"It is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to
elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing
supernatural characteristics akin to those of a god." - khrushchev, reacting to stalin's attempt to deify himself as a god-emperor.
stalin did not seek to abolish religion so much as he sought to create a new religion of russian nationalism, with himself as the titular head.
near the end, he demanded that russian citizens say prayers to his images. he oversaw a massive campaign to replace images of jesus with images of himself. orthodox christians would not just have their icons seized - they would also be given replacement icons that had stalin's likeness on them. and, they would be expected to pray on a schedule, just like the church had them pray.
meet the new god: same as the old god.
you want to understand this most easily through the prism of animal farm. we've all read this. we all get the idea that the socialists became capitalists. in the process, they became religionists, too.
this is an example of a prayer to stalin that was said by russian workers over their icons:
O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples,
Thou who broughtest man to birth.
Thou who fructifies the earth,
Thou who restorest to centuries,
Thou who makest bloom the spring,
Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords...
Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,
Sun reflected by millions of hearts.
so, you want to avoid this argument that stalin was an atheist. he really wasn't.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
also, i've been clear on this point since high school: all grammar is statist mind control and must be violently resisted. if i had an editor, we would get into fist fights. it' not even apathy. it's active resistance.
at
18:24
may 28, 2014
o'reilly is legitimately standing at the end of a long line of human thought, but it doesn't necessarily have to do with religion. the crux of what o'reilly is saying is that people won't behave properly unless they have a fear of consequence. because o'reilly also wants small government, he pushes it off to a higher power to enforce the threat of consequence. but, there's a lot of problems with the whole approach.
to begin with, just because bill wants the bad guys to believe they're going to have to deal with god doesn't mean they're going to. because religion is so counter-intuitive, in order for it to really work as a disincentive it needs to be enforced from the top - by government, maybe, as was done by various christian churches in the past and is still enforced in islamic theocracies, or maybe by media, as is done more viably in the united states. so, it's just a hobbesian argument, in the end - and nothing to do with religion, itself.
but, what's worse is that a really moral person doesn't require the consequence. if you're only behaving because of the threat of consequence, you're not truly moral. his ends really don't follow from his strategy.
dawkins seems to generally realize that he's often debating with social engineers, rather than legitimately religious people. whatever sort of self-constraints he imposes on himself tend to neutralize his arguments. i wish he'd engage his opponents on the level they truly exist on, rather than the level they pretend they exist on.
o'reilly's argument here is actually a type of vulgar marxism.
i should actually clarify, because that term has been co-opted. when i use the term "vulgar marxism", what i refer to is when capitalists use marxist ideas in order to promote a capitalist agenda.
so, what o'reilly is saying is that he agrees with the marxist insight that religion is a tool of social control. he's then arguing that we need religion for precisely that reason.
i, on the other hand, am following through with the deconstruction.
dawkins understands this. he knows o'reilly is full of shit. but, he bites his tongue. and he does this all of the time. it drives me nuts.
o'reilly is legitimately standing at the end of a long line of human thought, but it doesn't necessarily have to do with religion. the crux of what o'reilly is saying is that people won't behave properly unless they have a fear of consequence. because o'reilly also wants small government, he pushes it off to a higher power to enforce the threat of consequence. but, there's a lot of problems with the whole approach.
to begin with, just because bill wants the bad guys to believe they're going to have to deal with god doesn't mean they're going to. because religion is so counter-intuitive, in order for it to really work as a disincentive it needs to be enforced from the top - by government, maybe, as was done by various christian churches in the past and is still enforced in islamic theocracies, or maybe by media, as is done more viably in the united states. so, it's just a hobbesian argument, in the end - and nothing to do with religion, itself.
but, what's worse is that a really moral person doesn't require the consequence. if you're only behaving because of the threat of consequence, you're not truly moral. his ends really don't follow from his strategy.
dawkins seems to generally realize that he's often debating with social engineers, rather than legitimately religious people. whatever sort of self-constraints he imposes on himself tend to neutralize his arguments. i wish he'd engage his opponents on the level they truly exist on, rather than the level they pretend they exist on.
o'reilly's argument here is actually a type of vulgar marxism.
i should actually clarify, because that term has been co-opted. when i use the term "vulgar marxism", what i refer to is when capitalists use marxist ideas in order to promote a capitalist agenda.
so, what o'reilly is saying is that he agrees with the marxist insight that religion is a tool of social control. he's then arguing that we need religion for precisely that reason.
i, on the other hand, am following through with the deconstruction.
