BOOMERBUSTER
OLD CELLO
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
RE US BRITAIN JOIN FORCES RE BANK MISBEHAVIOUR
SOVEREIGNTY AT BAY, forty or fifty years later.
Game over.
Game over.
Monday, February 24, 2014
WILL RUSSIA INTERVENE IN UKRAINE
Do they have a choice?
After all, it seems to have been a puppet regime for some time now anyway.
After all, it seems to have been a puppet regime for some time now anyway.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
someone likes this you should too
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/07/cf-randall-collins-credential-society.html
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
RE NATIONALIST REMARKS LEAD TO CHILL NO NATIONALISM HERE MISTER WE ARE GLOBALIST ANARCHISTS
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2014/02/key-passage-from-dks-current-post.html
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
blast from the past re enlightenment expertise compartmentalization philosophy etc
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=50
The Sociological Eye: WHAT MADE ALEXANDER GREAT?
The Sociological Eye: WHAT MADE ALEXANDER GREAT?: A previous post considered Napoleon as CEO. It focused on how he led organizations and structures in transition, and how networks interse...
Saturday, February 15, 2014
KEY PASSAGE FROM DK'S CURRENT POST
"...And states, led by the United States, define their international enemies not as other nations or even political parties, but as individuals. That is why drones are becoming our weapon of choice...."
American individualism is a species of anarchism.
It kills off, not really intentionally, leadership, and political order, of any kind, both politically and militarily.
As a result, with the slow temporary death of the nation state, which the America free globalist market system has lead the world in trying to kill off, along with imperial states, and other federal states, there are only relatively weak nation states and empires, and a large number within these of smaller groups of armed, or unarmed, people and individuals, (state and local governments etc.) within an increasingly differentiated sea of disoriented individuals, many of whom now see only individualism as a way forward in the absence of any other paradigm under market capitalism.
American individualism is a species of anarchism.
It kills off, not really intentionally, leadership, and political order, of any kind, both politically and militarily.
As a result, with the slow temporary death of the nation state, which the America free globalist market system has lead the world in trying to kill off, along with imperial states, and other federal states, there are only relatively weak nation states and empires, and a large number within these of smaller groups of armed, or unarmed, people and individuals, (state and local governments etc.) within an increasingly differentiated sea of disoriented individuals, many of whom now see only individualism as a way forward in the absence of any other paradigm under market capitalism.
RE nyt MEDICINES MADE IN INDIA
If an individual, only an idiot, here, would take most of their drugs if they knew made in India and how they were made.
Global market capitalism at play.
" Never, in the history of human conflict,..."
Global market capitalism at play.
" Never, in the history of human conflict,..."
Friday, February 14, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
SEE RANDALL COLLINS' RECENT POSTS WELL WORTH IT
His intro paragraph to his current post:
"A previous post considered Napoleon as CEO. It focused on how he led organizations and structures in transition, and how networks intersected for a moment in time to pump up a central individual with huge emotional energy. It takes apart the genius/ talent/ ability cliché and shows what makes such careers happen. Alexander the Great is a good comparison: a chief contender to Napoleon, with an even better record of military victories, and similar historical fame. So: what made Alexander great?"
"A previous post considered Napoleon as CEO. It focused on how he led organizations and structures in transition, and how networks intersected for a moment in time to pump up a central individual with huge emotional energy. It takes apart the genius/ talent/ ability cliché and shows what makes such careers happen. Alexander the Great is a good comparison: a chief contender to Napoleon, with an even better record of military victories, and similar historical fame. So: what made Alexander great?"
re final paragraph DK current post too much to unpack on his site
"Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and even Stalin drew on a shared vision of a world ruled by law to win the Second World War. Even Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were animated by a vision of a stable world. We are in danger of slipping into a world of sectarian struggles, in which the traditional world leaders think only of their own advantage. Meanwhile, videos on youtube and short comments on twitter have replaced speeches and news stories as the forum for international conflict. The Republican-induced paralysis of our own democracy is a dreadful blow to democracy worldwide. And last but hardly least, the Republican position on immigration seeks in effect to institutionalize a situation in which millions of our workers have no legal status. Not since slavery has the United States experienced anything comparable. I cannot help but wonder whether the great achievements of western civilization are too far away to inspire enough of us anymore. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.""
