Take Me Out to a Loan

I love baseball. I've loved baseball since I was a kid in the 1950s, a time so long ago it seems from the vantage point of George W. Bush's America to have been prehistoric. And, as seems to be true of most subjects, I have a unique (which is to say, extreme minority position) viewpoint on what used to be called, but certainly could no longer be called "The National Pastime." Indeed, I don't think there's a professional sport played in the United States that is affordable for the ordinary working stiff. Since I don't attend these events--the only national professional sport close by will be the former Sonics basketball team, and you tell me if you think an average price of $47.50 a ticket at the arena we ordinary people are paying for is affordable for most people.

Maybe I'm living in another world, maybe I'm dreaming, but almost $100 to go see a basketball game seems pretty dear to me. And that's not counting parking, and any amenities whatever at the game. And of course it doesn't consider baby-sitting or dinner before or after the game. You could be talking $200 or more for a night out for the NBA. And that is not affordable for most people.

Well, that is positively dirt cheap compared to what you're going to pay for seats in the new Yankee Stadium, which, by the way is being built at a cost of $1.3 billion. Also by comparison, much cheaper than seats in the new Mets stadium, where the average seat will cost only $495. AVERAGE.

Are you ready for this? The best seats in the new Yankee house will be going for $500 to $2.500 a seat. Now, that's the season ticket price, and season ticket buyers must commit to at least three years. It boggles the mind. As for the suites where the corporate fat cats suck down booze and eat their lobster dinners in carpeted swank, those will go for $600,000 to $800,000 per year. Oh, and there's a 74-seat suite for anybody off the street for $700--food, but not alcohol included. $700 for a baseball game and free hot dogs and Cokes. What a deal!

And what about the rest? Oh, the Yankees didn't forget them:

"Of the non-premium seats, 88 percent will be less than $100. . . . It's easy to say that that's not cheap, but on the other 55 percent of the ballpark is going to be $45 or less. That's over 24,000 seats. We recognize everybody can't afford the suites. At the same time, we're trying to allow those suite prices to subsidize the other seating in the stadium. Look, the bleachers are $12, will be $12. The grandstand is $20 and $25, will be $20 and $25."

It's just obscene, pornographic when there are children starving in this country--or anywhere else, for that matter.

Stealing Us Blind

I commend to your reading this piece by Thomas Frank in the latest issue of The Nation. It's entitled "Why Misgovernment was No Accident in Bush's Washington," and it's taken from his latest book The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. It won't take you long, and it will really piss you off. Here's the gist of piece if you're not in the mood to go into full-throated rage at Bush and his greedy cronies today.

Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, all that follows: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we've come to expect from Washington.

I happened to hear Frank in a radio interview on PBS a few days ago. He seemed pretty calm as he related example after example of how the conservatives are just stealing us plumb silly. (I was certainly much more agitated listening to him.) These people gorge themselves at the public trough, while at the same time creating such a mountain of public debt that the likelihood of having the federal government permanently crippled is quite real. For these people hate the government, and if it were crippled, it would not bother them in the least. It would simply allow the market to take care of everything.

This is the sort of nonsense that the dimwit nonpareil Ronald Reagan--who famously observed that "government is the problem"--foisted upon us. It still amazes me that intelligent people could actually buy this crap. I just assumed that everybody knows what will happen if capitalism (the hallowed market) is allowed to operate without the restraint of government oversight and regulation. What you get in addition to all the punishments of hell on both the working class and the environment is (mis)rule by a bloated, blood-sucking plutocracy. Which is exactly what we've got. I thought everybody knew this.

Which just goes to show what an out-of-touch, naive idiot I am.

RIP Isaac Hayes

The Party of Stupid

I don't care for all the New York Times op-ed guys--William Kristol is a waste of protoplasm, for example--but as a group I like 'em. One of the best is the economist Paul Krugman, who had a column yesterday that bonged many of the gongs I've been hitting myself.

"Republicans," he writes, "once hailed as the 'party of ideas,' have become the party of stupid." While not insinuating anything about the intelligence of the Republicans at large, he observes something I've noticed for some time, only he says it much better. The Republicans, he says, have embraced: "know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: 'Real men don’t think things through.'”

Ain't it the truth? He goes on to excoriate them about their ridiculous claim that offshore drilling is what we need to reduce prices at the gas pump in just a few months. This is total bullshit, but, as Krugman reminds us, so were the reasons the country was given for invading Iraq, and the American people had no trouble swallowing it. Like me, Krugman is worried that stupidity is the controlling force in U.S. elections. What else could explain the fact that almost 70 percent of the U.S. people now favor offshore drilling, and over half of them think that this would lower gasoline prices in less than a year?

