From the New Deal to Donald Trump
TEXTS, GRAPHIC MATERIALS, & DATA SETS
(including Timelines and Maps)
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three horsemen of the apocalypse
"Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them
in the legs or something?"
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This site is a rhizome. Its principle of production is
transcendental empiricism
The
link between the "empirical" materials in the right-hand column and the
"theoretical" materials in this column is tenuous when viewed row by
row. The
empiricities structure this page--that is, I first assembled
these empiricities and only then began to consider what "theoretical"
materials should be adjacent to them. The "theoretical" materials
are
of two kinds: excerpts from state-of-the-art scholarly texts; and my
own comments. It is recommended that the reader first scroll down
and become acquainted with the graphic materials and data sets in the
right hand column. Then return to this place and resume
reading. This is really a working notebook.
And this is as it should be, in these times of the disintegration of civilization, when our age's leading philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, says that "only a catastrophe can save us." This entire site is about this disintegration, as seen from the vantage of:
And all this in the context of Figure 0. From the Origins of Language to the End of Print Literacy in the United States.
It is the contention of this site that Figure 0 is required of we are
to understand Trump. And not only Trump. The unfolding
catastrophe of our times is above all about Dasein, a term introduced
by the great Nazi philosopher, Martin Heidegger.
The
starred texts below should be read immediately. The Zaretsky
article is the best thing I have seen so far on Trump, and it is only
about 18 paragraphs long. The Social Origins of Language
is a truly monumental and indispensable resource. Eric Weitz on
the Nazis and the context of their emergence should be read in
conjunction with Zaretsky. Regarding Trump as grifter, Fraser
provides a depressing but inescapable question: the enigma of how these con artists and grifters become folk heroes. Fraser and Zaretsky should be read contrapuntally.
✭ Eli Zaretsky, "The Mass Psychology of Trumpism" (London Review of Books, 18 September 2018).
✭ Daniel Dor, Chris Knight, and Jerome Lewis, The Social Origins of Language (Oxford, 2014): Excerpts. A shorter summary and brief excerpts, is here.
Sinha, C. (2021). Artefacts, symbols, and the socio-cultural dynamics of niche construction, in The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution (Oxford, 2021).
Shilton, D; Breski, M; Dor, D; Jablonka, E (February 14, 2020). "Human Social Evolution: Self-Domestication or Self-Control?". Frontiers in Psychology. 11: 134.
✭ Eric D. Weitz, Weimar German: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, 2007/2018), chapter 9, "Revolution and Counterrevolution from the Right" (pp. 331-360), Excerpts
Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider, "Mafia, Antimafia, and the Plural Cultures of Sicily." Current Anthropology, Vol. 46, No. 4 (August/October 2005), pp. 501-520
✭ Steve Fraser, Every Man A Speculator: A history of Wall Street in American Life (HarperCollins, 2005), pp. 72-73 and 94-96.
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Figure 0. From the Origins of Language to the End of Print Literacy in the United States
the empiricities and their concepts
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a geneology of action
Bildung and the Will to Power
Enlightenment
civic republicanism
the vanguard party
a geneology of reaction
ressentiment and the mechanisms of defence
Fascism-Racism-Patrimonialism
the paranoid-schizoid position
the sex party
a geneology of innaction
nihilism
neoliberalism, (commercial republicanism) liberalism, socialism
the depressive position
the pity party
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state-of-the-art scholarly texts
Thinking in the Twenty-first Century (Transcendental Empiricism)
from Imanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787)
Thouughts 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). Thus the represesntations’white’, ‘grainy’,
‘saline’ are combined and ordered in the concept ‘salt, while the
representations ‘colorless’, ‘liquid’, ‘tasteless’ (say) are not.
In this way a concept is a rule allowing me to unite certain
representations and to bring them under a higher representation, i.e.
the concept. (pp. 22-3)
Cognition does not
consist merely in the collecting of phenomena; rather we strive to
forge conceptual links between them and to grasp the laws of nature
that are valid for specific classes of objects as cases of yet more
general laws, whereby we are guided by the ideal of a unified
explanation of nature. (p. 38)
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. I see, e.g., a spruce, a willow, and a
linden. By first comparing these objects with one another I note
that they are different from one another in regard to the trunk, the
branches, the leaves, etc.; but next I reflect on that which they have
in common among themselves, trunk, branches, and leaves themselves, and
I abstract from the quantity, the figure, etc., of these; thus I
acquire a concept of a tree. (p. 250)
from Levi R. Bryant, Difference and
Givenness: Deleuze's Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of
Immanence (Northwestern University Press, 2008)
. . . . so long as philosophy assumes that
thought has a natural affinity with the true . . . a specific form of
objectivity (natural common sense), and bases itself on the model of
recognition, thought cannot help but become unconsciously trapped in
its own implicit presuppositions which are culturally, historically,
and socially contingent. . . . Deleuze thus begins with a critique of
the transcendental subject as a structure consisting of invariant
categories. (17)
from Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe
Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning
(Duke University, 2007)
Discursive
practices define what counts as meaningful statements. Statements are
not the mere utterances of the originating consciousness of a unified
subject; rather, statements and subjects emerge from a field of
possibilities. This field of possibilities is not static or singular
but rather is a dynamic and contingent multiplicity. 146-7
. . . 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.
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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the empiricities and their concepts
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a geneology of action
Bildung and the Will to Power
Enlightenment
civic republicanism
the vanguard party
a geneology of reaction
ressentiment and the mechanisms of defence
Fascism-Racism-Patrimonialism
the paranoid-schizoid position
the sex party
a geneology of innaction
nihilism
neoliberalism, (commercial republicanism) liberalism, socialism
the depressive position
the pity party
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Thinking must first emancipate
itself from the Cartesian myth
1. 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, networks and contexts.
2. Trump is
only a moment in the unfolding of the sado-sexual eigenvector of GOP
rhetorical performativity.* Likewise, Trump is only an index of
the disintegration of the kind of cognitive-discursive performativity** that was
the central feature of modernity (Flynn).
3. "Language consitutes a ‘biocultural niche’, embedded within the entire
human semiosphere—everything in human culture, material and
non-material, that iis symbolic in nature. . . . The cultural technologies of reading and writing seem to have
extended human memory, enabled abstract chains of reasoning, and guided
new ways of scanning visual items, thus making human[s] even more
cognitively plastic." ***
————————————————————————————————————————
*See Fascism. On the concept sado-sexual eigenvector: Levi R. Bryant, Difference and Givenness: Deleuze's Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence (Northwestern University Press, 2008)
A
style or essence is what we might refer to as an identity of
difference, or an identity produced through difference. It is not
a type or a kind, but rather a rule of production, a genetic
factor. It is an identity that maintains itself through
topological variations. It is for this reason that we speak of
morphological essences or diagrams of becoming. 68 [Think Eternal
Return]
Although Deleuze
himself never makes reference to the notion of topological essences,
the theme can be seen to run throughout his work. . . . Insofar as a
topological identity is produced between the variations a structure can
undergo, Deleuze is also able to maintain the being of concrete
universals which are no longer opposed to particulars. 70-71
**Maryanne Wolf, Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World
(Harper Collins, 2018, p. 179): "The seriousness of the current reality
means that at the present rate, the majority of eighth-grade children
could be classified as functionally illiterate in a few years' time." See Cognitive Decline
**The President Who Doesn't Read," The Atlantic, January 5, 2018
Ironically,
it was the publication of a book this week that crystallized the
reality of just how little Donald Trump reads. While, like many of the
tendencies described in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, Trump’s
indifference to the printed word has been apparent for some time, the
depth and implications of Trump’s strong preference for oral
communication over the written word demand closer examination.
“He didn’t process information in any conventional sense,” Wolff
writes. “He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that
for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.”
Wolff quotes economic adviser Gary Cohn
writing in an email: “It’s worse than you can imagine … Trump won’t
read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing.
He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is
bored.”
In March, Reuters reported that briefers had
strategically placed the president’s name in as many paragraphs of
briefing documents as possible so as to attract his fickle attention.
In September, the Associated Press reported that top aides had decided
the president needed a crash course on America’s role in the world and
arranged a 90-minute, map-and-chart heavy lecture at the Pentagon. And
amid the hype over Wolff’s book, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough wrote a
column Friday saying that in September 2015, he confronted Trump over
poor debate performances, saying, “Can you read?” Met with silence,
Scarborough pressed again: “I’m serious, Donald. Do you read? If
someone wrote you a one-page paper on a policy, could you read it?”
Trump replied by brandishing a Bible from his mother and saying he read
it all the time—probably a self-aware joke, given Trump’s proud impiety
and displayed ignorance of the Bible.
*** The Social Origins of
Language (p. 5, p. 23).
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PISA Math Scores: 2003 to 2015: 20 Developed Nations
Source. "How Other Nations Pay for Childcare. The U.S. is an Outlier" (New York Times, October 6, 2021)
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This
site uses figurative elements, including graphs, tables,
charts,
and maps
This
site uses figurative elements, including graphs, tables,
charts,
and maps, originally 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.
This site began fifty years ago as a project which at the time I called
an exercise in phenomenological marxism, and resulted in the
publication of my book The Emergence of a UAW Local, 1936-1939: a Study in Class and Culture
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975). Edmund
Kord, who was the key organizer in this plant, was one of the bildungs-proletarians* who was part of the
Reuther circle at Wayne State University in the 1930s. (see the Bildung page).
The plant layout at the right (figure 2) was drawn by Kord in the course of our discussions.
Figure 1. The UAW-Unity Caucus, 1933-1943, emerged out of my discussions with a number of veterans of the
formative years of the UAW (59 of whom are listed here).
This map was only constructed in the time of Trump, although the
interviews that produced it were conducted in the mid-1970s.
Thus, it is only recently that I realized that the Unity caucus
 was a
fusion of bildungs-proletarians and plebeian upstarts, was the vanguard
of modernity in the factories of southeastern Michigan, and was
organically related to the Keynesian elite in the New Deal state. The
faction fight between the Unity caucus and the (fascist) forces of Homer Martin,
was actually a specific manifestation of the fundamental battle lines
that emerged following the French Revolution, summarized by Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: the French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2001)
The bildungs-proletarian component of that fusion was made up mostly of
communists and socialists.
It was these bildungs-proletarians around whom formed the action
networks of plebeian upstarts who created the modern
UAW in the late 1930s. When placed in the contexts of Figure 0 and the periodization of the History of Reading and Writing
provided by Lyons, the extended mind of the Unity caucus becomes a
cultural historical base camp from which observations can be made
regarding the historicity of language and cognition.
What made this whole site possible is the literary and cognitive
capabilities of the bildungsproletarians and plebeian upstarts whom I interviewed.
I had no idea at the time (the mid-1970s) that these interviews would
prove to be critical to a reconceptualization of
modernity as a mode of lingusitic and cognitive performativity, nor
that they would provide a framework necessary if not sufficient for
understanding all that we subsume under the term "trump".
All
of us historians who interviewed these workers back in the nineteen seventies
and eighties were not only struck by their powers of mind, but also by
what can only be described as their strength of character. They
were the very model of republican citizenship, the embodiment of civic republicanism.
it was these bildungsproletarians who embodied the biocultural niche of modernity within the factories of southeastern Michigan.
The four
excerpts below, and the Detroit News article to the right, give some
indication of what the synthesis of bildungs-proletarians and plebeian
upstarts--the Unity caucus--was up against.
*Bildungs-proletarians.
highly literate workers who participated in the public sphere, embedded
especially in the biocultural niche of Progressivism. See Kraus interview on Wyndham Mortimer. Read Mortimer's letter to Chas on the factional situation in the UAW in the spring of 1938 for an example of what Kraus is talking about.
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figure 1. The UAW-Unity Caucus, 1933-1943:
Intersubjectivity, Shared Intentionality, and the Extended Mind
Bildungsproletarians and Plebeian Upstarts
the UAW, 1933-1943: a working notebook
figure 2. Layout of Michigan Steel Tube (UAW Local 238), circa 1937
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state-of-the-art scholarly texts
| Daniel Dor, Chris Knight, and Jerome Lewis, The Social Origins of Language (Oxford, 2014), p.4
. . . in the case of many nonhuman primates, dominance asserted
through violence or threat is the internal principle of social
organization . . . [Among humans] . . . primate-style dominance is
periodically overthrown and then restored, only to be overthrown and
restored again and again.
