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Post by midcan5 on Aug 15, 2016 12:12:43 GMT -5
Any Charles Bowden readers out there? If you get a chance read 'At the Peripheries of Violence and Desire'. Warning, Bowden is not for the faint of heart, you may find yourself changed. It appeared in Harper's Magazine 8/1998, one of the best magazines ever published. It is also in 'The Charles Bowden Reader'. Sexual violence - rape - is its topic and its complication. Read it, link below. If you are a libertarian or other free market fanatic check out his wring on Mexico and the workers. Their pay, their hours, their deaths, again stay away if you want to remain a naive free marketer. I loved his pieces on his pet rattlesnake Beulah or all the bats. harpers.org/archive/1998/08/torch-song-2/aeon.co/essays/in-memory-of-charles-bowden-a-writer-and-a-sensualist"He had the most interesting and original mind that I ever got to know well. It cut right through the conventional wisdom and surface veneer to the stark uncomfortable truth. His intellectual honesty compelled him to fully acknowledge the horrors and pointlessness of the human experiment in this world, but he never lost his sense of wonder or curiosity. Even as he catalogued the monstrous dystopias emerging from social and political collapse in Mexico, even as he prophesied the bleakest of futures for our ransacked planet, his love of life was undiminished – mainly because he could take such pleasure from the colour of a bird’s throat, the feel of a woman’s thigh under his fingertips, the rain falling like arrows on the desert as the sky convulsed in thunder." from essay above Books www.amazon.com/Charles-Bowden-Reader/dp/0292721986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8www.amazon.com/Murder-City-Ciudad-Economys-Killing/dp/1568586450/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8"Legalized drugs would cause dislocations in the US economy - the prison industry for example and tens of billions spent annually on drug enforcement. But because the US economy is so large, this would be a minor blow, hardly as severe as the ultimate nightmare for the US economy, global peace, which would shutter its death industry commonly called the military/industrial complex." Charles Bowden |
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Post by midcan5 on Sept 6, 2016 6:26:35 GMT -5
Another interesting read, although the author seems a bit naive, he presents a picture of the poor that crosses race and demonstrates how similar people are.
From 'Hillbilly Elegy' page 191-192
"President Obama came on the scene right as so many people in my community began to believe that the modern American meritocracy was not built for them. We know we're not doing well. We see it every day: in the obituaries for teenage kids that conspicuously omit the cause of death (reading between the lines: overdose), in the deadbeats we watch our daughters waste their time with. Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren't. He wears' suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we're lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn't be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it-not because we think she's wrong but because we know she's right.
Many try to blame the anger and cynicism of working-class whites on misinformation. Admittedly, there is an industry of conspiracy-mongers and fringe lunatics writing about all manner of idiocy, from Obamas alleged religious leanings to his ancestry.
But every major news organization, even the oft-maligned Fox News, has always told the truth about Obamas citizenship status and religious views. The people I know are well aware of what the major news organizations have to say about the issue; they simply don't believe them. Only 6 percent of American voters believe that the media is "very trustworthy.'?! To many of us, the free press-that bulwark of American democracy-is simply full of shit.
With little trust in the press, there's no check on the Internet conspiracy theories that rule the digital world. Barack Obama is a foreign alien actively trying to destroy our country. Everything the media tells us is a lie. Many in the white working class believe the worst about their society. Here's a small sample of emails or messages I've seen from friends or family:
- From right-wing radio talker Alex Jones on the ten year anniversary of 9/11, a documentary about the "unanswered question" of the terrorist attacks, suggesting that the U.S. government played a role in the massacre of its own people.
- From an email chain, a story that the Obamacare legislation requires microchip implantation in new health care patients. This story carries extra bite because of the religious implications: Many believe that the End Times "mark of the beast" foretold in biblical prophecy will be an electronic device. Multiple friends warned others about this threat via social media.
- From the popular website WorldNetDaily, an editorial suggesting that the Newtown gun massacre was engineered by the federal government to turn public opinion on gun control measures."
'Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis' by J. D. Vance
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Post by midcan5 on Nov 26, 2016 6:48:13 GMT -5
Most of the information today is BS when it isn't outright lies. Wealthy ideologues like the control their media organizations give them over a flock of the uneducated. This stuff has gone on since America's founding and it's history is outlined in 'White Trash' by Nancy Isenberg. Another book by a woman that covers the changes since the New Deal is 'Invisible Hands' by Kim Phillips-Fein. Funny how women appear so much in tune with the control the wealthy have over the weak. Hillary hatred had its source in this insecurity. You read these men? boys? online, looking to Donald as their savior to make them great too. Kinda sad really. Isn't it an American meme that you make it on your own? Example of wealth spending linked below. www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Washington_Examinerwww.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Philip_F._Anschutz"...In his classic study of mid 19th century American labor, Norman Ware observes that the imposition of industrial capitalism and its values 'was repugnant to an astonishingly large section of the earlier American community'. The primary reason was 'the decline of the industrial worker as a person', the 'degradation' and 'psychological change' that followed from the 'loss of dignity and independence' and of democratic rights and freedoms. These reactions were vividly expressed in the working class literature, often by women, who played a prominent role despite their subordination in the general society." Introduction Alex Carey 'Taking The Risk Out Of Democracy' |
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Post by midcan5 on Nov 30, 2016 16:59:43 GMT -5
Another rural writer worth a read.
"Will Trump make America great again? The question is absurd. The real question is this: when was the country great, and for whom? In the not-so-distant past, it was certainly better for union members who could earn a living, for educators whose jobs were not tied to test scores, for anyone who worked in manufacturing. The country is better now for people of color, for gays and lesbians, for women, and for the disabled. This progress has been grotesquely misinterpreted to mean that the country is worse for white people. Such thinking is false logic. One does not rule out the other. Straight white men, especially those who have inherited family fortunes, are doing just fine in America. The problem is that some of them are trying to ruin it for the rest of us." By Chris Offutt
'IN THE HOLLOW, The changing face of Appalachia — and its role in the presidential race' Harper’s Magazine / November 2016
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Post by midcan5 on Jan 31, 2017 7:46:42 GMT -5
Reading to help understand these times. 'The Making of Donald Trump' by David Cay Johnston 'The Gilded Rage: A Wild Ride Through Donald Trump's America' by Alexander Zaitchik "One of the hardest parts in this election cycle has been separating the human media parasite that is Donald Trump from some of his more humble supporters." Amazon reviewer comment 'The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election' by Malcolm Nance "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" Jane Mayer 'Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal' Kim Phillips-Fein 'To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party' by Heather Cox Richardson 'The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government' by Mike Lofgren 'The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted' by Mike Lofgren "Strangers in Their Own Land - Anger and Mourning on the American Right" Arlie Russell Hochschild thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land |
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