Let’s just set aside our anarchist pretensions for a while and enumerate the many ways that government, that is our particular government, currently sucks.

Therefore I will occasionally post my latest gripe about the ways in which our government sucks.

Student Loan Subsidies & Guaranteed Student Loans Distort and Subvert Economics of Higher Education

Both programs are well-meaning and beneficial*, but as with most government programs they maximize the benefit to the entrenched elites (Banks, Corporations & Universities) at the expense of those they mean to benefit. By guaranteeing payment of student loans (regardless of subsidies) corporate “Educators” and even public universities (which are more and more run like corporate “educators”) are able to swindle students by charging whatever they can get away with for tuition.

Glorious competition, which is supposed to lower costs over time, is subverted by a system that has an endless supply of cash available whether you’re borrowing $10,000 to become a hair stylist or $250,000 to become a pediatrician.

Does it make sense today for a BA in English to cost the same as a BS in Computer Science? The banks always get their money. The schools always get their money. The students? They get all the risk.

So now Mr. Obama supports gay marriage. Maybe his constituents in North Carolina would have appreciated knowing that yesterday.

Is everybody else as sick of the use of the word “nuanced” re the Obama administration as I am?

***Interesting statistic from WaPo: “At least one in six Obama bundlers are gay, according to a Washington Post count, making it hard for the president to ignore the growing frustrations.”

I saw this little tidbit on the Daily Beast. Blake Gopnik takes James Franco to task for not being “convincing” as an artist.

The two paragraphs prodded a set of receptors in my brain that had been dormant for a while. The name “Monroe Beardsley” leaped to mind, along with a little nugget from the darkest backwater of academia–the philosophy of art–known as The Intentional Fallacy.

Beardsley is remembered for, among other things, co-writing the original article that introduced the concept of the above-mentioned fallacy back in the 1950′s. He was responding to the expressionist theories of art criticism and argued that not only are the intentions of artists irrelevant to the criticism of the art, they are unknowable. Beardsley claimed that the “value [of an artwork] is independent of the manner of production, even of whether the work was produced by an animal or by a computer or by a volcano or by a falling slop bucket.”

“Value” here means aesthetic value, not cash value of course. This idea seems quaint nowadays. That any creative work’s value is determined by its relation to an ideal of form, beauty or even an artistic rubric is anathema to the world we live in today.

Gopnik points out that so far as Franco’s work is concerned, he is mediocre. But there was the suspicion that he may in fact be playing with us, his vast audience of consumers. As Gopnik says, “Could it be that Franco’s entire art career has in fact been about him giving a brilliant theatrical performance as a generic contemporary artist–sort of like the one he played so well on General Hospital?”

Gopnik then insults Mr. Franco’s intelligence by presuming that he was incapable of answering “softball questions” about art at a recent MoMA event.

Conclusion? Franco can’t be a great performance artist because he appears incapable of the sort of witty repartee expected from an artistic genius. Clearly, his “performance” at MoMA reveals his intellectual limitations, thereby precluding the existence of Franco the Meta-Post-Modern Performance Artist.

Whether you agree with Beardsley or not as to the necessary conditions for art obtaining, his point about the irrelevance of an artist’s intentions is significant, particularly in a case like this. Art critics (and other intellectuals) make sport of discerning with their own superior minds the intentions of would-be artists (and other historical subjects). While entertaining to them it often obscures or even occludes the value of a particular work (or life). Artists make the same mistake insomuch as they spend too much time thinking about their own work rather than doing it. As any artist who has experienced it will tell you, the best work often comes when the least amount of self-conscious analysis is going on. Franco may just be having fun and is absorbed in doing it (his odd life). In doing that, he may yet be creating a performance piece of a certain merit, and his inarticulateness about his own art, whatever that is, may be entirely irrelevant to its worth.

When I’m not pissing and moaning about the state of the world, I occasionally am inspired to do something useful as I did this past evening.

Clad in the official uniform of pink button-down shirts, black pants and black shoes, my friend and I performed a necessary and valuable service to the citizens of our town by serving as officers of the Art Police. My fellow officer arrived equipped with megaphone, badges and a clip-board filled with a sufficient supply of official citations. I brought a plastic wrapped package of colored stars like the type a kindergarten teacher gives to rosy-cheeked children, a rubber stamp pad, and some plastic eye-balls like the kind used on kitschy tourist junk.

We descended upon the monthly downtown art festival of our local town prepared to encourage the good and shame the bad. Our mission: identify egregious aesthetic violations and issue appropriate citations where appropriate and commend works that genuinely enhanced the culture.

Our first stop was a gallery hosted at a local religious cathedral. The work was uninspiring, however a collection of a bank of light switches and a fire-alarm control panel in the corner caught my partners eye. The assemblage, all painted over in eggshell white, was stunning in its simplicity. It got a gold star.

On we went. Our first citation was given to the local “alternative” newspaper which calls itself “New Times” but is not new at all. We gave the two youngsters manning the booth a citation for false advertising.

We nearly had to call animal control for backup at our next stop. A plastic enclosure housed a collection of live rabbits which were being offered as “prizes” to people who could toss a little ball into a kiddie pool or some such activity.