Franz de Waal, Our Inner Ape (Riverhead, 2005) (p. 135)
Since debates about human
aggressiveness invariably revolve around warfare, the command
structures of armies should make us think twice before drawing
parallels with animal aggression. . . . Are wars born from
anger? Leaders often have economic motives, internal political
reasons, or act out of self-defense. . . . With supreme cynicism,
Napoleon observed, "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of
colored ribbon." I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that
the majority of people in the majority of wars have been driven by
something other than aggression. Human warfare is systematic and
cold-blooded, making it an almost new phenomenon.
The critical word is "almost." Tendencies toward group
identification, xenophobia, andand lethal combat--all of which do occur in
nature--have combined with our highly develoed planning capacities to
"elevate" human violence to its inhuman level. The study of
animal behavior may not be much help when it comes to things like
genocide, but if we move away from nation-states, looking instead at
human behavior in small-scale societies, the differences are not that
great anymore. (emphasis added)
Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (Yale, 2004) p. 7
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.
Richard Lachmann, "Coda: American Patrimonialism: The Return of
the Repressed” in Patrimonial Power in the Modern World, Julia Adams
and Mounira M. Charrad, eds. Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 2011:
Patrimonialism,
until fairly recently, seemed an archaic social form, largely replaced
by bureaucratic rationalism. That confident view of modernity, in the
histories that Max Weber and his followers wrote, deserves to be
challenged as patrimonial regimes reappear in states and firms
throughout the world.
from Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)
It may be that the earliest phenomenon that can be functionally related
to fascism is American: the Ku Klux Klan. . . . The first version
of the Klan in the defeated American South was arguably a remarkable
preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar
Europe. p. 49
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Thermidor (1938-1963)
A Comment on Dor, Knight and Lewis; de Waal; Roper; Lachman; and Paxton
The
works quoted above provide a necessary framework through which to see
the events and processes of the New Deal years. To put it
bluntly: we have not transcended our inner ape, our primate
biology. It is woven into our existence in ways best put by Marshall Sahlins.
The above excerpts should be taken as a response to Zizek. What
do we mean by catastrophe, and what does it mean to say that only a
catstrophe can save us?
The New Deal is generally seen as a response to the catastrophic
collapse of the economy symbolized by the stock market crash of
1929. As I will show throughout this site, this is wrong, wrong,
wrong. A geneological approach to the New Deal must include:
1. The
Massachusetts Board of Railroad Commissioners Report
of 1871.
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., out of which
emerged the Taylor Society. This latter was organized by the lead
attorney in the case, Louis D. Brandeis.
3.And it also
must include
the experiences of the War Industries Board of WWI that brought
together the Taylor Society and Felix Frankfurter (Brandeis'
protege). See Franfurter's contribution to the disussion of Person's paper in TS Bull. December 1917 person's paper Feb 17
In the midst
of the conservative reaction of the 1920s the Taylor Society
flourished. four examples of this should suffice at this point:
1. On the multiplier effect: proto-Keynesian discourse, circa 1871
3. On planning: "Must Prosperity Be Planned?" Bulletin of the Taylor Society, February 1928
4. On industrial unionism: “Some Observations on Workers’ Organizations,” Bulletin of the Taylor Society, Feb 1929
The catastrophe now unfolding is very different from this economic
catastrophe of the 1930s. Dasein itself is at stake. This
catastrophe can only be grasped within the framework proved by
SOOL. From the reformation to the New Deal
has two dimensions. First, and most obvious, political
institutions on the right have tapped into and intensified primate
violence. (Just to be clear: this is not biological
reductionism.) Hence the quotes above. Second, and most
difficult, is the task of understanding the cognitive dimensions of our
present catastrophe. Nietzsche comes in handy here, especially 1.
his concept of nihiism; and 2. his comments on language from 1971
To repeat:
The Social Origins of Language: primate-style dominance is
periodically overthrown and then restored, only to be overthrown and
restored again and again.
Lachmann: Patrimonialism,
until fairly recently, seemed an archaic social form, largely replaced
by bureaucratic rationalism. That confident view of modernity, in the
histories that Max Weber and his followers wrote, deserves to be
challenged as patrimonial regimes reappear in states and firms
throughout the world.
Roper: 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.
With Roper's help we can think about QAnon, and put some real teeth into Nietzsche's concept of eternal return.
What is the sado-sexual eigenvector of GOP performativity but an
illustration of the power of eternal return as a provocation to thought?*
from Lionel B. Steiman, Paths to Genocide: Antisemitism in Western History (Macmillan Press, 1998), p. 93-95
The
Enlightenment did not deny the existence of all manner of evils but
denied that these were a consequence of human nature. It held
that people are by nature reasonable and capable of good but had been
corrupted by their institutions and environment. Its rationalism
assumed the universal existence of human reason and applied the
criterion of social utility to all institutions, policies, and
actions. Transform or abolish corrupt institutions, improve the
human environment, and human behavior would likewise improve.
Human beings were by nature rational and therefore capable of creating
a rational and humane socal order.
This was the
intellectual ethos of Progressivism, whose radical wing included the
socialists and communists. It is this ethos which now lies in
ruins. One does not simply pick up the pieces and hope for a
better day. One can no longer yearn for that "class with radical
chains," that phantom of the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, a
stunning reversal has occured, most evident in the United States, where
the deterioration of discursive and cognitive performativity is now the
hallmark of our times. Is it possible that literacy is dying even
as we speak? You bet! And right before our eyes.
Watch MSNBC and see for yourself.
*Anindya Bhattacharyya, "Notes on Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence." Daniel Chapelle, Nietzsche and Psychoanalysis (State University of New York Press, 1993)
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Fascism in Flint, 1937
click here for full text
related stuff
Masatomo Ayabe, "Ku
Kluxers in a Coal Mining Community: A Study of the Ku Klux Klan
Movement in Williamson County, Illinois, 1923-1926." (.Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol.
102, No. 1 (Spring, 2009)
Donald Holley, "A Look Behind the Masks: The 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Monticello, Arkansas" (The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Summer, 2001)
James H. Madison, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland (Indiana U. Press, 2020)
Mich grand jury investigation into black legion
on racism, black legion, klan, Homer Martin
Bud Simons, interview (Skeels): on grifters, Press room Flint Fisher Body
Cliff Williams interview (PF) on Bert Harris; phone call (Neighborhood Improvement Association)
Bill Jenkins on Pontiac
"Tar-dipping" party Pontiac Fisher Body
Norm Bully on the "Americans" (PF)
Frank Fagan on the "Americans"
Harry Kujawsky
Tiedermann
Reuther on Anderson, Indiana
Simons on Saginaw, Michigan
The Elder report |
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I just have found these two paragraphs that I wrote in the time before Trump:
Marx, and the enlightenment ethos
of which he was a part, was indeed wrong, and in more ways than one.
Not only did the Enlightenment not acquire a proletarian or popular
embodiment (the "class with radical chains"). The ‘people’, even in
its "working class" moment, became the mass base for right wing,
nationalist, racist, xenophobic cognitive modalities, political
cultures, and socio-culturally contextualized character formations.
(Blanning, Paxton, Clarke, Sugrue) These modalities of ressentiment
are ontologically prior to the political forces that utilize, absorb,
and manipulate them (see Right-wing Elites in the Postwar era; Red
Scare, UAW links). That is why answers to such questions as What’s the Matter With Kansas? cannot be given in political terms or through political analysis.
I suggest here that there is a
persistent existential catastrophe manifested in fascism, or better, to
use Nietzsche's term, ressentiment. Usually something that is
catastrophic is seen as a cataclysmic event rather than a persistent
condition. But that all depends upon the level of analysis chosen. At
the level of the organism homo sapiens historicus--post-paleolithic
man--life is a series of catastrophes--eternal recurrence, repetition
compulsion, mechanisms of defense . . . The perpetual work of
adaptation to power, and the tremendous range of possibilities opened
up by the increasing symbolic and institutional complexity of Dasein,
give us our being in the world, fractured, dynamic, creative, sadistic,
stagnant, withdrawn, depressive, bold, fearful, anxious, petty,
ecstatic, explosive, gregarious, autistic, etc. |
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state-of-the-art scholarly texts
The Social Origins of Language (summary)
In many cases it is behavioural change that comes first, subsequently determing genetic change.
language’s evolutionary emergence would have required profound social
and political change, [and] more trusting, stable relationships
.
. . in the case of many nonhuman primates, dominance asserted through
violence or threat is the internal principle of social organization . .
.
. . . primate-style dominance is periodically overthrown and then restored, only to be overthrown and restored again and again
Language consitutes a ‘biocultural niche’, embedded within the entire
human semiosphere—everything in human culture, material and
non-material, that is symbolic in nature.
. . . the cultural technologies of reading and writing seem to have
extended human memory, enabled abstract chains of reasoning, and guided
new ways of scanning visual items, thus making human[s] even more
cognitively plastic.
Language . . . is a quasi-artefactual biocultural niche, and the
capacity to acquire and use it involves the evolution and replication
of a phenogenotypic biocultural complex.
intersubjectivity and shared intentionality . . . Whiten and
Erdal (2012) emphasize the socio-cognitive complex of cooperation,
egalitarianism, and mindreading alongside language and cultural
transmission in the evolution of humans as successful hunter-gatherers.
All languages are socially constructed technologies for the instruction
of imagination, but the actual dynamics of exploration and
stabilization in each and every language could be as variable as their
communities, their histories, their particular communicative needs,
their collective capacities, and the private experiential worlds of
their speakers.
‘conventional knowledge sits in a kind of “middle ground” between
objective and subjective knowledge about the world . . . it is neither
strictly objective, nor subjective—it is ‘intersubjective’
Only given social forces of counter-dominance—where individuals with
allies can resist being dominated—and reverse-dominance—where the
collective dominates any would-be dominant individual—is language
likely to emerge.
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state-of-the-art scholarly texts
The Social Origins of Language ( brief excerpts)
Daniel Dor and Eva Jablonka, “Why we need to move from gene-culture co-evolution to culturally driven co-evolution"
. . . language facilitates social interaction in four
ways, all of which are crucial for collaborative exploration: “Language
dramatically extends the possibility-space for interaction, facilitates
the profiling and navigation of joint attentional scenes, enables the
sharing of situation models and action plans, and mediates the cultural
shaping of interactive minds. . . . 26
Chris Sinha, "Niche construction and semiosis: biocultural and social dynamics"
It is increasingly recognized, in theories of distributed cognition,
that human cognitive processes extend ‘beyond the skin’, involving
intersubjectively shared mental states and cultural-cognitive
technologies. This presents a conceptual problem not only for
psychology, with its traditional individualist assumptions, but also
for biology, which assumes by default that the organism as a behavioral
and morphological individual is identical to the organism as bearer of
genetic material. 44-5
Daniel Dor, "The instruction of imagination: language and its evolution as a communication technology"
Current discourse on human experiencing tends to ignore the privacy of
experience for a very good theoretical reason: much of the discourse
has emerged as a counter-reaction to the solipsistic view of human
experiences based on Cartesian philosophy, and has thus systematically
highlighted the intersubjective nature of human experiencing—the
primacy of the interpersonal over the intrapersonal. p. 108
In order to understand language, then, I suggest that we have to
abandon both the Kantian dictum, the foundational presupposition of the
cognitive sciences, that all human experiences comply with a universal
interpretive scheme, and the neo-Kantian conviction, the foundational
presupposition of most of the social sciences, that the members of
every culture and sub-culture experience the world in the same ways.
