Republican and Democratic Misdirection & Why Every Good Capitalist has Read Marx

If there is anything that annoys me more than an ardent Republican it’s an ardent Democrat.  Amid the release of the Job Reports this morning, I’ve already seen two articles saying that the loss of jobs is bad news for Obama and the democrats for the midterms. Indeed a high unemployment rate isn’t good for any sitting president. Obama has responded this morning that the government will give $2 billion in tax credits to create some 17,000 “green” jobs.  All the while Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and other right wing noise artists are blasting the president for budget deficits and attempts at regulation, which according to them are debasing the recovery.

Anyone who subscribes to the noise artists’ point of view, whether its mouth pieces on the left or the right, is likely confused as all hell as to what effects and drives the economy. Unfortunately for partisan simpletons it isn’t the actions of congress or the president that can save or destroy the economy, although such actions certainly have an effect. The most ridiculous of the rabble rousing at this point must be that centered on regulation. Even the arch-conservative Richard Posner blamed a large part of the economic nose dive on the de-regulatory dogma of the nineties.

Even after the debacle in credit default swaps, the unregulated assets that bankrupted AIG, pro-market-or-die Republicans are still lambasting attempts at regulation as bad for business.  Congress was repeatedly advised to regulate the assets, which basically uncollateralized insurance policies on mortgaged backed assets. That didn’t stop Congress from blasting Ed Liddy (the government appointed chairman of AIG) for letting AIG deal in CDO’s. This occurred when he handed out huge bonus to- according to him- retain the employees necessary to wind down the riskier business practices AIG had gotten itself into.  Apparently Congress also forgot that Liddy was only appointed to head AIG after the risky business had already been undertaken.  As congressman after congress man lined up to ask the same questions as the one before, I couldn’t help feeling depressed and anxious, amazed at how blithely stupid our politicians can be.

Unfortunately for them and us, the paying out of huge bonuses to top-level managers is consistent with a systemic and long-range analysis of the principles of economics. The underlying problem in our understanding of economics is due to widespread ignorance and politically motivated deception. All we ever learn about Adam Smith in high school is the theory of the invisible hand. We never hear that he supported government intervention in some areas of the economy, especially where it could reduce poverty. Also since the cold war Marx has been represented as communist theorist that only traitorous scoundrels would reference.  In truth Marx’s theories of capitalism were very insightful while what he wrote about the Revolution was dead wrong.  There was not a spontaneous workers Revolution in Russia or China. Dedicated strategists and politicians led both revolutions. Marx’s temporary dictatorship never dissolved into communism in any of the Red states.  However, a Marxian approach to the counter cyclical path of economic growth sheds light on our own “Great Recession.”

In the past people traded goods for goods. Then we started using currencies and we traded currencies for goods. However, the advent of business enterprise changed all that.  No longer were goods traded for currency in the hopes of obtaining more goods. The goal then is to get some goods, turn around and sell them, and end up with more money than originally had. Now goods were traded, not in the pursuit of other goods, but in the pursuit of money. Now get ready to strike a pose because were going to do a little modeling here.

Let’s suppose an economy where there is one good. It takes two things to make that one good, capital and labor. Now we will also assume the cost of capital either stays the same or rises because we also assume constantly increased competition in the market. The point of capitalism now is to always make a profit which can be represented with the equation, p-(C+L)=P where p is price, C is cost of capital, L is cost of labor, and P is profit.

Now because competition is always going up prices eventually must come down. As supply will eventually grow firms must compete by lowering the price. This puts downward pressure on profits. However, because competition is constantly increasing there is upward pressure on the cost of capital. This leads to more downward pressure on profits, the pursuit of which is the ultimate goal of capitalism. Because managers will all seek to protect their profits they must cut costs somewhere. So they cut the cost of labor to secure sizable profits. Assuming things continue on like this more supply problems are inevitable. Not only is there an abundance of supply, but also now there is less of a demand for it. As workers are paid less they can spend correspondingly less. So even as prices fall the money paid back to workers falls too. Eventually the system proves deficient. As profits shrink to zero so do the value of the firms. So value is lost. What is then necessary to solve the problem of over supply and too little demand is the destruction of productive capacity. This either can occur by literal destruction of capital or by simply devaluing capital.  This analysis explains why these downturns are endemic to the system. Something no free-markets-or-die republicans will ever acknowledge.