dawkins understands this. he knows o'reilly is full of shit. but, he bites his tongue. and he does this all of the time. it drives me nuts.
at
18:22
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
this is a nice surprise...
he seems to be spending a lot of time working this record out. the original release date was late 1999.
he didn't release what he wanted. he didn't get the response that he wanted. i've commented previously that the whole process seems to have broken him, and he just hasn't been the same since.
revisiting this and working it through may take some more time. he shouldn't be rushed. let him do it.
but i'm probably letting on that i'm building some expectations, too. i'm fully cognizant of why he needs to do this - and why he knows it.
he seems to be spending a lot of time working this record out. the original release date was late 1999.
he didn't release what he wanted. he didn't get the response that he wanted. i've commented previously that the whole process seems to have broken him, and he just hasn't been the same since.
revisiting this and working it through may take some more time. he shouldn't be rushed. let him do it.
but i'm probably letting on that i'm building some expectations, too. i'm fully cognizant of why he needs to do this - and why he knows it.
at
16:33
it's the same thing with organized religion. my language towards religion is pretty violent, and if you're not paying close enough attention you might conclude that i'm some kind of evil nihilist or something. but, i think that religion should be abolished precisely because i think that it's evil - and that it makes us evil, in turn.
the point of abolishing religion is that it will eliminate a deeply immoral source of powerful coercion. i'm arguing that abolishing religion will make people less immoral.
so, not only am i not a nihilist, but i'm rejecting nietzsche's premise that the death of god will make us horrible. no. i think the death of god will make us more rational, and that will in turn make us better. god is the problem, not the solution.
the point of abolishing religion is that it will eliminate a deeply immoral source of powerful coercion. i'm arguing that abolishing religion will make people less immoral.
so, not only am i not a nihilist, but i'm rejecting nietzsche's premise that the death of god will make us horrible. no. i think the death of god will make us more rational, and that will in turn make us better. god is the problem, not the solution.
at
12:56
put another way, my interpretation of anarchism is not that people
should be left free to lie, but that the infrastructure of the state
should not be used to protect liars from the mob under the guise of
"individual rights". that process of censure should be allowed to
proceed, however violent it may or may not be.
right libertarians tend to get this backwards. they think that if you take the state out of the equation then there is nothing preventing them from lying for whatever profit or aim. they fail to realize that the status quo is such that the state actually protects them from the consequence of lying by erecting an immunity through rights legislation, and that if you take away these statist protections then they will have to face the consequences of their actions - which may be quite grim.
right libertarians tend to get this backwards. they think that if you take the state out of the equation then there is nothing preventing them from lying for whatever profit or aim. they fail to realize that the status quo is such that the state actually protects them from the consequence of lying by erecting an immunity through rights legislation, and that if you take away these statist protections then they will have to face the consequences of their actions - which may be quite grim.
at
11:05
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
i just want to quickly clarify my views on hate speech legislation and laws around speech, in general.
1) laws where the government orders that people cease communication are statist and authoritarian and bad. that's unconstitutional on both sides of the great lakes. the state should never dictate what can and cannot be said. ever.
2) but, remedies for libel and defamation are neither statist nor authoritarian, but ways to correct rights abuses. freedom of speech always comes with the caveat of being liable for the consequence of that speech. it never means that you can say what you want without further consideration. put another way, the freedom to speak comes with the obligation of speaking responsibly. i am consequently in full and enthusiastic support of civil and common law action. the canadian legal system seems to be far more willing to award damages than the american system is; i am more in agreement with canadian jurisprudence than i am with american jurisprudence.
so, to me, the proper anarchist rights balance is that the government ought to have essentially no say in the matter of banning or allowing speech, but that people should be hit brutally with harsh financial punishments and crippling boycotts when they behave dishonestly. it is through civil litigation that people should police themselves on this manner.
this is only going to appear as a contradiction to people that wish to profit off of lies. society has a right to protect itself from this, even as it rejects statist interference.
1) laws where the government orders that people cease communication are statist and authoritarian and bad. that's unconstitutional on both sides of the great lakes. the state should never dictate what can and cannot be said. ever.