We have to begin with the acknowledgement that each human individual
lives in a private, experienctial world which is different from that of
the others, and is inaccessible to them. p. 109
| Emily Wyman, "Language and Collective Fiction"
However, a curious type of speech act know as ‘performative’ neither
describes nor brings about change in the world, but creates altogether
new institutional states of affairs, or ‘institutional facts’, within
it. (171)
As succinctly put by Kalish and Sabbagh, ‘conventional knowledge sits
in a kind of “middle ground” between objective and subjective knowledge
about the world . . . it is neither strictly objective, nor
subjective—it is ‘intersubjective’. (173)
. . . the categories that humans recruit in making sense of the world
are, in general, not restricted to the traditional ontological
dichotomy of objective vs. subjective. They also include categories of
fact that may be termed ‘ontologially intersubjective’, in that they
exist in virtue of group consensus. Indeed, it may be precisely
because such facts elude objective and subjective categorization that
we recognize their intersubjective foundations, and with no reduction
in their normative force. As Plotkin incisively observes, it is simply
that for many human affairs, ‘the law is grounded in the group’. (181)
More generally, that humans use language and symbolic action to
coordinate their private imaginings into shared, public fictions that
have normative force is profoundly revealing with regard to our social
evolution. In addition to sophisticated behavioural coordination
strategies (shared with many other species of the animal kingdom)
humans have, in addition, evolved modes of coordinating cognitively.
The ability to jointly imagine and subscribe to a set of fictional
statuses that we subsequently use to guide our interactions in
normative terms is qualitatelvely different from anything observed
outside our own species. Indeed, the whole framework of collective
intentionality, in which we share attention to aspects of the
environment, share goals and plans for collaborating together, and
subscribe to shared fictions that then further govern our interactions,
indicates an evolutionary environment in which the threats of
competition and social exploitation became outweighted by the
necessities of cooperation and trust. (183) |
v
|
state-of-the-art scholarly text
The half century between the 1880s and the 1930s was the golden age of the book in the West
|
Martyn Lyons, A History of Reading and Writing In the Western World (PalgraveMacmillan, 2010)
9. The Reading Fever, 1750-1830
("Everyone in Paris is reading . . . People read while riding in
carriages or taking walks . . . Women, children, journeymen
and apprentices read in shops. On Sundays people read while
seated at the front of their houses; lackeys read on their
back seats, coachmen up on their boxes, and soldiers keeping guard."
10. The Age of the Mass Reading Public (“Between the 1830s and the First World War . . . a mass reading public came into existence.”)
11. New Readers and Reading Cultures ("The half century between the 1880s and the 1930s was the golden age of the book in the West.")
|
|
yy
Civic Republicanism--bildung and literacy:
a geneology of the bildungs-proletarians of southeast Michigan and the lower Great Lakes
from
T.
Wilson Hayes, "The Peaceful Apocalypse: Familism and Literacy in
Sixteenth-Century England." The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 131-143 (13 pages)
. . . they believed that by reading they could learn how to save their own souls." p. 132
"transformation of consciosness with the spread of alphabet literacy"; Ong ref; p. 137
an internal transformation epitomized by the acquisition of literacy p. 141
Like the Lollards before them, Familists did not advocate separation
from the dominant church and, as Champlin Burrage and David Loades have
pointed out, should not be referred to as a sect at all. By
encouraging the apocalyptic transformation of consciousness that
literacy provokes, Familists showed ordinary people how they might
transform both themselves and the world around them. This was a
key factor in the advancement of popular literacy and, as a result, of
popular political awareness. 143
from Eric Leed, "'Voice' and 'Print': Master Symbols in the History of Communication," in The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture (Coda Press, 1980), (pp. 53, 55?):
In the sixteenth century literacy became a sign of independence. Unlike
inherited wealth or class, the acquisition of literacy showed that one
had the self-discipline to master an intellectual skill and enabled one
to absorb "new conceptions of the behavior appropirate for self-possessing individuals."
from S.A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge Univesity Press, 2008)
We
have seen that for 'conscous' workers in Russia and, to a lesser
extent, in China, reading was an activity that was central to
self-fashioning, constitutive of what it meant to be a cultured and
autonomous individual. By contrast, the relation of the newly
literate and semi-literate readers of the lower urban classes to new
forms of commercially produced mass literature, produced with an eye to
entertainment rather than education, was far less earnest. . . . p. 100
Indeed, without denying the real potental for tension between
individual autonomy and class-based collectivism, we may conclude that
genuine forms of collectivism and cooperative action are possible only
where class solidarity is grounded in autonomous individuals capable of
demanding the recognition due to them as thinking, feeling
persons. Without that, new forms of group coercion based on weak
individuality are likely to be the result . . . 110
|
g
|
Table 7.1 from A mind so Rare (p. 260)
Successive layers in the evolution of human cognition and culture
Each stage continues to occupy its cultural niche today, so that fully modern societies have
all four stages simultaneously present.
Stage
|
Species/Period
|
Novel Forms
|
Manifest Change
|
Governance
|
EPISODIC
|
Primate
|
Episodic event perceptions
|
Self-awareness and event sensitivity
|
Episodic and reactive
|
MIMETIC
(first transition)
|
Early homids, peaking in
H. erectus 2M-0.4 Mya
|
Action
metaphor
|
Skill, gesture, mime, and imitation
|
Mimetic style and archetypes
|
MYTHIC
(second transition)
|
Sapient humans, peaking in H. sapiens sapiens 0.5-present
|
Language, symbolic representation
|
Oral traditions, mimetic ritual,narrative thought
|
Mythic framework of governance
|
THEORETIC
(third transition)
|
Modern culture
|
External symbolic universe
|
Formalisms, large-scale theoretic artifiacts, massive external storage
|
Institutionalized paradigmatic thought and invention
|
h
bildungsproletarians
and
plebeian upstarts
think Chartists
|
praxiological ratios
a. plebeian upstarts
1. the Joe Adams ratio: 10.6% (Dodge Main) PF
2. the Charlie Yaeger ratio: 7.2% (Buick) Skeels
3. the Bud Simons ratio: 7.5% (Fisher Body 1) Skeels
4. the Cliff Williams ratio: 7.1% (Pontiac Motors) PF
b. bildungsproletarians: about one in thousand
Dodge Main: 2 ratios (21,894 members in Fall 1939)
n=34. (0.16%): Emergency Meeting of Chrysler Executive Boards and Shop Committees, October 8, 1939
n=13 (0.06%): Meeting of the Chrysler Executive Boards and shop committees, November 7, 1939
|
Bildungsproletarians' encounters with the "world"
1. encounters with "the masses"
a. patrimonial formations: gangs and grifters
b. Masons and K of C
c. the middle (hometownsmen): Elder, Wainwright
d. Polish women (Herman Burt)
e. workhorse uncle toms
f. Hillbillies
2. encounters with "the middling sort"
a. Ben Wainwright interview
b. the Elder report
3. encounters with the skilled trades
a. Mazey on the skilled trades in Briggs
b. Fagan on the "Americans"
c. Kluck on skilled trades
d. Kord on the colonization of the tool room
4. encounters with plebeian upstarts
a. Bud Simons on Toledo flying squadron
b. Edmund Kord on guys from front welding
c. Edmund Kord on the youth "gangs" in the press
rooms
d. Bill Mazey and Joe Adams on the Italians
5. encounters with management
a. Earl Reynolds
b. Bud Simons and Frank Fagan
c. Murray Body spring committee
6. encounters with fascism*
a. Bud Simons experience in Saginaw
b. Victor Reuther experience in Anderson
|
|
|
Patrimonialism
Ethno-religious
networks matter when it comes to understanding the AFL-KKK party within
the emerging UAW in the 1930s. The three tables to the right are
derived from local union records.
I made a list of all the names of those workers who either held or ran
for union office, and of those workers sanctioned by the Unity caucus
after it won an NLRB election in late 1939.
|
h
|
Midland Steel, UAW Local 410
The AFL Faction: the Non-Production Craft and Service Sector
name
| nationality
| religion
| year of birth
| classification | department |
|
|
|
|
|
| Oran Snyder
| German
| Catholic
|
| repair weld
| assembly
| Glen Snyder
| German
| Catholic
|
| repair weld
| assembly
| Anton Boll
| German/Kashub?
| Catholic
|
| die maker
| tool room
| Frrank Carr
| Irish
| Catholic
|
| crib clerk
| tool room
| Joseph Bergeron
| French-Canadian
| Catholic
|
| tool welder
| tool room
|
|
|
|
|
|
| F. Bieske
| German
| Catholic
|
| plumber
| maintenance
| Fred Kraus
| German
| Catholic
|
| pipefitter
| maintenance | F. Mathews
| Irish
| Catholic
|
| millwright
| maintenance
| A. Dumais
| French-Canadian
| Catholic
|
| electrician
| maintenace
| Carl Brendel
| German
| Catholic
|
| plumber
| maintenace |
|
|
|
|
|
| J. Killala
| Irish
| Catholic
| 1899
| crane operator
| transportation
| William Babcock
| German
| Catholic
|
| crane operator | transportation | Junius Pruitt
| Black
|
|
| tractor driver
| transportation |
|
|
|
|
|
| Pete Olshove
| Kashub
| Catholic
| 1898
| hyd. press die set
| press room
| Agnes Baaranski
| Kashub
| Catholic
| 1900
| press operator
| press room
| Marie Budna
| Czech
| Catholic
|
| press operator
| press room
|
|
|
|
|
|
| H. L. Harris
| Black
|
| 1891
| Hannifin op.
| assembly
| A. M. Smith
| Irish
| Catholic
| 1910
| arc welder
| assembly
|
u
|
The
link
h
|
Midland Steel, UAW Local 410
The CIO Milieu: Bildungsproletarians and Plebeian Upstarts
name
| nationality
| religion
| year of birth
| classification | department |
|
|
|
|
|
| North European
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Thomas Dyer
| Ky. Mason
|
|
| die maker
| tool room
| Sam Brear
| Scot//Czech |
|
| machine hand
| tool room
| A. Barton
| Indiana WASP
|
|
| diie maker
| tool room
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Ben Wainwright
| Pa. English
|
|
| arc welder
| assembly
| Bud English
| WASP RR Okla
|
| 1906
| arc welder
| assembly
| Norm Green
| French-Canadian
| Catholic
| 1912
| arc welder
| assembly
| Bud Berkey
| Pa. WASP
|
| 1904
| arc welder
| assembly
| John Fisher
| Scotch
|
| 1897
| spot welder
| assembly
|
|
|
|
|
|
| G. Watson
|
|
|
| press operator
| press room
| Mac Mackelvey
| Scot
|
|
| press operator
| press room
| A. Fritche
| German
|
| 1899
| large press op.
| press room
|
|
|
|
|
|
| THE LEFT
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Bill Sumak
| Russian
|
| 1897
| press operator
| press room
| George Borovich
| Serb
|
| 1913
| press operator
| press room
| Fred Cini
| Maltese
|
| 1905
| press operator
| press room
| James Dinkle
| Germ/Kashub
|
| 1910
| press operator
| press room
|
|
|
|
|
|
| John Kazmierski
| Polish
|
| 1912 | Proj. welder | assembly
| Peter Borovich
| Serbian
|
| 1914 | arc welder
| assembly
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Peter Kotenko
| Russian
|
| 1915
| labor
| transportation
|
|
|
|
|
|
| THE SECOND GENERATION
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| John Kazmierski
| Polish
|
| 1915
| arc welder | assembly | Ed Grabowski
| Polish
|
| 1915
| arc welder | assembly | Ted Maciag
| Polish
|
| 1915
| arc welder | assembly | Frank Kusz
| Polish
|
| 1896
| arc welder | assembly | Chester Podorski
| Polish
|
| 1917
| Hannifin op
| assembly
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Oscar Oden
| Black
|
| 1909
| assembler
| assembly
| Henry Warfield
| Black
|
| 1896
| assembler
| assembly
| Nelson Merrill
| Black
|
| 1909
| assembler
| assembly
| Henry Patterson
| Black
|
| 1902
| assembler
| assembly
| Edgar Hicks
| Black
|
| 1891
| hannifin op
| assembly
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
h
|
|
Interviews (Skeels, Friedlander, Leighton): Lower Great Lakes Industrial Region
| Detroit-east side
|
|
interviewees
|
|
|
|
Murray Body
|
UAW Local 2
|
Pody, Fagan, Jones
|
Dodge Main
|
UAW Local 3
|
Frankensteen, Watson, Ross, Harris, Adams, Ptazynski, Reynolds, Zaremba
|
Plymouth
|
UAW Local 51
|
NLRB, Sweet, bus.hist.,
|
Packard
|
UAW Local 190
|
McDaniel, Kujawski, Matthews, Poplewski,Lindahl
|
Michigan Steel Tube
|
UAW Local 238 |
Klue
|
Detroit Steel Products
|
UAW Local 351
|
Silver
|
Midland Steel
|
UAW Local 410
|
N=24
|
Chrysler Highland Park
|
UAW Local 490
|
Jenkins
|
|
|
|
| Detroit-Connor Ave
|
|
interviewees
|
Chrysler-Jefferson
|
UAW Local 7
|
Zeller, Carey
|
Hudson
|
UAW Local 154
|
Anderson, Moore, Pody
|
Briggs
|
UAW Local 212
|
Bill Mazey, Ernie Mazey, Morris, Vega
|
Budd Wheel
|
UAW 306
|
Bauer
|
|
|
|
| Detroit-west side and Dearborn
|
|
interviewees |
Ford
|
UAW Local 600
|
Lock, Llewelyn, Tappes
|
Fleetwood
|
UAW Local 15
|
Anderson
|
Ternstedt
|
UAW Local 174
|
|
|
UAW Local 157
|
|
|
|
|
Flint
|
|
|
Fisher Body 1
|
|
Genski, Simons
|
Chevrolet
|
|
Jones
|
Buick
|
|
Bully, Case
|
A.C. Spark Plug
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Pontiac |
|
|
GM Truck & Bus
|
|
Williams et. al. |
| Fisher Body |
|
Williams et. al. |
| Pontiac Motors |
|
Williams et. al. |
|
|
|
Toledo
|
|
|
Auto-Lite
|
|
|
Chevrolet
|
|
Ditzel, Roland
|
Willys-Overland
|
|
Addes
|
Spicer Mfg.
|
|
|
City Auto Stamping
|
|
|
Logan Gear Co
|
|
|
Bingham Stamping and Tool
|
|
|
|
|
|
South Bend
|
|
|
Bendix
|
|
|
Studebaker
|
|
Rightly
|
|
|
|
Milwaukee
|
|
|
Allis-Chalmers
|
|
BOOK
|
Seaman Body
|
|
speth
|
|
|
|
Cleveland
|
|
|
Fisher Body
|
|
|
White Motor
|
|
Mortimer
|
|
state-of-the-art scholarly texts
excerpts from The Social Origins of Language
v
state-of-the-art scholarly text
The human mind has been
drastically changed by culture
from from Merlin Donald, A Mind So Rare: the Evolution of Human Consciousness (W.W. Norton, 2001), pp. 301-2 (emphasis added)
The human mind has been
drastically changed by culture. In modern culture, enculturation
has become an even more formative influence on mental development than
it was in the past. This may be a direct reflection of brain
plasticity, rather than genetic change, but that does not in any way
diminish the importance of the change from a purely cognitive
standpoint. The human mind is so plastic in the way it carries
out its cognitive business, individually and in groups, that the core
configuration of skills that defines a mind actually varies
significantly as a function of different kinds of culture. This
is especially true of the most conscious domains of mind, such as those
involved in formal thinking and representation.
Let me be very clear about what I mean here. I am not speaking of
trivial cultural changes, such as variations in custom or language
use. These are by far the most common and have no proven
cognitive impact. The most important of these is literacy.
Literacy skills change the functional organization of the brain and
deeply influence how individuals and communities of literate
individuals perform cognitive work. Mass literacy has triggered
two kinds of major cogitive reorganizations, one in individuals and the
other in groups.
To become fully literate, the individual must acquire a host of neural
demons that are completely absent from anyone who lacks literacy
training. This involves massive restructuring. There is no
equivalent in the preliterate mind to the circuits that hold the
complex neural components of a reading vocabulary or the elaborate
procedural habits of formal thinking. These are unnatural.
They have to be hammered in by decades of intensive schooling, which
changes the functional uses of certain brain circuits and rewire the
functional architecture of thought. This process can be very
extensive. Consider the impact of twenty or more years of schooling on
the brain of someone who has acquired full symbolic literacy in several
different
technical, mathematical, scientific, and musical fields. These
skills encumber neural resources on a vast scale and change how the
person's mind carries out its work.
from Lionel Bailly, Lacan: a Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld, 2009)
The human child needs no training, or even teaching: human beings acquire
language by simply 'crossing the bar' in the relationship between
signifier and signified; and once the bar is crossed, the human psyche
is in the entrance hall of the Symbolic realm, with all its vast
possibilities. (46)
The associations
between signifiers and their high mobility allow for the immeasurable
complexity of human psychological functioning, both conscious and
unconscious. (47)
The signified
concepts are already present in the child’s mind, and it is the
exercise of these concepts, via the vocalization, that produces
pleasure in the game. In this case, jouissance
is derived from the functioning of the psychological apparatus . . .
. This process of symbolization is the means by which drives may
be enjoyed in a sublimated form: ‘Sublimation is nonetheless
satisfaction of the drives, without repression.’ [Sahlins] (120)
There is just as
much, if not greater jouissance in the functioning of the mind than in
the functioning of any other bodily part. The ability to cross
the bar of metaphor, to operate in the symbolic realm—to conceptualize,
to analyze, and to rationalise—are all libidinal functions, which
entail enjoyment of the mere functioning of the intellect. (124)
|
g
|
Textures of Politics
Murray Body Committee Local 2 discusses the competitive situation in the spring industry, 1939
Minutes of the
Murray Body Committee Local 2 at Executive Board Meeting, April 26,
1939, Toledo Ohio, Addes Collection, Box 14.11, Reuther Archives.
The members of the Local 2 Committee were:
Brother Hall from Spring &
Wire
Brother McDonnell from Stamping
Brothers Sanders and McWilliams
from Trim
Brother Smith from Frame (Ecorse plant)
Brother Manini,
Vice President
Also present was Executive Board member Walter Reuther
|
FDR Addresses the Nation, 1936-1938
Campaign Address (speech file 930), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 1, 1936
Informal remarks (speech file 935), Oelwein, Iowa, October 9, 1936
Audio and Transcript of Campaign Speech, Madison Square Garden, October 31, 1936
Fireside Chat #13, "Report to the Nation on National Affairs", June 24, 1938
Barnesville, Georgia August 11, 1938 (Leuchtenberg/"Copperhead")
|
Novelist Saul Bellow recalled hearing a fireside chat . . .
from Wikipedia, "Fireside chats"
Novelist Saul Bellow
recalled hearing a fireside chat while walking in Chicago one summer
evening. "The blight hadn't yet carried off the elms, and under them,
drivers had pulled over, parking bumper to bumper, and turned on their
radios to hear Roosevelt. They had rolled down the windows and opened
the car doors. Everywhere the same voice, its odd Eastern accent, which
in anyone else would have irritated Midwesterners. You could follow
without missing a single word as you strolled by. You felt joined to
these unknown drivers, men and women smoking their cigarettes in
silence, not so much considering the President's words as affirming the
rightness of his tone and taking assurance from it."
|
Modernist Sensibilities in Flint circa 1945-48
from my interview with Saul Wellman, Michigan State Chairman of the Communist Party in the post-war 1940s.
Saul Wellman:
Flint is what I consider to be the asshole of the world; it's the
roughest place to be. Now we recruited dozens of people to the Party
in Flint, and they came out of indigenous folk. And those are the best
ones. But we couldn't keep them in Flint very long, once they joined
the Party. Because once they came to the Party a whole new world
opened up. New cultural concepts, new people, new ideas. And they
were like a sponge, you know. And Flint couldn't give it to them. The
only thing that Flint could give you was whorehouses and bowling
alleys, you see. So they would sneak down here to Detroit on
weekends--Saturday and Sunday--where they might see a Russian film or
they might . . . hear their first opera in their lives or a symphony
or talk to people that they never met with in their lives.
PF: to me that's one of the most significant processes of people becoming radicals, is this . . .
SW: but you lose them in their area . . .
PF: right. You lose
them, but I think something is going on there that I think radicals
have not understood about their own movement . . .
SW: right . . .
PF: something about the urge toward self improvement . . .
SW: right . . .
and cultural advancement . . .
SW: right, right . . .
PF: and not to remain an unskilled worker in the asshole of the world . . .
SW: right, right. But
there are two things going on at the same time. The movement is losing
something when a native indigenous force leaves his community. On the
other hand the reality of joining a movement of this type is that the
guy who is in the indigenous area looks around and says this is idiocy,
I can't survive here.
|
The Southern Strategy: the Lacan-Atwater Signifying Chain
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."
|
Trump's Meeting with the Joint Chiefs in the Tank, July 20, 2017
A close reading of chapter 9, "Shocking the Conscience," can be found here. The chapter in its entirety can be found here.
The most striking aspects of the Tank meeting, as reported in A Very Stable Genius,
are the
primitive
cognitive performativity of president Trump, his brutish behavior
toward the Joint Chiefs, and the degree to which the Joint Chiefs were
flabergasted by this brutish stupidity. "He's a fucking moron",
said Rex Tillerson. (Slate, "Trump's Nuclear Meltdown", October 11, 2017.)
|
"He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting"
from "It’s Just Too Much: A Florida Town Grapples With a Shutdown After a Hurricane," New York Times, 1-7-19.
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.
|
|
the Slave Power and Lindsay Graham
List of past N. Carolinaa Senators and the aggressive racist apeal
|
FDR vs. the Slave Power
|
|
geneologies, part two: chimpanzee Politics*
De Waal, Chimpanzee Politics
Mazur, Biosociology of Dominance and Deference
Wrangham
Weber and Patrimoniasm
|
|
X
Some Arrestees
from the January 6th Assault on the Capitol
|
|
Now things begin to get interesting. The industrial structure discussed above was associated with the golden age of the "working class", which ended roughly in the early 1970s (Stayin' Alive; Bully interview). In the tables to the right, Some Arrestees fron Jan. 6th Assault on the Capitol,
the concept of class is inapplicable, and the characterization of the
arrestees as “middle-class” by the two sources cited is fundamentally
mistaken, notwithstanding the sources (the New York Times, the
Atlantic, and the University of Chicago center for this and that |
a conceptual language removed
from its material. . .
"From Navy
SEAL to Part of the Angry Mob Outside the
Capitol," 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.
And The Capitol Rioters Aren’t Like Other Extremists, (the Atlantic, Febuary 2, 2021), by Dr. Robert A. Pape, principal investigator, and Dr. Kevin Ruby,
senior research director of "The Face of American Insurrection"*
40 percent
are business owners or hold white-collar jobs. Unlike the
stereotypical extremist, many of the alleged participants in the
Capitol riot have a lot to lose. They work as CEOs, shop owners,
doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants. Strikingly, court
documents indicate that only 9 percent are unemployed.
*The University of Chicago, Division of the Social Sciences, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats: The Face of American Insurrection: Right-Wing Organizations Evolving into a Violent Mass Movement (Update of 2=5=21).
|
the Base Speaks: Three Telephone Threats
Eric Swalwell
Fred Upton
Debbie Dingell
|
Trump's Meeting with the Joint Chiefs in the Tank, July 20, 2017
A close reading of chapter 9, "Shocking the Conscience," can be found here. The chapter in its entirety can be found here.
The most striking aspects of the Tank meeting, as reported in A Very Stable Genius, are the primitive
cognitive performativity of president Trump, his brutish behavior
toward the Joint Chiefs, and the inability of the Joint Chiefs themselves to understand what was happening in the
Tank. |
yyy
|
New Jersey: N=9 Arrestees fron Jan. 6th Assault on the Capitol
NAME
|
NOMOTHETIC AND HERMENEUTICAL MATERIALS
|
FUZZY SET CATEGORIES
|
Abual-Ragheb, Rasha N.
|
cosmetologist
In November 2020, a Facebook account with display name Rasha Abu
participated in Facebook and Telegram group chats involving the New
Jersey chapter of the American Patriot 3%. In the Facebook chat, user
Rasha Abu advised the revolution will start not by standing by but by
standing up. In addition, she advised civil war is coming and they need
to show support, and rise up and fight for our Constitution.
|
cosmetologist
|
Baranyi, Thomas
|
graduated Trenton State College
In a Facebook post, Baranyi’s father said his son graduated from the
College of New Jersey, joined the Peace Corps, and also went into basic
training for the U.S. Marine Corps but was discharged.
