Whadda Ya' Think?

[chlamor]

So HOPE means a projection of a better world in the future which usually in reality means a better nation state which one is a member of. Thus one is identifying with a kind of higher value and in this sense it's just another way of identifying with god or state as in fascist dreamwork.

What this forgets among other things is that nationalism always leads to imperialism/ international war as a way of protecting ones identity which is now identical with the nation state. This is why patriots are always the most warlike.

Then there is war and a reaction against the carnage for a few years i.e. League of Nations or UN. And then it starts again because no nation-state can survive if its citizens see themselves as global citizens except when this can be channeled into wars in the name of spreading democracy or as the Japanese did imperialism to protect the East from the West. So in the aftermath of the carnage - e.g. now we are so post Iraq aren't we? - there is someone who issues an optimistic note and starts the ball rolling again i.e. the nation-state regains pride in itself - the call by the Democrats - and then this will turn slowly into another version of the mechanism that leads to war.

This argument could be made in terms of the need for capital to expand then destroy something - I can't remember the technical marxist term - and then starts again. I suppose one interesting question here is why one needs this identification with a greater entity.

Is this just capitalist alienation?

If so what were those in pre-modern social formations thinking? Does this mean that religion simply transferred to the state? But why this- if it is- primordial need? Is this where we need psychoanalytic explanations of the oedipal scene? But are these transhistorical?

As for machines: capitalism commodifies the social relations thus Obama becomes a product to make one feel good like some luxury good. But like the latter which never satisfies for more than an instant we have to forget our past and have the same enthusiasm for the next product. Machines produce the same thing repeatedly and capital sells it as a fashion.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

This guy's going a mile a minute, but really he's just "playin". These grand narratives -- psychologized even -- aren't really helpful. If the point is supposed to be that the Democrats, specifically Obama?, are merely perpetuating the latest iteration of a cycle that has played out many times before, I think it'd be better to say that without all the, ah, accoutrements. Of course, getting down to business (talking about the present) comes at some later point.

The 'theory' applied here, and the worldly musings (I can't quite tell if he's being diminutive: after all, we're fools for falling for capitalism's tricks, right?) are a little juvenile.

I guess its not so bad if someone from PI wrote it or something.

[anaxarchos]

So HOPE means a projection of a better world in the future which usually in reality means a better nation state which one is a member of. Thus one is identifying with a kind of higher value and in this sense it's just another way of identifying with god or state as in fascist dreamwork.

What this forgets among other things is that nationalism always leads to imperialism/ international war as a way of protecting ones identity which is now identical with the nation state. This is why patriots are always the most warlike.

Then there is war and a reaction against the carnage for a few years i.e. League of Nations or UN. And then it starts again because no nation-state can survive if its citizens see themselves as global citizens except when this can be channeled into wars in the name of spreading democracy or as the Japanese did imperialism to protect the East from the West. So in the aftermath of the carnage - e.g. now we are so post Iraq aren't we? - there is someone who issues an optimistic note and starts the ball rolling again i.e. the nation-state regains pride in itself - the call by the Democrats - and then this will turn slowly into another version of the mechanism that leads to war.

This argument could be made in terms of the need for capital to expand then destroy something - I can't remember the technical marxist term - and then starts again. I suppose one interesting question here is why one needs this identification with a greater entity.

Is this just capitalist alienation?

If so what were those in pre-modern social formations thinking? Does this mean that religion simply transferred to the state? But why this- if it is- primordial need? Is this where we need psychoanalytic explanations of the oedipal scene? But are these transhistorical?

As for machines: capitalism commodifies the social relations thus Obama becomes a product to make one feel good like some luxury good. But like the latter which never satisfies for more than an instant we have to forget our past and have the same enthusiasm for the next product. Machines produce the same thing repeatedly and capital sells it as a fashion.


I think it is the start of a criticism but you can't get there from here. There is too much mixed together here and it needs to be pulled apart. I am less critical than the kid because of the sincerity of the intent but the next step for the critic is to criticize his or her own criticism. Just one example out of the three dozen that could be drawn from the above:

Does nationalism "cause" imperialism or does imperialism cause nationalism or are they both products of something else? This is not an abstract question. The problem starts to present itself in its actual complexity the minute we observe that when talking about the "nation-state", we face an immediate contradiction. The "state" is the basis of all class society or, to say the same thing, the basis for all of what we call civilization. As such, it is more than 10,000 years old. But, what about the "nation-state"? It simply does not exist for most of that time. Modern histories attempt to impose "nations" on the ancient world retrospectively but to do so they must reduce "nation" to a mere figure of speech. The various aspects of "nationhood" that are perfectly obvious to nearly all of the citizens of nearly 300 nation-states in the world are entirely missing for most of them 100 years ago, for almost all of them 200 years ago and 400 years ago there is not an atom or a fly-speck of "nations", "nationhood", "national loyalty", "national obligation", or the rest. There are, of course, other "loyalties", connections, and obligations but these have almost nothing to do with what is so familiar to us.

