to such an extent that seven-year-old boys there now have mouths full of caps on teeth that have been rotted away from drinking the water?

The “free-market,” selfish, “greed-is-good,” John Galt message of the American Right is diametrically opposed to reality, and is a very bad way of coping with a future of diminishing resources and a poisoned planet. For a long time, forward-thinking people have known this to be true, although the signs of our resource and environmental predicament were not obvious to most. Now the signs are becoming a lot more obvious. The Kool-Aid we've been fed is starting to make more people queasy - or, as Ahavah Gayle said recently on her blog Shalom Habayit, "This caviar tastes funny." The Deepwater Horizon accident was an American “Pravda moment.” The United States and its dominant media will be experiencing many more “Pravda moments” in the near future. Hopefully, such moments will be the start of an adult conversation.

For Further Reading,

• “Propaganda Investigative Assets: Insights,” PBS

• “The Editorial Notebook; Dear Pravda,” the New York Times

• “INVASION - A COMPARISON OF SOVIET AND WESTERN MEDIA PERFORMANCE,” Medialens

• “Toxic Waters,” the New York Times

Waiting for a Chicken Tenders Platter at Applebee's...

One night last week, I had a work-related evening appointment which lasted until nearly 9 PM. I wasn't thrilled about having to fix myself dinner at that hour, so I went to an Applebee's near my house. Lately the Applebee's chain has been hosting live music at some of its locations (along with other odd variations on the “family restaurant” theme, such as face painting.) I ordered my usual and waited.

As I waited I heard a young woman, a solo acoustic singer-songwriter type who was strumming away on her guitar and singing lyrics of the “confessional” sort. Most people were oblivious to her, but because she was situated next to the bar, some of the patrons there applauded her at the end of each song she sang. One middle-aged man was paying particular attention to her, repeatedly asking her if she would come away to Australia with him. Later on he began to harmonize with her, contributing “oohs” and “ahhs” that were actually in key, surprisingly enough. Still, his “contributions” got on my nerves, and I was glad that I was sitting several tables away. At one point, the man asked her, “Can you rock out?!” “Yeah, when I have my band!” was her answer.

I found myself asking myself why this woman was singing at an Applebee's on a week night. This led to the larger question of why there were so many people like her, both male and female, whose chosen ambition was to make it big as rock or pop stars or singer-songwriters. After all, the field is very crowded and after a while, everyone starts to sound the same. “Making it” in the business has come to mean being signed by some major record label, and becoming rich and famous shortly thereafter. But the music “industry” has many gatekeepers who have turned music into a standardized, commoditized package consisting of a limited selection of musical “flavors.” I am sure that it's very hard for an artist to be widely heard outside the dominant system.

What of those who are outside the dominant system? It seems to me that one key to their continued existence (and happiness) is that they've lowered or altered their expectations of what they want to get out of their music. They have turned their backs on trying to be famous. If they are trying to make a living, it's via teaching (or busking) or performing at weddings and other functions – and they have a backup “day job.” Otherwise, they play just for the fun of it. (Maybe that's what that woman at Applebee's was doing.)

This got me thinking about blogging. The same sorts of questions could be asked of many bloggers, especially the left-leaning, anti-materialist sort who write politically-tinged blogs. “Why do you do it?” And, “Don't you know that you all are a dime a dozen by now? Who pays attention to you, anyway?” “You think you're gonna change the world just because you went to Guitar Center and bought a guitar and an amp?” “You think you're gonna change the world just because you started a blog?”

There's an uncomfortable reality behind these questions. One blogger said recently that in the United States, we have the illusion of freedom of speech. This is because while anyone can say almost anything they want, the chances of any ordinary person being heard by a large audience are very small. The balance of media power is still skewed very much in favor of a small number of very wealthy people who have inordinate media access, and who use that access to unrelentingly hammer home their message, their worldview, and an agenda that is harmful to many.

But there is a further problem, namely, that most of America has been advertised to death by now. As a result, most of us are jaded. In the minds of many of us, anyone who has a message must have some ulterior motive which will cost us dearly if we allow ourselves to be persuaded by the message being offered. “Besides, we've heard it all before,” many of us say. “Why should I trust you?”

I don't have easy answers to any of these questions. I have to admit that when I first started blogging, I guess I had some half-conscious idea that “I could change the world” – maybe just a little. Now I'm much less optimistic. At this time in our national and societal history, when we are facing a comprehensive predicament that will require intelligence, maturity and the starting of adult conversations that most people would rather not have, the best I can hope for is that I can engage a handful of others in an adult conversation. And I appreciate the conversations of some of my fellow bloggers, conversations which I have been privileged to join. We can think of ourselves as participants in a “house concert.”

Hallucinating Riots

On Ran Prieur's website, there is a link to an online article from the May 2010 issue of Reason Magazine, titled, “Disaster Utopianism.” It is, among other things, a critique of CNN's coverage of the aftermath of the January earthquake in Haiti, where “news” correspondents talked of “chaotic crowds,” “chaotic scrambles,” and the need for “crowd control of...thousands of desperate people.” But the images of calm, orderly people recorded by the CNN cameras contradicted the attempts by CNN correspondents to portray Haiti as out of control.