From 2018 to 2020, he served in the Peace Corps in Albania.
On December 22, 2020, his father took to Facebook to say they have not seen each other in person since 2017.
|
went into basic
training for the U.S. Marine Corps but was discharged.
BTR
|
Fairlamb, Scott
|
a
New Jersey gym owner, Fairlamb held a protest at his Pompton Lakes gym
in May in response to Gov. Murphy’s coronavirus restrictions.
Fairlamb, a mixed martial artist who
turned pro in 2000, owned and operated Fairlamb Fit in Pompton Lakes.
The gym's website has been taken down and the phone number is
disconnected. Social media accounts for both Fairlamb and his
co-workers have been removed.
|
gym owner
martial artist
|
Guthrie, Leonard
|
(married with a daughter; identified himself as a street preacher.
His father told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter that his son went to
the rally as the chaplain for a group that met in Washington to "pray
and support President Trump and the whole movement.”
|
a street preacher
|
Hale-Cusanelli, Timothy Lewis
|
He is
an white supremacist and a Nazi sympathizer, according to an informant
who contacted Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) special
agent Daniel J. Meyers on January 12, 2021. The informant
is enrolled as a confidential human source (CHS) with the NCIS.
He has served in the U.S. Army since 2009 but has never deployed.
In 2011, when he was 19 years old, he was arrested after stabbing a man
he and his mother were living with in Pepperidge Court, Jackson, New
Jersey. With a wound to the abdomen, the victim underwent surgery in
the Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune Township, New
Jersey.
As a contractor at Naval Weapons Station Earle, he maintains a secret
security clearance and has access to a variety of munitions. He is
enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves. He is a human resources specialist
with the 174th Infantry Brigade at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in
Trenton, New Jersey.
He was a regular poster on anti-Semitic social media groups Jackson Strong and Rise Up Ocean County.
|
VIOLENCE
Military
PDLV
|
| Hazelton, Stephanie
|
aliases Ayla Wolf and Ayla Wolfe
a prominent right-wing activist from South Jersey, one of the loudest
supporters of Atilis Gym, that Bellmawr business that refused to follow
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s shutdown orders.
Hazelton has helped organize protests against New Jersey’s shutdown orders and is active in the anti-vaxxer movement.
Hazelton’s LinkedIn says she is the founder of New Jersey for Medical Freedom, the state chapter of an anti-vaccine network.
|
POLITICO
|
Stedman, Patrick Alonzo
|
a self-described “dating [and] relationship strategist”
In addition to offering relationship advice and touting his $500 master
class—which he claims is the “fastest and most effective way to change
your outcomes with women”—Stedman frequently writes about political
topics and his affinity for Trump.
|
GRIFTER
|
Suarez, Marissa A.
|
worked
as a correctional police officer in Monmouth County since 2019 but
resigned after her arrest. At the time, Suarez was a probationary
corrections officer at the Monmouth County Corrections Facility
|
correctional police officer
|
Todisco, Patricia
|
the performative domain of “legitimate” violence
pdlv PDO"L"V PDLV
|
correctional police officer
|
|
This segment (part two) assembles online media accounts of those arrested for their participation in the
events of January 6, 2020. Attempts were made to ascertain
occupational status and history; education; and
family/household/network embeddedness. Limitations in the
reporting of local media made this extremely difficult; and these
limitations themselves became a discovery incidental to the once
straightforward process of searching online for biographical information.
In Fascism: Data,
we sorted the arrestees by state and organization. Among the
states and organizations we looked at, the Oathkeeepers were the most
"middle class." They are a general manager at a car dealership, a
self-employed
carpenter, a window washer, a tatoo parlor owner, the owner of a
marginal day-car facility, and a former police officer. The
outlier in this table--and that by a long-shot--is Stewart Rhodes, Yale
Law School, clerk for an Arizona Supreme Court Justice, and a staffer
for
Ron Paul.
What we found was 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 classifications* 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 of the arrestees were connected to mainstrean occupations and industries: none
in manufacturing, none in the building trades, none in the modern
corporate sector.
The bottom line: out of the collapse of the economic basis for socialization
into adulthood within the psycho-cultural framework provided by white
supremacy, there results a prolongation of adolescent sadism (Goldberg
and Weitz).
Thus, about one third of the arrestees were employed in the
performative domain of "legitimate" violence: military, police,
security guards.
Another third were low-wage service workers in very small establishments.
Above all, many of the
arrestees come across as grifters. Indeed, the entire Trump
administration could be characterized as a swarm of grifters.** The GOP as a whole is a party dominated by grifters (although it still has within it honorable conservatives).
* North American Industry Classification System (U.S. Census Bureau)
Standard Occupational Classification System (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
**Herman Melville's The Confidence Man (1857). Karen Halttunen, Confidence men and painted women: a study of middle-class culture in America, 1830-1870 (Yale, 1982)
|
A University of Chicago study found that
40
percent [of the arrestees] are business owners or hold white-collar jobs. Unlike the
stereotypical extremist, many of the alleged participants in the
Capitol riot have a lot to lose. They work as CEOs, shop owners,
doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants. Strikingly, court
documents indicate that only 9 percent are unemployed.
And 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.
This characterization is profoundly wrong. It fails
to comprehend the reality of a population in
the process of marginalization.
In fact, any concept implying middle-class stability cannot be used to
describe this dataset. What one really sees here is one of the
more monstrous effects of what is misleadingly called
globalization. The transformations of postmodern capitalism are
not only spatial. They are technological (automation),
occupational (gig workers on the one hand, exqusitely refined
high-income-oriented services and commodity-fetishes on the other) . .
. and cultural-psychological (nihilism) (Ehrenberg]
What would happen, we began to wonder in the 1980s, to the displaced
masses thus produced. We have our answer: they would become the
cannon-fodder of fascism American style*. And the two-party system
is the death spiral of a once great nation. Speaking now as a
21st century New Dealer, today's liberal democratic party is 1. an
agent of globalization without the necessary planning that was a
hallmark of the New Deal; 2. a collaborator with the GOP in its support
of no child left behind (and thus, the destruction of public education
in workering class America; and a cheerleader for nihilism . . .
* and the subject of of books like Deaths of Despair.
What School Shooters Have in Common: Data-driven pathways for preventing gun violence, By Jillian Peterson & James Densley (Education Week, October 08, 2019)
|
At the left is a table of occupations of the six attendees interviewed by the Guardian reporter. This is real journalism.
This kind of reporting is almost entirely absent from local American news sources.
---the lifeworlds of the
arrestees, as well as the problems attendant on attempts to categorize
the arrestees in terms provided by the U.S. Census and standard
sociological theory (middle class, working class, small business . . . )
North American Industry Classification System (U.S. Census Bureau)
Standard Occupational Classification System (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
|
|
Tennessee: N=10 Arrestees fron Jan. 6th Assault on the Capitol
|
name
| hermeneutical materials
|
fuzzy set categories
|
Matthew Bledsoe
|
•He is the owner of Primetime Movers
•BBB: the company's accreditation was suspended due to failure to
respond to one or more customer complaints filed with the BBB.
•He was accused of kicking in the front door of his home in Cordova,
chasing his wife Kathryn Bledsoe, picking her up by her throat and
slamming her onto the floor.
|
grifter
violence
|
Jack Jesse Griffith
|
“I’m
not a domestic terrorist,” Griffith said. “For all the people
slandering, libeling, mislabeling my name, I’m a citizen I had nothing
to do with any violence, vandalism, and I love all my fellow citizens.”
Griffith
went on to promote his social media handles and Trump video game.
“Have an exuberant evening,” he said, as he hopped in a car to leave.
|
grifter
|
Eric Munchel
|
Munchel
currently lives in Nashville most likely working at Kid Rock’s Big
Honky Tonk bar downtown. He was accused of assaulting a man and woman
in 2013. He lists his profession as a bartender but Kid Rock’s
doesn’t hire male bar staff. This means he is likely working in the
kitchen or security. With his connections to others in private
security, that could very well be his role there. No record of military
service has been found. . . . He spent his summer hanging out with
local Proud Boys* and Qanon conspiracy theorists
|
grifter
|
Blake Austin Reed
|
From
2004 to 2009, he attended the University of Memphis in Memphis,
Tennessee where he earned his bachelor’s degree in organizational
leadership.
From 2012 to October 2013, he was the superintendent of Bluff City Operations‘ human resources management.
From February 2014 to November 2015, he was a superintendent at Regent Homes in Nolensville, Tennessee.
From November 2015 to September 2017, he was a project manager at Blalock Homes in Franklin, Tennessee.
From April 2018 to October 2019, he was a senior project manager at Vintage South Development in Nashville.
He owns Black Lion Brokers, which he established in November 2017 and is based in Nashville.
There is a Black Lion Realty in Nasvhille, NOT Black Lion Brokers
|
grifter
|
Ronald L. Sandlin
|
Ronald
L. Sandlin, 33, a self-styled internet blogger and protest organizer
from Tennessee, sobbed loudly and at one point blurted out, “Judge,
have mercy on me,” during his videoconference detention hearing on
multiple charges arising from the Jan. 6 breach at the Capitol.
How To Write Copy That Turns Into Cash - AWOL Elite Conference
On December 31, 2020, he took to Facebook to announce that he was
“organizing a caravan of patriots” who were going to Washington D.C.,
USA to “stand behind” Trump. He shared a link of the GoFundMe page
asking for donations for him, Josiah Colt and Nathaniel J. DeGrave and
said the three of them had already booked and paid for their trip to
Washington, D.C. On January 3, 2020, he revealed on Facebook that their
GoFundMe page was deleted.
On January 2, 2021, he wrote on Facebook that in 2020, he had a
“huge financial blow,” “got dumped” by his fiancé, crashed his
motorcycle and lost his grandfather.
During a detention hearing in federal court in February 2021, the judge
told him he owes $500,000 in back taxes. In the same month, the
I-Team found that no community where he is known to have resided can
find a record of him voting in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
|
grifter
|
Eric Chase Torrens
|
Torrens appeared in an Instagram video with Matthew Bledsoe and Jack Jesse Griffith (GRIFTER network)
|
grifter
|
Padilla, Joseph Lino
|
a company spokesperson for Wacker Chemie plant told us that Padilla worked at their Bradley County plant until 2016.
|
subproletariat?
former worker?
|
Michael Lee Roche
|
He works as a server at Farmers Family Restaurant in Murfreesboro
|
working poor?
|
Ronnie B. Presley
|
looked at 10+ local stories: NO INFO RE. WORK!
|
BTR
|
Bryan Wayne Ivey
|
looked at 10+ local stories: NO INFO RE. WORK!
|
BTR
|
Minnesota: n=3 Arrestees fron Jan. 6th Assault on the Capitol
NAME
|
AGE
|
NOMOTHETIC AND HERMENEUTICAL MATERIALS
|
FUZZY SET CATEGORIES
|
Victoria White
|
39
|
Larvita McFarquhar, a friend of White. McFarquhar owns Havens Garden cafe, in Lynd, Minn., where White has worked.
Attorney: Video shows police attacking Trump supporter Victoria White on Jan. 6
|
marginal working class?
|
Jonah Westbury
|
26
|
Westbury is from the city of Lindstrom (University of Mary North Dakota)
a former wrestler for the University of Mary Marauders in Bismarck, N.D.
|
BTR
|
Jordan K. Stotts
|
31
|
works in nurseries and greenhouses during the summer and travels in his van during the winter.
|
marginal working class
|
|
Eric Swalwell
Fred Upton
Debbie Dingell
▶︎Janice Sunderland--On March 27, 2017 Rehema Ellis interviewed Janis Sunderhaus, CEO of Health Partners of Western Ohio.
from “Health Care CEO: ‘People Don’tHave a Real Clear Understanding’ the Services Made Possible by ObamaCare”
Ellis: And you have said to me many people don’t even understand where
this health care is coming from. You told me the story of one
woman who was helped who was a Trump supporter. What was her
reaction to the fact that she was able to get this health care?
Sunderland: Well, she was able to qualify for the Medicaid expansion,
and she said to me, “Thank goodness I didn’t have to get
Obamacare.” And I looked at her and I said, “ Guess what?
This is Obamacare.” And she was kind of taken aback; and said
“Uh! Well let’s just keep that between you and me.” So
people don’t have a real clear understanding of what types of services
have been made possible by the Affordable Care Act passing Medicaid
expansion. This site here has now medical, dental, pharmacy
services—that’s all because of Medicaid expansion.
▶︎Family Furnishings: told the patient that her Medicaid coverage
was part of Obamacare, the patient said, “we’ll just keep that between
ourselves”. The one read of the expression on J. S.’s face is,
‘You see what the cognitive situation is—. but here, read in with Munro
Family Furnishings, re habitus of everyday wherein is enacted patient
X’s place in a field of discouse and senibilities
Understanding this cognitive gulf is a prerequisite to understanding “trump”.
----
▶︎Tina Johnson
Roy Moore Accuser Tina Johnson: ‘He Scarred Me For Life’ | Megyn Kelly TODAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZzp9AB2AyY
Moore accuser speaks to CNN (full interview)
https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2017/11/17/tina-johnson-roy-moore-accuser-erin-burnett-outfront-cnntv.cnn
|
ADD TO THIS TWO WOMEN VIDEOS FOR WORKING CLASS NOT CONTAINED IN BELOW:
The sex is for the women; sex is only a prop for sadism; women's sadism is sublimated; men's sadis is expressed
In part, the radically faithful had simply been concentrated.
The merely eager party types, and
the Las Vegas audience sorts, and
the local business proprietors, and
the family-outing Republicans, and
the VFW-post members, and
various church groups,
the salt of the Republican earth, more or less in normal dress,
all had mostly self-selected out, leaving what was generally, if
abstractly, referred to in the Trump circle as the “hard core.” But no
one had ever come so clearly face-to-face with this pure hard core as
was happening now and would happen, in video footage and in
indictments, in the weeks to come.
In some sense all the currents of the conservative movement--its way of
life, its power structure, its institutional identity, its carefully
assembled philosophy--had been custom-designed to avoid this
moment.
The wierdos and misfits;
the extremists;
the apocalyptic people;
the paranoids;
the conspiracy believers;
the embattled remnants of an activist racist world;
the followers of Robert Welch, the John Birch Society founder; and
the admirers of James B. Utt, the Congressman and racist from
California's Orange County (what Fortune magazine; in 1968 called
America's "nut country"); and
generals like Curtis LeMay, a face of the right wing in the 1950s and '60s, ready to nuke whoever back to the stone age--
all these had been for so long sanitized out of the conservative movement.
The currents of William F. Buckley Jr. (via Edmund Burke),
corporate leadership,
Richard Nixon realpolitik,
Ronald Reagan morning-in-America politics,
upwardly mobile capitalism,
family values, and
megachurch institutional conservatism
had taken over. But now, it turned out, the real right wing
had not gone away at all, but, apparemntly, flourished unseen, becoming
ver more baroque, ecstatic, and as far from the bourgeois world as it
was possible to get.
|
|
Florida: N=19 Arrestees fron Jan. 6th Assault on the Capitol
NAME
|
NOMOTHETIC AND HERMENEUTICAL MATERIALS
|
FUZZY SET CATEGORIES
|
Adams, Howard Berton
|
Edgewater
|
|
Anderson, John Steven
|
Courthouse
records on the Clerk of Court website show ANDERSON involved in
contentious divorce litigation alleging domestic violence, as
well as dismissed charges of assault, and fines paid for driving
without wearing a seatbelt, driving with an expired license tag.
|
|
Biggs, Joseph Randall
|
Proud Boys, Ormond Beach, Florida. is supporting his ex-wife and child
|
|
Camargo, Samuel
|
Like
many of the MAGA fanatics who have been arrested in the two weeks since
the insurrection, Samuel Camargo implicated himself by bragging about
his participation on social media, authorities said.
|
|
Counsil, Matthew
|
A Tampa Bay resident
|
|
Curzio, Michael
|
spent time in prison for attempted murder.VIOLENCE |
VIOLENCE |
Garcia, Gabriel Augustin
|
ran as a Republican in District 116 in Miami-Dade
a former U.S. Army captain, ran for Florida House District 116 as a Trump backer.
|
STORMTROOPER
GOP
|
Gossjankowski,
Vitali
|
a student at Gallaudet University
Katherine Jankowski, his mother, was formerly an administrator at Gallaudet.
|
|
Honeycutt, Adam Avery, 39
|
works as a bail bondsman in Northeast Florida
Honeycutt has three prior arrests on charges of drug possession,
domestic battery and breach of peace, but he was only found guilty of
that last charge.
|
police
|
Johnson, Adam
|
Johnson Is a Stay at Home Father Who Makes Furniture
|
marginal
|
Maldonado, Steven Omar
|
Maldonado
alias Emilio Maldonado is a Puerto Rico native and lives in Palm Bay,
Brevard County, Florida, according to Conan Daily. Previously, he was
arrested for a couple of misdemeanors in 1998 and is a real estate
sales associate. The site also listed him as a diver and he worked at
the Treasure Coast Dive Charters as a boat captain where he offered
diving and spearfishing trips on the Treasure Coast in Florida.
|
|
Mariotto, Anthony R. (aka, Tony Mariotto)
|
fort pierce
|
|
PERT, Rachael Lynn
|
Pert, who is the assistant manager of a Circle K convenience store in Middleberg, requested time off work to go D.C. with Winn.
“We’re on our way to DC because us as American patriots, we’re tired of
this shit,” Winn allegedly said in their live-stream. “It’s time to
make a stand. I never really knew how deep and corrupt all this crap
was and how far back it’s gone. But American needs to wake up. We’re on
the verge of fucking losing it.”
|
|
RIVERA, Jesus (aka, JD Rivera, Jesus Delmora Rivera)
|
U.S. Marines (Former)
|
|
STEPAKOFF, Michael
|
Stepakoff leads Temple New Jerusalem, a Messianic synagogue in Palm Harbor. He is also a former attorney.
Palm Harbor, Florida, rabbi
|
|
Sweet, Douglas
|
She
said Douglas was a self-employed man who does "handyman stuff" but
spends most of his time with his extremist groups. attended the
violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville
see photo!
“The Daughter Of A Trump Rioter Arrested At The Capitol Says She Is "Ashamed And Disgusted””
Douglas Sweet from Hudgins and Cobbs Creek resident Cindy Fitchett
|
|
Weeks, Bradley W., 43
|
a Clay High School graduate who attended the University of North Florida
WEEKS then sets up his camera to show his face and launches into a
speech declaring both the actions he has taken and his intentions.
“We’ve reached the steps. We’ve had to climb scaffolding. We’ve had to
climb ladders. We’ve had to break things to get through, but we’ve
gotten through. We’ve gotten through, and we are going to take back the
Capitol! We’re taking back our country! This is our 1776! This is where
it’s gonna happen! This is where Tyranny will fall! This is where
America will rise! Look at this, America! Look at this!”
|
|
WILLIAMS, Andrew
|
firefighter paramedic
|
|
WINN, Dana Joe
|
A Lemon Bay High School graduate
see Pert.
|
|
|
|
Oathkeepers N=14 Arrestees fron Jan. 6th Assault on the Capitol
NAME
|
NOMOTHETIC AND HERMENEUTICAL MATERIALS PBs
| FUZZY SET CATEGORIES |
Kelly Meggs
|
general manager at a car dealership
|
|
Connie Meggs
|
|
|
Kenneth Harrelson
|
Retired Army Sgt. Kenneth Harrelson
|
|
Donovan Crowl
|
Marine veteran, militia
a self-employed carpenter
Prosecutors said he does not have a stable address
|
|
Jessica Watkins
|
bartender who runs a self-identified militia, joined by three others in her unit, drove to Washington D.C. last week
|
|
Joshua James
|
window washer
|
|
Robert Minuta
|
tatoo parlor owner; High School graduate
|
|
Stewart Rhodes
|
Stewart
Rhodes grew up in the Southwest and joined the Army after finishing
high school. He became a paratrooper, receiving an honorable discharge
due to an injury in a night parachuting accident. Then Rhodes attended
college at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, graduating in 1998. Rhodes
has said that he taught street crime survival and rape prevention at
the college women’s center and also worked as a certified Nevada
concealed-carry firearms instructor.
After college, his first politically oriented job was supervising
interns in Washington, D.C., for libertarian Ron Paul, then a
Republican congressman from Texas. Rhodes subsequently attended Yale
Law School, graduating in 2004, and clerked for Arizona Supreme Court
Justice Michael D. Ryan. A trial lawyer and libertarian, he later
volunteered on Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign.
more: SPLC
|
|
Tanios, George Pierre 39
|
a West Virginia sandwich shop owner
GROUP OF 8 PHOTO
|
|
Grayden Young
|
an
Army and Navy reserve veteran; a brother, husband and a small business
owner; brother of Steele; Manager at Young Children's Academy
|
|
Laura Steele
|
a former High Point police officer; sister of Young
|
|
Sandra Parker
|
|
|
Bennie Parker*
|
|
|
|
|
Proud Boys: N=13 Arrestees fron Jan. 6th Assault on the Capitol
NAME
|
NOMOTHETIC AND HERMENEUTICAL MATERIALS | FUZZY SET CATEGORIES |
Enrique Tarrio
| "Arested Proud Boys chairman has history of business failure, apparently lives with mom" (WAPO JANUARY 8, 2021)
|
|
Joseph Biggs
|
Ormond Beach, Florida. is supporting his ex-wife and child. This Wikipedia entry is a must-read: Joe Biggs.
|
|
Ethan Nordean
|
•Auburn,
Washington.has been a Proud Boys chapter president and member of the
group’s national “Elders Council.” willing to stake the home
where his wife and child were living (?)
•Proud Boy activist who was fired by his father, Mike Nordean, over his
membership of the group. Mike Nordean owns Wall’s Chowder House and
Wally’s Drive-In in Des Moines, Washington.
|
|
Zachary Rehl
|
Zach Rehl biography: 13 things about Proud Boys member from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
|
|
Charles Donohoe
|
presidents of his local Proud Boys chapter
|
|
Ashlock, Ryan
|
Gardner, Kansas. Kansas City metro chapter of the Proud Boys
|
|
Chrestman, William
|
|
|
DECARLO, Nicholas
|
In
some photos, DeCarlo was seen with Nicholas Ochs, one of the founders
of Hawaii’s chapter of the Proud Boys, neofascist group.
In addition to his work for Murder the Media, DeCarlo said he also worked trading bitcoin online currency.
DeCarlo said he was not a member of the Proud Boys. But he said the Proud Boys had raised money for his defense
| posible Grifter
|
GARCIA, Gabriel Augustin
|
a
former U.S. Army captain, a 2020 candidate for the Florida State House
and a reported member of the Proud Boys / ran for Florida
House District 116 as a Trump backer
|
|
GOODWYN, Daniel
|
A
San Francisco freelance web developer who calls himself a Proud Boy and
has an extensive history of COVID denialism has been charged for his
alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Goodwyn has a large digital footprint. According to his personal
website, he attended City College of San Francisco and works as a
freelance web and app developer. He lists Jews for Jesus as one of his
clients and, strangely, posts links to everything from his Gab, Parler,
Venmo and Pandora accounts to his dating app profiles.
On his Twitter account Goodwyn claimed in September he was "arrested
and cited" for not wearing a mask on Muni. Afterward, he posted video
of himself on YouTube, maskless, reading a statement in front of the
Hall of Justice. In it, he repeats a number of lies about the
coronavirus pandemic, including denying it outright and falsely
claiming COVID vaccines will contain "a microchip.”