It’s clear to see that this has been happening. Since the de-industrialization of the seventies high paying jobs have become fewer and farther between. The growth of the Service sector meanwhile has left us with plenty of jobs for the most passionate of dog groomers, burger flippers, and wait staff. The overall reduction in the pay of individuals is also apparent by our un-indexed minimum wage. Which overtime has become worth less and less.  Now in the midst of the recession workers, including my father, have been forced to either take pay cuts or lay offs and the American worker ends up with an even smaller piece of the pie.  This is only half the story of the collapse and why blaming either party is an exercise in futility.

The second half of the story has to do with a systemic analysis. Systemic analysis contests that it’s impossible to understand one economy with out understanding the role it plays in the world economy. The basic premise of the systemic perspective is that a global hegemonic (dominant) power is necessary to provide security to those who wish to engage in trade. Since that dominant power provides the security it also makes the rules. The hegemony of “the center,” in the dialect of world-system analysis, becomes dominant by being stronger militarily. This is achieved by being more efficient at production, because the better your killing technology the better you are at killing. Eventually technology spreads and “the periphery,” the other countries, catch up to the dominant country. Then the economic advantage that ensured the security of the system is undermined. In this second stage of the cycle profits from production of real goods are effectively quashed to zero as a system of perfect competition ensues. Since real production is no longer a viable source of income, profit seekers resort to financial speculation to make money.

We can see this today in our own economy. GMAC the financial division in GM was, before the crash, the only profitable wing of GM. Now it just petitioned for more bail out bucks. Similarly GE makes very little profit by selling a dishwasher. It makes up for that by financing the purchase of the dishwasher. See the U.S. after WWII was the hegemonic power. With all the industries of Western Europe and Japan bombed to high hell, the U.S. had the clear economic advantage. Not only that but high wages paid during the war years created a savings glut as no consumer goods were available. In the post war years consumer demand at an all time high as factories switched from making hand grenades to hair dryers. The U.S. was also the only developed nation left not blown to bits. Around 1968 the rest of the world caught up in terms of productive capacity. Now the big three couldn’t compete with each other with features alone, because Honda was competing with them in terms of price. The effects on our economy when the down turn kicked in was deindustrialization and increased financialization of our economy.  No longer would goods be produced in the U.S. and then sold over seas. Now U.S. companies would buy parts from abroad at as low a price as possible and act as only organizers of the product chain. Meanwhile reduced wages at home diminish demand for goods here. Despite what the right wing noise machine may have you believe, demand is the driving force behind the economy, not the degree of regulation placed on companies. What has occurred to buoy demand is a glut of debt and money creation. However increased liquidity only goes so far, especially once people have already taken on huge swaths of debt to finance consumerist lifestyles.

You might be reading at home thinking, but wait during the nineties we had a huge boom. Realize though over-valued tech stocks drove that boom. These tech stocks were over valued because of the increase in institutional investors like insurance companies, financial wings of corporations, and expanded commercial banking investment. The increase in risky investments by commercial banks was due to the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act. The law divided commercial banking and investment banking activities. The repeal of which also gave rise to the “too big to fail” megaliths like Citi Group and Bank of America.

In my opinion the reason why the economy is in the shitter is for all the aforementioned reasons.  There is a deficiency in demand. Americans don’t want a new car every year. We’re sick of running up our credit cards to buy shit we don’t need. Shit that will probably break due to some planned malfeasance. Perhaps if we were paid more we would run out and buy the newest plasti-form junk-o-matic. But then the managers wouldn’t make enough money. As the process of managing a successful business becomes harder because of the downward pressure on profits endemic to the system, firms are forced to pay out the huge bonuses like those paid out at AIG last spring. Otherwise the top-level managers capable of turning a profit will go somewhere else.