Krugman has underscored a lamentable character trait of the Americans that seems more and more prominent. Not just their ignorance. But their aggressive stupidity. Such people, incapable of sensing how scorned they are by their supposed champions, deserve the Republicans.

Thigh Bone's Connected to . . .

I've turned over a new leaf. I've decided to spend less time in front of this computer screen. Why? Because much as I enjoy surfing around and getting sucked into reading all the interesting stuff you can always find, there is only so much profitable time in a day, and I'm pissing away too much of it with the computer. Even as we speak, I'm in a room surrounded by books on four sides. My first love and my most constant, whom I've been avoiding--to my own detriment, I fear. So beginning last Monday, I set aside several hours a day just to read (and listen to classical music while doing so).

Which brings us to Mr. Morris Berman and his book Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire. A most engrossing read. But don't come near it if you're looking for sweetness and light. The gist of it is this: It's already too late for us. We've been a national security state since the end of WWII. We're a a thoroughly militarized society. Our foreign policy has been centered on advancing the fortunes of corporations (either overtly or at root) since the late 19th century. Globalization = Americanization. The US military is there to enforce this over any objectors. We Americans absolutely despise revolutionary movements, especially those that don't square with our view of what is acceptable--i.e., not inimical to US interests, non-socialist. These two categories exclude virtually all revolutions.

This rendition hardly does the book any justice at all. It's much more than this, and I'm not finished with it yet.

What's striking is the continuum here. Ankle bone is Manifest Destiny; calf bone is Mexican War; knee bone, extermination of Native Americans; thigh bone, Spanish American war . . . you get the idea. Cold War presented us with what we love: a black and white choice where answer is "we good, they bad." That's as complicated as we can stand, and we're going to go straight down the tubes of history because we're too ignorant and too arrogant to see it any other way.

Is There a You in You?

This is a neat paraphrase of the central question in contemporary neuroscience. And it's discussed in a long review of five new books on the human brain by Garry Greenberg in the June issue of Harper's. I don't think I'd ever read any of these books, but the review was fascinating nonetheless. Just as in every other field, there's a split among people who study the human brain between the materialists and those who find answers for the really big questions in the transcendent. The issue for the neuroscientists is the nature of the mind. Is it "a set of operations carried out by the brain, much as walking is a set of operations carried out by the legs, except dramatically more complex"? Are our brains us? as is contended by the materialists. Brains that are "fundamentally . . . electrical organ[s] that transmit electrical signals from one nerve cell to the next" or "complex biological organs of great computational capability."

Or are we something more?

It's the age old question between materialism and dualism. The mind/body problem is echoed by the brain/mind problem. I shall content myself here with a few provocative quotes from the review and the observation that I'm not a materialist--I believe there is a you in you (and a me in me.) I don't think we can understand human beings without reference to the spiritual.

"Neuroscientists have not discovered that there is no you in you," writes [Mario Beauregard in The Spiritual Brain]. "They start their work with that assumption. Anything they find is on the basis of that view."

And they can count on the mass media to support them . . . because: "The culture of popular science is one of unidirectional skepticism. . . . It is skeptical of any idea that spirituality corresponds to something outside ourselves, but surprisingly gullible about any reductionist explanation for it."

Other tidbits:

• If will is an illusion, then what is the basis for personal responsibility?

• 'If will is an illusion, the very idea of evil is evacuated. . . . What fills the vacuum? Desires and dislikes.' But use your mind to modify its (temporary) home, guiding it with the appropriate teaching, and you have a way not only to reclaim ethics but to bring a muscular brain to bear on your dilemmas.

• Talk about dualism cannot go very far without running into religion. Indeed the two may be inseparable, at least so long as our choices are spirit and matter. . . . If there is a you in you, it must come from somewhere, and where else could that be but some transcendent realm?

Finally, something that I have known for a long, long time and the real reason I cannot be a materialist:

"There is hardly any point in reiterating that scientists have yet to show that the brain is both the necessary and the sufficient cause of our minds, or that elucidating neural circuitry in all its glorious detail is not the same thing as explaining how that circuitry gives us the strange experience we call consciousness."

Precisely. I'm conscious of being me and of everything that makes me me. How is this? I don't know, but I do know I cannot but believe it's more than just synapses and electrochemical circuitry in my brain.

A Worthy Cause

My son, who was completely taken when he saw this on TV and is supporting this organization regularly himself, requested that I spread the word far and wide about Operation Smile. A non-profit that supports a group of doctors who perform relatively inexpensive and uncomplicated surgery on kids with cleft palates throughout the developing world. The procedure literally changes these kids' lives. Help them out if you can, and spread the word to your circle whether you can or you can't. This is something we can do for the global community rather than to it.

