Yes, both parties are full of shit, and the phenomenon of Obama actually stripped from me the last shred of hope I had in our version of Democracy, but seriously, the activist wing of the Republican party still makes my skin crawl. And as long as we’re going to keep living under this system of government (and YOU GUYS have to help us FIGURE OUT a better way) then I’m still going to have some problems shutting my eyes and letting this thing go down the damn shithole. Elizabeth Warren wants to be the next Senator from the great state of Massachusetts. I can’t think about Ms. Warren without recalling video of her in that documentary about credit cards with that little cast on her hand. But I really thought she was awesome back then, and as far as conformist, statist liberals go, she’s about as good as it gets. Because we really do have some class warfare going on here. And it’s OK to call it that. (In the same way that it’s OK to call locking up hundreds of thousands of potheads a war on drugs).

So, there’s a video floating around with Warren giving an early version of her stump speech that brings me back to the issue of fairness. As I have pointed out in the past, there’s no reason why we should be so attached to this concept except it seems to be a childish response to inequity (hmmm… what are the implications of that). Warren points out, correctly, that no one makes it in this country on their own. If you get rich, you enjoyed the shared benefits of this society on the way up (good roads, good schools, stable society, freedom from nuclear holocaust, perfect weather, good parents, etc…)

The Capital class (and their lackies) believe that it is unfair to take from them what they have EARNED in order to redistribute it to other classes of society. This is Class Warfare! These fuckers obviously don’t know what war is.

Then there are the liberals who feel that we should take more of what the Capital class has accumulated and use it to build more roads, bridges, prisons, weapons and computer systems at the NSA.

Shit, where was I going with this?

I’m browsing a slender book by Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech… The parrhesiastes tells the truth. Where are our parrhesiastes now? Who can contain the truth? Who can speak the truth, when we live in a googly world?

I am challenged by the notion of truth. What does it mean? Is it mere authenticity (surely this must be a necessary condition). But one can be earnest and earnestly wrong. Or authentically inane. Help me, Oh Tyche! to speak truthfully! To risk the truth! To care more for the truth than for my own skin.

I’ll just leave it at that. It sounds better with Mahler in the background.

There must be a tipping point in life where the physical will to live overcomes the ennui of life, the disgust with carrying on for one more tedious day. Best to expire before that moment occurs.

For a couple of minutes earlier today I experienced intense heart palpitations–a strong physical awareness of my heart fluttering and convulsing in my chest. I thought, well maybe this is a heart attack. And then, I hope it’s a big one, no desire to linger on and become a cardiac patient. In the span of two or three minutes I found myself feeling peaceful about it. OK, if that’s the way it’s going to happen, then so be it. Simultaneous to all that I was analyzing my symptoms and gradually concluding that this could not be a heart attack. There was no real pain involved, nor the numbness in the arm and so forth that I imagine are signs of a real heart attack. And my heart has been checked over. Yes, it’s been three or four years ago (maybe more), but surely things haven’t changed that much in that amount of time. All this happening in 180 seconds or so, trying to catch my breath, feeling heat in my neck. Maybe it was a panic attack. But the idea that if it had been something serious, that I would be at peace about it was greatly comforting to me.

More terrifying to me is to pass beyond that point where it seems the physical body takes over and demands to persist despite all evidence that one’s usefulness is over. I question the point of prolonging life just to add more days. But will my will resist the pulling down to earth, the inevitable insistence on persistence that the physical body inflicts upon the contents of the mind, or the soul if you like?

Some identical twins seem to live a “conjoined” life. With identical dna and environmentally similar experiences, they perhaps are most likely to experience a sensation that their life is “shared” at the most fundamental level.

The idea that such a phenomenon exists makes me think of Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. It’s kind of creepy, which makes me wonder if the idea of connecting with someone on such a deep level is desirable after all.

Maybe we’re better off in our splendid isolation.

The great over-arching theme of my artistic/philosophical enterprise has been my preoccupation with the gulf between human beings. No matter how close we try to connect, the synapse between I and thou is too great. We communicate. Sometimes authentically, in emotional streams that tempt you to believe that a connection has been made. But the moment dissolves and the gulf intervenes. That person does not understand what I was saying/feeling/communicating.

A desperate sense of ones utter aloneness descends. The phenomenon of romantic love, of being in love, deceives us into believing that a connection has occurred. Physical union reinforces the sense that two are one for a moment, but the separation returns.

It doesn’t matter how well we speak, or write or draw. With the faint hope that something authentic will insert itself into the other and be recognized is the great hope, the desperate desire of the soul.

The authentic artist, those I admire the most (Modigliani, Soutine, Matisse, Hopper, Basquiat) understood this, felt it, expressed it. The narcissist feels not the lack. For some, it is a gaping wound.

Do certain features of the social safety net serve the capitalist class more than the working class?

Isn’t it true that social programs such as unemployment insurance, food stamps and certain types of assistance (such as tax credits like the Earned Income Credit–introduced by the Nixon administration as an alternative to raising the minimum wage) reduce the solidarity of workers and inhibit direct action? Isn’t it less likely that workers will take direct action when the government offers benefits that ameliorate the damage done by the capitalist class?

Employers pay a relatively small tax to provide unemployment insurance to workers, and contribute to the general funds that create other programs. Is unemployment insurance a program for the unemployed, or insurance against strikes?

There is a difference between left and right. Whatever your position on government is–statist vs anarchist, for example–the motivating factor that determines where your stand can be graphed on a spectrum runs left to right. What is the basic nature of the difference? One’s choice as to the form of government, or a choice for no government at all, is incidental to the position one is in on this spectrum. That position is determined solely on the basis of the individual’s judgment about fairness.

Choices about the nature and style of government are means to ends. The question that matters is, what kind of society do you want to live in? What is more important to you? What types of injustices are more abhorrent? We will all suffer (or benefit) from injustice. That’s a basic fact of human existence. The question is, what is the responsibility of the individual? How do we characterize freedom? Is it freedom from or freedom to?

The person who tends to be to the left judges unfairness on the basis of outcomes. He or she sees the results of whatever the current structure is, and deems them insufficient. Something is out of whack.

The person who tends to be to the right observes the outcomes, but tends to view them as just desserts. Yes, there are inequities, but the exceptions prove the rule. With a little gumption, and sufficient desire, you can be a success. If you’re not, well that’s because you are either a) inferior or b) incompetent.

The person on the left embraces a radical view of equality that presumes and rationalizes all inequities to some form of environmental phenomenon that can be ameliorated by willful intervention (presumably by members of an educated class trained to identify such problems).

The person on the right tends more to a fatalist perspective and is more accepting of inequality insomuch as it is obvious that there are inferior specimens everywhere he or she looks. That they are less successful is not an environmental deficiency so much as a congenital one.

This is a curve, of course. And most people, to the extent they think about it all, fall somewhere in the middle. Sometimes they sense the injustice, particularly when identifying themselves with a class. Even the super-rich feel sorry for themselves sometimes, as strange as that seems to the rest of us. Their class suffers the indignities of being resented by the masses of poor.

The point is there is a mysterious weighing that goes on that determines where one falls down on this. Anarchism is agnostic about this. There are other reasons why most anarchists come from the left, and statist-libertarians come from the right. Something to think about.

Can they run this thing for the US?

I say the more extreme the better!

I lived in Texas in 2006 and my protest vote was for Kinky Friedman (who has now endorsed Perry). Oh well. After last night though, I’m kind of with the punditocracy. I think Romney is going to be getting some big fat checks pretty soon. And what would a Romney presidency look like? Pretty much like the last three years.

That’s fine, I can hang on a few more years.