So the next time you curse Obama for attempting to get some regulation in the dangerously deregulated financial sector, shut up. Democrat’s regulation of the economy isn’t what is causing this downturn.  If you’re tempted to go the other direction, please shut up! Obama’s green jobs plan isn’t going to save the economy. Even with the most generous of multiplier effects the 17,000 green jobs his plan is supposedly about to create aren’t going to fix an economy of 304 million people. Understand that the economy isn’t going to respond to even the most vigorous sloganeering.  As long as the underlying production of goods isn’t met with sufficient demand the economy is going to suck. No amount of money creation by the FED will fix that. Neither will all the hope in the world. So please stop looking for simple solutions, because there aren’t any. It’s time to start asking serious questions about the future of capitalism. Different approaches to ensure steady growth and a more equitable dispersion of the spoils of growth without encroaching upon our individual liberties are out there. We just haven’t thought of them yet.

Thurdsday Nights Means one thing: New InfoMania!

If you are not familiar with Al Gore and Joe Hyatt’s Current TV, you should be. Anyone who considers themselves a tertiary consumer of information should tune in to the network for a perspective different form that of the main stream media. Indeed even if Al Gore did invent the internet, inventing Current TV is way more impressive. Their low-budget investigative journalism show Vanguard is Emmy nominated, but the real treasure on Current is InfoMania. A new episode airs tonight at 10 PM (9 PM central time). In case you are unfamiliar with the show it is basically in “the soup” format, but with jokes that aren’t just funny but also exceptionally poignant. Conor Knighton hosts starting the show off with the biggest clips of the week and also a magazine segment entitled We’ve Got You Covered. What ever madness the media has drummed up Conor is sure to expose it for the idiotic dribble it is with the most snide and unerring wit. However the show just keeps getting better. Ben Hoffman hosts the InfoMania editorial. It features him standing on a soapbox and berating whatever it is that is pissing him off that week. He also sometimes does the tech reports which are also hilarious.  In one centered around the Wii Fit he exclaims, “well I have two resolutions for 2010. Get in shape and Interact with less people.” The latter resolution seems exactly the point of all our technical innovations.  Why talk in person when you can call. Why call when you can text.  Why text when you can just post on  facebook. Soon babies will be born via the internet and come out of the womb attached to a computer chair. After Hoffman finishes berating us with his pessimism the incredibly dry  Sergio Cilli explains why the top five videos or top fives songs pulled of either Itunes or some other big list are terrible. Once Sergio makes fun of what ever is dominating the radio Sarah Haskin normally reports in a segment entitled target women. Sarah deliciously tears apart the products and fads companies aim at women. Constantly playing a stereo typical self-conscious female while at the same time staying so sarcastic that even British people would find her cold. “When your a woman, happiness is only one purchase of away!” she chides in the 2009 “Retrospectacular.” Not surprisingly she is a Chicago native where the only thing chillier than the weather is peoples sense of humor. Anyways thats the end of this short post. I’m taking it easy on this on because InfoMania is almost on. I have to go find my favorite chair, necessary food stuffs, and veg-out. I suggest you tune in and do the same. If you don’t get Current TV run out and fire bomb your cable company. No just kidding. You can check it out hulu.com or current.com.

I forgot to Mention…

Names of friends in my new years eve post were changed to respect their privacy. I will do the same for other friends who are featured here in the future.

