The Sound and the Fury

Thoughts on The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The freedom of the individual and their ability to escape the past has been a recurring theme in twentieth century literature.  While other works, such as Nightwood suggested the possibility of “forgetting”, this book is all facticity - it seems there is no escape from the past. Faulkner shows life as confused and constantly being oppressed by the intrusion of the past into the realm of present thought.

This imprisonment by the past is most exemplified in Quentin (at least in the first half). He is certainly obsessed; with family, the past, and time itself. An interesting revelation of this is when Quentin goes into the jeweler’s shop. He keeps asking if any of the clocks are accurate - until he gets the answer no. His mental response to this is remembering his father‘s view that “says clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life” (97).  Earlier, he while contemplating what time is, he remembers his father saying that “constant speculation regarding the position of mechanical hands on an arbitrary dial which is a symptom of mind-function” (87).  Apparently mind-function is a bad thing, in this sense it detracts from life lived in the moment.  The answer that none of the clocks is accurate shows that time is merely an arbitrary concept; it isn’t real – at least in the ways that it is measured.  Furthermore, it suggests that there are no foundations to the modern world.  There is no fixed absolute from which everything else can be quantitatively or qualitatively evaluated.

Like the conceptual reversal of time, Quentin’s father inverts the idea of sexual innocence, stating that “women are never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature” (132).  Faulkner doesn’t reveal an argument to clearly backup the position that purity should be a negative state, but it seems that Mr Compson is indicating that the world as a whole exists in a fallen state, and it is just common sense to realize that no one could live up to the ideals of purity.  He also makes reference to the “reducto adsurdum of human experience” (97).  He sees that life can’t be organized by reason and molded into what we want it to be.

This obsession with what is not, or what can’t be, seems to indicate that there is a very profound crisis underlying life. Reducing time to the mechanical workings of a human machine makes it artificial.  The construct of the modern world, the artificial, is in conflict with the natural order.   Quentin seems caught in the middle of this conflict.  On one side Benjy represents a more innocent state of being.  He is naturally able to see things from a simple point of view.  The references to the age of thirty-three and the holidays of Easter and Christmas in his chapter suggest he lives in a traditional (Christian), or pre-modern world.  Quentin’s father on the other hand has already accepted the absurdity of life, rejected imposing his own structure on it, and continues living in a dysfunctional state.  This nihilistic view has advanced beyond the modern.  Only Quentin realizes modernity and with his hyper-conscious thought he is obsessed by the nagging “lack” in the world and finds it a problem to be fixed.  Unfortunately, he is trapped in time and doesn’t seem to be able to find a solution.  This leaves him with a developing neurosis that results in incestuous thoughts, anger management issues, and the inability to live in the present or the future.

I found reading the second part of the book to be a much bleaker experience than the first half. It seemed to me that Quentin (the brother) was really the heart of the story. Without the presence of Quentin, Caddy, and Mr Compson (with his unusual but provoking thoughts about the world) the family seems very empty. I haven’t been sure what to make of the repeated idea that “Caddy smells like trees,” but by the end I’m thinking that she represents the natural order of things and as her experiences begin the breakdown of the Compson family, they move away from the natural to a very artificial state of being. 

There is no more spirit in the family, leaving only a mechanical functioning to everyday life.  Jason’s thoughts are very cold and calculated, with no time to stop for any useful introspective thoughts. All that matters now, at least to Jason, is money. Everything he does revolves around it. But, even after all the effort he expends involving constant attention and resulting headaches, he still loses his wealth. There are constantly forces at work that are beyond his control, and his security is placed in the market.  He uses the market to hopefully profit, but when things go wrong he replies that “that’s not my fault either. I didn’t invent it” (282).  There is no acknowledgement of responsibility and rather than make smarter decisions he continues to let things happen and then blame others.

At this point, I can only assume that Faulkner is making a comment on the rising consumer culture which quantifies everything into units of time and money. In this world the everyday rat race becomes just a superficial “sound and fury”, and the internal life of the self begins to “signify nothing.”  Once life is adapted into this structure, there is no essence of humanity left.  Faulkner may have been reacting to the change in the South, but this whole process of decay, or perhaps devolution, seems applicable to the world and time at large.  At the fundamental core of life is the relationship one has to other individuals.  When this breaks down there is nothing left to build upon. 

Almost all of the characters spend their time concerned with the actions of others, but only out of concern for themselves.  Jason is so obsessed with imposing discipline on everyone else that he leaves no room for them to act autonomously.  In the process he neglects control over his own actions and loses some of his selfhood.  Quentin’s obsession  leads to his own demise when he can’t reconcile Caddy’s actions.  Quentin Jr.  barely has a self and is consciously aware that she “is going to hell” and doesn’t care (217).  Only Dilsey offers some contrast to this, as she has a notion of the importance of the self and finds some possibility of salvation in religion.  But as the older views and traditions are replaced and the younger generation of the family takes over, it seems that this emptiness will expand.  At the end (is it even an end?), I can only think that Faulkner is suggesting that one should be a more active participant in their own life, choose appropriate courses of action and then ultimately find connection with others in a more constructive manner.

El Dorado

i. Long-Shadowed Sun

I remember..
The enchanted English walled garden
Days of summer air and honey-suckled nights
The capricious dance of lavenders and cabbage-whites
Made more than 3D, glowing in the evening long-shadowed sun
Nowhere better. But in England, although nothing really changes, the weather always does…

The thunder approaches
The heavy sighing of the monster…
  - El Dorado, Marillion (2016)


In video game design the Green Hill Zone is the initial, idyllic landscape from which the player begins their journey, an area of relative safety which allows the player to ease into their virtual existence before encountering serious conflict.

Born into American culture of the later part of the twentieth-century, specifically in the Mid-west, life existed in a world of a Green Hill Zone.  The only existential danger were those economic downturns which particularly devastated rural livelihoods.  But, in these cases the worst outcome was far better than the world's poor classes and farther above the historic peasantry.  World-War II was now a receded nightmare, the result of an antiquated historic period.  We were finally enlightened, modernized and civilized.  Even living under the nuclear threat, the economic golden age of the 50s and 60s were the prologue to the utopian future.  After the Fall of Communism and the ostensible end of the nuclear threat of the Cold War, the future really was now.  War, still never too far away, and in many ways now an omnipresent, ongoing campaign to maintain safe order, was at least clean. Genocide, holocaust, and the mass destruction of function society were unthinkable (without the final push of a button). Of course Sarajevo happened quickly, an actual siege of a modern city.  But that was a one-off, an exercise, something to show how well the new Western-led international community could respond.  Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, Myanmar, these were and are all so far away.  By the time of the Syrian war post-2011, it was no longer possible to say that the horrors of mass warfare were impossible. Now, the Green Zone, that safe zone, may not remain outside of the action and the resulting horrors.  Mid-America may not witness destruction, ignoring it even as it helps to sustain the mechanisms that create it. But it is no longer causally separated from such events and it is no longer insulated from the damaging effects.  In the process of making America "great" (again?) it is an active part of the center of history, susceptible to engagement and consequence.

This week David Lynch suggested Trump "could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much." I cant agree with Lynch's logical position, as he claims that "No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way."  Of course, everything Trump does can be countered by an intelligent (an exponentially more intelligent) response.  But he is right in the sense that Trump and his supporters are not operating on the cognitive and intelligent level. You can't have an intelligent negotiation because they don't care, they are solely functioning on a reptilian-response level.  For whatever reason, Lynch is coming from a similar perspective to Zizek, seeing the positive result of Trump tearing down the old Order. I wouldn't in any case look to Lynch for rationality, in fact his artistic expression has its own genius precisely because it is irrational, it embodies the Real, the inarticulate-able, primordial, pre-symbolic aspects of existence. Lynch is the auteur of the Real, just as Zizek is the philosopher of the Real.  But, there is an extreme danger when these views collide with the practical world, and the idealistic vision to build something new from the ground up allows for a path to catastrophe. Lynch did follow up, adding “Unfortunately, if you continue as you have been, you will not have a chance to go down in history as a great president ... You are causing suffering and division.”  He is at least not oblivious.