2) but, remedies for libel and defamation are neither statist nor authoritarian, but ways to correct rights abuses. freedom of speech always comes with the caveat of being liable for the consequence of that speech. it never means that you can say what you want without further consideration. put another way, the freedom to speak comes with the obligation of speaking responsibly. i am consequently in full and enthusiastic support of civil and common law action. the canadian legal system seems to be far more willing to award damages than the american system is; i am more in agreement with canadian jurisprudence than i am with american jurisprudence.
so, to me, the proper anarchist rights balance is that the government ought to have essentially no say in the matter of banning or allowing speech, but that people should be hit brutally with harsh financial punishments and crippling boycotts when they behave dishonestly. it is through civil litigation that people should police themselves on this manner.
this is only going to appear as a contradiction to people that wish to profit off of lies. society has a right to protect itself from this, even as it rejects statist interference.
at
10:54
May 23, 2014
i just watched a little report on the national about how the robocall scandal never happened, and it was just blown out of proportion by the media. this was filmed after the government came out with a report indicating that they couldn't find evidence of the claims.
well, that's government investigating government, and i have reason to believe it's being covered up. how much of an effect it actually had is a more complicated question that i can't begin to try and answer.
however, i was working for one of the robocall firms on election day. it was a small office out of a tall building on elgin street in ottawa. i initially started working there doing opinion surveys as a student, but i found myself going back there between jobs because they were happy to have me back. i happen to have been rather good at getting people to answer the surveys (i guess it's a combination of being interesting enough to not hang up on and being a good troll), which is an obscure and sought after talent.
anyways, the nature of the firm changed over the five or so years i was in and out of it. they were initially doing overflow for ekos or doing a lot of government of canada surveys. over time, they started doing more and more surveys for conservative political candidates. for the last several months leading up to the election, they were pretty much campaigning for the conservative party.
some of the polls were pretty straight forward - which candidate in your riding do you support, followed by some demographics about age and income. some of them were a little less straight forward, and i had caught on that something was not right by the end of it.
for example, they were polling in helena guergis' riding, but they weren't refreshing the numbers. so, you'd have people calling the same numbers over and over again, supposedly on behalf of helena guergis. that's a good way to piss people off so that they don't want to vote for helena guergis, which is what the cpc wanted at the time.
i was taken off the phone on election day to do data entry, but i do distinctly recall the *owner* of the firm periodically repeating - and it was of the utmost importance to him - to NOT tell people there was a change in the riding, because the information was false. i didn't put it together at the time, but it seems like he was actually NOT wanting to commit voter fraud, no doubt to try and protect his business' reputation.
holinshed closed it's doors almost immediately after the election and has not resurfaced since.
the people on the phone were not robots, although they may have sounded like robots from time to time.
i just watched a little report on the national about how the robocall scandal never happened, and it was just blown out of proportion by the media. this was filmed after the government came out with a report indicating that they couldn't find evidence of the claims.
well, that's government investigating government, and i have reason to believe it's being covered up. how much of an effect it actually had is a more complicated question that i can't begin to try and answer.
however, i was working for one of the robocall firms on election day. it was a small office out of a tall building on elgin street in ottawa. i initially started working there doing opinion surveys as a student, but i found myself going back there between jobs because they were happy to have me back. i happen to have been rather good at getting people to answer the surveys (i guess it's a combination of being interesting enough to not hang up on and being a good troll), which is an obscure and sought after talent.
anyways, the nature of the firm changed over the five or so years i was in and out of it. they were initially doing overflow for ekos or doing a lot of government of canada surveys. over time, they started doing more and more surveys for conservative political candidates. for the last several months leading up to the election, they were pretty much campaigning for the conservative party.
some of the polls were pretty straight forward - which candidate in your riding do you support, followed by some demographics about age and income. some of them were a little less straight forward, and i had caught on that something was not right by the end of it.
for example, they were polling in helena guergis' riding, but they weren't refreshing the numbers. so, you'd have people calling the same numbers over and over again, supposedly on behalf of helena guergis. that's a good way to piss people off so that they don't want to vote for helena guergis, which is what the cpc wanted at the time.
i was taken off the phone on election day to do data entry, but i do distinctly recall the *owner* of the firm periodically repeating - and it was of the utmost importance to him - to NOT tell people there was a change in the riding, because the information was false. i didn't put it together at the time, but it seems like he was actually NOT wanting to commit voter fraud, no doubt to try and protect his business' reputation.
holinshed closed it's doors almost immediately after the election and has not resurfaced since.
the people on the phone were not robots, although they may have sounded like robots from time to time.
at
10:35
May 16, 2014
if you accept all (or some) of the reasons that states are inherently corrupt and driven by the interests of those that control them (capital, today), how can you be so naive as to think that international law will ever be upheld for any reason?
fucking liberals.
can somebody give me ONE example where an empire said "gee, we shouldn't invade this area and steal it's resources. it's written here in international law."
