9/16/10
I’m sitting on a public bench in front of the harbor.
It’s 5:15 PM.
Autumn has arrived very fast here in Stockholm. The weather is certainly very different than it was when I was here last a few weeks ago.
It is almost impossible for me to put into words a description of the atmosphere. It has been raining on and off every couple of minutes this evening. Each shower or sprinkle is interrupted by a sunset that is more of a fading blue than the expected colors. I will call it a ‘storm-blue’ for lack of a better title. This storm-blue sky is lined by the most imposing and treacherous-looking of storm clouds. But I can tell that these clouds are all bark and no bite, so to speak. They don’t threaten me. I’m too at peace to be threatened by the weather.
It is such a strong, cold wind blowing at me. I feel a great rush. Approximately fifteen minutes ago. I was walking along the bridge, aside the passing train. I stopped for a few minutes to capture the moment; asked a few passersby to take some photos of me and took the rest myself.
I’m on my way to pay a brief visit to the Stadtsmuseum, the wisdom in that being that perhaps my getting a decent cultural fix this evening will pull me back into a more vigorous writing mood. I haven’t been doing so well in that department for the past few days. In Glasgow my health, both physical and mental took a sharp decline. I’ve returned to Stockholm, riding a Low and debilitated by a pesky head cold. I’ve been taking the time to recuperate, and I especially owe my thanks to the very kind hostel matron for accommodating me with private quarters for two nights.
Geez, I shouldn’t be sitting out here, like this. The weather isn’t suitable for someone with a cold and a runny nose to be outside like this in. But damn, the breeze is intoxicating. My mind is still too much in its recovery phase to allow for me to apply the full force of my intellect for writing this entry.
Since I can’t offer a written description of the scene before me, I may as well let my photos provide one for the eyes.
One hour and a half later:
With all the stops I’ve made to “capture the moment” (not to mention, grabbing a sandwich at Subway) it’s taken me that much time just to get to the museum, ogle the exhibits briefly, and then plant myself on the bench and resume writing…
I’ve started the new blog last night. I’d say it’s about time that I’d brought that plan to fruition after I’ve left it on the back burner for so long.
From now on, I won’t just be posting entries in my notes on Facebook. Perhaps now, I’ll be bringing myself closer to gaining the exposure for my writing, I have for so long desired.
I have a better feeling about this blog. My long-dormant previous one, Kind of a Drag, to me represents a long time of neglect; a time too wasted by depression and apathy to make headway.
As evidenced by yesterday’s opening salvo, I’ve christened this blog by uploading the essays I’d written for Facebook over the past two years.
It is most interesting reviewing observations I had written the week leading up to the U.S. Presidential Election, 2008. At the time I had first arrived in Sydney, for the commencement of what would become my epic Australian odyssey. As I’d written then:
I appreciate the irony of that we are on the eve of a presidential election that promises to be the most revolutionary in the history of the United States of America—as a victory by one side will serve as a statement defining the breaking of racial barriers in terms of upward mobility, and a victory by the other will do the same for barriers of gender—and I have been so distracted by the more immediate events of my life—the many great changes that are occurring in terms of relationships and opportunities—that I have essentially sat out this process.
I suppose ‘revolutionary’ was a misleading adjective. The election never promised to be one ushering in an era of transformation. Rather, what I should have written was that the election promised to be a ‘first’ in terms of breaking social barriers. Many have lamented lately that while it was extraordinary to see an African-American achieve the presidency, the Obama administration has hardly been extraordinary enough to warrant wearing the mantle of ‘revolutionary.’ But I’m sure I can be forgiven for being swept up in the excitement of the times. After all, it was hard to miss, even from abroad.
In his very enthusiastic comment on my post, my friend Noel Passeri had a great deal to say on the subject:
I agree with what you are saying. The biggest problem, in my opinion, with the “progressive” movement is its tendency to mock the values and culture of the masses they claim to be advocating. This works out incredibly well for the bourgeois plutocracy that composes our 2 [party] “democracy.” One party claims to advocate the culture of the working class, the other claims to represent the economic interests of the working class, and the end result is a divided, exploited, and manipulated working class that has no class consciousness [sic].
I don’t think very much will change in this country whether McCain or Obama wins. Capitalism will be the single ruling ideology of this country. And for better or worse America will continue to pursue interventionism in its foreign policy and maintain itself as a global empire.
