I think it was this comment, Woj, that led John and I to think you were talking about "trashy yards".
I'm used to your view and you've explained it often enough and pretty much unequivocally said the other day that manual laborers were worse than yuppies -- more in support of the war then the upper middle strata, that is.
So yeah, while I understand your comments about public structures -- though I can't say it's very accurate from my perspective -- I do see elements of it. Saw it in Toronto, too. Litter. Ugly buildings. Rude clerks. Rude people. Billboards. Advertising all over. Some really ugly ass suburban areas that look just like the U.S., too. When I travel, I like to get off the beaten path and take backroads or look for local happenings. I got my fill in Toronto. Adored the open air market, but man, it stank of urine and fish heads. I'll take Wegman's pseudo open-air European-style produce/bakery section any day or a farmer's market. Hell, I'd rather go to one of the flea markets around here where you get to enjoy all manner of ugly ass shit for sale. *shudder*.
At 04:05 PM 4/19/2005, BklynMagus wrote:
>Dear List:
>
>Kelley notes:
>
> > That essay was just idiotic.
to steal a line from Carrol, I mean that in the Greek sense of the word. *grin* (and btw, congratulations. I've been so buried with the Web site, I haven't had time to pull my nose away from the monitor for more than the few minutes it takes to make coffee or pee. TMI!
>Agreed.
>
> > As I said at the outset: what use is this essay? Of
>what practical, political use is it?
>
>None, but then it was never intended to have any
>practical effect.
Really? You don't think so? I get the sense from reading that piece that this woman is an activist and would probably be among the crowd here who decry theory and cultural commentary and uphold activism of any kind, 24x7.
Anyway, personally, I found it a little disturbing that she kept saying she was "fine" with her work after the earthquake. I don't think she was fine with at all. She works really hard to describe all that she'd done. I'd say that the therapist was probably right to tell this woman to stop blaming herself. As she notes, she grew up there and apparently now lives in the u.s. I suspect Z feels guilty and does blame herself. Not because she thinks she didn't work hard enough in the rescue efforts, but probably because she feels guilty for living in the u.s. I'd say her therapist was spot on.
>
>When writing on "Aguirre the Wrath of God" by Werner
>Herzog and "Lancelot du Lac" by Robert Bresson, the
>great French film critic Oudart noted that each was a film
>that allowed the bourgeoisie to admire its beautiful corpse
>in a mirror. This essay is just a literary example of the
>same thing.
So, the piece was art? :p
Doug:
><<Not all, but some. They're not all victims. Collective guilt is
>bullshit, but so is collective innocence. I don't know where to draw the
>line, like I said, but it's dishonest and evasive to pretend it doesn't
>need to be drawn at all.>>
Well, no one knows better than I do that guys in the military are often -- usually -- enthusiastic. In fact, R, when he first met me, laughed when I told him I was a commie. "Oh? I spent about 10 years thinking I'd like to kill a commie."
No one is saying that they're victims. Lyndie England et al did something they didn't have to do. R didn't have to join the Navy. He could have stayed in Idaho bagging groceries or turning a wrench in a barely surviving auto repair shop. He could work in a junk yard, as the son of his best friend does. And I suppose he shouldn't aspire to more--the driving force behind a decision to joing the mil--since we all know that this aspiration to have nice things, learn more about the world, travle and see things other than your own backyard, and have a stable life is the product of ideology.
My other son didn't have to join the service. He wanted to. He believes that terr'sts are bad guys -- probably feels just as you did after the WTC was hit on 9-11, yes?
Of all the options open to him, that's the best one from his limited view. He doesn't read a paper everyday. I'd bet he's fairly illiterate and even if he did read the paper, he surely wouldn't get much in the way of analysis, would he? You have to work hard to find it.
It's hard to resist the come on from the military. It's hard to resist 10k in signing bonuses. It's hard to resist joining something that gives you a sense of purpose and meaning in your life when all around you, you are repeatedly told there isn't one and if there is, it's about "making it" or, at least" aspiring to some sense of "making it."
My partner doesn't have to take the jobs he's been offered, one with a mil contractor, one working his same job in Hawaii, only as a civilian. We both went to see the jobs counselor at MacDill the other day. They think I'm his wife and I'll go ahead and take the free career counseling and job assistance. She called to say that there are several places who need people like me and R to do all kinds of work, military contractors.
Do I have a choice. No one's knocking down my door for book design or Web design or editing work. I'm not getting paid for anything I've been working on. People don't want to pay for it, want me to donate my labor, or want to pay me $10/hr or less for it.