Health Care, Twitter, Sustainability and Lady Gaga: Happy Fucking New Year

I’m not sure how you rang in the New Year, but if it was anything like the way I did let me be the first to say, I’m sorry and there is always next year.  Yes, if you’re like me New Years Eve always seems to turns out to be a big disappointment and this year was no different. Being that I tend to plan on a 36 hour time horizon, I failed to buy tickets in advance to the Future Rock show that I originally planned on attending. And Being that even when I do manage to figure out what I’m going to be doing more than ten minutes prior to doing so, I still just like to “go with the flow” the other Event I was planning on attending was also sold out when I arrived. Being the resourceful and mildly personable personality that I am, I had a back up plan, a punk rock party.  Since punk had gone out of fashion, unlike house music, about twenty some odd years ago, I figured it was an infallible option. Unfortunately, some things are just beyond control, like the Chicago Police Department. The CPD are never a fun guest at a party. As they wrangled up the first group of underage kids to arrive and threw them in the paddy wagon, my friend and I hung our heads in despair. There was only one option left. I had been invited to another party. One I didn’t want to attend, though there was guaranteed to be many girls there.

So my friend and I mounted our bikes and rode off to the party, the lesbian party. When we arrived everyone seemed confused. They eyed us suspiciously. “Who do you know here?” an assertive female voice demanded.

“Eh? Jessica.” I said naming the friend of the roommate of the house who I was better acquainted with.

“Uhh… there’s no Jessica here!” another snidely countered. I knew she was there I had just gotten off the phone with her. However, you don’t contradict a testy Sapphic princess in her own house.

“Well what about Tiffany?” Immediately all doubt was erased from their faces.

“Oh she’s up in her room. Come here I will show you.” Said one of the guests. The scene in Tiffany’s room was a bit depressing. Besides being led up and away from the party like a patient placed in quarantine Jessica’s and her boyfriend had broken up just two nights ago.  Whiskey was the answer. We all drank deeply. The highlight of the night occurred just after twelve. We went on the roof and screamed profanities and love songs. Then we went down to the party to exploit some Champaign. Soon though the bubbly, whisky, and beer proved to potent drunkenness and I can’t recall some of the surely more terrible and hilarious moments of the evening. I woke up on the masonite flooring in Tiffany’s room thinking wow that night went by really quick.

Though I’ve never been good at big events or holidays, I have a theory that New Years Eve is a big fat disappointment waiting to happen for most of us. We try to end the year with a bang, even though we could say the year starts for on January 26 instead, like the Chinese. Either way though we will hype the celebration so thoroughly that few if any real experiences can live up to it. For example even if I had the money to go to Playboys Party at the W. I still probably wouldn’t end up hanging out with any playmates unless I was a V.I.P. But then I would be disappointed if I didn’t bring one home.

Another example is my other friend who attended a Black Keys concert on New Years Eve. He is a huge fan and has liked the Black Keys since they were just gaining a little traction with Thickfreakness. Unfortunately for him they only played a short hour and half long set. Not only that, but he had to share the experience with a bunch of people who didn’t have the same enthusiasm for the band as he did. Also, the girls in his party were obscenely drunk.  The point isn’t only that the expectations are set to high and no matter what New Years Eve is going to be a disappointment, but also that magical forces come together on New Years to make sure it sucks. I think these forces are due to the fact that were celebrating something that doesn’t deserve celebration.

Think about it on New Years people celebrate finishing one year and starting another. So we’re celebrating being done and starting over, but nothing has actually ended or started. Instead of looking back over the last twelve months and taking an honest look at how we spent our time, we rubber stamp them and move on to next year, the next big movie, the next gadget, the next pop star, the next party ect.  We say were going to do things differently. We have resolutions and make pacts with our friends about losing weight or quitting smoking.  But do we actually stop and think why it is we want to do these things. Or are they just accepted as good, and that’s that.  So in the spirit of reevaluation I turn to some of the dominant themes of 2009 and Make some predictions about 2010.

Health Care

In the face of the “Great Recession” the congress has been completely enraptured in Health Care reform for the last year.  Though I doubt know much about our current health care system, I do know that the all the attention paid towards fixing it has left our banking system unregulated and poised for another crash.  So when the next depression hits at least we will all have health care provided that the senate and house can hammer out an agreement before then. Even when they do I predict will be such an amalgamation of special interest provisions and political compromises that Health Care system in this country will remain broken for years to come.