At this point, when the government is literally torturing and abusing children (as young as a few months old) by separating them from parents and throwing them into detention camps (as sick, twisted, supporters are cheering it on), it is certainly safe to say that we will longer be able to avoid the storm unscathed.  Innocent people will suffer at the hands of a tyrant and his evil supporters.  Those ready to take their ideological fight to the front-lines may suffer, but they are not the measure of history.  It is the innocent, those who are trying to flee, avoid conflict, ans simply live (and who likely don't have a say in global politics) who will be caught under the machinery which manifests the Storm. [1]

As Tobias Stone wrote:

At a local level in time, people think things are fine — then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this, it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later, it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another . . .  We should be asking ourselves what our Archduke Ferdinand moment will be. How will an apparently small event trigger another period of massive destruction . . .  It will come in ways we can’t see coming, and will spin out of control so fast people won’t be able to stop it. Historians will look back and make sense of it all and wonder how we could all have been so naïve. . . . The people who see that open societies, being nice to other people, not being racist, not fighting wars, is a better way to live, they generally end up losing these fights . . . we are entering a bad phase. It will be unpleasant for those living through it, maybe even will unravel into being hellish and beyond imagination. Humans will come out the other side, recover and move on. The human race will be fine, changed, maybe better. But for those at the sharp end . . . for those yet to fall, this will be their Somme.

We are already seeing those at the sharp end.  For many, white Americans not near the faultlines, things will go on, possibly without disruption. But for many it won't - those trapped in between the faults, those that are crushed by America (the New American Direction) and can't be defended by their own governments, and maybe those who try to stop it. The Storm is coming, It can now be seen and heard on the horizon.

As Sartre argued there is no non-choice, any war is our war, everyone's war.  Each individual must make a moral choice, and stand on the moral side of the war.  For those of us in the culture creating this conflict, it is our responsibility. History will judge those who allowed evil things to happen.

[1] What i call The Storm (or Trump's Storm) is not to be confused with any ridiculous conspiracy theories, although I think they a apt name.

Tropic of Cancer

Thoughts on Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

It is hard to imagine the impact of Henry Miller’s vulgar language in 1934, but I suppose in the pre-shock-jock era someone had to push the bounds of language and conventional thought. If Dostoevsky's underground man was the kind of person that must exist in the nineteenth century, created by the expanding rationalistic world of modernism, then Miller’s persona in the Tropic of Cancer is a logical but extreme extension of that thought. Given the possible nihilism that has come about after Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead,” the possibility of value has been eroded in the early twentieth century. Miller’s reference to Turgenev shows an affinity with Russian nihilist thought. He states that:
For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been
dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been
crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it
off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the
coup de grâce, it needs to be blown to smithereens. (26)

Since nothing seems to rise above into a hierarchy of meaning and value, Miller seems to reject everything as the same, and in response concerns himself only with the base values of food and sex. He quite consciously claims that he is not of the human world but the inhuman, and it seems Paris suits his activity better than American and its “puritanical” values .

Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could
have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am
proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and
governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles.
I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity – I
belong to the earth!

This view indicates Miller wants to throw off all artificial limitations created by man, and live in a much more naturalistic way, answering only to the self. Despite his rejection of value, there does seem to be times where Miller regards the act of creation as having intrinsic value, and the (sometimes) eloquent and poetic quality of his writing suggests a pursuit of an aesthetic goal. Ultimately, Miller’s interest is only in what is immediately present, the concrete elements of life. He is interested in the awareness of the: discrepancy there is between ideas and living. A permanent dislocation, though we try to cover the two with a bright awning. And it won’t go. Ideas have to be wedded to action; if there is no sex, no vitality in them, there is no action. Ideas cannot exist alone in the vacuum of the mind. Ideas are related to living: (242)

Life requires action, it should not be “an abstract idea nailed to a cross” (243). Life is lived on the margins of society. Anything that takes the vitality out of life (such as social conventions, normative morality, etc) should be rejected. While this worldview may not be sustainable for societies at large, it does seem applicable to the artist striving to find the center of life, to create something new, and live life to its fullest intensity. I think Miller is proposing that the only way to find value in the modern world is to first destroy all of the systems that have been built up in the past and start over by finding value in life itself.

Native Son

Thoughts on Native Son by Richard Wright

For me, the most prominent question that arises from Native Son concerns Bigger’s justification. This work resembles The Stranger, written by Camus at roughly the same time. In that work the character Mersault was also sentenced for death for inadvertently killing someone. Ultimately, his real crime was indifference to the world (a world that was indifferent to him).  He was not an active participant in his own life.  The same can be said of Bigger.  However, in his case, there seems to be something more than indifference. Once he gets himself into this situation, his attempt to get out becomes more ruthless, to the point that he is willing to kill again - even the person closest to him.    

There are several situations where Bigger notes a disconnectedness from himself, as when he claims that “he felt he had no physical existence at all right then” (67). He is certainly not exerting direct control over his actions. His mother notes that he needs to apply himself or he will suffer, yet he hesitates and wavers about taking the job while contemplating committing robbery.  From the beginning he essentially lost and drifting along.  Just as he does not fully recognize himself as a person, Bigger doesn’t see others in the world as individual people.  For him “white people were not really people; they were a sort of great natural force” (109).  This idea of force along with Bigger’s inability to act consciously suggests that the world is merely opposing forces caught in a struggle and human beings are just caught in that maelstrom, unable to escape.  While Bigger is living in an oppressive time and place, the one possible escape might have been the way suggested by Jan and his communist idea of equality.  However, he is not given the chance to pursue this idea, as events put him in an unwinnable situation.   After killing Bessie he finally realizes that “he had committed murder twice and had created a new world for himself” (279).  In contrast to the earlier ideas of external force, the word created suggests that Bigger did indeed play a role in forming the situation.   It is not a world that one would choose, but given his role in it he must deal with the consequences of it.  Bigger has not only fought against the whites and the oppressive conditions they set up, but by killing Bessie he has committed crimes against his own people, and there seems no clear justification for this action.  His only motivation seems to be a pure animalistic drive for self-preservation, regardless of what color his opponents possess. The divisions of color have disappeared, and he is alone against the world.

It would seem that Bigger will either have to face the realization that he has no freewill or take responsibility for his actions.  In the Stranger, Mersault accepts what he has done and learns to live with it (for as long as that lasts).  In Bigger’s case, he will have to do that as well, if he is to ever justify himself.  On the other hand, if Wright is arguing that there is no freewill and that all of us are merely exhibiting instinctive responses to external forces, then there is no hope of freedom for anyone regardless of race, color, or social status.

A large amount of Part 3 contains arguments that attempt to minimize Bigger’s criminal actions.  While Max’s argument makes some sense in reference to the system set up by the whites that has caused repercussions of this kind, not all of it seems to hold justification. His claim that Bigger was in a kind of “war” and forced to kill, does not directly justify the two murders. First, Mary was trying to help Bigger. While her behavior could be felt as patronizing, killing her in some kind of war effort would be counterproductive. In this sense, during the Civil War, slaves would be justified in killing sympathetic Northerners, which would clearly hinder their own efforts.  Second, this argument does nothing to explain Bessie’s murder. She was not an enemy to Bigger, and was not really involved in a race conflict. Unlike her, there were black members of the clergy who Bigger viewed as being like the whites, as they held some power. Even in war soldiers have to make ethical decisions, and ultimately Bigger’s actions come down to his own responsibility.  Max argues that “it was an act of creation” (466).  While Bigger may have found some kind of autonomous personhood and freedom in his actions, ultimately his denying the personhood of others, black or white, by killing them would contradict his own freedom.  If Bigger had made deliberate decisions in order to act in ways that would eliminate his oppression, then a better claim could be made that his actions were necessary. 

I found the most compelling argument to be the indictment of religion.  Bigger rejects religion, and Wright seems to be suggesting (in a Foucauldian way) that it is one more instrument used to separate people. Bigger looks at white people like a transcendental force.  “I always think of white folks. . . well, they own everything.  They choke you off the face of the Earth.  They like God” (409).  His rejection of white society and its dominate power system goes along with religion.  He states that he “wanted to be happy in this world, not out of it.  I didn’t want that kind of happiness. The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want with us” (412). Perhaps the most shocking image in the book is the contrast of the burning KKK cross to the cross that Bigger has worn.  Religion that he had previously been a part of, was not really his religion and, in the end, it couldn’t do anything for him.  He realizes that “whatever he thought or did from now on would have to come from him and him alone, or not at all.”   However, along with this feeling of freedom and self-reliance, there is a side effect of despair.  He states that “never again did he want to feel anything like hope” (394). 

In the end Bigger does seem to have some idea that connections to others are what matter, but he doesn’t seem overly affected by this realization, nothing that would suggest remorse or awareness of the value of others.  Max (and presumably Wright) makes the case that the problem isn’t racial division, it’s economic.  Wealth, and its power, create classes and divide people and because of this system individuals will sometimes rebel as products of this society.  However, he does not make a claim of how individuals should act and feel towards others.  By omitting this, Wright seems to be claiming that the world is fully deterministic, and he doesn’t reveal an easy solution, other than reducing the cycle that dehumanizes and produces these crimes.  If Bigger was created by society, and unable to act in a conscious manner, then there is no hope for him to feel.