Looking only at MacMillan's recent book's illustrations, re various European journals' illustrations, it is hard to place them on a higher emotional level than those of youtube or twitter. However, qualitatively, and artistically, they were much better done, and show an incomparably better, if journalistically jaundiced and manipulative, grasp of international politics, as it was felt and understood, than ours.
Reading Kennan's two volumes on the diplomatic run up to WWI, and then Macmillan's book, gives quite a different impression than the one gets from 20th Century American history, and what I would call something like Wilsonian Rooseveltism, call it utopian liberal socialist leftism; or its later nemesis, McCarthyism, and later the neocon Republican droolings.
Looking only at MacMillan's recent book's illustrations, re various European journals' illustrations, it is hard to place them on a higher emotional level than those of youtube or twitter. However, qualitatively, and artistically, they were much better done, and show an incomparably better, if journalistically jaundiced and manipulative, grasp of international politics, as it was felt and understood, than ours.
Reading Kennan's two volumes on the diplomatic run up to WWI, and then Macmillan's book, gives quite a different impression than the one gets from 20th Century American history, and what I would call something like Wilsonian Rooseveltism, call it utopian liberal socialist leftism; or its later nemesis, McCarthyism, and later the neocon Republican droolings.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
re DK's May 19 2012 post great stuff
"One of the most important readings about the Vietnam War that I have ever encountered is a chapter by the late Douglas Pike, a real authority on the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, about dau tranh, or struggle, the philosophy behind the Vietnamese Communist revolution. Dau tranh, Pike explains, had two forms: military and political. Of the two, the political was far more important, and indeed, the Viet Cong always had several times as many active political workers as soldiers during the Vietnam War. Their mission was to rally their own troops and sow confusion among the enemy, doing whatever they could, in particular, to make the South Vietnamese government unable to function effectively. They also infiltrated that government at every level and tried to influence the views of enemy forces. Their goal, essentially, was to reduce society to chaos and allow the well-organized Communist Party to take over. The other day I raised some eyebrows in a small group setting by suggesting that the Republican Party has been practicing dau tranh for more than twenty years. It has now crippled government at all levels and has a good chance of reducing much of the United States to chaos in the next ten years.
Dau transh in its current form started with Newt Gingrich's all-out assault on the Democrats in the House of Representatives, whom he was determined to demonize in order to take away their majority. Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge, now signed by almost every Republican in Congress and thousands more in state legislatures around the country, is another form of dau tranh. So, of course, is the ceaseless drumbeat of propaganda day after day, week after week, year after year, on Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest. So is the attack on the authority of the mainstream media, universities and scientists. Oddly, while this attack on government probably did more than anything to land us in our current economic mess, the mess also makes dau tranh more effective, because it undermines confidence in the government. Conservative Republicans have also waged long-term dau tranh within our legal system, using the Federalist society to develop a network of conservative lawyers and judges and packing the courts whenever they can. Jeffrey Toobin has analyzed the increasingly significant results of that effort in a series of articles in the New Yorker.
I was moved to write this post because I have to deal with dau tranh almost daily myself in managing this blog. One of my regular readers is a fanatical right-winger who probably posts 50 comments a week here, week in and week out. They are not really comments, for the most part--they are links to some piece of right-wing propaganda, often accompanied with personal abuse towards myself. I think I know who he is, although we have never met face to face, and I also regard him as the prime suspect for having put my name on the Obama=Hitler email which is still circulating, even though he denied it when we were both still on the same discussion forum. (He was kicked off the forum when his dau tranh and personal abuse went too far.) I warn, of course, on the blog, that abusive anonymous comments will be deleted, but he berates me for doing so nonetheless. The attempt to keep the extreme Republican view of the world in the foreground is a key element of Republican dau tranh, just as it was for Nazis and Communists.