The funniest thing to come out the health care debate was blue-collar schmucks who were terrified that Obama was trying to turn America into a communist country.  Most hilariously pathetic were the people on Medicare and social security telling the government to stay out of their lives. Oh if only they picked up a book once in a while maybe they wouldn’t be so stupid.  The thing I am sure we won’t see in 2010: some one with a national audience asking if its right that health care is a for profit industry in the first place. Should a sick person be at the mercy of a capitalist enterprise when trying to get well? Is it right to make money off of other peoples sicknesses? Of course some jackass is out there screaming the free market does it better! But do that jackasses know that the pharmaceutical industry spends twice as much convincing you that you need their drugs as it does developing them?

Twitter

Holy shit, can we please stop talking about it?  It’s a website that allows people to post short message that then get relayed to their “followers” cell phones via text message. This technological marvel impressed the hell out of ever media outlet in the U.S. in 2009.  The media, not surprisingly, attributed some sort of hyper significance to “tweeting.” Sounding like a smart phone commercial the media often probed as to whether twitter was a true information technology revolution that would bring us all closer together into and the interwoven digital network of virtual society… or if it was just a bunch of bullshit.  Meanwhile people in the suburbs still don’t talk to their neighbors and I am sick of idiotic celebrities 140 characters or less anecdotes about where they are currently shopping or eating at.  My prediction is that in 2010 the media will finally stop pretending that twitter is an awesome tool to foster greater interconnectedness when Obama accidently tweets on the toilet “Oh mama that’s stinky… you can really smell the egg fu young from last night” only meaning to text Joe Biden who secretly shares his sick, disgusting sense of humor.  At that moment the media will realize that some things are better kept amongst small circles.

Sustainability

Everyone from businesses to governments has been talking about sustainability. It’s the magic word that charms and amazes without ever being defined or contextualized.  Massive oil companies can continue to drill and spill millions of gallons of crude each year as long as they remind us that they are also looking for sustainable sources of energy. Governments are legislating sustainable stimulus packages that will borrow us out of over indebtedness.  For all the talk of sustainability there has been little action. We still source our Nikes and Hanes from the poorest nations in the world. Investment Banks and Hedge Funds still can make un-collateralized financial innovations. Two wars still rage on in the Middle East with both sides sustainably firing millions and millions of rounds per year.  The corpracotracy still is dependent on consumers buying consumption goods throwing them out only to run out and do it all over again. It seems the only thing we are sustaining is our propensity for bullshit and hypocrisy.  I predict that half way through 2010 “sustainability” will be dropped for a new buzzword because people in the media will realize how oxymoronic it is to talk about sustainable pollution practices. Of course our pollution practice are sustainable. I bet it is exponentially sustainable. I bet we can turn out more trash each year for at least another thirty years! My three guesses for the buzzword to replace sustainability are proportionable, torrentially, and snowballity. I can here Katie Couric now, “But Ms. Speaker how is this program going compensate for the lack of snowballity we’ve seen with other like programs?”

Lady Gaga

Why Lady Gaga? Because Gwen Stefani is getting old and just isn’t weird enough any more. In this post post modern world we need our pop starts to be weird, really weird. We don’t have flying cars yet and that just pisses us off.  So we need a futurist gothic sexually ambiguous pop star with an immense capacity for babble to distract us.  In this day and age of euphemism were so sick of hearing dribble that is supposed to mean something, we’re just dying for dribble that doesn’t mean anything at all, just words with no underlying idea or concept behind them. Ga Ga Rah Rah Rah, Ga Ga Rah Rah Rah because thinking is just too damn hard.  And, I mean everything has been said before, so why not just make some shit up. I predict in 2010 that Ms. Gaga and Lindsey Lohan will elope and then make a sex tape. Then get divorced and become more famous than ever. The sex tape will likely feature techno-bondage, some mild bestiality, and plenty of incomprehensible babble.

That is my reconsideration of the biggest themes from 2009 and how the fate of these fads will play out in 2010.  Thanks for reading. Happy Fucking New Year.