one?
no?
didn't think so.
law requires enforcement. that's how it is. and who polices the police?
so, instead of flailing around these worthless pieces of paper, i propose that we collectively grasp the situation, realize this order has failed us, throw the laws nobody follows out the window and start building a new order instead.
if you accept all (or some) of the reasons that states are inherently corrupt and driven by the interests of those that control them (capital, today), how can you be so naive as to think that international law will ever be upheld for any reason?
fucking liberals.
can somebody give me ONE example where an empire said "gee, we shouldn't invade this area and steal it's resources. it's written here in international law."
one?
no?
didn't think so.
law requires enforcement. that's how it is. and who polices the police?
so, instead of flailing around these worthless pieces of paper, i propose that we collectively grasp the situation, realize this order has failed us, throw the laws nobody follows out the window and start building a new order instead.
at
09:32
may 16, 2014
it's really pretty sad just what level of effort people perceive is being put into this. the writing in this profile is largely stream of consciousness. i'll go back to correct spelling or modify sentence structures to eliminate underlying assumptions in the writing that only make sense to me, but what you're reading here is otherwise completely raw.
so, how do you approach somebody accusing you of using a thesaurus? this is shit i'm pumping out in a few minutes per post. so, when the false assumptions are stripped out, that must be a suggestion that i have an advanced vocabulary, which i actually think is not at all true - i think it's obvious that i graduated high school and have read a few books since but i wouldn't suggest that much beyond that stands out in what i'm presenting here. nor would i want it to. i fucking hate pretentious blowhards. here's a startling fact: over the approximately ten years that i spent in university i went to zero parties and made zero friends that i stayed in contact with outside of the scholastic context. the hate was really mutual, actually. it wasn't somewhere i fit into. at all.
for the first few years, i greatly preferred hanging out in the projects near my parents house, with dropouts and hustlers. then i spent a few years hanging out with street artists and ravers, followed by a few years of complete lonerism and then a few years with occupy kids before i went back to being a complete loner. i've never been or ever wanted to be the elitist educated kid. that's really a very bad way to interpret this. yet, it is also unfortunately a very bad reflection of the public education system when somebody of no meaningfully advanced education that is just scrawling out thoughts as they come up is viewed as writing carefully presented essays and agonizing over every word in them...
i always knew i would be fucking miserable in the life of an academic, but i was balancing it off against other ways to be fucking miserable. in hindsight? i regret wasting my time with it. but, i can't say i ever had a lot of choice: the alternative that was presented to me was pretty shitty, too.
there were several years when taking student loan money was literally the only way that i could pay my rent, because i wasn't able to get a job in a coffee shop or fast food restaurant.
"so, why did you go to graduate school?"
"because mcdonald's wouldn't call me back. white, unfortunately."
"oh."
"the rent just keeps coming, y'know? every fucking month. never stops. the student loans are a steady pay check for somebody that can't find work."
"why not just try welfare?"
"well, that would be better. i could do what i want instead of studying shit i don't care about. but, welfare is something like half of student loan money. it's not enough to pay the bastards. if it was, i'd go for it."
"oh. disability?"
"well, i don't have one, far as i can tell."
today, i do live on disability. but the diagnosis is pretty weak. it's something i have to do this summer, actually - get a better diagnosis. i don't know what fits best. schizophrenia. bi polar. something like that....
TheVanillatech
3 Oct 2014
Why? I know 4 months but why?
jessica
3 Oct 2014
+TheVanillatech
this post was to google, rather than youtube. it's just all cross-posted.
TheVanillatech
3 Oct 2014
+deathtokoalas
Still, why..... XD
jessica
3 Oct 2014
+TheVanillatech
i've been posting a lot to google over the last few months. i guess i have an internet addiction; before i was posting to google, i was posting to facebook, and before that i was all over the cbc (canadian state run media), and before that i was all over mailing lists and newsgroups...
but i've moved to youtube in an attempt to promote the music i've been spending more time with over the last few months.
i'm constantly being accused of being one of them no good book lerners. i've had dozens of people accuse me of sitting in front of my laptop with thesaurus.com open.
it's ridiculous. and false. but interesting. just reflecting.
