Postmuseum Musings

9/17/10

I missed the chance to visit the Stockholm Postmuseum today—overslept. I suppose I was asking for it. After all, I was aware of the fact that the museum closes at 4 pm, Tuesdays through Sundays, and I’ve allowed my sleep cycle to go out of whack these past few days and haven’t made much of an effort to rectify that. Unfortunately, I’m moving on tomorrow, so the Postmuseum will have to wait until the next time—may it be sooner or later—that I return to Stockholm.

There is still a positive way I can look at this development, though. Having missed the opportunity today, it raises its value to me. Should I return, visiting the Postmuseum will be higher on my list of priorities. Had I hurried to visit the museum today, I probably would have been doing so with half the attention and enthusiasm that I would give it after I have taken time to nurture in my mind the prospect of visiting.

Call it the effect of “wanting what you don’t possess.” It’s well worth it.



I have made the study of the postal system a fundamental part of my ‘Mailman’ persona. As a backpacker/traveler, I have made a point of gathering as much intelligence on the postal services of each destination*

As I wrote two years ago:

My buddy Noel has a masterful knowledge of iconic imagery and its manipulation to serve an agenda. The rugged individualist message of 1980's action films signifying neoconservative wet dreams; the freeze-frame of Sylvester Stallone with his assault rife, sweat dripping from his muscles, symbolic of American supremacy. Or for the cross-combination of imagery: 1980s consumer product advertising employed for Communist propaganda. (Read: late Soviet-era Estonian ice cream commercials!)

Continuing:

Upon long moments of reflection have I too realized the extent to which I have used icons and iconic imagery to define the developments in my daily life and the changes in my identity over the past year. I've created icons over many abstract

The U.S. Postal Service; Postman Pat, metamorphasized [sic] into French Woods' Joe the Mailman: the archetype of the wandering persecuted fugitive as popularized by Jean Valjean in Les Miserables (the inspiration for my peripatetic backpacking journey across Australia); All popular things Australian.

I stand by the above statement, (all grammatical errors aside).

My above-mentioned friend, Noel Passeri and I have made quite an effective pundit duo. Whereas Noel’s expertise is in his knowledge of political theories, mine is more oriented toward knowledge of human nature and self-interest.

My interest in the symbolic imagery of the international postal system reflects my self-identity.

Symbolism can also be employed to support the conflict theory of politics. Murray Edelman, author of The Symbolic Uses of Politics, according to his critic Larry Arnhart of Northern Illinois University, believed:

Referential symbols allow us to understand empirical reality objectively and to manipulate it for our benefit. Condensation symbols evoke an emotional and thus subjective reaction to a situation, and therefore we see the world not as it really is but as we imagine it to be. By applying this distinction to political symbolism, we can distinguish mythical politics from utilitarian politics. For most people politics is a mythical activity; for a few people it is a utilitarian activity. (1-5) For "mass publics" politics is a spectacle in which they ritualistically seek symbolic reassurance that they live in a meaningful world. But for the "elites," who participate directly in public affairs, politics is merely an instrument for manipulating the objective world to win certain tangible benefits-money and power. The elite few bargain among themselves about public policy in the selfish pursuit of concrete gains, while the naive many deceive themselves into believing that government promotes the common good. The utilitarian politics of the few is a rational calculation of material interests. The mythical politics of the many is an irrational evocation of abstract ideas. (9-11, 15-18, 29, 41-42, 97-98, 124-25, 180)

Thus, like many other political scientists, Edelman rejects American democratic ideals as illusions. (191-94) Much of Edelman's writing seems to assume a Hobbesian view of politics, which could be explained by the influence of Harold Lasswell. Human beings are not by nature political beings. Rather they are divided by their selfish appetites. They establish governments, therefore, only for the sake of securing peace. (Uses, 18-19) On the other hand, Edelman insists that "man is a political animal." (Uses, 1-2) Politics is not merely an instrument for satisfying individual wants, because what a man wants-indeed the essence of his being- is in part a product of political symbolism. (Uses, 19, 43) But this suggests that there is no sharp distinction between the instrumental or utilitarian politics of the elites and the expressive or mythical politics of the masses. "The expressive and symbolic functions of the polity are therefore central: not simply a blind for oligarchic rules, though they may sometimes be that, too." (Uses, 19-20) "Elites are just as likely as others to base their beliefs upon symbolic governmental cues." (Action, 10) In these and other passages, Edelman uses the word "symbolic" in a narrow sense to denote condensation symbols rather than referential symbols. The implication, therefore, seems to be that all human beings-both the elites and the masses-rely on condensation symbols to determine their needs and wants. Only with such symbols can human beings define themselves through interaction with one another.(Uses, 124-25, 127, 142, 180-81; Action, 7, 70, 114, 144-45, 158, 171)

This, however, creates a paradox. Human beings cannot live without relying on mythical symbols that falsify the world. And yet if this is so, it is hard to see how anyone could know it. For in the very act of recognizing that falsification is a necessity for all human beings, someone would have to free himself from that necessity, which would show it was not a necessity after all. One cannot expose falsehood without some conception of truth. Edelman, however, sometimes tries to evade this point.