Why District 9 is a Better Flick than Avatar

Way before everyone was clamoring about Avatar and its huge cost and profitability, District 9 was raising some eyebrows of its own.   Just recently released on DVD, I was able to viddy this interesting film over the holidays. I must admit I enjoyed it more thoroughly than Avatar.

Though the effects in District 9 are comparable to the latest Star Wars films, with fully computer animated characters lacking the serene facial expressions of Cameron’s Na’vi in Avatar, the film still manages to trump Avatar with style and substance.  The mockumentary narrative combined with the fake live action news helicopter shots brings the grit in District 9. The film makes the audience feel as if the action on screen has actually taken place.  While Avatar whisks us a way to an adventure land far far away, District 9 brings the aliens have to earth, Cape-town, South Africa to be precise.

Furthermore, instead of furry blue humanoids with tails (how whimsical, don’t we wish we all had one) we’re greeted with insect like bipeds with an appetite for destruction and cat food. The fearsome and ugly aliens of District 9 make the audience think harder than do the Na’vi of Avatar. While the Na’vi are reminiscent of our cats, Smurfs, and Native Americans, the “prawns” in District 9 initially make the audience want run out to stock up on roach bombs.  Yet both movies ask the viewer to reevaluate our thought process when it comes to relating to those different from ourselves. The difference is while Avatar asks the audience to understand the simple, District 9 begs us to deal with the complex.

I am reminded of an incident in one of my classes, when a student that we’ll call Dim brought up an interesting dilemma he was running into when it came to the Palestinian and Israeli conflict.  He queried, “Why doesn’t the U.S. or Israel go in and kill all of Hamas… I don’t get it they are a terrorist organization. I mean they’ve killed people and had suicide bombers.” Lets just forget for a moment that Hamas has been voted into office by the Palestinians and that Governments are just organizations that are allowed to kill people.

Laughing it up with my Anarchist friend out in the hall, he pitied the fool, “Yeah, some people don’t get it. If you take peoples land, knock down their houses with bulldozers and tanks, treat them as less than human, and kill vast swarms of the and eventually… they fight back. “ Obviously we’re looking at two different sides of the spectrum when it comes to this topic.  But take into consideration the bias at which the media reports on the conflict before you start labeling me the unpatriotic traitorous sedition artist that I proudly am.  The New York Times for example in 2000 and 2001 reported the deaths of Israeli and Palestinian children to be more or less equal, when in fact five times as many Palestinian children had died in the conflict than Israelis.

Unfortunately most people are two caught up with the image of “Terrorist” to see past the masks and AK-47 to the suffering and desperate eyes of a brutalized people.  District 9 brings this phenomenon in sci-fi format.  Instead of the simple right and wrong involved in the moral dilemma of invading a planet that isn’t ours, the audience must figure the moral dilemma of how to treat an ugly imperfect uninvited population that needs help.

Instead of offering an anti-colonial message in a post colonial empire, District 9 reminds us that things aren’t so simple as they seem and some times we need to look past our predelictions in order to understand what people are going through.  Because no matter how many Dims or Bill O’Riellys there are to tell us things are simple and that terrorists, illegal immigrants, or whatever easily identifiable scapegoats are the source of all our problems, we still have to live together.  Thus hurting perceived enemies then leads to real enemies, which we then have to live with. Seeing as the population here on earth is rising, learning to live peacefully with one another doesn’t seem to be a problem that will be going away soon. So next time some humanoid looks more like a disgusting bi-ped insect with drooling mandibles remember, that there is something soft underneath that exoskeleton, something you shouldn’t miss.