(edit: feb 11, 2016…
re that last re-post.
the flip side of what some people call white privilege is an equally valid concept that one could refer to as white obligation. not the white man's burden, that's not what i mean...
never mind that i'm not really actually white. it's less than 50%, anyways. but i look white, so i'm stuck with this annoying white obligation whether i like it or not.
what white obligation states is that i'm not allowed to be an economic loser - i have an obligation to take my place in a hierarchy and live up to a set of contrived expectations. it doesn't matter that i don't at all care or have any remote interest in climbing up any kind of hierarchy. it doesn't matter that i'd rather invest my energy towards economically useless behaviour. due to my skin colour, i'm basically forbidden to work a shitty job. i'm expected to go to university and get a middle class job that i don't care about, whether i like it or not. a life of apathy and low-investment labour is verbotten, as it is beneath me on the hierarchy of expectations. so, mcdonalds will not call me back, no matter how many times i apply (and i've applied many times). further, economists and politicians will then claim that i do not want to work at mcdonalds - because i'm too privileged.
the system will allow me to take out absurdly large loans, and then place me on disability when i fail out of disinterest. but, it will not allow me to work below my racial potential. and, for me, that's equally enslaving.
i've come to care less and less as i've aged. but, i'm at the point where i no longer remotely care. if the system tried to force me into some kind of workfare, i'd walk into work drunk, spit in the boss' face, urinate on the cash register - it would be horrific. but, there was a time when i was happy enough to work a crappy job - if i'd only be allowed to.
it was the emotional investment and time expenditure required to hold a middle class job that i strenuously rejected.)
it's really pretty sad just what level of effort people perceive is being put into this. the writing in this profile is largely stream of consciousness. i'll go back to correct spelling or modify sentence structures to eliminate underlying assumptions in the writing that only make sense to me, but what you're reading here is otherwise completely raw.
so, how do you approach somebody accusing you of using a thesaurus? this is shit i'm pumping out in a few minutes per post. so, when the false assumptions are stripped out, that must be a suggestion that i have an advanced vocabulary, which i actually think is not at all true - i think it's obvious that i graduated high school and have read a few books since but i wouldn't suggest that much beyond that stands out in what i'm presenting here. nor would i want it to. i fucking hate pretentious blowhards. here's a startling fact: over the approximately ten years that i spent in university i went to zero parties and made zero friends that i stayed in contact with outside of the scholastic context. the hate was really mutual, actually. it wasn't somewhere i fit into. at all.
for the first few years, i greatly preferred hanging out in the projects near my parents house, with dropouts and hustlers. then i spent a few years hanging out with street artists and ravers, followed by a few years of complete lonerism and then a few years with occupy kids before i went back to being a complete loner. i've never been or ever wanted to be the elitist educated kid. that's really a very bad way to interpret this. yet, it is also unfortunately a very bad reflection of the public education system when somebody of no meaningfully advanced education that is just scrawling out thoughts as they come up is viewed as writing carefully presented essays and agonizing over every word in them...
i always knew i would be fucking miserable in the life of an academic, but i was balancing it off against other ways to be fucking miserable. in hindsight? i regret wasting my time with it. but, i can't say i ever had a lot of choice: the alternative that was presented to me was pretty shitty, too.
there were several years when taking student loan money was literally the only way that i could pay my rent, because i wasn't able to get a job in a coffee shop or fast food restaurant.
"so, why did you go to graduate school?"
"because mcdonald's wouldn't call me back. white, unfortunately."
"oh."
"the rent just keeps coming, y'know? every fucking month. never stops. the student loans are a steady pay check for somebody that can't find work."
"why not just try welfare?"
"well, that would be better. i could do what i want instead of studying shit i don't care about. but, welfare is something like half of student loan money. it's not enough to pay the bastards. if it was, i'd go for it."
"oh. disability?"
"well, i don't have one, far as i can tell."
today, i do live on disability. but the diagnosis is pretty weak. it's something i have to do this summer, actually - get a better diagnosis. i don't know what fits best. schizophrenia. bi polar. something like that....
TheVanillatech
3 Oct 2014
Why? I know 4 months but why?
jessica
3 Oct 2014
+TheVanillatech
this post was to google, rather than youtube. it's just all cross-posted.
TheVanillatech
3 Oct 2014
+deathtokoalas
Still, why..... XD
jessica
3 Oct 2014
+TheVanillatech
i've been posting a lot to google over the last few months. i guess i have an internet addiction; before i was posting to google, i was posting to facebook, and before that i was all over the cbc (canadian state run media), and before that i was all over mailing lists and newsgroups...
but i've moved to youtube in an attempt to promote the music i've been spending more time with over the last few months.
i'm constantly being accused of being one of them no good book lerners. i've had dozens of people accuse me of sitting in front of my laptop with thesaurus.com open.
it's ridiculous. and false. but interesting. just reflecting.
