Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum (or, as I like to call him, Sanatorium, because that’s where he belongs) has recently announced that gay people should respect his opinion. I say he has every right to demand respect, but that respect is earned, not grudgingly given when demanded. And, since the former senator from Pennsylvania is wrong to condemn gays and lesbians, and promise that, if elected president he will take action to deny them legal rights and status, he has not earned that respect and should not be given it.
Fine, says a friend of mine. But gays and lesbians, by the same token, should not demand respect and expect it to be given automatically.
My answer is that there are two different kinds of respect. Respect for a group, a class of people, is not the same as an individual demanding personal respect: it is that class demanding equal legal and social rights.
I may or may not respect a certain couple (gay or straight) as a couple, you see, but I am required by the ethics of fairness and to a degree by law to give that couple (gay or straight) exactly the same respect I give to any couple. If I recognize any couples (whether or not I respect them personally) as couples, if I acknowledge that they are couples, with the same legal and social rights as any other couple, then out of fairness and by law I must recognize all couples as couples.
I may or may not respect individual couples, gay or straight. I may or may not respect gay or straight couples in general. (Indeed, I know some gay/lesbian couples that don't respect other such couples.) It is my right to like or dislike, to respect or disrespect whom I please, individual or group.
However, groups have a legal right under law to expect what is termed “equal treatment under the law”, and to demand it if they aren’t getting it. The United States Constitution, and every other constitution I’ve studied, beginning with Hammurabi's, enshrines “equal treatment under the law”. All of the major ethicists in history, beginning with Aristotle, have insisted that – no matter what our personal opinions may be – we are required by logic to be fair to all: rights and privileges given to some must be given to all, or we are hypocrites.
Therefore, I explain to my straight friend, whether you or I personally like the idea of gay and lesbian couples having the right to marry legally, we must accept it as their legal right, as a class. No matter whether we respect gay and lesbian couples as individuals or as a group. We must afford them the same right we straights enjoy ourselves.
So all groups and individuals have a right to demand respect from you and me, including gays and lesbians, and including Mr. Sanatorium. And you and I have every right as individuals to give respect to, or withhold it from, any individual or group.
But all individuals and groups have, under the Constitution not only the right demand the respect of being afforded equal treatment under the law. And you and I have no right to deny them that equal treatment. By law, all citizens are to be treated equally in all matters pertaining to the law.
(And yes, of course religious organizations and individual clergy have the right to refuse to sanction gay/lesbian marriages under the law. It would never be constitutionally legal or ethically acceptable to force institutions or individual clergy to sanction marriages of which they do not approve. On the other hand, public officials [city clerks, justices of the peace, etc.], as agents of government, as servants of the people, must afford to gay and lesbian couples the same service they give to straight couples: issuing licenses and providing civil ceremonies to all comers, notwithstanding their personal feelings on the subject.)
However, this is not the case for Mr. Sanatorium. By law he has to give all individuals and groups equal treatment under the law, whether he likes it or not. He can spew and foam about how gays and lesbians are responsible for the economic woes we're in, and responsible for the ruination of straight marriage. Yet he has one legal power you and I don't have: he and his bigoted cohorts in public office can change the law.
Let me explain.
Rick Sanatorium has every right to demand respect for his views from gays. And gays (and lesbians, whom he forgot to mention, being a chauvinist) have every right to refuse to give it, and I hope they do. I hope straights also refuse to give him any respect. He has, by law, the right to speak his bigoted views, but nobody is obliged by law to respect those views. Thankfully.
The difference is that gay-hating elected officials like Rick have the power to enforce their views. Ordinary citizens do not. Ordinary gay-hating citizens can't take a gun and shoot all gay or straight couples, or even one of them.
But Sanatorium can change the laws so as to enforce his bigotry against gays and lesbians. You and I cannot do that! He can make laws that strip them of their legal rights, even deny them “equal treatment under the law”. And, since more and more courts, including the Supreme Court, are now stacked with arch-conservatives like Sanatorium, any litigation demanding equal treatment under the law is likely to lose.
So, for you and me, it is illegal to take action on our dislikes, but not for him; he makes the laws.
That is why so-called people like Sanatorium and Perry and Bachmann and Palin are so dangerous. If straights can expect equal treatment under the law when they want to marry, then so should gays/lesbians. You or I may personally not approve of it, or not like this or that gay or straight couple, but they have, or should have, the same legal rights that you and I and other citizens enjoy. People like Sanatorium have the power to legally deny them those equal rights.
What is more, people like Sanatorium, Perry, Bachmann, and Palin want to remove all legal impediments on the ownership and use of weapons. And their rhetoric is often violent in nature, inciting violence against people who are not arch-conservatives like them and their followers. That is how Gabby Giffords and others got shot in Phoenix; that is how a bloodbath of conservative-inspired violence took place in Norway.
If Sanatorium and people like him are elected to office in sufficient numbers, not only will they change the laws so gays and lesbians – and other minorities, like Jews and Muslims, Latinos and Blacks, and liberals (and, who knows, perhaps also lefties and ugly people and old people and you and me) – lose their Constitutional rights ....
but they will change the laws so their conservative followers can take guns and legally blow away minorities.
And that, my friends, is why I say we should give no respect to Sanatorium (even though he has every right to demand it), and why we must give respect to all groups to enjoy the same legal rights we enjoy.
And that, my friends, is why Sanatorium and people like him are so evil and dangerous.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
The Final War: Gingrich versus Buffett
I think we can agree, whether or not we like him, whether or not we accept what he says, that former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is an intelligent man. His acumen, like that of billionaire Warren Buffet, far exceeds that of those darling politibimbos Palin and Bachmann.
How, then, can someone like Gingrich (or, as I call him, “Givingtotherich”) say with a straight face that the legalization of gay marriage is responsible for the current worldwide economic meltdown?
I am sure that he is aware this is not really the case, that in effect he is lying.
I do not think he is crazy.
Nor do I think that he says these things just to please his audience; that, while it may happen, is insufficient to justify the continual repetition of obvious untruths.
In analyzing the cause behind Gingrich’s perorations, one must remember that all of these people – Gingrich and the rest of the “religious right” (neither religious nor right) – are a complex mess of evangelistic believers, america-firsters, gun nuts, arian skinheads, Republican pundits, and jus’ plain folks.
How is it, then, that such a widely disparate, extremely heterogeneous conglomeration of subcultural groups are all saying exactly the same crazy things – that Muslims are out to kill us in our sleep, gay marriage is responsible for these economic woes, that the super-wealthy and their companies should not be taxed (with the unspoken corollary that, since somebody has to pay the taxes that fuel government, it’s going to be the poor and middle classes), that guns should not be regulated (despite the shocking rise in gun violence), that health care should be privatized (despite the clear example from every other “developed” country in the world), that the United States has every right to influence politics in other sovereign countries and invade them to control their oil (but that no other country had better mess with us!), that environmental regulations are bad for us, that companies like Halliburton and Monsanto are godsends, and so on?
It is simply too much of a strain on my credulity to believe that people coming from such different subcultural communities – could just happen to be so completely in accord on so many obviously stupid falsehoods on so many topics.
The only tenable conclusion I can accept is that there is a very small group of people, unknown to us, the world at large, who have extremely carefully scripted exactly how power over the masses in the United States, and hence/thereafter the world, will be secured. This small group is considerably wealthy; it controls the major multinational companies.
I fully realize that I sound like an extremely paranoid conspiracy theorist in saying this, but I believe that this is the only conclusion that fits the glaring fact that all of these pundits, no matter which group they spring out of, are saying exactly the same things. This just couldn’t happen unless they were being told to do so by some entity powerful enough to coërce them into staying on point with everyone else.
