Still haven't figured out why I can't sleep right, although I imagine my last post might have something to do with it. Ugh I was almost right too. Takes me two weeks of vacation just to rest up.
My friends are gone but its nice to have some silence around here. Getting some reading done, mostly Gandhi but also catching up on world affairs through financial magazines. Elections in Georgia, Thailand, and Kenya coming up, all big challenges for democracy (whatever that means). Although if elections there are anything like the circus we endure in the states modern democracy is less useful than a jar of pennies.
America's economy keeps looking weak, surprise surprise, the sub-prime crisis continues to hinder growth even though Bush says everything's cool. Are we in a whole shitload of trouble? Only time will tell but if the Dow Jones' apogee months ago was the equivalent of the dotcom boom, and the good times are already over and we are back in a recession cycle, watch out! The job market in real estate, retail, and construction have yet to realize the full toll. Rich people will continue to get richer as always, for the most part, even as we begin to pay $4 for gas (no lie, happened to me at a remote station on I-40 after a desolate stretch of craggy hills in California - where I happened to run out of gas, haha but got rescued by my convoy...hmmm I smell an analogy)
Just read an incredibly irresponsible story on CNN, claiming that Arizona's anti-immigration laws have been successful in driving out illegal immigrants; it cited no facts or figures but made many broad and audacious claims off of a culled selection of quotes. Did it tell us anything useful? No. Does America still eat up xenophobia like late night taco bell runs? Absolutely. Just give us the recipe to your margaritas, asadas and rotisserie chickens and then get the hell out. Uh, could you finish painting my porch first though?
Here's the link.
Although in my opinion I would way rather live in Mexico than this hypocritical, fearful nation. If not for my home state I would probably be long gone, looking for a country that doesn't bulldoze its traditions to build hideous strip malls and imposing fast food joints, and then wears an undersized t-shirt on its rancid, stretched belly that says: "We're #1!"
Think there's a reason democracy is in trouble? That middle America is more ignorant, fat, and lonely than the rest of the world but still pulls out the shirt with the BBQ stains on it in time to watch Lou Dobbs. Of course the sub-prime crisis hit, Americans are idiots about their money and are more than willing to spiral further and further into debt. Keep charging up your credit cards to put stuff under the tree, though, otherwise you're a bad parent and not in the spirit of Christmas.
Ohhhh man I am getting out of control. I'll post something nice later, I swear haha. I still like people, even when they insist on acting like assholes.
Shalom!
My friends are gone but its nice to have some silence around here. Getting some reading done, mostly Gandhi but also catching up on world affairs through financial magazines. Elections in Georgia, Thailand, and Kenya coming up, all big challenges for democracy (whatever that means). Although if elections there are anything like the circus we endure in the states modern democracy is less useful than a jar of pennies.
America's economy keeps looking weak, surprise surprise, the sub-prime crisis continues to hinder growth even though Bush says everything's cool. Are we in a whole shitload of trouble? Only time will tell but if the Dow Jones' apogee months ago was the equivalent of the dotcom boom, and the good times are already over and we are back in a recession cycle, watch out! The job market in real estate, retail, and construction have yet to realize the full toll. Rich people will continue to get richer as always, for the most part, even as we begin to pay $4 for gas (no lie, happened to me at a remote station on I-40 after a desolate stretch of craggy hills in California - where I happened to run out of gas, haha but got rescued by my convoy...hmmm I smell an analogy)
Just read an incredibly irresponsible story on CNN, claiming that Arizona's anti-immigration laws have been successful in driving out illegal immigrants; it cited no facts or figures but made many broad and audacious claims off of a culled selection of quotes. Did it tell us anything useful? No. Does America still eat up xenophobia like late night taco bell runs? Absolutely. Just give us the recipe to your margaritas, asadas and rotisserie chickens and then get the hell out. Uh, could you finish painting my porch first though?
Here's the link.
Although in my opinion I would way rather live in Mexico than this hypocritical, fearful nation. If not for my home state I would probably be long gone, looking for a country that doesn't bulldoze its traditions to build hideous strip malls and imposing fast food joints, and then wears an undersized t-shirt on its rancid, stretched belly that says: "We're #1!"
Think there's a reason democracy is in trouble? That middle America is more ignorant, fat, and lonely than the rest of the world but still pulls out the shirt with the BBQ stains on it in time to watch Lou Dobbs. Of course the sub-prime crisis hit, Americans are idiots about their money and are more than willing to spiral further and further into debt. Keep charging up your credit cards to put stuff under the tree, though, otherwise you're a bad parent and not in the spirit of Christmas.
Ohhhh man I am getting out of control. I'll post something nice later, I swear haha. I still like people, even when they insist on acting like assholes.
Shalom!
posted by Deadondres at 6:30 AM
1 Comments:
Never forget, democracy, in all its incarnations, is structured around “cyclic- ness”…(so what I invented a word, suck-it!). Jefferson knew this very well, and this is why he loved democracy: because like the human-condition Democracy evolves through mimesis and imitation. It copies itself, election-cycle after election-cycle. But each time the election and the rein of the elected changes, altering time and space, and thus the following election.
Mimicry and change is also the basis of what makes us human, human mutation, evolution, the way the mind learns through mirror neurons reflecting signifiers, but altering them slightly so that we may make each thought or own— an opinion forms...Democracy is made of the same stuff as humanity. (Demos just means “people”, Kratos “power”…Democracy = human power.) Jeffersonian democracy particularly is set up so that there is complete cycle; he affirmed a periodic revolution, “at least once every 20 years,” was “a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” –Jefferson. As opposed to Greek democracy, which cycled around Lottery, Turn-Taking, and evaluation or judgment…once again all cyclical processes, and Roman democracy, which was exactly like Greek democracy— a more polluted form— but incorporated hegemony and citizenship.
I read a book a while back called “After the Empire” by Emmanuel Todd. Now the book is almost five years old, but I still agree him, that Democracy has and will take many forms in the future and that we cannot expect all democracy to look the same. So cheers to those elections, no matter how bad they turn out because it is becoming more and more evident to me, that elections are not the democratic way anymore. The Greeks only used voting for policy-making, not for picking leaders. Rulers took turns ruling and afterwards, were judged in trial form for their actions, noble or not. Thank you Solon the Wise. He is the dead person I would like to meet.
That’s what I’m talking about….time to cycle-back babe.
Post a Comment
<< Home