Why You Shouldn’t Get Too Excited About Avatar

James Cameron’s Avatar is proving it can go the distance, in terms of dollars and cents anyway.  Together with Sherlock Holmes, the two blockbusters drove ticket sales to an all time high this Christmas weekend. No matter how you feel about the movie it is impossible to ignore. A friend’s status on facebook reads  “Avatar…the most INCREDIBLE movie I have ever seen…EVER.” While returning gifts at Guitar Center I over heard the salesman prattling on about how if any one starts a sentence with “I want to see” he immediately interrupts them with “–Avatar.”  He seemed very proud of his clairvoyance on the issue after nauseatingly interceding that his co-worker wanted to see avatar. So Mr. Cameron you’ve done it again. You’ve created another megalith of intoxicating American culture.  Unfortunately sir, I feel the absurdity of the whole situation is lost on you.
While most reviews acknowledge that the plot is a little weak (basically Dances With Wolves with twelve foot tall blue aliens instead of Native Americans), they all give it up for the special effects. However, I’ve yet to read anything that thoroughly points out the absurdity of the flower power message in this ultra high tech packaging. The moral of the movie is basically that pillaging the environment and people to get rich is wrong. Seems simple enough. Unfortunately, the movie costs somewhere between 300 million and half a billion dollars to produce and market. Never mind pointing out how many millions of pound of rice that could have bought for oppressed peoples around the globe the movie tries to teach us about (600 million pounds of rice if rice is $1000 per ton and the movie cost 300 Million, enough to feed 1/10 of the world for a few days). This statistic is superficial, considering the rise in price of rice from dumping $300 million on any given day in the market would likely hurt the worlds poor by driving up the cost. Also, the money spent on Avatar was an investment. Like all investments, it’s meant to yield a profit, not help the disenfranchised.  Nonetheless Cameron chose to not just to make a visually stunning movie but also to preach an anti-imperialistic message, opening himself up to the criticism of believers and heretics alike.
So Cameron’s antagonist is basically the military industrial complex portrayed by the RDA Corporation and the U.S. Marine Force. They are pillaging the Na’vi and their home planet of Pandora to mine unobtanium. A fictional mineral that is extremely valuable back on earth. The Na’vi, however, are the predictable wise savages whose intrinsic appreciation for nature represents a truer Truth. This is all fine and good, but how pathetic is it that the average American needs a completely virtual world manufactured for them in order to listen to bedtime story about nature? Ironically this may be the trick to getting the masses to understand their own complex relationship with the environment. Perhaps the deluded drooling hoards need CGI blue aliens to tell them what they should have read in books. Perhaps it is a worthwhile investment.
Before we let Cameron completely off the hook, let’s ask if he knows what made the production of Avatar possible? Eh. You give up… okay, it’s microprocessors. Perhaps more specifically what is needed to make a microprocessor? One needs a super conductor for that. Where does this super conductor come prêt ell? It comes from Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the war-torn nation Western backed factions are engaged in a fierce civil war for a mineral almost as farcical sounding as unobtanium. Columbite-tantalite otherwise known as Coltan is used in everything from your smart phone to your TV remote control. So quite literally Cameron’s movie about exploiting a fictitious alien people for their mineral wealth, would not have been possible (or at least not as cheap) with out the real exploitation of people for their mineral wealth.  I am guilty too. These musings are brought to you via the same bloody mineral.  I just wonder if Cameron understands the costs and the absurdity of his “revolutionary” and “ground breaking” film.
“I think the film is a plea for us to open our eyes to see each other as human beings, for what we are, to see past the cultural differences, to respect nature, respect each other, and to respect other cultures,” said Cameron. This is a great sentiment, but I wonder if gangly blue aliens really are needed.  Cameron could have just made a movie about the actual Congo. Then again there wouldn’t be as much opportunity for special effects wizardry, Cameron’s forte. God forbid the audience would have been forced to sit through a movie that is reliant on his dialogue. Also a film that explains how cheap consumer electronics require the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people could negatively affect the bluray sales. Indeed, why would any major motion picture studio waste the time and money raising awareness for a real issue that effects real people when they could make up an allegory that leaves people conveniently ignorant about their own imperialistic tendencies.  Real issues are sad. Fake issues are spectacular.
Furthermore, for all the money and razzle-dazzle packed in this film, Cameron fails to illuminate the audience past the point of triteness.  He has the spiritual leader of the Na’vi remind us to empty our cup. Then Sigourney Weaver tells us there is an interconnectedness of all things. However, instead of explaining this interconnectedness as a real phenomenon (that you are the great magician who makes the grass green), he relies on his fantasyland. On Pandora the na’vi can connect to the network of energy that runs through the plants and “download and upload” knowledge about their ancestors. Cameron’s Buddhist new age philosophy fails to challenge the viewer past a third grad comprehension of reality. I doubt Cameron’s own philosophical inquiries have led him further than googling “Buddhist sayings” and reading an Inconvenient Truth. If they have he certainly doesn’t let the audience in on his ponderings.  There are certainly plenty of sources (Lao Tzu, James Joyce, Robert Anton Wilson, Joseph Heller, Henry David Thoreau) Cameron could have tapped into, but apparently he was too busy tweaking his special effects to spend time learning about the ideas he was trying to express. In the end it appears that Cameron’s cup is indeed overflowing and Avatar was yet another pointless and absurd money rake. A common feature in our society, that leaves me rather unimpressed.