Via his megaphone, my partner announced our entrance into another venue: a trendy little coffee shop cum art gallery. “Keep calm! Nothing to be concerned about. Art police. We’re here to investigate this establishment for aesthetic violations.” The puzzled and bemused patrons stared at us as we did a cursory tour of the premises. After interviewing the clientele we were shocked to discover that they were not offered coffee in real cups contrary to the shop’s stated policy. We cited them for promoting disposable culture. The manager was upset, refused to accept our citation, and told us to fuck off, so we cited them again for not having a sense of humor.

This went on for another three hours. In one venue (a rather nice little gallery that was not in danger of receiving a citation) I was accosted by a large young man who screamed at me, blood rushing to his face, “What gives you the right to do this? I’m an anarchist and you’re a fucking fascist!” He stormed away without ever being aware of the irony.

And in the end, that was the story of the night. The lack of any sense of irony or comprehension of what we were doing surprised. Sure, there were the old-school artists that have been hanging on down there year after year and for them, the idea of art police was an amusing and entertaining bit of commentary on the culture, and of course a lot of fun. Which was a point that was lost on quite a significant percentage of those in attendance.

We plan to be back next month. Arrests may be made next time.

Nobody had anything to say about my Perfect Justice post? Come on. Are you guys just being polite? Is it that bad?

This is a pretty small clique we have here, you know. I thought that was a pretty good post…

By the way, what’s up with Sartwell? (Seriously… someone closer than me should do an intervention).

And Crow is kind of in a slump too…

What’s up with this crew? Sorry IOZ, but you’re not carrying the water for us these days (that’s all 250 of us).

Anarchurious? You’re doing your part.

And now Montag has quit (I have been working on a response to his GRID not GOAL farewell for weeks)

We are a small and motley crew of ne’er-do-wells are we not?

Justin? Where are you? (OK, break that post up into smaller chunks that I can read).

Mr. BDR keeps checking in to make sure I haven’t hung myself (You are a good man, sir!)

and my dear anne (who has been absent during my recovery, but posted a blessedly matronly and patronizing post a week ago) must be on a trans-atlantic cruise to reverse the tragedy of the Titanic…

And, last but certainly not least, Mr. Ochstradt, aka Oxtrot… Well, we need him. You know you miss CD…

Courtesy of my very good friend, Mr. Ray Davies:

So Mr. Andrew Sullivan is no anarchist, but he got it right today with this quote (in the context of his critique of CIA Genarilissimo Jose Rodriguez):

In other words, the president answers to the CIA and not the other way round. If that is really true – and we have evidence that a president and the Justice Department do not have the strength or will to bring war criminals to justice – then we no longer live in an accountable democracy. We are run by a security state that invents its own laws and makes money off its own war crimes.

No shit Andrew.

The methodology of studies such as this must surely be discredited by now. More fear-mongering by the powers that be. You know what would save a lot of money on health related expense? Just letting people die sooner. That’s why I continue to smoke. I am doing my part to reduce the burden on the next generation.

For years researchers suspected that the higher medical costs of obesity might be offset by the possibility that the obese would die young, and thus never rack up spending for nursing homes, Alzheimer’s care, and other pricey items.

That’s what happens to smokers. While they do incur higher medical costs than nonsmokers in any given year, their lifetime drain on public and private dollars is less because they die sooner. “Smokers die early enough that they save Social Security, private pensions, and Medicare” trillions of dollars, said Duke’s Finkelstein. “But mortality isn’t that much higher among the obese.”

Give smokers a fucking break. We’re doing our part!

Maybe it’s a case of be careful what you wish for.

I have no common cause or sympathy with those who dream of an interconnected world. The idea of “singularity” gives me the creeps. Predicting the future can be tricky, though, so whatever we imagine now will probably be way off. (Didn’t most of us in my demographic assume we’d be living on the moon by now?)

Anyway, the only thing about this of any real interest to me is the aforementioned silver lining: a truly anarchist society. No doubt it will be far from Utopia, but if you like the idea of being a sentient ant,  happily living up to your genetic potential (as determined by the cloud) then you will be drooling at the prospect.

Let me elaborate on why I believe this is the key to our possible anarchist future.

A coercive elite class is only able to persist in an environment of constant uncertainty and threat. A society is governed by LAWS as determined by the ruling elite. A globally interconnected world of total visibility, where every action of every member of society is digitally recorded for all time will rather quickly undermine our current notions of morality and legality. Consider violent crime. We have hundreds of legal statutes related to homicide: different degrees of murder, manslaughter, ground-standing and so forth. In a world where the record was complete and incontrovertible, the perpetrator’s actions, motivations and entire life history would be weighed by his or her peers to determine the appropriate response. Pre-meditated violence would be difficult to pull off inasmuch as those actions that hinted at the intentions of the perpetrator would incite intervention. (Except in those cases where the consensus of the “group” condoned a violent act, which is just as possible).

All ethical judgments would be situational!

You can see hints of our future in our legal system. We all enjoy the benefits of the pretense that we are a nation of LAWS, but give the masses a highly publicized case and see how quickly LAWS become secondary. The only difference is right now we have limited information.

Perfect Information = Perfect Justice! (There’s a deep theological nugget in there).