Palin and Bachmann don’t have sufficient brainpower to tie their shoes without help, so they have to be getting careful training and grooming. Palin, however, has so often made evident what a dumb bunny she is that she’s now being set aside, and Bachmann being promoted by these powers in her place. Bachmann has risen from complete ignominy into a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and I submit that that wouldn’t be possible on her own, unless she were getting significant help from very powerful people.
Neither Palin nor Bachmann has at her disposal enough brain matter to say to herself, “This blather they want me to say is complete nonsense,” and perhaps question whether she should say it at all. I have no doubt that Palin and Bachmann, in their own way, are truly sincere women who genuinely believe this tripe; just that they are too colossally stupid to review the glaring logical and factual evidence against it. Bachmann doesn't even seem to realize that her obviously repressed-gay husband is doing nobody a service with his clinic at which other gays can be trained to repress their nature as homosexuals.
On the other hand, how can an individual of Gingrich’s clear mental ability say, repeatedly, the obvious hokum he spouts? How can he justify to himself the glaringly, patently false allegation that gays are responsible for the economic woes we are in? Clearly, he cannot – unless there is a force being exerted upon him from above – or if he agrees with these mongers that an ultra-conservative takeover is required and that their plan is the most likely to succeed. And that “above”, again I posit, is this cabal of exceedingly wealthy potentates.
This group may or may not include the Koch Heads, but I'm starting to think they are shills set up by the group as well. the evidence. They have dutifully contributed large chunks of their financial resources to politicos and groups dedicated to exactly the same crazy views that Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Romney, and all of them spout as if it were Biblical truth. Yet even the Koch Heads have had the temerity to question publicly the economy-crippling government subsidies of the ethanol industry.
Still, overall, the Koch Heads remain firmly in step with the rest of the puppets of this secret cabal of powermongers. They have not yet, quite, stepped over the line as has Warren Buffett.
The latter has stated, powerfully and intelligently, that he and his fellow extremely wealthy individuals, should be glad to be taxed, glad to do their part to support the good work that government does. Warren Buffet has now broken ranks with the dutiful minions of these ultra-wealthy powermongers. He has refused to recite the script handed to him; he has dared to utter the TRUTH, that the super-rich should be taxed appropriately.
For that, Buffett is being harshly castigated and mocked by conservative commentators such as Gingrich – and on conservative pages on Facebook, which must please no end their genial host Mr. Zuckermann, who has been to Washington complaining that there’s “too much free speech”, and who is clearly censoring Facebook pages of a liberal agenda.
In other words, I think the cabal of mongers met in secret emergency session after Buffett’s outburst, and it has been decided to have their minions, Givingtotherich, etc., start repeating over and over that Buffet has gone soft in the head, senile, kooky, and so on. That way, should Buffett (as I anticipate) continue to dare to speak the truth, he will be dismissed by the masses, the cattle in the stall being milked by the mongers, as just another ludicrous, kooky crackpot.
This is the methodology adopted already with other eloquent, intelligent spokespeople coming from the other side, the liberals. Michael Moore, Al Gore, Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank, Rachel Maddow, Amy Goodman, and others are eloquent and intelligent, and persuasive if one listens to them with an open mind. But the script has clearly been handed out to brand them as kooky crackpots, and to indulge in ad hominem attacks when possible – notwithstanding the inapplicability of the attacks to the subjects at hand – Frank is gay, so anything he says must be wrong, for instance. Buffett now is being treated to the same methodology.
I don’t think for a second that the cabal of mongers promoting the religious underpinnings of this script believe these underpinnings. I think rather that, when it was decided to proceed with this plan for taking over control of the world, they looked around and saw that there was a large if unorganized group of conservative Christian belief, specifically dominionism and millenarianism (in brief general terms, the belief that the end of the world-as-we-know-it is coming soon, that there will be a Final War engulfing the entire planet, that Jesus is returning, that the [heterosexual conservative literalist] Christians will be saved and all others will be burning in hell). Seeing this amorphous group, they decided it had the most potential as a tool, so the group was carefully shaped by grooming spokespeople here and there – the very spokespeople I am writing about.
But I do think that the mongers support the sociopolitical goals that are drawn from this religious fervor – privatization of prisons, privatization of health care, privatization of the military, genetic engineering of crops so seeds have to be bought, and so on. And I do think that the conservative politicos who have been elected to office and will be elected to office represent another goal of these mongers: a complete, absolute takeover of the United States, and therefore of the world. And I do think that these mongers have decided there will be a “Final War” - not a religious battle of good versus evil, though they don’t mind if their minions think like that, but simply their war to take over control of this entire planet.
This constitutes a revolution, folks – a revolution not done by messy military means like the first American Revolution or the French Revolution, or even the revolutions going on now in the Middle East, but a revolution won by carefully taking control of every social institution: the schools (so they train children with work-oriented coursework rather than dangerous stuff like literature and history to be slaves to the economic system), the courts (so any attempt to challenge this takeover will be stopped), the news media (so the masses will be mesmerized into believing this takeover is a good thing), and of course legislatures on every level up to the federal Congress. And a takeover of other countries; by manipulating their elections, by pressuring them economically, by bringing in American ingenuity such as manipulative polling, other countries will dutifully elect U.S. puppets like Sarkozy and Berlusconi.
All of this, needless to say, is exactly in accordance with the recipe for revolution described (in Mein Kampf) and followed by Adolf Hitler. Repeat the big lies, again and again and again, stay on script, and in time the people will believe them. This recipe worked for Hitler. He only failed because he overreached too quickly for world domination. They have learned from his example and from his subsequent mistakes. They are well-positioned to succeed.
The only hope is that brave people like Moore, Gore, Sanders, Maddow, and perhaps now Buffett as well, will do exactly the same thing – stay on script, and again and again and again speak the truth. The only hope is that you and I continue to do the same with our friends, and on internet social networks like Facebook (as long as Mr. Zuckermann doesn’t shut us down too). We may not be likely to save the world from this takeover by the cabal of mongers, but we must not let this serve as an excuse for giving up. We have no choice but to try as hard as we can to save the world - not from idiots like Bachmann and Palen, not from glib talkers like Limbaugh and Gingrich, but from the intelligent and very well-heeled monsters who control them.
“The meek shall inherit the earth.” What a beautiful prophecy.
In these difficult times it is easy for us to lose hope. It is easy for us to believe that the strong, the bully, the big man who whips us along at our work, the bought-and-paid-for politician, the radio loudmouth, the megabillionaire who owns everything we see and touch and hear about. It is easy for us to lose hope, and to give up, and let Evil have its way. It is easy for us to think that perhaps, if we refuse to engage with Evil, we might not get hurt, we might remain relatively unscathed as Evil instead tramples those who do stand up to it under its marching feet.
But we must not lose hope. If we lose hope, Evil wins. If we lose hope, we become, at least tacitly, part of Evil's army. It may be irrational, it may be futile, but we must never lose hope.
Yes, the future - at least as I see it - looks pretty bleak, pretty lacking in goodness and light.
But I cannot bring myself to give up. I can and will continue to hope, to pray, and to do my best to bring a tiny speck of good, of light, into this world. My efforts may not be enough. Yet perhaps, as I hope and pray, other good souls will join me in this effort - other good souls that have not yet enslaved themselves to the Other One, or who have not yet given up and cowered away in spiritual suicide. Perhaps other good souls also will do their best to bring a tiny speck of good, of light, into this world.
If each of us does that, then maybe, maybe yet, the wisdom and the truth stated by Jesus, that the meek shall inherit the earth, will yet be our future.
I beg you, all of you who have read this and pondered our present and our future: no matter how bleak this age may seem to you - no matter how futile it may seem to you to try to counter, weak as we are, thse monsters that control the press, the schools, the legislatures, the mercantile and military, and the courts - no matter how irrational it may seem to believe in the good and the light, and to urge others to feel the same way, that is our only hope. The more YOU succeed in persuading others to do the same, the more our army of real human beings, armed with nothing more potent than love and light, can and will still inherit this earth.