(edit: feb 11, 2016…
re that last re-post.
the flip side of what some people call white privilege is an equally valid concept that one could refer to as white obligation. not the white man's burden, that's not what i mean...
never mind that i'm not really actually white. it's less than 50%, anyways. but i look white, so i'm stuck with this annoying white obligation whether i like it or not.
what white obligation states is that i'm not allowed to be an economic loser - i have an obligation to take my place in a hierarchy and live up to a set of contrived expectations. it doesn't matter that i don't at all care or have any remote interest in climbing up any kind of hierarchy. it doesn't matter that i'd rather invest my energy towards economically useless behaviour. due to my skin colour, i'm basically forbidden to work a shitty job. i'm expected to go to university and get a middle class job that i don't care about, whether i like it or not. a life of apathy and low-investment labour is verbotten, as it is beneath me on the hierarchy of expectations. so, mcdonalds will not call me back, no matter how many times i apply (and i've applied many times). further, economists and politicians will then claim that i do not want to work at mcdonalds - because i'm too privileged.
the system will allow me to take out absurdly large loans, and then place me on disability when i fail out of disinterest. but, it will not allow me to work below my racial potential. and, for me, that's equally enslaving.
i've come to care less and less as i've aged. but, i'm at the point where i no longer remotely care. if the system tried to force me into some kind of workfare, i'd walk into work drunk, spit in the boss' face, urinate on the cash register - it would be horrific. but, there was a time when i was happy enough to work a crappy job - if i'd only be allowed to.
it was the emotional investment and time expenditure required to hold a middle class job that i strenuously rejected.)
at
09:00
it seems as though "do it for views" has become a kind of politically correct way to accuse somebody of being a sellout. what you're avoiding is accusing somebody of doing something for money.
just be honest. nobody cares about views. nobody does a damned fucking thing for views.
just be honest. nobody cares about views. nobody does a damned fucking thing for views.
at
06:23
i've explained this before, so i'll just do it briefly here as the transition approaches.
was obama a good president or a bad president? what is his legacy? they get you in the frame, and you need to answer. you don't think he was that bad, so you say good.
i propose neither. that he was inconsequential. and that he'll end up smack dab in the middle of the "nobody remembers" pile.
he has produced no independent foreign policy; he just carried on with bush'. he has produced no meaningful domestic policy that will outlive him. he just held the office for a few years. the correct term for this is caretaker president.
but, here's another thought: this may be a characteristic of this period of late capitalism that we may be exiting. i'd say the same thing about stephen harper and david cameron and angela merkel. that's what we've had over the last ten years: these bureaucratic "moderate conservatives" that have just held to power without using it.
that's changing. i don't want to give trump a chance: he will be a bad president, i think that is obvious, although good or bad is obviously subjective and we may look at the same policy and come to different conclusions. history also has somewhat of a lorentz factor to consider; the chinese have famously claimed that it's still too soon to analyze the outcome of the french revolution. but, there are changes happening in britain, too. as well as in canada.
we don't know what follows "late capitalism". marx & hegel were wrong: history does not unfold in a final cause. it could be a return to feudalism. we could be entering a period of civil war.
but, this is obama's legacy - he's a footnote to history in an era that is a footnote to history.
was obama a good president or a bad president? what is his legacy? they get you in the frame, and you need to answer. you don't think he was that bad, so you say good.
i propose neither. that he was inconsequential. and that he'll end up smack dab in the middle of the "nobody remembers" pile.
he has produced no independent foreign policy; he just carried on with bush'. he has produced no meaningful domestic policy that will outlive him. he just held the office for a few years. the correct term for this is caretaker president.
but, here's another thought: this may be a characteristic of this period of late capitalism that we may be exiting. i'd say the same thing about stephen harper and david cameron and angela merkel. that's what we've had over the last ten years: these bureaucratic "moderate conservatives" that have just held to power without using it.
that's changing. i don't want to give trump a chance: he will be a bad president, i think that is obvious, although good or bad is obviously subjective and we may look at the same policy and come to different conclusions. history also has somewhat of a lorentz factor to consider; the chinese have famously claimed that it's still too soon to analyze the outcome of the french revolution. but, there are changes happening in britain, too. as well as in canada.
we don't know what follows "late capitalism". marx & hegel were wrong: history does not unfold in a final cause. it could be a return to feudalism. we could be entering a period of civil war.
but, this is obama's legacy - he's a footnote to history in an era that is a footnote to history.
at
03:14
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