Brave

For the second EMI Deluxe release of Marillion we have Brave (the third releases of the band v2.0, a concept album reminiscent of the third album of Misplaced Childhood).  This one is a little less definitive.  This is a more difficult case, as there have already been 6 discs of material for this album released, the 1998 remaster with B-sides, the Made Again live album of the tour (historically interesting as the first live album of the H era), and the making-of album. Additionally there was the River release and 2002 and 2013 live versions  While we get the Blu-ray with documentary and 5.1 Wilson mix, there are a lot of omissions.  The album disc is a new mix, but strangely the disc of B-sides is ditched in favor of including the original mix (already released twice).  The two live discs have the full performance used for the Made Again recordings, adding 9 tracks, but not adding much to the Brave legacy. Also, as a personal irritation, the cover is not directly signed by the band, but includes a signed print. Just as cool, but now it won't match the Misplaced Childhood release on the shelf and a display of 7 signed prints will be incomplete. What would have been a really cool addition would be a digital version of the vinyl release which had a randomized ending, either concluding on Made Again, or The Great Escape (Spiral remake). A carefully constructed discrete 5.1 mix, once again makes this a definite version (and adds to the study of the immense depth of layers found in Marillion work, although I can't say much of the specifics (these days who has time to to sit in solitary contemplation in the proper space for an entire album - music is more on-the-go).  The next releases are now eagerly awaited as we rediscover the classic period of Marillion's career.

The Last Jedi (or Return of the Jedi We've Been Wating For)

Imagine waiting 34 years to meet Luke Skywalker as a Jedi Master, and finding him to be difficult, abrasive, engaged, and unlikable.  [1] That's what we have with the Last Jedi.  There's still a lot of a whiny farmboy in him. After the awful sequel-reboot that was the Force Awakens, this one is much better, but still missing something. [2] Is IX a reboot of V?  No, but it's a little too familiar.  We start with the Rebels desperately fleeing their base (an even more reduce version than the Rebel Alliance), a novice force user confronting the last member of the Jedi order- who is difficult and hostile to training- on a remote, hidden, and undeveloped planet, and a land battle against AT-ATs on an apparently snow-like planet. I'm not sure I like how Luke is presented, a lot more could have, and should have, been done with this character, but it was done better than Solo.

The big question is how does this all fit together? Rey is still the strongest part of the last trilogy, despite really being a Luke clone.  But, it remains to be seen how this story completes the Skywalker epic.  This certainly does not feel like the story Lucas would have continued.  The Last Jedi moves the story along, but it also places a higher pressure on Episode IX to end the story with a coherent and unified conclusion.

The biggest problem, in my view, is the origin point of the trilogy: while being the New Republic, the Galactic government is instantly reduced to a group of Rebels, and by the end of the second film, just a group of people transportable by one piece-of-junk cargo chip.  While the novels try to retcon how the First Order became so powerful behind the scenes and were able to overpower the Republic, a better setting for the trilogy would have been the struggles of an ascending Republic and a new enemy, not just the old Imperial Navy/ Dark Force mix. It just feels like a repeat of the middle trilogy. But, the first time, the Empire was the ultimate domination, so it made sense that even after the loss of the Death Star they could  begin to get the upper hand against the rebels.  Here, the loss of the First Order weapon/base doesn't retard their destruction of the established government, and the fringe militant group still has domination.  It doesn't make sense.  Hopefully this will all pay off, but there is only one chance, everything rests on IX.

Other thoughts: I like the look of being in hyperspace, [3] borrowed from the games.  The timing is a little better.  At least some length of time is shown while traveling, unlike the instant travel through a hole in The Force Awakens and Rogue One (something that started back in Episode III). The WWII air campaign battle styling was interesting.  Kylo came across as more, well, characterized, and his ambition beyond what Darth Vader pursued was an interesting plot point. There is still too much attention on comedy, at least at the most illogical points, and it's a little too forced. Leia's fake death seemed unnecessary and a waste, as we know she had too be written out anyway, why not make a dramatic and useful death scene that makes a significant plot point.  Laura Dern's character seemed completely out of place.  That's what an admiral acts like in the New Republic fleet? It would have made more sense to have her the last member of the civilian leadership.  Benicio Del Toro's character also seemed misused.  Looking back, the subplot makes a little sense, but seems somewhat like a waste of a character.The entire Resistance escape makes no sense.  They should have used the first of three ships to destroy the Mega-Star destroyer, saving the final two (the venerable Nebulon-B and the Calamari Cruiser). But, even after destroying the First Order fleet, they land and lock themselves in a salt version of Echo Base and then wonder how to escape, not realizing the just flew in on transports that could now be used to fly away from the no longer existing enemy ships (especially once the Falcon can provide escort).  Do they have phones in their Universe? Do phone jokes make any logical sense?

Instead of the dark, moving set up for the final resolution, we get a movie where nothing goes anywhere.  Everything could have been done in the first battle: The Resistance is destroyed, Kylo kills Snoke, and Rey is off learning that Luke is no longer the Luke of legend.  The End.  Episode VII didn't really do anything in terms of narrative advancement because it had to introduce new characters and integrate them with the old.  It was the set up. OK.  Now, Episode VIII doesn't really go anywhere. The only thing these movies have done is negate the resolution found in Return of the Jedi, it just resets the situation back to Episode IV/V. So almost the whole story of trilogy three will reside in Episode IX.  Seeing Luke as a Jedi Master defeat all perceivable threats, and then be confronted with the danger that his student (and relation) might be the thing that resurrects the Sith, forcing him to prevent that by any means, would have made a great story.  That's what the trilogy should have been, rather than putting the interesting narrative in flashbacks just to explain situations that may or may not have any significance and which we may never even get a complete answer to.  These movies revolve around the edges of the real story. Unless Rey is revealed to be a Skywalker and brings the Anakin/ Luke lineage to a conclusion, she should have just been set up at the end to carry on in the upcoming trilogy.   As for the Republic and First Order, unless the destruction of both of them together is meant to be a parallel to the necessary negation of the Jedi/Sith dichotomy, the inconsistency and flux in their respective power positions makes no sense. 

It's just disappointing that by getting this story we will never get the Skywalker tale we were waiting for.  This seems like fanboy fanfiction (which JJ might be the worst of all), "wouldn't it be cool to see someone do this?" "Wouldn't it be cool to see Luke milk a walrus?" Etc.  No, it wouldn't. Have any of these people seen the original films - in a way they understand the characters and can continue to develop or adhere to them?  Ultimately, the story of this trilogy is just bad, it can't really be saved. The value of Star Wars is its cultural mythology.  It became entwined with fundamental human existence, to become an active mythology that will persist to embody the late twentieth century.  That is why it important to take it seriously.

For all those defensive replies that Star Wars was always a simple, youth-oriented story, I have two points: 1. We, as a media receptive audience are far more sophisticated now than in the 1970s.  Film making has evolved immensely in forty years [4], replacing (and becoming) literature as the dominate cultural engagement with narrative art.  Look at Game of Thrones, or any of the New Golden Age of television [5].  2. Star Wars (A New Hope) is largely responsible for this generational leap.  It began a new era where sci-fi was not just awful B movies.  So, it has to compete against its own history as a measurement and evolve as well, resulting in the final parts of the story more advanced than the original that was a (relatively) low budget fantasy of an independent filmmaker. It has been reported that Lucas was distraught after making A New Hope, realizing that he made "a kid's movie,"
 rather than a sophisticated epic.  Even if that is true, there has been continual opportunities to take that simple story origin an expand it toward the other side of the spectrum, that it making it an advanced story while still retaining the basic elements of the original.  Lucas may have tried, with the result being some politically obtuse Prequels, but he also never did really try, focusing effort on elements like Jar Jar.

Since Disney has no plans to slow releases, we always have more forthcoming films to enhance the legacy (and maybe the dark, gritty TV series planned by Lucas will eventually materialize), but hopefully the legendary Skywalker center of this universe will remain intact following Episode IX.


Updated 12.20

[1] If someone had long ago told me that after waiting half a lifetime, the next time I see Skywalker, he will be milking a space walrus, I would have inquired as to what kind of bizarre alternate universe this person travels from.  Of course, I've already been asking myself how I came to be in that weird alternate universe. [A] 

[2] Beyond being a retelling of A New Hope, another (God please stop) larger Death Star, the annihilation of Han Solo's character and far too much emphasis on comedy, the main problem was the logic of each scene.  Despite having much larger, more capable Star Destroyers, the First Order's only attempt to stop Finn and Poe is a few concussion missiles. Their only ability, despite being a massive starfighter carrier, is to send a few Tie fighters against the Millenium Falcon, etc. And, don't get me started on the Starkiller weapon.  Having people watch  (as through visible light) a hyper-space beam destroy multiple star systems at least light days away from each other is possibly thew stupidest thing ever done in sci-fi.