Larry Arnhart’s article serves both Noel’s and my opinions, where we can agree and disagree, in its forum for Murray Edelman’s views and Arnhart’s criticism of Edelman’s views. Arnhart puts forward:

Since each person looks at the political world from the point of view of his values and interests, all political arguments are rationalizations. Politics is so complex and so ambiguous that any person can find evidence to support his preferred position on any issue. Therefore, when conflicting interests lead to fundamentally different interpretations of the evidence, there is no rational way to settle the disagreement.

I believe that while human nature accords the average voter to have his self-interest at heart, the voter casts his ballot according to his chosen values. It is a mistake to believe that a politician’s victory represents that the public has bestowed in him a mandate for his ideology. Rather, a smart politician knows that in order to succeed he must attempt to co-opt the voters’ values into his agenda. Barack Obama’s mistake, in my opinion is that in the post-election hubris, his administration has instead attempted to do the opposite. In essence, placing their agenda over the public’s values.

As David Paul Kuhn writes in realclearpolitics.com:

Recall the Obama hyperbole of November 2008, so many predictions of an emerging progressive majority. New York Times' columnist Paul Krugman typified a corps of liberal analysts at the time. "We've had a major political realignment," Krugman wrote. "[The] presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies -- and the progressive philosophy won." Krugman won a Nobel Prize in economics that same year. Yet even he disregarded how the economy made Obama's mandate that day.
By March 2009, liberal analyst Ruy Teixeira wrote a report on the "New Progressive America." It dissected the presidential electorate. How white, brown, black and educated voted. Everyone but bicycling Norwegians. Yet, as I noted then, the nearly 50-page report ignored the economy's role. The lapse was, again, typical of the time and type.
We are now in another political time. The Democratic House could collapse in less than 50 days. Obama lost the majority long ago. And liberal analysts are running to economic explanations. Krugman has led the chorus. "It really is the economy, stupid," he wrote this summer.
It's an analysis that seeks to have it both ways. The economy is blamed in bad Democratic times. It's ignored in good. This cognitive dissonance deceived Democrats most. It brought hubris when they were on top. It now brings denial. If Obama first won his mandate on progressivism and now lost it with the economy, then the "professional left" does not have to consider where its ideas went wrong.
Democrats 2008 victory was credited to a great politician, a great campaign and a greatly changing nation. Yet it was the economy that made Obama's majority. Not necessarily his victory. But it's in majorities that presidents claim mandates.

It is a mistake repeated by progressives and liberals in general for the past several decades. This has been the basis for Rick Perlstein’s opinions, to which I have since subscribed with much enthusiasm. Progressive change does indeed come naturally over time, yet simultaneously, liberals and progressives tend to lose the public relations war. Despite the irrational backlash orchestrated by a paranoid Right-wing fringe, eventually the public adopts these changes as entitlements:

…When it was Medicare, the center-left much more firmly understood the concept of the reactionary — that this small and predictable minority of obdurate Americans would automatically fight any serious social reform as harbinger of the apocalypse.
Politicians had the moral confidence to push it through nonetheless, past the shrieks of the scared extremists and their corporate ideological partners. Meanwhile, they rhetorically stigmatized the shriekers — confident that wise and enlightened legislation would before long establish cherished social rights (keep the government out of my Medicare!).
With Obama care, however, too many Democrats proceeded from the suspicion that the shriekers might just have something important and useful to say about the broader judgment of of the electorate. And so ultimately, too much political energy and capital was expended trying to achieve an impossible bipartisan consensus on too little reform. Luckily — with financial reform and energy policy — Democrats will have two more bites at the apple.

As an undergraduate student in New Hampshire during the George W. Bush re-election in 2004, watching TV analysis of Bush’s victory—seeing the analysis boil down to one statement among the chattering classes: That one of the main reasons Bush was a stronger candidate than John Kerry was that he was a ‘regular guy’ you’d enjoy having a beer with—I found myself asking the same question that has dogged and frustrated liberals for so long. That surely, the public must have a constant desire to vote against its own interests.