I believe in you. I believe in hope. I believe in the future. I believe in love. DO NOT GIVE UP!
How, then, can someone like Gingrich (or, as I call him, “Givingtotherich”) say with a straight face that the legalization of gay marriage is responsible for the current worldwide economic meltdown?
I am sure that he is aware this is not really the case, that in effect he is lying.
I do not think he is crazy.
Nor do I think that he says these things just to please his audience; that, while it may happen, is insufficient to justify the continual repetition of obvious untruths.
In analyzing the cause behind Gingrich’s perorations, one must remember that all of these people – Gingrich and the rest of the “religious right” (neither religious nor right) – are a complex mess of evangelistic believers, america-firsters, gun nuts, arian skinheads, Republican pundits, and jus’ plain folks.
How is it, then, that such a widely disparate, extremely heterogeneous conglomeration of subcultural groups are all saying exactly the same crazy things – that Muslims are out to kill us in our sleep, gay marriage is responsible for these economic woes, that the super-wealthy and their companies should not be taxed (with the unspoken corollary that, since somebody has to pay the taxes that fuel government, it’s going to be the poor and middle classes), that guns should not be regulated (despite the shocking rise in gun violence), that health care should be privatized (despite the clear example from every other “developed” country in the world), that the United States has every right to influence politics in other sovereign countries and invade them to control their oil (but that no other country had better mess with us!), that environmental regulations are bad for us, that companies like Halliburton and Monsanto are godsends, and so on?
It is simply too much of a strain on my credulity to believe that people coming from such different subcultural communities – could just happen to be so completely in accord on so many obviously stupid falsehoods on so many topics.
The only tenable conclusion I can accept is that there is a very small group of people, unknown to us, the world at large, who have extremely carefully scripted exactly how power over the masses in the United States, and hence/thereafter the world, will be secured. This small group is considerably wealthy; it controls the major multinational companies.
I fully realize that I sound like an extremely paranoid conspiracy theorist in saying this, but I believe that this is the only conclusion that fits the glaring fact that all of these pundits, no matter which group they spring out of, are saying exactly the same things. This just couldn’t happen unless they were being told to do so by some entity powerful enough to coërce them into staying on point with everyone else.
Palin and Bachmann don’t have sufficient brainpower to tie their shoes without help, so they have to be getting careful training and grooming. Palin, however, has so often made evident what a dumb bunny she is that she’s now being set aside, and Bachmann being promoted by these powers in her place. Bachmann has risen from complete ignominy into a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and I submit that that wouldn’t be possible on her own, unless she were getting significant help from very powerful people.
Neither Palin nor Bachmann has at her disposal enough brain matter to say to herself, “This blather they want me to say is complete nonsense,” and perhaps question whether she should say it at all. I have no doubt that Palin and Bachmann, in their own way, are truly sincere women who genuinely believe this tripe; just that they are too colossally stupid to review the glaring logical and factual evidence against it. Bachmann doesn't even seem to realize that her obviously repressed-gay husband is doing nobody a service with his clinic at which other gays can be trained to repress their nature as homosexuals.
On the other hand, how can an individual of Gingrich’s clear mental ability say, repeatedly, the obvious hokum he spouts? How can he justify to himself the glaringly, patently false allegation that gays are responsible for the economic woes we are in? Clearly, he cannot – unless there is a force being exerted upon him from above – or if he agrees with these mongers that an ultra-conservative takeover is required and that their plan is the most likely to succeed. And that “above”, again I posit, is this cabal of exceedingly wealthy potentates.
This group may or may not include the Koch Heads, but I'm starting to think they are shills set up by the group as well. the evidence. They have dutifully contributed large chunks of their financial resources to politicos and groups dedicated to exactly the same crazy views that Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Romney, and all of them spout as if it were Biblical truth. Yet even the Koch Heads have had the temerity to question publicly the economy-crippling government subsidies of the ethanol industry.
Still, overall, the Koch Heads remain firmly in step with the rest of the puppets of this secret cabal of powermongers. They have not yet, quite, stepped over the line as has Warren Buffett.
The latter has stated, powerfully and intelligently, that he and his fellow extremely wealthy individuals, should be glad to be taxed, glad to do their part to support the good work that government does. Warren Buffet has now broken ranks with the dutiful minions of these ultra-wealthy powermongers. He has refused to recite the script handed to him; he has dared to utter the TRUTH, that the super-rich should be taxed appropriately.
For that, Buffett is being harshly castigated and mocked by conservative commentators such as Gingrich – and on conservative pages on Facebook, which must please no end their genial host Mr. Zuckermann, who has been to Washington complaining that there’s “too much free speech”, and who is clearly censoring Facebook pages of a liberal agenda.
In other words, I think the cabal of mongers met in secret emergency session after Buffett’s outburst, and it has been decided to have their minions, Givingtotherich, etc., start repeating over and over that Buffet has gone soft in the head, senile, kooky, and so on. That way, should Buffett (as I anticipate) continue to dare to speak the truth, he will be dismissed by the masses, the cattle in the stall being milked by the mongers, as just another ludicrous, kooky crackpot.
This is the methodology adopted already with other eloquent, intelligent spokespeople coming from the other side, the liberals. Michael Moore, Al Gore, Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank, Rachel Maddow, Amy Goodman, and others are eloquent and intelligent, and persuasive if one listens to them with an open mind. But the script has clearly been handed out to brand them as kooky crackpots, and to indulge in ad hominem attacks when possible – notwithstanding the inapplicability of the attacks to the subjects at hand – Frank is gay, so anything he says must be wrong, for instance. Buffett now is being treated to the same methodology.
I don’t think for a second that the cabal of mongers promoting the religious underpinnings of this script believe these underpinnings. I think rather that, when it was decided to proceed with this plan for taking over control of the world, they looked around and saw that there was a large if unorganized group of conservative Christian belief, specifically dominionism and millenarianism (in brief general terms, the belief that the end of the world-as-we-know-it is coming soon, that there will be a Final War engulfing the entire planet, that Jesus is returning, that the [heterosexual conservative literalist] Christians will be saved and all others will be burning in hell). Seeing this amorphous group, they decided it had the most potential as a tool, so the group was carefully shaped by grooming spokespeople here and there – the very spokespeople I am writing about.
But I do think that the mongers support the sociopolitical goals that are drawn from this religious fervor – privatization of prisons, privatization of health care, privatization of the military, genetic engineering of crops so seeds have to be bought, and so on. And I do think that the conservative politicos who have been elected to office and will be elected to office represent another goal of these mongers: a complete, absolute takeover of the United States, and therefore of the world. And I do think that these mongers have decided there will be a “Final War” - not a religious battle of good versus evil, though they don’t mind if their minions think like that, but simply their war to take over control of this entire planet.
This constitutes a revolution, folks – a revolution not done by messy military means like the first American Revolution or the French Revolution, or even the revolutions going on now in the Middle East, but a revolution won by carefully taking control of every social institution: the schools (so they train children with work-oriented coursework rather than dangerous stuff like literature and history to be slaves to the economic system), the courts (so any attempt to challenge this takeover will be stopped), the news media (so the masses will be mesmerized into believing this takeover is a good thing), and of course legislatures on every level up to the federal Congress. And a takeover of other countries; by manipulating their elections, by pressuring them economically, by bringing in American ingenuity such as manipulative polling, other countries will dutifully elect U.S. puppets like Sarkozy and Berlusconi.
All of this, needless to say, is exactly in accordance with the recipe for revolution described (in Mein Kampf) and followed by Adolf Hitler. Repeat the big lies, again and again and again, stay on script, and in time the people will believe them. This recipe worked for Hitler. He only failed because he overreached too quickly for world domination. They have learned from his example and from his subsequent mistakes. They are well-positioned to succeed.