[3] But did they really have to constantly use the term lightspeed? It's just bad science, and sounds worse now than when Battlestar Galactica insisted on it in the 1970s. Speaking of which, the space battles seemed a little too influenced by the Galactica reboot (ships emerging from Hyperspace, tracking through jumps, the camera being too prominent in the framing, etc). But, I guess that's just a little historic revenge.  The original trilogy had the best scientific consistency(for what that's worth) and it has continued to go downhill when it could easily be rectified.

[4] Here I don't mean technologically, although Star Wars deserves recognition for its great visual advancements and contibutions.

[5] This may partially explain why TV now seems much more interesting than film.  These two hour dramas have embraced the idea of a visually exciting story taht fills the time, but doesn't leave lasting room for contemplation that very long series can.

[A] Where the FBI is the enemy, the Russians are the good guys, the free press is bad, etc

Paper Lies

It's a sign of the times
We believe anything and nothing

Paper lies

When you kill the truth
You can make a killing
You might just make losing look like winning - Marillion (1994)

Despite Trump's assertion that he invented the word fake, it actually has been in use a long time (since at least the 18 century).  And the idea of fiction, falsity and bias in news reporting has been around for a long while as well (someone even mentioned it in a song in 1994). Trump's statement is a fascinating example of irony that displays what it is attacking.  We used to even have a more-than-one-syllable word for it: propaganda.  As such, propaganda attempts to close any open, unresolved elements to ensure a complete, monologic transmission of thought.  That is, to force a conclusion without question.  It is a mode of ideology in operation.

The problem isn't news that's fake, it's use of the term itself.  Fake news is a term that is used to shut down a debate and enforce ideology over facts. And it's used by, and to describe, people who don't want to think for themselves.  Other than the noise created by negative chaos of social media and deliberate lying manipulation by memes, and organizations so deprived, evil and so ridiculously stupid that only a true moron would follow them [1], which aren't news at all, but lies meant to incite: psychological warfare, there isn't much fakeness.  The news reported is based on real events, it's the presented fields of interpretation that add There is a responsibility on the part of the receiver to understand these fields and discern some levels of relevancy and accuracy.  In this information age, it is easier than ever to fact check on one's own an d to stay current.

As American landscape has changed over the last 10 years, there has been a lot of blame put onto the  media, lamenting the loss of objective reporting and accusing the of inserting bias.  But this is just a surface reaction.  To understand the real issue requires a look at the subject of what is being reported.  It isn't the media that has changed -fundamentally - but the political landscape itself.  Changes in the media are only a response, a a reaction to that.

As Fareed Zakaria has noted "Politics is about tribal affiliation. It's not about issues anymore. In the old days is was about issues, it was really about economic issues, and economic issues you can comprise on . . . When you get into these cultural,social issues which are really more about core identity, how do you compromise? . . . These have become issues on which people see the world differently. we have become Sunnis and Shiites . . . for the last ten years there has been no compromise"

The culture has become so split that no news report could be completely objective in the perspective of both parallax views.  But, that does not mean both sides are equivalent.  Not all forces of persuasive discourse are equal.  Power systems must be factored in and the existing dominant structures recognized.  Reporting that challenges the power structure is not the inverse of reporting that promotes it.  Challenges still leave an open space for understanding.  But, reports that mimic what leadership wants one to believe closes space for debate and argumentation.  

In the case of Fox vs CNN there is a difference. First Fox is very monologic, with talking heads spouting ideology to force conclusions inline with their desired power structure.  When the head of power is on the left, they attach to figures on the right that form an opposition.  In the case of CNN, first there is active debate.  Panels made up of three to three on the left/right are common, sometimes 2 on the left against 3 on the right . The balance of left/right on CNN is even more distorted to the right  than it was to the left during Obama's term, with the placement of panelists who have been paid members of the Trump team.  With panelists like Lewandowski, Jeffrey Lord, Kayleigh, Ed Martin, Andre Bauer, there is a direct defense of Trump's establishment and hence, CNN cannot be monologic. The debate raises issues that the viewer can contemplate.  Secondly, while the channel does challenge  Republican administrations, it also heavily criticizes Democratic ones as well.  For instance, Erin Burnett would at times lead with three stories attacking the Obama administration.

With each swing of the pendulum, the challengers in the social discussion adopt tactics that the former side used and there is further escalation.  What is needed is not a draining of the swamp, but a return to the establishment, when policy makers were professionals and worked in terms of policy primarily rather than cultural ideology.  When the debates become once again anchored on facts and not judgment, then the competing arguments can be presented and evaluated in objective and comparable terms.

[1] Pure non-sense like Info-wars and Alex Jones which de-evolve any view into childish fantasy and result in evil, rather than misinformed bad arguments.

Jeremiah Blues 2017.10 Part 2

After listening to more mental gymnastics by the right today, I have to revisit yesterday's controversy.  First, the backlash against the CBS lawyer who was unsympathetic to the shooting victims is being framed to make her into some kind of liberal poster child while calling for her perpetual firing (and probably worse if many conservatives had their way).  She is no spokesperson for the left. And second, they have tried to tie her disrespectful attitude into some larger view coextensive with the mainstream media. She isn't a representative of the popular view either. But in this new paradigm it's their fault. And hers. And ours.  But never theirs.

I would urge conservatives who think that media reporting has become uncivilized, and yearn for some long lost detachment from the public sphere, to look back at where this started.  One only needs to look back to the 1990s to see the fragmentation of public discourse into uncivilized confrontation. with the start of Fox News and the rise of Rush ( and a demeaning attitude toward the presidency).  The right started this de-evolution.  Anyone who finds Geftman-Gold's posts distasteful better check that they have not supported all of the vile things spewed nightly on Fox from Hannity, O'Reilly or Coulter, who have said things just as bad.

Even worse, I have to again refer to an advisor to our very own president, Mr Scumbag Alex Jones who has said things far worse.  But yet, I never heard calls for his immediate firing or exile from the American community. No, he got promoted to presidential advisor.  His disgusting fake accusations against the children of Sandy Hook should have got him excommunicated from the human race. So, before I hear one more word of bitching from conservatives, they better take at look at their own closet of past sins and denounce those which they have been complicit with.

Furthermore, it is amazing how the right has twisted and distorted events to make themselves look good.  It is what they do well, and they are far better at preemptive psychological warfare than  liberals.  Now, in their perverse narrative, the left has become the Fascists, inciting violence and waging war on: whites (dafuq?). To illustrate, they cite Charlottesville.  So although one of their Neo-Nazis killed an innocent person, the left are (now) the totalitarian aggressors.  The cognitive dissidence is strong.  But this is the danger, that their outrageous lies will become the recognized narrative.  Conservatives are the masters of fake news, and they are becoming masters of identity politics, driving a wedge between traditional Christian whites and everybody else, and trying to divide liberals into white/non-white conflict as they make the idea of  a white liberal a contradiction (although I imagine that numerically whites are still a significant majority of the left).

This outrage on the right is just a mask to cover the monstrosities currently emerging, but it may take down the entire country.

Jeremiah Blues 2017.10

So, here we are once more. From the unlikely hyper-real world of Las Vegas, a land of entertainment and escape, we are once again confronted with the definition of terrorism.  With no "other" here, we are left with only one of us, as definitively us as one can be, with no clear political motive.  Response to the 2016 St Cloud "attack" was a strong assertion of "terrorism,"  even though this individual had no explicit ideological motive.  The result was no fatalities and only minor injuries, although people expressed that they would not go to the mall anymore.  This would have clearly been just a crime, perpetrated by a lone-wolf deranged individual, if not for the otherness of his being.  So now, without otherness, we are, predictably, hearing about a mass-shooting, but not the T word.  It seems, however, that the scale of an action, even without ideological or political motive, can elevate an event into terrorism.  If a non-fatal knife attack can be terrorism, this certainly is.  The fact that someone could shoot 600 people, in an expectably innocent location, was unthinkable. Now it's not and we have to recognize how far gone we are before the next one happens - and it's bigger.