He used the citation to fundraise for himself on a Christian
crowd-funding site used by other far-right extremists like Stop the
Steal founder Ali Alexander. Goodwyn raised $1,689 of his $5,000 goal.
|
|
Greeson, Kevin
|
On Jan. 4, Kelly allegedly wrote, “I’ll be with ex NYPD and some proud boys. This will be the most historic event of my life.”
Read this: The Radicalization of Kevin Greeson.
|
|
KELLY, Christopher M.
|
works for a fixed wireless company in Cedar Rapids
|
|
Pezzola, Dominic
|
“The
Proud Boy Who Smashed a US Capitol Window Is a Former
Marine”
The Aquinas Institute in a suburb of Rochester, New
York.
One person who has known Pezzola for over 20 years described him as a
hardworking father of two daughters whose politics grew increasingly
extreme over the last two years. VICE News attempted to
contact Pezzola via phone numbers connected to his business
“Out of everyone in our class, I would have picked him out as a
domestic terrorist,” one classmate, who asked to remain anonymous for
her safety, told VICE News. “He was always a bit machismo,” remarked
another, who had the same request for anonymity.
Pezzola, of Rochester, N.Y., also has been named in state tax warrants
totaling more than $40,000 over the past five years, according to
public records. His attorney declined to comment.
|
|
|
|
the Base Speaks: Three Telephone Threats
Eric Swalwell
Fred Upton
Debbie Dingell
|
|
|
X
Semiotic Regimes: the Two-Party System
|
The
figure to the right combines cognitive and emotional processes.
Deployment of a concept of semiotic regimes enables making sense of
media productions as a moral theater of ressentiment and complaint.
So-called "conspiracy theories", when apprehended in the context of
this figure, become intelligible as instances of the political
mobilization of the paranoid-schizoid position. It is within this
context that a concept of the sado-sexual eigenvector of GOP
perfomativity emerges. (Clarke and Zaretsky; Nietzsche & Marx on the Cartesian myth (the myth of the "Individual")
|
state-of-the-art scholarly texts
|
from Friederich 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 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 or, in a
similar way, its flip side: explosions of violence, rage, the search
for new sensations. pp. 185-6
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
* "moral judgement" in the original
** "morality" in the original
|
|
The two-party System: Semiotic Regimes I
Cognitive Performativities and Emotional Configurations
|
LEFT*
|
RIGHT
|
Topology
|
depressive
|
paranoid-schizoid
|
Political style
|
progressive
|
proto-Dorian
|
Cognitive mode
|
concrete & pre-op
|
pre-op and gestural
|
Regime type
|
rational-bureaucratic
|
patrimonial
|
t
ihhhi
Analysis of comments sent to the Connecticut Post, August 31, 2006 regarding
the Jonathan Edwards murder case
|
The
original impetus for this analysis emerged from a reading of
the comments published in The Connecticut Post of August 31, 2006 re.
the Jonathon Edington murder case (Rabids/Thoughtfuls).
I noticed the deep similarities between this set of comments and the
pro- and anti-war demonstrators' signs in a CNN newscast, 4:00 to 6:00
PM, 9-15-07.
Figures 1 is what resulted from this line of thought.
In
the figure above right I characterized the differences between the two
parties as topological the topology (where there is a structure on a
set of elements)
and the topography (which is simply descriptive) of the two-party
system.
By topologies I mean the
following: take the set of all statements made in a well-defined
bounded discursive space (the two-party space).
First, the rhetorical elements form two disjoint sets.
Second, there is a
structure on each data set: a left structure and a right structure.
Each data set has both a psychoanalytic and a cognitive dimension.
These psychological-semiotic structures are provided by Simon Clarke, Social Theory, Psychoanalysis and Racism
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). The Clarke text is deployed as
interpretive grid. Without this psychoanalytic framework it is
impossible to understand the rhetorical performances of right-wing
political actors--and the responses of their right-wing audiences.
Note also how the work of Clarke, Zaretsky, Ehrenberg
The cognitive-semiotic
structures are provided by standard developmental theory (page,
bibliography). Pre-operational and gestural cognitive modalities
dominate the right rhetorical set. More abstract (formal
operational) and factual (concrete operational) dominate on the
left. Indeed, the fundamental character of the left is its
committment to science, explicitly, and bildung, implicityly. |
|
Rabid
Put me down for 100.00$ for this guys defence. He was kind. In Texas
they would have never found the body. I tored of all the nambepambe
judges letting these monster room free. I tell my kids not to worry
about whats on TV, worry about you neighbor! I don;t want to tramatize
them but damn the world has just changed for the worst. Nothing new,
its alwas been there, with media we haer more of it. You'd thing a good
judge would use it to their advantage and really knock these type of
creep down and lock them up and trow away the key. email me Jon, and
Thanks Allen
Allen Winn | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 12:09 pm | #
|
This father is hero. Hopefully, those of us who feel the same will
continue to lobby the law makers to pass laws making any indecent
contact with a child AND dealing in any way with kiddie-porn, a felony,
carrying HEAVY jail sentences. The fact that this dad is an attorney
and knows the watered-down, perp-favored laws, says volumes. He meted
out justice, swiftly and fairly. God bless you, Mr. Edington!
c | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 12:07 pm | # |
|
About time someone takes the law in their own hands, So what did the
FFLD PD do when they had the compliant about the perv standing naked in
the window, FFLD PD get off your ASS and start working instead of
worrying about traffic voilation..... |
I hope i am a jurer for this trial, FREE FREE FREE
chris gallo | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 12:06 pm | #
|
I've always thought I would do the same if any person harmed my son.
Thank you Mr. Edington from fathers everywhere. I wish this happened
everyday. Perverts would think twice.
Anton | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 11:51 am | # |
This man should be lift on the shoulders of every father in this
country and given three cheers. What he did to his neighbor is nothing
compared to what that little girl will have to live with. We should all
rally to let our voices be heard and help this man out. He is no danger
to anyone except the man who harmed his daughter and that is very well
taken care of.
Chris | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 11:44 am | # |
Wow I was expecting to chime in with the exact comments expressed here.
Earlier when the death was reported I said it was probably going to be
over something silly since nothing was reported about the reason.
videophotog | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 11:35 am | # |
This guy should be given the key to the city. The only thing the guy
did wrong was that he should have just gotten rid of the body so the
tax paying people of conn. wouldn't have to pick up the bill for the
trial. This is the way it should be done until the laws on sexual
predation are corrected.
Joel | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 11:07 am | # |
I have heard many a father say that is exactly what they would do to
any sick man who would dare....The tragedy is not that he killed a sick
man the tragedy is what was done to that little girl and what their
family will have to endure in the future.
Diane | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 11:06 am | # |
I hope he gets off and doesn't serve one day in jail because he got rid of a low life useless person a pediphile pig!
B | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 9:34 am | # |
|
|
|
Thoughtful
I heard the child was 2. Most 2 yearolds barely talk and most not
capable of making up a story. How did the child tell the mother about
this incident?
lisa | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 1:31 pm | # |
So many are making comments without knowing the facts. What really did
happen?? Think about both families and how they are both feeling. In
the USA we are supposed be to innocent until proven guilty. And does
being convicted of driving under the influence make this an automatic
assumption of guilt. Learn the facts before you judge............
Susan | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 1:07 pm | # |
I find it extremely disturbing that a man can be tried, convicted and
executed without one shred of evidence, in the court of public madness
and extremism.
Has our paranoia become so intesified that we are reasy to commit cold blooded murder merely on speculation and rumor?
The article stated: MacNamara said James did not have a criminal record
and was not under "any investigation alleging inappropriate activity
regarding children."
On May 1, 2001, James pleaded guilty in Superior Court to driving under
the influence of alcohol or drugs and was sentenced to six months,
suspended after two days, followed by 18 months probation. He was also
fined $500.
If people think the above charges warrant the death penalty by
stabbing, then the real danger to society are the majority of the
posters here.
TL Myers | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 12:59 pm | # |
Im glad your all so quick to judge. Do you know the facts? To me
something as important as molestation of a child should not been done
by a phone call. Where was the parents when this 2 year old child was
left alone? That just seems strange to me. people need to question that.
anonymous | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 12:37 pm | # |
I am an empty nest father of two, a daughter and a son. I too would
have the urge to hunt down and exterminate anyone who hurt either of my
children or my wife. Crimes against children are the very worst and are
why these types of people have to be protected from other lawbreakers.
Nevertheless, it seems strange to me that he would take the action he
did based on a phone call and not speaking with his daughter himself. I
would have got myself to my daughter's side first to talk to and
comfort her and my wife. There were already hard feelings with this
neighbor and the phone conversation after a long day at work was the
spark. This man is no hero to me regardless of the evidence that may
come.
Charlie | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 12:19 pm | # |
I am a bit dismayed at the comments here. If this guy did molest the
little girl then I have no problem with the father walking away.
However, every comment so far has convicted this man of molestation on
the word of a 2 year old, and the phone call of a wife. Did the 2 year
old just come out and say this to her mother? Did her mother bring this
revelation out of the child? We don't know, yet you are ready to
convict a man that you do not even know. The police have not confirmed
anything. How can anyone condone killing of another person based on
rumor, and at this point that is all that it is.
Joe Duh | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 12:15 pm | # |
Being the mother of a murdered daughter, you might think I would
approve of this but I dont..We have due process whether or not we think
t he process is just or not..This man is innocent until proven
guilty..A two year old child has to be questioned carefully..We cannot
as a society take the law into our own hands..Change the laws
pertaining to molestation, and violent crimes..Pay attention ,contact
legislators because it could be you or someone you love one day..Put
these people away, but do it in a legal manner.
gail addenbrooke | Email | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 12:10 pm | # |
|
part 3
|
X
X
the Keynesian Elite in the new deal state
|
d
d
d
The "New Deal" as an interlocking set of semiotically-mediated action networks
|
d
proto-Keynesian discourse, circa 1871: origins of the multiplier effect
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 thesmselves ("It is a
pefectly well-established fact in railroad economy, that where a
community in 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.
from Friederich Nietzsche, Geneology of Morals, II, 12
The democratic
idiosyncracy which opposes [the will to power] has permeated the realm
of the spirit and disguised itself in the most spiritual forms to such
a degree that today it has forced its way, has acquired the right to
force its way into the strictest, apparently most objective
sciences; indeed, it . . . has robbed life of a fundamental
concept, that of activity. Under the influence of the above
metioned idosyncracy, one places instead "adaptation" in the
foreground, that is to say, an activity of the second rank, a
mere reactivity; indeed, life itself has been defined as a more and
more efficient inner adaptation to external conditons (Herbert
Spencer). Thus, the essence of life, its will to power, is
ignored; one overlooks the essential priority of the spontaneous,
aggressive, expansive, form-giving forces that give new interpretations
and directions, although 'adaptation' follows only after this; the
dominant role of the highest functionaries within the organism iself in
which the will to life appears active and form-giving is denied.
from review by Jeff Turrentine (NY Times, 2-20-15) of Tom McCarthy’s ‘Satin Island’
U.’s firm is of the
sort that can count among its clients not only multinational
corporations but also their host governments; they come seeking expert
guidance on how to “contextualize and nuance their services and
products,” how to “brand and rebrand themselves” and how to “elaborate
and frame regenerative strategies.” What they’re really seeking, of
course, is an inside track to the sublimated anxieties and ritualized
desires of the billions of individuals that the new digital
monoculture, foretold by Lévi-Strauss, has made into one big, happy,
global family of consumers. For his part, U., a classically trained
anthropologist rescued “from the dying branches of academia” by his
company’s charismatically Delphic C.E.O., is more than happy to oblige
their requests, recognizing as he does that the market for his skills
has shrunk a bit in the 80 years since Lévi-Strauss first disappeared
into the rain forest. As he puts it, memorably and matter-of-factly:
“Forget family, or ethnic and religious groupings: Corporations have
supplanted all these as the primary structure of the modern tribe.”
|
|
Intersubjectivity, Shared Intentionality, and the Extended Mind:
The Keynesian Elite in the New Deal state
The Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State: Career Matrix Ezekiel
CODE
|
STATE FUNCTIONS
|
CAREER VECTORS
|
|
National Power Policy Committee (NPPC) |
|
MR
|
Harold Ickes |
Chicago
Progressivism: Rosenwald-Crane-Merriman/People's Progressive League
1922/People's Traction Leaugge 1929-30/PWA 1933-39/NRC 1934-39 |
TS-FF
|
Morris L. Cooke
|
Pinchot: Phila Public Works 1911-14/ WIB Depot Bd. 1917/U.S. Shipping Bd. 1918/N.Y. State Power Authority
|
FF-TS
|
Benjamin V. Cohen
|
Harvard Law 1916/U.S. Shipping Bd. 1917-19/PWA-NPPC/Leading legislative draftsman New Deal
|
|
|
Figure 5. Taylor
Society, 1927: Mass
Distribution, input-output flows
|
|
Figure 6. Taylor
Society, 1927: Mass
Housing, input-output flows
|
|
Figure 7. Taylor Society, 1927: Machinery
|
|
Figure 4. The Taylor Society: Non-Mfg Organizations, 1927
|
FDR vs. the Slave Power
Roosevelt and Frankfurter: their correspondence, 1928-1945, annotated by Max Freedman (Little, Brown, 1967), pp. 282-83
The following memorandum by Frankfurter, as Roosevelt recognized and
indicated, was a historic document, for it showed that Roosevelt knew
he would have trouble with the Congressional leaders of his party as
early as the summer of 1935. The memorandum destroys the myth
that the divisions in the Democratic party became serious only because
of the court-packing fight and the attempt to purge uncooperative
Democrats like Senators George and Tydings.