The only hope is that brave people like Moore, Gore, Sanders, Maddow, and perhaps now Buffett as well, will do exactly the same thing – stay on script, and again and again and again speak the truth. The only hope is that you and I continue to do the same with our friends, and on internet social networks like Facebook (as long as Mr. Zuckermann doesn’t shut us down too). We may not be likely to save the world from this takeover by the cabal of mongers, but we must not let this serve as an excuse for giving up. We have no choice but to try as hard as we can to save the world - not from idiots like Bachmann and Palen, not from glib talkers like Limbaugh and Gingrich, but from the intelligent and very well-heeled monsters who control them.
“The meek shall inherit the earth.” What a beautiful prophecy.
In these difficult times it is easy for us to lose hope. It is easy for us to believe that the strong, the bully, the big man who whips us along at our work, the bought-and-paid-for politician, the radio loudmouth, the megabillionaire who owns everything we see and touch and hear about. It is easy for us to lose hope, and to give up, and let Evil have its way. It is easy for us to think that perhaps, if we refuse to engage with Evil, we might not get hurt, we might remain relatively unscathed as Evil instead tramples those who do stand up to it under its marching feet.
But we must not lose hope. If we lose hope, Evil wins. If we lose hope, we become, at least tacitly, part of Evil's army. It may be irrational, it may be futile, but we must never lose hope.
Yes, the future - at least as I see it - looks pretty bleak, pretty lacking in goodness and light.
But I cannot bring myself to give up. I can and will continue to hope, to pray, and to do my best to bring a tiny speck of good, of light, into this world. My efforts may not be enough. Yet perhaps, as I hope and pray, other good souls will join me in this effort - other good souls that have not yet enslaved themselves to the Other One, or who have not yet given up and cowered away in spiritual suicide. Perhaps other good souls also will do their best to bring a tiny speck of good, of light, into this world.
If each of us does that, then maybe, maybe yet, the wisdom and the truth stated by Jesus, that the meek shall inherit the earth, will yet be our future.
I beg you, all of you who have read this and pondered our present and our future: no matter how bleak this age may seem to you - no matter how futile it may seem to you to try to counter, weak as we are, thse monsters that control the press, the schools, the legislatures, the mercantile and military, and the courts - no matter how irrational it may seem to believe in the good and the light, and to urge others to feel the same way, that is our only hope. The more YOU succeed in persuading others to do the same, the more our army of real human beings, armed with nothing more potent than love and light, can and will still inherit this earth.
I believe in you. I believe in hope. I believe in the future. I believe in love. DO NOT GIVE UP!
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Silly Salary Slides would Select Slaves of the Super-Wealthy to Serve
Once again, my liberal friends aren't quite thinking things through. Lately a lot of them, in response to the colossal federal debt in the United States, have on public media like Facebook repeated the following mantra:
...and their friends do immediately repost, without considering the implications.
First, the above salaries represent a vanishingly small percentage of the federal debt. Even if every elected official (not merely the few listed above) worked for free, there would be no effect on the debt.
The real cuts need to be made in the Pentagon military budget, which is gigantic and, moreover, continuing to get padded at an alarming rate. In other words, liberals should focus not on the salaries of elected officials, but on getting those shamefully underpaid soldiers back home, and into good jobs back home.
Reforming a shameful health system - the United States is the only "developed" country without a single-payer universal health-care system - would be a big help toward balancing the federal budget, though not sufficient in itself to finish the job.
Second, liberals need to consider what would happen if the salaries of top officials are cut deeply.
One fact is: To get top talent, you have to pay top dollar. If we want the most qualified people to serve as (for instance) president of the United States, then we, the citizens, need to offer a salary package that will attract those people. Even as it is, a $180,000 annual salary - while it sounds filthily exorbitant to most of us in the middle and lower wage-earning classes - is in fact minuscule in comparison to the millions of dollars earned by the presidents and CEOs of the major companies. Talent is going to go where the money is, and I hope you agree that we want talented people as our elected public servants.
And if you resent (as the above quotation suggests) that former presidents get paid for life, again - that is nothing in comparison to the stunningly lucrative "golden parachutes" and retirement benefits accrued by former big-company presidents and CEOs. Again: if you want talent, you have to offer a package that will attract it.
Another fact is: It is extremely costly to run for president. Yes, technically, you and I and any citizen can do so. But the expenses of campaigning easily run into the tens of millions of dollars. Anyone who has a serious chance of becoming president is either independently extremely wealthy or has sold his or her soul to the presidents anad CEOs of those evil major companies. The lower the salary paid to the president, the more that president, any president, will belong to the monsters that have burdened us lower and middle class members with high taxes, few jobs, and vanishing social and medical security.
The United States should follow the example of other countries and drastically reduce the cost of campaigning. We should pass laws requiring television and radio to provide free publicity to all candidates (remember, we, the people, own the airwaves!, much as the arch-conservative owned-by-the-superwealthy media conglomerates may think otherwise!).
Better yet, media should be required to provide serious space in newspapers, serious amounts of time on radio and television for substantive debates of the real issues, rather than foolish and misleading "Willie Horton" sound bytes. That way, we might find unsuspected talent in, imagine this!, the poor and middle classes, rather than having to accept elected officials who represent the super-wealthy, the very people out to destroy us!
And the people of the United States should not cut, but increase the salary of top elected officials in order to attract independent-thinking and honest talent, not lapdog puppets of the super-wealthy.
Once again, my liberal friends, by not thinking things through, would have us do exactly what the super-wealthy want us to do: go chasing after windmills instead of identifying and correcting the REAL problems that beset the United States and the world.
Liberals are going to LOSE this battle for the future, to LOSE the opportunity to create a world of peace and plenty for all, and rather see a world of suffering and torment for everyone but the super-wealthy -- precisely because they have woefully misidentified objectives. It isn't the debt ceiling. It isn't elected officials. It isn't the salaries they make. It isn't the platitude-pooping popinjays on public airwaves. IT IS THE SUPER-WEALTHY AND THEIR HUGE COMPANIES!
So I'll thank my liberal friends if they think about this call to cut elected officials' salaries as a vaunted way to balance the budget before they copy it and ask me to copy it too.
Salary of retired US Presidents .............$180,000 FOR LIFE
Salary of House/Senate .......................$174,000 FOR LIFE
Salary of Speaker of the House ............$223,500 FOR LIFE
Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders ...... $193,400 FOR LIFE
Average Salary of a teacher ................ $40,065
Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN AFGHANISTAN $38,000
I think we found where the cuts should be made! If you agree... RE-POST
...and their friends do immediately repost, without considering the implications.
First, the above salaries represent a vanishingly small percentage of the federal debt. Even if every elected official (not merely the few listed above) worked for free, there would be no effect on the debt.
The real cuts need to be made in the Pentagon military budget, which is gigantic and, moreover, continuing to get padded at an alarming rate. In other words, liberals should focus not on the salaries of elected officials, but on getting those shamefully underpaid soldiers back home, and into good jobs back home.
Reforming a shameful health system - the United States is the only "developed" country without a single-payer universal health-care system - would be a big help toward balancing the federal budget, though not sufficient in itself to finish the job.
Second, liberals need to consider what would happen if the salaries of top officials are cut deeply.
One fact is: To get top talent, you have to pay top dollar. If we want the most qualified people to serve as (for instance) president of the United States, then we, the citizens, need to offer a salary package that will attract those people. Even as it is, a $180,000 annual salary - while it sounds filthily exorbitant to most of us in the middle and lower wage-earning classes - is in fact minuscule in comparison to the millions of dollars earned by the presidents and CEOs of the major companies. Talent is going to go where the money is, and I hope you agree that we want talented people as our elected public servants.