The responses today were completely predictable, from "Hillary's attack of the 2nd Amendment is wrong," (without any reasons given), "there's nothing you can do to stop this," to "it's the price of freedom." Well, that's some great freedom we have.  We are clearly paying too much.  Not all rights are equal: when they come into conflict the right to life must come first, it is a higher right, without prominence no other rights can even be sustained. Furthermore, there are, of course, things that can be done.  It is indeed the job of government, the very reason for its existence, to provide reasonable protection.  That is why we have everything from local police to the military. [1] Certainly, you can't stop all crime (although we still take proactive measures), but there has to be attention to protection, and mitigation, of mass public events. As Robert Reich stated: "This is a crisis of public health and safety."  This event clearly refutes the pro-gun arguments, or myth, that you only need good guys with guns to shoot back.  There was no possibility of that helping here (and the band even had guns).  Even police were not equipped to fire back, it would have required a sniper of supreme skill. Only preventative measures pertaining directly to firearms can help mitigate such future events. The hypocrisy of the right is astounding.  No expense is too great to protect us from them, you know, the real terrorists, no matter how small the event.  Walls, travel bans, trillions of dollars on wars that cost millions of lives (theirs, not ours) - it's all necessary.  We can lock ourselves in, but none of that makes us safer, because the danger is already here - in us.

It's time the government does its job serving the people.  And stops being a hostage to that portion of Americans who worships guns as a religion, as they place their empty, mythical, "rights" above actual reasons, debates, and practicalities.  If the country is serious about protecting us from terrorism, then gun regulation has to be a part of that.  Otherwise this whole elaborate structure of keeping America safe is just a sham.

Regarding the CBS executive and her inappropriate post, she's probably not a person one wants to defend. However [2], her classless response reminds one of another high-profile tweeter.  But, in this case CBS fired her, so there is thankfully a system to compensate. Despite the poor sentiment, deliberately unsympathetic and not retaining the humanitarian position she would apparently hope to hold, an interesting consideration emerges.  One is responsible for the world they create, even if they become victims of their own negative effects.  These terror events are not precisely equal, there are degrees of difference.  As horrific it as this one has been, the Sandy Hook event contained a further dimension that I don't think needs explanation.  And, this event may be a layer removed from a concert filled with teenage girls.  It seems likely that the majority of attendees do support extensive, or unlimited, gun rights, it is a view consistent with the country subculture. I would seriously be interested in statistical information on that. Additionally, we have an extreme example of white on white violence here. What if this concert was a rap one where a gang shootout result in similar deaths?  Would anyone on the right care? Or would they say that the moral decadence of that subculture was to blame?  What if it was an NRA convention?  Surely the dominant views of the participants play a role when they are directly relevant to the outcome.

In terms of other obnoxious responses, Alex Jones has once again called this a false-flag event.  At least he's consistent. But, it's odd that before he made such ridiculous accusations as an attack on the president (as head of the deep state).  Now he seems to be ranting against the deep state because of its detachment from the presidency (and his savior) But, Scumbag Jones can't have it both ways. Either the president has control of government, or he doesn't. That doesn't change because one approves of one and not the other.  However, I think he might be somewhat right even in his ludicrous delusion.  If the deep state perpetrates events to manipulate the population, it will certainly happen during conservative administrations as much as liberal ones.  And, I would wager any draconian moves would really happen in a conservative era.  The smoke and mirrors show is enacted to place the blame on the left  (look at how well the gun industry did under Obama, for instance, as opposed to now).  If Jones wants to fight the deep state, he's on the wrong side. But, he doesn't. He just wants to promote his own brand of authoritarianism.

[1] Of course, that's only a minor function of their existence. Preserving power structures, it could be argued, are their rai·son d'ê·tre.  However, we should still try to get these entities to provide service to the citizenry that maintains them.

[2] After hearing the mental contortions of conservatives trying to defend Mnuchin's use of taxpayer money when their own party and current administration are (in theory)  built upon ending such corruption, as well as Trump's "very fine people" remarks, it seems that everyone is defend-able these days.

Jeremiah Blues 8-17

So, how are we doing now that in 2017 the New Guy is leading us to "winning?"

Perhaps the most disturbing trend I see this year is the conservative idea that "you lost, get over it. We won." This is immensely stupid on many levels.  We don't vote people in to be dictators, or to have carte blanche to do whatever they want.  Policy still needs public debate, this is why they hold town meetings and have public phone lines. Just because some people supported their opinions doesn't mean they are automatically instituted.  Legislators are still servants of the their constituents and are beholden to their opinions.  I didn't hear conservatives keeping their mouths shut for eight years of a democratic president.  So, now they have to deal with liberal views challenging conservative policy makers. Tough. Grow up and get over it. This is how public policy works.  In addition to this childish notion, there is the fabricated idea used for propaganda that Trump won 90% of the US.  To demonstrate this they show a glorious Red map.  Guess what conservatives- the electorate is not made up of empty land.  Land doesn't f******g vote!  People do. This is simply a desperate attempt to compensate for the fact that they could not even get a majority of the electorate. What is the opposite of a mandate?  This is how pathetic this current administration and its supporters are.

Another interesting tactic now in use is taking all of the accusations leveled against President Obama (which were not true) and actually doing them with impunity.  The racial conflict which arose during the Obama term, and was blamed specifically on him, is now actually being executed (somewhat by design through the White House's alt-right).   But any blame is now shifted away from the presidency to the liberal mass and Democratic congress members.  Just one more double standard.

This has culminated in the events of Charlottesville.  A clear cut case of white terrorism. (ISIS) Hopefully the murderer will not only get first degree charges, but hate crime charges as well.  This will be any interesting case, with a white victim the result of white hate.  The argument that a crime is a crime regardless of race, and hate crime charges are a social view which should not be injected into the legal system has some validity.  When one perpetrates a crime against society in the name of ideology, it should be classified as terrorism, negating the need for hate crime charges.  Despite the pathetic and complicit assertions of Trump, Pence, and Bossert, some cabinet members, notably Sessions and McMaster, correctly labeled this terrorism.

The ridiculous notion that the left's paranoid aversion to Nazi-ism is similar to the right's view of communism doesn't hold any validity.  First it is an attempt to uphold the views of the right while dismissing the extremist problems within the conservative circles. Since when is resistance to Nazi-sim just a leftist position.  Surely conservatives fought against Germany at least as strongly as liberals.  This just shows how far right American conservatives have swung.  Moreover, the comparison to communism is absurd.  Democrats accused of this position never identified as such.  More importantly their actions have no correlation, as administration such as Obama's have strengthened the capitalist system.  If there were actual communists in the government, like the early twentieth century, this would not ensure  the presence of an enemy. Communism is not a specific party any more than capitalism, it is merely an economic system which may very well extend the rights of the individual.  The communist powers which we fought were enemies due to their authoritarian political systems.  As for American Nazi-ism, the new movement of White Nationalists denounce the term as derogatory only because of its negative history.  They embrace the same ideals, incorporate the same symbols, methodology, and rituals.  If a group calls themselves Renamed-substitute-Nazis (while some still adhere to Neo-Nazi), then it is not paranoid to label them as such.  It is simply reality.  Something the right has a very hard time understanding.

The fractures within the conservative movement are fascinating.  Trump was elected to drain DC, presumably of all the old guard including traditional Republicans, and party members with a professional approach are being labeled RINOs even as they uphold their party's tradition.  Meanwhile it is clear that Trump is not a Republican and could much more accurately be labeled RINO.  A more sensible approach for the nihilist burn-it-down Trumpers would be to form a new party and detach from Republicans, as they perceive that party of falling to their left.  But they use the built-in base for their own power by deceiving the Republican electorate rather than building a new voter base through reasonable positions (which they don't have).

BETA

Finally, the current backlash against transgender issues provides an interesting test case.  The right [1] complains that transgender rights are a part of the snowflake liberal movement. In reality, this is much closer to a conservative stance, as it embraces individual rights. It is a clear example of how libertarianism should work (and doesn't); they should be advocates of it just as much as liberals.  But, they aren't.  Once again they are still attached to the this giant morass of conservatism, and it shows that libertarianism is a scam, an appearance of liberty on the surface - one that only exists as long as it embodies conservative values.

[1] In this case libertarians as much as the socially conservative right.

Misplaced Childhood

The first of Deluxe Marillion releases, Misplaced Childhood, is out. What is there to say about it? Not much in terms of content that hasn't been said before (as Steve Wilson remarked, there isn't much to be changed on the original recording).  It is essentially the 1998 Remaster with the second disc of B-sides and demos, with the newly released Live in Utrecht 1986 concert, which is a nice addition to the under-represented live catalog of the Fish years.  Additionally, there is the Wilson 5.1 mix (album along with Lady Nina, (as the Freaks original tape is lost)) and a making-of discussion video with Fish and the band on Blu-ray.

What this series of the EMI years showcases is the physical, tangible, manifestation of music as a historical artifact.  There wouldn't be much gained by getting a download version of this.  It is the packaging, book sized with 60 color pages of Misplaced history (and here signed by the band), that makes this the definitive release. The visuals, the history, and the legacy are all here, with the immersive acoustic expansion of the 5.1 here, not much more can likely be said in the future.