The Republicans' real target is the idea that dominated the last century--the idea that human reason can design, and create, a better world. That is why Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson have been given places in their Pantheon of villains. I'm afraid they have sufficiently discredited that idea that it no longer dominates our political life, and might be disappearing altogether. Their lust for power is much, much greater than their respect for the truth. This is the threat the nation faces. Pike also argued provocatively in one of his books that there was no known counter-strategy to dau tranh, and I'm afraid he may have been right.
Dau transh in its current form started with Newt Gingrich's all-out assault on the Democrats in the House of Representatives, whom he was determined to demonize in order to take away their majority. Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge, now signed by almost every Republican in Congress and thousands more in state legislatures around the country, is another form of dau tranh. So, of course, is the ceaseless drumbeat of propaganda day after day, week after week, year after year, on Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest. So is the attack on the authority of the mainstream media, universities and scientists. Oddly, while this attack on government probably did more than anything to land us in our current economic mess, the mess also makes dau tranh more effective, because it undermines confidence in the government. Conservative Republicans have also waged long-term dau tranh within our legal system, using the Federalist society to develop a network of conservative lawyers and judges and packing the courts whenever they can. Jeffrey Toobin has analyzed the increasingly significant results of that effort in a series of articles in the New Yorker.
I was moved to write this post because I have to deal with dau tranh almost daily myself in managing this blog. One of my regular readers is a fanatical right-winger who probably posts 50 comments a week here, week in and week out. They are not really comments, for the most part--they are links to some piece of right-wing propaganda, often accompanied with personal abuse towards myself. I think I know who he is, although we have never met face to face, and I also regard him as the prime suspect for having put my name on the Obama=Hitler email which is still circulating, even though he denied it when we were both still on the same discussion forum. (He was kicked off the forum when his dau tranh and personal abuse went too far.) I warn, of course, on the blog, that abusive anonymous comments will be deleted, but he berates me for doing so nonetheless. The attempt to keep the extreme Republican view of the world in the foreground is a key element of Republican dau tranh, just as it was for Nazis and Communists.
The Republicans' real target is the idea that dominated the last century--the idea that human reason can design, and create, a better world. That is why Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson have been given places in their Pantheon of villains. I'm afraid they have sufficiently discredited that idea that it no longer dominates our political life, and might be disappearing altogether. Their lust for power is much, much greater than their respect for the truth. This is the threat the nation faces. Pike also argued provocatively in one of his books that there was no known counter-strategy to dau tranh, and I'm afraid he may have been right.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
RE THE DREAM OF REASON
Professor Kaiser summarizes it nicely:
"More than two centuries ago in the north Atlantic world, a dream was born: a dream of a world ruled by law, whose principles would be drawn from human reason. Science would continue improving the quality of human life; industry would create new products; and governments, established with the consent of the governed, would promote progress under law. Logic, reason, and fundamental principles of equality would replace tradition, family, and inherited wealth as sources of authority. All citizens would enjoy equality under the law. During the 19th and early 20th centuries the idea also arose that nations, as well as individuals, would enjoy equal rights, and hopes grew that they might settle disputes among one another by legal means. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt involved the United States in two world wars to make that happen, and Roosevelt enjoyed extraordinary, though hardly complete, success."
Also replaced, along with tradition, family, and inherited wealth as sources of authority, would be traditional religious institutions of all kinds, although replacing these institutions was certainly not, at first, a goal for the early men of reason; they were, after all, aristocrats, who were concerned more to improve the established order than to overturn it. Overturning it only came later in the dream:
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/06/re-wuthnows-discussion-of-cultural.html
Also replaced, along with tradition, family, and inherited wealth as sources of authority, would be traditional religious institutions of all kinds, although replacing these institutions was certainly not, at first, a goal for the early men of reason; they were, after all, aristocrats, who were concerned more to improve the established order than to overturn it. Overturning it only came later in the dream:
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/06/re-wuthnows-discussion-of-cultural.html
Just one of the more or less hidden problems with the dream, call it utopian but it is hardly my idea of a utopia, was that it, eventually, though not at first, came to imply a total world unified government structure, not a national, or even limited federal, civilizational, monarchic, or imperial, or merely multi civilizational, one.