And if you resent (as the above quotation suggests) that former presidents get paid for life, again - that is nothing in comparison to the stunningly lucrative "golden parachutes" and retirement benefits accrued by former big-company presidents and CEOs. Again: if you want talent, you have to offer a package that will attract it.
Another fact is: It is extremely costly to run for president. Yes, technically, you and I and any citizen can do so. But the expenses of campaigning easily run into the tens of millions of dollars. Anyone who has a serious chance of becoming president is either independently extremely wealthy or has sold his or her soul to the presidents anad CEOs of those evil major companies. The lower the salary paid to the president, the more that president, any president, will belong to the monsters that have burdened us lower and middle class members with high taxes, few jobs, and vanishing social and medical security.
The United States should follow the example of other countries and drastically reduce the cost of campaigning. We should pass laws requiring television and radio to provide free publicity to all candidates (remember, we, the people, own the airwaves!, much as the arch-conservative owned-by-the-superwealthy media conglomerates may think otherwise!).
Better yet, media should be required to provide serious space in newspapers, serious amounts of time on radio and television for substantive debates of the real issues, rather than foolish and misleading "Willie Horton" sound bytes. That way, we might find unsuspected talent in, imagine this!, the poor and middle classes, rather than having to accept elected officials who represent the super-wealthy, the very people out to destroy us!
And the people of the United States should not cut, but increase the salary of top elected officials in order to attract independent-thinking and honest talent, not lapdog puppets of the super-wealthy.
Once again, my liberal friends, by not thinking things through, would have us do exactly what the super-wealthy want us to do: go chasing after windmills instead of identifying and correcting the REAL problems that beset the United States and the world.
Liberals are going to LOSE this battle for the future, to LOSE the opportunity to create a world of peace and plenty for all, and rather see a world of suffering and torment for everyone but the super-wealthy -- precisely because they have woefully misidentified objectives. It isn't the debt ceiling. It isn't elected officials. It isn't the salaries they make. It isn't the platitude-pooping popinjays on public airwaves. IT IS THE SUPER-WEALTHY AND THEIR HUGE COMPANIES!
So I'll thank my liberal friends if they think about this call to cut elected officials' salaries as a vaunted way to balance the budget before they copy it and ask me to copy it too.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
"Power to the People Right Now"
Once again my liberal friends are sorely misguided - and I wonder how often it is by the deliberate manipulations of public opinion by their enemies that my liberal friends are so often so easily duped into shabby thinking.
Many of my liberal friends are saying, "Throw the bums out," meaning: throw out the tea party officials and elect new candidates for public office, candidates who more accurately reflect the liberal agenda of appropriately taxing the super-wealthy and their companies rather than shifting it to the poor and middle classes, of protecting individuals through core civil rights from bigotry and arrogation, and of safeguarding social institutions to support people who cannot fully support themselves.
That agenda is superb and I support it with all my heart.
My liberal friends point, accurately enough, to the fact that their opponents - people of the largely Republican "Tea Party" "religious right" persuasion - did just that: the conservatives successfully threw out the people whom they thought of as bums - liberal and middle-of-the-road politicians - and put their arch-conservative candidates into public office.
However, what my liberal friends fail to understand is the system. "Throwing the bums out" isn't going to change a thing - because these vaunted bums are but puppets.
The puppets in elected office are controlled by strings largely financial in nature. It is extremely expensive these days to win elections (especially thanks to the cost of television time), and so candidates must dance to the tune of their biggest campaign contributors. These contributors by definition are going to be overwhelmingly representative of the super-wealthy class and their corporations - and thus will be giving money to the conservative types in office now, and not to their liberal challengers.
And lobbyists, who represent these super-wealthy and their corporations, are likewise strings tying these puppets to the will of their masters.
The same goes for pollsters - it costs a great deal of money to conduct polls, and it is a well-known fact that polls get the results required by whoever is paying for them. (If you want more "conservative" results, for instance, do your telephoning during the day, when more-likely-to-be-liberal young people are off at work and only more-likely-to-be-conservative retirees are at home; be sure to word your questions in a way that just about guarantees the results required.)
And the conservative powers - the super-wealthy and their corporations - now own critical newspaper chains and television networks, and blithely tell people what to think. Liberals failed to hold on to their media outlets, and they now have little opportunity to speak their views widely, outside of a few mavericks like Maddow and Olbermann and Goodman, whose audiences consist of the already liberal, who therefore have little ability to reach those people who listen exclusively to the conservative media's loudmouthed-bigoted-drivel-cum-reportage.
Moreover, the system in place puts a great deal of power into the hands of the incumbents - these conservatives - to gerrymander districts to promote their re-electability (incumbents in the New York State Legislature, for instance, have a ninety-nine-percent re-election rate).
Got a problem with the system? The courts are increasingly stacked with conservative judges. The police and military are there to enforce the laws that protect this system. Want to throw these bums in prison? It isn't going to happen. They will throw you in prison if you gain any power at all to change their system - which isn't likely to happen, given the very self-protective nature of the system. Remember, these stacked courts have decided, against all logic and reality, that companies are persons - except that they live forever, getting more and more powerful, and have even fewer limits on their political influence powers than do the super-wealthy folks who sit in their top-floor boardrooms.
So liberal talk about "throwing the bums out" is fruitless - one, because it will be almost impossible to do so, and two, because the system in place now will either render elected liberals ineffective or (because of the need for financial support) turn them into obedient puppets for the conservative super-wealthy and their companies - case in point, President Obama.
Throw the bums out and their replacements are almost guaranteed to become bums - again, maybe with one or two tolerated maverick exceptions like Sanders, mavericks with no hope of ever gaining sufficient support in their legislative chambers to do more than fume and fuss from their corners and garner applause only from the dwindling cadres of their liberal supporters.
So we must remember that elected officials are only puppets on the strings of the system, with the puppetmasters being the super-wealthy and their companies.
Government is simply legalized crime. The great fourteenth-century sociologist-historian Ibn Khaldūn called government “an institution that prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself.” Government is essentially a monopolistic corporation designed to provide services for the wealthy (and only incidentally for others), and mainly protect the wealthy, their wealth and their power.
Remember, the American Revolution was bought and paid for by the wealthy of that day, as a means of halting the bleeding, of taxation taking their profits off to England. Those who were wealthy before the Revolution were even wealthier thereafter; those who were poor before the Revolution remained poor - if not dead in the war.
So throwing the bums out will not make any difference. Ultimately, only revolution might make any difference. History again and again shows that those who are without, as they get hungrier and hungrier, more and more desperate, they get stronger. When eventually they get organized, or simply rise up in a chaotic mass, the super-wealthy will be in great trouble. The super-wealthy know this, and use their media and their politicians and their armed forces to dissipate and control this chaotic power - but some day it will destroy them.
But there is danger in revolution too, as shown by the American Revolution (see above) and the American Civil War (which was only ostensibly about slavery; it was really an economic war between the factory-based economy of the North and the plantation-based economy of the South). If a revolution is bought and paid for by the super-wealthy, it will only further strengthen their grip on power and wealth.
In the time of the American Revolution, the super-wealthy wanted to stop the flow of money from their coffers to England, in the form of taxes. So they bought and paid for a revolution. Today, the super-wealthy are stopping the flow of money from their coffers in the form of taxes by becoming puppetmasters using the strings of the system to control their puppets, elected officials. In other words, they do not want a revolution.
But, if the people get hungry enough, and angry enough, there will be a revolution. All of the media and the courts and the police and the military and the elected officials are in place to prevent this. The system is in place to keep the poor and middle classes powerless. But, as John Lennon asked, "You say you want a revolution?", and as he answered his question in another song, "Power to the people right now."
We liberals are deluding ourselves if we think throwing out the puppets will do any good. Instead, we should focus on throwing out their puppetmasters. The bums to throw out are not the politicians - the bums to throw out are the super-wealthy and their companies.