Could I live simply? I don't know how to live any more simply than we're living. And why the fuck should I? The day lefties, who want to hold my partner and I accountable for taking jobs paid for by the U.S. military begin to figure out how to support me and him and countless others at a living wage is the day I'll take them seriously. (I've worked abortion clinic defense and debated anti-abortion zealots but I've always had respect for the outfits that create adoption agencies because they really do put their money where their fat mouths are.)
We can get by working at WalMart and the Hess station. But, personally, these days, I'm finding it far more attractive to off myself and let my son get SSI payments than to do scrape by on $8/hr jobs or listen to another potential client balk because they might have to pay you more than $10/hr for your services.
My partner also doesn't have to wear camo shorts from the mil store. He was laughing at a redneck joke Grace sent to Pulp a few weeks ago. I said, "You know, that joke is making fun of people like you and your friend Mike. Does it bother you to think that the military surplus clothes might peg you as a redneck."
He said: Yeah, I've thought about that. I'm fully aware of what people like that think. That's why I wear them. Fuck them. And, the joke was still funny but in my book, _I_ and _Mike_ get to laugh at the joke, not the pretentious assholes in Sun Valley who come to my homestate to get all rural and shit and then look down their noses at the people who clean up their piggy little messes."
And yet, he listens to classical music. He likes opera. He has a taste for gourmet cooking and could spend a fortune in some upscale gourmet shop buying things like a nutmeg grinder and fresh nutmeg. He'd also rather drive around a '72 El Camino and will probably never buy a car he can't work on himself. Happier than a pig in a poke that boy is when he's tuning up a car. And yet, he doesn't want to spend his life turning a wrench. Doesn't want to cut his hair and trim the beard and sit in a cube and push paper for some asshole manager, either. Had enough asshole managers in the Navy, thanks. He reads and reads and reads and likes nothing better than to leave the library with 20 books in his arms.
To take a cue from the cultural studies crowd, the analysis ought to lie in seeing how it is that people _do_ resist. In spite of everything around them pushing them to behave as sheeple, they resist nonetheless. No, they don't rebel or revolt, but they resist. They don't do it in the ways we'd like, of course. But the point is, they _are_ resisting and that means we have a place to start. It can be a criticial wedge, a gap in what otherwise might appear to be a seamless ideological web from which none of us escape.
I think the left has a difficult enough time of it that we don't need to exacerbate the problems by perpetuating the very intra-class antagonisms that shred human dignity every minute of every wretched day. When you can't understand why, no matter how hard you work, you're still spinning your wheels getting nowhere, it's pretty easy to decde that, if this is going to be your fate, you might as well embrace it. It's pretty easy to see the enemy as the upper middle 'class' professionals as the problem, especially when you have a rightnut movement helping them see it that way. We don't need to embody the stereotype. We especially don't need to run around talking about structural forces and holding individuals accountable -- pointing fingers at them and everyone else for the war --when we, ourselves, won't shit or get off the pot and start engaging in activities -- building alternative institutions, creating jobs, whatever -- for the people we expect to not join the military and exercise their moral fucking choices.
And, on that note, I'd point out that joining the military IS a moral choice. Morality, as Eli Sagain points out, is making a choice on the side of the life giving force of eros rather than the destructive force of thanatos. The rub is, of course, that my other son and people who join the military are apparently not sophisticated enough to see that wanting to defend their country --sneer at that sentiment if you will -- couldn't possibly on "the side of life."
But why should they? What mainstream news sources out there show the U.S. military doing anything like burning villages or dropping napalm.
I wanted to join the airforce. I wanted to fly a play and parachute, like my dad who was a paratrooper and watched his best friend get crushed in an accident. Did I know anything at all about the u.s. military when I was 18 -- other than that it was a way for me to get a college degree in a town that suffered one plant closing after another for decades? I, like any 18 y.o., loved mycountry, like I love my family. It's the only thing I knew (to paraphrase Joe/Budge who's fond of the lyrics from some song about patriotism: love my country 'coz it's the only thing I know). I still love my country, in fact, if you understand, of course, that loving country isn't the same thing as patriotically and unquestioning loving nation.
I really can't see why we'd fault people for joining the service or joining the reserves or national guard. And, if you've been through bootcamp, you'd know how easy it is to do as you're told and even learn to relish slicing throats, though I doubt that they really relish any of it and will probably return home to suffer post-traumatic stress.
Anyway, depressing. All of it.
kelley
Kelley
make them ashamed of themselves, make them feel they aren't good enough, that it's their fault they aren't successful, that it's their fault that no matter how hard they work, they keep coming up against one roadblock after another
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling