Figure 0.1. The Adventures of Dasein:
From the Origins of Language to the End of Print Literacy in the United States
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History without philosophy
History
without philosophy is only a screen on which to project the shibboleths
of our time. Thinking must first emancipate itself from the Cartesian
myth--the ontological presupposition of the Cartesian self and its
associated rhetorical elements of consciousness, belief, motive,
ideology, and interest. Failure to do so has the effect, a
priori, of blocking conceptualization of questions of ontology, agency,
intentionality, habitus, action networks and networks of power, and
context.
This site began as an attempt to advance an analysis of the historical
trajectory: the New Deal to Donald Trump, but the events of the second
decade of the 21st century, when viewed through the lens provided by The Social Origins of Language,
forced me to see that there was a bigger picture. This bigger
picture is represented by Figure 0. From the Origins of Language to the
End of Print Literacy in the United States.
"Trump"
forces us to face the question of our primate heritage (and its
corrolary, patrimonialism), on the one hand, and the fragility of
print-based civilization, on the other.
Taking into account
the major perspectives on the development of
language and cognition, and applying these results and methodologies to
the cognitive-discursive performativities of "school", "politics", and
the "media," we are led to a chilling conclusion: we are now
living through the disintegration of the cognitive-discursive
performativities associated with the biocultural niche of
modernity. As catastrophes go, this one--the disintegration of
the biocultural niche of modernity--is a whole order of magnitude
greater than the catastrophe known as the Great Depression of 1929-1941.
What
is happening now is beyond the cognitive scope of current
popular and much scholarly thought, which is economistic in character and Cartesian in its
metaphysical presuppositions.
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In the beginning . . .
from Imanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (A 51/B 75) p. 107 (Hackett Publishing Co., 1996):
Thoughts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.
from Eckart Förster, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy: a Systematic Reconstruction (Harvard, 2012)
.
. . concepts have their basis in functions, by which Kant understands
“the unity of the act of bringing various representations under one
common representaton.” (A68). A concept is a rule for combining
certain representations (and thus also a principle for excluding
certain others).
To make concepts out
of representations one must be able to compare, to reflect, and to
abstract, for these three logical operations of the understanding are
the essential and universal conditions for the generation of every
concept whatsoever.
from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (462):
In place of "sociology," a theory of the forms of domination.
In place of "society," the culture complex . . .
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From the Origins of Language to the End of Print Literacy in the United States:
the disintegration of
the biocultural niche of modernity
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fascism today
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This site is a rhizome.
This site is a rhizome.
Its principle of production is transcendental empiricism.
It uses figurative elements, including graphs, tables, charts,
and maps:
It assembles phenomenological bundles (the phenomenological bundle named fascism, for example) and identifies elementary particles (the elementry particle names Lacan-Atwater signifying chain).
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from Inka Mülder-Bach, "Introduction" to Siegfried Kracauer, The Salaried Masses: Duty amd Distraction in Weimar Germany (Verso, 1998), p. 15.
.
. . now theory forfeits its hierarchically privileged position in
relation to empirical material. It infiltrates the surface, so to
speak, manifesting itself in the way the tessera of the 'mosaic' are
cut and in the interstices left between them. . . . this
conceptual language misses precisely what matters crucially to
Kracauer: the details of the situations, their complexity, the
perspectives of their agents . . . His investigation, therefore,
refrains from formulating its insight in a conceptual language removed
from its material. . . Knowledge of the material's significance
becomes the principle of its textual representation, so that the
representation itself articulates the theory.
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from Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke University Press, 2007)
. . . the primary ontological unit is not independent objects
with independently determinate boundaries and properties but rather
what Bohr terms 'phenomena.' . . . phenomena do not merely mark
the epistemological inseperability of observer and observed, or the
results of measurement; rather, phenomena are the ontological
inseperability of agentially intra-acting components. . . .
phenomena are not mere laboratory creations but basic units of
reality. The shift from a metaphysics of things to phenomena
makes an enormous difference in understanding the nature of science and
ontological, epistemological, and ethical issues more generally.
33
.
. . the primary ontological units are not 'things' but
phenomena--dynamic topological
reconfigurings/entanglements/relationalities/(re)articulations of the
world. And the primary semantic units are not 'words' but
material-discursive practices through which (ontic and semantic)
boundaries are constituted. This dynamic is agency. 141
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Figure 1b. The UAW-Unity Caucus, 1933-1943:
Intersubjectivity, Shared Intentionality, and the Extended Mind
Bildungsproletarians and Plebeian Upstarts
the UAW, 1933-1943: a working notebook
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a. KE network
Figure 1a. Intersubjectivity, Shared Intentionality, and the Extended Mind:
the Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State
Source: "Membership List, May 1927" in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library,
and The United States Government Manual 1937. Also: the Papers of John M. Carmody
The Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State: Career Matrix
For context see Elites: Strategic and Otherwise
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elementary particles
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
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phenomenological bundles
".
. . now theory forfeits its hierarchically privileged position in
relation to empirical material"
| three elementary particles
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I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” an employee of the
Federal prison in the Florida Panhandle said. “I thought he was going
to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting. (emphasis added)
2. from Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (Yale, 2004):
The
hatred and terror that drove people to such violence were shaped by
social tensions and religious beliefs, but the passions themselves
derived from deeply rooted fantasies, extravagent in their evocation of
demonic lovers and Satanic revels. These fantasies shared, for
the most part, a standard structure and a similar set of primary
themes. p. 7
3. from
Wikipedia:
(Lee
Atwater's Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy)
As a member of the
Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an
anonymous interview to political scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of
the interview was printed in Lamis's book The Two-Party South, then
reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name
revealed. . . . Atwater talked about the Republican Southern Strategy
and Ronald Reagan's version of it:
Atwater:
As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others
put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have
been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don't have to do
that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in
place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 and that's fiscal
conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole
cluster.
Questioner:
But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter
and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal
services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater:
You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you
can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like
forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so
abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these
things you're talking about are totally economic things and a by-product
of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously
maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if
it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away
with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because
obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more
abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract
than "Nigger, nigger."
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a phenomenological bundle
the Mob at the Capitol, January 6, 2021:
This
is part of a larger sample that was the basis for
discussions between PF and RB that led to a series of
reconceptualizations, methodological as well as substantive, and is
provided so that the reader can have some idea of what we were working
with. The
failure of much of local journalism to provide basic facts re.
employment (occupation and industry) led me to cut short my efforts
to do all 212 individuals that I was working with. As it turned
out, this was sufficient material to think about, analyze, and draw
conclusions from.
Regional breakdowns.
This was the second step in arriving at the tables of arrestees from
selected states that became the basis for the comments on this page. Geography matters!
New England
Southeast (north)
Southeast (south)
Mideast
Great Lakes
Plains
Southwest
Rocky Mountain
Far West
As we reviewed these materials, it
became increasingly evident that the analysis out of the University of
Chicago (and mainstream media coverage in general) failed to comprehend the major features of the dataset Arrests Arising out of the Assault on Congress. A summray of our findings appears below.
Summary of findings. A close look at
the January 6 arrestees reveals that, contrary to the respectable
media, which claimed that "the
angry crowd at the Capitol . . . seemed to come
not from the fringes of American society but from white picket-fence
Main Street backgrounds,"1 what is found instead is a population in the process of
marginalization. The instability in their lives was manifested in
the difficulty of category formation. The standard occupational
and industry classifications2 are inadequate, indeed
misleading. Gyms, bars, tatoo parlors, restaurants, salons, and
gun shops occur regularly in the entire dataset. To view the
individual owners of these establishments solely in terms of their role
as "shop owners" is misleading. What we are really dealing with
is social networks, not Cartesian selves. Very few if any of the
arrestees were connected to mainstream occupations and industries: none
in manufacturing, none in the building trades, none in the modern
corporate sector. They could be better characterized as grifters.
This is a challenge to the neat concept of class.
1. from the New York Times (January 26, 2021): "One
striking aspect of the angry crowd at the Capitol was how many of its
members seemed to come not from the fringes of American society but
from white picket-fence Main Street backgrounds — firefighters and real
estate agents, a marketing executive and a Town Council member."
2. North American Industry Classification System (U.S. Census Bureau)
Standard Occupational Classification System (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
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1. the mob at the capitol
has already been introduced. Click on the state links to see how
messy a phenomenological bundle can and must of necessity be.
2. language (cognitive-discursive performativity) is
a bundle consisting of three bundles. Read the three telephone
threats to Congressmen. The discursive field of the two-party
system has two approachs to presenting these kinds of materials.
Most commonly such discourse is summarized as racially
insensitive. Or, the offending words are omitted and replaced
with a mix of asterisks and letters (e.g. sh*t instead of shit).
The effect of these maneuvers is to cover-up or ameliorate the sadism
that is at the core of that which is called racism/fascism*.
3. The Sado-Sexual Eigenvector of GOP Performativity is a collation
of political ads available over the Internet for the period 2008 to
2011. This rhetorical performances of the right are not only
cognitively primitive. In the Trumpean rhetorical field there are
not issues, but postures, gestures, various encodings of the same
sado-sexual reflex. Rage enacted in a political theater of
violence (psychologically, the "issue" of immigration is the script for
a generalized lynch-mob): This is the essence of what is called
"Conservative" today. And not only rage, but political
pornography. Sex and violence make up the entirety of the
cognitive-discursive performances of populist Republicanism.
These sado-sexual fixations may dress themselves up as issues, as if
they were subject to rational debate and beholden to empirical
checks. Language on the threshold of gesture and reflex.
Regression to infantile narcissism via processes of identification, to
a politics of patrimonialism.
4. state of the art scholarship is is a selection of key texts on fascism. Texts are selected based on the Cassirer inclusion rule.
Three key texts** document the evolution of of scholarly thinking on
fascism. That movement is toward a concept of the primordial.
*Robert C. Gordon, “Race,” in R. J. B. Bosworth, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Fascism
(Oxford, 2009), p. 315
In this longue durée
perspective, the problems of moving from the specifics of race within
single fascist regimes to a ‘fascist common denominator’ may fade in
comparison with the possibility that racism lies at the core of the
modern nation and modernity itself.
**Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism
(Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)
Geoff Eley, Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in
Germany, 1930-1945 (Routledge, 2013)
Dan Stone, the Holocaust: An Unfinished History (Mariner Books, 2023)
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Fascism as a phenomenological bundle
Approaching Fascism Immanently: Four Phenomenological Bundles
1. the mob at the capitol
2. language (cognitive-discursive performativity)
a. The language of these arrestees can be seen here:
b. The theoretical resources re. cognitive-discursive performativity:
c. These resources deployed:
3. The Sado-Sexual Eigenvector of GOP Performativity
4. state of the art scholarship
Excerpts from Eric D. Weitz, Weimar German: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, 2007/2018), chapter 9, "Revolution and Counterrevolution from the Right" (pp. 331-360).
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emergence of a new elementary particle, October 29, 2025
Observing the disintegration of the biocultural niche of modernity in real-time
"Why Even Basic A.I. Use Is So Bad for Students," by Anastasia Berg (New York Times, Oct. 29, 2025). Dr. Berg teaches philosophy at the University of California, Irvine.
Last spring, it
became clear to me that over half the students in my large general
education lecture course had used artificial intelligence tools,
contrary to my explicit policy, to write their final take-home exams.
My
situation was hardly unique — rampant A.I. cheating has been reported
all over the country. But I felt a dread I struggled to express until a
colleague articulated the problem in stark terms: “Our students are
about to turn subcognitive,” she said. That was it.
At stake are not just specialized academic skills or refined habits of
mind, but also the most basic form of cognitive fluency. To leave our
students to their own devices — which is to say, to the devices of A.I.
companies — is to deprive them of indispensable opportunities to
develop their linguistic mastery, and with it their most elementary
powers of thought.
Yet I have come to see that something far more fundamental is being put
at risk. Developing our linguistic capacities — to master diverse
concepts, to follow an intricate argument, to form judgments, to
communicate those to others — is the development of our capacity to
think.
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For us human beings, using language is not a skill like any other — it
is the way we do almost anything at all. Philosophers have disputed
whether beings could exist that could think despite lacking language,
but it is clear that humans cannot do so.
We grasp the very contours of
our world in and through language. But we are not born with a language.
We have to acquire and develop our linguistic capacities through
immersive practice with other human beings. For hundreds of years, in
advanced societies this has meant cultivating an intimate familiarity
with human writing.
A depleted conceptual reservoir would render our lives crude and our
experience of the world undifferentiated and coarse. Worst of all,
cognitive degradation threatens our claim to self-rule: It is far from
obvious that the denizens of the subcognitive society would be fit to
participate in the democratic processes that determine how we structure
our societies and lives.
Higher education aims to create cognitively mature adults, which in
turn requires us to ensure students learn to read, think and write all
on their own. It is easier than we think: Creating tech-free spaces and
incentivizing students to spend time in them requires no new resources.
All it takes is will. Many of our students still have it. Do their
teachers?
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“Our students are about to turn subcognitive”
We are now engulfed in is the implosion of neo-liberal "society."
We
are now engulfed in is the implosion of neo-liberal "society." The term
"society" is bracketed because, in the conventional use of the term, an
ontological stability is implied, whereas in reality this society is in
the process of blowing its brains out, and that along four axes of
ontological catastrophe.
•First, the
disintegration of the cognitive performativities of modernity itself:
the "human" side of "capital." (decognification, disindividuation;
Trump's rhetorical performances seen from the standpoint of literacy
and cognition as contingent not normative).
•Second, the explosion of fascist performativities within the orbit of the GOP (Robert O. Paxton, the Anatomy of Fascism:
"The legitimation of violence against a demonized internal enemy brings
us close to the heart of fascism."). the
persistence of the political culture, psychological dispositions and
praxiological modalities of ressentiment (the inner life of fascism).
•Third, the
patrimonial assault on rational-bureaucratic institutions, an assault
on the very idea of science-based professionalism and public
service. In this regard Trump goes beyond Hitler.
•Fourth, the triumph of nihilism as the socio-cultural engineering
project of global corporate networks of unimaginable reach and power,
generating an entropic process of disindividuation. Mass
consumption as a mode of absorption and transformation of the
organism. The fiction of freedom, the subversion of
individuation, the inner logic of addiction, the commodification of
distress, the infantilization of public discourse . . . in short, the
dissipation of the species homo sapiens sapiens into a proliferation of
effects. DSM-V as the operating manual of the post-human ontology.
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comments
SSEigen.
This
rhetorical performances of the right are not only cognitively
primitive. In the Trumpean rhetorical field there are not
issues, but postures, gestures, various encodings of the same
sado-sexual reflex. Rage enacted in a political
theater of violence
(psychologically, the "issue" of immigration is the script for a
generalized lynch-mob): This is the essence of what is called
"Conservative" today. And not only rage, but political
pornography. Sex and violence make up the entirety of the
cognitive-discursive performances of populist Republicanism.
These
sado-sexual fixations may dress themselves up as issues, as if they
were subject to rational debate and beholden to empirical checks.
Language on the threshold of gesture
and reflex. Regression to infantile narcissism via processes of
identification, to a politics of patrimonialism.
c. the return of the repressed: patrimonialism
This ever-expanding free-wheeling exercise of corporate power in the
creation of the subjectivities of disindividuation (Alcorn) becomes an
"issue" unlike any other that homo sapiens has ever faced before. This
infinite differentiability of this uniquely bio-cultural historical
species is what gives capitalism its "vitality." It is what Marxists,
with their obsession with the crisis of capitalism and the tendency of
the rate of profit to fall, characteristically fail to grasp.
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Elementary
particles and associated comments, lists, transcripts, remembrances of
things past (civic republicanism 1933-1943: Bildung + חֻצְפָ),
cognitive regimes, intersubjectivity and shared intentionality,
proximal processes, biocultural niche (Schiller Hall, Fox News, MSNBC),
brain plasticity, cognitive performativity*, paranoid-schizoid position
(the sado-sexual eigenvector of “Trump” performativities: ressentiment
and the mechanisms of defense), the depressive position ("liberalism":
nihilism, nietzsche, and you), the lynching for rape discourse, herding
primates: semiotic regimes, patrimonialilism and the fundamental
incompetence** of the Trump regime. Why Trump could not possibly have
acted differently re. Covid 19.
Deep structure of ressentiment and the precarious cultural-historical
achievements of “civilization”: defining barbarism (while being mindful
of James C. Scott’s discussion of the “barbarians” in Against the
Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale, 2017)). The
collapse of a civilization in the context of advanced capitalism;
regression to primate; collapse of cognitive performativity across the
board by one order of magnitude* in post-Fordist USA; the journalism of
disintegration (Who Killed the Knapp Family? NYT 1-9-20); hapless
liberalism . . . and more. The show goes on.
Now we are witness to a patrimonial bacchanale and the wholesale
destruction of the rational-bureaucratic organizations of government
that continues unabated.***
Also see Proximal Processes.
** the fundamental incompetence of the Trump regime, a regime of
schmoozers, hucksters, operatives, marginal real estate and gambling,
financial operatives of a preadatory not productive significance.
Modern capitalism's cultural-historical intersubjective discursive
field, the formal-operational systems thinking of modern management
(Keynesian elite, Committee for Economic Development and more), is far
beyond Trump's . . .
***(Marie Yovanovitch says State Department 'being hollowed out from
within' (UPI November 15, 2019). Statement from leader of federal
vaccine agency about his reassignment (April 22, 2020)
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the Keynesian Elite
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The New Deal: the Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State
Fig. 1a, The Keynesian Elite in the New Deal state, is an organizational chart of the Roosevelt
administration circa 1936. This particular social formation
(TS+FF) emerged out of the Eastern Rate Case of 1910, played a critical
role in the industrial side of the conduct of the First World War (when
FDR, Frankfurter, and the Taylor society linked up), and became, as
Figure 1a indicates, the socio-technical infrastructure of the New Deal
state. The work that produced this result can be found here:
"The Origins of the "Welfare State": The Keynesian Elite and the Second New Deal, 1910-1936" (manuscript, 1987)
The figure to the right--the Keynesian Elite in the
New Deal
state--must be the point of departure for understanding the second New
Deal. Notice that it is possible to group the administrative
agencies of the New Deal state into five major groups: infrastructure,
human capital, labor, planning, and credit. Each group was
staffed by a set of Taylor Society "technocrats" and a
Frankfurter-linked lawyer. (See The Brandeis/Frankfurter
Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court
Justices.) This can be shortened to KE = ∑ (LDB/FF
× TS)i (i = 1 − 5)
The
Taylor Society emerged
in the course of
the Eastern
Rate Case
(1910), and is the zone
of
systems synthesis of mass/advanced capitalism, the locus of the
emergent
functions of the so-called welfare state. ("Welfare state" is the rhetorical manifestation of Thermidor
The
force-field of out of which the Keynesian elite input
output
relations emerged is
suggested by the
membership list (when interpreted in the context of the origins and
history of the Taylor Society and its milieu).
This
is the Brandeisian wing of Progressivism: cosmopolitan,
enlightened,
and above all, committed to science.
Much attention has been paid to the middle class,
professional
character of this wing of progressivism (Otis Grahan Jr. Old
Progressives and New Deal); almost none to the vast array
of
modern firms that constituted the business milieu of Progressivism (Gal is the exception).
Any serious study of these phenomena reveals the advanced capitalist nature
of what is almost
universally misconceived as some kind of coalition of middle class
reformers, workers, and farmers that was anti-business (such is the
fairy tale told by historians). In fact, a close study of the
Keynesian Elite in the New Deal state shows that not only was the
leading institutional formation of reform not anti-business (they
represented important parts of modern capitalism); and not merely
middle
class reformers (they were part of the emergence of the higher-order
functions of advanced capitalism that transcended the merely localized
praxis of the firm); they were the vanguard of
advanced capitalism. In fact, Morris L. Cooke refered to the Taylor Society as the spearpoint of
modern business (the less clumsy term vanguard was already taken in another context).
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a. KE network
Figure 1a. Intersubjectivity, Shared Intentionality, and the Extended Mind:
the Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State
Source: "Membership List, May 1927" in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library,
and The United States Government Manual 1937. Also: the Papers of John M. Carmody
The Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State: Career Matrix
Nobuo Noda, How Japan Absorbed American Management Methods (Asian Productivity Organization, 1969)
Ordway Tead, "An Interpretative Forecast of the NRA: Is the Trend Toward Fascist or
Socialized Self-Government?" Bulletin of the Taylor Society, August 1933
For context see Elites: Strategic and Otherwise
FDR vs. the Slave Power: MEMO July 10, 1935
"Liberal Businessmen" Ezekiel
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Eastern
Rate Case: Shippers
Association, 1910: Chicago subset
Mass Consumer-Oriented Firms
Retail
Sears,
Roebuck
Marshall Field & Co.
Mandel Brothers
B. Kuppenheimer
Montgomery Ward
Siegel, Cooper & Co.
G.W. Shelton & Co.
Clothing
Hart,
Shafner, & Marx
Rosenwald & Weil, Inc.
The Hub (Henry C. Lytton & Sons)
Charles A. Stevens & Brothers
Percival B. Palmer & Co.
Warren Featherbone
Millinery, Gloves, Hats, Hosiery
Bush Hat Co.
Chicagao Mercantile Co.
Joseph N. Eisendrath Co.
Parrotte, Beals & Co.
C.D. Osborn Co.
Shoes
Wilder
& Co.
Guthman, Carpenter, & Telling Co.
Smith-Wallace Shoe Co.
The Rice and Hutchins Chicago Co.
Selz, Schwap & Co.
R.P. Smith & Sons & Co.
Food
& Related
Southern
Cotton Oil Co. (Wesson Oil)
Booth Fisheries
National Biscuit Co.
Nordyke and Marmon Co.
(flour and
cerial
milling machinery)
Beech-Nut Packing
Sprague, Warner & Co.
(flavoring
extracts,
preserves, beverages)
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Food
& Related, cont.
Steel-Wedeles
Co.
(importing, jobbing
&
mfg. of grocieries and
kindred)
W.M. Hoyt Co.
Frankln MacVeagh & Co.
Oerlich & Laux, Inc.
Charles B. Ford & Co.
(butter, eggs,
poultry--brokers and
wholesalers)
W.T. Rawleigh Co.
(veterinary and pultry
preparations)
E.B. Millar & Co. (tea,
coffie--importing and
mfg)
Libby, McNeil, & Libby
Decatur Brewing Co.
Thomson & Taylor Co.
(coffee, spices--mfg
for jobbers)
Reid, Murdoch & Co.
(coffee, pickles,
peanut butter)
Rueckheim Bros. &
Eckstein (candy,
crackerjacks)
United Cerial Mills
(Washington Crisps,
Egg-O-See, Toasted
Corn Flakes)
Soap
& Related
James
S. Kirk
Frigid Fluid Co.
The Fairbanks, N.K. Co.
Darling & Co.
Globe Rending
Pacific Coast Borax Co.
Fitzpatrick Bros. Soap
Packaging
& Paper
Humel
& Downing Co.
Sanfod Mfg. Co.
The Paper Mills' Co.
J.W. Butler Paper Co.
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Comment on the New Deal: 1871-1911
The political-economic context for the emergence of "Keynesian" discourset
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Figure 8b. Eastern
Rate Case: Shippers
Association, 1910: Chicago subset
Mass Housing Supply Firms & Diversified Capital Goods
Mass
Housing Supply Industries
U.S.
Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry James B. Clough
Kewanee
Boiler
Crane
Co.
H.
Mueller & Co.
Illinois
Malleable Iron Co.
Joseph
T. Ryerson & Son
Devoe
& Reynolds
Adams
& Elting Co.
George
S. Mepham & Co.
Hibbard,
Spencer, Bartlett & Co.
American
Lumberman
Lumber
World Review
Morgan
Sash & Door
Chicago
House Wrecking Co.
John
V. Farwell Co. (wholesale furniture,
carpets, etc)
Union
Furniture
Balkwill
& Patch Furniture Co. Inc.
W.W.
Kimball Co. (pianos, etc.)
Lyon
& Healy, Inc. (pianos, etc.)
Tonk
Manufacturing (piano benches)
Foley
& Williams (sewing machines,
supplies, pianos)
The
Brunswick Balke Collendar Co.
Chicago
Portrait Co.
Pitkin
& Brook, Importers, Mfg and
Distributors (china, glass, lamps)
M.
Paulman & Co.
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Diversified
Capital Goods, Esp. Agricultural Implements
International
Harvster
Deere & Co.
Emerson-Brantigam Co.
R. Herschel Manufacturing Co.
Rock Isoand Plow Co.
Star Mfg. Co.
Link-Belt Co.
Smith Mfg. Co.
Williams, White & Co.
Whiting Foundry Equipment Co.
Whitman & Barnes Co. (twist drils
& reamers)
The Delaval Seperator Co.
Griffin Wheel Co.
Galena Sigal Oil Co.
Other
General
Chemical Co.
Lehigh Valley Railroad
Peabody Coal
Inland Steel
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SOURCE: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerece Comission in the
Matter of Proposed Advances
in Freight Rates by Carriers, August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., Vol.
1 pp. 6-15
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the New Deal: 1871-1911
1. On the multiplier effect: proto-Keynesian discourse, circa 1871
from Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn, By Thomas K. McCraw, pp. 35-36
The commission tried
the cocked-gun approach in a circular letter mailed out to all
Massachusetts railroads in 1871. Adams' purpose was to promote
rate reductions, by way of both enticements and threat. The
letter . . . outlined the reduced costs brought by technological
innovation ("The locomotive which formerly cost $30,000 now costs but
$12,000"), the unusual opportunity now at hand ("Massachusetts is at
this time susceptible of a very great and sudden industrial
development"), and the payoff to the railroads themselves ("It is a
pefectly well-established fact in railroad economy, that where a
community is industrially in an elastic condition . . . a reduction of
railroad charges within certain limits does not necessarilly involve
any loss of net profits").
The content of the rate recommendations revealed
Adams' preoccupation with aggregate economic growth. He
emphasized, for example, a form of what economists later called the
multiplier effect:
In making any
reduction, whether in freight or fares, we would therefore suggest to
you [Massachusetts railroad presidents] the propriety of strongly
favoring certain commodities in general use along the line of the road,
and, by so doing, strongly stimulate development, rather than
neutralize the whole effect of any concessions you may make by dividing
it among too many objects. Take for instance coal . . . a primary
raw material in all manufacturing industry. Cheap coal is cheap
power; and cheap power is cheap manufacturing. A reduction of
five per cent. throughout the charges of tariff would scarcely produce
an appreciable effect on the consumption of anything; a tariff,
unchanged in numerous other respects, which gave a reduction of fifty
per cent. on the cost of carrying coal, would at once communicate an
impetus to every branch of industry dependent on power.
2. The Eastern Rate
Case: Evidence Taken by
the
Interstate Commerce Commission in the Matter of Proposed Advances
in Freight Rates
by Carriers,
August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3
Sess. FDR's 1936 campaign speeches
3. Louis D. Brandeis to Robert Marion LaFollette, July 29, 1911 (in Letters, vol. 2 )
All
the wealth is of no good, without development, and the first step in
the development is an adequate system of transportation. They
need railroads, and they will need much else in the way of public
utilities. The demand is so great for these facilities, and so
well founded, that the people are becoming willing to pay for them,
even the heavy price which will attend the furnishing of such
facilities by the capitalists, because those like the
Morgan-Guggenheims who put the money into Alaska are entering not upon
investment strictly, but upon speculation. If investment, it is
the investment of the pawn broker, demanding because of the risk and
because of the necessities of the borrower, a return of one hundred
percent or more. Development of transportation and other
facilities by the capitalists would, in a way, seriously impair
development, because to give them a return which would seem to them
adequate would entail rates which would be oppressive to the people of
Alaska, and would, in themselves, tend to retard development and the
opening up of opportunities . . .
4. Chicago progressivism in the year 1911, and the concept of elementary particle: "Prelude to Armageddon Charles E. Merriam and the Chicago Mayoral
Election of 1911," by Michael P. McCarthy (Journal of the Illinois
State Historical Society, Vol. 67, No.5, Nov., 1974), p. 508
And so Merriam
entered the race. His campaign manager was Harold L. Ickes, who
quickly won promises of substantial financial support from
industrialist Charles R. Crane [the Crane Co.: industrial and
residential plumbing supplies] and Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears
Roebuck and Company. A number of other wealthy businessmen
pledged money.
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Elite, Networks, and Milieux
The Deep Structure of the New Deal
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Sectors of Realization: Mass Consumption
sector of realization (the political economy of supply chains)
As can be seen in the graphic at the right, what are usually referred
to as "small" businesses are nothing of the kind. They are links
in a chain of realization.
I have subsumed the firms involved in packaging and labeling under the heading semiotics.
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a. KE Milieu: mass distribution
The Taylor Society, Mass Distribution Sector, 1927
Source: "Membership List, May 1927" in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
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Sectors of Realization: Mass Housing
At
the right the manufactured inputs to the home building industry.
Note the placement of the Bowery Savings Bank at the apex of this
sector.
Growth of the mass housing sector depends upon the availability and the
cost of transportation (the traction wars) and electric power, key progressive issues.
from "Prelude to Armageddon Charles E. Merriam and the Chicago Mayoral
Election of 1911," by Michael P. McCarthy (Journal of the Illinois
State Historical Society, Vol. 67, No.5, Nov., 1974), p. 508
And so Merriam
entered the race. His campaign manager was Harold L. Ickes, who
quickly won promises of substantial financial support from
industrialist Charles R. Crane [the Crane Co.: industrial and
residential plumbing supplies] ad Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears
Roebuck and Company. A number of other wealthy businessmen
pledged money.
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b. KE Milieu: mass housing
Taylor
Society, 1927: Mass
Housing, input-output flows
the Bowery Savings Bank
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What I have subsumed under "machinery" is a more heterogeneous group of firms
But keep an eye on White Motor. This firm, based in Cleveland,
employed Wyndham Mortimer, the single most consequential individual in
the formation of the UAW. Stay tuned.
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Configurations of Capital
Figure 7. Taylor Society, 1927: Machinery
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the complex of corporate activities
Thomas Stanback's concept of the complex of corporate activities
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Speaking of elites . . .
from Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power. Volume II: The rise of classes and national states (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
It
is a basic tenet of my work that societies are not systems. There
is no ultimately determining structure to human existence--at least
none that social actors or sociological observers, situated in its
midst, can discern. What we call societies are only loose
aggregates of diverse, overlapping, intersecting power networks.
p. 506
America
has not so much been exceptional as it has gradually come to represent
one extreme on a continuum of class relations. America has never
differed qualitatively from other national cases. Differences
have been of degree, not kind. . . . Explanations asserting an
original and enduring American exceptionalism . . . have only a very
limited truth. p. 638
Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume 3 Chapter 1: Introduction
human
societies form around four distinct power sources – ideological,
economic, military and political – which have a relative degree of
autonomy from each other.
G. William Domhoff,The Four Networks Theory of Power: A Theoretical Home for Power Structure Research
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Configurations of Capital
Figure 4. The Taylor Society: Non-Mfg Organizations, 1927
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the major elites in America history
Figure 1, firms by sector, is a synthesis, for purposes of
political analsis, of a number of studies of the structure of the U.S.
economy. Wassily Leonteff's study of the input-output structure
of the U.S. economy, and Charles A. Bliss's work on the structure of
manufacturing production provides essential theoretical and staitical
tools required for the developmen of a concept of sector of
realization.* Leontieff's analysis focuse on transactons between
sectors. Bliss's concept of "character of ultimate use" is
especially important, for it refers not to a particular industry, but
rather to the actual structure of demand. The latter is divided
into four major segments: cnsumption goods, construction materials,
capital equipment, and dproducers' supplies. These are further
broken down into 18 subdividsions.* In the present study
"character of ultimate use" is transformed into sector of
realization. Figure 1 is also influenced by those modes of taling
about "cities" that insist upon looking at real exchanges in the world
of activity, and that bring to the fore a geographically oriented
systems concept based on hierarchically organized input-output
flows.* In the construction of Figure 1, therefore, there is an
implicit rejection of the kind of approach one finds in Averitt,* for
exmple, where a-priori variables such as size or concentration rather
than functionally derived variables such as location within an
input-output matrix shape analysis. In Figure _____ sectoral
bounaries were etermined by grouping firms and segments based on the
nature of their respeoctve input-output matrices.
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Configurations of Capital
Fig. 1a.1. U.S. Political Economy by Sector, 1910 to 1948
input-output matrices: sectors of realization and the two-party system
Elites: Strategic and Otherwise
the Big One
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the enigma
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the Two-Party
System
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from F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (p. 51 Penguin)
To this extent media discourse* is never to be taken literally: as such, it never contains anything but nonsense. But as semiotics it remains of incaculable value: it reveals, to the informed man, at least, the
most precious realities of cultures and inner worlds which did not know
how to "understand" themselves. Media discourse** is merely sign-language, merely sympomology . . .
from Werner Stark, Sociology of Religion: A Study of Christendom (Fordham University Press, 1966-72) vol. 1, p. 188
As democratic convictions became settled . . . 'the people' emerged
increasingly as the true sovereign, and the conception gained ground
that 'the people' is sane and sound, and its voice, at least to some
extent, is sacred.
and from Nietzsche, Will to Power, § 863
“The values of the weak prevail because the strong have taken them over as devices of leadership.”
* "moral judgement" in the original
** "Morality" in the original
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Figure 1. The two-party System: Semiotic Regimes I
Cognitive Performativities and Emotional Configurations
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LEFT*
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RIGHT
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Topology
|
depressive
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paranoid-schizoid
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Political style
|
progressive
|
proto-Dorian
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Cognitive mode
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concrete & pre-op
|
pre-op and gestural
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Regime type
|
rational-bureaucratic
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patrimonial
|
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The Two-Party System (Semiotic Regimes): Elites and their Masses
MSNBC/CNN/
New York
Times/Washington Post
NIHILISM (Liberalism)
BILDUNG (Progressivism)
Commercial republicanism Civic republicanism
concrete-operational
and
formal-operational and
pre-operational
concrete operational
Fox News
RESSENTIMENT
Fascism
pre-operational and gestural
rentier sectors; provincial capitals; patrimonial
and predatory businesses and racist political ecologies
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This is an elementary particle ➙
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To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
What
is the relationship between elementary particles and
eigenvectors? Are these different ways of saying the same
thing? Perhaps. This elementary particle reveals the inner
logic of two-party system as formulated within the discursive field of
psychoanalysis.
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3. Deep Structure of the Two-party System: Emotional Configurations
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from Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age ( (McGill-Queens University Press, 2010)
We are changing, of course,
but that does not necessarily mean we are progressing. Combined
with all the forces that today exhort us to look into our own private
lives, the “civilization of change” has stimulated a massive interest
in psychic disorders. It can be heard from all quarters, and it
takes form in the many marketplaces that offer inner balance and
tranquility. Today, many of our socials tensions have been
expressed in terms of implosion and depressive collapse [liberalism] or, in a
similar way, its flip side: [fascism] explosions of violence, rage, the search
for new sensations. pp. 185-6
[liberalism] As addictive explosion reflects depressive implosion, so the
drug-taker’s search for sensation reflects the depressed person’s lack
of feeling. Depression, that crossroads of pathology, serves as a
canvas upon which to sketch out the changes in modern subjectivity, the
displacement of the hard task of being healthy. In a context in
which choice is the norm and inner insecurity the price, these
pathologies make up the dark side of contemporary private life.
Such is the equation of the sovereign individual: psychic freedom and
individual initiative = identity insecurities and the incapacity to
act. p. 232
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This too is an elementary particle ➙
This
elementary particle reveals the inner logic of two-party system as
formulated within the discursive field of history.
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4. the Deep Structure of the Two-Party System: political configurations
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from Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightement: the French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 48-52
What
were the elements of this emergent right wing vision? The
fundamental importance of religion in maintaining political order, a
preoccupation with the perils of intellectual and social license, the
valorization of the family and history, the critique of abstract
rights, the dangers of dividing sovereignty, and the need for a
strategic alliance between throne and altar . . . Even more
fundamental was a Manichean readiness to divide the word in two:
bewtween good and evil, right and wrong, Right and Left.
Yet to say
that the anti-philosophe discourse fulfilled an ideological function is
not to assert that it offered a fully developed political
platform. Rather it provided a "symbolic template" through which
to construe a perplexing and rapidly changing world, a number of
"authoritative concepts" and "suasive images" by which they could be
grasped.
By invoking
this mythic golden past . . . anti-philosophes revealed signs of a
romantic, qasi-utopian yearning for wholeness and social unity that
would characterize a strain in far Right thinking for years to
come.
Reactive,
reductive, Manichean, this thinking is less noteworthy, perhaps, for
its particulars than for its general form. It was precisely this
tendency to view society as a battleground between opposing camps that
stands as a hallmark of the bipolar, Right-Left model of politics so
fundamental to subsequent European history. . . . Dividing the
world between good and evil, between the pious and the profane,
anti-philosphes saw their struggle as a cosmic war in which the winners
would take all.
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Fascism
Stuff and Manifestations
the primary
semantic units are not 'words' but material-discursive practices
Fascism and anti-communism: opposites or twins? If twins,
identical or fraternal? Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: lynching or
pogrom? If neither, then what? McMahon on Thermidor; Lenin on Thermidor
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Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who's the greatest of them all?
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this is the stuff of fascism--that is, the raw, primordial materials that semiotic regimes and political agents work on to produce the manifestations of fascism. Gordon.
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Cruelty
two commentaries on Victor Nell, "Cruelty’s rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators," Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2006) 29, 211–257
1.
from Mika Haritos-Fatouros, “Cruelty: A dispositional or a situational
behavior in man?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2006) 29, p.230
The basic question remains, however:
How far are aggression, violence, and cruelty in humans today the
result of predisposition factors, or biological or archetypal
processes, and how far are they the result of cognitive/emotional
processes evoked by situational factors?
2. from Albert Bandura, “A murky portrait of human cruelty,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2006) 29, p. 225
At the macrosocial level, Nell
greatly exaggerates the prevalence of human cruelty. There exist wide
intercultural differences representing both warring and pacific
societies with large intracultural variations and even rapid
transformation of warring societies into peaceful ones.
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| this is a manifestation of fascism
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Mob at the Capitol
This
is part of a larger sample that was the basis for
discussions between PF and RB that led to a series of
reconceptualizations, methodological as well as substantive, and is
provided so that the reader can have some idea of what we were working
with. The
failure of much of local journalism to provide basic facts re.
employment (occupation and industry) led me to cut short my efforts
to do all 212 individuals that I was working with. As it turned
out, this was sufficient material to think about, analyze, and draw
conclusions from.
Regional breakdowns.
This was the second step in arriving at the tables of arrestees from
selected states that became the basis for the comments on this page. Geography matters!
New England
Southeast (north)
Southeast (south)
Mideast
Great Lakes
Plains
Southwest
Rocky Mountain
Far West
As we reviewed these materials, it
became increasingly evident that the analysis out of the University of
Chicago (and mainstream media coverage in general) failed to comprehend the major features of the dataset Arrests Arising out of the Assault on Congress. A summray of our findings appears below.
Summary of findings. A close look at
the January 6 arrestees reveals that, contrary to the respectable
media, which claimed that "the
angry crowd at the Capitol . . . seemed to come
not from the fringes of American society but from white picket-fence
Main Street backgrounds,"1 what is found instead is a population in the process of
marginalization. The instability in their lives was manifested in
the difficulty of category formation. The standard occupational
and industry classifications2 are inadequate, indeed
misleading. Gyms, bars, tatoo parlors, restaurants, salons, and
gun shops occur regularly in the entire dataset. To view the
individual owners of these establishments solely in terms of their role
as "shop owners" is misleading. What we are really dealing with
is social networks, not Cartesian selves. Very few if any of the
arrestees were connected to mainstream occupations and industries: none
in manufacturing, none in the building trades, none in the modern
corporate sector. They could be better characterized as grifters. This is a challenge to the neat concept of class.
1. from the New York Times (January 26, 2021): "One
striking aspect of the angry crowd at the Capitol was how many of its
members seemed to come not from the fringes of American society but
from white picket-fence Main Street backgrounds — firefighters and real
estate agents, a marketing executive and a Town Council member."