One note on this series: I only wish This Strange Engine was included (the first non-EMI release),or released as this seems like the final record of the 1.0/2.0 years, a bit of an epilogue  Everything after 1998 was different.  Although the making of album has already been done, it would be great to hear a 5.1 mix. [1]  Racket has done some 5.1 mixes for later works and could do more, but, again, it would be nice to have one definitive package to totalize the work.

[1] There are still many gaps - .com and Somewhere Else would be great candidates for 5.1, as well as the often requested Marbles.

Afterglow

Trump voters want to be anti-establishment?  Well, Trump is now the establishment.  The voters spoke for Clinton, and Trump took over The System.  So, the populists movement can either embrace the civil unrest and attempt to move the right to become an inclusive, un-divisive administration.  Or they can disavow the populist anti-establishment and embrace the System.  They can't have it both ways.

This election is particularly devastating, but not because Trump won.  Sometimes the populist wave takes things in a new direction.  First, the fact that Clinton won the popular vote mkaes it far worse, as the system is clearly rigged against large populations that vote left [1].  Furthermore, the system of checks and balances has broken down.  Taking control of the House and Senate in conjunction with the White House means that a radical policy can be enacted easier than most less-radical administrations.  On top of that, is the un-Constitutional and nihilistic actions of the current Republicans as they block the Supreme Court Justice selection until Trump can deliver their chosen one [2].  All of these aspects have come together in a perfect storm that allows a new, non-governmentally tested administration to freely project a policy against the will of the majority voters.

Protesting the system is probably not the best approach, although it is a perfectly legitimate act of American participation. Using the system is a better way, and it's depressing how many people didn't turn out in a protest vote against Trump (49%).  Hopefully this can evolve into a authentic movement that can work within the political system and save the protest for actaul destructive policies, rather than a legitimate (although biased and skewed), However, the protests are an important sign.  First, they create a message for the Representatives and Senators that they will need to the 80% of the population that did not vote for Trump in the decision making process.  Secondly, this movement will hopefully sustain a momentum that will be ready to act if and when the dominoes start to fall and the Trump administration crosses a line on human or civil rights. That's when the 80% will have to come together in force [3].

The best course of action for Trump at this point is to show (don't tell) how he will be a uniter and a President for everyone. A great start to this would be to dump the awful cabinet choices that are speculated.  Ousting Gingrich, Palin, and Guilanai and instead adding Democrats to the team, possibly even Clinton or Sanders, would be a welcome healing for the divided populace.  Second, he can announce a moderate nomination for the Supreme court that will appease everyone (even better is supporting Obama's nomination, who was universally held in high regard).

[1] I propose, in absence of dismantling the electoral college, that if the winners are split between the popular vote, and the electoral vote, that the popular vote winner should become vice president, and form a dual party administration.

[2] The language here is deliberate.  The Trump movement has explicit overtones of a cult, with its savior ideals.  They will be severely disappointed.

[3] I assume that the 20% who fell for the Trumpist scam will not be able to see reality until after it hits them square in the head.  Hopefully, the scam, the ideological distortion, will not spread as a wave through the general populace, as it did in 1930s Germany.

Midnight at Noon

Seeing Trump's face display on the Empire State Building is unreal.  Welcome to the future - an alternate dystopian future. There are too many scenes of the death of democracy (involving Natalie Portman) in my head. Never before has there been a President elected that hasn't served in government or the military.[1]  240 Years of American history thrown out, but like the Iraq invasion, the twenty-first century is an erasure of American ideals and tradition.  The country I come from is coming to an end, and something new will be beginning.  Anti-intellectualism has won.  Hopefully Mr Trump will not use the nuclear weapons he was so interested in, and hopefully he won't makes us a satellite of Russia, as they seem so happy about the occasion.  And, hopefully there won't be any racial prosecution or concentration camps, which would force me to choose between the clear morally correct humanitarian choice, and protecting my own self and family.  If we avoid those scenarios, we will survive, but in any case we will be different.

Election night 2008 provided an unknown feeling of hope, and now there is clearly a feeling of uncertainty, and in the context of ISIS, Russia, Brexit, there isn't much optimism.  As the world markets have already responded quite negatively, economic slide is already a concern.  The worst part of January 20th, 2017 will be seeing Mr Obama leave after doing such a graceful and respectable job.  Certainly Mrs Clinton was not a likable candidate and she didn't help herself or her reputation any.  But she was highly qualified, knowing how the executive branch works in the White House, how the legislative Senate works, and as Secretary of State was highly experienced in foreign relations.  Furthermore, she was probably the most vetted candidate in history, after seven congressional hearings on fabricated charges, and an FBI investigation which exonerated her.  The worst loss in diverging from that potential branch of history is the lack of another Clinton economic policy involving Bill Clinton, a second chance to bring back some of the success of the 90s.

Instead we get a President that has never answered to anyone and has no record to base expectation.  So far everything Trump has done has been to befit himself at the cost of others.  Unless he somehow identifies himself with the country, I imagine he will do the same to the country. Trump has no idea about working with people, and even with a fully Republican Congress he's not going to get everything he wants. He may not even get much of what he wants, as he learns that it takes compromise, discussion, and working out details, and there are limitations (e.g. finite financing). The "constitutional" candidate has run on a platform on completely  destroying the first amendment in multiple ways (freedom of religion and  freedom of speech and freedom of the press subject to prosecution) as well as the 4th and 8th, and I don't think his "stop and frisk" plan is a great embracement of the 2nd. But then, to the right, it's the truthiness that counts.

I think it's still possible that things won't work out like they seem.  Trump could resign, having won the game, leaving Pence as President.  That's not much better in my opinion, and I certainly don't want a President that got 0 votes in the primary.  He may be a Trojan Horse, playing his deplorable followers, and unveil a left-leaning agenda. Or, he may do something so stupid, so Trumpish that he gets impeached.  The problem isn't Mr Trump.  We have to give him the benefit of the doubt, it's possible he an actually get something productive done [2].  The problem is with the movement he has created (or at least led into emergence) and the people who follow this movement, who think they have license to harass and promote forms of racism and xenophobia (and perhaps ultimately worse, a defense of anti-intellectualism and ***** seizing) .  And, this is not isolated to the U.S. As we see in Europe, the rest of the world is following this model too, swinging to far right  stances that embrace nationalism and cultural and racial difference and hierarchy.  Just like pre-World War I & II,the world is positioning itself into confrontational positions. Now would be the time for a president that would de-escalate and avoid entering that destructive downward slide.

Trump was right.  Elections are rigged, and it would seem he succeeded in proving it. The "left wing" mainstream media really supported Trump by not fully calling out his absurdities and daily lies, and employed Trump paid staffers to spin his campaign.  Then there is the case of the FBI who interfered within 10 days on the election and with no substance caused a tremor in the polling.  Finally, we have Trump's Russian friends who have no doubt disrupted this election.

Now it's up to Trump to do what he said.  Good luck with that.  As things get worse over the next four years, as they undoubtedly will, the blame is on him and the delusion voters.  Be careful what you wish for.  It won't be long until those Russian friends turn on him and exploit Republican emails for their benefit.  They may well be smarter than a Trump administration. His presidency will not be the cakewalk he assumes.  After eight years of endless bitching by the right, it's time to shut up and do it if it's do easy.  Just don't fuck it up like the last Republican administration of  Mr Bush did.  We can't handle another Great Recession (or worse).

The question now becomes, if Trump is serious about acting through anti-establishment circumventions, how much substance does our governmental system have?  Is it a solid structure that operates within fixed and understood parameters?  OR does it just exist as all surface, just functioning through custom and convention -in which case exertion of power has break it, and unravel it to the point of dysfunction.  Let's hope we don't have to test it.


[1] Not only will we have a president with no past experience, but will an extremely unfavorable rating (60%), far higher than Clinton.

[2] The opposite side of this benefit, is that, most importantly, we must be highly vigilante of policies which destroy democracy and human rights, and intervene immediately before the wave of destruction occurs, as happened in the twentieth century Europe.

Fantastic Place

Marillion Live at the Vic Theater, Chicago, 2016.10.27-28

For this US tour, Chicago was Marillion's only two-night stop.  Both the new album and tour have been highly rated by the fan base.  Personally, I found this tour, while always a welcome experience, to be have less of an impact than the last four US tours.  First playing at the Vic seemed "off." The Park West always seems like a home for Marillion, and its a very classy place.  The Vic is a bit more of, um, a historical-garage ambiance. I would expect hip goth bands would be well received there.  And, I thought the sound was not very good- too loud and distorted. 