Many of my liberal friends are saying, "Throw the bums out," meaning: throw out the tea party officials and elect new candidates for public office, candidates who more accurately reflect the liberal agenda of appropriately taxing the super-wealthy and their companies rather than shifting it to the poor and middle classes, of protecting individuals through core civil rights from bigotry and arrogation, and of safeguarding social institutions to support people who cannot fully support themselves.
That agenda is superb and I support it with all my heart.
My liberal friends point, accurately enough, to the fact that their opponents - people of the largely Republican "Tea Party" "religious right" persuasion - did just that: the conservatives successfully threw out the people whom they thought of as bums - liberal and middle-of-the-road politicians - and put their arch-conservative candidates into public office.
However, what my liberal friends fail to understand is the system. "Throwing the bums out" isn't going to change a thing - because these vaunted bums are but puppets.
The puppets in elected office are controlled by strings largely financial in nature. It is extremely expensive these days to win elections (especially thanks to the cost of television time), and so candidates must dance to the tune of their biggest campaign contributors. These contributors by definition are going to be overwhelmingly representative of the super-wealthy class and their corporations - and thus will be giving money to the conservative types in office now, and not to their liberal challengers.
And lobbyists, who represent these super-wealthy and their corporations, are likewise strings tying these puppets to the will of their masters.
The same goes for pollsters - it costs a great deal of money to conduct polls, and it is a well-known fact that polls get the results required by whoever is paying for them. (If you want more "conservative" results, for instance, do your telephoning during the day, when more-likely-to-be-liberal young people are off at work and only more-likely-to-be-conservative retirees are at home; be sure to word your questions in a way that just about guarantees the results required.)
And the conservative powers - the super-wealthy and their corporations - now own critical newspaper chains and television networks, and blithely tell people what to think. Liberals failed to hold on to their media outlets, and they now have little opportunity to speak their views widely, outside of a few mavericks like Maddow and Olbermann and Goodman, whose audiences consist of the already liberal, who therefore have little ability to reach those people who listen exclusively to the conservative media's loudmouthed-bigoted-drivel-cum-reportage.
Moreover, the system in place puts a great deal of power into the hands of the incumbents - these conservatives - to gerrymander districts to promote their re-electability (incumbents in the New York State Legislature, for instance, have a ninety-nine-percent re-election rate).
Got a problem with the system? The courts are increasingly stacked with conservative judges. The police and military are there to enforce the laws that protect this system. Want to throw these bums in prison? It isn't going to happen. They will throw you in prison if you gain any power at all to change their system - which isn't likely to happen, given the very self-protective nature of the system. Remember, these stacked courts have decided, against all logic and reality, that companies are persons - except that they live forever, getting more and more powerful, and have even fewer limits on their political influence powers than do the super-wealthy folks who sit in their top-floor boardrooms.
So liberal talk about "throwing the bums out" is fruitless - one, because it will be almost impossible to do so, and two, because the system in place now will either render elected liberals ineffective or (because of the need for financial support) turn them into obedient puppets for the conservative super-wealthy and their companies - case in point, President Obama.
Throw the bums out and their replacements are almost guaranteed to become bums - again, maybe with one or two tolerated maverick exceptions like Sanders, mavericks with no hope of ever gaining sufficient support in their legislative chambers to do more than fume and fuss from their corners and garner applause only from the dwindling cadres of their liberal supporters.
So we must remember that elected officials are only puppets on the strings of the system, with the puppetmasters being the super-wealthy and their companies.
Government is simply legalized crime. The great fourteenth-century sociologist-historian Ibn Khaldūn called government “an institution that prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself.” Government is essentially a monopolistic corporation designed to provide services for the wealthy (and only incidentally for others), and mainly protect the wealthy, their wealth and their power.
Remember, the American Revolution was bought and paid for by the wealthy of that day, as a means of halting the bleeding, of taxation taking their profits off to England. Those who were wealthy before the Revolution were even wealthier thereafter; those who were poor before the Revolution remained poor - if not dead in the war.
So throwing the bums out will not make any difference. Ultimately, only revolution might make any difference. History again and again shows that those who are without, as they get hungrier and hungrier, more and more desperate, they get stronger. When eventually they get organized, or simply rise up in a chaotic mass, the super-wealthy will be in great trouble. The super-wealthy know this, and use their media and their politicians and their armed forces to dissipate and control this chaotic power - but some day it will destroy them.
But there is danger in revolution too, as shown by the American Revolution (see above) and the American Civil War (which was only ostensibly about slavery; it was really an economic war between the factory-based economy of the North and the plantation-based economy of the South). If a revolution is bought and paid for by the super-wealthy, it will only further strengthen their grip on power and wealth.
In the time of the American Revolution, the super-wealthy wanted to stop the flow of money from their coffers to England, in the form of taxes. So they bought and paid for a revolution. Today, the super-wealthy are stopping the flow of money from their coffers in the form of taxes by becoming puppetmasters using the strings of the system to control their puppets, elected officials. In other words, they do not want a revolution.
But, if the people get hungry enough, and angry enough, there will be a revolution. All of the media and the courts and the police and the military and the elected officials are in place to prevent this. The system is in place to keep the poor and middle classes powerless. But, as John Lennon asked, "You say you want a revolution?", and as he answered his question in another song, "Power to the people right now."
We liberals are deluding ourselves if we think throwing out the puppets will do any good. Instead, we should focus on throwing out their puppetmasters. The bums to throw out are not the politicians - the bums to throw out are the super-wealthy and their companies.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Keep the Debt Ceiling, but Use It as Intended!
Liberals say ditch the debt ceiling that recently put the United States on the verge of an economic meltdown. They decry how the opposition party, the Republicans, clearly used it as a tool to try to humiliate President Obama.
Liberals point out that other sovereign countries don't have debt ceiling requirements, and seem not to suffer from that lack.
Should the debt ceiling therefore be eliminated?
The Founders intended it as a check on "cowboy wars", on military actions undeclared by presidents. The bombing of Libya is an example of such an action - the Obama administration justifies saying it is not really a war, that it is just a military action, by saying "no lives have been lost", meaning no U.S. lives, like Libyan lives don't count. The Congress would have been justified to use the debt ceiling check to oppose this action for what it is, an undeclared "cowboy war". Using it as they did, however, in an attempt to humiliate a sitting president is, of course, unacceptable.
But this egregious and shameful misuse doesn't justify getting rid of the debt ceiling.
That's because the debt ceiling serves as a necessary "check and balance" against an imperial presidency going off to war without congressional support - and the United States has a long and sorry history of "cowboy wars", and a frightening trend toward an imperial presidency with almost unlimited powers. Indeed, Obama is militarily involved on more fronts than George W. Bush ever was.
The argument that other countries don't have debt ceiling requirements is therefore specious. Other countries, except perhaps Russia and China, don't have a comparable recent history of "cowboy wars", of unilaterally deciding to intervene in the sovereign affairs of other countries. (Russia and China falsely claim, for instance, that their actions in Chechnya and Tibet are police in nature, quelling of civil unrest, denying what they really are - wars of genocide on nations that should by all rights be sovereign countries.)
Of course, government should be conducted on a pay-as-it-goes basis. Of course, any failure to do so should result in the elected or appointed perpetrators being immediately removed from office.
And of course, most wars almost inevitably require a government to go into debt. The ever increasing debt in the United States is not the result of social services to the poor, but of a colossal and fast-growing military budget.
Once government goes over the line into debt, and lightning doesn't strike (nobody gets booted out of office), then there is no more restraint, no more shame, and the temptation to go ever farther into debt is irresitable - the temptation to "solve" budgetary impasses not by negotiation but by giving everybody what they want - giving everybody their big piece of pork to wave in front of the voters back home.
And the larger the deficit grows, and the larger looms the very real possibility of a powerful economic entity, the United States, going entirely bankrupt - and taking the world, economically, down with it.
And this reality is exacerbated by the cuts in social services and the transfer of taxation from the super-wealthy and their corporation to the poorer and middle classes - all while the military budget continues to grow at an alarming rate.
The solution is simple.
Deep cuts in the military budget.
Tax the super-rich at the rate they should be taxed.
Tax corporations rather than giving them public money.
Support social services that enable poor and middle-class people to survive, to get on their feet.
Liberals point out that other sovereign countries don't have debt ceiling requirements, and seem not to suffer from that lack.
Should the debt ceiling therefore be eliminated?
The Founders intended it as a check on "cowboy wars", on military actions undeclared by presidents. The bombing of Libya is an example of such an action - the Obama administration justifies saying it is not really a war, that it is just a military action, by saying "no lives have been lost", meaning no U.S. lives, like Libyan lives don't count. The Congress would have been justified to use the debt ceiling check to oppose this action for what it is, an undeclared "cowboy war". Using it as they did, however, in an attempt to humiliate a sitting president is, of course, unacceptable.
But this egregious and shameful misuse doesn't justify getting rid of the debt ceiling.
That's because the debt ceiling serves as a necessary "check and balance" against an imperial presidency going off to war without congressional support - and the United States has a long and sorry history of "cowboy wars", and a frightening trend toward an imperial presidency with almost unlimited powers. Indeed, Obama is militarily involved on more fronts than George W. Bush ever was.
The argument that other countries don't have debt ceiling requirements is therefore specious. Other countries, except perhaps Russia and China, don't have a comparable recent history of "cowboy wars", of unilaterally deciding to intervene in the sovereign affairs of other countries. (Russia and China falsely claim, for instance, that their actions in Chechnya and Tibet are police in nature, quelling of civil unrest, denying what they really are - wars of genocide on nations that should by all rights be sovereign countries.)
Of course, government should be conducted on a pay-as-it-goes basis. Of course, any failure to do so should result in the elected or appointed perpetrators being immediately removed from office.
And of course, most wars almost inevitably require a government to go into debt. The ever increasing debt in the United States is not the result of social services to the poor, but of a colossal and fast-growing military budget.
Once government goes over the line into debt, and lightning doesn't strike (nobody gets booted out of office), then there is no more restraint, no more shame, and the temptation to go ever farther into debt is irresitable - the temptation to "solve" budgetary impasses not by negotiation but by giving everybody what they want - giving everybody their big piece of pork to wave in front of the voters back home.
And the larger the deficit grows, and the larger looms the very real possibility of a powerful economic entity, the United States, going entirely bankrupt - and taking the world, economically, down with it.
And this reality is exacerbated by the cuts in social services and the transfer of taxation from the super-wealthy and their corporation to the poorer and middle classes - all while the military budget continues to grow at an alarming rate.
The solution is simple.
Deep cuts in the military budget.
Tax the super-rich at the rate they should be taxed.
Tax corporations rather than giving them public money.
Support social services that enable poor and middle-class people to survive, to get on their feet.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
E-Books: Will Literature Survive?
Electronic publishing increasingly looks to be the future of books. As an author of many books - some published electronically, some physically, and some both - perhaps my views are worthy of interest.
On the plus side, internet publishing makes it much easier to get one's work to market, increasing the likelihood that, in the future, people will still read good writing, which is something we can justifiably worry about. With all the competition in "entertainment" (the profit-oriented category of human endeavor that has replaced the aesthetics-oriented category "the arts") literature has precious little to recommend it. It offers no eye-popping special effects, just print on a page. It provides no instant gratification, but demands rather a considerable investment of time to reap its rewards. It is no lazy sit-back-and-enjoy, since one is required to think while reading, and use one's imagination.
Certainly it is fiercely expensive to pay people to perform all the tasks needed to publish a book in physical form, from evaluating submitted manuscripts to manuscript editing to typesetting to copyediting to book-designing to printing to binding to distributing to publicity to retailing. With all of these specialties involved, it's no wonder that there's very little profit to be made in the book industry.
This situation is tougher in some countries, like the United States, where a Supreme Court decision ("Thor Power Tools") significantly increased the tax liability on printed copies of books stored in warehouses and not yet sold. So high is this liability that most publishers avoid warehousing as much as possible; if a book isn't going to sell out quickly, it's not going to be printed.
In the past, the very difficulty of publishing (physical) books created a kind of selectivity - something was far more likely to be really good if it was going to make it into print. Or, put conversely, if someone wrote a really good manuscript, it was bound to be published; the book houses felt they had a public duty to bring good works before the public.
That is to say, publishers used to publish on the basis of not profit but quality. The first works of many of the greatest authors - Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Salinger, for instance - did not sell very many copies, and in fact the publishers expected them not to sell well, but the publishers knew these writers were good, and knew that some day they would be widely recognized for their goodness, and so they stuck by them.
Today, that would never happen. Publishing decisions are based not on quality but on quick profitability - hence (and I could use myself as an example) many great books languish unpublished while a lot of absolute sniveling crap gets heavily promoted. If I had submitted a book like my
novel "Rats Live on no Evil Star" in the 1930s or '40s, you can be sure it would have been quickly published, despite the economic difficulties during the Great Depression and World War II. Already a few hundred people have read it, minimally published though it is, and every one of them has come away from it saying it is one of the best novels he or she has ever read. But, nevertheless, I continue to shop it around from publisher to publisher, in three languages and several countries, and rarely do I even get a serious acknowledgement.
Which is not necessarily to blame the publishing industry. Today, a lot of would-be authors think that book house editors are heartless, tasteless ogres who irrationally and unjustifiably refuse to see that their writings are the next best-seller. But the truth is, with so little profit in the industry, that, unless yours is a household name, or the book or is a quick-sell item, or the book has a movie or toy-industry tie-in, it's not at all likely to be published. Hence all the books written (or so it is claimed) by actors and politicians and convicted criminals (but I repeat myself), and all the magnificent tomes such as "1,001 Uses for a Dead Cat".
On the minus side of electronic publishing:
While the e-book cuts right out most of the costs associated with physical publishing, one downside is that this eliminates a lot of jobs in an economy hurting for employment. And another downside is that valuable skills are being lost. Even physically printed books these days are commonly riddled with errors of typography, grammar, and spelling - if a copyeditor went over the galleys at all (which is increasingly doubtful), then that copyeditor, rushed for time and perhaps poorly trained by a public education which these days fails to convey the rudiments of proper English, utterly failed to do a good job of editing.
What is more, electronic publishing also denies the book lover certain fine tactile and olfactory splendors - the satisfaction of feeling a good book in your hands, the sound as the page is turned, the wonderful scents of ink and glue. It's simply not the same thing to curl up in bed with a Kindle or a Nook.
And, since e-publishing makes it so easy to get one's writing out there before the public, it exponentially multiplies the available amount of unmitigated shameless garbage. Thousands of people can indulge their little ego-trip of self-delusion that their poorly written derivative trash is going to be famous and make them lots of money - eventually they find out that, even through Amazon and the like, nobody will download their turgid nonsense even if it's offered for free.
Yet, if e-publishing helps to keep great literature alive - it is gratifying how many of the classic works of the past are available in electronic format for free - then, with all my qualms, I grudgingly must embrace it.
Moreover, in countries like Panama, where I live, it might help increase the literacy rate, and the interest-in-good-literature rate. And since, for expatriates like me there are virtually no English-language bookstores in the country and the cost of importing either one's existing book collection or mail-ordering new books from abroad is quite costly, one has little choice but to read e-books.
But what about the long-term future?