From the beginning, this dream has tended, in practice, as the dream has gone on, century after century, first in the West and then in the rest, to gradually, and sometimes quite abruptly, break down traditional political and social structures everywhere, putting nothing comparable in durability in their place along the way.
This is part of the reason why we have something like world anarchy unfolding, increasingly, everywhere.
For example, Kennan, 1979, The Decline of Bismarck's European Order: "The Austro-Hungarian Empire still looks better, as a solution to the tangled problems of that part of the world, than anything that has succeeded it." The die was cast by WWI.
Both the universalist liberal reasonist US, and the universalist communist regimes, have been enemies of traditional order in all societies, not merely their own, at least at first.
The Russian revolution, even, gradually settled into federalist Russian dominated nationalist totalitarianism; it did not start out that way.
WWI had scotched global communism with nationalism, even as it made possible by revolution a Bolshevik take over in Russia.
WWI should, logically, to use their own word, have scotched the dream of reason, too.
But WWI breathed new vigor into universalist liberalism by sweeping away several great Western traditionalist if somewhat liberal (England, Austria) empires, putting nothing much in their place but enhanced yet still weak globalist mercantile and financial connections, and a multitude of new illiberal nationalisms and puppets.
Certainly by the end of WWII, one would have thought that the very idea of universalist liberalism was dead as a mackerel.
Not in America. We globaized in a really big way, and encouraged everyone else to do the same, ostensibly to fight Soviet influence everywhere.
Yet, this globalization was also an economic and political war on the nation state (including our own) and on traditional empires, as such books as Sovereignty At Bay made amply clear somewhat later.
From the beginning, this dream has tended, in practice, as the dream has gone on, century after century, first in the West and then in the rest, to gradually, and sometimes quite abruptly, break down traditional political and social structures everywhere, putting nothing comparable in durability in their place along the way.
This is part of the reason why we have something like world anarchy unfolding, increasingly, everywhere.
For example, Kennan, 1979, The Decline of Bismarck's European Order: "The Austro-Hungarian Empire still looks better, as a solution to the tangled problems of that part of the world, than anything that has succeeded it." The die was cast by WWI.
Both the universalist liberal reasonist US, and the universalist communist regimes, have been enemies of traditional order in all societies, not merely their own, at least at first.
The Russian revolution, even, gradually settled into federalist Russian dominated nationalist totalitarianism; it did not start out that way.
WWI had scotched global communism with nationalism, even as it made possible by revolution a Bolshevik take over in Russia.
WWI should, logically, to use their own word, have scotched the dream of reason, too.
But WWI breathed new vigor into universalist liberalism by sweeping away several great Western traditionalist if somewhat liberal (England, Austria) empires, putting nothing much in their place but enhanced yet still weak globalist mercantile and financial connections, and a multitude of new illiberal nationalisms and puppets.
Certainly by the end of WWII, one would have thought that the very idea of universalist liberalism was dead as a mackerel.
Not in America. We globaized in a really big way, and encouraged everyone else to do the same, ostensibly to fight Soviet influence everywhere.
Yet, this globalization was also an economic and political war on the nation state (including our own) and on traditional empires, as such books as Sovereignty At Bay made amply clear somewhat later.
RE CHINA EXHIBIT NYT I TOLD YOU SO TRADING FACES AGAIN
We loved Japan, then we loved China, then we loved Japan again.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
RE THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE
Finishing this up soon.
In spite of powerful evidence, which she herself adduces, to the contrary, she comes down at several points blaming Austria Hungary, and Germany for starting the war, a war which everyone had considered inevitable, and for which everyone had been planning and contributing toward, not just Austria or Germany, for decades, especially Britain, Russia, and France.