Reading Rick Perlstein’s epic Nixonland and Vincent Cannato’s The Ungovernable City, I have since found a way to see past the inclination to ask such a question. These authors’ opinions have helped me recognize my ingrained political elitism and take a clearer view of the average American voter.

I have managed to gain a greater sympathy for what has attracted so many ordinary Americans to the Tea Party Movement. Still, as a man of reason and logic, what I see as the malignant irrationality of the present political discourse frustrates me and it has tested that sympathy.

I’d been eyeing paperback copies of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s bestseller Too Big to Fail all throughout my time in Europe this summer. The paperback edition has been published here in Europe some months ago. From what I’ve checked, it has only been released in America a week and a half ago. As I already have a hardcover copy back at my mother’s house in Ithaca, NY, it took a great deal of willpower to resist the temptation to buy it. I hadn’t been interested in reading the hardcover copy when it came to my attention several months ago. For one thing, its format bothered me. It seemed too thick, thus possessing the appearance of a potential “door-stopper-of-a-book.” I suppose another reason was that since I was reluctant to put a book belonging to my mother on my night table, at her recommendation. It always feels like less of a pleasure reading a book that way. These reasons are psychological, of course. But I am as susceptible as the next man.

I’ve noticed that some reviewers in European newspapers I have found have had one complaint about the book is that it is too America-centric—that its focus is primarily from the American perspective and that it doesn’t devote much detail to the role of European banks in the Financial Crisis. I admit, that I like many an American cannot help but share this self-absorbed mindset. It is for this reason that I have made such an effort in my travels to gain insight into current events, political and cultural in each destination.

The paperback copies, which I’d notice at airports, train stations, and bus stations, by contrast, seemed like an easier read. The book, in this form was more compact looking and clearly designed for traveling with. At a bookshop in London-Stansted Airport, I was seconds away from making the purchase, but withdrew at the last moment. The next day in Glasgow, I relented and went ahead and bought it at a local store.

Reading the book and seeing the intimate details of the behind the scenes goings-on in the days and months leading up to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the Great Financial Crisis has been breathtaking. Behind all the politics and the egos and the backstabbing and the players’ attempts at covering their own asses, the picture seems very simple. Unregulated capitalism has brought on this crisis. And in those hundreds of pages, only in one sentence in the epilogue have I seen any mention of fears of encroaching socialism. So why is it that that is what is really driving the Tea Partiers nuts.

The thought plays in my mind like a broken record. How can it be that in an economic climate following a financial crisis brought about by the shenanigans of big banks reaping the spoils of deregulation over the past eight years of conservative governance, the masses are more vocally up in arms about Big Government, and a liberal administration's attempts to secure the economy and regulate these delinquent banks?

I have noticed in the time I have set aside scrolling the blogosphere that the voices of the Right have hardly been ignorant of the crimes and misdemeanors of the major financial institutions. As a matter of fact, they reserve plenty of bile for them. On Goldman Sachs, for example, the posters on freerepublic.com save plenty of invective for the besieged institution. But these complainers for the most part, manage to weave the subject into the narrative of their anger with the Obama administration. They reserve their focus to members the administration’s alleged ties to Goldman.

It is impossible in these times for the Right to carry its message as committed advocates of Big Business: right or wrong. There is no way that anyone can get away with that. Rand Paul and Congressman Joe Barton have tried that with British Petroleum over the Gulf Oil Spill, and such politics have blown up in their faces.

Indeed, the Right has managed to adapt its message to the current political climate (something the Left has always seemed to have trouble doing). One need only watch Glenn Beck’s nightly rants—and I don’t if I can help it—and he is able to fit Big Business and Big Government into his meandering conspiracy theories.

I have been searching for some kind of screed by a conservative ideologue that can provide a coherent narrative that reconciles anger at Big Government, unions, liberals, progressives, socialists, etc. with anger at Big Business. Glenn Beck's chalkboard certainly doesn't suffice. I found by chance, an op-ed piece by Michael Barone in Investor’s Business Daily. I don't like Michael Barone at all. Never have. He's always been a smarmy bastard and I disagree with his politics and intentions in many areas. However, I find that his observations in this particular article are worth checking out, if strictly for purposes of academic discussion.

Damn, it is getting late. I’d like to keep writing and address my observations of Barone’s article. But now I just don’t have the energy to continue tonight. I’ll finish later.

From Stockholm, Sweden
This is Joe the Mailman

* I admit, devoting so much space and energy to exposition regarding my background is a bit frustrating. Bearing in mind, of course, that once this blog takes off fully, I should become a more familiar presence, and thus should not have to do as much.