Secondly, the setlist centered around a large portion of the new album FEAR, the longest and densest three songs.  I would have much preferred to hear the other two tracks - White Paper, and The Leavers, which I consider the highlights of the album.  They are the most "musical" and Marillionesque, as they don't seem to try so hard to conform to the thematic theme of the album.  Hearing the three 15 minute epics left little room in the set for material from the other 17 albums.  Moreover, keeping the set relatively similar both nights seemed a little repetitive. Although we heard everything played on the tour, (Edit: such as Kayleigh/Lavender, played only in Toronto).  This consistency throughout the tour is a little disappointing after the interesting 2016 South American tour, which featured some rare tracks, such as Afraid of Sunrise and Dry Land. Additionally, the constant inclusion of the long Invisible Man and Neverland take up another considerable part of the setlist. These shows make five times (in three tours) in a row that they have opened with Invisible Man, and it seems like its time for a rest.  Hearing each of these five mentioned tracks once would have allowed for another hour of material that was rehearsed from the South American tour. Marillion is now in the unenviable state that most long-time artists are in, with such a large back catalogue.  Rather than falling into a greatest hits act, and still producing interesting new material, a lot of the latest release is played, and some early tracks have to find their way in to please the casual old fan.  But that leaves a vast collection of middle material forgotten. However, its always great to see the band be able to play anything, and as well received as the new album is, many people found the show to be a excellent one.

The first night had the band in the most relaxed state I've seen them, with H going off on an extended ad-libbed Three Minute Boy.  This looseness came back to haunt the band on the second night, when Power went bad (either through timing or monitors) and H stormed off the stage.  They picked up with the next song and tightened up, but there still seemed (at least as an audience member) for soem tension.  Given the difficulties that Marillion has had in returning to the US in the last few years, along with the apparent situation of less turn-out, the status of future US shows seems in question now more than ever. Hopefully, a new tour, now slated for 2018, will go ahead. The stand-out performances from these shows would have to be Fantastic Place, Sugar Mice, King, and, as always This Strange Engine.

10.27:
The Invisible Man/ Power/ Fantastic Place/ Living In F E A R/ Mad/ Afraid of Sunlight/ The New Kings/ Quartz/ Neverland/ El Dorado/ Easter/ Three Minute Boy
10.28:
The Invisible Man/ Sounds That Can't Be Made/ Living In F E A R/ Sugar Mice/ The New Kings/ Man of a Thousand Faces/ King/ Neverland / El Dorado/ This Strange Engine

Hope for the Future / Fuck Everyone and Run

The Great Wall of China
What A waste of Time
The Maginot Line
What a waste of time. 

It appears Marillion's new album Fuck Everyone and Run may hit the nail right on the head in terms of the Zeitgeist (more on the album later.) Contrasting this title with their 1997 song Hope for Future, really shows the change in times, clearly for the worst. I'm not optimistic about the future, especially after yesterday, and it would seem the predictions of Marillion, as well as others from Nostradamus to George Friedman [1] are coming to fruition.  We have become so over-reactionary that every little event of violence by someone of Non-Western origin is immediately cast as terrorism. [2] But not every unfortunate incident of potentially intense violence is terrorism [3]. Some are simply violent acts committed by homicidal lunatics, who may or may not be religious.  But, in any case, they are homicidal maniacs first.

It seems certain that whatever conflict arises out of the current tension, there will be those who lose who don't deserve to. Not only the innocent people who happened to be born a different race [4], but those humanitarians that try to de-escalate the tension in order to protect undeserving people on both sides.  As seen, in current online discussions, the hatred for each side is so strong that it will be propelled at anyone who tries to question what is going on.  As we spiral around history, there always has to be the Other - coming to take our joy, one who can't be negotiated with, but is 100% alien and must be eradicated. While ISIS might fall factually into this category, the prevailing opinion is to include all Muslims in this category.   I wonder what would happen if Sting rewrote his 1986 song Russians into "Muslims," something like this: 

In Europe and America, there's a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
ISIS said we will bury you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Muslims love their children too

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy
There is no monopoly in common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Muslims love their children too

There is no historical precedent
To put the words in the mouth of the President
There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie we don't believe anymore
Mr. Trump says we will protect you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Muslims love their children too

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is if the Muslims love their children too

Certainly the message would be the same  -  "the Muslims love their children too," it would be timely and accurate, and I fear, far less acceptable.  The Muslim scare seems deeper rooted than the Red Scare and anti-communist Reagan years.  Which goes to show the "political correctness" of the right.  If you dare to throw out words like Islam, or Marxism, you are immediately shot down, dismissed and discredited as you try to make as serious intellectual point.  They are buzz words used to differentiate the other and cannot be used for any correct point - regardless of the facts of the situation.
The complete alienation of the Other is apparent whenever they try to take a positive position.  If BLM protests, they are told to be peaceful. If they are peaceful during the national anthem, they are told to stop being disrespectful.  If the Somali community doesn't publicly denounce Muslim violence, they are  accused of quietly supporting it.  If they do publicly denounce it, they are told to shut up and go away.  The divide will only get bigger, as the extreme right now has a voice on the public stage, they will continue to expand and veer farther right. They are waiting and hoping for more of the so-called "colossal" attacks, like 9/17, so they can respond with ever more retaliation, and prove their resistance to the Other.   It wasn't that we underestimated Trump. It is that we (and Trump) underestimated his followers.  Perhaps things will get better in 50 days.  But the way things are sliding, that is becoming less and less likely.  At which point the real divide will begin, and we'll all have a better understanding of 1930s Germany. Let's hope we don't have to choose sides and get caught in the middle while trying to take the moral high ground.


[1] STRATFOR's analysis of Russia, Turkey, etc, is increasingly seeming more likely after the last 3 years.

[2] Acts of mass violence, when perpetrated by Whites are not called Christian terrorism, or Western terrorism. Terrorism is limited to the Other. The way "terrorism" is used/understood (not the way it should be defined) is when the Other attacks Us. So, Colored people are terrorists, whites are criminals [see 4A].

[3] Violence- the kind of a homicidal maniac is a necessary quality of a terrorist, but it isn't sufficient.  Terrorism is more - it is ideological, and furthermore has an agenda to achieve.  It is therefore planned, organized and coordinated, to have any effect as terrorism.  If we start to call any violent act by someone who has an ideologically agenda (almost everyone) then the term loses all meaning.  This is a disservice to those in New York, Paris, Israel,/Gaza, etc. There are real terrorists out there- evil people - and we must not dilute that fight by calling every criminal act of a brown person terrorism.

[4] I realize "Muslim" isn't a race, but then race is an artificial construct - we're all the same species [4A].  When we're talking about Muslims,we're not talking about white Westerners that have converted. We mean Arabs, or Africans.  Like Jews, Muslim is a term for a culture that includes attributes of geography, history, and physical features, all united through a religion.  One is born into that religion as a part of their heritage, there isn;t much transfer in and out of such religious thought. Since those in that culture share "family resemblances" of traits, it makes sense to classify them in contrast to Western (mostly Christian) groups, through "race"for lack of a better term.

     [4A] The Irish and Italians used to be non-white, as were some German descents, and if German isn't white, then what is? But, all of these Europeans became white through common use which expanded and changed the definition.  Which culture associated with terrorism has a drink named after them?  The "Irish Car Bomb" has become so normalized that the Irish terrorists aren't terrorists anymore (because they're now white).

Fortunate Son

What is patriotism? Is is loyalty to the current governmental system - the administration in power and whatever is decided to be the current course of action? Or is it loyalty to the Constitution itself - the fundamental blueprint that should pervade all that government does?  It can't be the first, for when the true "patriots" - the right, right?- speak, they consistently condemn the government in power. Certainly, and specifically, they attack the left leaning politicians.  But more than that, they denounce the very idea of government. So it must be loyalty to the country, not the government.  The country, whatever that is- but if it can be defined by one thing, -is the Constitution.  Which guarantees the right of free expression.  One can argue that being "disrespectful" during a song -and we are just talking about a song and a gesture - is effectively denouncing the principle which gives one the right to denounce it - the very basis for dissent undermines and unravels itself.  But, the inverse is at least equally true. That free expression is using the principle in the way it was intended, thereby validating it. If you can't actually use the principle, then using it doesn't invalidate it since it doesn't really exist or stand for anything. Sitting down in defiance doesn't actually protest the Constitution, it just protests the application of it, reinforcing that the spirit of it should override the letter of the law.  Therefore, it seems that actualizing the rights and freedoms guaranteed - particularly when that is done through heartfelt conviction and a belief that it will make the country better and more aligned with the original vision - is more patriotic than blindly following what everyone else does because they think it's the proper patriotic behavior.  That is just the opposite side of "political correctness," following a set of rules to appear correct while rejecting freedom.  I'm astounded by libertarian-leaning individuals who champion the rights of the individual when they condemn dissent.  I don't think the Nazi analogy is that far off, when we are talking about forcing people to worship the country in a systematic and un-criticizable way.  Real freedom only matters when it is opposed by others - not supported by mindless conformists- the critical dissenter is the one promoting the freedom of the individual and is the real patriot.