Howard Zinn, Truth-teller

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."
---H. L. Mencken

Howard Zinn, one of the historians of the "New Left" school--that's the category of historian into which we lumped him back in the days I was a Ph.D. student--has had a tremendous effect on me. I have come to regard him as one of the foremost truth-tellers among American historians, an intellectual and activist who inspires. Stumbling across the lead-in video a few days ago reminded me of how much I respect and admire this man. His best known work, A People's History of the United States, should be assigned to every survey course in American history taught in this country. Naturally, since it is an extended (and quite readable) version of the history of the American empire depicted in the video, it is not. However, you could do worse than spending some time simply reading Zinn randomly. Now in his '80s, he maintains an active speaking and writing life still telling the truth. Long may he thrive.

Obama Wimps Out Again

I cannot believe what I'm reading here. Now Obama is folding on the offshore drilling issue! A manufactured non-issue cooked up by a desperate campaign. What can possibly be in his mind? He's gonna cave to the pea-brains clambering for off-shore drilling who claim that it will lower gas prices in a matter of months? Yes, that's exactly what he's doing. Latest polls are showing about half of the electorate actually believes the nonsense the McCain people have put out on this issue. This is is just an indication of just how stupid half the electorate is, not a real issue. These are some of the same people who believe Obama is a Muslim. And Obama is going to reverse his position for the likes of these people?

He plays right into the hands of McCain and his soulless operatives with this move. It makes him look wishy-washy, which he is apparently, and they will be all over him for that, and at the same time he tacitly admits that McCain's bullshit has been correct all along. It makes him look weak, and worse, it makes him look like just another politician, not anyone special. Aren't they all just blown about by the prevailing breezes? Here I thought Obama could really make a difference, a guy with the courage to speak the truth, to state the hard facts, to be hard-nosed enough to stand up to slander and idiocy, who embraced the progressive position on the issues. Evidently he can't.

Moreover, he's showing himself to be vulnerable to the cheapest kind of nonsense the Republicans can cook up. The McCain campaign is actually gaining ground because its bogus smoke screen tactics are working. I thought Obama was above this. If this is the best Obama can do--an echo of what he said about McCain just a couple of days ago--I've had enough of it. What's happened to the issues in this race? Where did Iraq, health care, tax reform, economy, environment . . . where did they go? Maybe it's a good thing they're not talking about something substantial, or we'd have to witness Obama weasel on those too. This guy needs to stand up and fight back. How can he be such a wimp?

And all of this against the backdrop of the oil companies making the most obscene profits ever. They're beating the drums for more drilling naturally. They've already got us by the balls. And apparently at least half of us, including Barack Obama, are perfectly willing to help them squeeze.

A Few Good Billions

Is anybody else bothered by the fact that we taxpayers spend untold millions, if not billions of dollars, for the armed forces to advertise? What made me think of this was the slick ad that appeared on the screen before the movie the other day. "Army Strong" is the current Madison Avenue theme to entice young people into the ranks, where they will be taught to say, grunt, shout "hooah" at all occasions--esprit, ya know--and not incidentally, of course, be fed as human fodder into the maw of whatever war whatever commander-in-chief, even a dangerously deluded one like Bush, wants to send them. These campaigns are devised by the most talented ad agencies money can buy. And why not? Money is never an object to the military. It gushes from an unending spigot since neither Congress nor the American people, not to mention a president, have the intelligence or courage to question the billions upon billions upon hundreds of billions this country spends on "defense," one of the best examples of Orwellian speech our government has devised. The American military hasn't defended anything since the end of World War II except the right of corporations to operate without hinderence anywhere on the globe they choose.

We're such a bunch of unreflecting morons! Spineless sheep! We citizens who have it within our power (still, but maybe not for long) to determine the course this country takes. But we've gotten so dumb, so uninformed, so addicted to the consumption drug, we bow to the Defense Department god and give it everything it wants, we internalize its adverstising slogans, and we break out the flags at any and all military adventures the US launches. Meanwhile the country is falling down around us.

It's difficult to find out exactly what military advertising costs us. I tried the standard Google searches but couldn't turn anything up. Why shouldn't this be an easy number to come by? I did discover this interesting tidbit reporting that the Air Force is spending our money simply on advertising for itself. Got that? Not for recruits, simply for PR, so we, through our elected agents of capitalism, will give them even more millions. Well, somebody might object to this, but don't go betting a court anywhere is going to find anything wrong with it. We already live in a military state.

[And then there's recruiting in high schools, ROTC, and other intrusions of the military into the fabric of our lives. But that's for another day.]