Curiously, she leaves Russia out, although she had spent many pages chronicling its involvement in the Balkans, both as a backer of Serbian Slav aspirations, and as an overt adversary of Austria Hungary in the Balkans from which Serbia received assurances of support.
In spite of powerful evidence, which she herself adduces, to the contrary, she comes down at several points blaming Austria Hungary, and Germany for starting the war, a war which everyone had considered inevitable, and for which everyone had been planning and contributing toward, not just Austria or Germany, for decades, especially Britain, Russia, and France.
Curiously, she leaves Russia out, although she had spent many pages chronicling its involvement in the Balkans, both as a backer of Serbian Slav aspirations, and as an overt adversary of Austria Hungary in the Balkans from which Serbia received assurances of support.
Monday, February 3, 2014
re Wilder's comment on DK's current post great stuff
"The youthful rebellion of the 1960s seemed so idealistic in its championing of racial justice, free speech and individual freedom, it is hard to fathom how it could be a manifestation of the same generation, which, 40 years later, was rolling back the New Deal and was enacting a horrifying parody of Wilsonian Internationalism in Iraq.
One thread I pick up in Mario Savio's speech is his hostility to institutional bureaucracy, policy and procedure: "depersonalized, unresponsive bureaucracy". Surely, those words, "depersonalized" and "unresponsive" would come freighted with meaning for Alice Miller or Melanie Klein.
The New Deal institutions were conceived of by people, who had witnessed desperate conflicts of economic interest in labor strife and the financial collapse of banking and ethnic and racial prejudice. The institutions were meant to resolve those conflicts fairly and regularly, in established procedures, to create a Frank Capra world. The ideas of useful constraint and Galbraith's countervailing power seemed conventional wisdom in the late 1950s. Clark Kerr, Savio's antagonist, was the founding director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Industrial Relations.
But, the generation, which had actually fought WWII had experienced an extreme of political solidarity under a leadership, which was competent and nearly selfless in its integrity. They had a remarkable faith in authority, a faith that would be betrayed in Vietnam.
The idealism of the Boomers about race and sexual politics seems to have lasted, but so did that hostility to bureaucratic authority and procedure. It was exploited to take apart economic regulation of the economy. And, in Iraq, the Boomers proved in a disastrous clinical experiment called Iraqi Reconstruction, that they had no idea of the institutional basis of politics, law or the economy, and no expectatons regarding integrity in administration."
One thread I pick up in Mario Savio's speech is his hostility to institutional bureaucracy, policy and procedure: "depersonalized, unresponsive bureaucracy". Surely, those words, "depersonalized" and "unresponsive" would come freighted with meaning for Alice Miller or Melanie Klein.
The New Deal institutions were conceived of by people, who had witnessed desperate conflicts of economic interest in labor strife and the financial collapse of banking and ethnic and racial prejudice. The institutions were meant to resolve those conflicts fairly and regularly, in established procedures, to create a Frank Capra world. The ideas of useful constraint and Galbraith's countervailing power seemed conventional wisdom in the late 1950s. Clark Kerr, Savio's antagonist, was the founding director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Industrial Relations.
But, the generation, which had actually fought WWII had experienced an extreme of political solidarity under a leadership, which was competent and nearly selfless in its integrity. They had a remarkable faith in authority, a faith that would be betrayed in Vietnam.
The idealism of the Boomers about race and sexual politics seems to have lasted, but so did that hostility to bureaucratic authority and procedure. It was exploited to take apart economic regulation of the economy. And, in Iraq, the Boomers proved in a disastrous clinical experiment called Iraqi Reconstruction, that they had no idea of the institutional basis of politics, law or the economy, and no expectatons regarding integrity in administration."
classic cartoon post Trading Places again
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/08/huan-trading-places-mise-en-scene-hog.html
Saturday, February 1, 2014
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