2. North American Industry Classification System (U.S. Census Bureau)
Standard Occupational Classification System (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
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this
is both a summary of our findings and a critique of corporate media
(often referred to euphemistically as the legacy media or the
mainstream media, or, more colloquially, as the adults in the room).
|
summary of our findings
A close look at
the January 6 arrestees reveals that, contrary to the respectable
media, which claimed that "the
angry crowd at the Capitol . . . seemed to come
not from the fringes of American society but from white picket-fence
Main Street backgrounds,"1 what is found instead is a population in the process of
marginalization. The instability in their lives was manifested in
the difficulty of category formation. The standard occupational
and industry classifications2 are inadequate, indeed
misleading. Gyms, bars, tatoo parlors, restaurants, salons, and
gun shops occur regularly in the entire dataset. To view the
individual owners of these establishments solely in terms of their role
as "shop owners" is misleading. What we are really dealing with
is social networks, not Cartesian selves. Very few if any of the
arrestees were connected to mainstream occupations and industries: none
in manufacturing, none in the building trades, none in the modern
corporate sector. They could be better characterized as grifters. This is a challenge to the neat concept of class.
1. from the New York Times (January 26, 2021): "One
striking aspect of the angry crowd at the Capitol was how many of its
members seemed to come not from the fringes of American society but
from white picket-fence Main Street backgrounds — firefighters and real
estate agents, a marketing executive and a Town Council member."
2. North American Industry Classification System (U.S. Census Bureau)
Standard Occupational Classification System (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
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Eli Zaretsky, "The Mass Psychology of Trumpism," London Review of Books, 18 September 2018. This is essential reading if one is to understand the case histories contained in Defendants Sorted by Region and State. It could be viewed as an update of Gibson's Warrior Dreams (Hill and Wang, 1994). Also: Dick Lehr, White Hot Hate: a True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America's Heartland (Mariner Books, 2021).
This is an extraordinary, intimate account by a participant-observer.
From the standpoint of transcendental empiricism it is a must-read.
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Eli Zaretsky, "The Mass Psychology of Trumpism,"
London Review of Books, 18 September 2018. This is essential
reading if one is to understand the case histories contained in
Defendants Sorted by Region and State. It could be viewed as an
update of Gibson's Warrior Dreams (Hill and Wang, 1994). Also:
Dick Lehr, White Hot Hate: a True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America's Heartland (Mariner
Books, 2021). This is an extraordinary, intimate account by a
participant-observer. From the standpoint of transcendental
empiricism it is a must-read.
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toward a concept of fascism: the sado-sexual eigenvector of GOP performantivty
|
the stuff of fascism
Robert C. Gordon, “Race,” in R. J. B. Bosworth, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Fascism
(Oxford, 2009), p. 315
In this longue durée
perspective, the problems of moving from the specifics of race within
single fascist regimes to a ‘fascist common denominator’ may fade in
comparison with the possibility that racism lies at the core of the
modern nation and modernity itself.
from Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (Yale, 2004):
The
hatred and terror that drove people to such violence were shaped by
social tensions and religious beliefs, but the passions themselves
derived from deeply rooted fantasies, extravagent in their evocation of
demonic lovers and Satanic revels. These fantasies shared, for
the most part, a standard structure and a similar set of primary
themes. p. 7
from F. Nietzsche, The Geneology of Morals, II, 16:
Let us add at once that . .
. the existence on earth of an animal soul turned against itself,
taking sides against itself, was something so new, profound, unheard
of, enigmatic, contradictory, and pregnant with a future that the
aspect of the earth was essentially altered. Indeed, divine
spectators were needed to justice to the spectacle that thus began and
the end of which is not yet in sight . . . . From now on, man . .
. gives rise to an interest, a tension, a hope, almost a certainty, as
if with him something were anouncing and preparing itself, as if man
were not a goal but onl a way, an episode, a bridge, a great promise.
from Michael André Bernstein, Bitter Carnival : ressentiment and the abject hero (Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 28
. . . ressentiment is
trapped forever in the slights of the past. . . . . What
“empowers” someone afflicted by ressentiment is the intensely focused,
but impotent hatred with which he feeds his sense of having been
treated unfairly, and his hope of someday forcing others to suffer in
his place.
from F. Nietzsche, The Geneology of Morals, II, 6
To
see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more. . .
. Without cruelty there is no festival. . . . and in
punishment there is so much that is festive!
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Dowd article, "Cruelty" (J. Brain)
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| Fascism on the molecular level of analysis
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the stuff of fascism manifested (talkin' shit)
(the primary
semantic units are not 'words' but material-discursive practices)
“You
fucking old, senile bitch, you’re as old and ugly as Biden,” the caller
says. “You ought to get the fuck off the planet. You fucking foul
bitch. I hope your family dies in front of you. I pray to God, if
you’ve got any children, they die in your face.”
I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” an employee of the
Federal prison in the Florida Panhandle said. “I thought he was going
to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting. (emphasis added)
Trump Details Crime Crackdown For D.C. (Aug 11, 2025 press conference)
“Our capital. city has been overtaken by violent gangs and
bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs
and homeless people, and we're not going to take let it happen any
more. . . . Caravans of mass youth rampage through city streets
at all times of the day. They're on ATVs, motorbikes, they travel
pretty well."
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from
Wikipedia:
(Lee
Atwater's Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy)
As a member of the
Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an
anonymous interview to political scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of
the interview was printed in Lamis's book The Two-Party South, then
reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name
revealed. . . . Atwater talked about the Republican Southern Strategy
and Ronald Reagan's version of it:
Atwater:
As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others
put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have
been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don't have to do
that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in
place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 and that's fiscal
conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole
cluster.
Questioner:
But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter
and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal
services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater:
You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you
can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like
forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so
abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these
things you're talking about are totally economic things and a by-product
of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously
maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if
it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away
with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because
obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more
abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract
than "Nigger, nigger."
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