Memorandum
The White House, July 10, 1935
Last night, after a
very delightful dinner on the South Porch, the President asked
Ferdinand Pecora and me into his study in the Oval Room. He said
he had a nasty little problem—a row between Senator Tydings, Chairman
of the Senate Investigating Committee now examining conditions in the
Virgin Islands, and Senator Harold Ickes. The latter had sent an
irate letter to Tydings charging him with unfairness in the conduct of
the investigation. Tydings had replied with acerbity. There
are involved several personalities—a constituent of Tydings, a Judge, a
former Congressman, and Senator Pat Harrison who has taken up the
cudgels for Tydings. Pat Harrison has enlisted the support of
Senator Joe Robinson, and these Democratic leaders are asking for the
scalp of Ickes. The President said Ickes is hot-tempered and
impulsive and all that and treats Congressmen and Senators with
brusqueness; but he is very valuable and the President refuses to let
him go.
And then, the President, after ruminating on the
situation, said, “Moreover, at bottom, the leaders like Joe Robinson,
though he has been loyal, and Pat Harrison are troubled about the whole
New Deal. They just wonder where the man in the White House is
taking the old Democratic party. During their long public life,
forty years or so, they knew it was the old Democratic party. They
were safe and when Republicans got into trouble, the old Democratic
party won nationally. But in any event they, and in the South
without opposition, were all right and old-fashioned. But now
they just wonder where that fellow in the White House is taking the
good old Democratic party. They are afraid there is going to be a
new Democratic party which they will not like. That’s the basic
fact in all these controversies and that explains why I will have
trouble with my own Democratic party from this time on in trying to
carry out further programs of reform and recovery. I know the
problem inside my party but I intend to appeal from it to the American
people and to go steadily forward with all I have.”
Frankfurter noted that he
read his minutes of this conversation to the President, who asked
Frankfurter to keep the memorandum because of its "historic value.”
----------
Memorandum FDR to FF
The White House, March 2, 1936
(b) I wish you and
Lasswell would try to work up a list of those smaller, independent
business men -- say fifteen or twenty -- whom I could invite to
Washington. I know of no way of getting up such a list. . . . .
(d) I hope to have a talk with Lincoln Filene. I saw him
the other day for a miinute but only with a group. Please ask him
if he can come down a little later on.
-------------
from Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1928-1945 (1967)
If American history means
anything it means that Presidents, on the whole, are the expression of
the convergence and conflict of dominant forces . . . . I hold
fast to the proposition that what matters in politics is the direction
to which impetus is given, and what determines impetus is very largely
the direction of the powerful forces that are enlisted on one side and
on the other. pp. 357-8 (circa September 25/October 1, 1936)
|
|
Strategic Elites: Institutions and Individuals
|
Sectors of Realization/ Configurations of Capital
|
Firms & Functions
|
See Elliot A. Rosen, Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brans Trust: from Depression to New Deal
Belmont, Baruch, Brookings, Lovett, Harriman (Columbia, 1977) for 1932 list
|
Commodities in International Trade
|
Tobacco, Cotton, Sugar, Corn, Wheat, Copper, Oil
Shipping
Legal Services
Financial Services
|
National Civic Federation
See Other People's Money, Pujo Committee, TNEC
Morgan
|
Securities Bloc
|
Securities & Finance
Legal Services
Infrastructure (Railroads, Telephones, Electric Power, Urban Transportation)
Primary Materials (Iron & Steel, Coal)
Captive Capital Goods
|
Pollak Foundation
The Taylor Society: elite non-manufacturing firms
Filene's, Macy's, Bowery Savings Bank, Dennison Manufacturing
|
Mass Consumption I:
Mass Distribution & Mass Housing
|
Mass Retailers
Producer Services
Real Estate
Construction?
|
|
The Taylor Society: manufacturing firms | Mass Consumption II:
Captive Production Inputs
|
|
Twentieth Century Fund
(founded by E. A. Filene)
Committee for Economic Development
Hiss List
see Mark Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite (Harvard, 2013)
|
Modern Machinery & Continuous Process Multinationals
|
|
Clinton Foundation
Democratic Leadership Council
Priorities USA Action: Contributors, 2016 cycle, $100,000 and above
|
Post-modern Capitalism:
1. the Production of Subjectivities
2. Financialization
|
|
| Provincial Elites |
|
|
Mayberry Machiavellis
The Price of Loyalty
Arno Mayer, The persistence of the Old Regime : Europe to the Great War
Michael W. Miles, The Odyssey of the American Right, 1980; The Kansas Experiment, New York Times August 5, 2015
|
Provincial Capital Formations
|
Local Chambers of Commerce
|
Sodalities
|
|
|
Republican Gomorrah
Seymour Hersch on Chicago p.d.
Rita Johnson
Bill Jenkins on Pontiac
Ferguson, Mo. PD
Staten Island D.A.
Jackie Presser
Barney Kluck on 1933 T&D strike
| Sodalities/Patrimonialism
ethnic, racial, religious, occupational
| Police, Fire, Local Gov't, Local Services, Skilled Trades, Construction?
|
Patrimonial "Capitalism"?
|
|
|
Coers, Trump, Koch, Lind
Piketty, Krugman, Adams, Weber, Randall
|
Patrimonialism/Sodalities
|
the grand Herd is a coalition of little herds;the mob (pogrom/lynching?): electorates, constituencies, markets, hotels, casinos
extractive industries (coal, oil, copper, etc. )
|
|
|
1. a Tsunami of Corporate Opposition to Trump's Coup Attempt, reported but not comprehended by major media.
Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee personally vetted Trump’s fraud claims, new book says. They were unpersuaded. (WAPO, Sept. 20, 2021)
Why McConnell Dumped Trump, by Jane Mayer (New Yorker Feb. 1)
Deepening Schism, McConnell Says Trump ‘Provoked’ Capitol Mob (NYT 1-19-21)
‘We Need to Stabilize’: Big Business Breaks With Republicans (NYT 1-15-21)
Chamber of Commerce calls Trump’s conduct ‘inexcusable’ and vows to curb certain donations. NYT 1-12-21
Money Walks: Corporate America is rethinking its political donations. NYT 1-12-21
These Businesses and Institutions Are Cutting Ties With Trump NYT 1-11-21
Loyal to Trump for Years, Manufacturing Group Now Calls for His Removal NYT 1-10-21
After Riot, Business Leaders Reckon With Their Support for Trump (NYT 1-7-21)
Business Leaders Condemn Violence on Capitol Hill: ‘This Is Sedition’ (NYT 1-6-21)
Business Leaders Call on Congress to Accept the Electoral College Results
January 04, 2021 (The Partnership for New York City)
Opinion:
All 10 living former defense secretaries: Involving the military in
election disputes would cross into dangerous territory, WAPO, January 3, 2021
More than 100 C.E.O.s urge Trump to let the transition of power begin. (NYT 11-23-20)
Business Leaders, Citing Damage to Country, Urge Trump to Begin Transition NYT 11-23-20)
2. The Elite Milieu of the Democratic Party, circa. 2016
|
|
|
X
X
X
A key text
In many cases it is behavioural change that comes first, subsequently determing genetic change.
language’s evolutionary emergence would have required profound social
and political change, [and] more trusting, stable relationships
.
. . in the case of many nonhuman primates, dominance asserted through
violence or threat is the internal principle of social organization . .
.
. . . primate-style dominance is periodically overthrown and then restored, only to be overthrown and restored again and again
Language consitutes a ‘biocultural niche’, embedded within the entire
human semiosphere—everything in human culture, material and
non-material, that is symbolic in nature.
. . . the cultural technologies of reading and writing seem to have
extended human memory, enabled abstract chains of reasoning, and guided
new ways of scanning visual items, thus making human[s] even more
cognitively plastic.
Language . . . is a quasi-artefactual biocultural niche, and the
capacity to acquire and use it involves the evolution and replication
of a phenogenotypic biocultural complex.
intersubjectivity and shared intentionality . . . Whiten and
Erdal (2012) emphasize the socio-cognitive complex of cooperation,
egalitarianism, and mindreading alongside language and cultural
transmission in the evolution of humans as successful hunter-gatherers.
All languages are socially constructed technologies for the instruction
of imagination, but the actual dynamics of exploration and
stabilization in each and every language could be as variable as their
communities, their histories, their particular communicative needs,
their collective capacities, and the private experiential worlds of
their speakers.
‘conventional knowledge sits in a kind of “middle ground” between
objective and subjective knowledge about the world . . . it is neither
strictly objective, nor subjective—it is ‘intersubjective’
Only given social forces of counter-dominance—where individuals with
allies can resist being dominated—and reverse-dominance—where the
collective dominates any would-be dominant individual—is language
likely to emerge.
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IV. Two Rules (there is no truth; only methods and works)
1. The Cassirer inclusion rule: there is a set of authoritative
texts--authoritative in the sense of being highly respected state of
the art works--that must be taken into account, or good reason given
for not doing so. For example, the semiotic field constituted by the
set of texts on on slavery in the Atlantic world (click here).
An exception to the Cassirer inclusion rule is provided by the Margolies exclusion rule:
2. The Margolies exclusion rule: Texts that address cultural,
psychological, political, and historical questions through scientistic
reductionism are excluded for the following reasons:
they expel from the field of discourse all of post-Kantian, hermeneutical philosophy
they thereby also exclude literature as a relevant resource for thinking about the human
they exclude the psychoanalytically-inspired textual modalities (not theories) that,
together with literature, provide indespensible resources for
comprehending not only depth and complexity, but also the dark side of
our existence.
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modernity as a mode of lingusitic and cognitive performativity
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from Friederich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, (I 2).
All
philosophers have the common failing of starting out from man as he is
now and thinking they can reach their goal through an analysis of
him. They involuntarily think of 'man' as an aeterna veritas, as
something that remains constant in the midst of all flux, as a sure
mesure of things. Everything the philosopher has declared about
man is, however, no more than a testimony as to the man of a very
limited period of time. Lack of historical sense is the family failing
of all philosophers
from Friederich 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 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*** or, in a
similar way, its flip side: explosions of violence, rage, the search
for new sensations.**** pp. 185-6
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
* "moral judgement" in the original
** "morality" in the original
*** liberalism/nihilism
**** fascism (see Roper and Walzer)
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the big picture: 1mya to 2023
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Geographies, Timelines, and Bibliographies
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