Electronic records - as anyone who has suffered from a computer crash or the loss of important data for one or another reason - are extremely vulnerable to inadvertent destruction. There is unlikely in some future age the sound of joy from archaeologists finding a treasure-trove of classics like the Nag Hammadi Library, for e-books will have long before have been reduced to mere a random static of free electrons.
What is more, even physical books these days are mostly printed on poor-quality high-acid-content paper, and won't survive more than a few decades at best - especially with the increasing amounts of corrosive pollution in the atmosphere.
Third, public education in most countries is being downsized and defunded, and the emphasis being put not on a well-rounded liberal arts education-for-its-own-sake, but on learning skills sufficient to be competent at some mindless trade. People are being trained by the profit-hungry market to want instant mindless entertainments that require no effort, that "relax" one after a hard work day. Literature is going to be of less and less appeal to such people.
A fourth factor, as noted above, is that the entire publishing industry (from printer to retailer) is run not by people who believe in literature for its own sake, but by bean-counters; if there is no profit in it, it's simply not going to be published, no matter how great a work of art it may be. I expect even free electronic versions of the classics to disappear soon.
So there is a serious possibility that all the literature of this age and past ages, that some unpublished Shakespeare or Dante or Murasaki of today or tomorrow may never be known and appreciated by the world of literature lovers. There is a serious possibility that the very lack of good literature will lead to the disappearance of literature lovers themselves. Tragically and ironically, the concern I raise here may be nonsensical in future ages.
I can hope that the electronic book will save literature, but of that - at this point in history - I cannot be sure.
DISCLAIMER: James David Audlin has written many books, a few of which have been published; most of them (he has thrown in the towel) are now available in electronic format at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JamesDavidAudlin - and in softcover through Createspace.com - and some in hardcover through Lulu.com
On the plus side, internet publishing makes it much easier to get one's work to market, increasing the likelihood that, in the future, people will still read good writing, which is something we can justifiably worry about. With all the competition in "entertainment" (the profit-oriented category of human endeavor that has replaced the aesthetics-oriented category "the arts") literature has precious little to recommend it. It offers no eye-popping special effects, just print on a page. It provides no instant gratification, but demands rather a considerable investment of time to reap its rewards. It is no lazy sit-back-and-enjoy, since one is required to think while reading, and use one's imagination.
Certainly it is fiercely expensive to pay people to perform all the tasks needed to publish a book in physical form, from evaluating submitted manuscripts to manuscript editing to typesetting to copyediting to book-designing to printing to binding to distributing to publicity to retailing. With all of these specialties involved, it's no wonder that there's very little profit to be made in the book industry.
This situation is tougher in some countries, like the United States, where a Supreme Court decision ("Thor Power Tools") significantly increased the tax liability on printed copies of books stored in warehouses and not yet sold. So high is this liability that most publishers avoid warehousing as much as possible; if a book isn't going to sell out quickly, it's not going to be printed.
In the past, the very difficulty of publishing (physical) books created a kind of selectivity - something was far more likely to be really good if it was going to make it into print. Or, put conversely, if someone wrote a really good manuscript, it was bound to be published; the book houses felt they had a public duty to bring good works before the public.
That is to say, publishers used to publish on the basis of not profit but quality. The first works of many of the greatest authors - Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Salinger, for instance - did not sell very many copies, and in fact the publishers expected them not to sell well, but the publishers knew these writers were good, and knew that some day they would be widely recognized for their goodness, and so they stuck by them.
Today, that would never happen. Publishing decisions are based not on quality but on quick profitability - hence (and I could use myself as an example) many great books languish unpublished while a lot of absolute sniveling crap gets heavily promoted. If I had submitted a book like my
novel "Rats Live on no Evil Star" in the 1930s or '40s, you can be sure it would have been quickly published, despite the economic difficulties during the Great Depression and World War II. Already a few hundred people have read it, minimally published though it is, and every one of them has come away from it saying it is one of the best novels he or she has ever read. But, nevertheless, I continue to shop it around from publisher to publisher, in three languages and several countries, and rarely do I even get a serious acknowledgement.
Which is not necessarily to blame the publishing industry. Today, a lot of would-be authors think that book house editors are heartless, tasteless ogres who irrationally and unjustifiably refuse to see that their writings are the next best-seller. But the truth is, with so little profit in the industry, that, unless yours is a household name, or the book or is a quick-sell item, or the book has a movie or toy-industry tie-in, it's not at all likely to be published. Hence all the books written (or so it is claimed) by actors and politicians and convicted criminals (but I repeat myself), and all the magnificent tomes such as "1,001 Uses for a Dead Cat".
On the minus side of electronic publishing:
While the e-book cuts right out most of the costs associated with physical publishing, one downside is that this eliminates a lot of jobs in an economy hurting for employment. And another downside is that valuable skills are being lost. Even physically printed books these days are commonly riddled with errors of typography, grammar, and spelling - if a copyeditor went over the galleys at all (which is increasingly doubtful), then that copyeditor, rushed for time and perhaps poorly trained by a public education which these days fails to convey the rudiments of proper English, utterly failed to do a good job of editing.
What is more, electronic publishing also denies the book lover certain fine tactile and olfactory splendors - the satisfaction of feeling a good book in your hands, the sound as the page is turned, the wonderful scents of ink and glue. It's simply not the same thing to curl up in bed with a Kindle or a Nook.
And, since e-publishing makes it so easy to get one's writing out there before the public, it exponentially multiplies the available amount of unmitigated shameless garbage. Thousands of people can indulge their little ego-trip of self-delusion that their poorly written derivative trash is going to be famous and make them lots of money - eventually they find out that, even through Amazon and the like, nobody will download their turgid nonsense even if it's offered for free.
Yet, if e-publishing helps to keep great literature alive - it is gratifying how many of the classic works of the past are available in electronic format for free - then, with all my qualms, I grudgingly must embrace it.
Moreover, in countries like Panama, where I live, it might help increase the literacy rate, and the interest-in-good-literature rate. And since, for expatriates like me there are virtually no English-language bookstores in the country and the cost of importing either one's existing book collection or mail-ordering new books from abroad is quite costly, one has little choice but to read e-books.
But what about the long-term future?
Electronic records - as anyone who has suffered from a computer crash or the loss of important data for one or another reason - are extremely vulnerable to inadvertent destruction. There is unlikely in some future age the sound of joy from archaeologists finding a treasure-trove of classics like the Nag Hammadi Library, for e-books will have long before have been reduced to mere a random static of free electrons.
What is more, even physical books these days are mostly printed on poor-quality high-acid-content paper, and won't survive more than a few decades at best - especially with the increasing amounts of corrosive pollution in the atmosphere.
Third, public education in most countries is being downsized and defunded, and the emphasis being put not on a well-rounded liberal arts education-for-its-own-sake, but on learning skills sufficient to be competent at some mindless trade. People are being trained by the profit-hungry market to want instant mindless entertainments that require no effort, that "relax" one after a hard work day. Literature is going to be of less and less appeal to such people.
A fourth factor, as noted above, is that the entire publishing industry (from printer to retailer) is run not by people who believe in literature for its own sake, but by bean-counters; if there is no profit in it, it's simply not going to be published, no matter how great a work of art it may be. I expect even free electronic versions of the classics to disappear soon.
So there is a serious possibility that all the literature of this age and past ages, that some unpublished Shakespeare or Dante or Murasaki of today or tomorrow may never be known and appreciated by the world of literature lovers. There is a serious possibility that the very lack of good literature will lead to the disappearance of literature lovers themselves. Tragically and ironically, the concern I raise here may be nonsensical in future ages.
I can hope that the electronic book will save literature, but of that - at this point in history - I cannot be sure.
DISCLAIMER: James David Audlin has written many books, a few of which have been published; most of them (he has thrown in the towel) are now available in electronic format at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JamesDavidAudlin - and in softcover through Createspace.com - and some in hardcover through Lulu.com
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