Welcome

Hello, this is my little blog about politics and pop culture. All my life I knew the world just wasn’t quite right. What I have to offer you here is just how not quite right our world is. My perspective is a bit unique to my generation. While my parents grew up with General Motors, I grew up with Goldman Sachs. Instead of dreaming of white picket fences and a car in the driveway, my generation dreams/dreamed before great recession, of mc mansions complete with three car garages packed with SUV’s and Jet Skis. Nothing is sacred and nothing always has been that sacred.* But I suspect there was a time when the stakes weren’t quite so high as today. Perhaps I am wrong. After all there were great atrocities before my time, and its foolish embrace a romanticized image of the past when a more realistic one can shed more light on today. Nonetheless here I am. Left adrift in a world of consumerism and “I don’t give a fuck” trying to make some sense of it all.

I will draw on many different sources in my posts here, but I think its time I explain the title of my little blog here: the parking lot fields. I chose the phrase comes from the Modest Mouse’s “Custom Concern” off their first album. I’m a fan, but thats besides the point. Here are the lyrics to this short song in full.

The custom concern for the people is
Build up monuments and steeples        – (1)-
To wear out our eyes
I get up just about noon
My head sends a message for me
to reach for my shoes and then walk
Gotta go to work, gotta go to work, gotta have a job      -(2)-
Goes through the parking lot fields
Didn’t see no signs that they would yield
And then thought, this’ll never end
This’ll never end, this’ll never stop          -(3)-
Message read on the bathroom wall
Said, “I don’t feel at all like I fall.”
And we’re losing all touch, losing all touch
Building a desert

This song about overdevelopment of the land and the underdevelopment of our humanity brings out so many of the details of just how not quite right our world is. While I could prattle on about the references in the song about (1) subduing the mass with religion, (2) the depressing life a wage slave leads, or (3) the need for an ever-expanding sphere of consumerism for capitalism, I won’t. I will let the song speak for itself on those points. However, what I do wish to point out is that I grew up in the parking lot fields. In my time I’ve met many of geriatrics eager to tell me about how when they were young, “this was all forest and farmland.”  Well for me it wasn’t. That awesome little pond they foggily remember, is and always was a McDonald for me. The Big oak tree that used to have a tire swing. It’s a strip mall. The old neighborhood bank that underwrote the ten thousand dollar mortgage on their house, well now Chase owns it, and they use it to lure people into debt they don’t need. I didn’t grow up with spacious skies, amber waves of grain, or purple mountains majesty.  I grew up with smog, Monsanto, and strip mining. So now that we’ve gotten that out-of-the-way, welcome. Welcome to the Parking Lot Fields.  I hope you enjoy your stay, comeback, and even tell me whether I’m right, wrong, grammatically inept, or just plain stupid.

*From time to time I will slip into double entendre, its habit-forming. However, if we don’t break out of Aristotelian shells eventually we will never realize chicken shit!