One way to trace this is that in the same way that we use language or language groups to trace "ethnicity", we can use symbology to trace national evolution. Since the beginning of civilization various types of heraldry, banners, standards, coats of arms, and so on have been used to symbolize even the most arcane and abstract of human groupings - not only personal and feudal standards but occupational, regional, and miscellaneous groupings of every type and description. Over the heads of every feudal army was a canopy of cloth. But, where were the national flags? There were none. The flag of one of the oldest nation-states, the "Union Jack" of the UK dates from 1600. But, that origin was as the personal flag for the British King who conquered Scotland. It flew only on British warships for a century, and then only on "crown" ships as a sort of property mark. The flag didn't come into general usage until 1700 and didn't reach its modern form until 1800, which not coincidentally is when the French Tricolor also came into usage. That is also the basic time-line of the modern nation-state. Nations are an essential product of the rise of capitalism just as national flags are.

The same type of conflation applies to the author's use of commodities, and "alienation", and the rest. The author has to dig far deeper.

As far as Obama goes, his "Hope" is not rocket science either: it is hope for American dominance without the need and cost of fighting for it anew, and a hope for American living standards to be again "first among equals", without any understanding of how things got that way in the first place. It is as much a fetishism as any cargo cult in the South Pacific. By voting in a new JFK, don't we also vote in JFK's social conditions and the economy of 50 years ago?

The only thing missing is a little ritual dance.

http://bp3.blogger.com/_xePSYcUFiTY/RnE-nh2-MbI/AAAAAAAAAwc/kfhwBr7NT4Y/s1600/cargo_cult.jpg

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Don't get me wrong, I like the kitchen sink approach -- it appeals to my sensibilities ;) -- but my first blush response was assuming Chlamor meant us to take this as an incisive bit of analysis. I thought it might be his "fear of Other" stuff or something.

If you take trippy space-rock as your analogy -- you fill in the pregnant blanks around every sparse note -- then it has a certain aesthetic to it.

Come to think of it, the opening is probably existentialist gold:


So HOPE means a projection of a better world in the future which usually in reality means a better nation state which one is a member of. Thus one is identifying with a kind of higher value and in this sense it's just another way of identifying with god or state as in fascist dreamwork.

But to be even-handed, he's seen through Obama, which ain't nothing.

[chlamor]

Don't get me wrong, I like the kitchen sink approach -- it appeals to my sensibilities ;) -- but my first blush response was assuming Chlamor meant us to take this as an incisive bit of analysis. I thought it might be his "fear of Other" stuff or something.

If you take trippy space-rock as your analogy -- you fill in the pregnant blanks around every sparse note -- then it has a certain aesthetic to it.

Come to think of it, the opening is probably existentialist gold:


So HOPE means a projection of a better world in the future which usually in reality means a better nation state which one is a member of. Thus one is identifying with a kind of higher value and in this sense it's just another way of identifying with god or state as in fascist dreamwork.

But to be even-handed, he's seen through Obama, which ain't nothing.

A high sounding academic friend sent that bit to me in an e-mail. We have had discussions about Obama who he finds hilariously worthless and the Dalai Lama who he seems drawn towards in his darker moods.

He's really a brilliant fella in some respects but seems always one note from despair and willing to merge with Oprah. I keep trying to pull him back to the light. LOL!

But he had just sort of spewed a garbled bunch of muck over the phone the other day and I asked him to clarify his position. I found some of it pretty interesting but couldn't ultimately get what he was pointing towards if anything.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Don't get me wrong, I like the kitchen sink approach -- it appeals to my sensibilities ;) -- but my first blush response was assuming Chlamor meant us to take this as an incisive bit of analysis. I thought it might be his "fear of Other" stuff or something.

If you take trippy space-rock as your analogy -- you fill in the pregnant blanks around every sparse note -- then it has a certain aesthetic to it.

Come to think of it, the opening is probably existentialist gold:


So HOPE means a projection of a better world in the future which usually in reality means a better nation state which one is a member of. Thus one is identifying with a kind of higher value and in this sense it's just another way of identifying with god or state as in fascist dreamwork.

But to be even-handed, he's seen through Obama, which ain't nothing.

A high sounding academic friend sent that bit to me in an e-mail. We have had discussions about Obama who he finds hilariously worthless and the Dalai Lama who he seems drawn towards in his darker moods.

He's really a brilliant fella in some respects but seems always one note from despair and willing to merge with Oprah. I keep trying to pull him back to the light. LOL!

But he had just sort of spewed a garbled bunch of muck over the phone the other day and I asked him to clarify his position. I found some of it pretty interesting but couldn't ultimately get what he was pointing towards if anything.

You also might ask him why he sees religion in every nook and cranny. Normally this is a fetish on display from those who rant about how stupid Americans are, why can't they see..which ends exactly on the doorstep of despair -- not out of any humanitarian sentiments but because of the stilted view that people are too stupid for things to be any different

Tough for me to say if his ranting is "real" or not -- most of the people I know who qualify are more depressed about their shitty jobs and shittier lives than the abstract notion that the US is doomed to the same endless cycle of War and immiseration over and over.