I Can't Stop Thinking About You

After a 13 year wait, we finally have the new single from Sting- I Can't Stop Thinking About You.  On the plus side, it's upbeat, it doesn't sound anything like his last two albums, and it's not a sappy love song [1].  The essential band members Dominic and  Vinnie are present, although David's keys are gone. [2] Musically, this seems like a progression of 2005's Broken Music Tour, all done on strings with the addition of a second guitar, now worked into new material.  Given the presence of Josh Freese on the album, I wonder if some of this didn't originate in those sessions. In terms of tempo, Thinking fits alongside Next To You, which Sting rediscovered for the 2005 tour. Lyrically, this track exists along with If I Ever Lose My Faith in You and contains similar imagery to tracks from Mercury Falling, particularly The Hounds of Winter and the style of 25 to Midnight.  Theological considerations similar to All This Time can also be discerned. Sting's music has always struck me as more relevant in the fall and winter (with, perhaps, The Police more compatible with Summer) and here Sting continues his exploration of an existential lack in relation to winter.  Just this week I was, through an event of synchronicity, thinking about the book The Heart of a Lonely Hunter, which gets worked into the lyrics, and always seems to make a good metaphor. This track suggest that the new album will not have the layered sonic complexity of his masterpiece albums (Nothing Like the Sun, The Soul Cages), or their refined lyrics.  But it is a good reboot, ending the overproduced yet flat sound and writing of the last two albums, and the non-rock endeavors of his last four releases.  It is a good indicator of Sting 3.0, and that might be the best thing to come from this return to the world, out of the hyper-esoteric and eccentric desert of the last decade.

[1] Unlike something like Whenever I Say Your Name
[2] The keyboards - particularly David's - were noticeably absent on the 2016.08.31 performance of All This Time.  Hopefully the tour will feature the re-inclusion of David (and Jo and Peter) to fully perform tracks from other albums.  Although, as mentioned, he got by on the Broken Music Tour and might try something different .

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Twenty-First Century America

With the absurdity level of the 2016 election continuing to increase, I think it is best to look back for some perspective.  Here are some of Douglas Adams' thoughts about president and ruler from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on which the Galaxy was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox had announced his intention to run as President it was more or less a fait accompli: he was the ideal presidency fodder.

The President in particular is very much a figurehead { he wields no real power whatsoever.He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria. Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had {he has already spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud. Very very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these very few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a computer. They couldn't be more wrong.

Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it. . . Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job. . .The fact that he had become President of the Galaxy was frankly astonishing, as was the manner of his leaving the post. Was there a reason behind it? There would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned unfathomably into an art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

It is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

The Ruler of the Universe is a man living in a small shack on a world that can only be reached with a key to an unprobability field or use of an Infinite Improbability Drive. He does not want to rule the universe and tries not to whenever possible, and therefore is by far the ideal candidate for the job.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This foresight by Adams only highlights his intelligence and awareness of devolution in the process of government. In the postmodern world of superficiality and spectacle, the real projections of power become the inverse of the apparent nodes, existing at the invisible bottom of the superstructure, not at the top.  The president here is all surface, an attraction of spectacle, while the ruler lives in hidden isolation behind the scenes.  Those who do not want power are those that are most deserving of it and can yield it most judiciously and effectively, while those that want it are the most corruptible and least likely to be "objectively" good at it.

In application, this can quite clearly be applicable to Trump and his postmodern, reality-TV spectacle approach, which overrides serious, thoughtful, calculated, and determined practice of governance. For those that think a rejection of the establishment is the crucial factor in contemporary politics, I contend that that approach is, at best, just more superficial spectacle, becoming farther removed from the real serious business of governing.  At worst (and this is becoming actualized with the elimination of Sanders), it is just a more extreme form of the Tea Party movement.  It is just an evolution of the 2010 election which sought to block President Obama at every turn.  Now it is looking to completely bypass the democratic process of compromise and agreement and replace it with the singular perspective of an extreme political movement.  Before a democrat became president, when was the establishment bad? Reagan was establishment, and the Bushes were just continuations of that line.  But, if a black liberal (through accusation anyway) becomes the leader of the free world (twice), then the establishment becomes the problem.  This election was been one continual highlighting of what a circus the anti-establishment is.  If we could throw out this distorted notion, maybe we can get back the serious issues.

For those that think government is the problem, I invite you take a time machine back to the 90s.  There were still serious issues that needed to be solved, but we were on the right road and had a good start.  American life looked ever more promising until being derailed in 2000.  Those that continue to perpetuate this myth fall into two groups - first, conservatives who have deluded themselves into forgetting the Clinton era America (by propagating a Bush-hero myth and transferring the problems of the 2000s back to an "origin" in the 90s, thereby erasing the massive failure that was the Bush administration and projecting all of his failings on to Clinton.  The second group are the millennials, many of whom were too young to understand the Clinton years, and are now being fed Fox history to rewrite and degrade that era.  Their criticisms reveal a great misunderstanding of recent history.

On a deeper level, we must separate the President from the American System.  There is a course that America sets through history, and this will not be changed by an alternate presidential choice.   Does anyone really think that drone strikes will be different depending on H Clinton, or Trump? Or that Sanders would have been any different?  Or Johnson? At this level, the precedent has been set, and will continue autonomously, or decided by people whose job it is to keep it going.  Presidents may change history on a larger level, by invading sovereign nations under false pretenses which destroy 200 years of American policy [1].  But, generally, that which they have an effect on is much smaller, and more domestic.  Tax rates for those who depend on every dollar, and the general tone of what is acceptable in society are the real things at risk.  Economic policy which favors the dominant oligarchy is self contained and will continue on.  And geopolitically, the America-as-singular-super-power will continue on unabated.  No one within the system is going to risk implementing something which might impede this course.  Who we choose for president should be based on who has the best temperament to embody what we want America to persist and present itself as. That person should be presidential as an individual.  And, they should be chosen on what tone we want to domestic policy to reflect, in ways that shape American value over time, making slight corrections to the course.  But, we should not vote thinking that the President makes decisions that decide every minute policy.  That would in actuality be bad. Very bad.  That would lead straight in totalitarianism.  But, that is the picture that Trump is presenting - that he will be able to change every little thing that makes America not great.  By immersing himself in this distortion, he is either a scam artist, or actually ignorant and incompetent.

Michael Weiss has written a very interesting analysis of Trump in  "Donald Trump’s Anti-Semitic Mob Came for Me." He also evaluates the placement of trump in the postmodern age:

"Trump is everything and anything to this camp because he is the first postmodern authoritarian in American history, a man for whom truth is a relative concept defined exclusively in relation one’s perception of the central, overriding object: the authoritarian himself . . . Trump’s positions are wildly inconsistent and galvanizing at the same time . . . He thinks America under Obama has become a weakling superpower that doesn’t stand up to its manifold adversaries, but he wants to destroy NATO."

Furthermore, he makes a enlightened connection between the relativistic nature of postmodernism and the essentialist conservative position:

"Postmodernism got its fullest articulation on the European left, but it’s always been at home on the international right: its forerunner theorist was Martin Heidegger, who infamously embraced National Socialism, which of course didn't stop him from becoming an icon to French radicals once Hitler was defeated. The internet has only given these fiefdoms of infinite “interpretation”—climate change denialists, the anti-vaxxers, chemtrails obsessives—more stridency and organization."

The postmodern rejection of Truth and its replacement with unending layers of interpretation can indeed serve the right just as well as the left.  Weiss insight-fully identifies the Trump as the first candidate to fully embrace this disconnect and use the contradictory nature of its structure as an advantage. One thing is certain, politics will not be the same as we shift toward a new epoch that overturns modern structures.  The nation state has become increasingly more irrelevant as groups like ISIL exert influence, and now the very nature of the politician and the political movement is evolving in to new types of entities.


[1] It is very conceivable that The (American) System would have found a way to create a great Middle Eastern Intervention without Bush and his personal and enthusiastic interest in Iraq, but it would have been very different under Gore, who would have been reluctant and would have appeared through his hesitation as weak and indecisive, just as Obama has been presented. However, if the US is going to make giant international moves without regard for actuality, I would prefer they are done less arrogantly and with more forethought.  A much better chess-board story could have been fabricated to prompt US action.