I will say that if Obama wins I don’t think the neo cons will have a significant influence in the oval office and the U.S. will likely pursue a soft power approach to foreign policy. Also if McCain wins we’ll probably have neo con think tanks like PNAC having major influence on US foreign policy. In terms of economics, Obama will have a Clinton-esk [sic] tax code and McCain will pursue Reaganomics. And no matter who wins my, evangelical comrades, abortion will remain the law of the land. And this disappoints me because I am a Christian and a Marxist and feel that abortion is immoral on a metaphysical level and non egalitarian [sic] on a material level.
Obama will probably be a synthesis of Walter Mondale and Bill Clinton while John McCain will be like a synthesis of Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney, and well…John McCain. Neither of these options would represent any radical “CHANGE” to what the American people are used to.
In terms of all this Red Scare stuff about Obama...Part of me isn’t surprised that Americans are so afraid of Socialism and Marxism, and another part of me is amazed how despite the fact that the fault lines of capitalism and imperialism have been cracking in the U.S. these last 8 years, no one in this ripe capitalist country wants to take the next step past capitalism and seize the literal and figurative machinery of capitalism and apply the accomplishments of capitalism to a system that promotes working class hegemony. The U.S. doesn’t have to do socialism like the USSR did it. We can learn for the failures and accomplishments of past socialist experiments in underdeveloped countries and use our century’s worth of developed material strength to make a just form of socialism that could lay the ground work for an eventual communist achievement. None of this will be accomplished with Barack Obama BECAUSE HE IS NOT A MARXIST OR A SOCIALIST!!!!!!
With all this being said I think Obama is the lesser of two evils, but I would not be surprised if people got into the voting booth and decided Obama is to unfamiliar and pull the lever for McCain. I just hope that no matter what happens that the U.S. or Israel doesn’t invade Iran and that the American people get to see Sarah Palin in a bikini on either WWE RAW, Smackdown, ECW, or TNA IMPACT. I also want to see Joe the Plumber fight Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania 25. And I am very, very serious. USA! USA! USA! USA! [Noel is a master in the art of harnessing pop-culture imagery to serve a political end.]
I piggybacked on Noel’s statement in my response:
I don't think it's that McCain knows something that the rest of us don't know. I think that he is merely letting us think he knows something we don't, so as to influence people into feeling less certain about Obama's electability. It's a classic tactic. If he acts as though he's ahead, he can pull ahead by power of suggestion.
As my friend Noel so declaratively states, no, Obama is not and cannot be called a socialist or a marxist. He is a liberal, and liberalism is about reformism. Marxism is about revolution, total overhaul of the system. Reformism guarantees the the system's preservation. One need only read Mao Zedong's "Combat Liberalism [and Discipline]" to see what an actual marxist thinks of liberals. Mao would most likely have had Obama put in a Collective, or shot.
It is frustrating to hear in national discourse this fallacious conflation of liberalism and Socialism. But of course, the main reason it's become the case is that it has become politically expedient to do so. It's what keeps liberalism on the defensive. As I said before, it's all about shaping the narrative, and that's how the narrative has been since Spiro Agnew worked so effectively to make that happen forty years ago.
Truthfully though, conservatives know that there is no classic socialism in the United States. There is only a great configuration of liberal designs, which conservatives fear will serve the socialist agenda (though it can't).
I refer as an example, to Donald J. Boudreaux's op/ed is in the Christian Science Monitor "Is Barack Obama really a socialist?"
The CSM op-ed piece I cited answered the title’s question with:
No. At least not in the classic sense of the term. "Socialism" originally meant government ownership of the major means of production and finance, such as land, coal mines, steel mills, automobile factories, and banks.
Needless to say, the rest is history. All the doomsayers crying imminent socialist apocalypse gleefully claim vindication with the subsequent government bailouts of the leading banks and automobile companies. (Though the bank bailouts began under Bush!)
Lost in the wilderness of the political food-fight are the facts that most of the banks have since paid off their bailout loans and the auto manufacturers have since been relieved from the brief federal administration. As Rick Perlstein wrote in the Washington Post last summer, “The various elements -- the liberal earnestly confused when rational dialogue won't hold sway; the anti-liberal rage at a world self-evidently out of joint; and, most of all, their mutual incomprehension -- sound as fresh as yesterday's news.” This hysteria is the case with every Democratic presidency since FDR.
My, oh my how the test of time has affected my observations of yesteryear.
No comments:
Post a Comment