This contradiction was noticed by a number of people, and not just those employed by Reason Magazine. Sasha Kramer, director of the Haitian nonprofit SOIL, described the calm, orderly solidarity of ordinary black Haitians after the quake. And in her post titled, “"The Quake"– Haiti Through The Distorted Lenses of PBS' Frontline,” blogger Chantal Laurent also noted that there are many discrepancies between the official American version of the story of Haiti and the reality on the ground – discrepancies whose effect is to present a magnified portrait of the United States as some kind of savior to a poor, backward, unstable nation. The American mainstream media portrayal of Haiti can best be summed up in this sarcastic statement from Reason Magazine: “Send cops to contain this peaceful crowd!”

So far that portrayal has worked – not many people have questioned the reasons for sending over 10,000 armed U.S. troops to Haiti to “restore order.” This is unlike Iraq, which the U.S. invaded because the Iraqi government “had ties to Al-Qaeda,” and “was building weapons of mass destruction.” When those statements were proven false, there was a brief period of much “hand-wringing” on the part of everyone in power, both in the mainstream media (except for Rupert Murdoch and Fox “News”) and in the Federal Government as they “wondered” how they could have made such a huge “mistake.” In the case of Haiti, where a major magazine has questioned how coverage of the situation could have been so inaccurate, the reasons cited have been rather vague. Reason Magazine blames the error on “cultural truisms” and ingrained prejudices that prevent affluent Anglo news reporters from seeing the reality right in front of their eyes.

Those reasons are certainly valid and operative in mainstream American media, where blond, blue-eyed survivors of disasters are described as “foraging for supplies” and “digging out from under the rubble,” but dark-skinned survivors performing the same actions are described as “looting” and “breaking and entering.” But I want to suggest another reason for this breakdown in perception, a reason which has been explored only by a handful of analysts.

Upton Sinclair once said that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” A corollary statement could go like this: “It is easy to get a man to see the world a certain way if his salary depends on it.” It is instructive to ask why the American mainstream media see Haiti the way they do, and why the American media are working to make the rest of us see Haiti the way they do. My short answer is this: “Follow the money.” To those who want a more accurate understanding of the world, I'd like to suggest that it is time for us to make a natural resource map of Haiti, along with a map or database of foreign companies operating there – especially companies involved in mining and other resource extraction, or in industrial factory farming for export. It is time for us to study the conditions under which these companies operate, as well as the flows of money and capital from company to company and between the companies and outside governments such as the United States and the other member nations of the U.N Security Council.

As we try to construct such a database, we notice certain companies right off the bat, companies such as Eurasian Minerals, which has had a strong interest in Haiti for over three years (and possibly much longer), as noted in an article originally published in the South China Morning Post and republished on the HaitiAnalysis.com and “Preval Haiti” websites. That article featured an interview with a Mr. Keith Laskowski, a geologist for Eurasian, who was beside himself with excitement at the possibilities of exploiting Haiti's potential for gold mining. Eurasian Minerals' interest in Haitian gold is also described in articles published in 2009, such as “Eurasian Minerals: The Early Bird Once Again Gets the Worm” and “Eurasian Minerals Discovers Two New High-Grade Copper-Silver-Gold Prospects at Treuil Property, Haiti.” Eurasian Minerals is by no means the only company interested in Haiti's mineral wealth; there are also several Canadian mining firms operating in that country.

Now that the earthquake has occurred, Eurasian Minerals and investors such as IFC and the World Bank have cast their gold-lust in a softer, more humanitarian light, as noted in articles like this: “IFC invests in Eurasian Minerals to support Haiti recovery.” This article states that “...this investment reaffirms IFC's commitment to social and economic growth in Haiti. It also comes at a critical time for supporting the country's recovery through private sector participation.”

The earthquake seems to have benefited others interested in extracting Haiti's natural resources, people such as oil prospectors, as revealed in these articles: “Haiti quake may have revealed oil reserves,” and “Haiti: Bonanza for Foreign Mining Companies.” Indeed, the earthquake and subsequent American occupation seem to have benefited everyone except the ordinary resident Haitians, and the promises of foreign companies and governments to use Haiti's resources to rebuild Haiti sound as hollow as American promises to use Iraqi oil to rebuild Iraq after the American invasion.

Eurasian Minerals, gold and oil are three dots that can be connected to form an accurate picture of the real reasons for American (and First World) interest and involvement in Haiti. There are other “dots” to connect, for those who have the time. Many of those “dots” can be found on the blog The Haitian Blogger, and in the Black Agenda Report. But even if you only do your own digging, I suspect that you'll find lots of verifiable, multiply-corroborated “dots” to connect, and that the resource “dots” can be connected with geopolitical and governmental “dots” to form some eye-catching combinations. How about it? Anyone over at Energy Bulletin or The Oil Drum interested in playing a game of connect-the-dots?

So what does this have to do with American neighborhoods? Well, if you live in a poor or working-class or minority neighborhood, everything. Beware of the media. Especially in the aftermath of a disaster. Especially if you have things that rich outsiders might want.